Her father had been after her to set a date for that reception the Accardis wanted to hold in her honor. When he heard of her engagement, and to whom, his cajoling had become persistence. He couldn’t wait to meet her fiancé.
And she couldn’t wait for Antonio to meet him, too. Now that she’d been included in Antonio’s family, her reluctance to establish a relationship with her father and the Accardis had evaporated. She now wanted to attend the party in which she would meet her long-lost family.
But though Antonio was always eager to do everything with her or for her, joining her for that party wasn’t a foregone conclusion. As he’d just proven again.
She tried again. “He’s really eager to meet you, and he’s hoping I can give him a final answer about the Accardi reception.”
Next moment, her heart lodged in her throat. At the shocking burst of wrath and revulsion she saw reflected at her in his eyes.
He suppressed his reaction at once. But she’d seen it.
This was far worse than she’d first thought. It was like this lethal persona that lived within him had surged to the surface. And it had been positively murderous.
Feeling close to tears for thoughtlessly causing him this flare-up, she squeezed her eyes shut and turned to leave the bathroom. “Please, forget it. I shouldn’t have brought this up.”
“No.” She heard the razor clatter in the marble sink, and then the sound of his hurried, powerful footsteps a second before his hands clamped her shoulders and turned her to him. “Dio mio, mi amore, no. You should always tell me everything. Everything you want to do, anything on your mind. Always. I beg your forgiveness if I made you feel you can’t talk to me about this.”
A tear trickled down her cheek, inciting a vicious string of self-abusing expletives from him.
Furious with herself, she wiped it away, pointed at the moisture. “This is for you. I hate that I didn’t take a hint, cornered you into letting your anger surface. I know how you hate your harsh side, what it takes to curb it so perfectly, to maintain your inner peace. I hate that it’s only on my account that you can fall prey again to such aggressive emotions.”
Clad in only low-riding black silk pajama bottoms, he scooped her up in his arms, his erection lodging in her quivering belly. “Well, you’ll have to live with the fact that I would give up all the peace in existence for the savage emotions you inspire in me, along with the sublime ones. You’ll have to make your peace with the fact that I can happily kill for you, not only die for you.”
Melting in his hold as he swept her up and carried her to bed, she wrapped her legs around his waist. “Since I’d rather you live for me, thank you very much, let’s forget I brought up my father and my family. You probably think I’m stupid to consider accepting his advances. You must consider they more or less did to me what your family did to you.”
He started to speak, then clamped his lips. Because she’d put her finger on the truth and he wasn’t about to say she didn’t. He always told her the truth.
As he came to half lie over her, she cupped his cheek and reveled in his beauty, this god among men who desired her so completely, who was unbelievably hers. “I understand how your anger toward your family extends to mine, and it’s totally justified. I wouldn’t have considered being anywhere near my father or any of the Accardis on my own. But he’s been trying so hard, I wanted to give him a chance before I decide whether to have him in my life. I didn’t want unresolved bitterness lurking anywhere if I could work it out. The best I expected was that my family would be a once-a-year presence in my life, and my father would be a peripheral one.
“But that was before I realized how forcefully you feel about this. Nothing is worth making you suffer the least discomfort. You, and our lives together, are the only things that matter to me. I did mean it when I said let’s just forget about this.”
* * *
Antonio stared down at his woman, the woman he’d been falling deeper in love with each passing second.
Every time she’d mentioned her father and their joint family, his agitation had built. Though he now considered whatever debt they owed him paid a million times over just for being the reason he’d met Liliana, he abhorred their very existence. He never wanted to see any of them, not to punish them or to have anything to do with them. But the idea that they were trying to enter her life, when they were bound to taint it, made his loathing mount. He’d destroy them all before he let them cause her the least heartache.
But she needed closure and now, because she considered only him and his feelings, she was dismissing that need.