It had nearly worked. Instead, he’d said something that he hadn’t even computed until the words had come out of his mouth. “Octavia is my family. She and my son are as much my family as any of you. I protect all of my family. Provided they remain loyal to me.”
Thankfully Octavia’s eyes remained closed and she couldn’t see the barely banked rage he was still struggling to contain. Or his confusion as he belatedly wondered if he really was choosing his marriage over his fealty to the Ferrantes. He had fashioned himself into a bastion of dependability and allegiance and couldn’t let a woman shake his resolve. That’s why he hadn’t wanted a love match when he married.
But as she’d held him off this past month, showing more caution than warmth, he’d been acutely aware of a sense of loss. He was ready to do just about anything to get back what he’d had.
Which disturbed him.
Leaning his backside on the balcony rail, he studied his wife, trying to determine how she was managing to affect him so deeply. She wasn’t a calculating femme fatale making a deliberate effort to provoke him. Quite the opposite. In some ways she was more aloof than when they’d first met, but wasn’t doing it as a lure.
She was genuinely disappointed and mistrustful, which cut a straight line through his ego.
Plus, she was so beautiful his throat hurt just looking at her. The baby weight still softening her pretty features made them even more sensual and fascinating. Her hair was loose and longer than he remembered it. He wanted to comb his hands through the silky strands, letting them caress between his fingers, then bury his nose in the almond-and-nutmeg scent. That hair of hers had been a fetish since his first whiff. Why?
Her color was better, he noted, though her brow remained tense and there was an underlying anxiety in the somberness of her mouth. She still seemed very wary and worried.
But she’d called him Sandro earlier. It had been so sweet it had touched off a pang in his chest, until he’d seen how badly she’d wanted to swallow it back, fearful she’d let her defenses down too far. He’d taken such encouragement from that little slip and had been shaken by how much she’d regretted letting it happen.
He sighed at the gridlock before him.
She opened her eyes.
“Don’t you want to look at the view?” She indicated the cushioned chair on the other side of the table, then nodded past him to the sweep of land toward the distant water.
“I am,” he said, delivering his compliment with a dose of self-mockery, mostly because it was so damned true. He could barely take his eyes off her.
And he wasn’t above using every weapon at his disposal to overcome her defenses, even flattery.
Which he supposed she realized because she dismissed his words with a downward sweep of her lashes. It should have been a relief that she didn’t know how sincere he was in his praise of her, that he was entranced by her, but it just reminded him that she didn’t even trust him to be honest about something as simple as her beauty.
The food he’d eaten grew heavy as gravel in the pit of his gut.
After a moment, she lifted her attention to him, her expression grave. “How did it go?”
He shrugged shoulders that were prickling from the penetrating heat of the sun, instinctively wanting to shut down a rehash of what had been a very difficult conversation. But his efforts to protect her had backfired in the past. He supposed she had a right to know what they were up against.
“My grandfather is understandably troubled. Giacomo is livid.”
She glanced back toward where Lorenzo slept, brow knitting with consternation.
“No, cara,” he reassured in a quick hush, stepping forward. He leaned down to kiss the part in her hair, surreptitiously stealing a caress and inhaling her scent, but trying to impart comfort, too. He was a physical man and found it easier to show than to tell, but he did his best to assuage her fears with words, too. “He won’t harm him. And I won’t let anyone try.”
“You’re sure?” She caught his hand.
Her fingers were cold and the tightness with which she clung was both heartening and worrisome. He liked that she was looking to him and seemed so willing to take his word. It was a first step in rebuilding her belief in him, but it made him realize how frightened she was under her composed exterior. He was learning that his wife was a woman of far more complexity than he’d given her credit for.
Which was a concern on many levels, but for now he had to alleviate her fear.
He hooked his foot around the leg of the empty chair and dragged it around so he faced her, not letting go of her hand. He spoke in an undertone that wouldn’t carry to open windows or below to the gardens.