“She hasn’t even left yet,” Maximos answered, extending a hand to Cass. “But it’s probably time we all packed up and headed back to Ortygia.”
Maximos helped Cass to her feet and after folding several blankets Adriana told Maximos that she and the others could finish up and so Maximos and Cass began a leisurely walk back toward the harbor.
“You’re good with your sisters,” Cass said as they left the others, walking through the tall sun burnt grass surrounding the ruins.
“Aren’t most brothers?”
She shot a swift side glance. He looked calm, unflappable and perhaps that was the secret of powerful, aristocratic Sicilian men. Men like Maximos appeared impervious to storm, war and danger. Men like Maximos appeared to lack nothing and need no one. Men like Maximos were strong, forceful, invincible because they didn’t let themselves feel, and they didn’t expose themselves emotionally, physically. Risks were always anticipated, weighed, calculated. “I don’t know. I was an only child.”
“I never knew that.”
She shrugged. “We never talked about our personal lives. Never discussed childhood, or our families.”
They passed the castello, the sun drenching the stones of the ruins, the intense sun playing over the lava rock, patterning the stones shades of gold and bronze.
“Your parents?” he asked now.
“Divorced. They separated when I was fairly young.”
Cass drew a sharp jagged breath, breathing in the warm air fragrant with sweet dry summer grasses. “Your father passed away a number of years ago, didn’t he?”
“Thirteen years ago. I’d just turned twenty-five.”
Cass glanced up at Maximos. “Were you close?”
“Yes.”
Maximos’s dark, watchful gaze rested on her face. “Were you close with your father?”
She hesitated a split second, trying to see her father’s face, trying to remember something of him other than her mother’s tears when he left. “No.” She tried to smile, the grown-up smile of one coming to terms with the past, but it wasn’t easy. Even now, after all these years. “He left us when I was still in school. He never came back. I…” She drew a breath and pressed on. “I never saw him again.”
Maximos stopped walking. “You’ve never seen him again?”
She felt that odd pucker of pain in her heart, the kind of pain that’s old, not fresh, a pain that has been part of you so long it’s merely a scar you remember your old self by. “No.”
“How could he leave you?” Maximos asked so gently, so quietly that tears pricked her eyes.
You did, she almost said, but she bit back the words, looked away, gazed out at what was left of the castello.
You could almost feel the ghost of the past here, she thought, stepping up onto a fallen stone. The air felt thick, saturated by time and the civilizations come and gone. The weight of time made her realize how insignificant she was. She might want to feel big and important, but no one lived forever. Not even the great leaders and philosophers lived forever.
She’d be gone before she knew it, that they’d all be gone and maybe this was the secret of places like Sicily, maybe this was what allowed the Sicilians so much passion and intensity. You only had today. So you had to live today.
“You’re so good with your family,” Cass said, her voice faint in the warm breeze. “Didn’t you ever want to get married?”
Maximos’s expression was shuttered. “You don’t have to be married to be happy.”
“Did I ever make you happy?”
“Yes.”
“But you were afraid of committing to me?”
“I was never afraid of a girl like you,” he answered, his voice deepening, his features hard, chiseled.
“A girl? I’m thirty, Maximos!”
“You might be thirty, but you’re still a little girl on the inside.”
His words made her heart ache. He made her remember who she’d been as a child, how she’d tried to assume the role of the adult, the parent, for her mother’s sake. Her mother had never been able to cope after her father left and it was Cass’s job to patch things up, to get things done.
“I can see the little girl in your eyes,” he added, and the gentleness in his voice nearly undid her. “You’re waiting for someone to come home.”
“Please,” she whispered, looking away, “I don’t—” She broke off, licked the inside of her lower lip, her chest heavy with emotion. “I’m not. Not anymore.” She turned her head, fixed a steady gaze on him. “I’ve learned.”
“Learned what?” he asked, studying her just as intently.
She remembered the last six months, the sorrow at losing Maximos, the grief over the miscarriage, the deep sadness that didn’t seem to go away. She’d fall apart, repair herself, patching herself together to get to work, accomplish a few things, but before she knew it, she’d be falling apart again, sitting at her desk with the glorious view of Rome and be fighting for survival.
Struggling to not drown.
Battling to keep her mind sane.
She didn’t know how not to miss Maximos. Didn’t know how to stop loving someone who’d become the only family she’d known in years.
When he left her it was like death but he hadn’t died. If they’d been married, people would call it a divorce. But she wasn’t his wife.
She was nothing. And she became nothing. And she’d learned nothing from the pain but not to want or need anyone again.
“Learned what?” he repeated.
She gave her head a slight shake, trying to chase away the dark clouds in her head, the memories that never got easier. “All things are possible.” She swallowed the lump in her throat, met his gaze calmly, praying he didn’t see the sheen of tears in her eyes. “I can bear all things.”
He swore softly and reached for her, wrapping an arm around her, bringing her firmly forward until she was against him. Hip to hip, knee to knee, he completely dwarfed her, his body taller, bigger, stronger. And standing so close, she felt the tension running through him, as well as that thread of hot emotion, the emotion he didn’t like, didn’t want, but couldn’t seem to control now that it was loose.
His head dropped, and she turned her face up to his even as his face dipped, his lips brushing hers. From anybody else the kiss would have been so brief she would have said it was nothing, but that slight caress of his mouth on hers was hot, sharp, fierce and her stomach tightened, legs trembling a little at the shock of it all.
His gaze followed the path of his lips, the fiery dark depths touching her lips, and then the pulse at the base of her throat. “That’s a terrible lesson to learn,” he mouthed against her throat, his voice deep, rough, a husky edge that made her feel far too much.
She wouldn’t cry. There was no reason to cry now. “But practical.”
“Practical.” He said the word as if it amused him. “Practical, sensible, Cassandra. No wonder you’ve been so incredibly successful.”
Cass stepped away from his arms. The warmth of his body weakened her defenses. She was far better standing apart from him, on her own two feet and swiftly she dropped her sunglasses back onto the bridge of her nose, concealing her eyes. “Sensible?”
“It’s not a bad word.”
“No, but…” Her