Lovers' Reunion

He frowned. That wasn’t the response he’d expected—or hoped for. This quiet, reserved woman was a marked contrast to the girl who once had hung on his every word. “I’d like to take you out for dinner, get to know you again. Are you free tonight?”

Her eyes widened, the brown completely eclipsed by a blank look of shock, and he realized it was the first time he’d been able to discern any emotion other than generic friendliness in her eyes. “That’s very nice of you, but—”

The back door opened behind her and they both stopped and looked at her mother, framed in the doorway. She was holding a very young infant cradled in one arm. “Sophie, this baby’s starting to fuss. Shall I warm a bottle?”

She nodded her head, shoving away the hair that flew around her shoulders. “Thanks, Mama, that would be great. She ate almost four hours ago and she’s probably starved.”

Shock rolled through him like a fireball ripping through a munitions plant. Sophie had a baby? As he gaped, she swung back to face him.

“Thank you for the invitation.” She shook her head. “But I have to get that wailing little one to bed. I was up half the night last night, and I’m hoping she’ll sleep soundly.” She smiled wryly. “So I can.”

He nodded, unable to trust his voice. He was paralyzed by a fierce wave of rage that made his reaction to his injury seem mild in comparison. Who had dared to touch her? She was his!

“Have a nice visit,” she said. “See you in a few weeks.”

Her voice brought reality crashing down on his head. She had been his once, and she’d wanted to keep it that way. But he’d left her. Hell, he’d even told her to go find somebody else! He continued to stand, gripping the fence so hard his fingers hurt, and he could see her dismiss him from her mind as she hurried back across the yard and disappeared into her parents’ house.

Slowly he made his way back to his own house, cursing the uneven ground. His mother came to the door as he mounted the steps, and she held the door wide. “Come inside and I’ll fix you some lemonade. Is your leg bothering you?”

He wanted to snarl. Not at all. Just Because I hobble around like an old man, why should you think that bothers me? But instead, he made his voice light and amused. “Knock it off, Ma. I promise I’ll tell you if it needs a kiss.”

She swatted his shoulder as he sat down at the table. “I see you talked to Sophie. She’s still a sweet girl, isn’t she?”

“Who’s a sweet girl?” His sister Elisabetta came into the kitchen with a half-eaten banana in one hand and her toddler son sleeping on her shoulder. “Hi, Ma. Thanks for watching him today.”

“Sophie is. And you’re welcome.” Dora plunked a glass of lemonade in front of Marco and picked up some more lemons for a second glass.

“Ah-h-h.” Liz drew the sound out knowingly. “Still drooling over our Sophie, big brother?”

“A man can look,” he said, forcing the turmoil that scrambled through him into hiding. But he couldn’t resist probing. “Although I guess looking’s all that’s allowed now. I don’t hit on married women.”

Liz threw him a surprised glance. “Sophie isn’t married anymore. Didn’t you know?”

“I didn’t know she’d gotten married at all. Who’d she marry?” He worked to project a mild neighborly interest. He was still reeling from the sight of that baby, and the implications at which its existence hinted. The thought of another man touching Sophie, kissing her, receiving the full pleasure of the hot, sweet response that always had been his threw a dark shadow over his thoughts, though he knew he had no right, no reason, to object He’d been the one to walk away.

So why didn’t that matter?

“His name was Kirk Morrell. They met in college,” his sister said.

“It must not have lasted long,” he commented. “Is Sophie the only one of the kids to have been divorced?”

“She’s not divorced,” Liz corrected. She threw a troubled glance at her mother, and Marco looked at his mother, too.

Dora’s hands stilled over the lemons. “Kirk was a lovely boy,” she said slowly. “He died.”

He was shocked, and he let it show. “How?”

“Cancer.” His mother made the word a curse.

Good Lord. Her baby couldn’t be more than a few months old, so she must have been widowed fairly recently—

“Marco?” Liz still looked troubled. “Please...don’t do anything else to hurt Sophie. She’s had some rough years.”

“I’m not planning on hurting her,” he said, striving for a reasonable tone, though his sister’s admonition stung.

“I’m sure you never planned to before, either, but you did,” Liz said. “And all I’m saying’s that Sophie’s had enough hurt in her life. She’s fragile.”

“Thanks for the warning,” he said, smiling. “I’ll ‘Handle with Care.’”

“I think we’d rather you didn’t handle at all,” Liz said under her breath.

Little sisters could be so annoying.

Later he was watching from his bedroom window when Sophie came out of her parents’ house. He wasn’t watching for her, of course—he wasn’t that desperate. It was coincidental that the easy chair near his bed was beside the front-facing window. He’d been sitting there for over an hour, working on the syllabus for the course on glaciology he’d be teaching in September, when movement on the street had caught his eye.

She had a diaper bag over her shoulder, the baby in one arm and with the other hand she carried a big bag that he suspected was full of Mrs. Domenico’s fabulous cooking. She set down the bags beside a little white compact car, then opened the back door and bent to strap the baby into a car seat. Her action gave him a clear view of the way she filled out her dark blue jeans as they stretched over her slender buttocks, and he swallowed, feeling his heart speed up.

So she wasn’t married after all.

The thought of some other man touching her, teaching her about the pleasures a man and a woman could share, bothered the hell out of him, even though he knew how irrational that was. He was the one who’d left.

He’d wanted her worse than any other woman he’d met before or since. But she was the daughter of his parents’ best friends and he’d felt guilty as hell when he’d finally let her push him into making love to her. And he’d known he couldn’t offer her anything lasting. Leaving had been the right thing to do.

The thought gave him little satisfaction. What it did give him was a damned uncomfortable hard-on that forced him to shift uncomfortably in the chair. He could recall with vivid clarity the way her soft body had writhed beneath his hands, the way she’d clutched at him and held his head to her breast, the way her eyes had widened in surprise as sensations ripped through her and she dissolved in his arms.

Each time they’d been together, he’d struggled to remember that it couldn’t be permanent. He’d known he was leaving, and he’d known he shouldn’t encourage her any more than he already had. And really, it wasn’t as if they’d had a long or exclusive relationship. No words of commitment ever had been exchanged.

But as she straightened and closed the back door, then walked around the little car and climbed into her own seat, the only thought that kept running through his head was that he and Sophie had unfinished business between them. When he’d first come home, he’d harbored the stupid belief that Sophie would be waiting for him, just as she’d waited before, that nothing had changed between them.

Well, maybe she hadn’t put her life on hold, and certainly he shouldn’t have expected that she would. But she was single now, and so was he.

And he knew, without putting a finger on her, that together they still could generate enough heat to put the Great Chicago Fire to shame.

The following day was Sunday. His parents went to early mass at St. Vincent’s, and for the first time since the accident, Marco decided to go to church. He hadn’t been a regular worshiper in years, and if he ever went to confession again, he’d have enough penance to keep him talking for a month.

It felt strange to enter the church where he’d grown up, served as an altar boy and made his First Communion, strange to take a seat in the pew where his family had sat since before he was born. Now his four sisters were married or engaged, and sprinkled among the adults was a raft of his nieces and nephews. His older sister, Camilla, came with her family and as he watched, several of the Domenico clan slipped into the pew ahead of him where they’d always sat.

His interest picked up, but Sophie wasn’t with them. Instead, the Domenico pew steadily expanded to two full rows, filled with a new generation ranging from a preteen boy that had to be Stefano’s son down to a fussing infant in pink carried in by a man he assumed was Violetta’s husband.

Sophie’s sister Arabella smiled and blew him a kiss as she took the last empty seat on the far end. He noticed she turned and looked toward the rear of the church several tunes, and when she smiled and beckoned, he glanced back to see Sophie coming down the aisle. It was an opportunity too good to miss. Before Belle could shove everyone in her pew together to squeeze her sister in, he stood and caught Sophie’s hand as she stopped at the pews.

“You can sit here,” he murmured. “I won’t bite.”

He’d forgotten how small she was. She barely came up to his chin, even in the heels she’d worn to Mass. She tilted her head up to look him in the eye, and he felt her subtly trying to withdraw her hand, but he only tightened his clasp. Her eyes were wide—the deep, rich chocolaty velvet that he remembered so clearly—and she hesitated for a moment.

But just as he’d expected, Sophie was too well-bred to make a scene in church, and after that first long, searching glance, her face relaxed into a small, cool smile. “Thank you,” she said, and this time he let her have her hand back after he drew her into the pew.

When she sat, he followed suit, brushing just close enough that his arm grazed hers. It didn’t escape him that she was quick to draw back, though they were both wearing jackets and it was as innocuous as a touch two strangers might exchange.