43
The Di Luca estate in Pennsylvania’s Brandywine Valley consisted of forty acres of rolling hills planted in vines, a Tuscan-style tasting room and Max’s home. As winter began its first sweep across Lake Erie, Cecilia huddled under a heated throw on the wide porch overlooking the vineyards and watched Max drive his battered pickup in from the blending barn. For the first time in more than two years, since her marriage to Gregory, she believed that, somehow, her life was worth living. More than that—she believed she was worthy of life, and with that revelation, she’d fallen in love with Max. After her marriage, it seemed impossible, but Max made her smile. He made her feel special.
She didn’t expect that he love her back. After all, he made Annabella smile, too. Same with his sister. Same with his mother. He was the kind of guy who cared for his people, and Cecilia had earned her place as one of his people. Still, after Gregory, it was interesting to feel a warm glow in the region of her heart—and other parts.
He ran up the porch stairs and grinned at the sight of her. “If you’re so cold, why don’t you go in?”
“I don’t like to be confined.”
“Right. I knew that. Scoot over.” He crowded her into one corner of the swing, pulled her into his arms and held her.
Slowly, she relaxed and allowed her head to sink onto his chest. “How do you stay so warm?” she asked.
“I’ve always been like this. I sleep naked in the winter.”
“Um.” Her apparently sex-starved mind constructed a glorious naked Max out of internet cowboys and James Bond movies. But Max didn’t deserve to have her using him for her own titillation, and hastily, she deconstructed the image.
“I’m not particularly hairy,” he said, “but I don’t wax and I’m not about to start. Is that okay?”
Naked Max was back, with a light dusting of body hair.
Her mouth was dry. She must be dehydrated. “Sure?”
“Do you have body hair?”
“Um. Parts of me. Since I’m blonde, there’s not actually…much.”
“Ah.” The sound was no more than a slow, soft exhale. He ran his fingers over her cropped head. “Blond all over.”
She broke a sweat. When she’d come out to the porch, the temperature had hovered at thirty-seven degrees. When had summer arrived?
“Whatever you do doesn’t matter to me. I like you the way you are.”
When had his voice grown so deep? Rumbly? “I don’t think that we should…talk about…”
“True. We shouldn’t talk.” He loosened his grip on her, stood up and offered her his hand. “Shall we go in and explore?”
She stared at that hand. She memorized the shape of the palm, broad and square, the length of the fingers, long and blunt, the nimble thumb, the sweeping lines, the scar under the index finger. She stared because she needed to think, but something about the stability and strength of that hand convinced her that thinking was overrated.
Putting her hand in his, she let him lift her to her feet. She didn’t know why he was doing this, but she followed him inside to his bedroom and watched him take off his clothes. When his clothes were off, then she knew why. He looked at her, still skinny, skittish, scarred and scared and broken, and he wanted her.
Taking a long breath, she dropped the heated throw, pulled off her headband, her gloves, her boots, socks, sweatshirt, jeans.
Max started to chuckle when she got to her winter underwear, and he came to help her. The man was efficient; he got her naked in no time. Then she was naked and he was naked and they were naked together, and she was very warm, and for the first time since seeing Gregory kill her cousin, she could sleep without nightmares.
She was safe.
Max’s family had gathered Ceecee into their collective bosom and smothered her with loving care. Yet as winter turned to a cold, wet spring, Max watched over her, gave her everything: food, drink, heat, love, laughter and sex, not necessarily in that order. It was, for Ceecee, a happy time…within reason. Someday soon, Max was going to want more from her. He would want to know where she came from, what her real name was, why she was hiding from her past.
She wasn’t ready to tell him. When she remembered her cousin, her soul shriveled with sorrow and guilt. Kellen Rae had had so much to live for, and she had died saving Cecilia. When Cecilia tried to look into the future, she couldn’t see herself ever telling Max the truth. When she did, Max would turn away and she would be alone and unloved. She did deserve that, but she couldn’t throw away what she had. Not yet.
But as she grew stronger, the old Cecilia, the person she had been before she met Gregory, the person who had gone off on her own to travel the United States, reasserted herself. She loved Max so much she couldn’t live without him, and that frightened her. She grew impatient with his care, then irritable. She started feeling tired, not really ill, but queasy and irritable. She looked for something to occupy her mind, and he was always working, so she offered to help him.
That was when Max made his fatal mistake.
He ran his hand through his dark hair and agreed. He said, “Sure. You’ve got a business degree. That would be great.”
He didn’t realize what he’d admitted.
At some point, he had looked at the documents Cecilia so vigilantly guarded. He believed she was Kellen Rae Adams. He thought she had a business degree. He probably knew the police wanted to talk to her in conjunction with the explosion at the Lykke house in Maine.
He had looked.
He had lied.
She was so sickened by the betrayal she threw up. Then while he was at work, she called his car service, took Kellen’s papers and ran away to Philadelphia. She didn’t have a plan, or money, or even good sense. What she had was a terrifying sense of panic. Max knew her secret, he’d never said a word about it to her—and the secret was a lie.
She had the car drop her off at Rittenhouse Square. She wandered the walks under budding trees and through cold sunshine. How could she explain to him her marriage, her cousin Kellen’s death, her own cowardice and deception?
Beneath Cecilia’s fear was a lurking anger.
Why had he looked at the papers she so carefully guarded? How dare he invade her privacy! Why had he broken his word? He had ruined everything.
A man, rough, unpolished, walked the path toward her. He had pulled the collar of his coat up around his ears and kept his hands plunged deep in his pockets. He had a desperate air about him, a reckless attitude she identified from her time on the streets.
She veered to avoid him.
He walked to intercept her, and she recognized him: Annabella’s father, Ettore Fontana, his face a death mask.
How had he found her so quickly?
Probably an informant on Max’s staff.
Across the wet, brown lawn, she saw a man running toward them. Running as fast as a linebacker could run. Max!
How had Max found her so quickly?
Probably through his credit card, the one that paid for the town car.
She tried to run.
Ettore grabbed her by one arm, pushed her up against a tree trunk and pulled a pistol out of his pocket. He touched it to her forehead.
She froze, afraid to move, afraid not to move. She felt the cool metal, saw the black barrel, smelled her own fear.
Max raced toward them, his mouth open as if he was yelling, but she heard no sound except the heavy beat of blood in her ears.
Then…then nothing.
Nothing, until the moment when she woke in the hospital from her coma.
She remembered so much. Almost everything. But nothing would ever bring back that year after the bullet had entered her brain.
That didn’t matter, did it?
What mattered was that in the years since, she’d lived and grown and become the woman the real Kellen Rae Adams would be proud to know.
And maybe what mattered was that Max Di Luca seemed to think they had unfinished business.
Perhaps they did.