Latin Lovers: Hot-Blooded Sicilians: Valentino's Love-Child / The Sicilian Doctor's Proposal / Sicilian Millionaire, Bought Bride. Catherine Spencer

struck her, the hour of the day not a deterrent no matter how late or early. She’d said a lot more about Faith.

      Add this knowledge to everything she’d told him previously about TK, and Valentino had a completely new picture of his lover, an image that convicted him about how little he’d known before. Not that it should have mattered, but with Faith it did. Their relationship would be a year old in two more weeks, and he didn’t want to spend the anniversary of their first date grieving her loss.

      Taking a deep breath, he knocked again.

      “Coming,” came from inside.

      A few seconds later the door swung open. “Agata, I wasn’t expect—”

      “My mother is at a fundraising meeting for Giosue’s school, I believe.”

      Faith looked at him with something like resignation and sighed. “Yes. That’s what I thought she was doing.”

      “Are you going to invite me in?”

      “Will you go away if I don’t?”

      “No.”

      “Why do you want to come in? You’ve never stepped foot in my building, much less my apartment. I didn’t think you even knew where I lived.”

      He hadn’t. He’d had to ask his mother, but Faith didn’t need to know that. “I want to see where you work.”

      She grimaced, but stepped back. He followed her into the apartment. It wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t small, either. She’d converted the main living area, which opened to a glassed-in balcony, into her studio. The half-glass ceiling bathed the room in the glow of natural light, and he could easily see why she’d picked this location to work.

      Although the area was clearly a working studio, she had created a conversation area in one corner with a love seat and two chairs around a low table decorated with traditional Sicilian tiles.

      He settled into one of the chairs after declining a drink. “Is my mother the only person who visits you here?”

      “No, a couple of the teachers from the school have been by, as well, but since the school day is not yet over …” She let her explanation trail off.

      “What about other artists?” He was trying to get a picture of her life, but it was still pretty fuzzy and that bothered him.

      She gave a half shrug. “I’m a private person.”

      “You always came off as friendly and outgoing to me.”

      She wiped at a spot of clay on her hand with the rag she held as she took the seat farthest from his. “Yes, well, maybe I should say that TK is a private person. I have some friends in the artistic community, but none of them live close enough to drop in during the middle of the day.”

      He considered this and what she had said about other teachers coming over sometimes, which he read to mean rarely. “You’re a very solitary person, aren’t you?”

      She shook her head, not in negation, but as if she couldn’t think what to say. “Why are you here, Tino?”

      After last night she could ask that?

      “I miss you.” There. The bald-faced truth.

      “I don’t see why you should.” She stiffened, drawing herself up into a ramrod sitting posture. “You still have your hand.”

      Shock struck him like a bolt of lightning, making it hard to breathe for just a second. “That is crude, and implies our relationship is nothing but mechanical sex.”

      “We no longer have a relationship.”

      He did not accept that, but to say so would violate their initial agreement. He decided to change the subject instead.

      “Are those the pieces my mother is salivating to see?” he asked, referring to several cloth-covered shapes around the room.

      “Yes. I told her she could see them when they are finished.”

      Sharp curiosity filled him. “She likes to see your work in progress.” He wanted to see Faith’s work. “Not this time.”

      “Why not?”

      “I don’t want her to see them before they are cast and glazed.”

      “You are using the clay as models?”

      “For some. There will be a numbered series cast before I break the mold for several, but some will be fired as is and be one-of-a-kind pieces.”

      “I know very little about your process.” Even less than he knew about her.

      “True.” She didn’t look inclined to elaborate.

      But didn’t most people enjoy rhapsodizing about their passions? From the way her work took over her home, he assumed her art was Faith’s biggest passion. “Perhaps you would care to change that now?”

      “I don’t think so.”

      Her negative response stunned him. Though why it should, in the face of the way she’d been behaving, he didn’t know. He kept expecting her to go back to acting the way she had until a few short weeks ago. “You don’t feel like talking about your work?”

      “I don’t feel like talking to you.”

      “Don’t be like that, carina.” He didn’t want to examine the way that made him feel, but it was not good. “We are friends.”

      “That’s not what you told your mother.”

      Must she keep harping on that one moment in time, an answer to his mother’s questioning he was past regretting and into mentally banging his head against a wall? “I was protecting myself, I admit it. But I was trying to protect us too, Faith. What would you have had me tell her?”

      “The truth?”

      “That we are lovers?” He did not think so.

      She glared, her eyes snapping with anger and something akin to disgust. “That wouldn’t be true, though, would it?”

      “We are lovers, perhaps on hiatus, but still together.”

      “You are delusional. We are not and never were lovers.”

      “Now who is being delusional?”

      She stood up, her hands fisted at her sides. “You have to give more than sex to be considered someone’s lover. We were sex partners. Now we are past acquaintances.”

      “That is not true. We have more than sex between us.” After all, that “more” had cost him the sleep of several nights.

      “Oh, really?”

      “Yes, our friendship.”

      “Again, let me refer you to that afternoon by the pool at your family home. You told your mother we were not friends.”

      “I made a mistake.” There, he had said it. “I am sorry,” he gritted.

      “That was really hard for you, wasn’t it?” He just looked at her.

      “Admitting you were wrong isn’t your thing.” “It doesn’t happen very often.” “Being wrong or admitting it?” she asked with dark amusement.

      “Both.”

      “I don’t suppose it does.”

      He too stood, taking her by the arms and standing close. “Let me back in, Faith. I need you.” Those last three words were said even less frequently than an apology by him.

      Tears filled her eyes. “I can’t, Tino.”

      “Why not?”

      She just shook her head.

      “Tell me what is wrong. Let me make it right.” He felt like he was drowning, but that wasn’t