Valentino's Love-Child. Lucy Monroe

you wanted me here.”

      “I thought he had invited his teacher from school.”

      “I am his teacher,” she chided. “His art teacher, anyway.”

      “Why did you never mention this to me?” It seemed almost contrived to him.

      “How could you not know? I mean, I’m aware you are supremely uninterested in my life outside our time together, but I’ve mentioned teaching art to primary schoolers in Marsala.”

      “I thought you did it to support your art hobby. My mother told me Gio’s teacher was a highly successful artist who donated her time.” Realizing how wrong he’d been made him feel like fool.

      Another unpleasant and infrequent experience. Grisafi men did not make a habit of ignorance or stupid behavior. His pride stung at the knowledge he was guilty of both. Knowing more about Faith would have saved him the current situation.

      “And in your eyes I could not be that woman?” Faith asked in that tone all men knew was very dangerous.

      The one that said a husband would be sleeping on the sofa for the foreseeable future. Faith was not his wife, but he didn’t want to be cut off from her body, nevertheless. Nor did he wish to offend her in any case.

      “In my eyes, that woman, Signora Guglielmo, was Sicilian—and you are not.”

      “No, I’m not. Is that a problem for you, Tino?”

      Where had that question come from? He was no ethnic supremacist. “Patently not. We have been lovers for a year now, Faith.”

      “Almost a year.”

      “Near enough.”

      “I suppose, but I’m trying to understand why my being a Sicilian art teacher would make me an appropriate dinner companion for you and your son, but being your expatriot American lover does not.”

      “It will not work.”

      “What?”

      “Attempting to use Giosue to insinuate yourself into my life more deeply than I wish you to go.”

      Hurt sparked in her peacock eyes, and then anger. “Don’t be paranoid, not to mention criminally conceited. One, I would never use a child—in any way. Two, I knew your son before I met you. What would you have had me do? Start ignoring him in class once you and I had become lovers?”

      “Of course not.” He sighed. What a tangle. “But you could have discouraged outright friendship.”

      “We were already friends. It would never occur to me to hurt a child with rejection that way. I won’t do it now, either, Tino, not even for you.”

      “That is not what I meant.”

      “Then what did you mean?”

      He swore. He wasn’t sure, and that was as disturbing as any other revelation from this night. He fell back on what he considered the topic at hand. “Let’s not make this more complicated than we need to. You know I do not allow the women I sleep with into my personal life. It would be too messy.”

      Cocking her head to one side, she gave him a look filled with disbelief. “You don’t consider what we do together as personal?”

      “You are nit-picking semantics here, Faith. You know what I am meaning here. Why are you being willfully obtuse? You knew the limitations of our relationship from the very beginning.” She was not normally so argumentative, and why she had to start being so now was a mystery to him.

      Certainly she had strong opinions, but they were not, as a rule, in opposition to his.

      “Maybe I’m no longer happy with them.” She watched him as if gauging his reaction to that bombshell.

      Alarm bells for a five-alarm fire went off in his head. Her words filled him with pure panic—not an emotion he was used to feeling and not one he had predisposed reactions for. “Faith, you must understand something. I have no plans to remarry. Ever.”

      “I know, but—”

      Those three little words sent a shard of apprehension right through him. She could not keep thinking in this manner. “If I did remarry, it would be to a traditional Sicilian woman—like Giosue’s mother.”

      Some Sicilian men married American women, but it was rare. Even rarer still, almost to the point of nonexistent, were Sicilian men who continued to live on the island after marrying them.

      Regardless, were he to remarry, he felt compelled to provide a female influence as like Giosue’s real mother as possible. He owed it to Maura.

      Being honest with himself would require he acknowledge that his reasons were not limited to cultural gaps and the obligation he felt to his dead wife, but had as much to do with a promise to keep. Only one woman put his promise to Maura at risk, his promise not to replace his wife, who had died too young in his heart.

      And that woman was a smart, sexy American.

      Faith crossed her arms, as if protecting herself from a blow. “Is that why you didn’t nip your son’s obvious attempt at matchmaking in the bud? Because you believed the woman he was trying to fix you up with was Sicilian?”

      “Yes.” He could not lie, though the temptation was there.

      This time Faith didn’t just wince, she flinched as if struck. “I see.”

      “I don’t think you do.” Needing her understanding— her acceptance—he cupped her face with both hands. “My son is the most important person in my life, I would do anything for him.”

      “Even remarry.”

      “If I believed that was what he truly needed for happiness, yes.” But not to a woman who would expect access to more than his body and bank account. Not to a woman who already threatened his memories of Maura and his promise to her.

      Not Faith.

      “Do you?”

      Again wishing he could lie, he dropped his hands. “I did not, but after tonight, I am not so sure. He loves his grandmother, but he glowed under your affection in a way that he does not with his nonna.”

      “He’s very special to me.”

      “If he is so special, why did you not tell me he was your student?”

      “You already asked that and the simple truth is that I thought you knew. I assumed he and, well, your mother, talked about me. We are friends. I suppose that’s going to send you into another tizzy of paranoia, but please remember, she and I were friends before I even met Gio.”

      “You and…and…my mother?”

      “Yes.”

      Tonight had been one unreal revelation after another. “You did not tell me this.”

      “I thought you knew,” she repeated, sounding exasperated. She turned away from him. “Perhaps Agata and I are not as close as I assumed.”

      The sad tone in Faith’s voice did something strange to Tino’s heart. He did not like it. At all. He was used to her being happy most of the time—sometimes cranky but never sad. It did not fit her.

      “She did talk about you, but I did not realize it was you she was talking about.” His mother had mentioned Gio’s teacher on occasion. Not often, though, and he too wondered if the two women shared as close a friendship as Faith believed.

      His mother was a true patron of the arts. She had many acquaintances in the artistic community. He could easily see her warm nature and natural graciousness being mistaken for friendship. But the only artist she mentioned often was TK.

      For a while, Tino had been worried his mother had developed a tendre for the male artist. However, when he had mentioned his concern to his father, Rosso Grisafi had laughed