Bound By A Sicilian Secret (Mills & Boon Modern) by Lela May Wight

Author:Lela May Wight [Wight, Lela May]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2023-03-31T18:30:00+00:00

That stung.

‘I care,’ she whispered.

His gaze narrowed. ‘So I should?’

She heard the inflection of his words. The question.

Quietly, she put her cutlery down and gave him her full attention. ‘They’re my family. Of course they should matter.’

‘To me?’ he asked. ‘Why would they matter to me?’

A boy with dark hair curling around his ears appeared in her mind without invitation. A boy dipping torn bread into cheese and handing it to the shadow of a woman she couldn’t picture. Couldn’t conjure anything but that shadow, which appeared as clear in her mind as a photograph.

‘Don’t you understand?’ she asked.

But how could he understand? Her family wasn’t perfect, but...

His gaze flicked to the left and then zeroed back on her within the flash of a millisecond. ‘Understand what?’

Flora’s heart stopped as she took in the deep frown lines between the darkly shaped eyebrows, the focused intensity of his gaze.

‘They’re your family now, too.’

Slowly he nodded, and she let out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding.

His hands flexed where he’d placed them on the table. ‘What do they need?’

‘What do you mean?’

He splayed his fingers, palms forward. ‘Is the farm in some sort of financial trouble?’

‘Of course not,’ she dismissed. ‘The farm is doing well. The farm is fine. What does that have to do with anything?’

‘Their livelihood—your family home—is safe?’ He frowned. ‘Then they don’t need me.’

‘Parents are not accepting dowries these days, Raffaele, and I’m pretty sure it used to be the other way around.’

‘Dowries?’ His frown deepened, before vanishing completely. Leaving his face a smooth mix of understanding and relief. ‘How much would they like?’

She shook her head. ‘No, that’s not what I meant.’

‘Then what did you mean?’

Flora shifted in her seat. Twisted her bottom and joined her knees until she faced him fully. ‘No payment is required. No membership fees. We are having a baby together, so our families will...’ she held her hands out in front of her and pulled them far apart ‘...merge.’ She clapped her hands together.

The frown returned, and her urge was to stand up and place her thumb at the base of those lines. Swipe upwards and smooth them free. But she didn’t. She sat and waited for him to join the dots. For him to understand what she meant.

They were all family now, whether or not he understood it.

‘You will take my name,’ he intoned.

‘They’ll still be my family. And my mother’s birthday is in two weeks.’

‘We will be in Sicily,’ he interjected.

‘Sicily?’ she asked. ‘I thought you lived here? On the boat?’

‘We can’t raise our baby on a super-yacht.’

‘You want to raise the baby in Italy?’

‘Sicily,’ he corrected. ‘I want to raise our baby in Sicily.’

‘Where you grew up?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why? I thought you said it was out of the way? Won’t we need a hospital?’

‘The village is not what it once was.’

‘Because you changed it?’

He nodded. ‘We will have no trouble with transportation. Nor with access to a hospital. Most things will come to us. And they are already being organised.

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