Our Little Secret by Rachael Stewart

Author:Rachael Stewart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2020-12-16T20:08:31+00:00

I CHECK THE time and fight back a grimace. Aunt Netta is due any minute, along with my cousin Sienna, her husband Lorenzo and their kids, Isabella and Leo. It’s not their presence that worries me; it’s the effect it will have on my mother. I’ve avoided being alone with her since her surprisingly sentimental outburst at dinner last night.

I feel a conversation brewing and it’s not one I’m ready for, not this side of the wedding, in spite of Faye’s encouragement to think otherwise. It’s waited all these years; it can at least wait another week or two, or more.

It was hard enough being cracked open for all to see at the dinner table. Losing my composure, this week of all weeks, and in such spectacular fashion...

No. I will deal with it later.

Much later.

As for Faye...she’s the perfect distraction from it all and one that I’m more than willing to entertain if it will keep my mind from veering into the past and whatever pain I glimpsed in Marianna.

I understand why Faye is encouraging me to talk to her. Her relationship with her own mother had been a good one, a healthy one, and one that she still so clearly mourns. The pain I glimpsed in her, the anguish still swimming in those pale blues, chips away at something buried deep inside. I rake my fingers through my hair, take a breath and force the image out.

Dio. Since when have I cared so much for the personal baggage of a woman I sleep with?

Sleep with?

Hardly.

It’s been a sensual trip up against a wall, a risky encounter in the pool house and again in the vineyard. All bring the hint of a smile to my lips even now, pushing out the stress of the new arrivals.

My veins instantly fire up, lust heating a path straight to my groin. Its intensity is at odds with the fact that she took me to the edge last night. And all through the game of cards I watched those fingers, those lips, those eyes and remembered what we’d shared. I was so badly distracted that I lost the game. And I never lose.

It was something which Dani commented on as she pulled me aside before bed and advised me to talk to our mother. I almost laughed. How would she feel to know the truth—that it wasn’t Marianna on my mind during the card game. It was her far too appealing maid of honour who also wanted to push the same advice?

Talk. I’ve done enough talking with Faye already, telling a woman I barely know things that I can hardly get a handle on myself. All this by day two of seven. What am I going to share in the next five?

The sound of raised voices invades the sanctity of my bedroom and I snap to attention, my eyes on the closed door as though I can see through it. Not that I need to.

Aunt Netta and Marianna.

At war already.

I pocket my phone and give the mirror a second’s glance.

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