An Inheritance of Shame (Sicily's Corretti Dynasty #04) by Kate Hewitt

Author:Kate Hewitt [Hewitt, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, United States, Women's Fiction, Contemporary Women, Contemporary Fiction, Series, Harlequin Presents, Romance, Contemporary, Contemporary Romance
ISBN: 9780373131686
Amazon: B00BNRHK84
Publisher: Harlequin Presents
Published: 2013-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

SHE WAS DOING the right thing. Lucia repeated that to herself as she walked into the hotel on unsteady legs, everything around her a blur. She was doing the right thing. Leaving Angelo, refusing his offer, was the right choice. It had to be, because if one night had nearly felled her seven years ago, what would a week do now? A month? However long Angelo decided he wanted to be with her, all on his terms. I don’t want this to end now.

Not now, but at some point, yes. He would decide to end it at some point in the not-too-distant future, and when that moment came he would walk away just as before. Just as he always did.

She worked steadily through the morning, grateful to scrub and sweep and spray down counters, and not have to think. Wonder. Regret.

She was doing the right thing.

She kept repeating that to herself, a desperate mantra, throughout the next few days. She didn’t see or hear from Angelo, and from the sinking disappointment she felt at his absence she knew at least a part of her had been hoping to, even as she knew, bone-deep, that she never would.

Three days after she left Angelo, Maria found her at break time, sitting alone at a table, lost in her own thoughts.

‘Lucia?’ The older woman smiled uncertainly, a sheet of paper clutched to her chest.

‘Ciao, Maria.’ Lucia did her best to smile and push away the tangled thoughts about Angelo that turned everything inside her into knots of doubt. ‘Did Stefano send you another letter?’

‘Not yet, but I want to write him.’

‘Again?’ Just a few days ago she’d helped Maria write a rather gushing response to Stefano.

Maria nodded, determination glinting in her deep brown eyes. ‘Yes…He’s not so good a writer, yes? So I keep writing, because I love him.’

The simple, heartfelt statement made Lucia still, those tangled knots inside her loosening just a little. I keep writing, because I love him. Maria’s love didn’t change, no matter Stefano’s response—or lack of it. Of course, a mother’s love for a son was different from a woman’s love for a man, but…

Did she—had she—loved Angelo like that? For years she’d told herself she had, yet she’d never sent him a single letter. Not after he’d left at eighteen, and not seven years later when he’d left her bed. She’d tried, of course, when she’d found out she was pregnant. She’d written draft after labourious draft, yet she hadn’t sent a single one. She hadn’t got so far as putting any of them in an envelope. She’d never, Lucia saw now with a cringing insight, intended on writing him at all.

Why?

‘Lucia?’

‘Yes…sorry. Of course I’ll help you write him.’ She gestured to the seat next to her and Maria sat down, putting the single sheet of paper on the table and smoothing it carefully before handing Lucia a pen. ‘What would you like to say?’

Maria smiled shyly. ‘Just that I love him. I miss him. I pray for him.

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