Sicilian's Shock Proposal Read online

‘No,’ Sophie admitted. ‘No knots, no disquiet.’

  She knew what he meant, though, as she tried to imagine a moment where the man lying there wasn’t Luka.

  It felt written in her DNA that this time belonged to him.

  ‘You really want to work on them?’ Luka asked, and they must have both been looking at the same thing because he voiced her thoughts.

  ‘No, I really want to be a guest on one of them.’ Sophie smiled. ‘But for now working on one would be wonderful.’

  ‘What would your father say?’ Luka asked.

  ‘What will my father say?’ Sophie corrected, because it was going to happen, she was determined, but she answered his question. ‘I don’t know how he’s going to react,’ she said, listening to the thud of Luka’s heart as he stroked her hair. So much had changed now. ‘I guess people will understand that I might want to get away after the shame of you dumping me.’ She laughed and dug him in the ribs but then she was serious. ‘I don’t know how my father will be about it but I don’t think I can factor that in when I make my choice... I don’t know if I want to stay here in Bordo Del Cielo, Luka. There is too much past...’

  They were the same, Luka realised.

  ‘I think my father is up to no good,’ Sophie admitted. ‘I love him yet I want to get away from him. I want no part in that type of life.’

  During his last years at school Luka had started to question the way things worked here and he had fought hard to go to university in England. There, his eyes had been fully opened as to his father’s ways and from that distance he had decided to stay away.

  Sophie had worked it out from here, Luka thought.

  Or was starting to.

  ‘My father doesn’t work, he sits in a bar most of the day and into the night. What are these meetings he says that he has to go to?’ She looked up from his chest and instead of giving her an answer or avoiding the subject he offered the unexpected.

  ‘Come to London with me,’ Luka said.

  ‘With you?’

  ‘You could apply to the cruise liners from there. I could help you to get on your feet. I am a part owner of a hotel, you could work there till you get your dream job...’

  Sophie lay there, thinking about it. She wasn’t surprised that he part owned a hotel—Malvolio would have seen to it that his son was looked after.

  ‘I have a flat,’ Luka said. ‘You could stay with me for a while.’

  ‘Stay with you?’ Sophie blinked. ‘I don’t know if that would work out...’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Luka, while I accept this is a one-off, I really don’t want to be there if you bring another woman home...’

  It angered her that he laughed and Sophie climbed from the bed. ‘I’m going to have a shower and then I have to go to church...’ She stopped talking when she saw the sheets that bore the evidence of what had just taken place. ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’ll sort it all out,’ Luka said. ‘I’m not going to leave them for Angela. Go and have your shower...’

  As Sophie did so she thought about what Luka had suggested and she thought too about her cross response.

  It was true.

  She somehow had to hold in her jealousy at the thought of him with someone else. She’d agreed to break things off, a part of her had even been happy about it and certainly she had been relieved...

  That had been before they’d made love, though.

  How could once with Luka ever be enough?

  He had taken her, left her exhausted and sated.

  Now, though, even the recent memory was bringing her back to sensual life. She soaped her tender breasts and saw the bruise that his mouth had made. Her sex was hot and swollen and as Sophie soaped the last traces of him away she wanted him again.

  She walked out with a towel around her to the sight of a naked Luka changing the sheets. Now from a relative distance she could admire his naked beauty. He was tall and lean and she could see the muscles on his thighs as he bent to rather haphazardly tuck in the sheet. His shaft, though soft against his leg, lifted a little from the movement and she wanted to take the sheet from his hand and get back to bed.

  ‘Is that the first bed you have ever made?’ Sophie teased, trying to keep things light.

  ‘It is the first bed I have ever made in Bordo Del Cielo,’ Luka answered. He looked to where she stood and wondered if what he had to offer would be enough. She thought him rich and, in London, he wasn’t.

  Yet.

  ‘Sophie, I have a small flat in London...’ Luka would explain it all to her later, he decided. He would go into detail about how he had removed himself completely from his father, that his ways were honest. But he wasn’t going to do that here, and anyway there was something else that needed to be addressed before they got to family stuff. Today was about them, about the possibility of a future away from Bordo Del Cielo. ‘What you said before about me bringing another woman home if we lived in London, I would not do that to you. In the same way I wouldn’t like it if you were staying with me and saw anyone else...’

  ‘I don’t understand what you are saying.’

  ‘I’m saying that I don’t want it to be over between us. Maybe I don’t want to commit to marriage, or getting engaged just yet, it is far too soon for that, but we can date,’ Luka said. ‘Once we get to London we can go out and get to know each other away from our families. We can do things our way, without all the pressure and expectations.’

  Sophie could feel the goose-bumps on her bare arms as she realised that Luka wasn’t just offering her a way out of Bordo Del Cielio but a way out with him.

  ‘Can I still apply to work on the cruise liners if we are going out with each other?’

  ‘Sophie,’ Luka said. ‘Tomorrow you are nineteen, of course you must follow your dreams and do the work you want to.’ He threw a sheet at her. ‘For now, though, you can help me do this...’

  Sophie took the sheet and started making her side of the bed. ‘Does anything smell better than a sheet dried in the sun?’ Sophie asked, because at the hotel it was all starch and bleach.

  ‘One thing does,’ Luka said, and he beckoned her to cross the bed. Unabashed, wanting the same as him, she climbed over to him, kneeling up as he stood. ‘You do.’

  ‘And you,’ Sophie said.

  They kissed a slow, long kiss that she wanted to go on for ever but it was Luka who halted things—the sky was turning orange, he could hear the bell in the distance, summoning everyone to church. He had no intention of going himself but he knew that Sophie would be expected to be there so he pulled back. ‘I’ll go and get your dress. You said you needed to be at church.’

  ‘Soon,’ Sophie said.

  ‘You’ll be late,’ Luka said.

  ‘I’m always late.’

  ‘When we’re in London, we can spend the whole day...’ He didn’t finish. Her towel was slipping and Sophie let it fall. His lovely erection was nudging her stomach as they kissed some more.

  ‘I want to kiss you there,’ Sophie said, and now, when she lowered her head, Luka didn’t remind her that there was somewhere else she needed to be.

  She kissed down his stomach until his erection was too tempting at her cheek to ignore. He held the base as she tasted him first with her tongue then kissed him along his thick shaft and then Luka removed his hands.

  Sophie felt giddy as she ran her lips over the salty tip.

  Together they would go to London; they would get to know each other’s bodies.

  The world was theirs.

  ‘Like this?’ Sophie asked, and then parted her lips and took him a little way in.

  ‘Like that,’ Luka agreed. This, for Luka, was more intimate than sex. More private. He would prefer to give rather than take but he went with it now. His hands were in her hair and she felt the buildin
g pressure. ‘Deeper,’ Luka said, and she obliged, taking him in as far as she could as her tongue swirled on his shaft.

  His powerful thighs started to buck a little, his hand coiled her hair into a long ponytail and Sophie loved the traction—the tightness to her scalp gave her delicious direction but then cruelly she stopped.

  ‘Now?’ Sophie said, hovering over him, and then she looked up and smiled as he swore. ‘Is now a good time to get my own way?’

  ‘Why the hell did I tell you that?’ Luka both laughed and groaned. ‘What is it that you want?’

  ‘Can Bella come too?’ Sophie asked. ‘Just till we get on our feet?’

  ‘Sophie...’ Luka tried to come up with a reason why she couldn’t but, what he hell, he knew Bella and Sophie had been friends for ever and it might make it easier for Sophie to settle in. ‘Sure,’ Luka said. ‘Bella can come too. Now, get back to work.’

  Laughing, happy, she did so. Her hands moved and held his taut buttocks. He let her hair fall and what went on behind the black curtain was a private tasting. Sophie rested on her heels, her sex on fire as Luka didn’t try for gentle. She loved his passion, how he told her exactly what he wanted—which was simply more of the same. It was hot work and then he swore again, and it was right to swear because things could never be the same as he swelled in her throat, she pulled her head back and caught him first on her tongue, tasting and swallowing him down, more turned on than she thought possible. But then she realised he hadn’t finished, and the sound of him gently swearing as he came over her lips and into her hair had her close to climax.

  ‘Tonight...’ Luka scooped her up to him, told her he would wash himself out of her hair, right now in the shower, and then, ‘I shall go and speak to your father tonight.’

  Not yet, though. He saw her so flushed and aroused and ready that he pushed her back on the bed. Too giddy to stand, he knelt on the floor. She would take a minute. Luka knew. She was almost there. He could see her wet, sore and swollen, her clitoris erect, and God help him but he never wanted them to get out of bed.

  Sophie watched, shocked and laughing, as he pulled her to his mouth, and she lay there longing for the building pressure in her to release to his lips. She would later wish she could somehow hold that moment, for it was a time that belonged only to them. A time of pure happiness. A moment without shame, where the future was bright, where dreams were coming true, but then a crashing noise doused her in panic.

  There was the sound of footsteps running up the stairs.

  A lot of them.

  Her first thought was that Malvolio had come home, though there was too much noise for it to be only him, but then the police shouted out that they were being raided.

  Luka threw a sheet over her. The bedroom door splintered and as it was kicked open he lay over her as gruff voices told them not to move.

  ‘Non muovetevi!’

  Sophie closed her eyes in terror as Luka was hauled from the bed to the floor where he was cuffed.

  ‘Stay still,’ Luka warned her. ‘Just stay calm.’ Then he shouted to them to fetch her clothes but all they gave her was one of Luka’s shirts.

  ‘Not in church this evening?’ The lewd comment only added to her embarrassment and terror as Sophie attempted to cover herself.

  ‘Say nothing,’ Luka warned her. His voice was the only calm in the room but then it changed as they pulled Sophie’s hands behind her back and put on cuffs. ‘Why are you cuffing her?’

  ‘I don’t know what’s happening...’ Sophie said, and then she looked at Luka, met his eyes and in that moment she did know.

  This was about their fathers.

  ‘Say nothing,’ Luka said. ‘I’ll get you a lawyer.’

  It had all been perfect and now she had been plunged into a hell that burned ever hotter. Sophie was unceremoniously marched to a car. The entire congregation of the church, it seemed, had come out and were watching from the other side of the road. It was mortifying. The only saving grace was Bella, shouting to her friend, ‘I’ll get some clothes and bring them.’ She was already running down the hill towards Sophie’s home.

  There was no time to thank Bella. Instead, Sophie’s head was pushed down as she got into a police car, but it didn’t come close to the loving way Luka’s hand had, only moments ago, guided her head.

  ‘Poutana...’ She heard the whispers—some even said it loudly. The people she had grown up with had all turned on her in one night and very soon she would start to understand why.

  ‘I suggest you don’t take your boyfriend’s advice and that you do speak,’ Sophie was told as the car started to drive off

  Sophie said nothing. She trusted Luka to sort this out and she knew that she’d done nothing wrong. She rested her head against the window and lifted her hands to her tousled hair, feeling her mother’s earring, then moved her fingers to her other ear.

  It was gone.

  ‘My earring,’ she started, and then stopped. She would speak with Luka later. It had to be in his bedroom, or maybe on the path as she had been led out.

  She looked down at the car floor, wondering if she had lost it when she’d been pushed in.

  ‘So where’s your father tonight?’ she was asked, but Sophie refused to answer. She had given up looking for her earring and was now back to staring unseeingly out of the window,

  ‘There’s Luka’s father,’ the officer said, and Sophie started to breathe faster as she saw Malvolio being led by the police from the hotel. ‘I wonder where Paulo is,’ the policeman said. ‘Let’s take the scenic route.’ But instead of the beach road they were heading now towards the hotel and into a small side street, the same street that Sophie had walked down just a few hours ago. Now, though, it was filled with firefighters and the deli was alight with flames.

  ‘You were in there this afternoon, weren’t you?’ the officer checked, and there was no point denying it so Sophie nodded.

  ‘Your father went and visited them this morning,’ the officer said. ‘For the third time.’

  It was then, Sophie knew, time for her to start talking.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘SOPHIE DURANTE.’

  Sophie stood as her name was called.

  It had taken six long months to get to the trial.

  After the arrests she had been released without charge the next morning but her father, Luka and Malvolio had all been charged with various offences.

  The last six months she had spent living with Bella and her mother because, even from prison, Malvolio still ruled Bordo Del Cielo. Her father’s house had been signed over to him to pay for Paulo’s lawyer.

  Sophie had been allowed a few short, monitored visits with her father.

  She would have preferred to have seen Luka.

  It was a terrible thing to admit perhaps, but at every visit she had ached for just a glimpse of him and she could no longer look her father in the eye.

  ‘You will hear many things in the trial,’ Paulo had said. ‘Some of the things will be true, but most are lies...’

  Sophie simply didn’t know what to believe.

  Trinkets and jewellery had been found in their home. Souvenirs, the police called them, for they had all belonged to victims.

  Sophie knew they had not been in her home, she’d cleaned it after all. But she also knew that her father, though perhaps not a killer, had not been entirely innocent either and it hurt like hell to know that.

  ‘Malvolio would send me to warn people—it doesn’t mean that I hurt them...’ Paulo attempted to explain.

  ‘You went, though,’ Sophie shot back. ‘You terrified them just by passing on the warnings. Why would you say yes to him?’

  ‘Sophie, please—’

  ‘No!’ She would not simply ignore the facts. ‘You chose to say yes to him and, please, never say that
you did it for me. He kept us poor.’

  ‘You have Luka.’

  Sophie let out an incredulous laugh. ‘Don’t tell me you said yes to him just for that. I’d have had Luka with or without your help.’

  She was confident of that.

  Almost.

  She couldn’t wait for the trial to be over, to go with him to London...to take up those tentative dreams and to run with them.

  Sophie looked at her father. He looked so grey and gaunt and she knew she had to win the battle to forgive him and stand by him, for she was the only family that he had.

  ‘After the trial you can get away from Bordo Del Cielo and start over again,’ Sophie said.

  ‘I’m not leaving your mother.’

  ‘She’s been dead for seventeen years! Father, I am going to be leaving. I’m going to move to London with Luka. I just want to get away from here and all the people who have judged me.’ She ran a nervous tongue over her lips for there was one thing she felt her father ought to hear first from her. ‘You will hear things in court about me too, father. Things that you won’t like. That afternoon, when the raids happened, Luka and I...we were together.’

  ‘Sophie, you and Luka were practically engaged. You have nothing to be ashamed about. Walk into that court and give your evidence with your head held high.’

  How, though?

  As her father was led back to the cells Sophie asked, as she always did, if she could visit Luka.

  He had no one. His mother had died years ago and his father was locked away.

  ‘Non ci sono visitatori ammessi.’

  Again she was told that no visitors were allowed and then she found out that Luka had been placed in solitary.

  ‘Malvolio too?’ Sophie challenged. ‘Of course not.’ She answered her own question.

  Luka wasn’t a security risk, Luka wouldn’t contaminate the trial, that would be Malvolio.

  ‘He rules even in here,’ Sophie called out as she left on the eve of the trial.

  She took the bus back to Bordo Del Cielo and walked down the street.

  Teresa’s café was all boarded up and the locals shunned her. If it weren’t for Bella and her mother. she would have had nowhere to go.