Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

" S O, YOU LIKE THE gardens?" he asked, some hours later, on the balcony of Maddie's hotel room. Despite his insistence that she stay with him, she'd been equally adamant that she wouldn't.

"I love the gardens," she said with an enthusiastic nod. "Oh, they're so stunning. And the fragrance, even at this time of year, it's so heady."

"Funny, I never really noticed."

"You never noticed ?" she demanded. "How on earth could you fail to notice? The color, the sculptures, the whole shape of the landscaping. It's just divine."

"It was simply…normal, for me. Besides, I was always more interested in throwing stones at the sculptures or trying to spear the fish."

She glared at him. "Rocco, you're kidding."

"I'm a man, cara, and before I was a man, I was a boy. I had little interest in colors or fragrance or landscaping."

She rolled her eyes. "Well, that's a bit sexist, isn't it?"

"Be that as it may, in my case, it's the truth."

Her heart gave a funny little tremor. She was enjoying herself. In a way that she knew to be dangerous because she was relaxing and seeing Rocco as just a nice, normal man when he was anything but.

After they'd made love in the gardens, they'd explored them together, and her enthusiasm had been impossible to mute. She'd left the house alone, in her little hire car, but she'd only been in her hotel for an hour—long enough to place orders with several of the wholesalers the wedding coordinator had mentioned, and to arrange special delivery for early the next morning—when Rocco had arrived, brandishing a bottle of champagne and a bouquet that looked to have been handpicked from the very same gardens they'd made love in. The sprigs of bougainvillea brought back memories and she found it hard not to take the gesture to heart.

Which was the very last thing she should do, obviously, because it meant nothing. Except that he was astute and knew how much she loved gardens. And it was easy for him, to boot. Easy to collect up the flowers, to wrap a ribbon around their base. and bring them to her.

They added a much-needed touch of color to the sterility of her hotel room.

"You, however, have always loved gardens," he said, lifting the champagne bottle and refilling her glass. It was absolutely delicious—a label she didn't recognize but was enjoying immensely.

"Yeah." She'd told him as much, she recalled, days ago. Days? Had it really only been days? In her mind, they'd known one another much longer. Then again, she'd known of him for longer still. Known of, and hated him, she reminded herself. She instinctively recoiled from talking about herself, and her love of gardens. Besides, she was more interested in him. "So, you spent a lot of time at the villa?"

She rested her chin on her palm, studying him. "Yes."

But it was a closed-off answer, as though he didn't want to talk about it, either.

"What about your parents?" She asked, but gently, giving him a chance to close down the conversation, even though she wanted to understand this aspect of him.

"We spent a lot of time with my aunt and uncle."

Her lips pulled to the side. "That's not really an answer, but that's okay. You don't have to answer."

He looked at her for a beat, his eyes probing hers, as if looking for something, or perhaps sensing something in the depths of her irises, because then he nodded slowly. "I know." He cleared his throat and sipped his drink. "My mother died when I was eleven. My father only about five years ago, but he was absent…after her."

Maddie's heart lurched a little. "Eleven is a hard age to lose a parent."

"Any age is, I imagine."

"True," she murmured. "But at eleven, you're still learning who you are to be in the world, how to be."

"Yes."

"Was she ill?"

"It was an accident. She was in America, visiting her parents—I'm not sure if I've mentioned that she was American?"

Maddie shook her head. She was surprised, for the simple reason that Rocco was so incredibly Italian.

"I was raised here," he explained as if reading her mind. "My mother spoke Italian at home with us, cooked Italian meals, did everything she could, really, to be a Santoro."

Maddie looked at him thoughtfully. "You say that as though it's a bad thing?"

"Not at all. But it is a ‘big' thing. The Santoro family is—has long been—wealthy and influential. She was marrying a version of Italian royalty, and I suppose she wanted to show she belonged."

Sympathy softened Maddie's lips into a frown. "Was she happy?"

"I was a child," he shrugged. "It's hard to say. My memories are that she was, yes. Absolutely. I recall my father worshipping her, and her laughing a lot. But I was a boy, as I said, and I saw things through that lens. I was always busy with something or other—I didn't give my parents a lot of thought. Until she died, and he withdrew."

Maddie shivered. "Withdrew how?"

Rocco, however, was in his own world, reliving the past, perhaps. "He began to drink, heavily. To date woman after woman after woman after woman. To parade them around the house, uncaring for what we thought. I was so angry, Maddie. So angry at him for letting these women into my mother's bed, into my mother's home. So angry with him for drinking to the point he was in a stupor, so angry with him for not being there, to talk to us about our mother, to try to keep things normal."

"And did you try to keep things normal?" she asked gently because she knew that he did.

"I tried," he muttered.

"But there was only so much you could do."

His expression was taut, and somehow, she knew that he didn't believe her—that he wasn't mollified by her words. Rocco Santoro carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. He didn't believe he was enough, that he had ever done enough. It was a moment of blinding clarity, that drove home for her the importance of this real estate development. It wasn't about money, it wasn't even about success, as he'd claimed. It was about validation. The ability to make up for what he perceived were his failings then.

"You were only a boy," she said. "It wasn't your responsibility to keep the train on the tracks."

"Wasn't it?"

"No. That was your father's job. Your aunt and uncle's."

Then, he smiled, an instinctive, automatic response that changed his whole face, driving away the grief. "My aunt and uncle cannot be faulted. As much as my father would allow it, they stepped into the breach."

"Your uncle and father were brothers, you said?"

He dipped his head in silent agreement.

"When you say, ‘as much as he would allow'?"

"My father was a proud man. He didn't feel it was anyone else's job to raise us."

"Even when he had given up on doing so himself?"

Rocco's features tightened in an expression of surprise.

Maddie's hand flew to her mouth, pressing there to suppress a sound of regret. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

Rocco shook his head once. "You're right, though. And too damned perceptive."

"It was rude of me. And it doesn't make any allowance for the fact that your father was grieving too."

Rocco's lip twisted cynically. "Yes, he was grieving, in his own way. It took me a long time to understand that."

"Did he ever re-marry?"

Rocco pulled a face. "He was full of contempt for the whole institution of marriage. It's a miracle that even one of us is willing to walk down the aisle after our indoctrination into the church of being a bachelor for life."

Maddie wondered at the strange feeling tightening in her chest, a sense of pain for Rocco, she assured herself. A feeling of sadness that a man with so much goodness to give should be left to feel so scathing of something like marriage.

"This is your philosophy too?"

"I don't know if it could be called a philosophy, it's just the way I am."

"That's why you go through women so fast?"

He lifted his shoulders. "I like women."

She smiled to hide the coldness slicking her veins. "Lots of women?" She affected a teasing tone to her voice, proud of herself for hiding the uneasiness she was feeling behind the fa?ade of easy amusement. It wasn't amusing though, and nor was her instinctive reaction to what he was saying.

"I'm not a saint."

She made a soft sound of mirth—or what she hoped would pass for it—then lifted her champagne flute to her mouth, sipped it thoughtfully. "Have you ever been in love?"

The question wasn't planned, and it surprised her as much as it did him, but she was strangely glad she'd asked it. She wanted to understand him, and this was a part of him. By his age, not having loved a woman was most definitely a choice, in her opinion.

"No." The answer came immediately and without hesitation. "Not even close."

Maddie considered that. He didn't sound unsure, he didn't sound like there was someone whom perhaps he had loved, once upon a time. That meant that even as a hormonal teenager, he'd been like this. Cold, closed off, refusing to commit, pushing people away as a matter of course.

Sadness for him washed over her. In many ways, they were polar opposites. Despite having known rejection from her mother, in a way that had blunted her self-esteem and made her doubt her worth, Maddie had always craved the deep roots that came from belonging to a happy family. She'd dreamed of finding her soul mate, falling in love, marrying, having children, and living a long, happy life surrounded by people who cared for and adored her. All of the things that had been missing in the formative years of her childhood. She wanted a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, a golden retriever, the works.

"What about you, Maddison?" he prompted, his voice thick and throaty, his accent flooding her body with warmth now, driving away the cool.

"What about me?" She pretended to misunderstand.

"You asked if I've ever been in love. Now I'm asking you."

"Oh." Her skin warmed for another reason now. Embarrassment. "I—was. Yes. Once upon a time, forever ago."

He arched a brow, silently encouraging her to continue, but there was something in the set of his jaw that spoke of a tension. Was he so dismissive of love that he didn't even want to think she'd felt it?

"There's nothing to tell, really," she lied. "You know the story: boy meets girl, boy flirts, girl falls, they date, fall in love, fall out of love, break up."

Cynicism darkened his eyes. "Because love is a myth."

Her eyes widened. "That wasn't really my point."

"No? What other lesson can you take from your experience?"

"Plenty of lessons, believe me, and they'll haunt me for a lifetime."

He looked at her in confusion, and she didn't blame him; he couldn't understand what she'd been through, and how it had taught her to think and act differently.

"Brock was a mistake," she said, choosing her words carefully. "I did love him, but at the same time, I never really knew him. No, that's not accurate. I never really saw him. I was so caught up in the idea of him, of what I wanted him, and us, to be, that I imagined him to be a man that didn't exist. I imagined him to be perfect."

"Nobody is perfect."

"Brock was far from it."

Rocco leaned forward, eyes on her face with an intensity that stole her breath. "Did he hurt you?"

Maddie's eyes dropped to her plate, a stinging in the back of them catching her off guard. She didn't want to cry!

"Maddison." Her name on his lips was a growl, deep and rich.

She blinked up at him, shaking her head. "He wasn't abusive, if that's what you mean."

"It's not." He stood then, coming around to her side of the table and looking down at her, so she had no choice but to stare up his torso, towards his handsome face. "Did he hurt you?"

She blinked away, feeling a little as though she was a deer in headlights. "He—it was a bad breakup," she admitted, wondering why she was withholding the truth from him. Because she was embarrassed? Because she'd never told anyone? She knew it wasn't her fault. Objectively, academically, she understood that Brock was one hundred percent wrong in this scenario, but it didn't change the feeling that she'd been a fool to trust him. That she'd laid herself open to his threats by allowing him to take those photos and that video in the first place. By not making sure he'd deleted them.

She'd trusted a total bastard, and he'd always have this over her.

She blinked quickly, searching for words, to explain further, but Rocco was pulling her to her feet, drawing her to him. It was not a warm night, and they both wore thick jumpers, but even through the wool, she felt him. His warmth, his familiar strength, and something clicked into place in her chest. She liked being close to him. And even though she'd sworn she'd never be stupid enough to trust another man, she was allowed to let one make her feel good, wasn't she? She could just enjoy this, without hoping for, or wanting, more? Without letting her guard down, or, worst of all, letting her heart get in the way?

"You deserve better than that," he said with confidence, despite not knowing any of the details.

Her lips pulled to one side. Everyone deserved better than someone like Brock, she thought.

"I'm sorry you were hurt."

It was the last thing she'd expected Rocco to say, but they were the very words she needed to hear, because implicit in his apology was an acknowledgement that he wouldn't hurt her. An assurance that she could rely on him for that, at least. A promise that she—and this—was safe.

"It's okay."

"It's not. No one should hurt you."

She pulled a face. "You've never hurt anyone?"

He frowned. "Not knowingly."

She lifted a hand, touched his cheek. "How does that work?"

"What do you mean?"

"You've been with a heap of women. How do you make sure they don't want more? How do you stop them from loving you?"

"Do you love me?"

Her eyes widened at the shocking question and her words almost strangled in her throat. So much so that she began to cough, half-choking on the very idea.

"I'll take that as a no," he responded, once she'd regained her composure.

"It's a no," she promised, as her heart began to thump hard against her ribs. "Definitely not. But then again, you are doing everything you can to destroy the only home I've ever known," she pointed out. "How could I ever love you?"

His eyes skimmed her face and this time, there was no hint of triumph in them, no look of satisfaction. If anything, there was a hint of concern, and regret. "It really means that much to you, doesn't it?"

"Isn't that obvious?"

His frown deepened. "Yes."

"But maybe you're right," she said with a small shrug, unaware of the vulnerability on her features. "Maybe keeping the house isn't right for Jack. Especially not with the mega precinct you're going to build around him."

Rocco reached down and clasped his hands low behind her back, holding her close to him. Though no music played, their bodies swayed a little in the moonlit night, as though they were listening to their own symphony, their own rhythm and beat, their own melody lilting in the air.

"Maybe the change will even be good for me," she said, after a moment of silence. "I have spent my entire adult life living in the same home I grew up in. At least this will force me to go, be somewhere else."

"Where will that be?"

She shook her head, sadly. "I don't know." There was wistfulness in her tone though, a wistfulness that spoke of her innate fear of being uprooted—again. It was a fear that defined her, that made her who she was—it had informed every single choice she'd made, for as long as she'd been able to make choices.

"When I was a girl," she said, softly, surprising herself with each word, because she never spoke about her childhood—not even with Brock—and she certainly hadn't planned to with Rocco. But there was something about him, this night, the way they were together, that had her opening up to him in a way that was surprising—and a little thrilling. "We moved around a lot. My mom struggled. She drank, too, but not like a glass of wine with dinner. She drank, a lot. She tried to hold it together, but she couldn't. She couldn't keep a job, a home. We lived in her car for a couple of months," Maddie continued.

"What about your grandparents?" Rocco asked, his hands tracing invisible patterns on Maddie's back, and even through her clothes, that soft contact made her heart race.

"They didn't know how bad it was. Mom made it seem like a game at first, an exciting adventure like we were in our own ‘hero's quest' story. But it got worse and worse. Sometimes we barely had enough food to eat—though she always managed to get bottles of liquor," Maddie winced. "She had a heap of boyfriends." Maddie swallowed past a lump in her throat. "Sound familiar?"

His eyes ran over her face—how could either of them fail to see the similarities? Except…Maddie's situation had been different, in some vital ways. She hadn't been safe. She hadn't been a part of a broader family. And there had never been close to enough money. "Some of them were…"

Rocco stopped swaying, and his hands stopped moving. The silence almost seemed to shake the air. "Go on," he encouraged, his voice tight.

"Creepy," she admitted.

"Creepy, how?"

"Like they'd want to talk to me after mom had passed out."

"Did anyone ever touch you, Maddie?"

Her eyes widened as she glanced up at him, before shaking her head. "But there was one who would talk to me about stuff. Grown-up stuff." She bit into her lower lip, still remembering how ashamed she'd been, how heavy the guilt had felt.

"What did your mother do?"

"I didn't tell her. I was so scared that I'd done something wrong, that I'd somehow encouraged it."

"Oh, Maddie." He dropped his head, pressing a kiss to her brow. "Of course you didn't."

"I know that now. But as a child, it's hard to navigate anything like that. I just wanted my mom to be happy. I wanted us to settle down somewhere. I wanted a garden," she whispered. "And not just my stupid citrus tree." Her laugh was hollow, tinged with pain for the little girl she'd been.

"This is why you were raised by your grandparents?"

"Well, yes. More or less. The last boyfriend got her into this weird cult. She was his fourth bride or something. They wanted me to live with them, but it was pretty clear that I would be expected to follow the lifestyle of their commune—I was terrified. I asked to go spend the summer with grandma and grandpa, talked them into letting me on account of their having just gotten married, and how nice the privacy would be."

Rocco was very quiet.

"And when I got to Jack's, I just refused to leave. I begged mom to follow after me, to leave the cult, but she wouldn't. She was happy; she said that if I loved her, I'd have been happy for her, and I would have stayed." Maddie sucked in a sharp breath. "Jack and Lorraine never asked questions, but eventually bits and pieces came out. They understood, and they loved me; they let me stay. They gave me a garden," she added, only aware that she was crying when Rocco lifted a finger and wiped a tear from her cheek. "They let me plant whatever I wanted, to spend time out there digging, losing myself in the beauty of flowers and life and nourishing the soil. Of putting down roots."

"As you had never been able to," he murmured, kissing her brow once more. "Poor, poor Maddie."

"Don't do that," she whispered. "Don't pity me."

"Pity you? How can I not, cara? But I also admire you. I admire the strength it took to run from that situation, to keep yourself safe, to know that you deserved better."

She dropped her head forward, his words a balm she hadn't known she needed.

"I think you are…quite impressive."

It was an almost business-like compliment and yet it landed, with all the precision of an arrow, right in the very center of her being, and she knew, somehow, that it would never dislodge itself from that spot.

He hadn't meant to spend the night but waking up beside Maddie as the early morning sun filtered in through her hotel window, he had to admit, he wasn't sorry. He wasn't sorry for any of it. Meeting her, indulging himself in this passion, getting to know her. There was an intimacy that came from their conversations that only seemed to deepen how much he wanted her, so he was burning with a need that he delighted in relieving—often. Insatiably. Made all the better by how equally she wanted him. In the night, she'd reached for him, half-asleep, groggy, their limbs entwined from earlier lovemaking, their bodies sated, until they weren't. Until they touched and kissed and stirred fires to life that had been extinguished. She straddled him and rocked her hips and arched her back while he drove into her, his fingers holding her low on his body, his mouth finding her breasts and tormenting her sensitive flesh, his whole body energized by this raw, vital desire.

And now it was morning, and when he flipped onto his side it was to see Maddie, fast asleep, her beautiful face so relaxed and innocent. Her lips were parted, her lashes so thick and dark against her cheeks, like two crescent moons. He wanted to reach for her even then, to touch her, and kiss her awake, but she just looked so peaceful, and she would naturally be quite exhausted.

He knew she planned to wake early to start work—and it was just dawn. He would leave her to sleep a little while longer and see her again later.

But first, he would look. Just a moment longer. Her features were so beautiful. Awake, she was animated and full of fire, like the first time they'd met, when she'd yelled at him like the personification of a hurricane. She was always in motion, expression, speaking, laughing, hands moving, features shifting. But in rest, like this, he could really see her. The beautiful, placid Maddie, and also, beyond the woman he'd made love to all night, the whole of her. The experiences that had shaped her, that had made her vulnerable as a child, when she should have known safety and security. The experiences that had taught her to be wary, and untrusting, that had taught her to keep everyone—even the adults she was supposed to rely on—at arm's length.

It explained so much about her.

From their very first meeting, he'd felt steel in her, a backbone of absolute iron, that was intractable, unbreakable. She was tough. A woman who'd once been a scrappy kid, close to being a street kid, he thought with a shifting in his belly, a sense of anger for the unknown woman who had been unable to care for Maddie.

His father had turned to alcohol too, but they had always been cared for. There had been housekeepers and nannies and elite private schools which they were ferried to by private drivers in comfortable cars. He had never known hunger, and he had never felt the kind of insecurity that must come from not knowing if you would have a bed for the night.

Poor Maddie, he thought again, and his insides churned with the injustice of it all. With a staunch desire to somehow change it for her, to fix it. To make it all better.

You know how to do that. The voice in the back of his mind was mocking, and derisive, as if Rocco was being intentionally dim-witted.

Because, of course, the answer lay before him.

Don't buy the house.

Put the others back on the market and allow them to be purchased by young families wanting to move to the area. Do something good for Jack. For Maddie. Make the street what it had once been.

And give up on his plans?

Walk away from the project he'd poured his heart and soul into for years?

All so he could keep Maddie tethered to her childhood home? What if she was right, and growing up and moving away from that home was actually a good thing for her?

What if it was time for her to start spreading her wings, and she was ready for that?

And what if she wasn't? He'd been through things. Grief, loss, trauma, disappointment. Abandonment. A fear that came from knowing your parents were no longer there, no longer the support network you'd hoped to always have access to. But at the same time, he'd had his aunt and uncle, his cousins, the villa in Italy that was a touchstone to their broader family, a reminder that he was a Santoro, and that being a Santoro damn well meant something.

Maddie hadn't known any of those reassuring securities, and the one thing she did have—the house—was about to be sold. To him.

What if Rocco became another man who'd treated her badly, and done the wrong thing by her?

He wasn't sure he could live with that reality. Not now that he knew her; not now that he understood her.

With quiet steps but an over-loud brain, he crept from Maddie's bed, dressed, and then left her hotel room, without a backward glance.