Chapter 3

THREE

M atthew didn’t wait for an answer, just hurtled down the marina, followed by Lea, Kate, Joni, and Marie, all jogging in their heels and dresses to keep up with him like a row of ducklings.

“Mattie, don’t,” I started but had to turn away from them all so I could wipe tears and smudged makeup off my face.

Not that it would hide a freaking thing. But really, this was the last thing we needed right now.

“Fucking hell,” Xavier said, not even bothering to censor himself for my family’s benefit.

“Is this true?” Matthew repeated, already rolling up his sleeves in preparation for a fight. “Frankie, are you actually pregnant?”

I sighed and looked up at the stars, which twinkled brightly overhead. So much for not stealing his day. “I—I wasn’t going to say anything until after Italy. But…yes. I am.”

Matthew’s eyes darkened toward Xavier. “So this asshole left you high and dry for another woman? When you’re gonna have his kid? Again ?”

“Well, to be accurate, I left him,” I pointed out. “Not to mention?—”

“What the fuck did he just say?” Xavier demanded, taking a few menacing steps in Matthew’s direction. “What is he talking about, ‘other woman’?”

Right. Yeah. We’d had plenty of fights about the fact that I’d left England in such a hurry…but I hadn’t had the guts to tell him that final reason why.

Tears pricked at the fleeting memory of Imogene Douglas, Xavier’s beautiful blonde neighbor, leaning over his desk as her lips met his.

This was why I couldn’t talk about it. Because recalling her stupidly perfect face for even a second crumpled mine like a piece of paper and made my throat seize with trapped sobs. And the idea of saying “you kissed Imogene Douglas” out loud had the same effect on my insides as my stomach’s current reaction to meat and cream products.

Plus, I didn’t want to feel more pathetic than I already was.

“You limey mother fucker .”

Before I knew it, my brother strode to where Xavier stood, wound his arm back, and punched him clean in the face.

Xavier stumbled backward, perilously close to the edge of the dock. He stood up straight again, hand to a bleeding lip. “Try that again, mate. I fucking dare you.”

Matthew took three more steps, so they were chest to chest, despite the fact that Xavier topped him by at least three inches. He shoved him hard right in the sternum.

To his credit, Xavier didn’t move this time.

Matthew tipped his chin up. “How’s that… mate ?”

And that was all it took.

All at once, the two of them were grappling on the pier, caring little for splinters or pebbles, or the fact that if they moved more than six inches, both of them were going to end up in the Mediterranean. Xavier landed several punches that seemed to attack Matthew’s kidneys, though my brother was no slouch as he managed a solid blow to Xavier’s gut and kneed him in the hamstring.

“Oh my God!” I shouted at them. “Get off the ground! This is insane. Matthew, this is your wedding day !”

“Clock him in the ear, Mattie,” Lea called behind me. “He’s not guarding his right side.”

“Lea, shut up!” I flapped my hands around like an excited penguin. “Mattie, Nina’s going to wonder where her groom disappeared to. Come on, you look like animals down there. ”

“He looks like he’s kicking the crap out of him,” Marie remarked with a bit too much satisfaction.

“I don’t know,” Joni replied. “Sexy gargoyle is getting in a lot of punches too. Come on, Keanu, don’t stop now!”

“Keanu?” I asked, unable to help myself.

Joni just grinned and shook her head, causing her oversized earrings to swing like wind chimes. “We watched The Matrix dubbed in Italian last night. Marie thinks Xavier looks like Keanu Reeves.”

“I do not,” Marie countered, though her cheeks were red.

“Do too. You said he would make a good Neo.”

“I see it,” Kate said evenly like she was judging a contest, not an amateur wrestling match.

“Nah, he’s too tall,” Lea put in. “More like the wolf guy from True Blood . But Asian.”

“Oooh, the werewolf? Yeah, he was hot!” Joni exclaimed. “Remember the shower scene?”

“I liked Bill better myself,” Lea said. “But yes, Alcide was very attractive.”

“Please. Everyone knows Eric is the hot one on that show,” Kate put in. “Give me a brooding androgynous vampire any time of day.”

“Oh my God, shut it!” I snapped at all four of them, though they continued to debate the merits of sex with vampires, werewolves, and other fantasy characters on HBO.

It didn’t matter. Neither man appeared to have heard us, anyway.

“Think you can fuck around on my sister and get away with it?” Matthew demanded as he drove an elbow into Xavier’s gut.

“Keep. Your. Fucking. Nose. Out of it!” Xavier flipped Matthew over and shoved a fist directly into his kidney.

“Never,” Matthew gasped. “Nobody cheats on my sisters. Fucking nobody .”

“What?” Xavier paused, popped his head up, and looked at me. “Who cheated on you, Ces?”

And that was all it took for Matthew to pile-drive right into his waist, forcing them both into a rolling ball of angry men that tumbled over backward. They fell straight into the water between two sailboats beneath the row of Zola women in their wedding finery.

“Well, that’s a terrific way to ruin a nice tux,” Lea remarked as we watched them flounder in the water. She picked a piece of lint off the mauve dress she’d gotten on sale at TJ Maxx.

“I know,” Kate agreed. “It was couture Givenchy too.” She sniffed, almost as if she was about to cry. “He was going to let me resell it after the wedding. I already had a buyer lined up and everything. Man, that suit would have paid my mortgage for two months.”

“Yeah, but it’s a hell of a wet T-shirt contest,” Joni said, only to receive a nudge from Marie as they both watched Xavier stand up fully in water that barely came to his waist.

“Don’t be nasty. One of them is our brother , and the other is Frankie’s man,” said Marie, though she didn’t seem particularly convinced while she stared at Xavier too.

“He is not my man.”

I could barely get the words out, though. Xavier wasn’t making it easy on any of us. That’s what happens when six feet, five inches of supernaturally cut man-muscle is dripping wet. His T-shirt was plastered to his body, leaving even less to the imagination when he stripped off his jacket in disgust and abandoned it to the water.

“What in the fuck are you talking about, cheating?” Xavier demanded as he rounded on Matthew, who stood himself, eyes narrowed, clearly trying to map out his next ambush. “And don’t even think about it unless you want to drown in three feet of water. I don’t care if you’re her brother.”

Only with a glance at me did Matthew relent. “Just say the word, Frankie. Say it, and his ass is fuckin’ grass.”

Xavier snorted at the idea, but his attention was fully on me as well. “I didn’t cheat on you, Ces. For fuck’s sake, is that why you left? Why would you even think that?”

“BECAUSE I SAW YOU!” I shrieked, no longer able to keep my tears from flowing freely.

“Jerk,” Kate murmured as she reached around Lea to rub my shoulder.

“Dick,” Joni concurred.

“Lowlife,” Marie added.

“Jackass,” Lea declared.

“What?” Xavier’s reply was immediate. “When? Fucking where?”

“In Kendal,” I told him while I swiped at my face with curled fists. “That last day. After you left me and Sofia in the kitchen, I decided the conversation wasn’t done. So I went upstairs to find you, got waylaid by your stepmonster, and by the time I made it back to your office, you were there with her .”

“I was with who ?” Xavier demanded with utter disbelief.

“That snooty neighbor,” Marie offered helpfully. “The viscount’s daughter, right? Or is it just count? I don’t really understand titles.”

“What was her name, again?” Joni asked. “It was super old-fashioned. Like a grandma name.”

“Imelda, I think,” Lea said as she folded her arms, looking like she wanted a shot at Xavier herself alongside Matthew.

“No, it was Imogene,” Kate corrected her. “And I think the name is pretty.”

I exhaled through my nose and massaged my temples. I loved my sisters, but I desperately wished they would disappear right now. It was like a Greek chorus had mated with the cast of Mean Girls .

Xavier’s brow furrowed as he gaped at me. “ Imogene ?” he repeated as if they’d suggested he’d slept with his own mother. “You think I cheated on you with Imogene bloody Douglas?”

“You said—” I rubbed my eyes, begging the tears to stop. “I heard you, Xavi. She said I couldn’t be happy with you. And you agreed with her. That I was the type of person who couldn’t be happy anyway. So why—why even bother with me, right? Why even try?”

I hiccupped back a gut-churning sob. God, I hated even thinking of the whole thing. For weeks, every time the memory had reappeared, I’d shoved it away, wanting only to forget how I’d felt outside that office door.

Small. Inconsequential.

A complete and total burden.

Kate rounded Lea and pulled me into her shoulder as I finished speaking.

“You said that?” she asked like she didn’t want to believe it.

Xavier’s eyes were rounder than the moon above us. “I—I didn’t?—”

But his words faltered, stained with something akin to shame, and I could tell the memory was coming back to him.

“And then she said…” I continued. “She said you deserved something better. And then she kissed you. Don’t try to deny it, Xavi—I saw you! She kissed you and you let her! ”

A hush fell over the boardwalk as my sisters all processed the moment with me, this time with a waterlogged Xavier watching us. They’d heard the story before, of course, though perhaps not in so much detail. Right now, however, Xavier didn’t just have one Zola who wanted to kick his ass. He had an entire army.

“What a fuckboy,” Joni pronounced with a curling lip.

“Two-timing snake.” Lea’s hand balled into a fist.

“Jerk,” Marie murmured like she was watching an episode of Judge Judy with Nonna.

Kate just shook her head while she stroked my hair. “You complete and utter ass .”

“Fucking prick,” Matthew said as he swung around with obvious intent.

His fist, however, was caught like a hardball in Xavier’s hand, and Matthew was forced a step back in the water as Xavier rounded on him like a bull seeing red.

“Touch me again, you lose a fucking eye,” Xavier gritted through his teeth as he took an equally rough handful of Matthew’s collar and lifted him a solid inch out of the water. “You’re not the only one who grew up street fighting, mate. And I’m primed right now, I really am.”

He released him roughly, and the two men eyed each other much like two wolves vying for leadership of a pack. A solid minute passed before Matthew exhaled, then took his fist back. Xavier watched him a moment more to make sure he was truly relenting, then turned back to me.

“Imogene kissed me, yes. Just like you said, babe, she. Kissed. Me. And for a moment, I was caught by surprise, frozen, as it were. But I’m guessing you didn’t stay for the next part, because as soon as I realized what was happening, I pushed her off, told her to get the fuck out of my office, and we’ve barely spoken since. That’s it, Ces. That’s all that happened.” He took a deep breath, his dark eyes never wandering from my face, keeping contact the entire time. Begging me to see whatever truth he was trying to impart. “I swear to God, Francesca. I swear on our daughter. I did not kiss Imogene Douglas .”

We stared at each other for a long time, and my entire family remained so still I could hear the water dripping off Xavier’s and Matthew’s soaked clothes back into the sea. Matthew tensed, clearly ready to pounce again. My sisters looked like a set of colorful statues dressed in silk and poly-blend.

But Xavier’s expression never wavered from me. He never even blinked. Those blue eyes held mine in a grip so tight I couldn’t move a single muscle, though I was several feet away.

The tension was too much to endure. I sucked in a breath, squeezed my eyes shut, and exhaled.

“I don’t know,” I croaked. “I don’t know what happened. Not anymore.”

Kate pulled me into her arms, and I sensed a few of my other sisters offering comfort. A hand on my back, another stroking my hair. Warmth and murmured kindness. They might have driven me crazy, but they knew the meaning of support.

This was why I had really gone back to New York. I had never been more glad for it than right now.

Eventually, there was the sound of someone getting out of the water and the slap of wet shoes on the decking until a shadow fell over all five of us. My sisters released me, and I turned to find Xavier dripping on the dock, wearing an expression of such sorrow and disbelief.

For the first time that night, he looked truly vulnerable under the vicious stares of the Zola family.

He chewed his lip a moment, eyes darting between each of us, then fixed his expression on me and spoke again.

“I’m not always a good man,” he said. “I know that. God , I know that. But I promise you with everything I am, Francesca. On Sofia, my mother’s memory, on everything I hold sacred on this earth. I would never hurt you or our child”—he gulped with a quick glance down at my still-flat belly—“ children that way. Not ever.”

He dropped to one knee, and every woman on that dock sucked in an audible breath.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Matthew muttered as he swatted at the water by his hips for lack of anything else to hit.

“He is not ,” Joni murmured.

“Hush,” Marie said. “He might be.”

“Oh my God, he wouldn’t,” Lea hummed under her breath.

“Holy crap, I hope not,” Kate agreed.

I couldn’t speak. He wasn’t doing this. Not here. He wouldn’t ask me that question now, would he?

He had to know better than that.

Didn’t he?

“Francesca,” Xavier whispered as he took both my hands.

“Y-yes?” I was shivering with nerves.

“I’m on my knees. Begging. Will you?—”

I gasped. Oh, God, it was really happening.

“Will you please …believe me?”

I closed my eyes as my entire body deflated. I couldn’t even look at my siblings. Didn’t even want to know one iota of what they were thinking when that question emerged instead of the other one that had clearly crossed all our minds.

What a difference a single word could make.

“Please say you will,” Xavier continued with a squeeze of my fingers. “I will do anything to make you believe. I swear it.”

Gently, I extricated one of my hands from his and pressed my fingertips to my mouth, unsure how to respond. What exactly was he asking me to say here? Yes? I do? What? Maybe this excused the kiss, a little.

But what about the rest of the summer?

“ Scusa. ”

“Matthew!”

We turned to find Nonna and Nina ambling down the dock together, though Nina looked like she was moving slowly out of respect for Nonna while her gray eyes flew wildly to Matthew’s sopping wet form.

My grandmother, on the other hand, was taking her sweet time, carrying her wineglass and a cigarette, though her dark eyes were no less sharp than they had been hours before. She wore a pretty beaded black dress befitting a grandmother of the groom, dainty gold earrings swinging from her earlobes, and a sash tied through her teased black hair that took her straight back to the nineteen-sixties. She was obviously having fun, but as she took us all in, her gaze was sharp as ever as it drifted between Matthew in the water and the row of Zola sisters standing like attendants in their dresses. Then to a dripping Xavier on one knee, one of my hands still clasped in his, while tears ran down my face.

“Huh,” was all she said. “Oh, my.”

“Oh, Matthew,” Nina said again in a voice that made my brother flush bright red.

And while I happened to know Matthew had a special talent for torturing himself with guilt, I had a feeling no one else made him feel as embarrassed as his name when Nina said it like that.

He held his hands out, though water still dripped loudly from his shirtsleeves. “I had to, duchess.”

At the nickname, both Xavier and I straightened. It didn’t mean anything. Nina was no more a duchess than I was.

But after the events of the summer, my heart ached with something akin to jealousy. Hearing it now, with that sweet tone of voice, I wondered for the first time if that love and kindness wasn’t what the prospective title had been missing all along.

Then, in her brisk way, Nonna clicked her tongue and started giving everyone directions.

“Matthew, your wife needs you,” she said to my brother in the Neapolitan accent that had grown considerably thicker on this trip. “Nina, take him back to change his clothes, okay? And Lea, the babies need you, too. Michael, he wants help with the children.”

Shooting twin arrows of disgust toward Xavier, Matthew and Lea both nodded, then obediently left to tend to matters more important than their little sister’s melodrama.

As it should be.

“Katie, Joni, Marie, go help with the party. Not enough people are dancing yet. Ask your cousins.”

“But, Nonna, I can’t dance—” Joni started to argue as she held out a crutch.

“ Go ,” Nonna ordered, gesturing with her wineglass.

Not a peep was uttered as the three of them left, Kate with a squeeze to my elbow.

Nonna approached Xavier and me, taking in our compromising positions. She sighed and shook her head, muttering, “ Mammàma ” under her breath. “You. Get up. You’re gonna ruin your pants.”

Eyes wary, Xavier did as he was told, though he didn’t let go of my hand.

Nonna muttered something more to herself in Italian that I didn’t understand, but I would have bet translated roughly to “these idiot kids.”

“Frankie, you take him back to the house,” she ordered. “Dry his clothes. I will watch Sofia for the night.”

“Oh, Nonna, that’s all right. I can come back?—”

“No,” she said brusquely. “You have a family, Francesca.” Her penetrating gaze dropped to my stomach, then back to my face, revealing she had noticed a lot more than I realized. “You take care of them now.”