Shadows Of The Past. Frances Housden
“Ha! Try that and you’ll be here for a month, not just overnight. My mother would love it. She’d nurse you to within an inch of your life.”
She lifted a hand to her mouth as her breath caught between a giggle and words. “Believe me, I’ve been there. I never want to be sick around Mamma again. So be warned, don’t even sneeze in her direction, or she’ll be looking out for an old remedy passed down from her great-great-grandmother.”
Maria’s laughter was unexpected and infectious; he joined in. It was a relief to do something normal, ordinary. Then he remembered. “But what is she going to think when she eventually meets Randy?”
“There is no Randy—in that way.” She shook her head and released a sigh before carrying on. “My mother was worried about me being left on the shelf. She and her sisters married very young, but she forgets things change, a woman doesn’t have to get married these days, not even to have a family.”
She looked up at him from under the veil of her lashes. Her lips quirked and he had the darnedest urge to reach out and touch the mole beside it that seemed to say, “Kiss me quick.”
“My mother was making noises—loud noises—about me going to Italy to meet some nice Italian boys.” She shuddered. “And though I know she would never force me, the thought of Mamma’s relatives lining them up for inspection was enough to send me running for the hills or composing an excuse. Sooo, to keep Mamma happy, I made someone up. It just so happens that his description fits you to a tee.”
He’d thought this convoluted situation bizarre, but it was getting worse. “I gather that would make me your ideal man?”
“On the outside, but it takes more than good looks to make an ideal man.”
It wasn’t an insult as such, but his reaction must have shown, because she laughed, and it was enough for now to see Maria’s eyes shed the dull flat look they’d held since her parents had made the announcement downstairs. “Yeah, he’d need to be able to commit, and my background lets me down there, but you still haven’t explained about Randy.”
“I just needed to see him, and your receptionist let slip where you were holding the party, so I visited the restaurant, looking for him.”
An oblique answer that left him no wiser than when he’d arrived at Falcon’s Rise and been catapulted out of his comfort zone. He grasped her shoulders as the truth dawned, and he gasped, “You mean you gate-crashed? The party?”
“If you remembered, I wanted to leave and you insisted I stay, but I never said Randy was my date. Besides, how could Mamma mistake you for him, you’re nothing alike.”
“I thought she’d forgotten his name or something. Grandma Glamuzina used to do it all the time with my brothers and me. Whoever she was looking at took the—” He broke off as one of the kids peeped in the door. “The blame.”
“Supper time,” the boy gurgled, as if it was a great joke that Maria had a man in her room that seemed about to kiss her. He was still laughing as he ran down the hall, but the noise he made bouncing down the stairs muffled everything else.
“Which one was that?” He’d be damned if he could tell them apart no matter that Maria had told him all their names.
“Ricky. He’ll have gone to share with the others. At that age they’re easily pleased.”
“C’mon,” he said, making good on Ricky’s speculation by planting a fast hard kiss on her lips. “The rest of the explanations can wait until after supper, I’m starving.”
Maria looked dazed for a second, but as he grasped her hand to pull her with him, she recovered her wits. “Well, I sincerely hope you like Italian food or you’ll stay hungry.”
He turned, trapping her against him in the doorway as he ducked his head, releasing a ravenous growl as he nibbled on her earlobe. “I thought you’d have guessed by now, I’m hungry for anything Italian.” And to prove it he kissed her again, drowning in the sweetness of her, lifting his head only when the sound of childish laughter reminded him they had an audience. One that stifled his impulse to carry Maria to the bed and finish what they’d started in the doorway.
As always, his nearness had a startling effect on Maria’s senses. She leaned against the doorjamb, her heart throbbing to a rhythm she was only beginning to learn. Fist clenched against her breasts as if that would soothe it, she called, “Shoo!” to the children hogging the top of the stairs, then turned back to Franc.
Without conscious thought, she brought her free hand up to lie on his chest, his large body seeming to surround hers again. Her fingers rasped against the knit of his shirt. Every breath he took, stilled and held, as she felt his heat seep into her palm, through his black polo shirt.
One big palm pressed her closer, the other cupped her cheek as her gaze mingled with his. It felt so right, the closeness, the touching, breathing the same air. The connection she felt with Franc burned fiercely, making her mouth turn dry. Moistening her lips with her tongue was no help.
“Don’t worry about me, hon. I won’t do anything to spoil your Christmas.” She felt rather than heard his reassurances. His voice scraped across her nerve endings like dry pumice stone. “I don’t enjoy seeing people hurt.”
“This will be our last Christmas in this house. We were all brought up here. There’s a tree in the garden where we all carved our initials one summer.”
He pulled her back into the doorway. “You’ll have to show me sometime.”
He gently caressed her cheek with his thumb. She wanted to close her eyes and wallow in the feelings his touch wrought in her body. But the newness of them, the brand-new sensation of letting another human being, and male at that, closer than ever before, made her want to see his reactions, as well.
Her eyebrows flicked up at the outside edge, dark and softly gleaming, like a tui’s wings as it took flight. And the way she trembled, Franc wondered if the same thing, flight, was on her mind.
“I wish there was some way I could imagine what it was like, all this closeness, but my family—we couldn’t wait to leave home.” He hadn’t said it deliberately to play on her emotions. Hadn’t touched her to set her lips quivering. The lipstick hadn’t been invented that could imitate the soft rose pink of Maria’s mouth. And nothing under the sun could stop him from taking her face in both hands and running his thumb over the silklike surface, reviving the memory of its texture under his mouth.
That first kiss? Had it only been last night?
“You must have missed a lot, growing up. I wish you’d known us then. We’d have dragged you into the fold.”
He thought about all the warmth he’d noticed downstairs and shook his head, knowing it would never have happened. Was never going to happen.
“You’re a much nicer person than I am, hon,” he murmured against the swell of her mouth. Like the champagne they’d just drunk, her taste flowered on his lips, tingled on his tongue as she opened to its pressure, and lingered on his palate. There was no doubt about it. Maria was a gold-medal winner and far too good for a man like himself.
Franc’s mood darkened on a twist of pain. For himself, for Maria. Especially Maria. She deserved better than him, but now he’d had a taste of her, he’d never let her go—not before he’d drunk his fill.
He sealed his compliment with another kiss. Her head bumped against his shoulder as he lifted his mouth from hers. His breathing grated past his larynx as he sought to control the hard ache in his groin. He’d been in this condition almost permanently since he’d met her. One touch and his hormones roared in agony, without a sign of relief in sight.
“We can’t keep letting our emotions take control.”
Typical Maria, always making him smile. “Hon, if I didn’t have mine under control, you’d be on that bed right now. The only thing stopping me is knowing it’s your parents’ house and any moment some