Too Devious to Tame (The Giovanni Clan) (23 page)

Giorgio took a deep breath.

"You know my father was killed in a car accident?" He glanced at her briefly, and she nodded.  She did know this. Giada had told her some of this back in Italy.

"As his heir I took over the running the vineyard. We'd been estranged for some time, and I had no idea how bad a state the vineyard was in. It came with Jean-Claude as a silent business partner. Only he wasn't so silent. He wanted me out of the picture, so he could use the vineyard for his own nefarious ends. I could not allow that. My great-great-great-grandfather planted the first vine on that soil, and a Giovanni has been at the helm ever since. I was not going to sit idly by and have him and Beauchamp take it away from us. We had a
disagreement.
When Don Luigi found out about it, he did some digging. Turns out my father's accident wasn't an accident at all." Jemima gasped, and Giorgio smiled grimly. "While my father's demise like that did not come as a huge surprise—I certainly didn't mourn him unduly—Jean-Claude could not be allowed to take over. We turned up enough dirt on him to force him to lie low for a while. The Don gave me the money to buy him out. He wanted to just kill him off, but I couldn't bring myself to take him up on the offer. If I had, all this would never have happened."

Giorgio ran his hand through his hair again in a way that spoke volumes of his inner turmoil, belying the deadly calm cadence of his voice. Jemima had no doubt that he would have no qualms pulling the trigger himself now, were he to get the opportunity, but back then he had been a different man. The years since had made him harder, and a part of her ached for him. They had both changed so much, and not necessarily for the better.

"You're not a killer, Giorgio. No one will blame you for not being able to have him killed."

Their eyes connected, and Giorgio sighed, and shrugged his shoulders. "If I had been, you wouldn't have suffered in the way that you did."

"We also would never have met, and we wouldn't have our baby." Her voice wobbled again at the thought of the little life they had created, and they both reached for her tummy together. Their fingers met, and a tingle of awareness shot up Jemima's arm at the innocent contact. "Please continue, what happened after we met."

"I thought myself safe. Jean-Claude was out of the way, and the vineyard was going from strength to strength. Then I met that sassy blonde in the piazza, and I fell head over heels." He smiled at her, and this time Jemima's answering smile felt genuine.

"She fell for you, too, you know. I meant what I said. Jean-Claude had engineered our meeting. I owed him a lot of money, and he said you'd stolen from him."

Giorgio's harsh laughter echoed around the room, and Jemima flinched.

"Let me guess, he wanted the recipes?" At her tentative nod he swore. A long furious string of Italian swear words. Some of them she had never heard before.

"I couldn't go through with it, Giorgio. I knew he would get to me somehow, but I just pushed it to the back of my mind. I was so happy, and I thought we could make it work, but then you insisted we got married, and it all got so serious, so fast, and … and I guess I panicked."

She grabbed hold of his arm in her agitation, and Giorgio shifted until she was back in his arms.

"I guessed as much. Now, knowing your history, I realize that I scared you off. I was furious when you flirted with Beauchamp. He was the fucking competition, and I knew he was still in league with Jean-Claude, or I at least knew he was up to no good. I should have trusted my instincts, but instead I acted like an immature school boy, and stormed out of there in a jealous fit." He dropped a kiss in her hair, and his voice deepened to an almost growl that send her heart aflutter.  "I left you in the lion's den. I am so sorry,
cara
mia. And then the next day, and the next, when you kept avoiding me…"

"I was too ashamed of what I'd done. When I woke up in his bed that morning I had no recollection of how I got there. I just knew I had to get away, and I was terrified you would find out, and then … then he phoned me. He said there were pictures and he would go to the press. You would be the laughing stock of Tuscany, and I knew you would never forgive me. He offered me a trade. Your recipes for the pictures."

She choked back a sob, and Giorgio's arms around her tightened.  She leaned into his comforting warmth and found the strength to continue.

"I couldn't do it. When you found me I was putting them back. But you wouldn't believe me, and you were so angry."

She felt him nod, and he murmured something into her hair.

"Like I said I was a jealous fool. Beauchamp had couriered the pictures to me that morning. Guess he was fed up waiting for you to deliver. I told him to stuff it. There was no fucking way he would ever get my family's recipes, and then I found you with your hands in my safe. Jesus, Jemima, I almost hit you I was so angry. All I could see was your betrayal, and then the next morning when you'd left, I was too fucking proud to go after you. I just saw it as proof of your guilt."

His voice broke, and he buried his face in her hair. His grip on her grew painful, but Jemima welcomed the pain. It was a welcome reminder that she was alive, that he cared, that maybe, just maybe this would all work out okay after all.

"I'm sorry,
cara mia,
I should have believed you. I know you had no choice in what happened that night. He drugged you. And no, I didn't know that at the time. Don Luigi sent me a message. After you were shot, Alfonso took the scum back to Italy. Once the Don's men got hold of him, he sang like a fucking canary."

Jemima couldn't hide her shudder of disgust, and she sank deeper into Giorgio's comforting presence.

"Why did he shoot us? I mean why now? It doesn't make sense."

"Beauchamp, in a word. I told you, I feared he was up to no good. He was up to his ears in debt, and I was in the way. He knew that with my connections with the Don, I would figure it out sooner or later. Jean-Claude was his business partner, and I guess he took the opportunity to settle a personal score. It's a fucking mess, and the Don is cleaning up big time. You may not want to watch the news for a few weeks, and we're staying out of Italy until it's all settled."

A heavy silence fell between them as Jemima absorbed this news. It seemed they had come full circle.

"Is it really over this time, Giorgio? Are we free?"

"
Si, cara mia.
It really is. There are no more skeletons in my cupboard. What you see is what you get, and I'm fully aware that you may never want to see me again, now you know the truth. I should have told you all this ten years ago." His voice held a wealth of pain, and Jemima's heart clenched, as the last of her own doubts disappeared. They had been given a second chance, and she would grab it with both hands, if he still wanted her.

"Yes, you should have done, but we were both so caught up in thinking the worst. I should have trusted you enough to take care of my
problems.
Instead
I
ruined it all by letting my insecurities get in the way of what we had. I was a fool."

"No, I was the fool."

"No, I was."

"No, I was,
cara mia."

"Oh,
Dio santo."
Stella's exasperated voice interrupted their argument. "Just kiss the girl already and make up, or so help me, I will bash your foolish heads together."

Stella stood in the doorway, hands on hips, Elise and Kitty behind her wearing identical amused grins.

"Do you mind,
Zia
Stella? I'm trying to tell my wife that I love her."

Giorgio's deep rumble settled  inside Jemima's heart, and happiness spread through her veins like wildfire.

"Since when do declarations of love involve arguing?" She bustled farther into the room, and cuffed a startled Giorgio around the head, as though he was a little boy who she'd caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

"As you seem incapable I shall do it for you." Stella focused her attention on her, and Jemima couldn't hide her amusement at the mischievous twinkle in the older woman's eyes.

"While I quite agree that my nephew is a fool, and I hereby give you permission to make him pay for his foolishness for the rest of his natural days, he's also head over in heels with love you. Now it would help all of us greatly if you could just tell him that you love him, too, so we can get on with more important things, like choosing a name for my great-nephew." She pointed at Jemima's stomach and smiled. "And of course, then there is the matter of choosing an outfit for you to go home in. Hospital nighties are so not chic, dear girl."

Giorgio groaned, and Jemima giggled. He looked at her and rolled his eyes, but it was the uncertain expression on his face and the tight set of his shoulders that gave him away. There were love and heat and hope in his eyes, and Jemima's heart soared. She lost herself in his steely gaze until the rest of the room faded away, and it was just the two of them looking into each other's souls, and finding the missing part to complete them.

" Ti amo così tanto, cara mia."

Jemima blinked her tears of happiness away, and Giorgio smiled at her whispered reply.

"I love you, too."

The room erupted in cheers when Giorgio kissed her, and he groaned his frustration into her neck.

"I may just have to kill my family though."

Pain radiated up his arm, and Giorgio was convinced his fingers were broken in several places. He swallowed a curse and breathed a sigh of relief when the contraction finished and Jemima released her vise-like grip on his abused hand. He flexed his fingers and doubled over as pain exploded in his balls instead.

"I'm going to fucking kill you, if you so much as come near me ever again." Jemima screamed at him, her complexion mottled and red, and she yanked the washcloth Elise tried to put on her forehead away with such force that it flew across the room and hit the opposite wall with a loud squelch. It stayed there for a few seconds, and then slowly slid to the floor, leaving  a wet trail in its wake.

Gasping for breath Giorgio managed to dodge another punch to his groin by mere seconds. The midwife just laughed, and Jemima growled and grunted as another contraction hit. She searched for his hand, and her whole body tensed with the force of the pain turning her tummy rigid.

"Breathe,
cara mia,
breathe. Remember our classes."

"I am fucking
breathing,
you moron. What the hell do you think I'm doing? Going for a fucking stroll by the sea side? Oh no … not again. Fuck, it hurts."

Another contraction hit, before the last one had even fully abated, and Jemima screamed her distress. Giorgio, too, wanted to howl and throw something, anything to stop the pain she was in. This couldn't be normal?  This had been going on for hours. How much more could she take? Yet, Elise and the midwife simply smiled at him.

"Nooooo, I can't do this. I'm going home. I can't … I don't want to … I can't." Words merged into each other, so that she didn't make any sense at all. Sweat ran down Giorgio's back, and just when he thought he was going to hit the fool of a midwife, the screams stopped. Jemima went quiet and then started grunting. Deep, animalistic sounds he never would have thought any human being capable of making, let alone his wife. Jemima's temper had progressively gotten worse the further her pregnancy had progressed, but this demented sound, no, that couldn't be normal.

"You want to get down to the business end, daddy. It won't be long now."

"What? But, you mean…?" Giorgio's tongue tripped up over the words as the significance of what was about to happen hit him.

"That's a good girl … beautiful … keep it coming, keep it coming. That's my girl. You're doing so well. I can see the head. One more big push with the next pain and we'll have the head out I reckon. Come and see, dad."

Sure enough, as Jemima bore down the baby's black-haired head appeared between her legs. It slipped back again until the next contraction when with one almighty push from Jemima, the head left her body.

The noises faded away, and Giorgio could only stare in wonder at the miracle of birth playing itself out in front of his eyes. They didn't know the sex of the baby. Jemima had refused to find out, and they'd good-naturedly argued about the sex all throughout her pregnancy. He kept referring to his son, whereas Jemima was adamant the baby was a girl.

"Get ready now, daddy, if you want to catch your baby."

The midwife's words galvanized him into action. It had been Jemima's specific wish that their baby would be caught by him.

With one last effort by an exhausted Jemima, their child slithered out of her body and into his waiting hands. The little scrap of humanity wailed its displeasure with the world. Eyes wide open, the little purple face all scrunched up their baby looked straight up at him, and for the second time in his life Giorgio fell head over heels in love with a female.

The End

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