The Bride's Awakening Read Free

travelling—drumming up more business for the winery—and hardly ever came home. He’d been more or less absent—gone—for nearly fifteen years. Anamaria could only imagine that a man like Vittorio needed more entertainment than the rolling hills and ancient vineyards Veneto could provide.
    She pictured him now, remembering how he’d looked at her from those gleaming onyx eyes. He was a beautiful man, but in a hard way. Those high, sharp cheekbones seemed almost cruel—at least they did when his eyes were narrowed in such an assessing manner, his mouth pursed in telling disdain before he’d offered her such a false smile.
    Yet, even as she considered how she’d seen him only a few moments ago, another memory rose up and swamped her senses. The only real memory she had of Vittorio Cazlevara. The memory that had made her smile when she’d seen him again—smile with hope and even, pathetically, with joy.
    It had been at her mother’s funeral. November, cold and wet. She’d been thirteen and hadn’t grown into her body yet, all awkward angles, her limbs seeming to fly out of their own accord. She’d stood by the graveside, her hand smeared with theclump of muddy dirt she’d been asked to throw on her mother’s casket. It had landed with a horrible thunk and she’d let out an inadvertent cry, the sound of a wounded animal.
    As the mourners had filed out, Vittorio—he must have been around twenty years old then—had paused near her. It was only later that she’d wondered why he’d come at all; their families were acquaintances, nothing more. She hadn’t registered the tall, dark presence for a moment; she’d been too shrouded in her own pall of grief. Then she’d looked up and those eyes—those beautiful eyes, dark with compassion—had met hers. He’d touched her cheek with his thumb, where a tear still sparkled.
    ‘It’s all right to be sad, rondinella ,’—swallow—he’d said, softly enough so only she could hear. ‘It’s all right to cry.’ She’d stared at him dumbly, his thumb still warm against her chilled cheek. He smiled, so sadly. ‘But you know where your mother is now, don’t you?’ She shook her head, not wanting to hear some paltry platitude about how Emily Viale was happy now, watching her daughter from some celestial cloud. He took his thumb, damp with her tears, and touched it to his breastbone. ‘In here. Tua cuore. ’ Your heart. And with another sad, fleeting smile, he had moved away.
    She’d known then that he’d lost his father a few years before. Even so, she hadn’t realized another person could understand her so perfectly. How someone—a stranger—had been able to say exactly the right thing. How later, when she wept scalding tears into her pillow, wept until she felt she’d be sick from it and her mind and body and heart all felt wrung, wasted, she’d remember his words.
    It’s all right to cry.
    He’d helped her to grieve. And when the pain had, if not stopped, then at least lessened, she’d wanted to tell him that. She’d wanted to say thank you, and she supposed she’d wanted to see if he still understood her. Understood her more, even, thanbefore. And she’d wanted to discover if she, perhaps, understood him too. A ridiculous notion, when that passing comment was the only conversation they’d ever really shared.
    Over the years, she’d almost—almost—forgotten about Vittorio’s words at her mother’s graveside. Yet in that second when she’d seen him again, every frail, childish hope had leapt to life within her and she’d thought—she’d actually believed —that he remembered. That it had meant something.
    Her pathetic foolishness, even if only for a second, annoyed her. She wasn’t romantic or a dreamer; any dreams of romance—love, even—she’d once entertained as a child had died out years ago, doused by the hard reality of boarding school, when she’d been a picked-on pigeon among swans. Ana’s mouth twisted cynically. Perhaps