Sal Gabrini 4: I'll Take You There (The Gabrini Men Series Book 7) by Mallory Monroe Page B

surprised too.   Any fool
would have said yes.   For peace sake
alone!
    But
Sal wasn’t going to lie to them.   “No,” he
said.   “If I was good to her, I would
have never asked her to marry me.   Not
asking her to be my wife, that’s how I would have been good to her.   Asking her to latch herself to me in what
they call holy matrimony is good for me.   It’s great for me.   But it’s the
worse move she can make, to tell you the truth.”
    “The
worse move?” Cassie was floored.    “I
don’t understand.”
    Sal
had to pause, to fight back his emotions.   Gemma stared at him.   Then he
spoke again.   “I’m not a loveable man,
Miss Jones,” he said.   “I wish I was, but
I’m not.   I’m crude, and rude, and I have
baggage that would make Samsonite blush.   I wish to God I would have never walked into the PaLargio and saw your
daughter.   Then I wouldn’t have fallen in
love.   Then I wouldn’t be the selfish man
I am today and asked her to marry me.”
    Gemma
had tears in her eyes.   So did Cassie.
    “I’m
not here for your blessing,” Sal went on.   “That’s too much to ask. I know it is.   Nobody blesses a man like me.   But
I am here to make it clear: if Gemma will have to lose the two of you in order
to have me, then she won’t have me.   I
won’t allow it.   I’ll live alone in a
cave before I become the reason for her separation from her parents.   I can’t let that happen.   I won’t let it happen.”
    Rodney
sat speechless.   He stared at Sal as if
he’d never seen a man quite like him before.   Tears dropped from his wife’s eyes, but he wasn’t emotional that
way.   He was riveted.   “Are you telling me,” he finally spoke, “that
if we refuse to go along with this marriage, you’ll leave Gemma?”
    Gemma
looked at Sal.   Sal swallowed hard.   “No,” he said.   “I’m not telling you that. You don’t have to
go along with the marriage.   I’ll never
give you or any other man that kind of power over my life.   But I am telling you that if you can’t
continue to love and be there for your daughter because she’s marrying me, then
yes, there won’t be a marriage.   Your
love and respect means everything to Gemma.   And she can’t lose that.”
    Rodney
nodded his head.   “I cannot, in good
conscious, go along with this marriage.   I can’t do it.   You are too much
of a risk for my daughter.”
    Sal’s
heart dropped.
    “But
I can promise you this,” Rodney went on.   “I will always love and cherish her. No man will ever come between my
love for her.   On that I give my word. If
that is your concern, you should perish the thought.”
    And
Cassie broke down in tears, stood up, and hurried to her daughter.   Gemma stood up and she and her mother, both
in tears, embraced heartily.  
    It
wasn’t what Sal had hoped for. He knew Cassie was crying tears of pain, not
joy, and she was crying those tears because her daughter was marrying a man
like him.   But it still felt
victorious.   He still had Gemma, and she
still had her folks.   Her folks wasn’t
having him, he thought sadly, but that was just the price he had to pay.  
    And
as the doorbell rang, he smiled anyway.   At least he had Gemma.   And Gemma,
above any human being alive, was pleased to have him.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
    CHAPTER SEVEN

 
    “Expecting
anyone, Gem?” Rodney glanced back at his daughter as he headed for the front
door.   The doorbell rang again.
    “I
told Marv and the gang I was coming to town,” Gemma said, “but they didn’t say
anything about coming over.”   She and her
mother were no longer embracing, and she was wiping her tears away.
    But
her mother became horrified.   “Oh, my
makeup,” she said, hurrying for the back of the house.   “I must look horrible.”
    Sal
smiled.   The beautiful thing about Gemma,
he thought, was that she rarely wore makeup.   She didn’t need it.   Her mother,
who