The compulsion to reach out her hand and stroke her fingers over his high cheekbones, to feel the texture of his skin on hers, to run her fingers through his hair...it all hit her so fast that her hand was inches from his face before she realised what she was about to do and stopped herself.
Her heart thumped wildly and for a moment she couldn’t breathe.
Putting her hand to her chest, she backed away, afraid to be this close to him.
Afraid of what it did to her.
* * *
Massimo’s eyes opened with a start.
He blinked rapidly, disorientated.
His laptop was still open but had put itself into sleep mode.
Had he fallen asleep?
Getting to his feet to stretch his legs, he felt a sudden chill on his thighs and gazed down in astonishment at the blanket that had fallen to the floor.
Where had that come from?
He stared over at Livia. Her partition was still up but, standing, he could see her clearly. She’d reclined her chair and was watching something on the television with her headphones in. A blanket covered her whole body up to her chin.
‘Did you put a blanket on me?’ He didn’t mean to sound so accusatory but the thought of her doing that...
Her face turned towards him and she pulled the headphones off. ‘Did you say something?’
Before he could answer one of the cabin crew entered. ‘We will be landing in twenty minutes.’
The moment they were alone again, Massimo turned back to Livia. ‘How long was I asleep?’
She shrugged.
He swore under his breath. He hadn’t finished his analysis. Damn it, he’d promised the project manager that he would have it in his inbox before he reached the office that morning.
He bit back the demand he wanted to throw at her as to why she hadn’t woken him and sat back down.
Livia had put the blanket on him. He knew that with a deep certainty and he didn’t know if it was that simple gesture or that he was now behind on where he needed to be workwise that made his guts feel as if acid had been poured in them.
He felt close to snapping. Virulent emotions were coursing through him and his wife, the cause of all his angst, was reclined in her seat as nonchalant as could be.
But knowing her as well as he did, he knew her nonchalance was a sham. Livia did not do nonchalance.
Why had she put a blanket on him?
His eyes were better able to focus after his short sleep but, with their landing imminent, he put his laptop away and folded his desk up and secured it, all the while hating that he was fully aware of Livia sorting her own seating area out, avoiding looking at him as much as he avoided looking at her.
Los Angeles couldn’t come soon enough.
Not another word was exchanged until the plane had landed safely.
Needing to escape the strange febrile atmosphere that seemed to have infected his flight crew as much as them, Massimo grabbed his laptop and got to his feet but the moment he left his seat, Livia was there facing him in the aisle, holding her bag tightly, clearly ready to make her own escape.
He stepped to one side to let her pass but she stepped to the same side too.
Their eyes met. Their gaze held, only momentarily, but long enough for him to see the pain she had become a master at hiding from him.
A sharp compression lanced his chest, as if his heart had become a rose in full bloom, its thorns spearing into him.
And then she blinked, cast her gaze to the floor, murmured, ‘Excuse me,’ and brushed past him.
Massimo swallowed away the lump in his throat and left his plane by the other exit.
CHAPTER THREE
TWO HOURS AFTER landing in Los Angeles, they were cleared to take off for the second leg of their mammoth journey to Fiji.
Livia had returned to the plane before Massimo. She guessed he’d gone to the private executive lounge in the airport to work. She’d taken herself for a walk, keeping her phone in her hand for the alert that the plane had refuelled and she could get back on, and tried to get hold of Gianluca, her youngest sibling. He hadn’t answered and hadn’t called her back either. She’d had no wish to go sightseeing or do any of the things most visitors with a short layover at LAX would do. Just breathing the air brought back the awful feelings that had lived in her the last dying months of their marriage.
She hated Los Angeles. She hated California. She’d loathed living there. For a place known as the Golden State, her life there had been devoid of sunshine.
At first, she’d enjoyed the novelty of it all. Compared to Naples and Rome it was huge. Everything was so much bigger. Even the sky and the sun that shone in it appeared greater and brighter. But then loneliness had seeped its way in. She had no friends there and no means to make them. Unlike Massimo, who spoke fluent English, her own English was barely passable. The glass home they’d shared was forty kilometres from downtown LA. An intensely private man, Massimo had deliberately chosen a home far from prying eyes. There were no neighbours. The household staff spoke only English and Spanish.
She’d become sick with longing for home.
Massimo hadn’t understood. He hadn’t even tried.
But there hadn’t been any sunshine since she’d left him and returned to her home in Italy either.
It was strange to experience taking off in her second sunset of the day. She should have slept during the first leg of the journey but sleep had been the last thing on her mind, the last thing she’d been capable of. The sun putting itself to sleep now in LA would soon be awakening in Rome.
She yawned and cast her eyes in Massimo’s direction. His partition was raised again but she could still hear the tapping of his fingers on the keypad. So much for talking. Silence for them truly had become golden.
A member of the cabin crew brought her pillows and a duvet and turned her seat into a bed while Livia used the bathroom to change into pyjamas, remove her make-up and brush her teeth.
She thought of the plane’s bedroom and its comfortable king-sized bed. An ache formed in the pit of her stomach to remember the glorious hours they had spent sharing it. Massimo would never begrudge her sleeping in it now but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t sleep in a bed they had shared knowing that when she woke the pillow beside her would be unused. That had been hard enough to deal with when they’d been together.
Massimo was on his feet stretching his aching back when Livia returned to the cabin clutching her washbag. It was the same washbag she’d used when they’d been married and his heart tugged to see it.
She looked younger with her face free from make-up and plain cream pyjamas on. More vulnerable too.
The threads tugging at his heart tightened.
‘I’m going to have a nightcap. Do you want one?’
Surprise lit her dark brown eyes before they fixed on his own freshly made-up bed. ‘You’re finished?’
He nodded. ‘My apologies for it taking so long. I didn’t factor in falling asleep.’
Her plump lips curved into the tiniest of smiles. ‘I would have woken you but you looked exhausted.’
She looked exhausted. Her seat had been made up into a bed for her too but, however comfortable it was, it was not the same as sleeping in a proper bed. ‘Why don’t you sleep in our bed?’
Now the tiniest of winces flashed over her face. ‘I’ll be fine here, thank you. You should use it—you only napped for a couple of hours.’
The only time he’d been in the jet’s bedroom since she’d left him was to use the en-suite shower. Sleeping in the bed he’d shared with her...the thought alone had been enough to make his guts twist tightly.
To see the same reluctance reflected in her eyes twisted them even harder.
He removed a bottle of his favourite bourbon and two glasses from the bar as the stewardess came into the cab
in with a bucket of ice. Massimo took it from her and arched an eyebrow in question at Livia.
She hesitated for a moment before nodding.
As the stewardess dimmed the lights and left the cabin, he poured them both a measure and handed a glass to Livia.
She took it with a murmured thanks, avoiding direct eye contact, carefully avoiding his touch. He could smell the mintiness of her toothpaste and caught a whiff of the delicately scented cream she used to remove her make-up and the moisturiser she finished her night-time routine with. The two combined into a scent that had always delighted his senses far more than her perfume, which in itself was beautiful. The perfume she sprayed herself with by day could be enjoyed by anyone who got close enough. Her night-time scent had always been for him alone.
Had any other man been lucky enough to smell it since they’d parted?
She sat on her bed and took a small sip of her bourbon. As she moved he couldn’t help but notice the light sway of her naked breasts beneath the silk pyjama top.
Her nightwear was functional and obviously selected to cover every inch but the curves that had driven him to such madness were clearly delineated beneath the fabric and it took all his willpower to keep his gaze fixed on her face.
But her face had driven him to madness as much as the body had. With Livia it had always been the whole package. Everything about her. Madness.
After a few moments of stilted silence she said, ‘Are you going to get some sleep too?’
Massimo knew what Livia was thinking: that having his own seat made into a bed was no indication that he actually intended to get any rest.
He shrugged and took a large sip of his bourbon, willing the smooth burn it made in his throat to flow through his veins and burn away the awareness searing his loins.
‘If I can.’ He raised his glass. ‘This should help.’ Enough of it would allow him a few precious hours of oblivion to the firecracker who would be sleeping at such close quarters to him.
‘How long do we have until we reach Fiji?’
He checked his watch. ‘Nine hours until we land at Nadi.’
‘We get another flight from there?’ Livia already knew the answer to this but the dimming of the lights seemed to have shrunk the generously proportioned cabin and given it an air of dangerous intimacy.
What was it about darkness that could change an atmosphere so acutely? Livia had grown up scared of the dark. The Secondigliano was a dangerous place in daylight. At night, all the monsters came out.
The dangers now were as different as night and day compared to her childhood and adolescence but she felt them as keenly. With Massimo’s face in shadows his handsome features took on a devilish quality that set her stomach loose with butterflies and her skin vibrating with awareness.
‘I’ve chartered a Cessna to fly us to Seibua Island.’
‘You managed to get the name changed?’ She couldn’t remember the original name of the island Massimo’s grandfather had been born and raised on.
‘The paperwork’s still being sorted but I’ve been reliably informed it’s been accepted.’ He finished his drink and poured himself another, raising the bottle at her in an unspoken question.
She shook her head. Marriage to Massimo had given her a real appreciation of bourbon but too much alcohol had a tendency to loosen her tongue, which she was the first to admit didn’t need loosening. It also loosened her inhibitions. She’d never had any inhibitions around Massimo before but to get through the weekend in one piece she needed them as greatly as she needed to keep her guard up around him. All of this would be easier to cope with if her heart didn’t ache so much just to share the same air as him again.
‘Are you going to buy a Cessna of your own to keep there?’
He grimaced and finally perched himself on his bed. The overhead light shone down on him. ‘The yacht’s already moored there and can be used as transport. Whether I buy a plane too depends on how often the family use the island.’ The resort created on the island would be available for the entire extended family to use as and when they wished, free of charge. The only stipulation would be that they treated it with respect.
‘Knowing your sister it will be often.’ It was doubtful Massimo would ever use it. His idea of a holiday was to take a Sunday off work.
She caught the whisper of a smile on his firm mouth but it disappeared behind his glass as he took another drink.
‘When did your family get there?’
‘They arrived three days ago.’
‘Have you been to the island yet?’
‘I haven’t had the time.’
She chewed her bottom lip rather than give voice to her thoughts that this was typical Massimo, never having the time for anything that didn’t revolve around work. He’d jumped through hoops and paid an astronomical sum for the island but those hoops had been jumped through by his lawyers and accountants. He’d spent a further fortune having the complex for the family built but, again, he’d had little involvement past hiring the architects and transferring the cash. Livia had signed off on the initial blueprint for the complex in the weeks before she’d left him. She had no idea if he’d even bothered to do more than cast an eye over it.
There was no point in her saying anything. It would only be a rehash of a conversation they’d had many times before, a conversation that would only lead to an argument. Or, as usually happened, it would lead to her getting increasingly het up at his refusal to engage in the conversation and losing her temper, and Massimo walking away in contempt leaving her shouting at the walls.
In any case, Massimo’s sidelining of anything that wasn’t work-related was none of her business. Not any more. If he wanted to blow his own money on projects and assets he had no intention of enjoying then that was up to him. If he wanted to keep his family on the fringes of his life for eternity then that was up to him too. He wasn’t an adolescent like her youngest brother, Gianluca, who’d been born seven months after their father’s death.
There was hope for Gianluca. Unlike their other siblings, who had succumbed to life in the Secondigliano, Gianluca’s humanity was still there. The question was whether he had the courage to take Livia’s hand and join her far from the violence and drugs that were such an intrinsic part of the Espositos’ lives before it was too late and he was sucked into a life of crime from which his only escape would be in a coffin.
It was too late for Pasquale, who like their dead father had risen high in Don Fortunato’s ranks, and too late for Denise who had married one of Pasquale’s equally ambitious friends and was currently pregnant with their second child. Livia’s siblings and her mother all knew Livia’s door was always open for them. Gianluca was the only one she allowed herself to hope for. He could still leave without repercussions just as she had but time was running out. He’d recently turned eighteen. Should Don Fortunato decide Gianluca was worthy of joining his guard he would strike soon.
The man Livia had married, a man who abhorred violence and anything to do with illegal drugs, had made his choice when he was only a few years older than Gianluca. He’d chosen to leave Italy and leave his family, just as his own grandfather had done seventy years before him. The difference was his grandfather had left Fiji for the love of his life, an Englishwoman, and set up home with her in England. When their daughter Sera had married an Italian, Jimmy and Elizabeth had moved again, this time to Italy so they could stay close to their daughter. For them, family came first above all else. They were as close as close could be. All except for Massimo himself.
He didn’t want to change. He saw nothing wrong with how he lived his life, nothing wrong with keeping a physical and emotional distance from the people who loved him. That was the choice he’d made and Livia had to respect that. She couldn’t change it. She’d tried. When the realisation hit that his emotional distance from his family extended to her too, along with the recognition that this to
o would never change, she’d had no choice but to leave him.
She hadn’t clawed her way out of the Secondigliano to spend her life as a trophy in a glass cabinet masquerading as a home.
While she had spent the past four months trying desperately to fix herself back together, for Massimo there had been nothing to fix. He’d got on with his life as if she’d never been a part of it.
Finishing her drink, she put the empty glass in the holder beside her bed and got under the covers. ‘I’m going to get some sleep. Goodnight.’ Then she turned her back on him and closed her eyes.
* * *
Massimo lay under his bed sheets, eyes wide open. He’d drunk enough bourbon to tranquillise an elephant but his mind was too busy. Except now it wasn’t the project he’d spent over a year working on that stopped his mind switching off.
Turning his head, eyes adjusted to the dark, he watched the rhythmic rise and fall of Livia’s duvet. He guessed she’d been asleep for around an hour now. He always knew when she was properly asleep and not just faking it. When she faked it, she lay rigid in absolute silence.
They’d slept together the first night they’d met—once they’d got talking at the hotel bar he hadn’t let her out of his sight—and both of them had known it was no one-night stand. He’d been dozing in the aftermath, Livia wrapped in his arms, his body thrumming with the delights they’d just shared, when she’d mumbled something. That was his first experience of her sleep-talking. He’d quickly discovered that she talked a lot in her sleep. Sometimes the words were distinct. He remembered the feeling that had erupted through him the first time she’d mumbled his name. It had been ten times the magnitude of what he’d felt to be offered two hundred million dollars for the stupid game he’d developed during his boring university evenings.
But her dreams hadn’t always been good. At least once a week he’d had to wake her from a bad one. The darkness of the life she’d lived until she’d left Naples at eighteen still haunted her.
A Passionate Reunion in Fiji Page 3
