by Various
The question—such an obvious one, too—completely threw him. He realised that he hadn’t planned what he was going to say and that, for once in his life, his fluent and often acerbic tongue was not providing him with the perfect answer. Was that because there wasn’t one?
‘Weren’t we going to go inside?’
Natasha shrugged. ‘Okay.’
She pulled off her gloves and stuffed them in the pockets of her jacket, and he followed her inside, having to stoop his head to accommodate the low doorframe.
Once inside, she took her hat off, too—and he could see that the expensive blonde highlights had partially grown out. It should have looked ridiculous, but somehow it did not—because her hair had the natural gleam of good health, youth and vigour.
Raffaele looked around. Within the small cottage she had created the kind of homely nest which always seemed to spring up around her. There was soup cooking on the stove and drawings of Sam’s pinned onto the front of the fridge. A simple little jug of twigs with some kind of furry tips had been stuck in the centre of a scrubbed wooden table, and next to the jug was an open textbook on French Grammar.
He looked at it, then at her. ‘Given up on Italian, have you, Tasha?’
She was terribly afraid that she would do something stupid. Like cry. Like tell him how grey her life was now that he was no longer in it. Blinking furiously, she glared at him. Hadn’t he got what he wanted—his pound of flesh and a couple of extra slices into the bargain?
‘Why are you here?’ she demanded.
‘I’ve brought a Christmas present for Sam.’
‘Oh.’ Funny thing, human nature. You could tell yourself that you didn’t want something—
like Raffaele bringing up the thorny subject of their ill-fated liaison—and then find yourself bitterly disappointed when you got the very thing you’d wished for. ‘That’s nice.’
‘He’s not here?’
‘No. He’s out with a friend.’
‘I see.’ That was good. He wanted to see Sam. But not now. Definitely not now. And then he saw the expression in her eyes—that wary look, like a cornered animal—and Raffaele knew that he couldn’t continue to keep playing it safe. He was known in the business world for being a risk-taker par excellence—since when had he ever played safe? But this felt different—and he couldn’t, for the life of him, work out why. Because he had never had to take an emotional risk before? Or because he was seriously afraid that she might send him away? He drew a deep breath. ‘I miss you, Tasha,’ he said simply.
Her stupid, needy heart leapt as if someone had just made a loud noise behind her, but Natasha kept her face neutral with the determination of self-protection. Did he think that she was some kind of toy? To be picked up and played with and then thrown away when he’d finished with her?
‘Well, that’s nice, too,’ she said blandly. ‘But I’m sure you must have found yourself a decent substitute by now. As I recall, you told me that all you had to do was just pick up the telephone and you’d have me replaced in an instant.’
He winced. Had he really said that? Yes, of course he had. And more. He’d been scared and he’d been angry—running from something that he’d spent his whole life running from.
Imagining that all women were like the ones he’d been mixing with since he’d made his first million at an obscenely young age—grasping, greedy sexual predators. Unwilling and unable to believe that he might have discovered one who was unlike all the rest. Refusing to believe the evidence of his own eyes and his own heart.
He had convinced himself that her lowly position made her unsuitable to be his partner, but that too had been a convenient excuse to hide behind—because since when was Raffaele de Feretti ever constrained by convention?
He drew a deep breath. ‘Tasha, listen to me. I miss you and I want you back,’ he said.
Once she would have leapt like a starving sparrow on those few words, but Natasha had learnt a lot lately. Out of the bitter, broken nights of her heartbreak, and the tears stifled to spare her sleeping son, she had discovered a resilience and a strength which she would not let go of easily—for her sanity’s sake, she couldn’t afford to.
She smiled. ‘There are other housekeepers, Raffaele.’
‘I’m not looking for a housekeeper.’
‘Really?’ she said politely.
He looked at her with admiration. At the composure she wore like a mantle around her shoulders. Oh, but she was magnificent—how could he have spent so many years never realising that? Why, no other woman had ever faced him down like this—whoever would have predicted that Natasha Phillips should be the one who did? ‘I am looking for a lover, cara mia.’
‘Well, we both know there certainly isn’t any shortage of candidates for that particular post!’
‘But there’s only one person who can properly fill it. You know there is,’ he said softly. ‘And that person is you.’
Of course her heart leapt again. And of course she wanted to squeal with delight and run into his arms, and kiss him, and…and…
Natasha swallowed. This wasn’t some game of emotional tennis with all the unspoken power which came from being seen to win. At the moment she held the upper hand. Raffaele probably only wanted her because she had taken the initiative and left before he’d had time to grow tired of her. He was looking for a lover, and she wasn’t. Well, certainly not another lover like him—who could hurt her with the kind of pain she hadn’t even realised existed.
‘I can’t operate in your world, Raffaele,’ she told him truthfully. ‘I can’t do stuff like you.
For you, I’m just another woman. But for me—’ She stopped, aware that she was saying far too much—giving herself away when to do so would be to place herself in terrible danger.
He shook his dark head, the mask gone completely now, raw passion and truth burning unashamedly from the black eyes. ‘But you’re not just another woman, Tasha! You’re the woman I want. The house isn’t the same since you’ve gone—’
‘Then, employ someone else! Someone else who will keep it cosy and warm and have pots bubbling on the stove, so you can fool yourself into thinking it’s a real home!’
‘That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it!’ he exploded, and he glared at her, raking his hand frustratedly back through his black hair. ‘My life isn’t the same without you, either.’
‘But you’re always going abroad!’ she objected. ‘I was hardly a day-to-day fixture. Your life can’t have changed that much.’
‘And I always used to come back to you,’ he said stubbornly. ‘Now I don’t. You can argue with me all you like, Natasha—don’t you think I’ve done the same, myself, over and over, to try to make some sense of all this?’ he demanded. ‘But the fact remains that I can’t. I miss you. I want you.’ There was a pause. ‘I love you.’
And that stopped Natasha right in her tracks—because she knew enough about Raffaele to realise that he would never say something like that unless he meant it. He might be cold and cruel sometimes, and he had a reputation for ruthlessness in the business world—but he would run a mile from emotional blackmail and from using words that weren’t true.
But he had said some awful things to her. Did he think he had the right to do that? That she would just let him? Wasn’t it important to show him that if he really had changed, then so had she?
‘You think that you can accuse me of trying to get you to the altar,’ she said quietly, ‘and then just pretend it never happened? As if it’s okay to hurt someone?’
He held her gaze, wanting to hold her, praying that in a moment she would let him and yet recognising that if they were to have any kind of future as equals in an equal partnership he must let her wield her own power. ‘I wish I could take the words back, mia bella, but I can’t.
I was scared of the way you were making me feel and that made me lash out. But I’m even more scared at the thought that I might have lost you. Me, who always thought of myself as fearless!’
But this was too important to be dictated by desire.
He played his trump card. ‘The question is whether or not you can look into my eyes and tell me that you don’t love me. Can you do that, Tasha? Can you honestly do that?’
She looked at him then, and the last of the fight went out of her. ‘You know I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve known that all along.’
Briefly, he closed his eyes and, when he opened them again, he held out his arms to her.
‘Come here. Come to me, Tasha.’
She hesitated for one last, unwanted second before she went into them—like someone who had been standing frozen outside for too long. She had to bite her lip to stop the tears. ‘Oh, Raffaele!’
She was shaking, and Raffaele tenderly kissed away the tears which had begun to slide down her face despite all her best intentions. He pulled her closer and held her tightly, and they stayed just like that for a long time, before he bent his mouth to her ear, his breath warm against her silken hair.
‘Now, take me bed,’ he whispered. ‘For I will not wait a moment longer.’
‘Oh, won’t you?’ she teased. But Natasha felt newly powerful as she led him into her tiny room, even when he took one look at her narrow bed and started laughing.
‘Dios!’ he exclaimed in a low voice. ‘I do not think that I have slept on such a bed since I was ten!’
‘I didn’t think you were planning on doing much sleeping,’ she said, both confident and yet strangely shy in light of the look he was now slanting over her.
‘Ah, Tasha,’ he whispered tenderly, and touched her cheek, brushing away a smudge of mud with the pad of his thumb. ‘Look at you. Bella. Mia bella—sempre.’ And then his voice suddenly became urgent, sharpened by the thought of what he had so nearly lost. ‘Kiss me,’
he demanded. ‘Kiss me now.’
Rising up on tiptoe, she wound her arms around his neck and put her lips to his. He made a little groan of delight, and she found herself smiling through the passion—because she could make this incredible man moan with just a kiss.
It was too cold in the small cottage for a leisurely undressing, and their clothes ended up in a heap on the bedroom floor—Natasha’s gardening trousers strewn over Raffaele’s cashmere sweater. In the confined space they lay close together under the duvet, exploring each other with eyes and lips and hands as if it was the first time.
And in a way it was—certainly for Raffaele. The first time he’d ever had sex and allowed—
no, wanted—emotion to enter into the equation. So that afterwards he was dazed, shaken, pulling her into his hard body, his embrace fierce, possessive, protective as their heartbeats stilled.
And later they lit a fire and sat on the floor in front of it while they roasted the chestnuts she’d bought yesterday at the market—and that was where Sam found them.
He took one look at them and a smile like the sun broke out on his face—then he gave a little squeal and hurled himself into Raffaele’s arms.
Epilogue
IT HAD been—as Natasha said—the worst possible time for a man to turn up on her doorstep and tell her that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. She had, after all, just taken on a new job and Sam was due to start at the school after the Christmas holidays.
Raffaele had bitten back his instinctive demand that she go with him instantly, recognising that Tasha’s dislike of letting anybody down was one of the things he loved about her. He gave a slow smile of contentment. There were so many!
So they had sat Sam down and asked him what he wanted to do—but his answer hadn’t really helped, since he’d told them that he didn’t care where they lived just as long as the three of them were together.
And, in that moment, Natasha had recognised that Raffaele was a hugely influential force in her son’s life—that he was a father to Sam in almost every sense of the word. Sam had been missing him, too, she realised.
In the end they had gone to see the headteacher and explained their predicament.
She had looked at Natasha with a stern expression. ‘I can’t say I’m not disappointed,’ she’d said. ‘Because I am.’
Then she’d looked at Raffaele. ‘And I can’t say I’m surprised, either,’ she’d added softly, her face softening.
Raffaele had smiled. ‘Thank you. But we’ve decided that we’d like Sam to come to school here, anyway. We’re going to buy a house nearby.’
‘Oh, you are? Oh, that’s wonderful!’
The head had beamed and sent for tea, and afterwards Raffaele told Tasha that he had felt about ten years old, sitting in that study! Once, he would have gone to hell and back rather than make such an admission. But that was one of the greatest things about love—it liberated you in so many ways.
And with the whole world to choose from the two of them had fallen in love with this corner of the English countryside. It was close enough to a major airport for Raffaele to take trips abroad—even though the lure of travel was palling and, for the first time in his life, he could see the attraction of being successful enough to delegate and stay home more. It was also close enough for him to travel into London as often as he wanted—he could do what many other businessmen did these days, which was to fly in by helicopter.
They had found a big old house in a decent-sized plot—with a garden big enough for Sam to have an entire junior football match on if he wanted to. There were stables for the horses that Natasha had always had a yearning to ride, and a flint-walled kitchen garden which got just enough summer sun to provide the white peaches which Raffaele had adored when he was a little boy. They might not grow as big nor quite as sweet as those remembered fruits—but growing them would be a symbol of something he had found with Tasha. Roots.
It was the kind of house that neither of them had ever had but both had longed for. It was a home, in fact. Their first real home.
‘Home is where the heart is,’ said Natasha, as he touched his lips to hers before carrying her over the threshold and continuing straight upstairs towards their bedroom. ‘Corny, but true.’
He could feel his own heart’s thundering beat and his body’s urgent need to join with hers.
‘Then my home is with you, mia bella,’ he said softly. ‘Per sempre.’
Natasha’s Italian had come on well enough for her to know that this meant always—but even if she hadn’t spoken a word of the language she would have understood what he meant.
She could read it in his eyes.
********
ANN MAJOR
Shameless
Where Texas society reigns supreme—and appearances are everything.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Phillip Westin joined the Lone Star Country Club to meet nice girls and to forget about the not-so-nice one who broke his heart years ago. But when his ex comes to town, trouble isn’t far behind. To keep her safe, Westin must rely on his tough-guy instincts to discern truth from lie, and his friends from his enemies.
Celeste Cavanaugh, aka Stella Lamour, can’t remember a time when she didn’t have stars in her eyes. These days, though, the stars are pretty tarnished, and a happily-ever-after in the sizzling embrace of her personal hero, Phillip Westin, doesn’t sound so bad.
Cole Yardley had only met Celeste once, but he’d remember her anywhere. When the shadowy ATF agent comes to town to investigate a gun-smuggling ring in quiet little Mission Creek, Texas, he threatens to blow Celeste’s secrets and her chances with Phillip away.
Prologue
Mezcaya, Central America
El Jefe terrorist compound
Lt. Col. Phillip Westin, burly ex-Marine, wasn’t dead.
Hell. He almost wished he was. Solitary confinement—it made you crazy.
Groggily, he
chafed at the ropes binding his wrists and ankles. Beneath the restraints his skin burned from too much rubbing.
He tried to roll over but he was so weak he could only lie facedown in the dark, gasping. The windowless walls seemed to close in upon him. He wanted to scream…or worse…to weep.
One minute he was burning up, the next he was shivering and whimpering on his cot like a baby. The cramps in his legs and arms knifed through him constantly.
Where the hell was he? Remember! Try to remember. His thoughts were slow and tortured. It took him a while to realize that he was lying on a dirty canvas cot deep in The Cave that served as the dungeon underneath Fortaleza de la Fortuna. The fortaleza was a terrorist compound in Mezcaya run by a particularly dangerous group of thugs who went by the name El Jefe.
Westin had been captured a few weeks ago shortly after he’d run Jose Mendoza, one of the terrorist ring-leaders, off a mountain road and killed him. Too bad Mendoza’s illegitimate son, Xavier Gonzalez, didn’t have a forgiving nature.
Westin blinked but couldn’t see a thing. The damned dungeon was blacker than the inside of an ape’s behind.
His head throbbed where Xavier had smacked him with a rifle butt yesterday. His throat was dry. He was thirsty as hell. Dehydrated probably.
Xavier and his unkempt dirty bunch of thugs had captured him and beaten him senseless and then gleefully trussed him like a pig for slaughter.
He was going to die. At dawn. A single bullet to the head, the final coup de grace. An hour ago Xavier and a couple of short, teenage captors reeking of body odor had strutted inside The Cave like a bunch of bantam cocks in a barnyard and kicked him with their black, muddy combat boots.
“Gringo. ¿Cómo estás?” They’d prodded him with their assault rifles and made cruel jokes in Spanish rather than in their Mezcayan dialect. They’d flipped coins to see who’d get lucky enough to pull the trigger. Xavier, the youngest and the most lethally handsome, had slid a
.45 out of a black holster and dried it off on his sleeve.
