The Sicilian's Red-Hot Revenge

by Kate Walker

  And immediately he knew why he had come.

  Just the brief sight of her like that, a face in a window, kicked every sense he possessed up several notches, heading straight for overdrive. His thoughts were flooded with the recollection of the way she had felt to touch, to kiss, to taste. The memory of the softness of her skin, the sweet warmth of her body and how it had been underneath him, the way that she had opened to him, the moist heat of her enclosing him, set his heart pounding, the blood racing through his veins until his head spun and his mouth dried, heat throbbing between his legs.

  Just to see her from a distance made him hard and hungry in the space of a heartbeat and the hunger was the sensation that had never left him in all the months they had been apart.

  And that was why he was here now.

  That one night had not been enough. It had stayed in his mind ever since. He had hated her for the deception she had practised on him and he still detested even the thought of it. He had despised himself for the fact that he could not get her out of his thoughts, but even after all this time she was still there like an itch he could not scratch. But while she was married he would never, ever touch her.

  But she wasn’t married any more. And that changed everything.

  Emily had heard the car come up the drive and halt outside the front door. The estate agent was a little early. The appointment had been for eleven; it was barely ten-thirty yet. Not that she minded. The sooner she got this over with, the better; then she could hope to move on with her life.

  Sighing, she got up from the chair where she’d been sitting and smoothed down her dress. It was unexpectedly warm for spring and she had had to hunt for something to wear to fit the temperature. Luckily the flowing lines of blue and green print were very forgiving as well as being cool and comfortable.

  A quick glance in the mirror made her grimace in distaste. In spite of the extra care she’d taken with her make-up that morning, knowing she was going to be on public view, she still looked pale and rather wan. Her hair needed cutting too. It had grown out of the sleek bob that had been so easy to keep up and now was frankly a mess. But she hadn’t had the time or the energy to care about such things.

  The truth was that she was tired. Tired and low. So much had happened in the last five months that she almost felt like a totally different person. She didn’t even recognise the Emily who had spent one wild, irresponsible night in a small flat beside the…‘No!’

  She shook her head firmly to distract herself, refusing to let her mind go back to that one night, that one man.

  He’d haunted her for far too long. In the day, things weren’t too bad. She had so much to do, so much to worry about, that she managed to focus her thoughts on that and distract herself through the daylight hours. But in the lonely darkness she’d lost hours of the night trying not to think about him. Even more hours thinking about him. And when she had finally fallen into fitful sleep, the hot, erotic dreams that had plagued her had made her restless and uneasy, waking bathed in sweat, her heart racing and her breath coming in ragged, uneven gasps.

  Perhaps when this final stage of the official process that had followed Mark’s death was over, she could go away somewhere quiet and get away from everything. Try to forget. But of course there was one good reason why she could never really forget.

  A gentle palm stroked the spot on her lower body where a faint swell revealed yet another reason for her tiredness. And for the fact that she could never, ever truly forget Vito Corsentino. Underneath her hand lay the almost-five-month pregnancy that had resulted from her one night of passion with the seductive Sicilian, a permanent legacy from the brief time they had shared. Vito Corsentino’s baby. The child that was almost all she would be left with once the formal legalities were over and she started her new life—as a single mother.

  Why hadn’t the doorbell rung? Surely Joe McKenzie must have reached the house by now? Or perhaps he was already surveying the property from the outside.

  Emily went to the window, pulled back the lace curtain very slightly and peered out, blinking at the brightness of the sun.

  Strange. He was still in the car. A brand-new car from the look of it; certainly one she had never seen before. Business at McKenzie and Watson must be doing very well.

  But there was no point in him sitting out there when he could be getting on with the job he’d come to do.

  Hurrying to the door, she pulled it open, fixing a smile on her face as she turned towards the sleek silver-grey vehicle and shaded her eyes with her hands.

  ‘You don’t have to wait there till eleven, Joe. I know you’re a little early but it really doesn’t matter.’

  The sun was shining straight into her eyes so that all she could see was that dark, masculine figure in the driving seat. For a moment her heart fluttered uncertainly as she wondered if in fact this was really Joe. But hastily she caught herself up, telling herself it was just the effect of the sun that turned the man in the car into a black silhouette behind the smoked glass of the windows. She had been letting her memories haunt her again and now she was being fanciful.

  ‘Would you like to come in and have a cup of coffee?’

  The silence and the stillness of the man in the car was disturbing. Had Joe sent someone else? Or…

  Unwillingly her thoughts went back to the previous weekend. She had attended the wedding of one of her husband’s cousins and in the middle of the ceremony the door at the back of the church had opened and a man had walked in.

  A tall, dark, devastating man. A man who looked so much like Vito Corsentino that for a moment she had thought that he was him. She’d believed that somehow, God knew how, the man she had shared that one passionate night with had found her. He had hunted her down and had come to the wedding to confront her.

  The small village church had spun round her. She’d felt as if the walls were closing in, there was no air and she could hardly breathe. Her eyes had closed and she had fallen from her seat in a dead faint. When she had come round, she was outside, where two friends had carried her. And the dark stranger was nowhere to be seen.

  But she’d met up with him again later.

  ‘Joe?’

  Her voice was more uncertain now, taking on a tremor of apprehension. Was this Joe McKenzie? Or someone else, come to disturb the hard-won peace she’d finally found for herself?

  Cautiously she took a step forward then, rethinking, froze into stillness again. She didn’t want to put too much space between herself and the doorway. What if her imagination was not playing her tricks? What if she should really be…?

  The thoughts died inside her head as there was movement from the car, the driver’s door swinging open. A hand appeared on the top of the door. A long-fingered, tanned hand. The sort of hand that the well past middle-aged and decidedly plump Joe McKenzie had never had.

  The sort of hand that made Emily’s heart stop dead in shock just to see it.

  ‘No…’ It escaped from her in a low, desperate whisper. ‘Please God—no!’

  But her prayers were not answered. She could only watch in horror, feeling all the warmth of the day ebb away as she saw the broad shoulders, the jet-black hair that gleamed in the bright sunlight, the handsome face of the man she had thought she would never see again. He was dressed much more formally than the other times she had seen him, the sleekly tailored lines of the light grey suit he wore with a pale blue shirt hugging the powerful body, emphasising his height and strength in a way that made her throat uncomfortably dry.

  Those deep grey eyes were hidden behind sunglasses but as he stood up and stretched lazily, easing the stiffness of his journey, he took off the concealing lenses and slanted a swift, narrow-eyed glance at her stunned face.

  ‘Ciao, belleza,’ he drawled with the sort of smile that made the earth seem to tilt beneath her feet. ‘Good afternoon, Signora Lawton. It’s a pleasure to see you again.’

  ‘No.’

  It was all she could manage. And she actually brought up he
r hand, holding it out as if to ward off something nasty that she feared was heading towards her.

  ‘No, cara?’ Vito echoed, his tone turning that ‘cara’ into something that was light-years away from the true meaning of the word. ‘You think I did not mean that? Well, let me assure you that, no matter how I happen to feel about you, it is always a pleasure to see your lovely face.’

  ‘It’s what you feel about me that bothers me,’ Emily stammered, so totally confused by that ‘your lovely face’ that she didn’t know at all how to react. ‘I know exactly how you do feel about me—you made it bitterly clear the last time I saw you. And, that being so, I really can’t understand what you’re doing here.’

  ‘I brought you this.’

  Putting his hand into the pocket of his jacket, he pulled out a small blue coin purse, which he held out towards her.

  ‘My parking-money purse. I wondered where it had got to. But why wait all this time to get it back to me?’

  After all, she doubted if the purse held more than a coin or two.

  ‘I didn’t know where you lived before now.’

  ‘But you could have found out.’

  ‘I could…’ Vito nodded thoughtfully. ‘But even if I knew where to find you, there was a very good reason why I should stay away.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now that reason no longer exists.’

  He was giving nothing away. The shaded glass might no longer be concealing his eyes from her but the deep dark gaze was almost as opaque as the tinted glass had been.

  ‘My sympathy on the death of your husband.’ It was stiffly formal, impeccably polite. And it forced from her an equally stiff acknowledgement.

  ‘Thank you. Unfortunately it was not unexpected.’

  Even after four months, she still found it difficult to accept any comments, or, worse, any sympathy on Mark’s death. She had no idea how she was expected to behave.

  ‘But how…?’ She let the question fade away as realisation dawned. ‘Of course—the man at the St Clair wedding.’

  ‘My brother,’ Vito confirmed. ‘Or, rather, Amber, who I believe was supposed to have been the bride at that event.’

  ‘You’ve seen Amber?’

  For a moment Emily was diverted. The disruption of Rafe St Clair’s wedding had been the talk of the town for the past week. The St Clair family had made sure that everyone knew how appalled and insulted they’d been and poor Amber Wellesley’s name had been mud in every conversation she’d heard. But of the missing bride herself there had been no sign.

  ‘She’s with Guido—in Sicily.’

  ‘Sicily is—is that where your brother lives?’

  ‘It’s where I live too. The flat was just a temporary base while I was in England.’

  I know—I went there and the place was empty—closed up. She had to swallow down the words, fighting not to let them escape. When she had found out that she was pregnant—a realisation that had been delayed by the event of Mark’s death and everything else that had piled on top of her at the time—she had made one weak, lonely trip to the flat. Vito had at least the right to know that he had fathered a child. She had resigned herself to the fact that he would probably not even be interested. What she hadn’t expected was to find that he had packed and gone and there was no one who seemed to know where.

  There was something that was not quite right with what Vito was saying, something was fretting at her thoughts—until it was completely knocked out of her head by Vito’s sudden move forward.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  It was too high, too sharp, and gave away too much about the fear that was bubbling up inside her at another sudden and unwanted realisation. The dress she was wearing was loose and flowing, swirling around her with any slight movement. But, realising that she had her arms folded across her body in a way that pressed the loose dress against her, she hastily unfolded them again.

  Just for the moment Vito might not have noticed the difference in her shape, the way that her waist was practically nonexistent with the extra weight. Her actual ‘bump’ might still be very small but if he came any closer…

  ‘You offered me coffee.’

  The look he turned on her said that her question had only amused him. He clearly didn’t think it was meant to be taken at all seriously.

  ‘I’d appreciate a cup—thank you.’

  ‘But that wasn’t you!’

  She really must get a grip on herself. She was revealing far too much in the way that she spoke, making it plain that there was something wrong, something she wanted to hide from him—something more than just not wanting him in her home.

  But the truth was that her mind was anywhere but on the conversation she was actually having.

  ‘I mean—I didn’t invite you in for coffee! I thought you were Joe.’

  ‘And Joe is?’ Vito enquired, his personal opinion of just who Joe might be written in the cold contempt in his eyes, all trace of amusement totally erased in an instant.

  ‘Not what you’re thinking!’ Emily flashed back at him. ‘Joe is the local estate agent. He’s coming to value the house.’

  ‘You’re selling up?’

  That was a surprise, Vito admitted. When he had arrived at the house, on his way up the long, curving drive, he had thought that it was obvious why Emily had been so keen to get back to her husband after the night they had spent together. She had taken a good look at the small, shabby flat he lived in and fled straight back home to the comfort and luxury her marriage could offer.

  ‘I have to.’ The words came out on an odd note, one that he couldn’t interpret.

  ‘You can’t afford the upkeep, is that it? I would have thought from all this that your husband…’

  A glacial glare from those soft blue eyes froze him out before he could finish the sentence.

  ‘You know nothing about my husband,’ Emily declared. ‘So I’ll thank you to keep out of things that are none of your business.’

  He’d touched a nerve there, that was obvious. But pressing her further would only make her close up again even more. He’d bide his time and see what he could discover later. There was something to discover, something she was hiding, he was sure of that.

  And there was something different about her features seen up close. There was a glow to her cheeks and her hair, and the thin, rather drawn look had disappeared. She didn’t look like a woman who had been mourning her husband.

  ‘So are you going to invite me in or not?’

  Not, it seemed from the way her face changed, her jaw tightening, her eyes narrowing. Deliberately Vito switched to a charm offensive, holding that sapphire gaze and smiling straight into her suspicious eyes.

  ‘Come, now, cara, you surely wouldn’t begrudge me a coffee when I’ve travelled all this way to see you.’

  ‘All this way?’ she scoffed. ‘It’s hardly sixty miles. And I am not your darling. You made that very plain the last time you saw me.’

  Vito ignored that final remark, concentrating instead on her first comment.

  ‘Believe me, I’ve come a lot further than those sixty miles.’

  ‘From the coast?’

  ‘No, from Sicily.’

  He had her now. She looked stunned, her head going back and her mouth falling slightly open in shock.

  ‘From—Sicily?’

  ‘Si, from Siracusa, to be exact. Where do you think I saw your friend Amber?’

  ‘I thought—I thought…’

  She shook her head slowly, bewilderment clouding her eyes.

  ‘But you’re not going to say that you’ve come from Sicily today…I don’t believe you!’ she protested when he nodded an answer to her question.

  ‘I flew overnight, then drove here from the airport. The last time I had coffee was on the plane. So, how about it, cara, hmm?’ he cajoled. ‘What harm can one cup of coffee do?’

  For a moment he thought that she was going to refuse. Suspicion and hostility still radiated from her so that he almost fe
lt that he could see the small hairs on the back of her neck standing up like those of a wary cat faced with an unknown intruder into its territory.

  But there was curiosity there too. She was intrigued and more than a little flattered to think that he had come all this way to see her. He almost had her hooked.

  All he had to do was to keep silent now and…

  ‘One cup of coffee, then,’ she said slowly, reluctantly. ‘And that’s it.’

  She had already turned, heading back towards the house, and so didn’t see the gleam of triumph in Vito’s eyes as he followed her.

  One coffee—and that would definitely not be it.

  One coffee was just the start of what he had in mind.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘ALL right, Vito, I think this has gone on long enough.’

  Emily prayed that the way she spoke didn’t reveal just how hard she had had to work to bring herself to actually get the words out into the open. Twice already she had told herself that she needed to say something; that she needed to ask questions, and, hopefully, get some answers. She couldn’t just leave things in limbo like this. But twice already she had also backed down, losing her nerve at the very last minute.

  She made the coffee, thanking heaven fervently for the fact that the violent reaction she had had in the first months of her pregnancy, when even the smell of the drink had made her stomach heave, had now eased. She still didn’t like the taste of coffee one little bit, but she could make a pot for Vito, pour it into a mug and place it in front of him without actually throwing up. And he didn’t appear to notice that she only got a glass of water for herself, or if he did, it didn’t bother him in any way.

  They’d made a sort of conversation as Vito enjoyed his drink. A strange, inane, going nowhere, not really saying anything sort of conversation that meandered from trivial topic to pointless topic only to fill the silence that would otherwise be too heavy to breathe, too thick with tension to endure a moment longer.

  They’d talked about the weather, for heaven’s sake! About how unexpectedly dry and warm it was for April, the chance that it might rain later, and the fact that the gardens needed the water. They’d talked about his flight, his drive from the airport to the house, the state of the roads, until Emily was just about ready to scream with frustration and near panic.