by Abby Green
Slowly she turned to look at him and he sucked in a breath at how pale she was and how huge her eyes looked. And as he watched, she seemed to come back to life, emotion making those eyes flash and burn like bright jewels.
She got up from the seat and came straight over to him, and lashed out, landing a blow to his chest before he could deflect it. It had enough force to make him take a step back.
‘Don’t you ever, ever, leave me alone like this again. Do you hear me? Never.’
Gianni stared at her. The anger in her voice was palpable. She looked haunted. Not piqued that he’d left her for a day. Haunted.
He said slowly, ‘I would have thought that’s exactly what you wanted since the day we met.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
KEELIN MIGHT HAVE agreed with Gianni if being abandoned wasn’t her particular pyschological demon. Sensations were rushing into limbs that had been locked tight for hours, giving her shooting pains and pins and needles. Her hand throbbed from where she’d hit him. His chest was like a steel wall.
And worse, emotion was rising. Just to see him again. He’d come back. Damn him.
‘You said nothing.’ Keelin was accusing. ‘You didn’t even leave a note.’
Gianni’s jaw tightened. ‘I thought Lucia would tell you.’
Keelin let out a short harsh laugh. ‘Via sign language? I don’t speak Italian and she doesn’t speak English.’
‘You could have phoned me.’
Keelin felt a kind of shame wash over her. She’d slowly become more and more paralysed as the day had gone on. How could she explain that when one was in the grip of something like a panic attack, the last thing you did was the logical one?
‘I couldn’t find your number, and my phone was dead,’ she supplied weakly. And then stronger, ‘There was no one here. Even Lucia disappeared after a while. I was all alone. Anything could have happened, did you think of that?’
Irritation crossed Gianni’s face. ‘For God’s sake, Keelin, it was only a day. You are in one of the most luxurious villas in Italy. There’s an indoor pool and an outdoor pool—’
Keelin whirled away from him and the suggestion she should have been happy to amuse herself, emotion reaching her eyes, making them sting. Making her chest hurt with the pressure it took to contain it. She’d not cried in years, learning that tears only caused her parents to look at her with bafflement. So rousing their ire had become her default position.
Gianni sounded exasperated. ‘Look—’
She kept her back to him and cut him off, saying with a low voice, ‘When I was fourteen I got a taxi home from the train station for my summer half-term holidays. The whole house was locked up. When I rang my father he was in Sao Paulo in Brazil and wouldn’t be home for days. My mother was in St Barts with friends. They’d given the staff a week off. They’d not even bothered to find out what I was doing.’
She turned around to face Gianni, arms folded tightly. ‘They had to send the housekeeper back to take care of me and she was not happy to have her holiday cut short but at least it wasn’t anything new so she wasn’t surprised.’
Gianni interjected in a tight-sounding voice, ‘This had happened before?’
Keelin lifted one shoulder in a gesture of assent. ‘It was a fairly regular occurrence except usually there’d be staff at home. When I was three they left me alone with my nanny for two and a half months while they went to America on business. When they came back I didn’t recognise them.‘Today...’ Emotion tightened her chest again but Keelin forced out, ‘Today, it just got to me. It’s isolated here. I don’t speak the language. I hate that it affected me. But I just—don’t do it again.’
Gianni came closer, all traces of exasperation and irritation gone. In his eyes was not pity, because Keelin couldn’t have handled that. But something else. A kind of understanding.
He cupped his hands around her face, and it was only when he smoothed his thumbs back and forth across her cheeks she realised that she was crying. Mortification rushed through her and she tried to take his hands down but he wouldn’t let her.
She’d planned on being icy and dismissive when he returned and instead she was blubbing all over him and spilling her guts. Keelin said, ‘Look, it’s not a big—’
He cut her off. ‘I shouldn’t have left you here with no explanation. The truth is that I was still angry after last night and I took it out on you by leaving you to go to Rome today. And the reason no one is here apart from Lucia is because I gave the staff a week off in a bid for some privacy. Today is Sunday so Lucia goes to her family in the local village for the day and night.’
Gianni’s mouth was a tight line. ‘It was careless and rude of me.’
Keelin’s heart flip-flopped. Uh-oh.
And then he changed the subject abruptly. ‘Have you eaten today?’
Keelin thought about it for a second and shook her head, feeling mortified again. Imagining he must be thinking, She’s such a drama queen. ‘Not since breakfast.’‘How about we get something to eat then, hmm?’
Keelin looked at him. ‘Okay.’
He stepped back and took her hand and led her out of the room. All of Keelin’s anger was washing away, to be replaced by something far more disturbing.
When they got down to the huge open-plan and surprisingly modern kitchen, Gianni directed Keelin to sit on a stool while he prepared pasta with a pesto sauce. Even though Keelin could see that he wasn’t exactly making pasta from scratch, he seemed to know his way around a kitchen.
He poured her a glass of red wine and when she took a sip he said dryly, ‘I take it that you do like wine?’
Keelin flushed and put the glass down, answering a little sheepishly, ‘Yes.’
Gianni had rolled his shirtsleeves up, and taken his tie off, and even though he wore smart trousers, this was the most relaxed she’d seen him since they’d met. The open top button of his shirt drew her eye to the strong column of his throat. His jaw was dark with stubble. Keelin thought of him being angry enough to go to Rome that morning and sensed that he didn’t normally let things provoke him to that extent. The realisation that she’d got to him made her feel somehow hollow though.
He looked at her as the pasta cooked, his gaze incisive. ‘I’m also guessing your views on children and boarding school were not entirely accurate?’
She met his gaze. She guessed she deserved to give him an answer after stringing him along. And she was passionate about this. She shook her head. ‘No child of mine will ever go to one of those places.’
Gianni quirked a brow and instantly looked younger and even more devilishly handsome. ‘Care to revise any more of your opinions?’
Keelin grimaced slightly and took another fortifying sip of wine before gesturing to her shirt and jeans. Bare feet. ‘I’ve always been inclined to dress down more than up. And,’ she admitted sheepishly, ‘I hate shopping with a passion.’
But before he could probe any further and already feeling far too exposed, Keelin asked, ‘What about you? You always seem to be so composed, pristine.’
Heat fizzed in her belly at the thought of what Gianni might look like completely undone. Naked.
Thankfully he was dishing up the pasta now and indicating for Keelin to go to the table, so he wasn’t looking at her too closely. He put the plates down, brought over the wine. When Keelin tasted a mouthful of the perfectly al dente pasta with pesto sauce she closed her eyes for a second in appreciation. It was simple and rustic but it was heaven.
When she looked again, Gianni was taking a sip of wine, eyes unreadable, on her. Awareness made her self-conscious. She’d almost forgotten what she’d asked him when he said, ‘Almost everything I do, and am, is a direct result of wanting to be the exact opposite of my father.’
Keelin remembered the way he’d retreated so spectacularly when she’d
mentioned his father before, and his rage when he’d seen those men at the wedding, and kept silent.
He swallowed some pasta and put his fork down. Keelin couldn’t seem to stop herself focusing on those lean hands. He spoke again, distracting her.
‘My father was rough, tough, uncivilised. He got in with the wrong people at a young age in Sicily, and believed that the way to getting ahead was via violence and terrorising people, including my mother. I needed to prove to myself that I could be different.’
A million questions flooded into her brain but she sensed that Gianni was already regretting saying too much as he looked away and ate some pasta. She ignored the questions and said, ‘Your mother seemed nice, quiet.’
Gianni grimaced slightly. ‘She is. And she refuses to leave our old home just outside Rome. When my father died, I thought she’d move back to Sicily but she won’t. She insists on keeping our home like a shrine.’
He shook his head and Keelin could understand that he didn’t get why a woman who had been brutalised by her husband would want to do that. And it surprised Keelin too, but on some level she could understand that Gianni’s mother perhaps still felt a sense of loyalty, and even love. After all, look at how far she herself had gone in a bid to prove something to her father after a lifetime of disinterest.
Quietly, before she could lose her nerve, she said, ‘I’m sorry about what I did at the wedding, encouraging her to invite those men. I had no idea.’
Gianni looked at her and just inclined his head before smiling a little wryly. ‘I can see how tempting it must have been to maximise a PR disaster.’
Keelin winced, but then he was saying, ‘I’ve asked my mother to move here as I know she’d love it, but she won’t.’
‘It is beautiful,’ Keelin offered, and he looked at her, surprised. She responded to his look with a dry, ‘You know, if you’re into that isolated bucolic crumbling idyll.’
He grimaced slightly as he pushed his empty plate away. ‘It is isolated. Which is why I love it, but I never thought about what it might be like for someone else.’
Keelin felt a bit light-headed and knew she couldn’t put it down to the wine, as she’d only had a drop. There was tension crackling between them but it was different to the tension she’d come to recognise. After all, things were different—they were married, so Gianni had won this round. But in that moment, Keelin couldn’t seem to rouse herself to care all that much.
All she could see was the powerful man lounging just feet away from her, full of latent danger. And suddenly all she could think about was how he’d ordered her to take off her dress last night and how easily he’d ripped off the lace. And how badly she’d wanted him to rip off the dress.
She needed to explain. ‘Look, about last night—’
He put up a hand, cutting her off. ‘It’s just us now, Keelin. No more lies, or acting, okay?’
She sat up straight, protesting hotly, ‘But I wasn’t lying about—’
Cutting her off again he said, ‘It doesn’t matter, okay? Let’s have a cessation in hostilities. For now.’
Keelin’s heart thumped hard. A truce. She was irritated he wouldn’t give her a chance to explain but at the same time she was feeling incredibly vulnerable and didn’t exactly want to go into it. But she had to.
‘No,’ she said firmly, ‘I need to tell you this.’
Gianni looked at her, exasperation clear on his face. Keelin couldn’t be so close to him and think straight. She got up and moved away, standing with her back to the sink, arms folded. She bit her lip and then said quickly, ‘I wasn’t lying last night. I am a virgin. I’ve never slept with anyone.’
He straightened up, his mouth thinned. ‘Have you forgotten what you told me? Are you getting your stories so tangled up now that—’
Keelin cut him off. ‘I told you that to wind you up. Why would I lie about this? It’s not as if it wouldn’t become pretty apparent.’
The blood seemed to leach from Gianni’s face. He stood up and shook his head, clearly not understanding. ‘You’re twenty-three, how is it possible?’
Humiliation coiled in her belly. ‘I know.’ She steeled herself. ‘The truth is that something happened to me—it kind of put me off wanting to have sex with anyone.’ Except you. The knowledge beat like a drum in her blood.
Gianni folded his arms. ‘What happened?’
Keelin couldn’t stay still under that black gaze. She started to pace back and forth. She stopped and looked at him and took a breath. ‘When I was seventeen, I was in a boarding school in Switzerland—it was my last school.’
He frowned. ‘The one you ran away from?’
Keelin exhaled. ‘Yes, that’s the one.’
She went on. ‘It was a weekend and I’d snuck out of school with some friends to go to the local town. We were drinking at a bar and a group of guys came over. We all paired off, but then the guy I was with brought me outside to a secluded spot.’
Keelin felt embarrassed now to remember how she’d hungered for the male attention. ‘We were fooling around, just kissing, nothing heavy, and then some of his friends came out.’
Something in Gianni’s face hardened. ‘Go on.’
Keelin’s hands were curled to fists by her sides. ‘I thought he’d tell them to leave, but they were laughing and joking. I tried to go back into the bar to find my friends but one of the guys blocked my way.’
She spoke quickly now. ‘To be honest I don’t remember much of what happened next...they overpowered me pretty quickly. Tripped me up and held me down on the ground. Two held my arms and someone else had my legs. They pulled my top off, tried to undo my trousers.’
‘Dio, Keelin.’ He looked shocked.
‘Nothing happened,’ she said quickly. ‘I screamed and kicked out. I got one of them on the jaw. A staff member heard me and found us. The guys ran.’
Gianni was disgusted. ‘Animals.’
Something very vulnerable moved inside Keelin to have blurted all that out. ‘In a way it made me grow up. After that I focused on getting into college and studying. I did self-defence classes while I was in college, so I’d never feel helpless again. But that’s why I shut down for so long.’
Gianni crossed the space between them and Keelin’s heart thumped heavily. Gruffly he said, ‘Do you feel threatened by me?’
Stripped bare of her defences, intoxicated by his proximity and infused with a headiness to have unburdened herself like that, she just shook her head. ‘No.’
Gianni reached out and his hand cupped her jaw, thumb moving lightly over her cheek. His touch was amazingly gentle and it further defused something inside Keelin. Everything fell away except here and now, and them. And the heat suffusing the air between them.
‘Will you let me make love to you, Keelin?’
A giddy rush of desire almost knocked her over with its force. She’d never wanted anything so badly. If he’d called her his wife, or made some allusion to their situation, it might have jarred her out of the moment, but he didn’t. And in truth, she didn’t care about any of that now. She just wanted him.
Jerkily, she nodded her head. ‘Yes.’
He took her hand and led her out of the kitchen, up through the house and to the bedroom. With every step it only felt more right to Keelin. She wasn’t someone who believed in any kind of mysticism but she had the sensation that there was literally nowhere else on earth she was meant to be, except here, right now, with this man.
When they were in the dimly lit bedroom with the door shut firmly behind them, Gianni led her over to the bed and turned around. He looked impossibly tall and broad. Strong and powerful, and something very feminine within Keelin reacted to that.
He lifted his hands and started to undo the buttons of her shirt, the backs of his fingers glancing off her hot skin. When they were all undone, h
e pushed open the shirt and drew it off her shoulders and down her arms so that it fell to the floor.
She felt intensely self-conscious in just her lace bra and almost jumped out of her skin when Gianni cupped the weight of one full breast and said softly, ‘You’re beautiful.’
She looked up, but words died in her mouth at the look in his eyes. He was so intent. Focused. Desirous. Her nipples drew tight, aching for his touch.
‘Gianni,’ she said weakly, not even sure how to articulate her desire.
‘Shh, I know. We’ll take this slow.’
An absurd lurch of emotion made Keelin’s throat tighten. She’d never have expected this of Gianni.
His fingers were on the buttons of his shirt now, but in a bid to drive down the emotion, Keelin said impulsively, ‘Let me.’
His hands dropped and his eyes were hooded as she stepped closer and started to undo his buttons, revealing his broad chest bit by gorgeous bit. When she’d undone them all she pushed his shirt apart, over his shoulders and down his arms, just like he’d done to her.
Her eyes widened. He was truly magnificent. Not an ounce of spare flesh. A male animal in his muscular prime. Dark skin, lightly covered with hair, blunt nipples. And the enticing ridges of muscles leading down to his pants.
Galvanised by something she’d never felt before, Keelin brought her hands to his belt, undoing it and sliding it through the loops with a sibilant hiss. She let it fall to the floor. And then she was undoing the top button, the skin of his hard flat abdomen hot against her knuckles.
His hand came to the back of her neck and she looked up at him, only realising then that she was breathing hard, and sweating lightly.
Gianni pulled her against him and he was tugging on her hair gently to tip her face up. The hard thrust of his erection pressed against her belly and she wanted to move against it, but then his mouth was on hers and his hand was on her bare back, fingers expertly undoing the clasp of her bra and spreading out over her naked skin.
Their mouths fit like missing pieces of a jigsaw, welded together, tongues duelling, teeth nipping. Keelin’s hands spread across Gianni’s chest, fingers curling against his skin, nails scraping those blunt nipples, making him shudder against her. It was heady, intoxicating.
