by Heidi Rice
Her own family had only consisted of her and her mother. She’d always dreamed of having more. Of having brothers and sisters, cousins and aunts and uncles. She knew perfectly well Gio was an only child too—and from what he’d already told her she knew he’d been a lot more alone than she had as a child. So why hadn’t he embraced the chance to get to know his own family?
‘For goodness’ sake, Gio,’ she said, riding the temper. ‘Why haven’t you been to see them? They’re your family.’
‘I don’t have a family. I don’t even know them,’ he continued. ‘They disowned Claudia before I was even born. Cut her out of their lives.’
‘Is that why you dislike them?’ she asked, confused now, and a little appalled by his indifference. ‘Because they treated your mother badly?’
‘Of course not!’ He sounded annoyed now—annoyed and something else she couldn’t quite define. ‘I expect she made their lives a misery. I can testify to the fact that she was a nightmare to live with, so I don’t blame them for kicking her out.’
She heard the contempt in his voice. So that was why he never talked about his mother.
‘Are you upset that they never got to know you as a boy, then?’ Issy asked carefully, still trying to understand his hostility towards the rest of his family. Why was he so determined to have nothing to do with them?
He pushed his plate away and reached for the pitcher of lemonade. ‘Issy, in case you haven’t realised yet—’ he poured himself a glass, gulped some down ‘—this conversation doesn’t interest me.’
‘Well, it interests me,’ she said, determined not to back down—not this time. ‘I think you do blame them. But you shouldn’t. It doesn’t—’
‘I don’t blame them.’ He shoved his chair back, walked to the balcony rail. ‘Why should they care about me? I’m nothing to them.’
Her temper died as she heard the defensiveness in his tone, saw his knuckles whiten where they gripped the terrace rail.
‘That’s clearly not true,’ she said, feeling desperately sad for him. ‘Or why would they have invited you to this christening?’ She watched his shoulders tense, but he didn’t say anything. ‘There must be a reason why they didn’t try to get to know you as a child. Maybe they—’
‘They did try,’ he interrupted her. ‘I met Carlo. Once. He came to our apartment in Rome.’ He paused, his voice barely audible above the breeze. ‘Claudia wasn’t there. She’d been out all night at some party, and I was in the place alone.’
‘How old were you?’ she asked gently. She’d tried not to think of him as a boy too much since their first night in Florence. Had tried not to make the mistake of reading too much into his parents’ behaviour and its effect on him. But now she wanted to know. How bad had it been?
‘Ten,’ he said, as if it weren’t particularly significant.
She bit down on her lip, tried not to let the thought of that neglected boy get to her.
But then another shattering thought occurred to her, and she felt tears sting the back of her throat.
As long as she had known Gio he had always called his parents Claudia and the Duke. Even as a boy he had never referred to them as Mum or Dad. And now Issy knew why. Because in all the ways that counted they had never been his mother and father. Just people who had battled over him and then rejected him.
‘What happened?’ She asked. ‘With Carlo?’
Gio shrugged, the movement stiff. ‘Not a lot. He asked to see Claudia. We waited together for her to come home. He told me who he was, asked me about myself. How old was I? What did I like doing? My Italian wasn’t great then, and his questions confused me.’
He sounded so puzzled, even now, and her heart ached. No wonder Gio had no faith in relationships, in family. He’d never been part of one. Not one where people cared for you and about you and were interested in what you did and said.
‘She came home eventually,’ he said, derision edging his voice. ‘Coked up to the eyeballs as usual. They had a massive row, she called the police, and he had to leave. He never came back. But the invitations started to come a few months later. Always addressed to me. She threw them away—wouldn’t let me open them. After her death I replied to a few, giving excuses why I couldn’t come, but they didn’t get the hint so now I throw them away.’
‘I think you should go.’ Taking the card back out of the bin, she crossed the balcony, placed a hand on his back. ‘I think you should go to this christening. See your family. See Carlo again.’ Suddenly it seemed vitally important.
He turned round, stared down at the card she held but didn’t take it.
‘Issy, for God’s sake.’ He cupped her cheek in his palm, his eyes shadowed. ‘Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? I don’t want to go. I don’t belong there,’ he murmured.
She rested her hand on his heart, felt the rapid beats. ‘Yes, you do. You don’t have to be scared of them, you know.’
‘I’m not scared. Don’t be idiotic.’
But she could hear defensiveness behind the irritation.
He was scared. He was scared to let them get too close. To trust them. To trust anyone.
Her heart clutched as he looked away.
Every child deserved to be loved unconditionally, supported in whatever they chose to do. She thought of the way her own mother had loved and supported her in every mad decision she’d ever made in her life. Edie had always been there. Praising her as if she’d been Sarah Bernhardt when she’d played a tomato in her first school play. Providing a shoulder to cry on when she’d bawled her eyes out over Gio. Even nagging her into admitting that her lifelong dream of becoming an actress needed some serious tweaking after she’d begun her job at the Crown and Feathers and discovered that she preferred bossing people about to angsting about her motivation.
For all his apparent confidence and charisma, Gio had never had any of that as a child. He’d been entirely alone—criticised and rejected by his father, or neglected and ignored by his mother. Even though he’d made a staggering success of his life, he’d survived emotionally by closing himself off and convincing himself he didn’t need love.
He’d persuaded himself it wasn’t important, that it didn’t matter to him, when obviously it did.
Gio had needed a friend as a boy, and he still needed one now. To show him there was another way.
‘They can make your life so much richer, Gio. Can’t you see that?’
He gave a harsh laugh. ‘You’ve still got a romantic streak a mile wide, haven’t you?’ He leaned back against the rail, his stance deliberately casual. ‘I’m not interested in meeting Claudia’s family. I’ve got nothing to offer them. And they’ve got nothing to offer me.’
She stared at him, saw stubborn refusal, but she knew it wasn’t true. He had so much to give. And he could get so much back in return.
‘There’s only one thing I need.’ He took the invitation from her. ‘And it’s got nothing to do with this.’ He flicked the card onto the table behind her.
He grasped her waist, tugged her close, then slanted his lips across hers.
She curled her fingers into his hair and kissed him back, not caring that he was trying to make a point. Not caring any more what the point was. Because she could taste his desperation right alongside his desire.
He bracketed her waist, boosted her into his arms. ‘Wrap your legs around me.’
She did as he commanded, feathering kisses over his brow, his chin, his cheeks, as he strode through the French doors into the master bedroom.
He took her mouth again as he lay beside her, his hard, beautiful body covering hers. The kiss was so deep and dangerous and full of purpose she wanted to scream.
They wrestled their robes off together.
He delved into the curls at her core with clever, insistent fingers.
‘I love the way you’re always wet for me,’ he murmured as she bucked beneath him, cried out, the twist and bite of arousal so vicious it stunned her.
She peaked in a rush of
savage sensation. Before she had a chance to draw a steady breath he gripped her hips and settled between her thighs.
She grasped his shoulders, opened for him as he plunged.
The fullness of the strokes had her building to a crescendo again with staggering speed, the harsh grunts of his breathing matching her broken sobs. But instead of cresting this time she cruised the brutal orgasm for an eternity, shooting up and then clawing back until she felt trapped in a vortex of pleasure too intense to survive.
Straining, desperate, she crashed over into the abyss at last, and heard his roar of fulfilment as he crashed and burned behind her.
Issy combed the damp curls at his nape with shaking fingers, her body still quivering from the aftermath of the titanic orgasm.
Had that been sex? She felt as if she’d just survived an earthquake.
He lifted his head. But he didn’t speak. He looked as stunned as she felt. Easing out of her, he flopped down by her side.
Then cursed. ‘I didn’t wear a condom. Is that going to be a problem?’
The flat words took a moment to penetrate her fuzzy brain. ‘Sorry. What?’
‘No condom.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I forgot.’ He propped himself up on his elbow, leaned over her. ‘When’s your next period?’
‘I…’ She tried to grasp the meaning, the rigid tone.
‘You’re not in the middle of your cycle, are you?’
‘No. No, I’m not. I’m due soon.’ She did a quick mental calculation. ‘Tomorrow, I think.’
He lay back on the bed. ‘Thank God.’ The relief in his voice made her cheeks burn.
‘What about emergency contraception?’ she whispered, her mind trying to cling to practicalities. ‘Is there somewhere near here we could get it?’ The thought of taking the morning-after pill, something she’d never had to do before, made her stomach clench.
‘You’d probably need a prescription,’ he said, so matter-of-factly it made her heart pound.
‘Oh.’ She sat up, disorientated. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’ll probably be fine,’ she said, the words catching in her throat. ‘I can get it from a pharmacy in the UK—perhaps I should arrange a flight just in case.’ They hadn’t talked about when she would leave. Why hadn’t they talked about it? It suddenly seemed vitally important. ‘I’ll look into that now.’ She swung her feet off the bed, struggling for calm as she pulled on her robe.
He caught her arm as she tried to stand. ‘You’re being irrational. There’s no need to book a flight.’ He paused. ‘I’ll get the jet to take you.’ He caressed the inside of her elbow with his thumb. ‘But let’s wait till tomorrow.’
The quiet comment brought with it a rush of excitement that made no sense at all.
This was silly. She should leave—sooner rather than later after their little accident—so why was she so pleased with the casual offer?
‘But we only agreed to a couple of days.’ She should go. Why didn’t she want to?
He brushed her hair behind her ear. ‘We did something stupid, that’s all. You said yourself it probably won’t lead to anything.’ He tucked his index finger under her chin.
She tried to rein in her galloping heartbeat. His eyes were full of an intensity she’d never seen before.
‘Don’t worry. We’ll sort it out if we need do.’ His deep, steady voice was reassuring, the stroke of his hand on her hair making her heart-rate slow to a canter.
Why did it feel as if everything had spun off its axis and nothing made any sense any more?
He took her shoulders, held her at arm’s length to look into her eyes. ‘Let’s not think about it today. Tomorrow is soon enough. Go and get dressed. Wear something fancy. We’ll go somewhere special.’ He brushed a kiss across her brow, making her smile despite her confusion. ‘It’ll take our minds off it.’
‘Do you really think—’
‘We can go anywhere you want,’ he interrupted her. ‘Your choice.’
‘Okay,’ she said, more pleased than she probably should be at the thought that she didn’t have to go today.
She hurried into the bathroom, shut the door and leaned back against it, letting the excited little hammer-beats of her pulse drown out the doubts. Everything was fine. More than fine. They’d made a silly mistake, but it didn’t have to mean anything.
She’d always found it hard to hold back as a teenager, to weigh and judge and interpret other people’s feelings properly. It was the reason she’d fallen so easily for Gio, and she’d worked long and hard in the decade since at keeping her emotions in check and never letting them get the better of her again. But maybe she’d held on too hard, turned herself into someone she really wasn’t.
It didn’t have to be a bad thing that she had such strong feelings for Gio. They had a shared history, and now she’d spent time with him, and understood the extent of his parents’ neglect and what it had done to him, it made sense that she would feel their friendship more keenly.
She twisted the gold-plated taps on the large designer tub.
She’d come here to get over her past mistakes, but surely the best way to do that was to heal the part of herself she’d lost that night. She didn’t have to be frightened of her feelings for Gio any more.
When their fling was over they would go their separate ways, having reclaimed the good things from their childhood and left behind the bad.
As the water gushed out, and she sprinkled bath salts, another thought occurred to her and she smiled.
Gio had said she could pick their destination for this afternoon. And she knew exactly where she wanted to go. She wasn’t the only one who needed to heal.
But as Issy slipped into the steamy, scented water, and let the lavender bubbles massage her tired muscles, she couldn’t quite shake the suspicion she had failed to grasp something vitally important.
What the hell had he done?
Gio lay on the bed, his arm folded under his head, as he stared at the fan on the ceiling.
He’d taken her without a condom. He turned his head to stare at the bathroom and heard the reassuring hum of running water.
Except he wasn’t feeling all that reassured.
Had he totally lost his mind?
He never, ever forgot to wear condoms. Partly for personal safety reasons, but mostly because he had absolutely no desire to father a child. Even if the woman said she was on the pill. No matter how hot he got, or how desperate he was to make love, he always used protection.
But Issy got him hotter and more desperate than any woman he’d ever met—and for the first time ever the thought of contraception hadn’t entered his head.
She’d made him feel raw and vulnerable with all that nonsense about getting to know Claudia’s family, until he’d been desperate to shut her up. But the minute he’d tasted her, the minute he’d touched her, the usual longing had welled up inside him and all he’d been able to think about was burying himself inside her. Before he knew what was happening he’d been glorying in the exquisite clasp of her body and shooting his seed deep into her womb without a thought to the consequences.
It hadn’t been a mistake, or an oversight. It had been sheer madness.
Getting off the bed, he shrugged into his robe, then scraped his fingers through his hair.
How the hell had this happened? He felt more out of control than ever now.
What if she actually got pregnant? He knew Issy. She would never consider an abortion. But he didn’t want a child. He knew what it was like to be an afterthought, an inconvenience, a mistake.
And why had he asked her to stay? By rights he should have been breaking the speed limit to race her to the airport even now, and then piloting the plane back to England to make sure she got whatever she needed to ensure there was no chance of a baby.
Temporary insanity had to be the answer. He slumped into a chair by the terrace table and frowned at the remnants of their aborted lunch. Although he wasn’t sure how temporary it was any more.
The woman was drivi
ng him nuts. In the last few days he’d become addicted to everything about her.
The fresh, sweet scent of her hair when he woke up beside her in the morning, the sound of her voice as she chatted away about everything and nothing, even the stubborn tilt of her chin and the compassion in those deep blue eyes when she had tried to insist he go to that stupid Christening.
He’d become so enthralled he’d gone to the office this morning just to prove he could. But the plan had backfired—because he hadn’t been able to stay away. And then he’d found her on the sun-lounger, her skin pink from too much sun, and he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her.
They’d nearly made a spectacle of themselves in front of Carlotta. And, while he’d found Issy’s outraged dignity amusing at the time, it didn’t seem all that funny any more.
But the worst moment had come when she’d announced she was going to book a flight home. He’d actually felt his stomach tighten with dread. And it had taken a major effort not to let the panic show.
He never got worked up about women. But he’d got worked up about her.
He walked towards the guest suite, steadfastly resisting the urge to join Issy in the master bath. He needed to take a break, because ravaging Issy senseless wasn’t turning out to be the cure-all he’d been hoping for.
He frowned as he entered the bathroom of the guest suite.
Maybe that was the problem. He wasn’t used to sharing his home with the women he dated, having unlimited sex on tap. As soon as the novelty wore off he’d be able to let Issy go with no trouble at all. And everything would be back to normal. Getting her out of his system was just taking longer than originally planned.
He reached for the shower control. A trip into town might be just what he needed.
He never would have believed it, but maybe you really could have too much of a good thing.
‘You want to go where?’ Gio’s fingers clenched on the Ferrari’s steering wheel as all his positive feelings about their afternoon out crashed and burned.
‘I have the address right here.’
He watched, stunned into silence, as Issy pulled the christening invitation out of her handbag and reeled off the address.
