His heart thumped hard and fast in his chest. His gut turned. “A night.”
“A night?” She shook her head angrily. “See? A night – this night. If chance hadn’t brought me to your room, you would have come and gone and I’d have been none the wiser.”
“I believed that to be what you wished.”
She sighed softly. “So did I.”
“I have thought of you often since then.”
She didn’t know if she believed him, but the words were some balm to her overwrought nerves. She settled back in the seat and scanned the street outside. “Do you need to say anything else?” She asked after a few kilometres had been eaten up by the bus. As it travelled across London, and out of the congested areas, it was moving with increased speed. When he didn’t answer, she pointed to the yellow buttons buried in the grey bars. “Because you are getting further and further away from central.”
He shrugged. “I’m seeing you home.”
Emily did laugh now, her face a study of amusement. “You’re seeing me home?”
His face was not smiling. It was serious and it was inexplicably furious. “Yes.”
“Ummm,” she made an effort to squash her laughter. “Why?”
His smile didn’t meet his eyes. “Stop asking questions to which you know the answers.”
Her stomach rolled; her insides clenched. “I live with my brother, remember?”
He nodded. “Yes. You sleep on a sofa bed.”
She refused to let his words embarrass her. But the truth was, she was embarrassed. Mortified, in fact.
The bus journey took over an hour, and much of it was completed in uncomfortable silence. Emily was burning with things she needed to say to Sabato, but now that she was faced with him, she wasn’t sure what they were. All she knew was the she’d missed him desperately. Seeing him again was an agony, because she knew it couldn’t last.
CHAPTER SIX
The bus drove off, puffing out a cloud of fog in its wake. Emily watched it go, then reluctantly glanced at her companion.
Sabato had looked bizarre enough on a bus. On the side of the road at The Elephant, he looked positively out of place.
“You do that every day?” He asked, his tone laced with something Emily didn’t understand.
She blinked up at him and then nodded.
“There is not a faster way to get to the hotel?”
She bit down on her lip and turned towards her home. She started walking and he fell in beside her. “There’s the tube, but I hate it.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Being underground. And all those people. I like to be able to see. To breathe. To read my book and look out at the city scape.”
His look was scathing. “That took an hour and seventeen minutes.”
“Swiss precision?” She asked, only half-joking. His watch, she knew, was some kind of Rolex.
“Why are you acting as though this doesn’t matter?”
“I’m not saying it’s not annoying,” she responded finally, letting her flippant tone drop. “But it’s not your business.”
He compressed his lips. “You work for me.”
“I work for someone who works for someone who works for someone who works for you. I think.”
He stopped walking, and his dark eyes bore into hers. “Emily …” It was a plaintive sound of frustration.
Emily lifted her chin. “What?”
“This is where you live?” He looked around the area, a few blocks from where the bus had deposited them. It was, admittedly, not the best street, but the rent was cheap and she knew enough of her neighbours to always feel safe.
“What’s wrong with it?” She challenged.
Sabato breathed out loudly and then shook his head. “Let us see.” He waved his hand down the street and commanded, “Lead the way, Emily.”
Emily wondered, later, why she had done as he said. She would have been within her rights to refuse him. Only saying ‘no’ to Sabato wasn’t something that came easily to her. And so she nodded tersely and resumed the well-worn journey to the one-time council flats she called home.
She paused at the door, waiting for Sabato to say something. But his face was thick with thunderclouds. She pulled her keys out of her bag and searched for the security access. Sabato’s angry presence was unnerving though, and her fingers weren’t steady. His silence only added to her stretched nerves. Finally, she clasped her fingers around the brass key and inserted it into the door. It opened with a good heave.
“The building repairman has been meaning to look at that for a while,” she murmured, annoyed that her voice sounded apologetic.
Sabato was a silent figure. He walked beside her, emanating disapproval as they passed overflowing mailboxes and proceeded down a hallway that was illuminated only intermittently, owing to a flickering fluorescent light tube.
She pressed the button for the lift and avoided meeting his eyes. When the doors opened, she went to step in, but his arm crossed against her body. “Is it safe?”
He was only half joking. If the building maintenance was so lax as to leave a door almost immovable and a light bulb unchanged, how regularly was the lift tended to?
Emily smiled at him with false sweetness. “Maybe it isn’t. Perhaps we should say goodbye here.”
He cast her a dark look and then released her, following her into the confines of the elevator.
In the small space, Emily was much more aware of him. Dangerously so. She swallowed past the lump in her throat and stared straight ahead. It was the first time she’d noticed the slight smell of urine in the cramped quarters. Sometimes, vagrants entered the lobby and sheltered in the apartment’s foyer.
Emily had been embarrassed, and now she was miserable. At his penthouse, they were still two creatures from different worlds. But now, they were just so incredibly different that Emily knew he would never want to see her again. Her stomach lurched as the doors opened.
Her expression was bleak when she turned to face him. “Please just go, Sabato.”
He stared down at her, a muscle flexing in his jaw. Their eyes clashed, and something shifted between them. “Which one is yours?”
She closed her eyes against the certainty that he was about to come into her life in a way she’d never expected. She tried to recall the state of the flat when she’d left that afternoon.
“Sabato,” she said quietly, and blinked her eyes open, to stare at him head on.
“Which one?” He repeated firmly.
She turned around and walked slowly down the corridor. As if a delay might weaken his resolve. It didn’t. They reached the door to her apartment and he was still beside her, impossible to fathom, and difficult to ignore.
Emily knew she could refuse to let him in. That she could cause a scene and tell him he had no place in her life. But a large part of her was sparking back to life, after three months of being frozen with despair. And that core of her being was desperate for whatever time she could share with Sabato Montepulciano.
The door pushed inwards easily. She’d oiled the hinges herself a few weeks earlier. She reached around the timber frame for the light and flicked it on. Apprehensively, she shifted into the apartment. Sabato followed, his eyes lancing her as he walked passed. But he did not look at her for long. He turned his focus to her home, scanning the basic but clean kitchen, the simple sofa bed with the depression in its centre, the television set she’d picked up from Argos and walked all the way home. The lamp she’d been given when the French couple next door had moved out.
He finished the slow inspection of the lounge and then looked at her again. His expression was becoming darker by the moment, and Emily’s stomach was in knots. He moved to the doorway that led to Andrew’s room. Emily padded behind him, but not too close. She didn’t want to see his cool rejection for a moment longer than she needed to.
Now he knew. He knew just how far out of his orbit she really was, and he would leave her alone. He might even wish he’d never bee
n with someone like her – someone so broke she could barely make ends meet. Mortification was unfurling in her gut. She couldn’t bear his silence.
She walked quietly back to the kitchen and flicked the kettle on. While it boiled to life, she stared straight ahead, at the lemon yellow tiles delineated by off-white grout.
The first clue she had that Sabato was behind her was the sound of the refrigerator opening. She spun around and watched as he crouched down to survey the contents.
“What are you doing?” She said finally, relieved to have remembered she had a voice, and every right to object to his invasion of her personal space.
He stood then, and shut the fridge door with more force than was necessary. His eyes were darkly accusing.
“This is where you live.” Another statement. Yet it seemed to demand an answer.
She tilted her head forward. “As you see.”
“Dio Mio,” he swore loudly, and slammed his palm into the kitchen bench. “This, here? This is where you come to, after you’ve worked so hard all day? This is your haven? Your home?”
His mood was grim, and yet she smiled. “I wouldn’t call it a haven,” she confided honestly. “But it’s home for now.”
His breathing was ragged. He thrust his hands onto his hips and looked at her long and hard. “I want you to pack a bag, and come back to the hotel. With me.”
Emily furrowed her brow in confusion. “Um, no.”
“I think you misunderstood. I’m not asking. Pack a bag. You have just as long as it takes for my driver to arrive.”
Emily’s ears had turned pink. She could feel the heat that was spreading all over her face. Indignant rage, it burned her insides with its flickering wrath. “Who the hell do you think you are?” She spoke quietly, with an undercurrent of fury.
His smile was both cold, and humourless. “I am your boss.”
She shook her head. “Not really.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Emily. If I want you fired, you’re fired. I am just as much your boss as if I worked directly over you.”
She took a step towards him, hoping that it might aid her in understanding him better. “Sabato,” her voice was husky. She shook her head and tried again. “Why would you even say that?”
He closed his eyes and ran a hand over them. “Just… pack a bag.”
Another step towards him; it brought no greater comprehension. “I can’t.” She bit down on her lip, and with her eyes, she begged him to drop this ridiculous proposal.
“Where are your things?”
“Stop!” She snapped, her eyes widening as she realised the depth of his intention. “You are behaving like a madman. You have no right –.”
“I have every right,” he interrupted swiftly. “You don’t think what we shared gives me a right to care about your accommodations? To want to provide something better for you?”
Her balance was off. She felt like she was looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. None of the colours were fitting together properly. “No,” she said after a long beat had passed. “Three months ago – that’s twelve weeks – we slept together. That’s all that we shared. It was nothing. It meant nothing. It certainly doesn’t mean you have any reason to interfere in how I live my life.”
He opened his mouth to speak but she shook her head angrily. “And I need you to go. Now. My brother’s band rehearsal will be finishing. He’ll be home soon and the last thing he needs is to see a strange man in our home.”
“I don’t think you understand, Emily. I’m not going anywhere. Not until I know that you are living in a better fashion than this.” He waved his hand around the apartment, focussing on the drab curtains and threadbare carpet.
“How I live is not your problem.” She straightened her spine and eyeballed him without blinking. “And it’s very rude of you to come here and criticise my life.”
He laughed, and it tore through the tension. His eyes sparkled, when he laughed, and his chest moved. Emily watched him, her wariness holding itself around her like a cloak.
“Yes. Perhaps I am being rude,” he agreed finally, taking a step of his own towards her. “I am also being domineering. It is how I am. I think you will find my stance impossible to shift me from.”
Emily looked up at him slowly. “But why?”
“Because. You are better than this.” He reached for her hands and lifted them to her chest. He clasped them between their two bodies, and stroked her palms. “You are better than this.”
She was caught in his gaze, powerless to look away. “Do you really believe where someone lives matters? That the quality of their possessions defines the kind of person they are?”
“No.” His eyes were like black diamonds in his face. “I believe you are kind and good, and that you should be comfortable and content. I know for a fact that I can improve your life with a click of my fingers.”
“And then what?” She said, shaking her head.
“Meaning?” He prompted, truly at a loss as to what she meant with her interruption.
“What will I owe you? What will you expect in return?” Her blue eyes were clouded by pain. “Would you expect me to open my door and my bed to you every time you were in London? To be permanently available to you, because you had ‘improved my life’, as you put it?”
The idea of a quid pro quo had never entered his head. He opened his mouth to say as much when she carried on with her outraged tirade. “Because this place mightn’t be much, but I’m proud of it. And I would rather live here than become your… your… London mistress. Or whatever.” She crossed her arms across her chest and glared belligerently across the room.
Sabato had built his fortune by reading people. He knew enough of Emily’s circumstances to find himself empowered with all the ammunition he needed to bring her to heel. And yet he held off, momentarily, on using it. Emily had, after all, provided him with a far more fascinating angle to play.
“You wouldn’t like being my London mistress?” He asked, teasing her gently.
Emily’s cheeks flushed. She shook her head, but that pulse point beneath the pale skin at the base of her neck was shivering visibly. He lifted his fingers to it now, his expression faintly mocking as he felt the excitement vibrate beneath his touch. Yes. He would get back to the most persuasive argument shortly, but for now… he lowered his head, so that their lips were separated by only a tiny fissure in space. “You wouldn’t like me to sneak into your bed, late at night, and take you in my arms?” Emily’s eyes beat closed, and her body swayed towards him. He had no idea how long they had before they would be interrupted, but he had been starved of her for too long to care. He wrapped his arms around her body and lifted her, holding her tight against him. He kissed her, and he carried her, into the lounge room.
It was not the most salubrious environment, but he could not wait. Sabato removed her pants without breaking the kiss, and then freed himself from the confines of his clothing. He did not bother to undress, only to slip himself from the fabric, so that he could enter her swiftly.
“Sabato!” She cried out, digging her fingernails into his back as her body convulsed with the pleasure long denied to them. She wrapped her legs around his waist and sobbed into his chest.
He was not capable of controlling his reactions to her. She was too beautiful and too perfect for him. In that moment, he knew that he would give her the world if it kept her in his life. An apartment and sex might be all he could offer her, but he would make it the best damned apartment and the best damned sex if it meant he could feel this again and again.
They exploded simultaneously; two frantic, wretched souls, bursting with lust and passion, burning brighter than volcanic ash.
Emily held onto him, while her breathing returned to its usual cadence, and then she pushed him away. Her apartment looked the same, but now it had been added to the list of casualties in her life. The places that would always and forever remind her of Sabato Montepulciano.
Her eyes were haunted as she walked past hi
m, and reached for some clean underwear and jeans. She pulled them on, aware of his silent watchfulness and powerless to formulate a sentence.
“Pack a bag, Emily,” he said quietly. When she angled her head to look at him, he was back to his normal self. Business-like. Efficient. Untouchable.
She swallowed and shook her head. “I’m not interested in what you can give me.” Except his heart. Only his heart.
She was digging in her heels. With every moment that passed, she was becoming more and more intent on doing the opposite of what he wished. Not just what he wished, he corrected internally, but what he knew to be the right course of action. What was the point of having billions at his disposal if he could not improve the life of someone as deserving as Emily?
“I would never have said you are selfish,” he drawled finally, his eyes dark in his face.
“Selfish?” She glared at him and then walked back to the small kitchen. She poured boiling water into the mug, staring at it while the colour from the peppermint tea bag bled through the cup. “How the hell do you figure that?”
He followed behind her, and stopped just inside the doorway. He crossed his arms over his toned chest and reclined casually against the wall. As though they were discussing something banal and convivial, like the shade of yellow used to decorate the kitchen.
“Is this really how you want to raise your brother? Is this what you think your mother and stepfather would have wanted?”
Indignation burst inside of her. “How dare you?” She put the tea down on the bench and braced herself, pressing both hands into the chipped laminate surface.
“Look at this place, Emily. It is fit for drug dealers and whores. You said your brother is seven years old?”
Her mouth opened and closed as the unjustness of his accusation drained through her awareness. “Get out.”
“Not without you,” he said firmly. For the first time since arriving in her apartment, he felt like his plan might not have been wise. Like there was a very real risk that she might firmly stand her ground. He ignored the doubt. It did not serve him. “Would you really make a decision to raise Andrew here, when I am offering you a whole new life?”
Seduced by the Italian Tycoon: From the first moment they met, she was powerless to resist him Page 9
