A Shadow of Guilt

by Abby Green

  Gio ruthlessly pushed aside the memories that threatened to rise and choke him. That way lay madness and even worse memories. Drawing on the icy veneer he’d surrounded himself with for years now, Gio pushed an impatient hand through his unruly hair. He was aware that he wasn’t perhaps as clean shaven as he could be, but he just cursed softly again and strode forward and towards the towering Corretti edifice.

  Valentina looked blankly at the ladder in her tights. She’d come by way of a ladder in her tights when she’d been all but knocked down by Alessandro Corretti, the groom. Instead of greeting a triumphant married couple after their wedding ceremony, it had been just the groom who had burst into the main reception room like an exploding tornado. She, and a tray of delicate hors d’oeuvres had gone flying, and with Alessandro blissfully unaware of the carnage left in his wake, he’d barrelled on.

  As she’d scrabbled around on the ground picking up the detritus before anyone else saw it, her assistant Sara had appeared and bent down to help, hissing sotto voce as she did, ‘The wedding is off—the bride just jilted the groom, right there in the church.’

  Valentina had looked at her—a sick feeling blooming in her belly. And then she’d heard the sudden flurry of approaching hissed whispers. The stunned and shocked guests were obviously making their way to the reception.

  Before she’d had time to figure out what this all meant, Carmela Corretti had swept into the reception hot on the heels of her son, with a face like thunder. She’d spotted Valentina and roughly hauled her up with a hand under her arm. ‘The wedding might be off, but you will proceed with this reception for whoever turns up, do you hear me?’

  She’d let Valentina go then and looked down that elegant nose. ‘As you’ll be looking after less than a full guest count, I won’t be paying you for services not rendered.’

  It had taken a second for her meaning to sink in and then Valentina had gasped out loud. ‘But … that’s …’

  Carmela had cut in ruthlessly. ‘I will not discuss this further. Now instruct your staff to tend to the guests who do arrive. I won’t have anyone say that we turned them away.’

  In shock, Valentina had done as instructed, far too mindful of Carmela Corretti’s influence should she defy her. And as she’d watched the staff rushing around serving amongst the arriving shell-shocked guests, as if nothing had just happened, Valentina had felt incredibly shaky with reaction.

  She couldn’t afford to spill champagne on a haute couture gown or drop a tray into someone’s lap so she’d retreated to a quiet corner for a moment to try and steady her nerves and process this information. And the fact that Carmela wasn’t going to pay her! The ladder in her tights was the least of her worries … who on earth would now touch the caterer associated with the wedding scandal of the year?

  Gio took another full glass of champagne from a passing waiter’s tray. He’d lost count of how many he’d had but the alcohol was having a nicely numbing effect on his brain. He’d walked straight into the debacle of the century. Expecting to find his cousin’s family jubilant and gloating with their new merger of power, he’d instead found small huddles of guests in the sumptuously decorated reception room, all whispering excitedly of the runaway bride.

  The unfolding scandal was so unexpected that it defused much of his simmering anger at the thought of having to play nice with his family. He had caught a glimpse of his older half-sister, Lia, but he’d instinctively shied away from talking to her, never quite knowing what to say to the tall serious woman who’d been brought up in his grandparents’ house after her mother, their father’s first wife, had died.

  Thinking that surely he couldn’t be expected to stay here now, Gio decided that he’d more than done his duty and slugged back the champagne before putting the empty glass down. He made his way out of the main function room into the corridor and passed by an anteroom where the wedding band were setting up and doing a sound check. Gio shook his head in disbelief—clearly the word hadn’t reached this far yet, or perhaps his formidable aunt Carmela wasn’t going to let a runaway bride stop her guests from dancing the night away?

  Something suddenly caught Gio’s peripheral vision. He stopped in his tracks. He was passing another room now, a store room. He could see that it was the figure of a woman sitting on a chair in the empty room, surrounded by boxes and other chairs piled high. Her head was down-bent, glossy chestnut hair caught up in a bun. Shapely legs under a black skirt. A white shirt and jacket. Slim pale hands clasped on her lap.

  As if she could feel the weight of his gaze on her, her head started to come up. Déjà vu was so immediate and strong, Gio nearly staggered back from it. No, he thought, it couldn’t be her. Not here, not now. Not ever. She was only in his dreams and nightmares. Cursing him. Along with the ghost of her brother.

  But now her head was up fully and those glorious tiger eyes were widening. It was her. The knowledge exploded something open, deep inside him. Something that had been frozen in time for seven years. He saw colour leach from her cheeks. So much more angular now that her teenage plumpness had disappeared. So much more beautiful. He could see her throat work, swallowing.

  She stood up with a slightly jerky move. She was taller than he remembered, slimmer and yet with very womanly curves. The promise of the burgeoning beauty that he remembered had been truly fulfilled. So many things were impacting Gio at once that he had to shut them all down deep inside him.

  He had alternately dreaded and anticipated the possibility of this day for a long time. He couldn’t crumble now in front of her. He wouldn’t allow himself the luxury.

  He walked to the entrance of the room and totally redundantly he said, ‘Valentina.’ And then after a pause, ‘It’s good to see you.’

  Valentina was in shock. More shock heaped on top of shock. Without even realising she was speaking out loud she said, ‘You’re not meant to be here.’ The sheer force of my will should have kept you away. But she didn’t say that.

  Gio’s mouth turned up on one corner in a tiny movement that wasn’t quite a smile, ‘Well, my cousin is, was, the groom so I have some right to be here.’ He frowned slightly. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Valentina’s brain wasn’t working properly. She answered almost absently, ‘I’m the caterer.’

  Gio was so much taller and broader than she remembered. Any hint of boyishness was gone. He was all stark angles and sinuous muscle and power. The suit hugged his muscular frame like a second skin. The white shirt and white bow tie made him look even darker.

  His hair was still messy though, giving him a familiar devil-may-care look that rang bells somewhere dimly in Valentina’s consciousness. His eyes were a light brown and a wicked voice whispered that she knew very well they could look green in certain lights.

  She used to watch him and her brother for hours as they’d egged each other on in a series of daredevil stunts, either on horseback or on the mud bikes Gio had had first on his father’s property, and then later, on his own property. But by then they’d been proper adult motorbikes and he and her brother had relished their death-defying races. She remembered the way Gio would tip his head back and laugh; he’d looked so vitally masculine, his teeth gleaming whitely in his face.

  She remembered turning fifteen and seeing him again for the first time in about four years, because he’d been living abroad in France, building up his equine business. He’d returned home a conquering hero, a self-made millionaire, with a bevy of champion thoroughbred horses. But that had had nothing to do with how she’d instantly had an altogether different awareness of him. Her belly would twist when she saw him, and then there were the butterflies, so violent it was like feeling sick. Her gaze had been shamefully captivated by his tall rangy body.

  Much to her everlasting mortification she’d tagged along on her brother’s visits to Gio in his new home near Syracuse whenever he’d been home from college, during his long summers off. Gio had bought a palatial castello complete with a farm, where he’d installed a state-of
-the-art stud and gallops. He’d been in the process of doing up a nearby run-down racetrack which by today had become the famed Corretti racetrack where the eponymous internationally renowned annual Corretti Cup race was held.

  Gio had caught her staring once and she’d been so mortified she’d been red for a week. She hadn’t been able to get out of her head how he’d held her gaze for a long moment, a slow smile turning up his mouth, as if something illicit and secret had passed between them. Something that scared her as much as it had exhilarated her.

  He had a beautiful face, sculpted lips. High cheekbones and a hard slashing line of a nose. A strong chin. But something in his demeanour took away any prettiness. A dark brooding energy surrounded him like a force-field.

  Gio lifted a hand to point to her hair and said, ‘You have something … just there.’ It shattered her memories and brought her back to the present. He was pointing above her right ear and Valentina reached up and felt something wet and sticky and took her hand down to see a lump of viscous orange salmon caviar.

  And then it was as if the deep baritone reality of his voice made the bells ring loud and clear in her head. He looked devil-may-care because that’s what he was, and that attitude had led directly to her brother’s death. For the past few moments she’d been protecting herself from the reality that he was here, in front of her, and now that protection was ripped away.

  She remembered. And with that knowledge came the pain. The memories. That lonely grave in the graveyard. Seven years of an ache that didn’t seem to get any better, only fade slightly. Until it caught you unawares and the wound was reopened all over again. Like right now.

  How dared he stand there and talk to her as if nothing had happened? As if civility could hide the ugly past. Anger and something much darker bubbled up inside Valentina. A kind of guilt, for having remembered another time for a moment; disgusted with herself she strode out of the room and straight up to Gio. She clenched the hand that held the remnants of the once-perfect canapé and looked up at him, focusing on the blazing incinerating anger of grief, and not something much more dangerous in her belly when she realised how tall he was. ‘Get out of my way, Corretti.’

  Gio flinched minutely as if she’d slapped him. He could remember in vivid recall how it had felt that day when she’d punched him in the chest. And he welcomed it now. For a few seconds when she’d looked stunned and not angry, he’d thought that perhaps, with time, a mellowing had taken place. But then he mocked himself—the pain of losing Mario still as fresh as it had been on the night he died. And the shock to cushion that blow had long gone. Now there was just the excoriating and ever-present guilt.

  Valentina was looking up at him, her eyes glowing gold and spitting. She hated him. It was in every taut and tense line of her body.

  She gritted out, ‘I said get out of my way, Corretti.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  GIO STEPPED BACK, his voice was stiff. ‘I’m not in your way, Valentina.’

  Valentina didn’t move though. She was vibrating all over with anger. It was like a tangible thing.

  ‘You need to go. You need to leave this place.’

  A small flare of anger which he had no right to feel raced up Gio’s spine. His mouth tightened. ‘As this is my cousin’s wedding I think I have a right to stay.’ He didn’t bother to mention he’d been about to leave.

  ‘The wedding is off, or hadn’t you heard?’ Valentina supplied with a measure of satisfaction.

  Something Gio didn’t understand made him bullishly stand his ground. ‘The reception is still on, or hadn’t you heard?’

  He saw her face pale and instinctively put out a hand to touch her but she flinched backwards, disgust etched all over her. ‘Don’t touch me. And yes, I know the reception is still on—half a reception, that is, which your aunt expects me to cater for without handing over one euro in payment. Your whole family are poison, Corretti, right to the core.’

  Gio wanted to say, Stop calling me that, but instead he frowned and said, ‘What do you mean? She’s not paying you?’

  ‘No,’ Valentina spat out, hating that she’d blurted that out, or that she was still even in a conversation with Giacomo Corretti.

  ‘But that’s ridiculous, you should to get paid regardless.’

  Valentina laughed harshly and forced herself to look at Gio. ‘Yes, call me old-fashioned but it is customary to be paid for services rendered. However, your aunt seems to feel that in light of the unfortunate turn of events, she’s absolved of the duty of payment.’

  ‘That’s crazy …’ Gio raked a hand through his hair, fire entering his belly. He was fixing on something, anything, he could do by way of helping Valentina and he knew it. The anger at his aunt’s heavy-handed and bullying tactics was a very easy target to focus on.

  He started to stride back towards the main function room and then he heard behind him, ‘Wait! Where do you think you’re going?’

  Gio turned around. The sight of Valentina standing just feet away with a stray lock of glossy silky hair caressing one hot cheek sent something molten right into his gut. He was shocked all over again that it was her, here, and he was captivated, momentarily forgetting everything.

  He felt as if he’d been existing in a fog and had suddenly been plunged into an icy pool. Everything was bright and piercingly clear, the sound check of the band nearby almost painful in its intensity.

  And something was happening in his body. After five years of strict sensory denial, it, too, was surging to life. Blood was rushing to every vein and artery. Becoming hard.

  Valentina was oblivious to this cataclysm going on in Gio’s body. She pointed a finger at him. ‘I asked you where you think you’re going?’

  Gio sucked in a breath and felt dizzy—as if someone had just spiked the air around him with a mind-altering drug. He struggled to focus on what she’d asked and not on the lush curve of her mouth, the perfect bow of its shape. He hadn’t even been noticing women for so long and now this—it was like an overload on his senses.

  ‘My aunt …’ he managed finally, focusing carefully on the words. ‘My aunt, I’ll tell her she can’t do this to you.’

  He turned again, as much to put some distance between himself and Valentina as anything else but wasn’t prepared for when a hand gripped his arm, pulling him around. She was suddenly too close. Gio all but reeled back and Valentina dropped her hand and looked him up and down scathingly. ‘You’re drunk.’

  He could have laughed. He knew very well that after the shock of seeing this woman again he was no more drunk than she was.

  Gio forced control on his wayward body, but he was tingling all over. He still felt the touch of her hand like a brand.

  ‘I’ll go to my aunt and tell her she—’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ Valentina interjected hotly. ‘You’ll do no such thing. I do not need you to fight my battles for me, Corretti.’

  Something snapped inside Gio and he gritted his jaw. ‘It’s Gio, or have you forgotten you once called me that?’

  Valentina’s face was carved from stone. ‘No, I haven’t forgotten, but apparently you’ve forgotten why I’d never call you that again.’

  The cruelty of that statement nearly felled Gio but he stayed standing. ‘No,’ he said faintly, ‘I haven’t forgotten.’

  Their eyes were locked, amber with hazel. For a moment there was nothing but simmering emotion between them, so strong and tangible that when one of the band members started to walk out of the room they’d been rehearsing in, he took one look at the couple locked in silent combat and retreated back inside, closing the door softly.

  ‘I’ll pay you—I’ll cover whatever my aunt should be paying you.’

  Valentina reared back, her hands curled into tiny fists, two spots of hectic colour on her white cheeks. ‘You?’

  Gio steeled himself.

  ‘I wouldn’t take your filthy money if it was offered to me on a silver platter.’

  Of course, he conceded bitterly, she wou
ld have nothing to do with him, or his money, no matter how hard he’d worked for it.

  Valentina pointed a finger at her chest then and Gio swallowed hard and fought not to let his eyes drop to those provocative swells underneath the plain white shirt. ‘I am a professional and I’ve been hired to do a job and that’s what I’m going to do. I will not let your aunt jeopardise my reputation by running out now. And I will not take your guilt money, Corretti.’

  Guilt money. The words fell on him hard. This time Gio didn’t correct her use of his name. For the first time he saw the bright sheen of tears in her eyes and something inside him broke apart. The memory of her stoic back that day by the graveside was vivid. But he couldn’t move or say a thing. She wouldn’t welcome it.

  Suddenly the doors to the main function room opened and a young girl appeared with a worried face beside them. ‘Val, there you are. We need you inside, now. Mrs Corretti is looking for you.’

  Valentina’s chin came up but she looked at Gio. ‘Thanks, Sara, I’ll be in in a second.’

  She waited until the girl had left and then she said to Gio with icy emphasis, ‘I think the least you can do is leave. And I sincerely hope never to have to see you again.’

  And then she walked by him, giving him a wide berth as if afraid to even come close to touching him. Gio heard the doors open and close behind him. Her scent lingered on the air, light and musky. Her.

  I think the least you can do is leave. Gio hadn’t needed much of an excuse before. And he certainly didn’t need one now. The past seven years had just fallen away like the flimsiest of sets on a stage to expose all of the ugliness and pain that was still there.

  As much as Valentina never wanted to see him again, he echoed that sentiment right at that moment. He didn’t think he could survive another encounter with her.

  A week later …

  ‘Who did you say?’ Gio’s voice rang with incredulity. Was he hearing things? He shook his head and focused again on his PA, a comfortably middle-aged woman called Agata.