by Tara Pammi
“I haven’t been sleeping well,” she added quickly, “and it’s all catching up with me. It feels like someone’s taking a sledgehammer inside my head.”
“Relax now,” he commanded in that voice of his.
As if she could ever relax in his presence. As if that relentless peal of her nerves could ever quiet.
She had no knowledge of how long he was at it, but God, the man could weave magic with those fingers. In more than one way if her memories were right.
Welcome heat streaked through her temples as his clever fingers pressed just the right amount in the perfect rhythm at all the right places. Up and down, back and forth. Faster and harder. “You’re really good at this,” she pointed out, her voice hoarse.
“Luca always had the worst kind of headaches growing up. He would...be at the piano for days, inhales books on so many different subjects, not sleep through nights at a time, then have raging headaches for days after. It was hard to watch him struggle with it so I learned a few techniques to ease it.”
Every time his fingers swooped down over her nape, sparks tingled. Languor filled her blood. “Where were your parents?” she asked and then realized she’d never heard any of the siblings mention them. Then or now.
“My father was not fit to be called one, much less a decent human being, and our mother,” his voice tempered here, “for years, she had her own problems.”
“What about Antonio?”
“Antonio is old-school. He thought Luca was pretending for attention and told him to toughen up.”
“You didn’t?” she asked, her curiosity flaming. Not that it had ever been dormant when it came to this man.
“I knew how much Luca suffered, for all the outrageous tricks he played. I had to do something.”
She opened her eyes and found the penetrating gray of his. Neck stretched over the leather seat, there was nowhere else for her gaze to land.
The white collar of his shirt was a stark contrast against the dark skin of his throat. He would feel like tempered steel and rough silk, she knew, her fingers curling around the hand rest.
Without the formal clothes, he should have looked more attainable. He didn’t. It was the confidence in his eyes, the sense of authority that clung to him like a second skin.
He seemed as out of her orbit as he’d been seven years ago.
“How old were you?” She somehow managed to get back on track.
“Fourteen.”
Fourteen years old and he’d been so thoughtful about his brother’s pain.
Another small facet of his personality and yet all Alex felt was like she was tunneling through darkness. Her relentless awareness of his masculinity and his shabby treatment of her seven years ago only counted against him.
“Tell me about the accident,” he prodded softly.
He peppered her with specific questions, asking for numerous details, about her injuries, recovery period, right down to the names of the nurses who’d attended her.
With her muscles turning into mush, Alex gave over to his deep voice, and those magical hands. Told him of the weeks she spent in the hospital, seeing Izzie’s face burst into tears at the sight of her in the stark bed, of wondering if she’d have use of her hand again.
“Your hand?” He walked around her seat immediately. “What happened to your hand?”
He lifted her left hand in his bigger one and studied the crisscross of scars across the puckered skin in the back. The pithy curse that fell from his mouth almost distracted her from the gentle, almost reverent touch.
Bluntly cut square nails. Long, tapered fingers. Rough calluses. She studied his hands to her heart’s content. He traced the veins on the back of her hand, sending a tingle up her arm.
“It got crushed in the impact. The nerve damage was far too extensive. But they said continued physical therapy will help.”
She tried to pull her hand away, suddenly feeling self-conscious. But he didn’t let go. “Was that the hardest part?”
Alexis looked down at their joined hands, her throat swelling. With his soothing tone and gentle caresses, he made her long for something that she couldn’t even define.
The worst offender was mistaking that she interested him. That he was as aware of her as she was of him.
“The hospital food.”
A soft smile curved his mouth, changing the entire vista of his forbidding features. Like one ray of sunlight that pierced even the thickest, densest darkness.
A carefree, laughing Leandro.
It was as novel as it was attractive. Even back then, her first impression of him had been how serious he was.
“Is Isabella like you? Strong and stubborn?”
Smiling, she nodded. “Actually, the hardest part was the sheer amount of insurance paperwork that I had to deal with. But Justin was a great help with that.”
It was like she’d seen the show about predators on National Geographic. Just an infinitesimal tightening of those features—head cocking, muscles bunching in his shoulders. Regrouping before attacking. “Who is Justin?” He didn’t quite meet her gaze.
“He’s my friend Emma’s brother. Moved back last year.”
“A good friend then?”
Something in his tone tugged but the pounding in her head easing, Alex couldn’t care. “We’ve been on a few dates this past year,” she said, thinking back on how strange it had been to step out without Izzie. How hard it had been to accept Justin’s help knowing that he liked her and she...she didn’t feel anything like that about him.
Having known Justin for a long time, her parents, however, had all but started planning their wedding.
“A boyfriend then?” He stood up and moved behind her again, his hands moving to her head again as if they had never left.
When she looked up at him, a frown marred his brow. “Izzie likes him, too,” she said, parroting her mother.
“And you, Alexis? Do you like him?” The question was silky smooth but the speed with which he asked made her heart race.
“It’s hard to not like Justin. Especially when I found last year how quickly men run in the opposite direction because I come with a child in tow.”
“What do you mean?”
“Emma decided I needed to get back out there and took out an ad on Forever.com. Forget forever, apparently, being a single mom means I don’t even get a first date. This one creep who did contact me said it’s good to have proof that I was fertile.” She cringed. “Fortunately, Justin proved I wasn’t quite as plague-ridden for men as I thought.”
“You miss excitement in your life then?”
“Will you count it against me in this test if I say yes?” she said teasingly.
“A test?” He sounded so innocent that she laughed. “To what end?”
“To gauge my credibility as a mother and guardian before you settle money on Izzie?”
He did really laugh then. It was a deep, husky sound that wrapped around Alex like a warm blanket. “That is a cynical statement. Even an insult, I think, as it implies I care more about my money than a newly discovered daughter.”
“I didn’t say that,” she pointed out. “I have no idea what kind of man you are, Leandro. Except for how you treated me. So if there’s an insult here and there in the way I speak to you, then it’s not intended.”
“Then we have to learn about each other.”
“Do we? Will you answer anything I ask of you?”
He smiled again and it stole through Alexis, warming her up from the inside, infusing her with a deep sense of well-being. Like one of Izzie’s sweet and tight cuddles. Like the smell of the first cup of coffee in the morning. Like the crisply cold air in Central Park after a night’s snowfall in winter.
“Are you bracing me with that question or yourself?”
&
nbsp; How did he see through her so easily?
She was still chewing on that when he spoke. “Has it been hard? Doing it all on your own?”
Tension, she didn’t know from where, swirled in the air all of a sudden. A million answers crowded in on her and Alex held her breath.
“For as long as I can remember, I worried about Luca and then Valentina.” Deep and low, his voice washed over her. But even more shocking was how readily he spoke of his past. “Still, only about their mental health and happiness. Not actual tangible things like their safety, finances and other things. Not to mention—”
“But that sounds like you had to grow up too fast.”
He shrugged. Clearly, he hadn’t seen it as a loss. “I did what anyone would have done. I could not let Luca or Valentina suffer my parents’ negligence.”
“Don’t you regret that you missed out on a carefree, reckless kind of childhood then?”
Whatever reply came to him, he cut it off and looked down at her. “You sound wistful, Alexis. Are you sorry that you haven’t lived recklessly enough?”
Pure taunt sizzled in that question.
He was thinking about that night, Alexis knew as surely as the pulsing beat of her heart. “Or the fact that having Isabella curtails you from it now?”
Refusing to take his bait, Alex looked away. Her confusion about him only rose. Made worse by her stringent awareness of him.
He’d looked after his brother and sister since he’d been a teenager. Even that week in Italy, he’d come to the villa because Valentina had slipped on some steps and twisted her ankle.
Within an hour, there he’d been—a hauntingly beautiful and masculine figure, concerned about his sister.
“Before the accident,” she said, trying to cover up her confusion, “it was more a sense of never having a moment to breathe. If it wasn’t the day-to-day things at the store, it was Izzie getting sick. If it wasn’t Izzie, it was some health issue with my dad. If it wasn’t him, then wondering about finances...” She pulled in a deep breath. “After the accident though, yes, it felt hard. And not just because of the panic attacks.”
“Panic attacks? Has Isabella seen you have one?”
That he immediately thought of Izzie both warmed and alarmed Alex. “No, she hasn’t. It’s just fragments from the accident, that sense of my life careening out of control. I had them only a couple of times but they made me determined to ensure Izzie’s future.”
Not even with Emma had she admitted how much it had all become for her before the accident. And yet, sharing bits and pieces from his own past, Leandro had put her instantly at ease.
It was almost as if he’d decided to make peace with her. Did he think they could forge a friendship of some sort? Would they be like those amicable partners who shared a child?
Because as good as that sounded ideally, Alex couldn’t fool herself that she could ever be just friends with Leandro. Not if she wanted to remain sane.
Even now, headache relieved, a sleepy, languorous flush claimed her.
Her jacket off her shoulders, she was awash in pure, skittering sensation.
Then those supple fingers stole under her T-shirt, pushed under the straps of her bra and pressed into the knots in her shoulders. Alex groaned, every inch of her thrumming in a molten kind of way.
It had been so long since she’d been touched by such strong, masculine hands that made her aware of her own fragility.
A desperate yearning took hold of her. She turned her cheek toward the rough hand. Rubbed it against the hair-roughened wrist. Shivers spewed everywhere.
She could just imagine those hands everywhere on her skin, teasing, taunting, drenching her in—
The utter stillness of his form, the rough texture of his hand against her cheek, so incredibly good and yet so alien, jerked Alex back into coherence.
Breath hitching in and out roughly, she pushed off her seat.
Skin tight over angular features, Leandro stared back at her. Not a smidgen of the confusion or the stringent awareness that vibrated through every inch of her reflected in his own gaze however.
“Thanks,” she said jerkily, wrapping her hands around herself. “I’m...much better.”
“Are you in love with this... Justin, Alexis?” he said, without heeding the distance she’d put between them.
Senses still raw from the sensations coursing through her, shocked at how much she wanted his hands on her, a choked breath fell from her lips. The resolute lift of his chin, the implacable look in his eyes...that pushed his question to sink through. “You think I came to Italy because I’m hitching up with a man and want to fob off Izzie on you?”
Jaw tight, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and tugged her closer. “No. As shocking as it is, it seems you’re an exceptional mother and—”
Oh, the man made her so mad. “Why is it so shocking? That I had sex with you and liked it makes it impossible that I’m also a good mother? If that’s the kind of attitude you’re going to show around Izzie about her mother—”
He covered her mouth with his palm. Thoughts fragmented. Sensation zoomed. It was heat all over, stinging, unrelenting. From his palm, from his lean frame standing so close to her. Beneath her skin, in her muscles.
“I would never disrespect her mother in front of Isabella. And I said it the wrong way.”
“Your timing sucks, that’s what Valentina said to me.” She had been so keen upon the previous night, she hadn’t realized what that meant. “Seven years ago and now. With you...what did she mean? What was going on when we met seven years ago?”
“It is irrelevant, Alexis.”
“To me, you mean?” she instantly challenged him, head cocked. “Way to put me in my place, Leandro. But this stopped being about me and you six years ago.”
The question about seven years ago was a sharp reminder to Leandro of how easily Alex could distract him. Of how easily one innocent touch could morph into this craving.
“My wife had—”
Alex clutched his shirt, her knees threatening to give out under her. “Your wife... God, you were married?”
“No! I would never... No, she had passed away recently when we...met.”
“How recently?”
“A month to the day that night.”
A month...the leaden weight on her chest eased enough for her to breathe.
Until she met his gaze, saw the self-loathing that settled into every line of his face.
“Rosa died after a long struggle with cancer and it took me mere weeks to forget that.”
Shame crawled through her insidiously, polluting her memory of that night, painting her with that same loathing she heard in his voice.
She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. God, why had she asked? “If you were the bloody saint your sister calls you, you shouldn’t have come near me, you shouldn’t have touched me.”
“You think I didn’t try?” He dragged her to him in a violent explosion of temper. “From the moment I laid eyes on you... Maledizione!” Fingers dug into her arms. Hard chest grazed her breasts. Her body came awake as if someone had thumped on her heart.
Excruciatingly, violently awake.
The hard length of his legs cradled hers, shaping and molding her muscles. “From the moment I saw you telling Tina not to be a spoiled, whiny brat, from the moment I saw you laugh with Luca...your face...you haunted me.” Fingers splayed over her jaw, he caressed every inch of her face with his eyes.
Was he remembering or did he still want her?
“Rosa suffered with cancer for three years. Through endless chemo cycles, I never even looked at another woman. I never even felt the urge.
“But every time I looked at you, there it was in your eyes. Your attraction to me, so guileless, so honest... The more I tried to st
ay away from the villa, the more times I found myself there. The more I told myself to leave you alone, the more I found myself near you.”
Leave it alone, Alex. Every self-preserving instinct yelled at her. But she didn’t heed it. “So you’re saying that I asked to be hurt? That I didn’t deserve a speck of the respect that you had for your wife? That I deserved to be slept with and then discarded—”
He covered her mouth with his finger. “There was no future for us. There was no us. Not even an affair. I did what I did to make sure you understood that.”
“I would’ve preferred knowing that you weren’t a heartless, ruthless jerk who used women and then abhorred them for wanting the same as you. I would’ve preferred to be treated as a person.
“I would have preferred knowing that you were grieving, that you—”
“No, Alexis! Do not spin theories about me. Do not make me out to be anything more than I am.”
“Your arrogance in dictating to me what I should think of you is astounding, Leandro.” She faced him, her heart pounding. “What scares you so much? That I might think you’re a man with a conscience? That I might think you liked me and that you wanted me that night as much as I did you? That there was a connection between us that threatened all your principles?”
A muscle jumped in his clamped jaw. His head cocked, infinitesimally, as if something had come at him.
Gaze absolutely implacable, he looked at her. Slowly, Alex could see any hint of emotion driven out by his sheer, ruthless will. Could see the man of the past few hours retreat. Could feel the intangible wall rise up between them.
A shiver climbed up her spine. Like a warning to brace herself.
* * *
“What I did that night was a betrayal to Rosa. I obviously misjudged the effect of prolonged celibacy, especially when thrown in front of an irresistible temptation. I saw her waste away month after month and you...you were everything she couldn’t be at the end.
