Her Last Night of Innocence

by India Grey

  His chest felt as if it was imploding.

  Automatically he felt himself moving forward, so he could see past the forest of wires and tubes to the sleeping child. He was aware of the blood rushing downwards from his head, a roaring noise in his ears as he looked at his son’s face for the first time.

  It was like looking at himself. Like turning back the clock and seeing himself as a small boy.

  Until that moment the strongest emotions he had ever felt—apart from sexual desire—had been anger, frustration, humiliation. Those were the things that had fuelled him as a teenager and driven him to do the things he’d done. Bad things. Dangerous things.

  But this…

  This blew all of them out of the water.

  His fingers burned with the need to touch that smooth skin. It was slightly paler than his, Cristiano observed as a boulder of emotion hardened in his throat, but there was still absolutely no mistaking the boy’s Italian heritage. Gently, almost reverently, he reached out his hand and touched Alexander’s cheek.

  His skin was the softest most miraculous thing Cristiano had ever touched. Like his mother’s, he thought with a thud. The child stirred a little, his mouth opening as he gave a gusting sigh.

  Cristiano moved his hand away, not wanting to wake him. At the other side of the bed Kate jerked awake. Her maternal senses, on high alert, had set some internal alarm bell ringing, and her gaze instinctively flew to Alexander’s face. His head had rolled to one side, so he would have been looking at her if his eyes had been open, but he slept on, his expression utterly peaceful.

  Her heart swelled, and for a moment she was so groggy with sleep and poleaxed with love that she didn’t notice the dark, imposing figure standing on the other side of bed.

  And then he spoke.

  ‘He’s beautiful.’

  Shock jolted through her like forked lightning. Instantly she stumbled to her feet, her heart pounding.

  ‘Cristiano…what are you doing here?’

  Her mind was racing frantically. She could almost feel the adrenaline pumping through her, hot and stinging. It shimmered in front of her eyes like a heat haze as she watched him take a step forward towards the bed.

  In the sterile, utilitarian setting of the hospital his beauty had a terrifying and dangerous edge. His dark hair was dishevelled, curling over the upturned collar of a long black overcoat, and at least two days of stubble shadowed his jaw, but all of that faded into insignificance compared to the white-hot burn of emotion in his eyes.

  ‘I came to meet my son.’

  His voice was as cold and brittle as ground glass. Kate felt faint. A primitive drum-beat of panic shook her whole body, while her overwrought, sleep-deprived brain struggled not to give in to the terror that was closing in on her like icy water. Some automatic almost animal instinct to protect her child made her wrench her head up and look him in the eye.

  ‘You have no right to just walk in here…’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about rights.’ His voice was low, but it pulsed with tightly restrained emotion. His lips were pale, tightly compressed, his whole body rigid as though he was desperately fighting to maintain control. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Kate?’

  ‘I was going to.’

  She was too tired, too shell-shocked by the events of the past couple of days to think of anything beyond the immediate need to defend her corner. Her son. Cristiano’s arrival threatened to shatter the fragile shell that was containing her raw emotions and she was horrified by the strength of her longing to throw herself into his arms and let him kiss her into oblivion. She backed against the wall, putting as much distance between them as was possible in the small room and clenching her hands into fists.

  ‘When? He’s three, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I tried…’

  In the bed, Alexander gave another breathy sigh as he shifted position. As usual when he was waking up his small hand went to the drip in the crook of his elbow and tried to tug it out. Watching him, Cristiano remembered doing exactly the same thing after his accident.

  The arrow of agony that shot through his own arm now was far harder to bear than the pain had been then. Because it was his son’s pain and he could do nothing about it.

  Gritting his teeth, he looked away. Kate had moved forward, murmuring soothingly as she bent to brush the dark hair off the little boy’s forehead. The thin, metallic light emphasised the pallor of her unmade-up face, and the lines of anguish etched into it, but in that moment there was something so profoundly, exquisitely beautiful about her that Cristiano’s breath caught, and he felt a sensation like hot needles pricking the backs of his eyes.

  And then she looked up at him and her expression changed to one of wariness, like a cornered animal.

  ‘Please Cristiano, I—’

  ‘Mummy…’

  The soft whimper from the bed made her stop mid-sentence, but the way her eyes widened in panic told him all he needed to know. She didn’t want him there. So much for gathering her up in his arms, protecting her, he thought with savage bitterness. The only thing she seemed to want protection from was him.

  ‘I’ll go,’ he said roughly, stepping backwards towards the door. ‘But on the condition that you’ll meet me later to talk.’

  He thought for a moment that she was going to argue. He could tell that she wanted to. But in the end she said quietly, reluctantly, ‘My friend Lizzie is coming in this morning. She can stay with him for a little while. But not long.’

  ‘Mummy…’

  Alexander’s voice was stronger now, more insistent. He was struggling to sit up. Cristiano felt a visceral pull inside him.

  ‘An hour.’

  She nodded quickly, keeping her eyes downcast. ‘OK. An hour.’

  At the nurses’ station on the way out, the blonde who’d let him in was talking to another nurse. They stopped their conversation as he walked towards them.

  ‘You’re not leaving already?’ the blonde one asked, looking up at him from under mascaraed lashes.

  Cristiano managed a hard, twisted smile. ‘On the contrary—I intend to be around for a while yet. Perhaps you could give me the name of a hotel close by?’

  Kate stared at herself dismally in the mirror of the parents’ washroom.

  The fluorescent strip light flickered slightly, adding a further sinister element to the whole ‘horror film extra’ look she seemed to have inadvertently adopted, mercilessly showing up the greyness of her skin and the grease that darkened her hair. She looked as if she should be the one in the hospital bed, not Alexander.

  After a solid few days of sleep the difference in him was nothing short of miraculous. She should be over the moon—she was over the moon, she told herself wearily—it was just that his new-found energy brought a whole new set of demands that, in her strung-out and exhausted state, she wasn’t coping with very well. At the best of times his attention span was pretty short, but now, excited by the novelty of his surroundings, and bored from spending so long in bed, it was getting increasingly hard to distract him from his mission to yank out his IV antibiotic line and run around.

  She’d been glad when Lizzie had arrived—bringing a get-well present of a big, shiny book about racing cars—because it had meant the pressure was taken off her own frayed nerves a little bit. Although it had also meant it was time for her to face Cristiano.

  Her reflection in the mirror had turned a sickly shade of khaki now. She knew she ought to change out of the black dress she had been wearing since she’d left the chalet—now crumpled like an old dishrag—and attempt to do something to paint out the purple circles under her eyes, but what was the point?

  They were meeting to talk about Alexander, she reminded herself bluntly. She didn’t need make-up or attractive clothes to do that. As he’d said before she got on the plane, whatever they had shared in Courchevel was over.

  As she came out of the bathroom she was aware of a flurry of activity around the nurses’ station. At least five nurses were gathered
there—more than Kate had seen in all the time she’d been there—and the hospital smell of antiseptic and floor polish was overlaid with clouds of perfume.

  And in the midst of them all, lounging with deceptive nonchalance against the front of the high desk, was Cristiano. He had shaved since she had seen him that morning, but the brooding expression on his face made him look as dangerous and piratical as ever.

  She shivered, though whether from fear or desire she couldn’t say.

  He broke away from the cluster of blue-clad figures when he saw her, moving towards her with menacing grace.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  As they emerged through the wide glass doors into the outside world, Kate was instantly assaulted by the cold wind and the roar of traffic. Her footsteps faltered for a moment, and she had to resist the urge to put her hands over her ears to block out the barrage of noise.

  Or bolt back inside.

  Or bury her head in Cristiano’s broad, hard chest.

  Walking beside her, he seemed impossibly tall and strong, and Kate’s legs felt shaky just from being near him again. Why did he have to be so horribly attractive? It made everything in this nightmare so much more complicated, so much harder to think through rationally. His arm touched hers and she flinched violently away.

  ‘Relax,’ he drawled acidly. ‘It’s that building over there.’ Raising an arm, he pointed across the street to an imposing Victorian frontage several storeys tall. Flags hung above the entrance, and a doorman wearing a dark grey overcoat stood at the top of the steps.

  ‘The Excelsior?’

  Her heart plummeted. She had just about been prepared to face him across a table in some busy coffee bar, but the Excelsior was the most expensive hotel in the whole of Yorkshire. And the most intimidatingly exclusive.

  ‘I can’t go in there,’ she protested, almost colliding with him as he stopped to cross the road. ‘Both the bar and the lounge have really strict dress codes, and I really don’t think I’m quite—’

  All of a sudden it seemed that she was talking to herself. The traffic had slowed for him, and he was halfway across the road already.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said grimly as she caught him up. ‘We’re not going into the bar or the lounge.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I booked a room.’

  ‘No!’ She stopped in the middle of the road, unthinkingly stepping backwards in horror. ‘I came here to talk about my son. Did you think it would be that easy to seduce me into doing what you want?’

  A horn blared behind her as a taxi swerved to avoid her. Cristiano grabbed her arm, yanking her forward. His face was as hard and cold as marble.

  ‘Our son,’ he said, with a lethal softness that was totally belied by his iron grip on her arm. ‘And I haven’t decided what I want yet.’

  The doorman eyed her curiously as Cristiano led her up the steps. As the heavy doors swung shut behind them the outside world receded again. The entrance lobby was hushed and opulent—like a gentlemen’s club, Kate thought, looking nervously around while they waited for the lift, hoping someone else would appear so she didn’t have to share it with him alone.

  The doors slid open. It was empty.

  Casting one last desperate look around, Kate stepped in after him, pressing herself against the wall furthest away from him. Neither of them spoke. Why did all lifts have to have mirrors inside? she wondered miserably, trying not to notice the contrast between her hollow-eyed gauntness and his ravaged beauty. He looked exhausted too, but the difference between them was that he could still stop traffic—literally, as she’d just discovered. She just looked like a road accident.

  Her stomach lurched as the lift came to a standstill. Her thoughts raced, but like a cartoon character running over the edge of a cliff they led nowhere, leaving her waiting for the moment when she would simply plunge through thin air and crash to the ground. I haven’t decided what I want yet, he’d said. What did that mean?

  ‘After you. It’s the room right at the end.’

  She was shaking as she walked along the thickly carpeted corridor with its endless rows of doors. His hand was perfectly steady as he slid the key card through the reader.

  The room she walked into was ridiculously grand, decorated in the same ostentatiously opulent Art Nouveau style as the hallway downstairs. Its antique furniture gleamed in the light of the lamps that stood on every surface, and the warm air was heavy with the slightly sickly scent of lilies and freesias from the huge arrangement on the table by the door.

  Against such polished opulence Kate felt more faded and tattered than ever.

  ‘So…’ she whispered, touching the fleshy petals of a lily and keeping her eyes fixed on its freckled throat—anything to avoid looking at Cristiano, or at the huge and decadent bed behind him. ‘Let’s get this over with. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  He advanced towards her. His face was unsmiling and inscrutable, his eyes narrowed as he took hold of her wrist.

  Kate made a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and a whimper as ten thousand volts of electricity shot through her already shredded nerves. A torrent of desire instantly gushed down inside her, followed by an acid wave of shame.

  ‘Cristiano, please,’ she croaked, pulling her hand away and shrinking from him. ‘I can’t…I don’t want to…I mean—please…I thought you just wanted to talk.’

  He could shatter her brittle defences into splinters of matchwood with just one kiss. She knew that. And she hated herself for it.

  He jerked away from her, his eyes blazing with a cold fury. ‘I do. But you’re not in any fit state to discuss anything at the moment. We can talk later.’ Stepping past her, he pushed open a door to the right, his movements taut with restrained aggression. Scented steam curled around her, and she found herself looking into a beautiful marble-floored bathroom. In the centre stood a vast Victorian bath, steam rising gently from its surface.

  Irrational tears stung Kate’s eyes as she realised how badly she’d misread the situation. He had done the last thing she’d expected, and the thing she most wanted and needed at that particular moment. She swallowed painfully.

  ‘But I only have an hour.’

  ‘Today, maybe. But there’s always tomorrow, the next day, next week. I can wait.’

  Shutting the door behind her a second later, she leaned against it and closed her eyes, waiting for the frantic rhythm of her pulse to slow. She couldn’t help but wonder whether what he said was meant as a reassurance or a threat.

  Cristiano poured himself some coffee from the silver pot brought by Room Service and looked down onto the street below. A selection of newspapers lay neatly folded and untouched on the edge of the linen-draped tray, and behind him the bathroom door remained firmly shut. As it had been for—he checked his watch—just over half an hour now.

  One fingertip drummed an impatient rhythm on the rim of his coffee cup. She’d been so tired—what if she’d fallen asleep in the bath?

  An image rose up in his mind of her naked body, glistening with the scented oil he’d poured into the bath, sliding beneath the water, her bruised eyes closed. Impatiently he dismissed it as nonsense, but it was replaced by another image—this time of her in the hot tub in the chalet, her skin glowing in the fiery sunset, droplets of water running down her throat and onto her breasts as she tipped her head back to drink champagne…

  Instant arousal hardened his body.

  He wanted her. He wanted her as much now as he had in Courchevel, and the fact that she was the mother of his child only seemed to have added a kind of fierce intensity to his hunger. A hunger which she obviously no longer shared. His teeth came together in a taut grimace as he remembered the way she had shrunk away from him, flinching if he inadvertently touched her, looking at him as if he was some kind of dangerous criminal.

  She was an entirely different woman from the one who’d sat on the bed dressed in his shirt and t
alked to him in her soft, musical voice. The one who’d cooked dinner and then left it to go cold while she abandoned herself to passion, arching her back and crying out as she came, so that her voice echoed off the mountains.

  The bathroom door opened.

  Cristiano took a gulp of scorching coffee and set the cup down, using all his powers of mental self-discipline to refocus his thoughts and gain control of his body as he turned round to greet her.

  ‘Come and have some breakfast.’

  Somehow he managed to keep his cool smile in place. The huge hotel bathrobe seemed to swamp her. With her newly washed hair slicked back from her forehead and her face scrubbed clean she looked incredibly fragile.

  ‘I haven’t got much time.’

  Cristiano poured a second cup of coffee and pushed it across the polished surface of the table. ‘You have exactly twenty-three minutes. I won’t keep you any longer than that.’

  He couldn’t quite keep the edge of bitterness from his tone, and as she picked up the cup and looked at him over its rim he saw anguish flare in her eyes.

  ‘How did you find out?’ she said in a low voice, picking up a croissant.

  ‘You left the bag that you had at the party in the chalet. There was a letter inside.’

  Stopping in the act of spearing a curl of butter from the silver dish, she looked sharply up at him. ‘You had no right to—’

  ‘What?’ Frustration made him cruel. ‘Read it? It was addressed to me, so I don’t think that’s technically true. The question is, why didn’t you give it to me? Or even better—’ he gave her a twisted smile ‘—tell me what it said to my face?’

  Around the handle of her knife, her knuckles were white. For the barest moment her dark lashes swooped down, shuttering off her blue gaze for a second before she looked up at him again.

  ‘I was going to. I wanted to. That’s why I came to Monte Carlo—to the party. But you didn’t even recognise me.’

  His jaw was so tense he had to force the words out through gritted teeth. ‘That was hardly personal.’