Dubai had turned it on and as the cars took off, the roar that went up combined with the engines and there was a new love in Matteo’s life.
Motor racing.
He looked to Abby; she was lost to him for the next couple of hours, her focus on the race, and Matteo was fine with that.
He’d apologise later, he decided, glad that she had drawn the line.
He could understand now her obsession with the sport. Neck and neck took on a whole new meaning when it went for two hours and Abby never broke her focus, not once.
They were going to place, Matteo thought as he glanced at the times and the top four came into the second-last lap.
Better than that, they might hit the podium.
Pedro overtook Evan just as they came into the final lap. The Boucher team was a split second behind Lachance. Pedro was biting at Hunter’s heels though, just waiting for that chance to take him.
And then, when Hunter refused to give him that chance, Pedro made his own.
Young, brave and foolish, at the final turn he took Hunter!
The roar from the Boucher team drowned the engines, and even Abby stopped working. There was nothing she could do from here except scream her lungs out.
Pedro gunned it.
He simply took the engine that she had designed, the car that she had built, the driver that she had nurtured and the team that should lose right into the history books, and Abby just stood there screaming as Pedro took her baby home.
They had won!
Not only that, Evan had overtaken Hunter, who had struggled to right his car from Pedro’s brave manoeuvre.
The noise was deafening but all Abby could hear was silence.
She was being thumped on the back, lifted up; she was screaming but she could not feel or hear a thing.
And then she saw Matteo, right there in front of her.
For the first time today, she properly saw him. He was wearing black jeans and a black shirt. Dark, dangerous and unshaven, the only safe thing about him was that those full blood-red lips were smiling.
At her.
‘You did it,’ he said, moving that final step into her space so that his voice was all she could hear.
Matteo didn’t even get what she had done—that she had finally beaten Hunter—but right now she didn’t even care about that.
‘I’m sorry about the other night,’ he said, his eyes intent on hers.
‘I am too,’ Abby admitted, to her own surprise.
Elation enabled honesty and with those words she admitted the truth she dared not, even to herself—she was sorry that she had said no.
And then there was no space between them. They were wrapped in each other’s arms and the mouth she had wanted from the night they had met was on hers, crushing hers. Had she imagined a kiss over the years it had always been a gentle one.
This was not that.
It was consuming, blatant and very fierce and, unthinking, her mouth opened in delicious reflex. His tongue was straight in, and yet she, too, sought his, like some exotic sword fight, where both were winners as they partook in the deepest, sexiest kiss.
God, he was shameless, Abby thought. He removed her cap and his hand pressed her head further in so she could feel the skin shredding on her jaw. Then he took the energy of their kiss and didn’t just sustain it; Matteo heightened it. He was hard and pressing into her and she could feel every delicious inch. His hands were now travelling down to her bottom and pulling her into him. Yet, rather than pull back, Abby was just as on fire and as sexed up as he.
And then they remembered the rules and pulled their mouths rather than their bodies back.
‘When we win...we kiss...’ Matteo said.
She could live with that.
They were breathing so hard just staring at each other.
‘When we place, we kiss,’ he said, kissing her cheek as if it were her mouth and that made her laugh. ‘And if we lose,’ he continued, making out with her ear, ‘then we have to commiserate...’
He was still hard and still there, nudging her stomach, and there was the beautiful absence of fear, even when he pulled back and looked right into her eyes.
‘What does it feel like to win?’ Matteo asked.
‘Better than sex,’ Abby said, no longer scared to throw a flirty line.
And she expected him to laugh or to haul her closer in for more of a feel of his erection but instead he looked deeper into her eyes.
‘Then someone hasn’t been doing you right,’ Matteo said.
He intended to remedy that later tonight.
CHAPTER FIVE
HUNTER SAW THEM.
He got out of his car and looked over and saw the woman he had left lying bruised and bleeding on a marble bathroom floor, and then pissed all over, now happy and free.
‘Whoa!’ The reporters shouted in several languages as Hunter kicked his car and threw his helmet down to the ground and then stormed off.
Abby and Matteo didn’t see a thing.
They were too busy laughing as Kedah informed them that Matteo was now the owner of an extremely temperamental horse!
‘Her name is Abby,’ Matteo said but she deliberately missed the inference.
‘I’m not temperamental.’
Or maybe she was, because Abby, who didn’t cry, almost did when she watched as Pedro stood in first place on the podium.
‘I almost want a glass of champagne,’ Abby admitted as Pedro sprayed the crowd with the same.
The Carter team was in second place and Evan grinned and waved and took the dousing.
Hunter attempted to do the same.
It was a good day.
A brilliant day.
And the world was waiting for the press conference.
Oh, they were an arrogant lot, Matteo thought as the drivers came in and took their seats.
Pedro sat there grinning; so, too, did Evan. Even Hunter had recovered from his hissy fit and that assured smile was back on his face.
‘I have to congratulate Pedro...’ They were the first words out of Hunter’s mouth.
He was charming, said a reporter standing to the side of Matteo and Abby.
‘Narcissists generally are,’ Matteo drawled.
He didn’t like him.
‘I lost my focus for a second,’ Hunter conceded, ‘and Pedro took his chance.’
Hunter made it sound like he had lost rather than that they had won and Matteo felt Abby tense beside him.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ Matteo said, without looking over to her. ‘You know you won.’ He then listened as a reporter asked Hunter a question.
‘What about your reaction after the race? You seemed pretty angry.’
‘Ha.’ Hunter shrugged and then spread his hands, holding his palm to the sky. ‘I guess I’m not used to it...’ And then he put down his hands and looked straight over to Matteo as he spoke on. ‘I tend to get there first.’
Matteo didn’t know that he had hackles till then, yet he felt them rise and he watched as Hunter’s gaze moved to the woman who stood beside him.
‘That was for me...’ Abby said and Matteo frowned because her voice was slurred.
His newly discovered hackles were still up and Matteo put an arm around Abby.
‘It’s okay.’ He didn’t know what was going on but he could feel Abby’s distress and he tried to reassure her.
But all she could hear was Wah-wah-wah...
The rest of what Matteo said she lost.
There was a roaring in Abby’s ears and her chest felt closed and she could feel that her lips were tingling.
‘I can’t breathe...’ she gasped.
‘Abby...’ Matteo said, but then she lost track of his deep smoky voice again and she made one last desperate plea.
‘Don’t let Hunter see me like this.’
Matteo got her out of the press conference and to a horrid plastic seat, where he sat her down and told her to cup her hands over her face. ‘You’re having a panic attack.’
He was just calm.
On the outside.
Matteo never let anyone glimpse his fear.
He went over to a guy who was walking past and tipped the man’s burger into his hand and returned to Abby with the paper bag. ‘Breathe into this...’ Matteo said and he just kept on talking in his lovely deep voice and telling her she would soon be okay. ‘It will pass soon,’ he assured. ‘My sister Natalia gets them and they pass. I promise.’
He just sat with her the entire way through it. Abby was sweating and white and her eyes were wide open and looking into his as she breathed in and out of the paper bag and then moved it aside.
‘He lost,’ Abby said and, with a sinking feeling, Matteo knew, he just knew, that they weren’t talking about Hunter losing the race today.
Matteo felt sick; he actually did but he just looked back at her.
‘He lost a race...’ Abby said. She could not do it in full sentences. ‘I was ending it. We’d only gone out a few times. We’d never...’
And he didn’t know what to say.
‘He got so angry.’
Matteo just didn’t know what to say.
‘I told my father. He said not to report it.’ She shook her head. ‘You see, I was drunk...’
And now Matteo did know what to say.
It was his first rule.
‘Then he should have seen you safely home.’
‘I was in his hotel room.’
No, he would not let her go there.
‘Then he should have checked into another or put you to bed and slept in the chair,’ Matteo said. ‘There’s no excuse for what he did.’
‘It was so violent.’ Abby relived it just for a second and she watched Matteo blink, not once but three times, and then he responded.
‘He should have treated you like glass,’ Matteo said.
‘It was my first time...’
‘Crystal glass, then,’ Matteo amended. ‘And that was not your first time—that’s not sex.’
‘It’s the only sex I know.’
And then her panic came back because they were coming out of the press conference. ‘He can’t see me like this.’
Yet she couldn’t stand.
‘What if we look like we were having an intimate moment—is that okay?’ Matteo gently checked and she nodded.
He just wrapped her in his arms and she saw the yellow leather of Hunter walking past and she heard the increasing thud, thud, thud of Matteo’s heart and his breathing firing into rapid. Abby felt the tension in him and she knew that Matteo wanted to drop her and run and do what her father should have all those years ago.
For her sake he didn’t.
But then, at the last moment, when he recalled Hunter’s “I tend to get there first” line, Abby felt the rip of tension in him.
‘Please don’t,’ Abby begged when she felt him move to run but then his arms came tighter around her.
‘I won’t.’
He wanted to though.
Matteo now could barely breathe.
Abby could feel him struggle to contain himself. Matteo even with a hangover in fierce heat did not break a sweat, yet he was swimming in adrenaline and his shirt was drenched and his breathing was coming fast and shallow.
‘I might need to borrow that paper bag...’ Matteo said.
Still he could make her smile.
And she waited for the questions to start but when her breathing was normal and she peered out from his chest, the only thing Matteo asked was if she wanted some water.
‘Please.’
He went off to a vending machine and got her a drink and Abby drank it down thirstily, and Matteo was right; the panic had passed.
‘Better?’ Matteo asked.
‘Much,’ Abby said, though she was now incredibly embarrassed at what she had told him.
‘So, where do you want to go now?’ Matteo asked.
‘Go?’ It was the last thing she’d expected him to ask her but Matteo squatted down in front of her and looked right at her when, embarrassed by her revelations, she could barely now look at him.
‘We’re still celebrating your win.’ Matteo was insistent. He looked briefly over to the team, who were all on their phones and buoyantly posing for the cameras and Kedah was with them. ‘I’m guessing that you don’t want to go out with that lot...’
‘No.’
‘But you won,’ Matteo said. ‘And you have every day since that bastard did what he did, and do you know what? You deserve to celebrate.’
‘I do.’
‘So, go and congratulate Pedro. Tell him it’s covered tonight, whatever he wants.’
‘Er, I don’t know if you know what you’re agreeing to.’
‘You’re talking to me.’ Matteo smiled. ‘I know what a wild night is. Seriously, with the bet I put on I’m even more loaded than usual. I’ll get Kedah to go along with them. He runs wild but he’s a good sort. He’ll keep an eye.’
Matteo didn’t, Abby thought, look at her like she had two heads; he just chatted away as if she hadn’t just told him her darkest shame. ‘You’re sure?’ she checked.
‘Of course,’ Matteo said. ‘Kedah will cover it and then I’ll see him right.’
He went to the vending machine again and bought a cola for himself and another water for her, and then Abby did what she properly wanted to do but hadn’t had a chance to until now!
‘Pedro!’ She went over and gave him a hug.
‘How good was that?’ Pedro grinned. ‘Hunter’s spewing.’
‘I know that he is. You were amazing, Pedro. I couldn’t believe it when you took him. I still don’t know how you did that.’
‘I’ll tell you in detail over dinner tonight,’ Pedro said.
‘Actually, I can’t make dinner. I’m going to go out and chat up our sponsor,’ Abby said. She saw a little flare of relief in her crew that she wasn’t coming out with him, though they did their best to hide it.
‘Oh, come on, Abby,’ Pedro insisted but she shook her head.
Yes, they all got on, but it was a very male world and she saw the tiny smiles as they realised that they wouldn’t have to behave as they always did around her.
And that thought brought a lump to her throat.
But these were nice tears that she was holding back.
They all did behave around her; she already knew that but she fully realised it then.
Abby’s team really were amazing.
‘Go and have the best night,’ Abby told them. ‘It’s all covered, whatever you want. Kedah will pick up the tab and Matteo will cover it.’
Pedro frowned. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes! Now go and have a brilliant night!’ Abby said. ‘God knows you deserve it but,’ she warned, ‘remember that we’ve got an official breakfast tomorrow.’
‘Tell Matteo,’ Pedro said, ‘that I’ll take him out in the car next time.’
‘I shall.’ She gave Pedro another hug and then she turned and went back to Matteo.
‘Okay, where are we off to?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I do.’ Matteo had just decided. ‘First, though, we’ll swing by my hotel and I’ll get changed.’
‘I need to get changed too.’
He looked down at her oily bottle-green overalls. ‘Absolutely, you do!’
* * *
‘Buy a dress here...’ Matteo suggested as they pulled up at his hotel. ‘There are plenty of boutiques for you to choose from.’
‘No, I bought a dress ages ago and I promised that if we ever got on the podium...’ Abby shook her head. ‘I just never expected it to be tonight.’
She simply couldn’t believe it.
Podium would have been brilliant—it would have shown that they were serious contenders—but to have come first was beyond her wildest dreams!
For others it was a nightmare—the bookies were panicking, the other teams were regrouping. Tonight, only the Boucher team was floating on cloud nine.
&
nbsp; As they got out of his car Matteo was about to ask if she wanted to come up and have a drink while he changed but then he decided against it. Now her comment that first day, about their meeting being held in the restaurant rather than his hotel room, made sense.
God, he could kick himself now for the other night but instead he saw her to a seat and gave her a smile.
‘I shan’t be long.’
Abby sat in the lovely foyer as he went and changed and as she did she saw that she had about fifty missed calls, some from her father, and loads of texts offering congratulations. Where had they all been prior to this victory? Abby thought.
She turned her phone off and then she looked up as a man who had been there for her came out of the elevator. He was wearing black pants and a white shirt and dark tie but he was carrying the jacket to his suit, and he’d shaved.
For her.
And she remembered their kiss and her response and there were just too many feelings for Abby to explore right now, and so she chose to just do her best to enjoy the night.
Matteo had ditched his car and they were driven to her hotel and, instead of sitting in the car while she changed, he came into the foyer.
‘My turn to wait,’ he said.
Matteo sat down as she headed off to the elevators but he watched as Abby was called back by the concierge and signed for something and then, a few minutes later, she was handed a parcel and took the elevator up.
Abby stepped into her room.
She was dizzy both from elation at winning and her revelations about Hunter but it was the kiss that had taken place between her and Matteo that had her slightly breathless with recall.
Being kissed by Matteo had been amazing, showing her a side to herself she hadn’t known existed.
Did it even matter, now that she’d told him the truth? That there had been no one before or after Hunter.
She thought about what he said, how Hunter didn’t count, and she liked that. Even if it made her a twenty-seven-year-old virgin.
She took the dress out of her wardrobe and, given today’s events, decided that the dress was too much.
Much too much.
It was seductive, provocative and sexy and it was everything Abby had hoped that she might one day be able to be.
Not yet though.
She was scared of her own sexuality, scared that if she dressed up tonight, then somehow Matteo might think she was leading him on.
Di Sione's Innocent Conquest (The Billionaire's Legacy) Page 6
