Good for her, Matteo thought. It was Ellison’s do the Friday after the race and he was tempted to reply to the email with two choice words.
Yet, he was as complicit in the attempt to get her to the function, wearing the necklace, as her father was.
Even Giovanni had called wanting an update and Matteo had been unusually terse with the old man.
Matteo knew that he had to speak properly with his grandfather.
Yes, he was angry.
Abby deserved better—someone who would deliver on the relationship front and, according to his lineage, Matteo never could. Even if by some miracle he could negate that fact, he knew that the moment Abby found out about the origins of his supposed interest in her team, it would end them.
Checkmate.
And so the day she got to Monte Carlo he fired one very rapid text.
Hope preparations are going well. I’ll try to make it for the practice race.
And then he fired another text to Pedro, reminding him what they had discussed, and the best that Matteo could do was hope Pedro would take his request seriously.
Pedro did.
* * *
Abby hated being here.
She woke up and let out a tense breath as she checked her phone and of course Matteo hadn’t called.
Only it wasn’t just Matteo’s imminent arrival that had Abby in knots.
Matteo had been right; Hunter was playing mind games because he’d changed hotels again and two days before the race had checked into the one that the Boucher team were staying at.
Yes, it was a different hotel than the last time she had been here, but just being in a hotel in Monte Carlo already had Abby on edge.
There was a knock at the door and it was the Perpetual Pedro wanting to go down to breakfast.
‘I just want to run through a few things,’ he said.
‘Sure.’ Abby nodded. ‘I’ll meet you down there.’
‘I’ll wait.’
‘How’s Bernadette?’ Abby asked, because last night when Abby had headed back early from dinner, Bernadette had said that she had a headache and had joined Abby on the walk back to the hotel. Bernadette had even come up to Abby’s room for a cup of tea and a chat about the press conference tomorrow and the practice race.
‘She’s doing great,’ Pedro said.
‘Good.’
Abby left Pedro in the corridor and grabbed her bag and then they headed down to the restaurant.
‘Ready for the press conference?’ Abby asked when they had been shown to their seats, and Pedro nodded but then he looked up and smiled, and Abby saw why.
Matteo was here.
‘Hey!’ Pedro said.
‘How are you?’ Matteo asked him.
‘I’m confident,’ Pedro said. ‘Actually, I think I might take breakfast upstairs. Is that okay?’ he checked with Abby and, as she nodded, it dawned on her then the reason Pedro or Bernadette had barely left her side.
‘Did you tell him to watch out for me?’ Abby challenged as Matteo took off his jacket and took a seat.
‘Yep.’ He met her angry gaze. ‘I’m not going to apologise.’
‘What on earth did you say to him? You didn’t tell Pedro...’
‘Of course not,’ Matteo said. ‘I just told him that I’d had a couple of choice words with Hunter and that I didn’t trust his temper. Pedro agreed with me!’
‘He did?’
‘Yep. He knows what a bastard he is.’
‘I’ve been managing fine for the past eighteen months...’
‘You weren’t winning then,’ Matteo pointed out.
He looked terrible, Abby thought.
There were black smudges under his eyes and she guessed he hadn’t shaved for the best part of a week.
‘What time’s the press conference?’ he asked.
‘Eleven.’
‘I’ll stay for that and then I have to head off. I’m catching up with Kedah and we’re going out on a friend’s yacht. I’ll be back tomorrow for the race but then I have to fly out straight after.’
‘Matteo.’ Abby took a deep breath. They hadn’t even slept together and they were sniping and avoiding the other and so she told him what she had been building to since the morning he had left her hotel room.
‘Can we just take it back to business?’
He closed his eyes and then nodded.
‘You don’t have to avoid me,’ Abby said. ‘Look, as much as you turn me on, I don’t want to sleep with you.’ She just said it, not knowing that the waitress was standing beside her waiting to take the breakfast order and then he laughed and said that he’d like his eggs sunny-side up please as Abby just about face-planted the table.
And then, just like that, they were friends again, but even as they smiled, there was, though, for Abby, something more that needed to be said. ‘Matteo, thank you for the other night. I mean that. I have no regrets—it was amazing but...’
‘There’s always a but.’
‘Not really. I know you don’t want to take things any further and I get that. I respect that...’ She gave him a smile. ‘I don’t have to like it.’
He liked that she was honest.
‘I need more though.’ Abby told her truth. ‘I’ve waited a long time. Or rather I’ve been so messed up that I’ve missed out on an awful lot and I just want, well, when I do sleep with someone, it has to mean something.’
‘I understand.’
‘So thanks for the offer of a sex lesson but I shan’t be taking you up on it.’
Matteo let out a breath of both relief and regret.
Relief that they were finished with.
Regret that they would never be.
‘Are we good?’ Abby checked and he took her hand and gave it a squeeze.
‘All good.’
* * *
And so they stood, side by side, but not holding hands, as the stars of the show took their places.
It was the deciding race tomorrow and Evan, Hunter and Pedro were all a chance.
The winner would take all.
But though the desire to win burnt bright, it was no longer driven by revenge. There was next year, Abby thought.
It didn’t all have to be now.
She wanted next year. More than that, she wanted the team she had built to all be together, but then a journalist asked Pedro the question that was on everyone’s lips.
‘Are the rumours true about you signing with the Lachance team next year?’
Pedro looked over to Abby and she gave him a smile and a very slight nod, letting Pedro know that he could answer with the truth—they had made a deal after all.
‘I’ve been approached.’ Pedro shrugged.
‘And?’
‘In fact, they asked to speak with me yesterday,’ Pedro continued, ‘but as I said to them—their cars are as dated as their drivers.’
There was a small stunned silence at the obvious provocation and then the cameras started flashing and Hunter got up and walked out.
‘Game on,’ Matteo said.
The practice race went well and then Matteo disappeared to get ready for his night on the town. Abby had a lot of work to do on the car and so it was Perpetual Pedro who hung around.
‘Go!’ she said to Pedro when it was close to seven. ‘I don’t need a babysitter and you need to sleep.’
‘Abby...’
‘Pedro,’ she warned. ‘I have every right not to walk in fear and I’m exercising it. Go.’
Reluctantly, Pedro did and Abby worked till after ten, fine-tuning the engine till she was as happy as she could be with it and then she took a cab back to the hotel.
She was ready simply to go to bed and to do her best not to think of what Matteo was up to now that she had let him off the hook.
Abby climbed out of the cab, wondering if she could be bothered to get room service. The moment she walked into the foyer though, there was Matteo walking with Kedah, both looking like the two playboys they intended to be tonight.
&
nbsp; Clearly they were just heading out.
Matteo had shaved and was wearing a suit and had that arrogant, rich gleam in his eye and he was, Abby knew, about to exercise his right to get royally laid.
‘Abby?’ He frowned as she passed them and he saw that she was alone. ‘Where’s Pedro?’
‘In bed, where he’s supposed to be before a race!’ Abby angrily answered. ‘Don’t ever mess with my team and tell them what to do. You were supposed to be hands off, remember!’
‘I was just...’
‘Well, don’t! It’s not your job to look out for me and neither do you have the right to interfere with Pedro’s build-up to the race.’
A car was waiting for them in the forecourt and as Kedah climbed in he waved to Matteo to get a move on.
‘Your friend’s waiting for you,’ Abby said. ‘Have a great night, Matteo.’
She just brushed past him, loathing herself for the anger and jealousy that had shot from her lips. He didn’t deserve any of that. They had agreed to no-strings sex and she had been the one that had backed out.
What the hell was he supposed to do? Abby thought as she closed the door to her room and stripped off her greasy overalls.
She ran a bath and, as it filled, sat at her desk, trying to type up the adjustments she had made to the car but the figures all blurred before her eyes. There were emails she had to answer about order of events for after the race but all she could think about was Matteo and where he was right now. Then she suddenly remembered the bath.
Thank God for the overflow, Abby thought, and then she climbed in the overfull bath and cried.
For him.
For them.
And for the wish that she had at least slept with him.
Once.
Her first because, if not technically, Matteo would have been her first, and the way she felt about him it felt right that it be him.
It was his lack of feelings for her that hurt.
She lay in the bath and let the hot water relax her and over and over she topped it up and tried not to think about Matteo and Kedah in some sordid hot tub.
Bastard!
Except he wasn’t.
He had been completely lovely with her.
She got out of the bath and it was close to one and she knew that she had to be up at five and was just about to take her robe off and climb into bed when there was a knock at the door.
And despite brave words that she was fine without a bodyguard, Abby felt a prickle of fear.
Matteo was out, Pedro would be asleep. She knew that because he was always in bed by seven the night before a race.
The knock sounded again and she was sweating, Abby realised. Her legs wouldn’t move and she just stared at the door, too frozen to go to the peephole and see who it was.
‘Abby?’
She just about dropped in relief when she heard Matteo’s voice and wrenched open the door.
He saw her terror.
‘I thought...’
‘Sorry, sorry...’ He took her straight in his arms. ‘I should have called.’
‘I thought you were on the yacht.’
‘I couldn’t get it up.’
He was so crude and yet he made her laugh.
‘I didn’t even try,’ he admitted and then, because he was holding her, because they had missed each other, for even as his mouth moved to hers Abby was reaching for him and they kissed intensely, hurriedly, before logic moved in, before they thought of the many reasons they should not. His arm curled around her waist as he pulled her in. The fear that had gripped her turned to angry passion and as she kissed him back Abby pushed Matteo’s jacket down and it fell to the floor. She didn’t care about tomorrow when she could have tonight. ‘Abby...’ She was opening the buttons to his shirt, her mind made up, yet Matteo refused to give her even a moment to regret and he peeled his mouth away. ‘I need to tell you something.’
‘You don’t.’
They were panting, both breathless, and she didn’t need to hear now that he didn’t love her and never would.
‘Abby,’ Matteo said. ‘You do deserve better than this.’
She did, because he was hard and his hands were bunched into the gown so as not to tear it off and they could be over and done with—Abby up against the wall, he could be taking her now—but he would not allow another morning between them like the last one, where the air was awkward and the conversation wooden. He would not do that to her.
‘We need to talk.’
‘Said the playboy.’ And then she saw that he was in as much of a mess as she, Abby realised. ‘Matteo, I don’t need to hear it. I know we’re going nowhere.’
‘And I’m trying to tell you why it has to be that way.’
It was possibly the most responsible decision in his life and regrettable at that because there was so much energy and want between them that it felt almost criminal to pull back. His shirt was undone and damp from her wet hair but he took a seat beside the desk as Abby straightened out her robe and then took a seat at the desk in front of her laptop. ‘It’s like a doctor’s visit,’ he said and she smiled but they were both hurting so much that their smiles didn’t last. ‘I know you should be asleep but I needed to say this. I really do have to leave tomorrow straight after the race so if I don’t say it now...’
‘Are you drunk?’
‘A bit.’ He nodded. ‘Look, you know how everyone says, “It’s not you, it’s me”?’ he said and now Abby really smiled.
‘Well, in this case it is me,’ she said. ‘I have more baggage...’
‘No,’ Matteo interrupted. ‘It really is me.’ He took a breath before continuing. He had never fully had this conversation in his head, let alone with another. ‘I made a decision a few years ago...’
‘You don’t have to do this, Matteo,’ Abby said because she could see his discomfort and reluctance to reveal more of himself.
‘I want to though,’ Matteo admitted. ‘I know that you’ve got baggage and I don’t want you thinking that my reluctance to get involved with you had anything to do with what’s gone on between us, or that what’s happened to you in the past has any bearings on my choice. You’re right, you should hold out for someone who can give you all that you deserve and I truly can’t. I don’t want a relationship.’
‘I know,’ Abby said, yet there was this tiny part that hoped one day he might change his mind.
He answered it there and then.
‘Ever.’
There wasn’t even a sound as that little flame died; she just silently acknowledged its passing.
‘My father had a lot of affairs,’ Matteo said. ‘I don’t even know if you could call them affairs. Just one-night stands, parties, drugs, alcohol...’ He closed his eyes as he had to the drama all those years ago, but then he had been lying in bed listening to the fights; now he was doing his best to block out thoughts of a beautiful future with Abby. ‘You never knew what you were going to get,’ Matteo explained. ‘I never knew who would be there in the morning—Mom, Dad, neither. Sometimes, for days on end it was just the nanny. Really, the older ones looked out for the younger...’ He wasn’t explaining this very well. ‘I always knew that in the morning they might not be there. One morning they weren’t but this time it was different. My grandfather was there as well as other relatives and outside there were reporters. But I knew already—I used to sleep with the radio on, I liked the voices and the music—I’d heard it on the news...’
Abby sat there.
She could remember the shock of her mother’s death. It had been expected. She had been older but she could still remember the shock and finality of it.
Imagine losing both at five and to hear it read out as a headline on the news?
She tried to but couldn’t quite grasp it.
‘There was a huge funeral. The press were everywhere and it was on the television constantly, as I expected it to be,’ Matteo said. ‘It was the biggest news in my life and because I was five I actually thought that it sh
ould be everywhere...’ He gave a wry smile. ‘You know how small your world is when you’re a child?’
Abby nodded.
‘But then we went to live at my grandfather’s and life went on but it had changed. The older ones all went off to boarding school and Allegra looked after my little sisters.’
‘You?’
‘I just did what I wanted and I was always getting into trouble but never really told off. I never got why my grandfather could hardly bear to look at me. No matter what I did, no matter how much trouble I got into, he hardly addressed me.’
‘I thought you two were close.’
‘We’re not close, but we’re closer now than we were.’ Matteo nodded. ‘While I was growing up he just stayed back. I started studying and after a year I realised I already knew how to make money. I had my start-up from my parents’ estate, but I didn’t need to sit in a lecture and be taught what I already knew and so I dropped out.’ He looked up at Abby and he told her about a row that repeated in his head to this very moment. ‘For the first time my grandfather got angry with me. We had a huge row. He told me I was wasting my life, I was heading for trouble and that he’d seen the signs, should have stepped in earlier...’
Abby swallowed.
‘“But you didn’t,” I said to him. I told him he had never cared about me so why start to worry now? I told him that I knew he couldn’t stand to be near me. I just didn’t know why.’
Abby sat quietly, remembering Matteo’s patience when she had told him what had happened in her past.
‘My grandfather said, “Every time I look at you I see Benito.”’
‘Your father?’
Matteo nodded. ‘He told me that I was just like him. A gambler, a liar, a risk-taker. He said that I was on track for disaster and he was tired of sitting back and watching history repeat...’
‘Matteo.’ Abby wouldn’t buy it. ‘Just because...’
‘Abby,’ Matteo interrupted her. ‘I am all of those things. When my grandfather said what he did, it just confirmed what I already knew. I decided then that I would never let myself be like my father. Yes, I might have his traits but I won’t get so involved with another that I’m capable of coming close to the damage that he did.’
‘Matteo...’ Abby started but then she halted herself. Matteo had let her speak; he had let her work out what she wanted for herself. It wasn’t her place to tell him how he felt, even if she thought he was wrong to be so down on himself, but she did say a little. ‘Your father had children and a wife—you don’t.’
Di Sione's Innocent Conquest (The Billionaire's Legacy) Page 11
