by Tara Pammi
“I know you’re busy. I’m in there with you most of the time. But this is not just work stress. This is not you tuning everything else out to untangle an analytical problem.
“You’ve been freezing me out for a week. I don’t know why or what I did. You won’t...look at me. You won’t smile. You...don’t talk to me in the lab. You...come to me in the middle of the night and make love to me, but by morning...you’re back to behaving the same way again.
“It’s almost as if you’re...ashamed to converse with me outside of bed.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” he said, an inane response to her perceptive gauntlet.
“No, I’m not. You didn’t even tell me how exceptionally clever my design was for the bank’s interactive portals. If nothing else, I count on you to tell me how brilliant I am on a regular basis, Massimo.”
That irreverence, that honest but baffled admission—it was a balm to his masculine ego. Which the woman had the disconcerting knack of knocking off balance with a regularity. At least she was in this madness as much as he was.
“Are you done with me, with us, Massimo? Is that it? Do you want to move on?” Vulnerability in her voice even as she stubbornly tilted her chin up. “Because if you are, just...tell me.”
“Nessuno,” Massimo answered automatically, speaking his instinct before even processing that question.
“I can take it. I told you I don’t need—”
“Fiore’s CTO, Franco, summoned me last week to tell me he’d discovered that you had a juvenile record. As part of the routine background checks they do on every member of this team.
“For a financial crime, Natalie!
“Do you realize what that does to BCS’s image? After everything we’ve had to put up with over the last few months? After all the fires I’ve been putting out? Now, when we’re so close to that contract?
“Cristo, Natalie, is it true?”
All color fled her cheeks. She looked down at her hands and then up at him, her heart in her eyes.
Something in his chest deflated, as if he’d been expecting her to deny it. Call it just an accusation. Demand that he listen to the truth. What a coward he was that he couldn’t face her truth. Couldn’t face the power she already had over him.
“Yes, it was when I was fourteen.”
His curse rang in the room.
But she didn’t flinch. “I transferred some money from my foster father’s bank account to his daughter’s. He was a bully and she offered me two hundred dollars for it...” She shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. “I had already learned how to break most security designs. I... The cyber investigator—it took him forever to pin me down for it. The judge sentenced me to community service, and a warning, and sealed those records. Those should have been sealed records. It was a juvenile offense. Before I met him. Before he persuaded me that I couldn’t continue like that... I didn’t know right from wrong, Massimo. All I knew was survival.”
Tears filled her eyes and she looked away from him. Her body bowed as she stared out the window, and all he wanted was to pull her into his arms and hold her tight. To tell her that no one would ever push her to that ever again. That she’d never be so alone in the world.
Instead, he stayed where he was, watching her, willing this desperate need inside him to calm, willing rationality to take over again.
How had he picked the one woman who with every breath, every word, jeopardized his goals? Why didn’t he just push her away, now that he knew the truth? Why couldn’t he say yes, this association was too costly for him?
Why didn’t he just draw the line here, now?
Every rational instinct he possessed urged him to do it. Better late than never. They could just be colleagues and still live under the same roof. He’d done it so many times before.
And yet, he stood, every muscle frozen.
Slowly, her shoulders straightened. He saw her dash away the tears with a rough gesture.
“You should have told me.”
She turned back to him, her eyes shining with pride. “I didn’t realize I was supposed to tell you every part of my unsavory life.”
He rubbed a hand over his forehead, hating that he made her so defensive. “This is a hundred-billion-euro security project for a finance empire. All of us will come under the microscope. I can’t keep covering for you. You should—”
She pushed away from the wall. “Did it ever occur to you that I was too ashamed to tell you? Or that it’s not a part of my life I want to advertise to you when I’m begging you to not send me to jail? Or should I tell you when you already think I’m deceitful and low class and—”
He pulled her into his arms, incapable of not touching her.
She didn’t come easily. Her fists came at his chest, her body shuddered; she jerked in his embrace, but he held fast. Willing her to trust him. Consigning the war between his mind and his heart to hell.
“Let me go, Massimo.”
“Calm down, cara mia. I just...”
“You what?” She pushed her hair away from her face, brown eyes shooting daggers at him. “You are ashamed of associating with me. You’re already calculating damage control. You’re...”
He flicked his lashes down, afraid of what else she’d discover that he didn’t even know himself. Those eyes taunted him before she laughed. A sad sound filled with bitterness and pain. Pain he was causing her. Doing the one thing he swore he wouldn’t do.
“Wow, you’re no better than one of those supercomputers of yours, calculating gains and losses per transaction, per every interaction you have with me, huh?”
“Stop, Natalie. I told you to give me space. I was going to work it out. You’re the one who pushed me into this...discussion.
“I’ve already asked the project manager to take you off the team for now. You just need to lay low until Fiore signs, that’s all. It won’t go any higher up than this. His CTO will arrest it there. Especially since those are sealed records.
“But we can’t risk you being on the project. We can’t... If there’s anything else I should know...”
“How about I sleep separately for a while, too? How about you come back to me when this is done?
“Is that what you’ve been finding so hard to say? Too bad you tied yourself to me in front of your whole bloody world, sì? Too bad you can’t just throw me out of your life as easily as you can cut me out of the project?”
“Natalie, you know what this project means to me.”
“You... My past, who I’ve been, who I am, is a liability to you. You...you weigh everything in life to see whether it serves your ambition or not. You weigh people around you in terms of assets and liabilities.
“I’m a liability. I’ll always be a liability to you.
“But I refuse to be ashamed of who I am and what I’ve done in the past to survive.”
* * *
Natalie let the hot water pound at her, washing away the sweat and grime of her workout. Wash away the tears that should have dried up a long time ago.
With a groan, she pressed her head into the cold tile. The worst part was that, despite her defiant words to him, she did feel ashamed. Wished she could change things she couldn’t undo now.
And even worse was the feeling that she wasn’t good for him. Good for his image. Good for the Massimo Brunetti who was going to take not only Milan but Italy by a storm with his innovative cyber security design for Fiore Worldwide Banks.
That she would never be good enough.
She rinsed off the soap, lethargy and tiredness crawling into her muscles. And she felt him standing outside the shower before she heard him, the scent of him calling her.
“Can I come in?” he asked softly, though he was already partly inside the open gap in the marble-tiled shower, his hair catching on water drops, the front of his unbuttoned shirt more than half-damp.
God, he’d even persuaded her onto the table in his lab while they’d been working late one night. Dropped to his knees and tucked his head between her thighs and now she couldn’t walk into that lab without blushing and heating up.
And here she was again, after that argument, standing there naked, letting him look her over, going weak at her knees wondering where he would take this... If she wasn’t a pushover, she didn’t know one. “I’m almost done.”
A small smile played around his lips. “I don’t really want to be in there if you get out.” He leaned against the wall, pulled up his knee and watched her. As if his goal in life was to watch her bathe. “You have a little soap you need to wash off. There. Under your right breast. Where you have that mole. Where you...”
Her breasts were heavier, her nipples tight buds begging for his attention, her sex wet and willing by the time Natalie mustered enough senses to understand his game. “It’s not fair. We had a fight and sex doesn’t fix it. Even the fantastic sex you give.”
His smile vanished, though the warmth of his gaze didn’t. “Sì. We did have a fight. And maybe you could’ve been more honest—” he raised his hands in surrender when she opened her mouth “—if I had been more thorough about the scope and reach of this project. If I hadn’t backed you into a corner.
“I brought you on, so the mistake is mine.
“But it doesn’t mean, never did it mean, that I don’t want you here. In my room. In my lab. In my life.
“I’m trying to make this work, cara mia. And no, I’ve not been and never will be ashamed of what you had to do to survive. You’re right. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be that girl who had no one, the girl who had to make herself so tough.” He cupped her cheek, his thumb pushing away the tears that trailed down them, his voice so infinitely tender. His lips were warm and familiar against hers. “Meet me halfway, tesoro. Just...let me get through this milestone. I need you here. I want you here.”
And just like that, with easy charm and sincere words, he made mincemeat of her anger and her hurt and her defenses. He hadn’t apologized, really, for putting that contract above her. He didn’t even think of it that way.
He was far from admitting, even to himself, how much he cared about her, much less to her.
But he made accommodations for her in his life. And he let her know how much he wanted her. It was more than Natalie had expected of him, entering into this relationship. God, he’d never lied to her where his priorities lay.
She pushed her wet hair away from her face and nodded.
He inclined his head.
The antagonism in the air shimmered away, instantly replaced by hunger and heat.
“I missed you,” he said, his head completely in the water now. “Yesterday. In my bed. I didn’t sleep well.”
She was tempted to say she had slept soundly. But they didn’t play games with each other. Not when it came to this. Here, there was only truth. Utter truth. “I didn’t, either.”
“Say no if you don’t want to do it in the shower, cara mia.”
“Can I say yes?” she said, reaching for his shirt and pulling it out, seeking the hard, warm male skin.
He smiled and pulled her to him. And took her with a devouring hunger that filled all the empty places inside of her. He told her with his kiss, his touch, his hard, hungry caresses what he would never say in words. His arms caged her, as if he meant to never let her go, his belt buckle digging into her belly. “I want to be inside you, now. Please, Natalie.”
“Now is good. Now is always good with you. Take what you need, Massimo,” she said, and somehow, they managed to undo his trousers, push the wet fabric past his lean hips, and she wrapped her legs around him, and he rubbed at her clit to check she was ready and then he was inside her.
Natalie threw her head back, feeling him all over inside her, in this position. He was in her breath and in her blood and in her heart. And any fear that she was heading for a heartbreak of epic proportions melted away under the onslaught of sensation when he flicked his tongue over her nipple.
She rocked into his thrust when he turned her to the wall and swirled his hips. Her breasts bounced and scraped against his chest, and she felt the tension coiling in her belly and when he pressed her against the cold tile and brought her hand to her clit and smiled wickedly, she massaged the swollen bundle.
And when he took her mouth, hard and fast, all the while rocking into her with short, swift thrusts, Natalie let go of all the fears and doubts and let herself be washed in him, in the pleasure he wrought in her, in the magic they created together.
* * *
A week later, Natalie clicked on the encrypted email that was sitting at the top of her in-box on the tablet Massimo let her use, her heart racing, threatening to rip out of her chest. She’d instinctively reached for her tablet, wanting to see if Frankie had replied to the stupid meme she’d sent him about cats.
Massimo lay on his chest with his arm over her midriff, still asleep.
Meet me tomorrow. One p.m. at Piazza del Duomo. V.
Her heart thumped, her pulse racing with fear. She exited out of the program quickly, spending two more minutes to clear out the history, erasing every inch of her account from the hard drive itself.
Vincenzo was here? In Milan? What did he want with her?
She wanted to throw up at the very idea of lying to Massimo again. At the very thought of deceiving him.
If she told him, he would forbid her to go. He would...tell Leonardo, and God knows what Leo would do.
But how could she just...not go?
What if this was her chance to convince Vincenzo to stop this crazy agenda? To find out why he was doing this in the first place? What if she could solve this problem, once and for all, for Massimo and effect some kind of peace between him, Leonardo and Vincenzo?
Then she would be more than a liability. Then she’d be worthy of his respect; she’d maybe even be worthy of him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
PIAZZA DEL DUOMO, Milan’s main, spacious city square, was bursting to the brim with tourists and locals as Natalie walked in on Tuesday afternoon. Pausing, she looked up at the massive facade of the Cathedral of Milan. The architecture was magnificent and she desperately wished she could have a carefree day with Massimo.
On the other side was the world famous La Scala Theater he’d promised to take her to soon.
The cobblestones clicked beneath her black pumps, the air filled with the decadent scents of chocolate and coffee, friends and lovers calling out to each other, buzzing with energy. The constant knot in her belly she’d been walking around with since yesterday tightened when she spotted the dark head, sitting at a table outside a café.
Palm flat on her belly, she walked toward the table just as Vincenzo looked up. Almost severe in their sharpness, his features lent him an austere beauty that arrested more than one woman walking by. Dressed in a blue dress shirt and black tailored trousers, he was the epitome of masculine appeal.
“Come, Natalie,” he said in that deep, bass voice she had known for so long. When she didn’t move, except to stare at his outstretched hand, a dark smile played around his lips. “Come, little cat,” he said again cajolingly, using that little moniker he’d always used. “I won’t bite, cara mia. You know that.”
Natalie shook her head and took his hand. He clutched her shoulders and studied her face. Bent his head and kissed her cheek. And slowly, his arm wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her to him. He was the same man who had done her a
thousand favors, the same man who had kept her safe, helped her make a life for herself.
Natalie went into his arms, even though she felt as if she was betraying the man who’d again and again given her his trust, his loyalty, and earned hers in return.
There was something so familiar about Vincenzo—the scent of the cigar and his aqua cologne—that she calmed. “You’re well?” he breathed the question over her head. “You weren’t mistreated?”
She felt the tension in him dissolve when she nodded. He wasn’t a monster. Not the man who worried about an orphan he’d saved years ago. “You know I can watch out for myself.”
“I had to remind myself of your strength every day. There was no way to get in touch with you. I went to see Frankie and he said you’d called him and told him you were leaving the country for a friend’s wedding. He was super excited for you.”
Natalie’s heart crawled up to her chest. “You saw him? He’s good?”
“He’s doing great.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“How are you doing?”
“I’m fine, Vincenzo. I’ve been...good, too.”
He stared at her questioningly, but nodded.
He pulled a chair for her and then settled into the next one. When the waiter inquired, he ordered two coffees for them, telling the waiter to make hers extra sweet and extra milky, with a distasteful scrunch of his nose. Natalie laughed, and tucked an errant curl away.
His gaze arrested on the diamond on her finger, and she hastily dropped her hand.
“What I heard through the grapevine is true?” The warmth didn’t quite leave his eyes but there was something else.
Natalie opened her mouth and then closed it. She wanted to ask him so many questions: how long had he been in Milan, in Italy, what was he planning and why. But she curbed her curiosity. She didn’t want to get in the middle of this. Not after today. Also from everything she’d learned in the last two months, he was a master chess player, moving pieces back and forth, ten moves ahead of everyone else. “It’s a fake engagement. Too convoluted to explain.”
