Читать книгу Modern Romance August Books 5-8 - Мишель Смарт, Julia James - Страница 9

PROLOGUE

‘YOU’LL COME WITH ME?’ Matteo checked. ‘You’ll meet me and Luka at the airport this morning?’

He couldn’t quite meet Bella’s eyes—not just because there was a bruise on her cheek that his hand had made, more that last night had left him feeling more open and exposed than Matteo was used to.

And yet, for the most part, there was no sense of regret.

Bella looked up at the man who had had her heart since she was sixteen. On her first day as a chambermaid at Brezza Oceana she had started her shift feeling awkward in her uniform and missing her friends from school, but at least her closest friend Sophie had started working there that day too.

Bella and Sophie had walked along a corridor, only to see a few of Malvolio’s men coming towards them, including Matteo Santini and his half-brother Dino.

The young women had stepped back to let the group pass but even as they’d done so Bella had braced herself for what was to come.

Sophie was out of bounds. She had been promised to Luka and they would get engaged soon. Even though he lived in England, Luka was Malvolio’s son and so they didn’t say anything to her.

The lewd comments were instead all aimed at Bella, because they knew she was Maria Gatti’s daughter and were aware of her mother’s occupation.

Bella was more than used to it.

‘Hey!’ Matteo said sharply, and for a moment Bella thought he was speaking to her but then he turned to the group, his brother included, and there was anger in his rich, deep voice. ‘Déjala en paz.’

He told them to leave her alone and when Dino argued Matteo said it even more firmly. In fact, when Dino persisted, Matteo shoved him against the wall and, still holding his brother there, he briefly turned to Bella.

‘Via via...’

He had told her, not unkindly, to go away and leave them. It was the only time he had really spoken to her, but even before then he’d had a little bit of her heart—if her mother had money for Malvolio, it was Matteo she would ring to come and collect it, rather than Dino.

‘At least Matteo only takes the money,’ her mother would say.

Yes, little by little, over the years, Matteo had collected pieces of Bella’s heart and now finally he had taken it all.

Last night Matteo had made her his lover and he had been her first.

Yes, the night had started out in the cruellest of circumstances, but they had been circumstances that had been forced upon them.

The coastal town in Sicily’s wild, wild west was ruled by Malvolio.

The game was called fear and the people were his pawns.

He owned the hotel and most of the businesses and was a cruel landlord to most of the town. Despite the idyllic surroundings, there was crime and corruption at every turn and it was also a dangerous world if you did not play by Malvolio’s rules.

Yet somehow, together, they had made last night beautiful and now, this morning, Matteo had asked her to leave Bordo Del Cielo with him.

‘I’ll do my best to be there,’ Bella said.

‘We only have this one chance,’ Matteo warned. ‘If you stay, then no one can ever know that I offered for you to join me. If they know that I...’ Matteo hesitated, because with Bella he used words he was not used to hearing, let alone saying. ‘If Malvolio gets so much as a hint that I care about you then you will be in serious trouble.’

‘I’ve said that I will do my best.’

Bella watched as he knotted his tie. Matteo always dressed well, far better than the rest—his suits were made in Milan and his shoes were handmade. Last night she had found out the reason why Matteo always looked more expensive than the others.

Last night he had told her things that could possibly have them both killed.

He slipped on his jacket. His suit was dark grey, almost black, and his thick cotton shirt was relatively uncrumpled for he had carefully hung up most of his clothes last night during his slow, teasing strip.

‘I love the fabric...’ Bella ran her fingers over his jacket then slipped her hand inside to feel the cool silk lining. She was a skilled seamstress and had an eye for design, not that she got to practise it here. ‘I could make that,’ Bella said.

‘I have the best tailor come from Milan once a year,’ Matteo said, and then he chose not to argue because her nimble fingers had moved from examining his jacket and were exploring the tiny pleats beneath his leather belt and his want for her had become unrelenting because he was rising again. ‘You probably could.’

‘Come back to bed,’ Bella said.

‘No. There is no time.’

She watched as he ran a hand through his jet hair and it fell into perfect shape. Soon those eyes would be behind expensive dark glasses. That was how she knew him best but in the last few hours Bella had seen the real beauty in those dark grey eyes as they had made love to her.

The suits, the clothes, the designer stubble were all an image that Matteo had created merely to survive.

This morning he was asking her to join him and his close friend Luka for a new kind of life in London.

Bella knew that Luka would have asked Sophie to come with him.

Sophie, though, had told Bella that she and Luka were over and that she was making her way to Rome tonight. She had begged Bella to join her but Bella had said no, that she could not leave her mother.

Maria, even if she was only thirty-four, was frail and sick, though she did her best not to let it show.

Matteo had said to Bella that if it was what it took to get Bella to leave then she could bring her mother along.

He would take care of them both.

Bella sat in a rumpled bed, wearing nothing but a smile on a morning when other hearts were breaking.

‘The plane leaves at nine...’ Matteo said, and he sat down on the bed and picked up a long strand of Bella’s hair and tucked it behind her ear. ‘Please be there.’ Now he looked into Bella’s vivid green eyes. They were clear, they were bright and he knew, if she stayed here in Bordo Del Cielo, very soon they would be faded and vacant.

‘If you don’t get away this morning, Malvolio will have you working in the bar tonight and I shan’t be there to...’

Save you.

He didn’t say the words out loud but they hung unsaid in the air between them.

‘If you stay,’ Matteo continued, ‘then as of tonight you’ll be working and I’m telling you now, Bella—I don’t want to date a working girl, I don’t want there to have been anyone else.’

‘Double standards, Matteo...’ Bella pointed out, given how they had arrived at this point.

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘That is how I feel. Bella, I want to make a completely new start. I am done with this way of living. Tomorrow Malvolio wants me to start to avenge all the people who spoke against him during the trial...’

Bella shivered.

Malvolio, Luka and Sophie’s father Paulo had been in prison for the past six months awaiting trial—a lot had been said against Malvolio. The people had believed that there was enough against him that he would surely be put away for life.

Instead, he was back and taking charge again.

‘I have to get out because I don’t want to do the things he has planned for me,’ Matteo reiterated. ‘Kill once and you’ll always be a killer. It’s not who I want to be. I want an honest life and I am going to make something of myself. I’ll have enough trouble explaining my own past, I don’t want yours bringing me down.’

Harsh words perhaps but for Matteo they were honest ones.

He was offering her an out and he still did not know if she would take it so he made it very clear this was her one chance to be with him.

‘Once a whore and you’ll always...’

‘I get it,’ Bella said.

‘Good,’ he continued. ‘And, for the record, I don’t have double standards—I’ve never paid for sex. Last night was never about money.’ He said it even as he emptied his wallet for her. He took out every note that he had and this morning he had plenty. He laid the wad of cash beside her on the bed. ‘I’m giving you money to get out, not for last night. If your mother refuses to come you can give her this cash to help tide her over.’

Bella could still scarcely believe what he was offering. She was eighteen but Matteo Santini had long been her dream. Now he sat on the bed where they had made love and offered her a new life.

Was it foolish to dream that her life really would be with him? That what they had found in this room could survive the outside world?

It felt far from foolish. Now, as the clock nudged six, life felt terribly simple and as he took her naked, warm body in his arms, the future looked deliciously clear.

‘I’ll take care of you,’ Matteo said, and his kiss promised her that he would.

The wool of his suit, the sharp scent of his cologne both wrapped around her and she was lost to his mouth.

It was a slow, lingering kiss that confirmed how they were both feeling because, had time not been against them, Matteo would have shed his clothes and joined her in the bed that had provided their haven last night.

Instead, he drew her in closer to him. Her body was pliant, lazily relaxed and soft, and he smiled down when he stopped kissing her, though he didn’t release her from his firm embrace. ‘Don’t you dare go to sleep when I’m gone.’

‘I shan’t.’ Bella smiled. ‘Don’t go just yet. Surely there is a little more time.’

She was nervous of Matteo leaving. Worried that once he stepped outside the door he might change his mind.

‘I have to,’ he said.

‘What will Luka say?’ Bella asked. ‘He will surely try and talk you out of bringing us along.’

‘I shan’t be telling Luka until you are right by my side, Bella. This is my choice, it has little to do with him. If he says no, screw him, we forget London and just go to Rome. I’m leaving here so that I don’t have to answer to anyone...’ He looked so deeply into her eyes then and his words, though slow and measured, were also urgent. ‘If your mother says no, that she cannot leave, then at least you have given her a choice. You need to get out now.’

Bella’s response was her kiss. She loved him unshaven against her skin and how, as they sealed their agreement with their mouths, he pressed her back onto the pillow. Bella’s fingers knotted in his damp hair and she tried to match the stroke of his tongue, but it had shifted from tender to the delicious threat of possession.

He simply could not get enough of the night they had made beautiful.

He swallowed her sighs as his hand burrowed into the sheet and moved between her legs and then his mouth moved to her ear.

‘I owe you one for this morning,’ Matteo whispered, because this morning she had made magic on him with her mouth. He then got back to kissing her so deeply, so thoroughly that she could not now think of his pleasure as his fingers slid inside her.

She was hot and swollen from last night and his fingers were the reverse of a balm for instead of soothing they made her ache all over again. A delicious ache, though, for she knew, from last night, how it would end. She knew now that the pressure he was building within her would have her collapse into a void somehow lined in velvet any minute now.

He loved how she whimpered, how her hand moved to his as his fingers grew rougher, yet they did not move to halt him, Bella simply wanted to feel the skill beneath her own palm.

‘I want you again,’ Bella begged as he worked her slick sex while, with his free hand, he lifted one slender leg and pushed her thigh open so that she was more available to his hand.

‘No time...’ Matteo was struggling to catch his breath. His intention had been to leave Bella hungry enough to follow him and also he wanted the scent of her on his fingers.

He had never intended to be so close to coming himself.

None more so than when she removed her hand from his and found his straining shaft and reached for his zipper, but he paused her in his own way—he slipped another finger in and stretched her swollen intimate flesh and in doing so made sure that the imminent pleasure was simply all Bella’s.

Her thighs came together, entrapping his hand but not halting it. Her neck arched and he chased her mouth as it lifted and, capturing her open lips, he suckled her tongue. He felt her tiny quivers down below and yet he stroked longer and harder till she tightened around him over and over. He nearly came to the sensation as he remembered taking her last night and the feel of those same beats of pleasure around him.

His fingers slipped out of her and he slipped a hand under her calf, straightening her leg so that it collapsed, loose limbed, to the bed and he watched her eyes slowly open and a lazy, sated smile spread over her lips.

She had him.

Even if he had just taken her, somehow with that smile she had him and for a second, just for a second, because mistrust came as second nature to him, Matteo wondered if he was being played.

He trusted no one.

He never had.

Even his friendship with Luka was a guarded one and so he warned her.

‘Don’t let me down, Bella.’

‘I shan’t.’

‘So I’ll see you soon?’ Matteo checked, yet she hesitated for a moment before she gave him a small nod.

‘Don’t ruin this, Bella,’ Matteo warned. ‘No second chances. You leave with me this morning or you leave here for good...’ He tapped his head and Bella knew that if she didn’t follow him Matteo was telling her she would be dismissed from his mind.

Tough talk, Bella thought, but she knew him better.

Matteo might have been promoted to Malvolio’s right-hand man but she knew for sure now that beneath that cool exterior beat a beautiful warm heart.

No matter what others thought of him.

They had made love all night yet he was harder and more wanting as he left the room than when he had entered.

Bella lay there as the door closed and how she would have loved to rest, to fall asleep in sheets that held the scent of them, to wake up slowly later and to recall in vivid detail the bliss of last night...

Soon she would do just that, Bella told herself.

The memories of last night, though, for now she must put away. Tuck them into the pages of her heart and turn the key.

She would take them out and examine them later.

There was no time for that now.

And so, instead, Bella showered quickly and pulled on the tarty black dress that she had worn last night.

It smelt of the cheap perfume that Matteo had loathed so.

The lacy stockings and suspenders she had also worn Bella stuffed in her bag.

And, knowing how things must appear, she did what would surely be expected of her—Bella emptied the bar fridge of the tiny bottles of liquor and took the nuts and treats. She picked up the money that Matteo had left on the bed and peeled off a couple of notes and put them in her bag, some she stuffed in her bra and the rest...

Bella pulled the rubber stoppers off her ridiculously high sandals and rolled the rest of the cash into two tight tubes and squeezed them into her heels, then she replaced the stoppers and strapped on her sandals.

She allowed herself one last glance around the room before she closed the door—oh, she had been terrified on entering it. Her cheek had been smarting from his slap, there had been angry tears falling from her eyes but now she stood smiling as she saw the chairs they had pushed back so they could dance together and make up for all the nights they had not had.

Her first night of work had been a pleasure rather than the hell she had anticipated.

Bella took the elevator down and her nostrils tightened as she walked into the bar. It was filled with the stale scent of last night’s celebrations that had been held to mark Malvolio’s release from prison and his not-guilty verdict.

‘How was it?’ Gina asked, referring to her night with Matteo, and Bella simply didn’t know how to answer such a question so she said nothing. ‘I hope he paid you well...’ Gina said. ‘Given that he kept you all night.’

‘I thought this one was on Malvolio.’ Bella shrugged and went to walk off but Gina halted her.

‘Are you trying to say that Matteo didn’t give you a tip?’ Gina frowned, clearly disbelieving Bella, and she held out her hand.

‘I thought that we would get to keep the tips.’

‘Half is for Malvolio and the rest we divide amongst us.’ Gina snapped her fingers and Bella opened her bag and handed over the money that she had earlier separated from the pile.

‘And?’ Gina said.

Bella took out a few of the tiny bottles of liquor that she had taken. ‘There,’ Bella said, and again went to walk off but was abruptly halted. Her long black hair was caught and yanked by Gina and Bella found herself face against the wall.

‘Don’t bullshit me,’ Gina said, and her hands searched Bella’s breasts, easily locating the wad of cash that she had stuffed into her bra.

She took out the cash and then let go of Bella’s hair and Bella turned around.

‘Don’t ever try to get one up on me again, Gatti. I know tricks that you haven’t even thought of yet.’

How Bella hated the world she had almost entered.

‘Here,’ Gina said, as if nothing had just happened, and she peeled off a paltry number of notes and handed them to Bella. ‘I’ll see you tonight.’

No, you won’t, Bella thought, but she nodded.

She walked home when she wanted to run but she forced herself to walk as if she had plenty of time on her side.

Out of the Brezza Oceana hotel Bella took the path that ran alongside the beach. Some fishermen were bringing in the morning’s catch and she drew some lewd comments and whistles from them.

She ignored them.

Further along Bella walked, past a small wooded area and a path that led to a small cove. Oh, she would have loved to have gone down to the water to visit it one last time—to take the tiny secret path that only the locals knew about and drink in the view she loved before she left Bordo Del Cielo for good.

But there was no time to linger and, anyway, Bella thought, there would be no Sophie there to chat with.

Her best friend had left last night and Malvolio was back and nothing now could ever be the same. Bella knew, if she really wanted to get away, she must not draw attention to herself.

No one must guess that she and her mother would be fleeing today.

So instead of heading down the secret path she turned and took the hilly street towards home. A group of tourists was standing on the corner, clearly the worse for last night, and their responses to Bella were pretty much the same as the locals had been.

She did not blush.

Never had Bella admired her mother more—Maria had always walked with her head held high and now, on this early morning, Bella did the same.

She carried on up the hill, her ankle giving way on the high heels several times, yet she gave a smug smile to herself when she thought of the money in them.

Yes, Gina might know a few tricks but Bella’s mother had taught her daughter so many more.

She actually laughed as she walked up the garden path, recalling her mother coming home some mornings and emptying out her shoes!

Her mother’s heart had just about broken last night as Bella had dressed for work. Now Bella pictured her face when she told her mother that Matteo had offered them both a way out of Bordo Del Cielo.

They were leaving today.

Her head was spinning with possibilities as she stepped into the house but then, in one second, it all changed.

Like stepping off a merry-go-round, everything slowed down and, stifling a scream, Bella took in the chaos. Their house was always neat but now the hall table was overturned and the vase of flowers from their garden lay strewn on the floor. And there, in the middle, lay Maria.

‘Ma!’

Bella dropped to the floor and cradled her mother. Blood was pouring out of a head wound and for a terrible moment Bella thought this must be Malvolio’s work. Briefly she wondered if somehow he had found out that she had made plans to leave...

‘I fell...’ Maria slurred.

‘Were you drinking again?’ Bella asked, because her mother had been so ill lately but she had promised that she had stopped all that.

‘No.’

It took a moment to register that her mother was only able to move one arm and when Bella saw that one side of her face was weak it dawned on Bella that at just thirty-four years of age her beautiful mother had suffered a stroke.

‘I’ll call for the doctor,’ Bella said.

As they waited, Bella ran and got a blanket from her mother’s bedroom and made her as comfortable as she could.

The doctor arrived and then he called for an ambulance. It was five minutes after nine as the ambulance blasted its way through the town and then took the road that ran the opposite way from the airport.

Bella knew that she would never get there now.

She held her mother’s hand as she held in her tears.

Her chance to escape had gone. She thought of Matteo at the airport, waiting for them to arrive.

* * *

He was.

Matteo stood with Luka, scanning the small airport, just waiting for the sliding doors to open and for Bella to appear.

‘We should go through,’ Luka said.

‘Soon,’ Matteo responded.

‘They’re boarding.’

‘I just have to make a call...’ Matteo had Maria’s number because he would call her before he came to collect any money for Malvolio. He waited and there was a small beat of hope as it rung out.

They must be on their way, Matteo thought, but after another twenty minutes all hope had gone.

‘Final call,’ Luka said.

When he could wait no more Matteo boarded.

‘Have you ever flown?’ Luka asked, frowning because his friend had always been so worldly, so completely ahead of everyone’s games, but it had just dawned on Luka he had never seem him out of Bordo Del Cielo and also he could feel Matteo’s tension.

‘Never,’ Matteo answered, then sat silent beside his friend as the plane taxied down the runway and lifted into the sky.

Matteo wasn’t nervous about flying, or leaving Bordo Del Cielo.

It was stay and become what, till now, he had avoided—a killer.

Or leave everything behind.

He chose the latter.