Читать книгу Italian Deception - Michelle Reid - Страница 9

CRAMP. Shannon knew what it was even as it brought her screaming out of a deep dark pit of exhaustion. She writhed on the bed, kicking back the covers as her hand shot down to cover the ugly knot that had appeared in her left calf. She groaned and began rubbing at the distressed muscle with the flat of her hand.

It made no difference and if anything only seemed to make her writhe all the more. An agitated need to do something about it before the pain tore her apart sent her agony-bright eyes shooting around the darkened bedroom in search of help from something—anything!

But then her cramping muscle twisted a little tighter and she tumbled off the side of the bed to land in a heap on hard, polished wood squirming and whimpering like a wounded animal.

She had never suffered from cramp in her life before, so she had no idea what to do to ease it. She tried shaking the offending leg, then rubbing it again when the shaking did nothing but make her teeth sing. In sheer desperation she tried to stand up on the dizzy idea that if she could manage to reach the bathroom she could apply something warm to the muscle in the hope heat would help release the angry spasm. But she never made it because the moment she placed any weight on the leg the pain became so unbearable that she landed back on the floor amidst a shrill and shaken cry.

The bedroom door suddenly flew open, and light from the hallway poured into the room. ‘What the hell—?’ a harsh voice demanded.

Luca stood there. She stared helplessly up at his lean, dark bulk silhouetted against the light. ‘Cramp,’ she groaned.

It was all she could manage.

To give him credit he didn’t need to be told twice. In a couple of strides he was kneeling beside her and gripping the offending leg with ruthless fingers, then began manipulating the cramped muscle in a way that set her teeth singing again.

‘I should have known something like this would happen,’ he gritted over her whimpered cries of protest. ‘When was the last time you bothered to drink anything? You must be dehydrated, you fool!’

Fool or not, she was beginning to see stars now, tears were streaming down her face. ‘It hurts,’ she cried over and over and kept hitting the floor with a fist while he kept up his grim manipulation of her leg.

Miraculously, though, his form of torture began to ease the other. Sheer relief from the pain brought her out in a shivering cold sweat. ‘Aah!’ she gasped out shakily. ‘That has to be the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life.’

But Luca wasn’t listening. His dark face locked with anger, he had twisted to pull the light quilt from the bed and was grimly bundling her shivering body into it. Without a word he gathered her into his arms and stood up to carry her out of the bedroom then down the hall and into the kitchen where he finally dumped her on a chair at the table.

Not quite knowing what had hit her, Shannon sat huddling into the quilt while she stared at him in a state of near shock as he crossed the floor and opened the fridge door. A second later he was placing a clean glass tumbler and a bottle of water down on the table.

‘Drink,’ he commanded.

In mute obedience Shannon unscrewed the bottle top and—ignoring the glass—drank straight from the bottle. Ice-cold, the water was like nectar to her parched mouth and burning throat. After drinking down half the bottle she slumped back in the chair and closed her eyes while she tried to grapple with what had just happened. Her leg felt as if someone had kicked it; the pain had left her shaken and weak. Her head ached with one of those dull throbs that came with too much stress and she felt so tired she could fall asleep where she was sitting.

A sound beside her forced her eyes to open. Luca was leaning against the table beside her chair staring down at his own bare feet. He looked tired and pale, the long day’s strain etched into the hard contours of his face.

‘Sorry I woke you,’ she mumbled.

‘I was not asleep,’ he replied, and the way he said it told her that he had been lying there thinking about his brother, loving him, hurting for him, wishing the last twenty-four hours had never been.

Her heart turned over, an aching sympathy curling around it. She wanted to reach out and touch him gently, offer words that might help to ease his grief. But there were no such words and she didn’t dare mention Angelo’s name because whenever she did Luca went ballistic. It was such a helpless, hollow feeling to know that she was not the person he wanted to confide his feelings in.

She would have been, once upon a time. He used to tell her everything. They would lie in bed with limbs tangled and talk and talk and—

‘Drink.’

Her eyelashes fluttered against her cheek-bones, then lifted to find him looking at her. His eyes were dark—dark as ebony, sleepy and sultry, his lashes curved and spiky and just begging her to—

She looked away quickly before the senses she could feel beginning to stir took a dangerous grip. Picking up the bottle, she drank some more, hoping the cold water would cool what was beginning to heat. She didn’t want to want Luca. She didn’t want to remember things about him that she’d learned years before. He was her past. She’d moved on since then.

And just because he was leaning here wearing only a short, hastily tied robe did not mean she had to conjure up memories of the body beneath the robe. So what if this particular man was built to push the female sex drive into meltdown? Sex was sex. These days she looked for deeper things in a relationship like friendship, caring and respect. One day she might even find a man she felt she could trust enough to give him these things. She hadn’t stopped looking because of one bad experience. It was just that she hadn’t found him yet.

Lifting the bottle to her lips, she drank again. The only illumination in the room came from the down-lighters that were integral to the wall units. The light barely reached the centrally placed table but what did manage to reach cast a warm, seductive glow. And it was quiet, so quiet she thought she could hear the unsteady beat of Luca’s heart.

Or was it her heart that was beating unsteadily?

Of course it was her heart. He was too close and she wished that he weren’t. Lifting the bottle again, she kept her eyes carefully averted from him and tried to pretend that they were complete strangers.

But averting her eyes didn’t do anything but give her imagination a chance to list every detail about him. The length of his legs, for instance, the power in his golden thighs. The robe he was wearing could cover what it liked without making much difference to her for she knew every inch of him, the shape of each separate vertebra in his long, supple spine. She knew the wonderful feel of his satin skin and the contrasting crisp coils of hair that covered his chest. She knew how firm his stomach was, how taut the muscles were in his lean behind. She could draw a picture of every sleek detail from his long brown toes to even longer fingers.

Oh, stop it! she railed herself as a sensation she knew only too well made her squirm. Move away from me! she wanted to yell at him, but instead took another gulp at her drink because saying anything of the kind would be tantamount to confessing what she was thinking and she would rather cut out her tongue than let him know what was inside her head.

A sigh shook her. The kind of sigh that was supposed to ease tension, not help to intensify it—yet that was exactly what this particular sigh did. It intensified everything she was thinking and feeling until the atmosphere began to sing. She wanted to run but remained glued to her seat. She wished those legs weren’t right in her field of vision, yet couldn’t make herself look the other way.

‘What time is it?’ she asked with a touch of desperation.

‘Three-thirty,’ he supplied and even his voice worked its own kind of magic on what was happening to her. It was low and deep and dark and gorgeously accented. It tugged at her heartstrings, which in turn tugged at more susceptible things.

She ached on a silent groan. Will I ever get over him? The first love syndrome, she thought helplessly. They say that you never really recover from your first true love.

‘How is the muscle?’

Like a wooden puppet, she put a hand down to rub the offending calf. It still felt tight but it was no longer knotting.

‘OK,’ she replied and drank some more water. It came as a shock to realise that somewhere in the last few minutes he had exchanged her empty bottle for a full one. ‘How many of these do you want me to drink before you’ll let me go back to bed?’

It was said in an effort to lighten the tension, and he dutifully laughed. But the low sound only set her flesh tingling. ‘Keep going until I tell you to stop,’ he replied.

Then the silence came back. Her pulse began to race, the previously even rhythm of her breathing shattering so badly that she shifted restlessly on the chair in an effort to contain it all. The action made one of the thin straps of her flimsy top slide off her shoulder. Finding herself in real danger of exposing a tightly thrusting nipple, she reached up to tug the offending strap back into place again—only to clash with long brown fingers as they went to do the same thing.

Both of them went absolutely still with fingers resting against fingers, while her flesh began to heat. She glanced up. It was instinctive. What she saw sent her heart-rate into overdrive.

He was looking at her body. His dark eyes were hidden beneath those spiky black lashes as they grazed over a smooth white shoulder, then dipped lower to the rounded slopes of her breasts.

He wanted to touch her.

‘No,’ she breathed in shaky rejection and made a clumsy grab at the slipping duvet.

Her denial brought his lashes up. Black heat from his eyes shot towards her and held her trapped in a dark, dark mesh. The duvet remained where it was, lying in a soft, squashy heap on her lap and the sting of desire leapt through her blood, tripping sensual switches as it went.

He knew—he knew. Everything about him was turning dark on the knowledge. Dark eyes, dark heart, a searing dark ardour that coiled itself around the both of them. Nothing about him was light any more, or gentle or soft. He wanted her but didn’t want to want her. She returned the resentful feeling.

His fingers began to trail across her shoulder. Moving with a tantalising slowness until they reached the long column of her neck, then slid sideways, combing her tangled hair away from her nape. Shannon stopped breathing. Luca did the opposite. Pulling a deep, hard breath of air into his lungs, he moved, dipping his dark head to fasten white teeth on the creamy flesh he had just exposed.

Sensation shot through her like a thousand pinpricks; she gasped and quivered, then stroked her cheek against his face. Animal, they were animals, she the purring preening she-cat responding to her demanding mate. His hands slid beneath her arms and lifted her onto her feet. His mouth moved from nape to her mouth and she stood on one foot, favouring her cramped leg as she sank herself into the all-consuming heat of his kiss.

What had been threatening to spark between them from the moment they’d first faced each other across the threshold of her London flat now flared up with spectacular energy. They kissed as they used to kiss, long and deep and holding back nothing. Her arms went around his neck; the duvet lay around her feet. He moved his hands down her slender sides, moulding her fine-boned feminine shape, then gripping her waist to draw her between his legs. He was still leaning against the table but the robe had slid apart at his waist. She felt the heat of him, the powerful thrust of his sex against her stomach, and knew that she was not going to be the one to stop this.

Would he stop it? She moaned against his mouth in horror of it happening. He took the groan to mean something else.

‘No way,’ he muttered, and explained his meaning by shifting his hands again. Her pyjama bottoms slithered downwards to come to rest at her knees. She accepted the force of his thrust between her thighs and held him there while the kiss went on and on and her pyjama top was eased away from her breasts. He touched, she went wild for him. Her fingers clutched at his hair and her thighs tightened their possessive grip. On a dark growl he picked her up and began walking without allowing the kiss to break until he let go of her and she landed in the middle of a rumpled bed.

For a horrible moment she thought he was going to turn and walk away. It would be just punishment in his eyes, she knew that. But, far from walking away, Luca stripped off his robe and came to join her, ridding her of the flimsy scraps of blue silk before sliding his powerful frame over the top of hers and returning his mouth to hers.

They kissed right through the whole tempestuous journey. Not once did either of them attempt to break free. They touched with hands and the sensual shift of their bodies; when they needed more he penetrated her with a single silken thrust. She cried out against his mouth; he answered the cry with a grunt that raked the back of his throat. Her fingers had a tight grip on his hair again, her legs were wrapped around him, like two tight clamps. He moved to a primitive rhythm, his chest rasping against her breasts.

Animal? Yes, it was animal. A hungry coupling of two wild creatures that did not want to think about the past or the present or even the future. They just wanted—needed this.

This came with a power to make her lose contact with reality. Gasps, groans and shudders arrived in unison. Mingled sweat and body-heat and, finally, body fluids that left them wasted and eventually shocked.

He got up the moment he was physically able. Snatching up his robe, he slammed out of the room. Shannon watched him go with her heart in her eyes, then curled into a ball and sobbed her heart out.

He hated her—despised himself for touching her at all.

When daylight came, she opened her eyes to a pale sun seeping through the window and with her body aching like mad and her heart locked into a dull throb. She continued to lie there for a while, reluctant to move when moving meant having to face Luca.

Then she remembered Keira, and was grimly pushing Luca to one side and hurrying into the bathroom.

Choosing the first things out of her case that came to hand, she pulled on her jeans and added a clean blue top, then repacked the case. She wasn’t staying here another night.

As she opened the bedroom door the seductive aroma of fresh coffee teased her senses, the thought that Luca was up and about made those same senses squirm. She didn’t want to see him. If she could get away from here without having to face him she would do.

She never wanted to have to set eyes on him again.

But there he stood, looking very sombre and civilised in beautifully cut black silk trousers and a crisp white shirt. He was standing by a kitchen unit playing the domestic again. Her stomach dipped; she followed it by placing her bags down by the kitchen door.

‘Sit down,’ he invited. ‘This won’t be a minute.’ He indicated the large pot of coffee brewing beside him.

But he didn’t turn to look at her as he said it, which spoke volumes to her. Too ashamed of himself? If so, he wasn’t the only one to feel that way.

‘Did you ring the hospital?’ she asked him stiffly.

He nodded. ‘There is still no change,’ he supplied.

‘Then I would rather be going.’

‘After we have eaten,’ he came back uncompromisingly. ‘I don’t think either of us got around to eating much yesterday.’

We ate each other, Shannon thought bitterly. ‘I don’t—’

‘We played this scene in your kitchen, Shannon,’ he cut in. ‘I see no use in doing it again.’

In other words, shut up. Pressing her lips together, she moved to the table and sat herself down. If he sticks toast under my nose I shall probably throw it back at him, she decided mutinously. Then felt a wave of panic wash over her when he turned suddenly as if she’d said the words out loud.

Not that she was afraid of him—only his expression. She preferred to keep looking at his back. In fact she would prefer it a lot more if she did not have to look at him at all! So she kept her eyes lowered as he crossed to the table, and placed the coffee pot before her.

Then he went still because he’d noticed her bag standing by the door and a new tension began to suck the oxygen out of the air. He was going to say something about last night, she was sure of it. If he did she was out of here even if that meant jumping down the lift shaft.

‘About last night …’

She shot to her feet like a bullet.

‘I want to apologise for—’

She moved on trembling legs towards the door.

‘Shannon …’

‘No!’ She swung on him furiously. ‘Don’t you dare start telling me how much you regret it! Don’t you dare, do you hear me, Luca? Don’t you dare!’

‘I hear you,’ he said very quietly.

She looked at him then, really looked at him and saw exactly what she’d expected to see—his handsome dark features locked into a cold stone wall of self-contempt and regret. A sob caught in her throat. She wanted to hide her shame. She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole!

‘Keira has to be all that matters here,’ she pushed out unsteadily. ‘You—m-me—we don’t matter. I won’t let you force me into running away this time!’

‘I don’t want you to run,’ he sighed out irritably.

The question—Then what do you want from me?—sang in a silence that hung.

She didn’t ask it. Instead she lifted trembling fingers to her mouth, tried to swallow, then lowered them again.

‘I have to move to a hotel—today,’ she told him.

There was a movement of tight male muscle, a flash of black fury hitting his eyes. ‘And I have to claim my brother’s body today!’ he lashed at her harshly. ‘What do you think is more important right now?’

She took a jerky step backwards, shaken to her roots by what he’d said. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered painfully ‘I didn’t know!’

‘I know that,’ he snapped, still frowning blackly as he swung away again. ‘We are both having to deal with an intolerable situation,’ he said tightly. ‘Needs cross, emotions get out of control. It has to be expected that our priorities will clash.’

Wise words, she acknowledged, if she was able to ignore the fact that she had been so wrapped up in her own grievances and distress she’d allowed herself to forget all of his.

And what were her grievances? she asked herself. So, they’d done the unforgivable last night but both had been guilty of falling into that particular dark pit, greedily assuaging one set of emotions, then overwhelming them with a different set.

Because Luca had pulled away from her afterwards did not mean she could shift all the blame onto him. In fact, while she was being brutally honest here—if he hadn’t pulled away, then she probably would have.

The new silence gnawed at the tension in the atmosphere. She wished she could say something to make them both feel better but she couldn’t think what. He was standing there wearing a rod of iron strapped across his broad shoulders, and his fingers were gripping the worktop with enough power to put dents in to the solid black marble.

‘Sit down again,’ he gritted.

Sit down, she repeated to herself, and looked down at the way her bags were standing at her feet like a childish defiance. Without saying a word she picked them up, turned and left the kitchen. Walking down the hall, she went back into the bedroom, put the bags down by the bed then walked back the way she had come. Fingers fluttered momentarily, coinciding with the deep, shaky breath she took before she pushed open the kitchen door and stepped back in.

Luca was still standing where she had left him, long brown fingers still gripping the worktop like a vice. She wanted to go to him, put her arms around him and show him just how badly she felt for forgetting what really mattered. But instead she crossed to the table and sat down.

And the silence pulsed in her eardrums, it throbbed in her stomach and pulled at the flesh covering her face. Move! She wanted to shout at him. Say something—anything! I’ve said I’m sorry. I’ve made the climb down. I don’t know what else to do!

Maybe he tapped into her thought patterns—he’d always been able to do that. He turned, walked towards the table. The predicted rack of toast was set down in front of her.

‘I will organise a hotel suite for you,’ he announced curtly, then left her alone to swallow the unpalatable fact that her climb down had been a complete waste of time.

An hour later and she was at her sister’s bedside, delivered there by Luca who, once he’d checked on Keira, left again, his lean face scored by the grim task that lay ahead of him, one that would to strip his self-control to the bone.

Tears for them all flooded her eyes as she sat gently stroking Keira’s soft brown hair. She and her sister were so unalike in so many ways, she thought fondly. The colour of their hair, for instance, and the differences in character. Where she was bright and independent and naturally self-confident, Keira had always been shy and unsure of herself. Meeting and falling in love with Angelo had put stars in her eyes and an anxious pallor on her soft cheeks. She could never quite believe that a dashingly handsome man like Angelo could fall in love with a timid little mouse like her. So she’d worked hard all her marriage to make herself feel worthy of her man. It had infuriated Shannon to watch it sometimes. ‘You spoil him too much. He’ll start treating you like a doormat if you don’t watch out.’

But Angelo had remained faithfully besotted to his Irish mouse. It was the mouse who’d taken Shannon by surprise by turning into a sly little fox. ‘Idiot,’ she whispered and was suddenly fighting a battle with fresh tears again.

What followed was a long and hard nerve-flaying day in which Shannon divided her time between Keira and the nursery.

By two o’clock she was beginning to feel drained of emotional energy and was actually glad to be given some respite from her bedside vigil when a team of medical staff appeared and she was ushered away.

She needed some air that did not smell of the hospital. So she bought a sandwich in the downstairs cafeteria and took it with her to eat outside. The sun was bright and the air was cool, fresh—clean. Walking through the neatly laid gardens, she found a bench in the sunshine and sat down, unwrapped her sandwich and tried to empty all thoughts from her head so that she could attempt to eat at least.

Luca tracked her down ten minutes later. Her hair was up scrunched into a twist of narrow black ribbon, and the curve of her slender neck looked disturbingly vulnerable to him. The thought made him grimace because he wasn’t thinking of vulnerable as in fragile, he was thinking vulnerable as in ripe for tasting. His tongue even moistened at the prospect, and he wished that he didn’t have to look at her through the eyes of a recent lover.

But he did. Giving in to his baser instincts might have been a stupid mistake but he was now stuck with the results of it. Last night he had gone a little insane. He had lost control of himself. Two years ago she’d left him, taking his manhood with her when she went. Last night she gave it back to him. He should be pleased. He should be feeling the triumph of retribution and be able to walk away free and whole and ready to get on with the rest of his life, but all he felt was …

Need, greed—it had many names but they all came wrapped up in the same package. He wanted more and no amount of self-aimed contempt was going to change that.

Maybe he should go out and find himself a woman. There were certainly a lot out there more than willing to share his bed. Maybe now that Shannon had released him from his sexual prison he could even do both himself and these other woman some of his old macho justice.

But he didn’t want them; he wanted this one. This red-haired, white-skinned, blue eyed betrayer who made his body sing.

A wry smile played with the tired corners of his mouth as he started walking again. The slight tensing in Shannon’s shoulders as she’d sensed his approach gave that smile a different edge. Love each other or hate each other, they could still tune into the others presence like wild cats sniffing territorial scent.

Stepping around the bench, he paused for a moment to study the strain in her face. Her hair might burn like fire in the sunlight but her cheeks were pale, her eyes too dark and there was a telling hint of hurt about the way she was holding her mouth.

On a heavy sigh, he remembered why it was that he had come to find her. Slipping free the single button holding his jacket together, he sat down next to her with a long sigh.

‘I’m sorry there was no one here with you,’ he murmured quietly. ‘It has been a—tough morning for everyone, I’m afraid.’

She turned to look at him, expression guarded as she looked into his face. He was beginning to look haggard, he knew, and did not bother to hide it. ‘I thought it was tough enough five years ago when we had to do this for my father but …’ He stopped, mouth tightening on words he didn’t want to say but knew in the end that he had no choice. ‘My mother collapsed and has had to be sedated. Renata is finding it difficult to cope. Sophia offered to come here to sit with you but she is needed by Mama.’

‘I understand,’ she returned.

‘Do you?’ Luca wished that he did. It felt as if the whole family had been involved in that car crash—himself and Shannon included. ‘It’s a mess,’ he muttered and leaned forward to rest his forearms on his knees, his throat working on the now-permanent lump stuck in it. ‘I’ve got people dropping like flies all around me. Formalities to deal with. A company that refuses to stop running just because I want it to. The phones keep on ringing. We are sinking beneath a wave of sympathy that, to be honest, I could do without right now.’ His voice was growing husky—he could hear it.

Would she scream abuse at him if he also admitted that he wanted to pick her up and carry her off to the nearest bed to lose himself in her for an hour or two?

‘The thing is, Shannon, I need to ask a big favour …’

She tensed. He grimaced as his mind made a connection with what he’d been thinking and what he’d just said. But, of course, Shannon didn’t know about that.

‘I need to be sure you are OK, you see,’ he went on. ‘Thinking of you alone in some faceless hotel room when you are not here does not make me feel OK.’ He turned his head to look at her. The sunlight was trying its best to put some colour onto her drawn cheeks but it wasn’t succeeding, and her mouth looked so vulnerable he wanted to—

‘So I would like to take back my offer to find you somewhere else to stay. I want you to go on living at my place. I will move out if you prefer,’ he offered, watching her carefully for some kind of reaction, but he wasn’t getting one. ‘But I would rather stay there too. That way I will know you will not be on your own if the—’

‘Don’t say it,’ she said.

‘No,’ he agreed, looking down at his long fingered hands hanging limp between his spread knees.

While Shannon looked at the top of his dark head, watching the sun gloss it with a silken sheen. If the worst happens during the night, was what he had been going to say. Having shared her time between Keira and the baby, she was more than aware that the ‘worst’ wasn’t very far away. As she watched the baby grow stronger with every passing hour she watched the baby’s mama slowly fade.

‘About last night,’ he inserted suddenly.

Shannon sucked in a sharp breath. His hands moved, flexing tensely before pleating together, and she saw a nerve at the edge of his jaw give a jerk.

‘I went a little crazy,’ he admitted. ‘I am ashamed of myself for taking my—feelings out on you.’

‘We both went a little crazy.’ She shifted tensely.

‘It won’t happen again,’ he promised.

‘No,’ she agreed.

‘So will you stay at my apartment?’

She looked down at her lap where the remains of her half-eaten sandwich lay slotted in its triangular casing and watched it blur out of focus on the onset of tears. ‘Keira isn’t ever going to wake up, is she?’ she whispered.

Luca didn’t answer for a moment, then he shook his dark head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he responded huskily.

‘I’ll stay,’ she agreed on a thick swallow.

Luca sat back against the bench suddenly and the air hissed out from between his teeth in a tense, taut act of relief. A moment later something dropped on her lap next to the sandwich carton.

It was a plastic security card. ‘Access,’ he explained. ‘You might need it if I cannot get here to collect you.’

She nodded.

‘If I cannot make it then my driver Fredo will come for you. You remember Fredo?’

‘Yes.’ Another nod while she stared down at the card. Fredo was a wiry little man with amazing patience—he needed it for the hours he tended to hang around waiting for Luca to appear.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then I don’t have to worry about you getting into the back of some stranger’s car.’

It was a joke. She hadn’t expected it. It surprised her enough to force a small laugh out of her. Luca laughed too, one of those deep, soft, husky sounds of his that caressed the senses. But it all felt so strange and wrong to be laughing in the circumstances that soon they both fell silent and still.

‘You don’t have to worry about me at all,’ she thrust into that stillness.

‘Worry is not the word that shoots into my head,’ he countered. ‘Someone should be here with you supporting you through this. Here.’ Something else landed on her lap. She stared in surprise at the sight of her own mobile telephone. ‘It was in my overcoat pocket. I found it this morning,’ Luca explained. ‘Here is my private number. Log it in the phone’s memory. Don’t hesitate to call me if you need me, Shannon.’ It was a serious threat more than polite reassurance.

Then he stood up so suddenly that he made her blink. Big and lean and dark and tense, he blocked out her sunlight. She felt cold—bereft. He was going to leave and she wanted to fling herself at him and beg him to stay!

But he had duties to return to and she had a bedside vigil to keep.

‘I have to go.’ He stated the obvious and tension zipped through the air like electric static. ‘Use the phone, do you hear me?’

Shannon pressed her lips hard together and nodded. He turned and strode away without glancing back and she remained sitting there with the sun trying to put back the warmth he had taken with him.

It didn’t.

Luca had never felt so inadequate or useless in his entire life as he did when he walked away from her like that. But he had things to deal with, lousy, throat-locking, soul-stripping things that could not be put off.

But his mind was locked into Shannon—or was it his heart? He didn’t know. What he did know was that Shannon might have betrayed him two years ago but he was betraying her now by not being there when she needed him.

And it had to be him. That was the other part of his inner conflict that was flaying him alive. He did not want someone else to be there with her. He didn’t even want to think about her leaning on someone else.

‘Dio, leave me in peace!’ he rasped when the land-line on the desk began to ring.

It was a reporter wanting him to make a statement. This was not the first insensitive lout he’d had to deal with today and probably would not be the last. As he was replacing the receiver Renata put her head round the door to look him a question. She’d added ten years in twenty-four hours. They all had.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It was the press, not the hospital.’

Renata remained hovering in the doorway and he knew she wanted him to hold her. Walking across the room, he took her in his arms and let her weep into his shoulder and wished it could be OK for him to break down and weep.

‘How is Mama?’ he asked when the flood subsided.

‘She’s awake now, and looking a little stronger,’ Renata told him, then added carefully. ‘Luca, about Shannon—’

‘Don’t go there, Renata,’ he warned thinly and was glad of the excuse to move away from her when the phone rang again. His sister hovered for a few seconds longer, silenced by his censure and waiting to find out who was calling before slipping away once she knew the call was business.

He did not want to discuss the rights and wrongs of Shannon staying with him at his apartment. He did not want to discuss Shannon with anyone—period.

His personal assistant was asking him a question that required his full concentration. Luca gave it to him and dealt with the problem as if it were perfectly normal to make corporate decisions while the world lay in rubble at his feet.

It was while he was in the middle of a curt, clipped sentence that his private cell-phone began to beep.

Shannon. He was certain of it. He dropped the other phone as if it were a hot brick.

His fingers shook as he made the connection. All she could manage to say to him was, ‘Please—will you come?’