Читать книгу A Passionate Reunion In Fiji / Cinderella's Scandalous Secret - Мишель Смарт, Michelle Smart - Страница 14

TWO HOURS AFTER landing in Los Angeles, they were cleared to take off for the second leg of their mammoth journey to Fiji.

Livia had returned to the plane before Massimo. She guessed he’d gone to the private executive lounge in the airport to work. She’d taken herself for a walk, keeping her phone in her hand for the alert that the plane had refuelled and she could get back on, and tried to get hold of Gianluca, her youngest sibling. He hadn’t answered and hadn’t called her back either. She’d had no wish to go sightseeing or do any of the things most visitors with a short layover at LAX would do. Just breathing the air brought back the awful feelings that had lived in her the last dying months of their marriage.

She hated Los Angeles. She hated California. She’d loathed living there. For a place known as the Golden State, her life there had been devoid of sunshine.

At first, she’d enjoyed the novelty of it all. Compared to Naples and Rome it was huge. Everything was so much bigger. Even the sky and the sun that shone in it appeared greater and brighter. But then loneliness had seeped its way in. She had no friends there and no means to make them. Unlike Massimo, who spoke fluent English, her own English was barely passable. The glass home they’d shared was forty kilometres from downtown LA. An intensely private man, Massimo had deliberately chosen a home far from prying eyes. There were no neighbours. The household staff spoke only English and Spanish.

She’d become sick with longing for home.

Massimo hadn’t understood. He hadn’t even tried.

But there hadn’t been any sunshine since she’d left him and returned to her home in Italy either.

It was strange to experience taking off in her second sunset of the day. She should have slept during the first leg of the journey but sleep had been the last thing on her mind, the last thing she’d been capable of. The sun putting itself to sleep now in LA would soon be awakening in Rome.

She yawned and cast her eyes in Massimo’s direction. His partition was raised again but she could still hear the tapping of his fingers on the keypad. So much for talking. Silence for them truly had become golden.

A member of the cabin crew brought her pillows and a duvet and turned her seat into a bed while Livia used the bathroom to change into pyjamas, remove her make-up and brush her teeth.

She thought of the plane’s bedroom and its comfortable king-sized bed. An ache formed in the pit of her stomach to remember the glorious hours they had spent sharing it. Massimo would never begrudge her sleeping in it now but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t sleep in a bed they had shared knowing that when she woke the pillow beside her would be unused. That had been hard enough to deal with when they’d been together.

Massimo was on his feet stretching his aching back when Livia returned to the cabin clutching her washbag. It was the same washbag she’d used when they’d been married and his heart tugged to see it.

She looked younger with her face free from make-up and plain cream pyjamas on. More vulnerable too.

The threads tugging at his heart tightened.

‘I’m going to have a nightcap. Do you want one?’

Surprise lit her dark brown eyes before they fixed on his own freshly made-up bed. ‘You’re finished?’

He nodded. ‘My apologies for it taking so long. I didn’t factor in falling asleep.’

Her plump lips curved into the tiniest of smiles. ‘I would have woken you but you looked exhausted.’

She looked exhausted. Her seat had been made up into a bed for her too but, however comfortable it was, it was not the same as sleeping in a proper bed. ‘Why don’t you sleep in our bed?’

Now the tiniest of winces flashed over her face. ‘I’ll be fine here, thank you. You should use it—you only napped for a couple of hours.’

The only time he’d been in the jet’s bedroom since she’d left him was to use the en-suite shower. Sleeping in the bed he’d shared with her…the thought alone had been enough to make his guts twist tightly.

To see the same reluctance reflected in her eyes twisted them even harder.

He removed a bottle of his favourite bourbon and two glasses from the bar as the stewardess came into the cabin with a bucket of ice. Massimo took it from her and arched an eyebrow in question at Livia.

She hesitated for a moment before nodding.

As the stewardess dimmed the lights and left the cabin, he poured them both a measure and handed a glass to Livia.

She took it with a murmured thanks, avoiding direct eye contact, carefully avoiding his touch. He could smell the mintiness of her toothpaste and caught a whiff of the delicately scented cream she used to remove her make-up and the moisturiser she finished her night-time routine with. The two combined into a scent that had always delighted his senses far more than her perfume, which in itself was beautiful. The perfume she sprayed herself with by day could be enjoyed by anyone who got close enough. Her night-time scent had always been for him alone.

Had any other man been lucky enough to smell it since they’d parted?

She sat on her bed and took a small sip of her bourbon. As she moved he couldn’t help but notice the light sway of her naked breasts beneath the silk pyjama top.

Her nightwear was functional and obviously selected to cover every inch but the curves that had driven him to such madness were clearly delineated beneath the fabric and it took all his willpower to keep his gaze fixed on her face.

But her face had driven him to madness as much as the body had. With Livia it had always been the whole package. Everything about her. Madness.

After a few moments of stilted silence she said, ‘Are you going to get some sleep too?’

Massimo knew what Livia was thinking: that having his own seat made into a bed was no indication that he actually intended to get any rest.

He shrugged and took a large sip of his bourbon, willing the smooth burn it made in his throat to flow through his veins and burn away the awareness searing his loins.

‘If I can.’ He raised his glass. ‘This should help.’ Enough of it would allow him a few precious hours of oblivion to the firecracker who would be sleeping at such close quarters to him.

‘How long do we have until we reach Fiji?’

He checked his watch. ‘Nine hours until we land at Nadi.’

‘We get another flight from there?’ Livia already knew the answer to this but the dimming of the lights seemed to have shrunk the generously proportioned cabin and given it an air of dangerous intimacy.

What was it about darkness that could change an atmosphere so acutely? Livia had grown up scared of the dark. The Secondigliano was a dangerous place in daylight. At night, all the monsters came out.

The dangers now were as different as night and day compared to her childhood and adolescence but she felt them as keenly. With Massimo’s face in shadows his handsome features took on a devilish quality that set her stomach loose with butterflies and her skin vibrating with awareness.

‘I’ve chartered a Cessna to fly us to Seibua Island.’

‘You managed to get the name changed?’ She couldn’t remember the original name of the island Massimo’s grandfather had been born and raised on.

‘The paperwork’s still being sorted but I’ve been reliably informed it’s been accepted.’ He finished his drink and poured himself another, raising the bottle at her in an unspoken question.

She shook her head. Marriage to Massimo had given her a real appreciation of bourbon but too much alcohol had a tendency to loosen her tongue, which she was the first to admit didn’t need loosening. It also loosened her inhibitions. She’d never had any inhibitions around Massimo before but to get through the weekend in one piece she needed them as greatly as she needed to keep her guard up around him. All of this would be easier to cope with if her heart didn’t ache so much just to share the same air as him again.

‘Are you going to buy a Cessna of your own to keep there?’

He grimaced and finally perched himself on his bed. The overhead light shone down on him. ‘The yacht’s already moored there and can be used as transport. Whether I buy a plane too depends on how often the family use the island.’ The resort created on the island would be available for the entire extended family to use as and when they wished, free of charge. The only stipulation would be that they treated it with respect.

‘Knowing your sister it will be often.’ It was doubtful Massimo would ever use it. His idea of a holiday was to take a Sunday off work.

She caught the whisper of a smile on his firm mouth but it disappeared behind his glass as he took another drink.

‘When did your family get there?’

‘They arrived three days ago.’

‘Have you been to the island yet?’

‘I haven’t had the time.’

She chewed her bottom lip rather than give voice to her thoughts that this was typical Massimo, never having the time for anything that didn’t revolve around work. He’d jumped through hoops and paid an astronomical sum for the island but those hoops had been jumped through by his lawyers and accountants. He’d spent a further fortune having the complex for the family built but, again, he’d had little involvement past hiring the architects and transferring the cash. Livia had signed off on the initial blueprint for the complex in the weeks before she’d left him. She had no idea if he’d even bothered to do more than cast an eye over it.

There was no point in her saying anything. It would only be a rehash of a conversation they’d had many times before, a conversation that would only lead to an argument. Or, as usually happened, it would lead to her getting increasingly het up at his refusal to engage in the conversation and losing her temper, and Massimo walking away in contempt leaving her shouting at the walls.

In any case, Massimo’s sidelining of anything that wasn’t work-related was none of her business. Not any more. If he wanted to blow his own money on projects and assets he had no intention of enjoying then that was up to him. If he wanted to keep his family on the fringes of his life for eternity then that was up to him too. He wasn’t an adolescent like her youngest brother, Gianluca, who’d been born seven months after their father’s death.

There was hope for Gianluca. Unlike their other siblings, who had succumbed to life in the Secondigliano, Gianluca’s humanity was still there. The question was whether he had the courage to take Livia’s hand and join her far from the violence and drugs that were such an intrinsic part of the Espositos’ lives before it was too late and he was sucked into a life of crime from which his only escape would be in a coffin.

It was too late for Pasquale, who like their dead father had risen high in Don Fortunato’s ranks, and too late for Denise who had married one of Pasquale’s equally ambitious friends and was currently pregnant with their second child. Livia’s siblings and her mother all knew Livia’s door was always open for them. Gianluca was the only one she allowed herself to hope for. He could still leave without repercussions just as she had but time was running out. He’d recently turned eighteen. Should Don Fortunato decide Gianluca was worthy of joining his guard he would strike soon.

The man Livia had married, a man who abhorred violence and anything to do with illegal drugs, had made his choice when he was only a few years older than Gianluca. He’d chosen to leave Italy and leave his family, just as his own grandfather had done seventy years before him. The difference was his grandfather had left Fiji for the love of his life, an Englishwoman, and set up home with her in England. When their daughter Sera had married an Italian, Jimmy and Elizabeth had moved again, this time to Italy so they could stay close to their daughter. For them, family came first above all else. They were as close as close could be. All except for Massimo himself.

He didn’t want to change. He saw nothing wrong with how he lived his life, nothing wrong with keeping a physical and emotional distance from the people who loved him. That was the choice he’d made and Livia had to respect that. She couldn’t change it. She’d tried. When the realisation hit that his emotional distance from his family extended to her too, along with the recognition that this too would never change, she’d had no choice but to leave him.

She hadn’t clawed her way out of the Secondigliano to spend her life as a trophy in a glass cabinet masquerading as a home.

While she had spent the past four months trying desperately to fix herself back together, for Massimo there had been nothing to fix. He’d got on with his life as if she’d never been a part of it.

Finishing her drink, she put the empty glass in the holder beside her bed and got under the covers. ‘I’m going to get some sleep. Goodnight.’ Then she turned her back on him and closed her eyes.

Massimo lay under his bed sheets, eyes wide open. He’d drunk enough bourbon to tranquillise an elephant but his mind was too busy. Except now it wasn’t the project he’d spent over a year working on that stopped his mind switching off.

Turning his head, eyes adjusted to the dark, he watched the rhythmic rise and fall of Livia’s duvet. He guessed she’d been asleep for around an hour now. He always knew when she was properly asleep and not just faking it. When she faked it, she lay rigid in absolute silence.

They’d slept together the first night they’d met—once they’d got talking at the hotel bar he hadn’t let her out of his sight—and both of them had known it was no one-night stand. He’d been dozing in the aftermath, Livia wrapped in his arms, his body thrumming with the delights they’d just shared, when she’d mumbled something. That was his first experience of her sleep-talking. He’d quickly discovered that she talked a lot in her sleep. Sometimes the words were distinct. He remembered the feeling that had erupted through him the first time she’d mumbled his name. It had been ten times the magnitude of what he’d felt to be offered two hundred million dollars for the stupid game he’d developed during his boring university evenings.

But her dreams hadn’t always been good. At least once a week he’d had to wake her from a bad one. The darkness of the life she’d lived until she’d left Naples at eighteen still haunted her.

Had another man woken her from the nightmares since she’d left him?

He pinched the bridge of his nose and willed the pain spearing him away.

Livia’s sex life was no longer his business.

The thought of her with a lover was something that hadn’t even occurred to him until she’d stepped onto his plane and now it was all he could think of.

In the four months since she’d left him, his own libido had gone into hibernation. From the feelings erupting through him now, he realised he’d shut down far more than his libido.

He’d shut down long before she’d left him.

Their marriage had begun with such high hopes and such certainty. They’d both been too foolish to realise that it was nothing but lust, a flaming passion that could only burn itself out.

He’d been intoxicated by her. He’d never met anyone like her: tough on the outside but marshmallow-soft inside. Straight talking. Capable of lancing with her tongue. But tender and compassionate. Someone who would drop everything if she were needed. Someone who would give everything they had if it were needed. Massimo had never been one for showing his emotions but being tactile with Livia had come naturally. She’d brought that side of him out right from the start.

And then the tide had turned. His assumptions that he would be able to continue his life and work in the same way he always had but with his beautiful, vivacious wife to come home to had been quickly dispelled.

He should never have married her, that was the truth of it, but he’d been so swept up in the need to tie her to him and make her his in every way possible that he’d blinded himself to what marriage to a woman like Livia would actually entail. It entailed far more than he could give.

It was still dark when Livia woke. Groping for her phone, she looked at the time and was relieved to see they only had a couple of hours left until they landed.

Creeping out of her bed so as not to wake Massimo, she took her overnight bag from the compartment and made her way to the bedroom. She needed a shower. It was pure misfortune that the main bathroom was reached through the bedroom.

The moment she opened the bedroom door and stepped inside, she realised her mistake. The bathroom light was already switched on and the scent of Massimo’s shower gel seeped through the gap in the door. Before she could beat a hasty retreat, the door opened and he stepped over the threshold as naked as the day he was born.

Startled caramel eyes met hers. All the air flew from her lungs.

Seconds passed that stretched like hours as they did nothing but stare at each other.

A compression formed in her chest and tightened her throat.

For a man who rarely worked out, Massimo had a physique to die for. Lean but muscular, his deep olive skin had only the lightest brush of fine dark hair over his defined pecs and the plane of his washboard stomach. The hair thickened considerably below his abdomen to the huge…

Her own abdomen contracted, heat rushing through her pelvis as she noticed—couldn’t help but notice—his growing erection.

The heat in her pelvis spread. It suffused her cheeks with colour and she tightened her hold on her bag, crushing it against her chest.

Slowly, his features became taut, his nostrils flaring. His caramel eyes swirled with something she recognised, something that should have her spinning round immediately and leaving. But she couldn’t. Her feet were rooted to the floor.

He’d had more work done on his tattoo, she noticed dimly, trying desperately hard not to let her gaze fall back below his waist, trying even harder to contain the rush of sultry warmth flooding her veins. His tattoo covered the entire bicep around his left shoulder, all in bold black lines. The large sun, the centrepiece that he had once told her symbolised his rebirth and represented the way he strove for perfection in all he did, was encircled by sharks’ teeth, which represented power, leadership and protection, and they were now encircled by spearheads. She didn’t know what the spearheads represented but knew they must mean something to him.

Instinct told her they represented something to do with her.

The sensation in her fingers that had almost had her touching his sleeping face earlier tingled again. An ache to touch his tattoo. To touch him. A yearning to feel the heat of his powerful body flush against hers, to be swept in his arms and to lose herself in the wonder she had always found in his lovemaking. It all hit her so quickly that if he had reached out for her she would have fallen into his arms in an instant.

More seconds stretched without a word exchanged but with that thick, sick chemistry shrouding them.

And then Massimo closed his eyes.

When he next looked at her, the swirling desire had gone.

He’d shut down again.

He turned and walked back into the bathroom, locking the door behind him.