Italian Deception: The Salvatore Marriage / A Sicilian Seduction / The Passion Bargain

It could, she discovered. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said gruffly.

But he wasn’t sorry, not for her at any rate. It was too late for him to murmur polite words of sympathy when he’d looked at her the way he’d done a few minutes ago. He resented bitterly the fact that he had lost his beloved brother while she, the undeserving one, could still cling to a small thread of hope.

‘Excuse me,’ she said thickly, ‘but I’m going to be sick,’ and, dragging herself up from the sofa, she made a dash for the bathroom.

He didn’t follow and Shannon did not expect him to—though he had to hear her retching because she hadn’t had time to close the door. But she could feel his presence like a scar on her heaving body because this was a scene they had played before, though under very different circumstances.

And remembering that ugly moment made her feel suddenly very bitter that it had to be him of all people to bring her bad news and then witness this.

Trembling too badly to stand unaided, she sank down on the toilet seat lid and tried to think. She had to plan, she had to deal with Luca on a calm and sane footing, because if she was sure about anything in this sudden dizzying nightmare she had been tossed into, then it was that he would have pre-empted her immediate needs and have had travel arrangements put into place before he had even knocked on her door.

It was the way of the man—of the Salvatore family as a whole. Incisive efficiency under pressure was their trade mark. They were rich, they were powerful, they dealt with their enemies in the same way that they dealt with tragedy, by closing ranks and, with shields in place, dealing with the situation as one dynamic force.

All for one, one for all, she mused bleakly. Then she thought about Keira lying in a hospital bed somewhere, and even as the family grieved for Angelo she knew that her sister would still be surrounded by their tight ring of protection. The image should have comforted her but instead she found herself having to make another lurching dive for the washbasin.

Why? Because she was not included. She was the outcast sent into exile for her so-called sins. And the prospect of having to break her way through the Salvatore guard to be with her own sister caused the same nauseating distress that had kept her out of Florence for the last two years.

‘Oh, Keira …’ she groaned on a sob of anguish. Then she thought of poor Angelo and knew that one constrained sob was not going to be enough, so she switched on the taps and wept with the rush of water drowning out the sound.

Luca wasn’t in the sitting room when eventually she went back to face him. The all too familiar scent of him lingered, though, catching at her nostrils and relaying messages to certain senses she did not want disturbed. Strange how she had not picked up on that scent earlier.

Even stranger that she’d dared to tell herself that she was over him.

Well, not any longer, she was forced to accept as she turned to go and find him and spied his overcoat lying across the back of one of the chairs in the old familiar way that brought weak tears springing back to her eyes.

Something had happened to her back there in the bathroom. A door inside her had opened and allowed too many suppressed memories to come flooding out. Memories of love and passion and a promise of perfect happiness turning to dust at her feet. And other memories of a sister she had loved more than anyone. Yet when she’d left Luca she had also turned her back on Keira.

Guilt thudded at her conscience, but it fought with resentment and a deep, deep sense of betrayal that still hurt two years on. There were many ways to break someone’s heart for them, she mused bleakly. Luca and Keira both had broken her heart in different ways.

She found him standing in her kitchen by one of the modern white units, his six-foot-two-inch frame dwarfing the room as it did most things—including her more diminutive size. He was in the process of pouring boiling water into her smart glass and steel coffee pot but on hearing her step he turned his dark head. For a brief moment she saw him as she had last seen him two years ago, angry, naked, the natural colour washed out of his skin by disgust and contempt and an appalling knowledge of what he had just done.

Then the image faded and now she saw a tired man living with the strain of grief locked up inside him and a knowledge that life had to go on just as duty must still be done.

He offered her a brief smile before turning away again. ‘I thought we both needed this,’ he explained levelly, drawing her attention to the freshly made pot of coffee he had prepared. ‘I have also made you some toast to help to settle your stomach.’

Following the indication of his dark head she saw a plate sitting on the breakfast counter bearing two slices of lightly toasted wholemeal bread. Her stomach lurched again—not at the thought of receiving anything in its tender state, but because the whole scenario was resurrecting yet more memories of the old times. Times when this wealthy, very sophisticated and utterly spoiled man had surprised her with domestic moments like this.

He owned homes in many prestigious places, owned aeroplanes and helicopters and a beautiful yacht that could take one’s breath away. He ran a huge multinational finance company that employed thousands of people right across the globe but he didn’t like servants intruding on his privacy, suffered their services as a necessity in his busy life so long as they did their work when he wasn’t there. He could cook, he could clean and he made the best cup of coffee she had ever tasted.

But here in her kitchen—acting as if he actually cared about her well-being?

Fresh bitterness welled at his damned hypocrisy. ‘I’d rather be going,’ she replied with as much composure as she could muster. ‘That is presuming you’ve made arrangements for me to travel to Florence?’

‘Of course,’ he confirmed. ‘But we do not have to leave for another hour. My plane needs to refuel and perform the usual checks then wait for a vacant slot before it can take off again.’

‘You mean you’ve flown here from Florence—today?’ Shannon was stunned and it showed in the stifled gasp she released.

‘Someone had to break the news to you.’ The way he shrugged a broad shoulder was meant to convey indifference to the task but they both knew it was a lie. His brother had just died in tragic circumstances. His sister-in-law lay gravely ill. His mother and his two sisters must need him desperately, yet here he was standing in her small kitchen making coffee and toast for her?

‘Wouldn’t a message to my answering service have been simpler?’

‘Would it?’ he said and only had to glance at her for Shannon to know what he was getting at. He had come in person because he knew her. He’d expected her to fall apart just exactly as she had done.

Turning with the coffee pot, he went to place it on the counter next to the plate of toast, then glanced at his watch with its thick gold strap that nestled into a bed of dark hair on a wrist built to lift heavy weights if required to do so. Everything about him was built that way. The formation of his muscular structure showed the power in him yet in some unfathomable way he still managed to appear contradictorily lean and sleek.

His suit was dark, his shirt sky-blue, his tie a slender strip of navy blue silk. Wide shoulders tapered down a long lithe back to narrow hip-bones, the power in his legs and arms lay hidden beneath the expensive cut of his clothes. He could pick her up with one hand—she knew this because he had done it once when she’d challenged him. Then they’d tumbled onto the bed in a fit of laughter because one recently bathed, slippery wet and wriggling naked female was not easy to balance by her seat.

There wasn’t a woman alive who didn’t have heart flutters when Luca was near them. She had done more than flutter; she’d positively vibrated. He’d personified Man in her estimation and no man since him had come close to equalling him.

‘Come and eat your toast.’

The dark tones in his voice made her flesh quiver. Glancing at the plate of toast, she felt a sudden desire to tell him where to go with his demonstration of concern. She didn’t need him standing about her kitchen pretending that there was nothing between them but a very loose sister-brother-in-law relationship. They’d sank into each other’s bodies for goodness’ sake! He was passionately Italian and she was passionately Irish. Both stubborn, hot tempered and as temperamental as hell. Standing here watching him stroll about her kitchen was enough to ignite her temper. But common sense was telling her to just shut up and put up if she didn’t want full-scale war to break out, because she knew Luca. When his mind was made up about something nothing could budge it. She had learned that the hard way.

Bitterness welled, once more she crushed it down and wondered yet again where she’d got the stupid idea from that she was over him when here she was flailing in the middle of a stomach-curdling crisis and all she seemed able to do was think about him.

Or maybe that was it, she then consoled herself as she used a trembling hand to pull out one of the two high stools that sat in front of her white laminate breakfast bar and hitched herself up onto it. Maybe obsessing about Luca was her mind’s way of distracting her from what was really threatening to tear her apart.

‘How are your mother and your sisters coping?’ she asked as she pulled the plate of toast towards her.

‘They’re not,’ he replied with a blunt economy that turned her stomach inside out. Then he relented slightly, sighed and added, ‘They are keeping themselves occupied at the hospital, taking turns to sit with Keira and the baby. It—helps them to be there.’

‘Yes.’ Shannon acknowledged her acceptance of that.

Luca used that moment to pull out the other stool and sit down beside her. His thigh accidentally brushed against hers as he reached over to pour coffee into her mug. Shannon’s mind went blank—although blank was nowhere near the right word to describe the sudden burning sensation that sprang to life low in her abdomen. Nor did the word suit the sudden fire-burst of images that went chasing through her head. Images of what that thigh felt like naked when brushing against her naked thigh, images of her hand stroking along its muscle-packed length and of his hand making the same sensual journey along the silken length of hers.

The old vibrations started up, running riot round her system and warming the sensitive place at her core. In an effort to pretend it just wasn’t happening, she reached for a slice of toast and lifted it to her mouth. She bit but didn’t taste, tried chewing though she knew she would struggle to swallow. Her mouth was too dry and she needed that coffee.

She needed him to move away so she didn’t have to feel like this. She needed to remember why he was here! Oh, God, she thought wretchedly. She was ashamed of herself—she could smell him, feel him, she could even taste him! What was it with her that she couldn’t keep her stupid, rotten appalling thoughts under control?

Her throat closed as she tried to swallow—hot, bright tears burned in her eyes. She despised herself; she despised him for coming here and doing this to her—for showing her up for the weak-willed, shallow person she had to be to be letting him get to her at a time like this when—

‘Milk?’ he asked.

Shannon looked at the two mugs of steaming black coffee and recalled how little it had always taken for them to want to fall upon each other. A look, a word, an accidental touch like the light brushing of thighs and they could lose themselves quite appallingly in the pleasures of the flesh. Making love with Luca had been passionate and daring and uninhibited. He had shown her pleasure she’d never known existed, lowered her so deep into her own senses that sometimes she’d struggled to float back out again.

Only twice had he actually hurt her: the first time they’d made love and the last time they’d made love. The first time Luca hadn’t understood what kind of woman he’d been dealing with and she hadn’t bothered to tell him that he would be her first lover so she’d accepted all the blame. When she’d cried a little afterwards he’d wrapped her in his arms and shown her a different kind of loving with the power of comfort and a need to put right what he saw as his own failure. He had done so, of course, many times and in many, many ways.

‘No,’ she managed to offer in answer to his question—while her mind rocketed off to recall the second time he had hurt her.

He had been blinded by fury, lost inside a frighteningly jealous rage. He had called her everything from slut to harlot and she had been so appalled that he could see her that way that she’d riled him on with biting sarcasm until he had snapped.

And it had not been the compulsive roar of sex that followed that hurt her, but the contempt with which he’d cast her aside afterwards that had ground her emotions to dust. Since then—nothing. No word, no contact—not even an acknowledgement to say that he had received back his ring.

Therefore—yes, she reiterated very grimly, she was over Luca Salvatore. The simple act of remembering those dark times was enough to kill anything she’d ever felt for him. Even if the truth came up and hit him in the face right now as they sat here pretending to be civilised and he got down on his knees to beg her forgiveness, she would not forgive.

So let her senses respond to his closeness, she invited. Let her foolish pulse quicken and her weak flesh vibrate and her shameful head try recalling the good times if it felt it had to do. But the bad times would always overshadow those good times.

‘I’m going to pack a bag.’ Getting up with an abruptness that startled him, she walked away without sparing his over-still, over-watchful frame a single fleeting glance.

CHAPTER TWO

LEFT alone in the kitchen, Luca stared into his mug of coffee and wondered grimly if she had actually seen him at all through that glaze of shock that covered her eyes.

Did he really care? he then questioned in outright rejection of what was rumbling around inside him. He already knew the inner Shannon too well to want to make contact again.

Been there, done that, he thought with a cold lack of any humour, then hunched forward and folded his hands around his coffee mug wishing to hell he hadn’t come here. In the way he’d always believed that these things worked, life should have drawn a story on her beautiful face by now. She should look distinctly jaded but instead she was more stunningly beautiful than ever.

Lies, all lies, he contended tightly. Those too-blue eyes had turned lying into a fine art. The same with her lush, soft, kissable mouth and the way she held her chin so high whenever she allowed herself to look at him.

Challenge and contempt. He’d seen both in her face before he’d felled her with the news. What did she think gave her the right to look at him like that when she had been the one who had taken another lover into his bed?

His bed. ‘Dio.’

Letting go of his cup, he sprang to his feet on an explosion of anger and disgust, versus a strange, unwanted, stomach-clutching fight with regret.

She had been his woman. In every way he had ever looked at it he had been her man—her love, her for ever after. It had been in her eyes, in her smile, in the way she’d taken him inside her, so why—why had she thrown it all away?

A harsh sigh sent him to stand by the kitchen window. The rain was still lashing down outside, the night so stormy it promised to be a rough flight out of England.

Irritation shot down his backbone. Why had he come here?

He wished he knew. He wished he knew what it was that was driving him. Had he really believed that he was man enough to bury the past in this time of tragedy and deal with this situation with understanding and compassion? Or had his motives been driven by something much more basic than that—like a need to assuage this thick bloody grief churning around inside him by witnessing some sign of remorse or regret for what she had thrown away?

Well, so much for the compassion scenario because one look at her standing there at her door, one glance at the way she cowered back against the wall, and his stupid head took him back to the last time he’d seen her cower like that. So he’d pulled the lousy trick with the doors and deserved the contempt she’d thrown back at him for doing it.

And as for signs of remorse?

‘Dio,’ he grated.

He was a fool for coming here in person. He was a fool for expecting to see remorse from a woman who had shown none when she’d been caught cheating on him. He should have stayed where he belonged in Florence with his mother and sisters. He should have left a message on her cell-phone as she’d suggested—There’s been a car accident, your sister is dying and my brother is dead.

‘Hell,’ he cursed. ‘Hell!’ as his own brutal words ground his body into a clutch of agony.

Angelo—dead.

His heart began to pound like the rain on the window. He caught sight of his own iron hard reflection washed by tears he knew he could not shed.

He turned his back on it, grabbing at his neck with tense fingers as the violence within him built like a great balloon making him want to hit something—anything to offset this black pain!

Keira and the baby—he reminded himself forcefully. Think only about them because with them there was still life and where there was life there had to be hope.

On that stern lecture he tugged his cell-phone out of his jacket pocket and stabbed in a set of numbers. Discovering the storm was ruining his signal did not improve his mood. Pocketing the phone, he went back to the sitting room to use Shannon’s land-line, hoping that they wouldn’t get grounded here until the storm blew over. The sooner they got to Florence, the sooner he could walk away from her.

He was amazed at how badly he needed to do that.

He heard Shannon moving about in the hall while he was still on the telephone. He kept his back to the door as he listened to what his mother was saying and kept his own voice dipped to low-toned Italian as he asked questions, received answers, and felt Shannon’s stillness in the doorway like an electric charge to his spine.

The call ended, he turned. She had managed to snatch a quick shower and a change of clothes, he noticed. Gone was the sexy skirt she had been wearing, replaced by faded denims and a sweater that almost blended with her creamy skin. Her hair was up, caught in a neat knot that dowsed most of the flames. But what the prim style took away it then gave back by enhancing the delicate shape of her small oval face, her incredible blue eyes and soft little mouth, which could look Madonna-like but were really weapons of sin.

‘No change,’ was all he said in answer to the question he could see hovering on her lips.

No change, Shannon repeated to herself. Was that good or bad? No change said that Keira was still hanging in there. But no change also meant that she was still in a coma, which was no reassurance at all. She wanted to know more—needed to know more and even opened her mouth to demand Luca tell her more. Then changed her mind when she was forced to accept that knowing would probably make her fall apart again and she had to keep herself together if she wanted to get through the long hours of travelling that lay ahead.

So she made her voice sound composed when she said, ‘I need to use the phone if you’ve finished with it. I have to let some people know that I won’t be around for a while.’

A nod of his dark head and Luca took a step sideways. Dark clothes, dark eyes, dark everything, he seemed to cast a heavy shadow across her light and airy room. Picking up the receiver, she felt the heat from his grasp still lingering. For some stupid reason, feeling the intimacy that heat evoked made her throat ache all the more as she tapped in the number of her co-partner at the busy graphic design company she and Joshua Soames had built together.

As she murmured huskily, ‘Hi, Josh, it’s me …’ Luca turned and walked out of the room. His shadow remained, though, casting a pall over everything. Taking a deep breath in preparation for a shower of sympathy and concern she just didn’t want to have to deal with right now, she began to explain.

Luca reappeared while she was making her second call to confirm that her neighbour still had the spare key to her flat so she could keep an eye on it for her.

‘Thanks, Alex, I owe you one,’ she murmured gratefully. ‘Dinner when I get back? Sure, my shout. It will be something to look forward to.’

The dull throb of silence returned once she’d replaced the receiver. Luca was shrugging into his overcoat and his profile could have been cast in iron. ‘Anyone else?’ he asked and, at her reply, he flashed her a hard smile. ‘Only the two men in your life? You are a consistent little thing, Shannon, I will say that.’

Her response was to walk away without giving him the satisfaction of answer. His reasons to be bitter—imagined or otherwise—were his prerogative, but his right to take cheap shots at her now, when other things were so much more important, filled her with fresh contempt. She wasn’t going to explain that Alex was a woman and that Josh was the man who’d saved her life when Luca had done his best to ruin it!

He was standing by the front door when she came out of her bedroom wearing a long black woollen coat and a hat pulled down over her ears, both of which had become essential accessories during the winter the UK was enduring this year.

‘Is this it?’ he asked without making eye contact. In one hand he held her suitcase, in the other the padded black bag that contained her laptop computer.

Settling the strap to her handbag on her shoulder, ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Do you have a car outside or do we need to use mine?’

‘I have a hire car.’

Turning away, he opened the door and stepped out onto the landing, then went to call the lift while Shannon locked up her flat. They rode the lift like perfect strangers, and left the building to walk into driving rain. Luckily his hire car waited only a few yards away. Using a remote control to unlock it, he swung open the passenger door to allow Shannon to get in and out of the rain before he strode round to the boot to stash her things, finally arriving behind the wheel wet through.

Neither had thought to catch up one of the umbrellas she kept by the front door. Neither seemed to give a damn. As the car engine fired Shannon turned her face to the side window. With only a swipe from a hand across his wet face, Luca ignored the raindrops running down the back of his neck and set them moving with the grim desire to get this over with as quickly as it was humanly possible.

He was angry with himself for making that comment about her personal life. It had placed him in the position of sounding hard and nasty, and could have given the impression that he cared when he didn’t. She could have as many Alexes as she liked lining up to take their turn in her bed. Joshua Soames was a different matter. Luca knew all about her close friend and business partner because Keira never ceased to talk about how their graphic design venture had taken off like a rocket from the moment the two of them had begun to trade. The two partners had been friends throughout university, both excelling in computer design. Luca had listened to Keira spouting proud things about her sister even that far back. Only his mood had been more indulgent then—his mind remembering a rather cute, if self-conscious, freckle-faced teenager with a head of gorgeous hair in a pale blue taffeta bridesmaid’s dress that managed to wear her rather than the other way around. She’d simply amused him then. He’d liked her because despite all her teenage awkwardness she’d had a tongue like a whip, which had entertained him all the way through Keira and Angelo’s long wedding breakfast.

Needless to say it was the image he’d used to conjure up of Shannon whenever Keira had mentioned her younger sister. So when, four years later, she’d arrived on her first visit to Florence and he’d found himself confronted by the grown-up version, he had been completely blown away.