The Vengeful Groom

“If you can’t handle the trouble with your car and can’t wait for the part-timers,” she suggested brightly, “try the garage in Ipswich. There’s a pay phone nearby.”

He smiled faintly, his cynical mouth curling at the corners. “There’s nothing wrong with the car. I parked by the garage on purpose.”

“Oh!” Stunned, she remembered the neat patch of oil, the handy car trolley and his still-immaculate suit. A setup. “What…purpose?” she said, her voice wavering, her nerves crumbling.

“I arranged the car—and myself,” he said, ringing the bell impatiently again, “as a lure.”

Her eyes widened. It had worked. “To bring me out?” she asked.

“Heaven forbid,” he murmured, rolling eloquent eyes up to heaven. “I knew what your reaction would be when you saw me. I was hoping to lure out your grandfather.”

“He’s not about, and the garage is closed till the part-timers arrive,” she said stiffly, still not understanding why he needed her grandfather. Her black eyebrows arched and disappeared beneath her bangs. “Have you run out of gas?”

“No. Patience,” he answered dryly. “Where is Dan? He always started at seven.”

“Not nowadays. He’s nearly eighty,” Tina reminded him shortly.

“I see. I thought he was probably still having breakfast. That’s the reason I slid under the car to wait for him to come over and ask me what the trouble was.” He smiled, his eyes distant as though remembering happier times. “He and I could smell out classic cars at a hundred paces. I was sure he’d be out like a shot.”

“Seems an elaborate ploy,” she said with a frown. “Why risk ruining your rented suit for that?”

A blankness deadened his eyes and he stared at her somberly for a while. “The stakes were high,” he said eventually. “Worth a little subterfuge, a little waiting and some good honest dust.”

Tina went cold. “Like I said, he’s not in.” Her tone was curt, her voluptuous mouth set in decidedly stubborn lines.

He looked upward, scanning the windows and frowning when he came to the small barred one. Tina held her breath. “I don’t believe you. Let me in, Tina,” he ordered.

Incredulous that he’d even consider asking, she said coldly, “Not on your life.”

He leaned against the porch, elegant, cool and totally implacable. And his body language told her in no uncertain terms that he’d keep attempting to reach his declared goal and wouldn’t let up. His arms were folded across the big chest, his legs were slightly spread, and his jaw stuck out ominously. She leaned against the opposite side, but for support, not display.

Languidly his hand reached out, and Tina’s mesmerized eyes followed its progress to her throat. She swallowed, the flicker of his eyes telling her that he’d seen her fear. Then the tips of his fingers met her hot skin and she felt them slide over the slippery surface down to her collarbone.

“Nervous about something?” he murmured, lifting his fingers from her skin and holding out their sweat-dampened tips for her to explain.

“Hot. From running. You’ve got a long stride.”

“I’ve got a long checklist to get through.”

“Meaning?” she asked nervously.

The black velvet eyes glimmered. “I came to talk to your grandfather. Since he’s not around, it seems I must make do with you, instead,” he said in a lazy predatory drawl. “Alternatively, I could ask a few questions in town.”

“What questions?” she asked, brazening it out.

“Anything there is to know about you, for a start. Since you’re a school counselor, I imagine those students over there know a few things about you they’d be willing to divulge.”

“Don’t involve them!” she said quickly, hating to beg.

“Let me in and I won’t need to.”

She was silent. Her pulse throbbed heavily in her temples, and she put her fingers there for relief so she could think straight. It was the uncertainty she couldn’t stand. There were three possibilities: either he knew about Adriana, or he suspected something, or he knew nothing at all. But if she invited him in to talk sense into him, he’d see enough evidence to give the game away after a few minutes.

“You can’t come up,” she said firmly. “People will talk.”

“Plan C, then.” With a casual shrug, he strolled over to his car. Tina waited, holding her breath. A bluff. He’d get in the car and drive away…

He began talking to Lisa. She fumed as Lisa and Giovanni laughed together, his sun-shot blond head bent low over hers. Recognizing that look of admiration Lisa was giving him, Tina winced. If she didn’t move soon, he’d dispense with the preliminaries and ask a few direct incriminating questions.

Angrily she stomped across the lot to where Giovanni was holding court.

“Oh, yes, known her for years,” he was saying. The students stared at Tina in awe as she came closer, and he smiled at her in a sickeningly winsome way. “We’ve been talking over old times,” he said in a husky reminiscing tone of voice. “You know the kind of thing. The high school prom, the homecoming dance, old films, clambakes.”

Tina eyed him cynically. “Time you went home, Gio. Byee!”

“It was at a clambake,” he remarked idly to his rapt audience, ignoring her completely, “that Tina poured a half-gallon tub of melted chocolate ice cream—”

“Please!” she protested indignantly.

“—into the school bully’s gas tank,” he finished.

Four pairs of astonished eyes turned on Tina’s flushed face.

“You’ll give them ideas, Gio,” she muttered.

“I could,” he said worryingly. “Shall we continue our chat indoors, Teen? I’m ready if you are,” he added with an encouraging lift of his eyebrow.

She screwed her mouth up tightly at his misuse of her name. “I’m heading for the beach in a while.” Somehow she dug up a smile for the students’ benefit. “Aren’t you all off to the beach, too?” she suggested to them hopefully.

Giovanni grinned amiably at the fascinated group. “Or you guys could take a moment to sit in the car, try it for size. Feel free.”

There was a chorus of enthusiastic agreement, so he obligingly opened the Lamborghini’s passenger-side door. Watching the excited faces, hearing him answering the eager queries, she grudgingly admired the way he had won the interest of the students. He’d done something for them; now it would be their turn to do something for him. Like answering his questions, she thought with apprehension.

And their eyes met, his triumph plain to see. Tina felt trapped, wanting to run away but unable to. It seemed that whatever she did, he’d find out that she’d kept a secret from him all these years. One so important that by rights she should have told him.

“I won’t be long, darling,” he said warmly to Tina. At her gasp, he gave a theatrical groan and a sheepish grin, releasing appealing laughter lines around his dark eyes. “I’ve let the cat out of the bag!” he exclaimed. “I suppose they don’t even know we were once close friends—”

“Stop it, Gio!” Tina interrupted desperately.

“Aw, shucks! Mustn’t tease my best girl, must I?” He grinned, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her fondly into his hip. He looked down at her as if they were lovers reunited.

Tina wanted to hit him. Aw, shucks and best girl indeed! She caught the look in Giovanni’s eye and was furious to see that he was vastly amused by the way he’d put her on the defensive. Time she got Giovanni somewhere he couldn’t bring her name into disrepute! Already his hipbone was burning into hers with more heat than friends ought to generate between them.

“Not if you want to reach thirty, you mustn’t,” Tina agreed lightly, without a clue in the world as to how to get rid of him safely. But at least she could lose their audience while she did it. So she swallowed her pride and her fear, flashed him a big friendly smile and tucked her arm in his. “I might see you guys at the beach,” she said to the students. “If I’m carrying a tub of ice cream, it’s because I’m going to take my revenge on a bully—”

“I hope you’re not planning on pouring it into my gas tank,” he said with a low laugh, squeezing her waist with his big crushing hand and making her gasp.

“No,” she said sweetly. “Down your cream suit.”

He chucked her indulgently under the chin. “Saucy witch!” he said fondly. His lips parted and his eyes became drugged with a drowsy desire. “You know I’d make you lick it off.”

There was an intake of breath all round. Giovanni’s trick of wrapping each word in curling sensuality had made that sound like a highly erotic act. Red in the face with embarrassment, Tina felt his fingers sliding down her hip, and she could see from the expression on the students’ faces that she needed to play the remark down or she’d lose all credibility as an upholder of the moral tone.

“Idiot,” she said fondly. “Don’t take any notice of this guy,” she said in an offhand way to the students, trying to hold his roaming hand still. The rhythm was penetrating her bones and creating far-reaching vibrations in places she’d rather not remember. “He’s a real joker. Won the debating prize most years. You know the kind. All talk, no do. Come on,” she said, grimly shooting the amused Giovanni a hands-off look. “Tell your aunty Teen what you’ve been up to since you left and how your lovely wife is and your—is it eight?—children. Loves kids,” she confided, her voice a little wobbly now from the strain. “Bye, everyone. Have a nice day.”

With knowing smirks that made her want to scream, the teenagers wandered away and Tina drew in a deep breath. First blow to her. And then her brief sense of deliverance vanished rather rapidly when she found herself being firmly propelled toward her apartment door.

“I knew you’d see sense,” murmured Giovanni.

“Now it’s your turn,” began Tina. But suddenly she found his arms around her. “Gio!” she warned huskily.

“Mmm?” he said with a slow smile.

She felt his long fingers sliding down her back and tensed, ready to raise her knee and… Tina blinked rapidly. Both his hands were pushed into the side pockets of her shorts, and for a few delicious seconds her hipbones were being treated to a seductive massage. She stiffened, motionless as a statue. Giovanni’s long fingers had crept into the warm socket beyond her pelvic bones and the caress was driving heat into her loins. Lovely liquid heat that made her back arch involuntarily and her head lift till her face was uptilted and available.

He murmured something and then laughed softly. She heard a clink and saw that he was waving her key in front of her nose.

“No!” she wailed, furious with herself for not realizing what he was doing. Always he tricked her. Always she fell for it! Angrily she shot her hand up for the key. He lifted it higher, waggling it about in smug triumph. Tall he might be, but she could jump, couldn’t she? And wipe that smile off! Her knees flexed and she sprang into the air just as he stepped closer. And to anyone watching, it must have seemed she’d leapt into his waiting embrace with unseemly eagerness.

Giovanni reacted with typical enthusiasm. “Tina!” he said silkily, wrapping his arms around her with the speed of lightning.

Helplessly she kicked her dangling legs in midair only too uncomfortably aware that her body was being pressed into his and her mouth had ended up inches away from his jaw. “Opportunist!” she gasped, the breath being crushed from her. To her horror, she saw a movement at the Alden place and her eyes widened in dismay. “Put me down!” she yelped.

He glanced behind him and also saw that Lisa had returned and was straightening up from collecting something she’d left behind by the car. With a cruelly mocking grin, he turned back, at the same time casually kicking out at a gas can stowed in the porch.

“I think you’d better stop wiggling,” he said huskily. “I’m enjoying it too much. Do you know where your pelvis is?”

The distraught Tina went instantly limp. Of course she knew! Wasn’t she wishing she didn’t? “Put me down!” she whispered, her mouth a lick away from his. “Lisa must have heard the rattle of the can….”

“Oh, do you think so?” he asked innocently. “I imagine she’s glancing over now, don’t you? I’m afraid,” he added gravely, “that it’ll look as if we’re locked in a friendly clinch.”

“Manipulator! Down!” she whispered fiercely against his laughing mouth.

“If you insist. Mmm. Gorgeous.” His mouth drifted lower to her throat. A hand, thrust between them, crept to the top of her thighs.

“I…mmm! I meant down as in put me down!” she mumbled breathily, feeling the quick rush of flowing need spreading from where his hand had briefly rested and radiating through her whole body.

“Okay.”

One arm alone held her slight weight. She heard the sound of the key being inserted into the lock, but before she could protest, she was being carried inside and the door had slammed. Almost immediately Giovanni let her go and she tumbled to the floor in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs. So did he.

“Well, this is nice,” he murmured, halfheartedly untangling his legs from hers. “Like Bambi and Thumper, when they bumped on the ice.” She gave him a look of loathing, and his hand clamped around her chin. Her mutinous eyes glowered at him, he gave her a crooked grin, then touched his lips to hers.

“They were friends,” she muttered through the kiss, unwillingly adoring the taste of him as her inner lip moved against his mouth.

“I love your sulky pout. Mmm. Your tongue’s so sour tipped when you talk to me and yet you’re really tasty,” he mused. “Must be all those doughnuts. Sugar sweet. I’m crazy about sweet things. Chocolate ice cream on naked flesh, honey-tipped breasts, your luscious poppy red lips. Come here.”

“Gio!” she protested, deeply shocked. His mouth swooped on hers again and she felt his laugh shape the kiss and his breath feeding into her with a rush of deliciously tingling warmth. Weakly she fought the instant pleasure, appalled that she found it wonderful to be drowning in his arms once more and that it was a joy to be mingling the taste of her lips with his, inhaling the clean-showered scent of his body and experiencing the feeling of satin stroking satin as his mouth explored hers.

Sun warm, his mouth, she thought dazedly, pushing at his shoulders because she knew she must. Kisses deep and driving and dangerous. Thoroughly wanton. A hand crawled up her back, and she arched away when all her instincts told her to wriggle into the sweep of his palm and let him explore every curve of her warm body.

With a sudden effort she broke free, her mouth strangely reluctant to do anything more than hold its crushed-kiss pout. Feeling sick with herself, she took a huge breath and said, “Get out!”

“Sure. When I’m satisfied,” he replied in a sexy growl.

Her eyes widened in alarm. She was alone. With a guy who couldn’t control himself. God, her sex drive had driven her mad! “Giovanni!” she whispered shakily. “You…you wouldn’t…” Fear cut off her vocal cords. He was gently stroking the shimmering skin that stretched over her collarbone, a look of dangerous lust in his eyes as he gazed at her.

“I will do whatever I have to,” he said softly.

His body shifted a little closer. She felt the warmth of him a breath or two away and her lips parted in a whimper. The blond head lowered, offering her the full impact of its glorious sun-bleached curls, tousled charmingly by the fall, cascading in touchable damp tendrils on his smoothly tanned forehead. Two dark eyes melted into hers.

A spear of something unrecognizable caught her unawares and made her quiver from head to foot. Her head spun. Flu, she thought. A stomach bug. Just when she needed all her strength.

And then she was swallowing back a cry of alarm because his powerful arms and body were forming an imprisoning cage around her, and she knew that if she attempted to come upright, she couldn’t avoid being pressed intimately against him again. The thought made her feel sick. That strong male body. The hard muscular thighs…

A sudden flash of sexual reaction ripped through her, from loins to stomach, to breasts, throat and mouth, her lips flowering into an unwilling lushness. It wasn’t sickness, she thought, appalled. It was a totally unwelcome carnal excitement that had overtaken her and refused to go away.

My sister is dead, she said to herself. Her child is dead. Gio killed them. The destructive desire receded a little. To her eternal shame, it ebbed away more slowly than it had come.

He smiled mockingly as if he knew everything that was going on inside her and growled with sexy appreciation in his golden throat. “So it still happens,” he marveled. “You become aroused by a look, a gesture, by the passing of warm breath over your ultrasensitive skin.” He gazed at her through the dark fringe of lashes, his expression infinitely seductive. “I do so love the combination of madonna and whore in your makeup.”

“That’s insulting!” she cried with hot-faced indignation. “Being near you makes me sick with disgust!”

“Sure?”

His knowing eyes played on her trembling body in a slow and devastatingly sexy prelude to possession, and to her utter dismay she felt each part tense painfully in turn and leave a tingle on the skin that seeped deeper into each receptive pore. Although he was caressing her only with his eyes, it was as though he was lightly drawing his fingers across her body in a sensual movement that snaked thrillingly down her throat and across her naked shoulders. She was sick with something—hunger, emptiness, a lost dream.

Pain flashed through her, the pain of misery and violent need. The shock of her response thickened her tongue, and it was a great effort to say what she had to. “I’m sure,” she rasped, even those two words wavering.

“I don’t think you’re sure at all. Your big blue eyes are a real giveaway,” he said with a contemptuous drawl. His voice became husky. “They’re glazed and they’re alarmed and they’re begging.”

“No!” she denied, making them as narrow as she could.

He smiled mockingly. “And your beautiful mouth is asking to be kissed so prettily,” he said, touching her hot swollen lower lip. His finger traced a delicate trail to the corner, and it was all she could do to keep her mouth closed and not groan in hunger. “Then there’s your breathing,” he murmured.

“My…what?” she said jerkily, and blinked. She’d squeaked, actually squeaked! Her obvious horror at her own self-betrayal made him smile triumphantly.

“Very shallow, rapid, rather rasping,” he observed with a solicitous smile. “Health problem or me?”

Bodies were treacherous, she thought irritably. They had long memories. She suffered a cruel split-second reminder of their exciting union—wild, passionate, utterly satisfying and perfectly wonderful to her innocent mind and body. Pushing away the memory of his golden body above hers in all its naked glory, she squirmed beneath his knowing stare and tried to concentrate.

“Anger!” she explained in a furious croak.

His eyebrow lifted cynically. “Uh-huh.”

“It is,” she muttered, incensed that he was able to invest such depth of meaning in one little “uh-huh.”

“I’d advise you not to get angry too often, then,” he said. “The results do the most alarming things to your lovely breasts and only a saint would keep his hands off them. In case you hadn’t noticed,” he added unnecessarily, “I’m not a saint.”

She folded her arms with difficulty. There seemed to be a lot of her in the way suddenly. “Keep your eyes and your mind off my body!” she mumbled. “And get in your dream machine and drive off into the blue yonder!” she added in despair.

“I would if I could, believe me,” he said, spreading his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “But I have too many memories of your eager responses. Like when I was dating Beth and had dropped her off with her aunt. You and I were stuck in my car while the blizzard raged around us….”

Tina bristled. “I was cold. You said you’d warm me up. You were the one coming on to me,” she said tightly.

A faint smile tilted the corners of his expressive mouth, and Tina found herself staring at it, hopelessly remembering his first gentle respectful kiss. “I think you were with me every step of the way,” he said quietly.

“I was scared,” she countered, ruthlessly obliterating the dreamlike quality of the kiss and her naively delighted demands for more. He’d obliged, of course. Till she was dizzy and intoxicated with love. “I needed comfort. I was afraid we’d be stranded,” she explained.

“No, you weren’t. You hoped we might be,” he reminded her brutally.

She lifted a stubborn chin. “Only because I wanted to miss study period.”

Giovanni laughed, his even teeth dazzling white in his dark handsome face. Tina felt her heart lurch infuriatingly as it used to in the days when she’d been shamelessly and helplessly in love with her best friend’s lover. Being kissed by him in the car had been her secret dream come true. Other than Brent Powell, who’d been Giovanni’s rival in every walk of life, Gio was the most desirable guy in school.

Brent was everything a mother would want for her daughter. Giovanni had an edge of danger, a rawness that made him exciting. Mothers didn’t want him for their daughters; they wanted him for themselves.

“You’re deluding yourself,” he said in amusement. “You were nuts about me.”

“I was nuts, all right,” she muttered. “You were a fake charmer. You fooled us all.”

“But not anymore?” His eyes grew soft with warm melting desire and his fingers lightly brushed her bare arm. “God!” he breathed huskily. “You look sinfully wanton and inviting sprawled out like that!”

Fear killed the initial flame of pleasure that lit her up inside. She edged backward, feeling the hard line of the stairs against her spine. Giovanni didn’t move, but she could see his muscles were tensed, ready, his eyes working over her body as though she were in a shop window or a cheap peep show.

Against her rib cage, her heart beat frantically, and try as she might, she couldn’t stop the fear from welling up inside. “Don’t touch me!” she whispered.

He caught her in his strong grip, and she froze as he boldly slid one hand under her T-shirt to cup her breast. “But I have to,” he said softly. “There are things my body and soul cry out for. Things I need, or I can’t be content. Don’t you see?” And his mouth descended ruthlessly on hers.

Tina couldn’t even struggle. Weeping inside in frustrated anger, she gritted her teeth to steel herself against the slow, torturing rhythm of the finger and thumb that delicately rubbed the already throbbing peak of her breast, whisking it shockingly to harder and tighter tension and thus arousing every inch of her love-starved body with a perfectly timed, accurately judged pressure. Enough to drive her wild. Enough to make her lean in to him for more. Enough of a kiss to divert her attention, enough to remind her….

“Mmm…” she moaned.

He became still, his hands wandering to her waist while she strained against him hungrily for more. A terrible anger filled her. He was going to cheat her body of its needs. Slowly his mouth lifted from hers and his dark unfathomable eyes fixed her with a tenacious stare. “Is that a capitulation?” he murmured huskily.

“I’ll…” She fought for breath, for some composure and for time.

“Give in, Tina!” he commanded softly. “You know how it is between us. There’s never been anyone as good, has there?”

It was the slightly hesitant query that alerted her. Lifting her lashes briefly to identify the cause, she saw with a firing spurt of satisfaction that he wasn’t quite as indifferent as he pretended. His breathing was ragged, his chest rose and fell with jerky irregularity, and he looked more than a little glazed. He did desire her. He wanted confirmation that he was the greatest lover on God’s earth—and that meant she had a potential weapon.

Giovanni Kowalski cared only for bodily pleasures, and his desire was nothing more than an animal urge. He was man. She was woman. Prison had changed him and made his nature even more carnal than before.