Cathy Williams - Summer Loving

The next few songs flew by. Somewhere, during a twirl, her hair clasp slid off and disappeared. Feeling freer, she let go.

When the songs slowed, she stopped dancing, grateful for the chance to cool down. ‘Thank you, that was—’ She stuttered to a stop when his arms slid around her waist.

Just as quickly she was disengaged from him. She almost lost her balance as rough hands grabbed her from behind. The tingle along her nerve endings announced who held her before she heard his voice.

‘It’s time to leave.’

Without waiting for her agreement, he tucked her behind him, then murmured low, heated words to Mario. In the strobe light, Ava saw the younger man pale.

Cesare’s jaw was set as he straightened and manacled her wrist with one hand.

Before she could draw breath, he was tugging her off the dance floor.

‘Cesare, wait!’

He ignored her and headed towards the exit.

‘For goodness’ sake, stop! I need to get my shoes.’

He stopped so suddenly she careened into him. His hard body easily absorbed the impact, but she was left with a vivid imprint of his broad, bristling masculine form. With his fingers still imprisoning her wrist, his gaze dropped to her feet.

‘You danced barefoot?’ he grazed out.

‘Yes. Now I need to get my shoes.’

‘Why? You’ll only discard them at the earliest opportunity.’

‘That doesn’t mean I want to leave them behind. They cost me a bomb.’

His eyes glinted with danger. ‘Do not move from here.’

The crowd parted for him as he headed for the bar. He returned seconds later, her silver shoes dangling from his fingers. Wordlessly he thrust them at her. When she didn’t immediately put them on, his eyebrow shot up.

‘What? My feet are killing me.’

His gaze dropped again to her bare feet. For some reason, the sight of them seemed to annoy him further. When he glanced at her, his eyes were ablaze with a look that made her swallow and step back.

He advanced until she was backed into a corner. ‘What do you think you were playing at back there?’ he asked through clenched teeth.

‘I could ask you the same thing.’

He bared his teeth, but nothing about his expression showed he was in a merry mood. ‘How long are we going to keep doing this? We’ve tested the theory a few times these past weeks. Per favore, Ava, you need to stop pushing my buttons because I’m hanging by a thread here, and I’m seriously scared of what the consequences will mean for us if I snap.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE INTENSITY BEHIND his words sent a wave of panic through Ava.

She swallowed, cleared her throat and shook her head. She couldn’t show him how his behaviour had affected her. ‘You were too busy renewing your various acquaintances to be bothered with me, so I decided to make my own friends.’

Tawny eyes darkened into stormy pools. ‘And you thought the best way to enjoy yourself is to let another man put his hands all over you?’ His fists were clenched and his pallor had faded a little underneath his tan. The tic beating a wild tattoo in his cheek made her belly swan dive.

‘We were just dancing. No big deal.’

His disbelieving laugh grated on her ears. ‘No big deal?’

‘What did you expect? That I’d sulk in a corner pining for you?’

He released a harsh breath. ‘Ava...’

‘You want to leave, so let’s go.’ Unable to withstand the pressure, she pushed past him and threw open the heavy oak doors that led outside.

The cool breeze after the nightclub’s cloying atmosphere was a refreshing welcome. Heaving lungfuls of air into her oxygen-starved body, she stopped beside the bronze and gold column that fronted the club. She sensed Cesare behind her but thought it safer not to turn around.

‘We can’t keep doing this to one another,’ he finally rasped in a fierce undertone.

‘I agree. We can’t. You’ve withdrawn from me completely, and yet you can’t stand it when another man comes within touching distance of me. Whatever is wrong with us, it’s driving me insane and I can’t stand this any more.’ Feelings she didn’t know how to deal with ricocheted through her at lightning speed.

She seethed with anger, she wanted to cry and she wanted to scream.

Plunging shaking hands into her hair, she lifted the suddenly heavy tresses off her heated shoulders. Tears prickled at her eyes but she furiously blinked them away.

Divorce, it seemed, was her only escape. And yet the thought of that final severing from the man she’d dreamed she would spend the rest of her life with brought a hard lump to her chest.

Her frenzied fingers twisted her hair into a rope at her nape.

Cesare drew closer, bringing a renewed rush of awareness. His relentless, all encompassing heat bored down on her. She sucked in a breath and held it in, afraid to let it out lest it somehow transmitted her turmoil.

Firm hands brushed hers away and his strong fingers replaced hers. Her breath grew laboured as his fingers glided through her hair. ‘It’s time we have that talk, carissima.’ His breath fanned her sensitive lobe.

A shiver went through her. She’d started to turn when a loud wolf-whistle shattered the air from a trio of men who’d just emerged from the club.

The sight of her—arms raised, bare feet and naked, seductively curved back—garnered very male interest that made Cesare growl low in his throat.

With jerky movements, he shrugged out of his jacket. ‘Basta! I don’t care if it offends your female sensibilities. Put this on, now,’ he hissed. Pulling her arms down, he draped the jacket around her shoulders.

His limo, which had pulled up while she’d been lost in thought, stood with Paolo holding the door open. Cesare ushered her into the back seat, climbed in beside her and yanked the door shut.

Rough fists clenched and unclenched on his thigh, but it wasn’t until the car was moving that he spoke.

‘It seems you’ve turned into quite the exhibitionist, cara mia.’ The cold endearment emerged more as a reproach than an affectionate term.

She flinched and tried to move away. Immediately he trapped her arms, stopping her sideways escape.

‘A lot of things have happened while you’ve been busy pretending I don’t exist, Cesare.’

His lips firmed. ‘I can see that. And I’m wondering how all this impacts on my daughter.’

She turned sharply. ‘Stop right there! You’d better erase that whiff of you’re a bad mother I hear in your voice, PDQ! And stop referring to her as your daughter. Up until very recently, your part in all this has merely been the biology. You chose to live away from us! You lost the right to be a father when you withdrew so far physically and emotionally from our daughter, she may as well have been dead to you!’

In the darkened interior of the car, his head went back as if she’d struck him. What little colour had remained left his face. She couldn’t have struck a deeper blow if she’d shot a bullet into his heart.

Immediately contrite, she reached out and grabbed his hand. It remained cold and unmoving beneath hers.

‘Cesare, I didn’t mean that—’

‘I deserved that. But I had good reason. Or I thought I had for a long time, well before the earthquake. What happened with Roberto and Valentina...I didn’t think I deserved a child when Roberto had lost his.’

‘Do you really think Roberto begrudged you a family?’

‘I didn’t think—I knew. He told me many times that I didn’t deserve a family—’ a tight edge of pain roughened his voice ‘—that I deserved to be alone the way he was.’

Her insides fractured at his torment. But she couldn’t stop her own pain from welling up alongside it. She sank deeper into the warm jacket that had so recently draped Cesare’s body. Curiously, she drew strength from it to fight him. ‘I’m sorry he said that to you. But did you really think Annabelle deserved to suffer because your brother was fighting his own monsters?’