Kate Walker - The Sicilian's Wife

‘Stop messing—don’t tease me like this.’

‘What makes you think that I’m teasing?’

Looking into his dark, inscrutable face, she could almost believe that he meant it. There was no trace of amusement in those burning eyes, no hint of a smile on the sensual mouth.

‘But you have to be…’

Again his proud head moved in denial of her protest.

‘No, cara. There is no “have to be” about this. I am telling the absolute truth.’

‘You can’t be…’

All the strength went from her legs and she dropped down into the nearest chair, unable to keep upright any longer. And at least this way she could put some distance between them.

‘I don’t believe you!’

‘Believe it!’

Oh, this was worse than ever! Bending down, he had placed both strong-fingered hands on the arms of the chair, one on either side of her. Imprisoned in the cage made by them and his powerful body, the wall of his chest in the immaculate white shirt a solid barrier between her and escape, she could look nowhere but into the smouldering bronze of his eyes.

And suddenly she was reminded of the volcano Etna on his native island of Sicily. The burn of his eyes made her think of the molten lava that had poured down the mountain’s sides, scorching everything in its path. She felt as if his gaze had just the same heated power, searing over the delicacy of the exposed skin of her face and neck.

He was so close that she could smell the clean scent of his body, mixed with the tang of some citrus cologne, light and invigorating—and painfully stimulating to her already overwrought nerves. Her heart was thudding in double-quick time, her breath coming raw and uneven.

‘Don’t do this to me! Not now! What is this, Cesare—some sort of twisted little game? Do you get some fun out of tormenting me, lying to me? Because—’

‘Would it help if I swore I am not lying now—but that I had lied in the past?’

‘Lied?’

It seemed that with every word he spoke the situation got stranger and stranger, more complicated and tangled, impossible to sort out. It was as if the Cesare Santorino that she had thought she knew had been taken away and someone new and totally alien had been put in his place.

‘When did you lie to me?’

Her mouth had dried painfully and the words came out on an embarrassing croak.

‘When I said I wasn’t interested in you. When I acted as if you bored me. When I—’

‘No—stop it—no, no, no!’

Megan flung her hands up to cover her ears and then rapidly moved them so that they covered her face.

‘Stop it!’ she muttered into the protection of her concealing fingers. ‘This isn’t fair!’

This time last year—on her twenty-first birthday—she would have been overjoyed to hear those words. At Christmas, and even more at that dreadful New Year party, they would have set her heart dancing for joy, made her spirits sing. But now it was too late.

Then she couldn’t think of anything that could have been better. Now she couldn’t think of anything worse. Because if anything Cesare claimed was the truth in any way, then it very soon wouldn’t be when he found out…

‘Stop it!’ she repeated more fiercely this time.

‘Mi dispiace—I am sorry.’

He’d moved too fast, Cesare told himself reproachfully. Impatience had always been a fault of his and this time he’d rushed right in when he would have done so much better to take things slowly.

He had promised himself he would take things slowly. But in the moment that he’d walked into the library and seen Megan in the flesh for the first time in over six months all his control had deserted him. He had struggled to hold on to that control for over six years now, and he hadn’t been able to do so any longer.

‘Forgive me Megan…’

His tone was so rough, so unbelievably raw with some emotion that it forced Megan to lower her protective hands, gazing up at him in shock and bewilderment.

And that bewilderment struck at Cesare like a reproach.

‘Forgive me…’ he said again, lifting his hands swiftly from the chair arms and flinging them up and out in a supremely Italian gesture of surrender.

‘You are right. I was in the wrong to tease you—wrong and cruel. I should never have done it.’

It was only what she had expected, Megan told herself dully as she watched him swing away from her and prowl moodily across the wide, polished wooden floor, his shoulders hunched, hands pushed deep into the pockets of his trousers. She had known all along that he wasn’t telling the truth. That he was just tormenting her as he had done when she was little more than a child, and he had been a sophisticated twenty-two year old.

Then he had mocked her starry-eyed hero-worship of him playing on it mercilessly to have her fetching and carrying for him, taking advantage of her keenness to perform any tiny task she could for the object of her devotion. And now it seemed that he was doing it again.

It was only what she had expected but, right now, with the worry that was always there, just below the surface of her mind, nagging at her and throwing her into total confusion about what she should do, his teasing seemed so much worse.

It hurt. It hurt terribly, adding another layer to the pain of the way Gary had behaved, and the consequences of that behaviour until her head swum sickeningly, and she was unable to think straight.

‘It’s all right,’ she managed stiffly. ‘After all, it’s only what I’d expect from you. But now that you’ve had your fun, would you mind leaving?’

With an effort she brought her chin up, forced her green eyes to meet his dark gaze defiantly.

‘I’d prefer to be alone.’

‘Fun?’

He didn’t seem to have heard the last comment or, if he had, he was deliberately ignoring it.

‘Fun!’

Shock roughed his voice, stopped his restless prowling.

‘You think that this is just un divertimento? That I am playing with you?’

‘Well, isn’t it?’ Her chin lifted a little higher. ‘What else could it be?’ she challenged.

‘La verita!’ Cesare shot back, his tone like the crack of a gun. ‘The truth!’

‘The truth! Oh come on! Don’t…don’t…’

To her horror, her voice began to tremble, so that she stumbled over the words she wanted. It was too much. Too cruel. He’d taken his joke too far. And she was in no fit state to be able to cope with this new, sophisticated form of emotional torture.

‘Don’t do this to me!’ she wailed, her voice high and tight.

The pain in her words was like a blow to his face, making him freeze into stillness, eyes narrowing sharply. Something was very wrong here. Something much more than any distress at his heavy-handed teasing.

‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

And then, when she could only shake her head in mute, numb misery, he came close—closer—one warm strong hand sliding under her chin and lifting her face to meet his brown-eyed scrutiny.

Her cheeks were wet with tears. Tears that had trickled down her face, dripping off her chin. And more were welling up inside her eyes, making the deep green glisten like polished gemstones.

‘Carina, why are you crying? Meggie…’

Unthinkingly, the word slid past his lips, using the long ago nickname she had had as a child.

‘Tell me what’s wrong.’

It was the name that did it. If he hadn’t said ‘Meggie…’ in quite that way. If he hadn’t used that once familiar, now rarely spoken, nickname, the name only those closest and dearest to her had used in the past, then she might have been able to resist it.

But he had said ‘Meggie,’ and both his voice and his expression had softened on the word. Just for a moment he had pushed aside time and had taken her back to the days when life had been sweet, idyllic, uncomplicated. The perfect bliss of a summer when the sun had always seemed to be shining, and nothing could possibly go wrong.