Tori Carrington - Dangerous...

Gia had spotted the pain on his face even as he said the words and had wondered if he was comforting her or himself.

“I miss her.”

Gia wasn’t sure if it was the rain trailing down his handsome face or tears as he enveloped her in a hug, holding her tight, holding her close. “I do, too, sweetheart. I do, too.”

They stayed like that for a long moment.

And then Vito had cleared his throat from somewhere behind them, and an umbrella appeared above their heads, casting a gloomier shadow over them.

Her father had looked at his close friend, then back at Gia. “You have family, Giovanna. Lots of family. And you’ll always have them. Remember that. You’ll always have them.”

Gia had tried to find comfort in his words, but she’d only been seven and hadn’t really understood what he’d meant in light of losing the closest member of her family. Now she saw what he meant. Now, so many years later, the family had welcomed her back with open arms when she’d decided to return to the fold. Each and every one of them working in unison to help find the person behind her father’s death.

Luca included.

She rubbed her arm again, the memory of him sitting across the informal kitchen counter from her a short time earlier replacing the image of her father’s rain-stained face.

“Why are you so surprised I came back?” he’d asked her over a simple pasta dinner she’d prepared herself with the help of a jar of homemade pesto sauce the housekeeper/cook had stored in the refrigerator.

Gia had pretended she might not answer the question, even though she’d known she would. “You didn’t seem to want anything to do with the family when you left. It just seemed odd that you would come back.”

She’d seen something in his blue eyes then. Something that signaled that the still waters of his appearance ran deep within him.

She remembered the many family nicknames for him. The most popular being Pretty Boy Paretti because he had the blond-haired, blue- eyed good looks of the northern Italians rather than the dark intensity of the Sicilians.

It had been those same good looks that made her easy prey when he’d spent a lot of time around the house doing odd jobs for her father while he attended college and then law school. She’d fallen for him, hard.

And the same, she’d thought, had applied to him.

And then his brother was killed and the man she’d fallen in love with had become cold and distant. And then he’d disappeared altogether.

Another movement outside the windows caught her attention. Only the movement hadn’t come from outside, had it? Rather she’d caught the reflection of someone moving behind her in the glass.

Gia’s heart lodged in her throat as she helplessly watched a masked man wearing gloves reach above her and then stretch a thin wire cord around her neck.

She moved her right hand up in time to fit it between her neck and the wire before her assailant pulled. Still, she coughed from the sudden, intense pressure even as she kicked at his feet and legs. But she was no match for his height and strength. The strong smell of onions filled her nose as he leaned closer to her ear.

“A lady mob boss. You should be glad that you lasted as long as you did, Giovanna. Your father would have been proud.”

The voice was unfamiliar to her. Then again, many of the voices that now filled her father’s house fell into the same category. Where once she could have foretold someone’s arrival by his or her footfalls, now the sound of the house settling kept her up at night.

With good reason, she realized.

She watched her own reflection in the glass. Blood drained from her face and the cord felt dangerously close to severing her fingers as she tried to pull it away, serving only to pull it tighter to the unprotected part of her neck.

Gia kicked out, aiming for the doors, desperately trying to attract the attention of the guard outside. Her bare foot hit a lower pane of glass and the door rattled. She tried again, but found herself jerked out of reach by her assailant.

Death. It had been a way of life for her growing up. Forget that every now and again the house had been the gathering place when someone in the family caught a bullet with his name on it. There were also the more personal deaths. First, there had been the loss of her mother when she was but a girl. And then her paternal grandmother, who had spoken only Italian and had essentially raised her and her brothers until her own death when Gia was seventeen.

But somehow she’d never considered that her own death would take place here. And that it should happen in such a way that she should bear witness to it seemed especially disheartening. She tried to penetrate the mask of the man holding her, catch a glimpse of his eyes, the shape of his jaw, even though the attempt was futile at best. She knew that within a matter of seconds she’d begin to lose consciousness, and soon after that her heart would stop beating due to lack of oxygen.

Still, she searched for a way to fend off her attacker.

It was then she grew aware that when he’d jerked her back from the doors, he’d moved her closer to a side table where a brass lamp sat. She shifted her free hand from around her neck and reached for the light, coughing when he pulled harder on the cord and then reaching again. Her fingertips slid against the cold metal but she couldn’t seem to get a grip around the wide base.

The room began to blacken. She slowly blinked, her arm falling to her side.

That was when she caught another reflection in the doors. That of a man coming up behind her attacker.

Luca…

LONG MINUTES LATER, Gia sat against the sofa cushions of the library, her fingers at her raw throat, staring at the man who had appeared out of nowhere and had seen to her attacker with the efficiency of a paramilitary trooper. At least until the last minute when the masked man had landed a punch that set Luca back on his heels and gotten away despite the armed guards who were supposed to be protecting the house and its inhabitants.

Finally, Luca finished talking to the head of the guard detail, who apologized over and over again, and then he closed the library doors,

turning to face Gia.

“What are you doing here?”

For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why she was being openly antagonistic toward the man who had just saved her life. Actually, she’d been rude to him pretty much since she’d returned to Long Island. It probably had something to do with the fact that when it came to Luca, it was better to avoid the past than to confront it head- on.

He crossed to a concealed bar, pushed the door to spring it open and poured two glasses of whiskey. He walked toward the couch and handed her one.

He considered her over the rim of his glass as he drank. “I should think your first words to me would be ‘thank you.’”

Gia dropped her gaze, the contents of her own glass blazing a trail down her throat. “For all I know, you could have been in on it with him.”

His eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. “Is that what you think?”

She shrugged and then put her glass down on the end table nearest her. “It doesn’t matter what I think. Facts speak louder than words. And the fact is that I said good-night to you over an hour ago.”

Luca stood staring at her for a long moment, then retrieved something lying on the floor near the door. She realized it was the file of papers he’d had her sign earlier. “I got all the way back to my place before realizing I’d forgotten these.”

Gia looked from his hands to his face. “So I should count myself lucky then, shouldn’t I?”

He didn’t appear to know how to respond so he said nothing. Instead, he moved to sit on the couch next to her.