Michelle Reid - Italian Deception - The Salvatore Marriage / A Sicilian Seduction / The Passion Bargain

In other words, shut up. Pressing her lips together, she moved to the table and sat herself down. If he sticks toast under my nose I shall probably throw it back at him, she decided mutinously. Then felt a wave of panic wash over her when he turned suddenly as if she’d said the words out loud.

Not that she was afraid of him—only his expression. She preferred to keep looking at his back. In fact she would prefer it a lot more if she did not have to look at him at all! So she kept her eyes lowered as he crossed to the table, and placed the coffee pot before her.

Then he went still because he’d noticed her bag standing by the door and a new tension began to suck the oxygen out of the air. He was going to say something about last night, she was sure of it. If he did she was out of here even if that meant jumping down the lift shaft.

‘About last night …’

She shot to her feet like a bullet.

‘I want to apologise for—’

She moved on trembling legs towards the door.

‘Shannon …’

‘No!’ She swung on him furiously. ‘Don’t you dare start telling me how much you regret it! Don’t you dare, do you hear me, Luca? Don’t you dare !’

‘I hear you,’ he said very quietly.

She looked at him then, really looked at him and saw exactly what she’d expected to see—his handsome dark features locked into a cold stone wall of self-contempt and regret. A sob caught in her throat. She wanted to hide her shame. She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole!

‘Keira has to be all that matters here,’ she pushed out unsteadily. ‘You—m-me— we don’t matter. I won’t let you force me into running away this time!’

‘I don’t want you to run,’ he sighed out irritably.

The question—Then what do you want from me?—sang in a silence that hung.

She didn’t ask it. Instead she lifted trembling fingers to her mouth, tried to swallow, then lowered them again.

‘I have to move to a hotel—today,’ she told him.

There was a movement of tight male muscle, a flash of black fury hitting his eyes. ‘And I have to claim my brother’s body today!’ he lashed at her harshly. ‘What do you think is more important right now?’

She took a jerky step backwards, shaken to her roots by what he’d said. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered painfully ‘I didn’t know!’

‘I know that,’ he snapped, still frowning blackly as he swung away again. ‘We are both having to deal with an intolerable situation,’ he said tightly. ‘Needs cross, emotions get out of control. It has to be expected that our priorities will clash.’

Wise words, she acknowledged, if she was able to ignore the fact that she had been so wrapped up in her own grievances and distress she’d allowed herself to forget all of his.

And what were her grievances? she asked herself. So, they’d done the unforgivable last night but both had been guilty of falling into that particular dark pit, greedily assuaging one set of emotions, then overwhelming them with a different set.

Because Luca had pulled away from her afterwards did not mean she could shift all the blame onto him. In fact, while she was being brutally honest here—if he hadn’t pulled away, then she probably would have.

The new silence gnawed at the tension in the atmosphere. She wished she could say something to make them both feel better but she couldn’t think what. He was standing there wearing a rod of iron strapped across his broad shoulders, and his fingers were gripping the worktop with enough power to put dents in to the solid black marble.

‘Sit down again,’ he gritted.

Sit down, she repeated to herself, and looked down at the way her bags were standing at her feet like a childish defiance. Without saying a word she picked them up, turned and left the kitchen. Walking down the hall, she went back into the bedroom, put the bags down by the bed then walked back the way she had come. Fingers fluttered momentarily, coinciding with the deep, shaky breath she took before she pushed open the kitchen door and stepped back in.

Luca was still standing where she had left him, long brown fingers still gripping the worktop like a vice. She wanted to go to him, put her arms around him and show him just how badly she felt for forgetting what really mattered. But instead she crossed to the table and sat down.

And the silence pulsed in her eardrums, it throbbed in her stomach and pulled at the flesh covering her face. Move ! She wanted to shout at him. Say something— anything ! I’ve said I’m sorry. I’ve made the climb down. I don’t know what else to do!

Maybe he tapped into her thought patterns—he’d always been able to do that. He turned, walked towards the table. The predicted rack of toast was set down in front of her.

‘I will organise a hotel suite for you,’ he announced curtly, then left her alone to swallow the unpalatable fact that her climb down had been a complete waste of time.

An hour later and she was at her sister’s bedside, delivered there by Luca who, once he’d checked on Keira, left again, his lean face scored by the grim task that lay ahead of him, one that would to strip his self-control to the bone.

Tears for them all flooded her eyes as she sat gently stroking Keira’s soft brown hair. She and her sister were so unalike in so many ways, she thought fondly. The colour of their hair, for instance, and the differences in character. Where she was bright and independent and naturally self-confident, Keira had always been shy and unsure of herself. Meeting and falling in love with Angelo had put stars in her eyes and an anxious pallor on her soft cheeks. She could never quite believe that a dashingly handsome man like Angelo could fall in love with a timid little mouse like her. So she’d worked hard all her marriage to make herself feel worthy of her man. It had infuriated Shannon to watch it sometimes. ‘You spoil him too much. He’ll start treating you like a doormat if you don’t watch out.’

But Angelo had remained faithfully besotted to his Irish mouse. It was the mouse who’d taken Shannon by surprise by turning into a sly little fox. ‘Idiot,’ she whispered and was suddenly fighting a battle with fresh tears again.

What followed was a long and hard nerve-flaying day in which Shannon divided her time between Keira and the nursery.

By two o’clock she was beginning to feel drained of emotional energy and was actually glad to be given some respite from her bedside vigil when a team of medical staff appeared and she was ushered away.

She needed some air that did not smell of the hospital. So she bought a sandwich in the downstairs cafeteria and took it with her to eat outside. The sun was bright and the air was cool, fresh—clean. Walking through the neatly laid gardens, she found a bench in the sunshine and sat down, unwrapped her sandwich and tried to empty all thoughts from her head so that she could attempt to eat at least.

Luca tracked her down ten minutes later. Her hair was up scrunched into a twist of narrow black ribbon, and the curve of her slender neck looked disturbingly vulnerable to him. The thought made him grimace because he wasn’t thinking of vulnerable as in fragile, he was thinking vulnerable as in ripe for tasting. His tongue even moistened at the prospect, and he wished that he didn’t have to look at her through the eyes of a recent lover.

But he did. Giving in to his baser instincts might have been a stupid mistake but he was now stuck with the results of it. Last night he had gone a little insane. He had lost control of himself. Two years ago she’d left him, taking his manhood with her when she went. Last night she gave it back to him. He should be pleased. He should be feeling the triumph of retribution and be able to walk away free and whole and ready to get on with the rest of his life, but all he felt was …