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

Need, greed—it had many names but they all came wrapped up in the same package. He wanted more and no amount of self-aimed contempt was going to change that.

Maybe he should go out and find himself a woman. There were certainly a lot out there more than willing to share his bed. Maybe now that Shannon had released him from his sexual prison he could even do both himself and these other woman some of his old macho justice.

But he didn’t want them; he wanted this one. This red-haired, white-skinned, blue eyed betrayer who made his body sing.

A wry smile played with the tired corners of his mouth as he started walking again. The slight tensing in Shannon’s shoulders as she’d sensed his approach gave that smile a different edge. Love each other or hate each other, they could still tune into the others presence like wild cats sniffing territorial scent.

Stepping around the bench, he paused for a moment to study the strain in her face. Her hair might burn like fire in the sunlight but her cheeks were pale, her eyes too dark and there was a telling hint of hurt about the way she was holding her mouth.

On a heavy sigh, he remembered why it was that he had come to find her. Slipping free the single button holding his jacket together, he sat down next to her with a long sigh.

‘I’m sorry there was no one here with you,’ he murmured quietly. ‘It has been a—tough morning for everyone, I’m afraid.’

She turned to look at him, expression guarded as she looked into his face. He was beginning to look haggard, he knew, and did not bother to hide it. ‘I thought it was tough enough five years ago when we had to do this for my father but …’ He stopped, mouth tightening on words he didn’t want to say but knew in the end that he had no choice. ‘My mother collapsed and has had to be sedated. Renata is finding it difficult to cope. Sophia offered to come here to sit with you but she is needed by Mama.’

‘I understand,’ she returned.

‘Do you?’ Luca wished that he did. It felt as if the whole family had been involved in that car crash—himself and Shannon included. ‘It’s a mess,’ he muttered and leaned forward to rest his forearms on his knees, his throat working on the now-permanent lump stuck in it. ‘I’ve got people dropping like flies all around me. Formalities to deal with. A company that refuses to stop running just because I want it to. The phones keep on ringing. We are sinking beneath a wave of sympathy that, to be honest, I could do without right now.’ His voice was growing husky—he could hear it.

Would she scream abuse at him if he also admitted that he wanted to pick her up and carry her off to the nearest bed to lose himself in her for an hour or two?

‘The thing is, Shannon, I need to ask a big favour …’

She tensed. He grimaced as his mind made a connection with what he’d been thinking and what he’d just said. But, of course, Shannon didn’t know about that.

‘I need to be sure you are OK, you see,’ he went on. ‘Thinking of you alone in some faceless hotel room when you are not here does not make me feel OK.’ He turned his head to look at her. The sunlight was trying its best to put some colour onto her drawn cheeks but it wasn’t succeeding, and her mouth looked so vulnerable he wanted to—

‘So I would like to take back my offer to find you somewhere else to stay. I want you to go on living at my place. I will move out if you prefer,’ he offered, watching her carefully for some kind of reaction, but he wasn’t getting one. ‘But I would rather stay there too. That way I will know you will not be on your own if the—’

‘Don’t say it,’ she said.

‘No,’ he agreed, looking down at his long fingered hands hanging limp between his spread knees.

While Shannon looked at the top of his dark head, watching the sun gloss it with a silken sheen. If the worst happens during the night, was what he had been going to say. Having shared her time between Keira and the baby, she was more than aware that the ‘worst’ wasn’t very far away. As she watched the baby grow stronger with every passing hour she watched the baby’s mama slowly fade.

‘About last night,’ he inserted suddenly.

Shannon sucked in a sharp breath. His hands moved, flexing tensely before pleating together, and she saw a nerve at the edge of his jaw give a jerk.

‘I went a little crazy,’ he admitted. ‘I am ashamed of myself for taking my—feelings out on you.’

‘We both went a little crazy.’ She shifted tensely.

‘It won’t happen again,’ he promised.

‘No,’ she agreed.

‘So will you stay at my apartment?’

She looked down at her lap where the remains of her half-eaten sandwich lay slotted in its triangular casing and watched it blur out of focus on the onset of tears. ‘Keira isn’t ever going to wake up, is she?’ she whispered.

Luca didn’t answer for a moment, then he shook his dark head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he responded huskily.

‘I’ll stay,’ she agreed on a thick swallow.

Luca sat back against the bench suddenly and the air hissed out from between his teeth in a tense, taut act of relief. A moment later something dropped on her lap next to the sandwich carton.

It was a plastic security card. ‘Access,’ he explained. ‘You might need it if I cannot get here to collect you.’

She nodded.

‘If I cannot make it then my driver Fredo will come for you. You remember Fredo?’

‘Yes.’ Another nod while she stared down at the card. Fredo was a wiry little man with amazing patience—he needed it for the hours he tended to hang around waiting for Luca to appear.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then I don’t have to worry about you getting into the back of some stranger’s car.’

It was a joke. She hadn’t expected it. It surprised her enough to force a small laugh out of her. Luca laughed too, one of those deep, soft, husky sounds of his that caressed the senses. But it all felt so strange and wrong to be laughing in the circumstances that soon they both fell silent and still.

‘You don’t have to worry about me at all,’ she thrust into that stillness.

‘Worry is not the word that shoots into my head,’ he countered. ‘Someone should be here with you supporting you through this. Here.’ Something else landed on her lap. She stared in surprise at the sight of her own mobile telephone. ‘It was in my overcoat pocket. I found it this morning,’ Luca explained. ‘Here is my private number. Log it in the phone’s memory. Don’t hesitate to call me if you need me, Shannon.’ It was a serious threat more than polite reassurance.

Then he stood up so suddenly that he made her blink. Big and lean and dark and tense, he blocked out her sunlight. She felt cold—bereft. He was going to leave and she wanted to fling herself at him and beg him to stay!

But he had duties to return to and she had a bedside vigil to keep.

‘I have to go.’ He stated the obvious and tension zipped through the air like electric static. ‘Use the phone, do you hear me?’

Shannon pressed her lips hard together and nodded. He turned and strode away without glancing back and she remained sitting there with the sun trying to put back the warmth he had taken with him.

It didn’t.

Luca had never felt so inadequate or useless in his entire life as he did when he walked away from her like that. But he had things to deal with, lousy, throat-locking, soul-stripping things that could not be put off.

But his mind was locked into Shannon—or was it his heart? He didn’t know. What he did know was that Shannon might have betrayed him two years ago but he was betraying her now by not being there when she needed him.

And it had to be him. That was the other part of his inner conflict that was flaying him alive. He did not want someone else to be there with her. He didn’t even want to think about her leaning on someone else.