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

‘ Dio , leave me in peace!’ he rasped when the land-line on the desk began to ring.

It was a reporter wanting him to make a statement. This was not the first insensitive lout he’d had to deal with today and probably would not be the last. As he was replacing the receiver Renata put her head round the door to look him a question. She’d added ten years in twenty-four hours. They all had.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It was the press, not the hospital.’

Renata remained hovering in the doorway and he knew she wanted him to hold her. Walking across the room, he took her in his arms and let her weep into his shoulder and wished it could be OK for him to break down and weep.

‘How is Mama?’ he asked when the flood subsided.

‘She’s awake now, and looking a little stronger,’ Renata told him, then added carefully. ‘Luca, about Shannon—’

‘Don’t go there, Renata,’ he warned thinly and was glad of the excuse to move away from her when the phone rang again. His sister hovered for a few seconds longer, silenced by his censure and waiting to find out who was calling before slipping away once she knew the call was business.

He did not want to discuss the rights and wrongs of Shannon staying with him at his apartment. He did not want to discuss Shannon with anyone—period.

His personal assistant was asking him a question that required his full concentration. Luca gave it to him and dealt with the problem as if it were perfectly normal to make corporate decisions while the world lay in rubble at his feet.

It was while he was in the middle of a curt, clipped sentence that his private cell-phone began to beep.

Shannon. He was certain of it. He dropped the other phone as if it were a hot brick.

His fingers shook as he made the connection. All she could manage to say to him was, ‘Please—will you come?’

LUCA came to a stop in the doorway, a thick breath labouring in his chest. He was too late. She had called him too late. Now he was having to stand here and witness just how alone she must have felt.

The doctors had advised him to take her away now, but how did you prize those slender white fingers from her beautiful, beautiful sister’s fingers for the last time?

Tears hit his eyes and remained there, burning like acid, though he did not let them fall. It was going to happen soon, he knew that. Soon he was going to give way to all of this hard, aching grief and cry himself empty, he promised himself.

But for now he wanted to hit something again, put his fist through a window or a wall. The pain it would cause had to be more bearable than what he was suffering right now, he thought grimly as he made himself walk forward on legs that felt hollow and slowly went down on his haunches next to Shannon’s chair. She didn’t even notice, but as he gathered up her free hand her eyelashes flickered and she looked at him.

‘It’s over,’ she whispered.

‘Si,’ he murmured unevenly. ‘I know.’

Her eyes drifted back to her sister’s quietly serene face and she forgot he was there again for a while, then the sound of a muffled sob came from somewhere behind them, and glancing round Luca saw that the rest of his family had arrived.

He’d taken off without them with Fredo driving like a madman leaving the others to find their own way here, now they poured forward, crowding the bed to begin this next wave of unbearable grief. As they pressed around the bed he saw Shannon become aware, blinking blank and dazed eyes at the sudden commotion, and he knew by instinct that she was not going to cope with the Italian way of letting feelings pour out like this.

With his jaw set like a closed vice, he reached across for her other hand and with gentle fingers began carefully easing it away from Keira’s hand.

Shannon gasped and looked him a pained protest. But he shook his head. ‘It’s time to let go, cara ,’ he told her gently.

For a moment he thought she was going to refuse. She looked back at her sister with glistening tears drawing a film across her eyes and it ripped him apart inside because he knew those tears displayed the beginning of acceptance.

A few seconds after that she allowed him to complete the separation, allowed him to ease his arm around her waist and help her to her feet. The others flooded towards her now, crowding her by reaching out to embrace her and murmuring their tearful phrases of condolence; his mother looking dreadful, his weeping sisters and their sober-faced husbands all taking their turn.

Shannon accepted their embraces from within a cocoon of dazed bewilderment and clung tightly to one of Luca’s hands.

Keira was gone.

Angelo and Keira. Was it all right for her to use their names together like that now? She looked up at Luca standing big and dark like a guard beside her; his handsome face was locked up again, mouth grim, eyes hot. It wasn’t the face to which you asked such a question, she thought, and allowed him to guide her towards the door, leaving her sister surrounded by people who’d always loved her unstintingly.

There was consolation in that somehow.

‘The baby,’ she said as they reached the quietness of the corridor.

‘Not now,’ Luca said and kept her moving—away towards the lifts, then down and across the ground floor foyer out into the late afternoon sunlight. It was cold and she shivered. She saw Fredo was there looking solemn as he held open the rear door to a big silver car. Luca guided her inside, then followed. Almost as soon as the door closed behind him he was reaching for her and drawing her into his arms.

They stayed like that for the time it took Fredo to deliver them to the apartment, Shannon leaning limply against him, lost somewhere inside the mists of shock while he gave her what he instinctively knew she needed—his silent strength.

He continued to hold her close as they walked across the main foyer of the apartment block; he kept her wrapped in his arms as they rode the lift. When they reached the apartment she suddenly broke free and headed straight for her bedroom. Luca needed to use a few moments to put a clamp on what was threatening to break loose from inside him, then he followed with the intention of making sure she was all right before he left her alone to her grief.

But it did not work out like that. One glance at her lying curled on her side in the middle of the bed and he was kicking off his shoes, dragging off his jacket and tie, then joining her.

It was really quite pathetic the way she accepted his arms as they drew her in, and near impossible not to shed tears with her when she began to weep quietly.

When she eventually went silent he reached beneath and tugged out the duvet, then covered them both.

‘I don’t—’ she went to protest.

‘You are so cold you’re shivering,’ he cut in huskily. ‘Stay here with me like this for a little while,’ he encouraged. ‘Once you warm up a bit I will go and leave you in peace.’

‘I don’t want you to go.’ It was so soft and weak he almost missed it. But he didn’t miss the way her fingers drifted across his shirt front and settled in a tremulous curl around his nape. Her breath feathered along his jawline, her breasts felt soft against his ribs and a slender leg slid across his thighs as she pressed herself closer as if it was the only place she wanted to be. He closed his eyes and wished it did not feel so good to be needed by her like this.

That need continued through the ensuing dark days when Shannon was aware of very little if Luca was not there to make her.

‘Eat,’ he’d say and she would eat. ‘Sleep,’ and she would curl up in her bed like a child and close her eyes obediently.

In the mornings they would share breakfast, then Luca would drive her to the hospital to be with the baby while he went off to attend to—other things. In the afternoon he would arrive back at the hospital to spend a little time in the nursery before taking Shannon back to his apartment to ply her with more food and make her talk about work, her life in London, Keira and Angelo—about anything so long as she was made to use her brain.