Книга - A Passionate Reunion In Fiji

A Passionate Reunion In Fiji
Michelle Smart


A remote island paradise… A chance to rekindle their marriage! Workaholic billionaire Massimo Briatore has convinced his estranged wife Livia to accompany him to Fiji. It’s supposed to be one final weekend, pretending to be married for a family celebration. But, trapped in paradise, there’s no escape from the memories of the tenderness and heat that once bound them together. An explosive reunion is on the cards, but only if their passion can burn away their past…







A remote island paradise…

A chance to rekindle their marriage!

Nothing fazes workaholic billionaire Massimo Briatore. Not even the idea of his estranged wife, Livia, accompanying him to Fiji for a family celebration. He’s sure he’ll have no problem pretending for one weekend that their whirlwind marriage is still intact. Until he lays eyes on her again…

Trapped in paradise, Livia can’t escape from the memories of the tenderness and heat that once bound her to Massimo. An explosive reunion is on the cards, but only if their passion can burn away their past!


MICHELLE SMART’s love affair with books started when she was a baby and would cuddle them in her cot. A voracious reader of all genres, she found her love of romance established when she stumbled across her first Mills & Boon book at the age of twelve. She’s been reading them—and writing them—ever since. Michelle lives in Northamptonshire, England, with her husband and two young Smarties.


Also by Michelle Smart (#uaa835b45-db34-569e-b4cc-308707a3c774)

Married for the Greek’s Convenience

Once a Moretti Wife

A Bride at His Bidding

The Sicilian’s Bought Cinderella

Bound to a Billionaire miniseries

Protecting His Defiant Innocent

Claiming His One-Night Baby

Buying His Bride of Convenience

Cinderella Seductions miniseries

A Cinderella to Secure His Heir

The Greek’s Pregnant Cinderella

Rings of Vengeance miniseries

Billionaire’s Bride for Revenge

Marriage Made in Blackmail

Billionaire’s Baby of Redemption

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).


A Passionate Reunion in Fiji

Michelle Smart






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


ISBN: 978-1-474-08826-8

A PASSIONATE REUNION IN FIJI

© 2019 Michelle Smart

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




Note to Readers (#uaa835b45-db34-569e-b4cc-308707a3c774)


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This is for Keanu Reeves,

my teenage object of lust,

who, like a fine wine, grows only better with age.


Contents

Cover (#u8423f0d4-9f2e-5bd3-80ef-41959f465584)

Back Cover Text (#u627e3aac-23e8-54ce-9cb8-29db34cd633f)

About the Author (#u4c8e9c75-1c53-57a0-84ca-8edca64403c7)

Booklist (#u2f3e8be0-2ba1-5a88-8c34-285ddb5c93fe)

Title Page (#u8dc3591d-fdeb-511f-bcae-3b7d425136da)

Copyright (#ue8a172ac-a916-5737-8382-6aa91d7ae8ac)

Note to Readers

Dedication (#u0072471d-cf8b-59ca-84f0-53d056452dbb)

CHAPTER ONE (#u7c9cd681-e7bb-5bb9-bcaf-5e1172063905)

CHAPTER TWO (#ued047de6-9b8c-55c0-8124-9e13e9a42d0e)

CHAPTER THREE (#u95f511d2-8170-5c88-b70a-487e26189d5f)

CHAPTER FOUR (#u36b2741e-95bb-53b4-98f3-d44cba93e56e)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




CHAPTER ONE (#uaa835b45-db34-569e-b4cc-308707a3c774)


LIVIA BRIATORE CLIMBED the metal steps to the sleek jet’s cabin, her heart hammering so hard she felt the vibrations in the tips of her hair. The sun was setting, the growing darkness perfectly matching the darkness that had enveloped her these recent months.

The flight crew, the same crew from when she’d first boarded this plane over two years ago, greeted her warmly but with questions ringing from their eyes.

Livia responded with a smile but the effort was such the muscles of her mouth protested. She didn’t think she’d smiled once these past four months.

Sick dread swirled in her stomach. Clamping her teeth together, she straightened her spine and raised her chin, then stepped into the luxurious cabin where she was destined to spend the next twenty-six hours flying to Fiji.

Immediately her senses were assailed by the familiar smell of expensive upholstery mingled with the musky yet citrusy scent of the man on the plush leather seat, a laptop open before him.

She almost doubled over with the strength of the pain that punched through her stomach.

The first time Livia had stepped on this plane her heart had pounded with excitement and anticipation. Her body had run amok with brand-new feelings.

That first time in this plane, taking off from this very same airport in Rome, she had been filled with more happiness than she had known existed. The man whose attention was currently fixed on his laptop had hardly been able to wait for take-off before dragging her into the bedroom to make love to her.

All that was left of the flame of the passion that had seen them married within a month of meeting was ashes.

She blinked the painful memories away and forced her leaden legs forward.

She’d made a promise and she would keep it, however much it hurt.

The plane had four luxury window seats facing each other with the aisle between them. Massimo had raised his partition and when she took the seat diagonal to his, all she could see of him were his shoes. They were as buffed and polished as they always had been, a quirk she had thought adorable. Her husband was the least vain man she had ever met but he always took pride in his footwear.

She fastened her seat belt then laced her fingers tightly together to stop herself giving in to the need to bite her nails. She’d had an expensive gel treatment done on them the day before, masking that they were all bitten to the quick. She didn’t want Massimo to see them like that. She couldn’t bear for him to look at her and see the signs of her broken heart.

Livia had patched her heart back up. She’d licked her wounds and stitched herself back together. That was the only good thing about her childhood. It had taught her how to survive.

She would survive the next four days too. Four days and then she need never see him again.

The captain’s voice came over the tannoy system, informing them they were cleared to take off. His words brought Massimo to life. The partition acting as a barrier came down as he closed his laptop and stored it away, then fastened his seat belt. Not once did he look at her but Livia was aware of every movement he made. Her heart bloomed to see the muscles of his tall, lean body flex beneath the expensive navy shirt with the sleeves carelessly rolled up, the buttons around his strong neck undone. No doubt he’d ripped the tie he would have worn to the conference from his neck the moment he’d left the venue. A maverick even by usual standards, Massimo conformed to rules only when he judged it necessary. She supposed the engineering conference in London he’d been guest of honour at had been an occasion he’d decided was worthy of bothering with an actual suit.

Livia only knew he’d been in London because his PA had casually mentioned it in her email when they’d been making the arrangements for today.

It wasn’t until the plane taxied down the runway that the soulful caramel eyes she had once stared into with wonder finally met her gaze. It was the briefest of glances before he turned his attention to the window beside his head but it was enough for Livia’s stomach to flip over and her throat to tighten.

Massimo’s face was one she’d been familiar with long before they’d met. Employed as his grandfather’s private nurse, she’d stared at the large Briatore family portrait that had hung in his grandfather’s living room too many times to count. Her gaze had always been drawn to the only member whose smile appeared forced. It was a beautiful face. Slightly long with high cheekbones, a strong Roman nose and a wide firm mouth, it was a chameleon of a face, fitting for a construction worker, a banker or a poet. That it belonged to one of the richest self-made billionaires in the world was irrelevant. She would have been drawn to that face no matter who he was.

Seeing him in the flesh for the first time, in the church his sister was getting married in, had been like having all the oxygen sucked out of her.

The first time she’d seen him smile for real her insides had melted as if she’d been injected with liquid sunshine. She had brought that smile out in him. She couldn’t even remember what she’d said, only that after hours of sidelong glances at each other throughout the wedding ceremony and the official photographs, she’d gone to the bar of the hotel the reception was being held in and suddenly the air around her had become electrified. She’d known before even turning her head that he’d come to stand beside her. Her tongue, usually so razor sharp, had tied itself in knots. Whatever she’d said in those first awkward moments had evoked that smile and in that instant all the awkwardness disappeared and it was as if they had known each other for ever.

And now he couldn’t even bring himself to look at her.

She had no idea how they were going to get through a weekend with his family, celebrating his grandfather’s ninetieth birthday, pretending to still be together.






Massimo watched an illuminated Rome disappear beneath the clouds and tried to clear the hot cloud that was the mess in his head.

When he’d agreed to speak at the engineering conference in London, it had made sense to fly to Rome afterwards and collect Livia en route. It had been logical.

He’d assumed that after four months apart, being with her again would be no big deal. He hadn’t missed her in the slightest. Not that there had been time to miss her with all the hours he’d been putting in. Without the burden of a hot-tempered wife demanding his attention, he’d been able to devote himself to his multiple businesses just as he had before she’d collided into his life and torn it inside out. The day she’d left, he’d bought himself the bed for his office which the mere suggestion of had so angered her. He’d slept in it most nights since. It was far more comfortable than the blanket on the sofa he’d used the nights he’d worked late and decided it wasn’t worth driving home.

He hadn’t anticipated that his blood would become hot and sticky and his hands clammy just to land in his home city and be under the same sky as her again.

And now that she was here, in the cabin of his plane, every cell in his body, dormant all this time apart, had awoken.

He could curse his logical mind. Why hadn’t he insisted she fly to Los Angeles, where he was scheduled to refuel, and board his plane there? He couldn’t have her fly all the way to Fiji separately from him—that would defeat the whole purpose of her being there—but he could have engineered things so they only had to spend a minimal amount of time on his plane together, not the full twenty-six hours it would take to travel to the other side of the world.

For the return journey he would fly with her to Australia and charter a plane to fly her back to Italy.

He’d listed all the excuses he could have made to avoid bringing her with him but it had all boiled down to one thing. This was for his grandfather, Jimmy Seibua. His terminally ill grandfather, who’d taken a cruise from Rome to Fiji with his family and an army of medical personnel in attendance and had arrived on the island three days ago. This weekend was all that had been keeping his grandfather alive, this one last visit to the homeland he’d left as a twenty-two-year-old the spark giving him the fight needed to beat the odds. Jimmy would celebrate his ninetieth birthday on the Fijian island of his birth, now owned by Massimo, with the family he loved. His grandfather thought of Livia as part of his family. He loved her as a granddaughter. His only regret at Massimo marrying her was that it meant he lost the private nurse who had tended to him with such care during his first battle with cancer.

And, whatever his own feelings towards his estranged wife, Massimo knew Livia loved Jimmy too.

‘Are you going to spend the entire flight ignoring me?’

Massimo clenched his jaw as Livia’s direct husky tones penetrated his senses, speaking their native Italian.

That was the thing with his wife. She was always direct. If she wasn’t happy about something she made damned sure you knew about it. For a long time the object of her unhappiness had been Massimo. Her declaration that she was leaving him had come as no surprise, only relief. Marriage to Livia had gone from being passionate and invigorating to being like a war zone. And she wondered why he’d spent so much time at work? The nights they had spent together those last few months had been with her cold back firmly turned to him. She’d even started wearing nightshirts.

He swallowed back the lump that had suddenly appeared in his throat and finally allowed his gaze to fall on her properly.

The lump he’d tried to shift grew but he opened his mouth and dragged the words through it. ‘You’ve had your hair cut.’

Her beautiful thick, dark chestnut hair, which had fallen like a sheet down to her lower back, now fell in layers to rest on her shoulders in loose curls. It was lighter too, streaks of honey blonde carefully blending with her natural colour. Livia was not the most beautiful woman in the world but to his eyes she was stunning. It was the whole package. A sexy firecracker with a dirty laugh. He’d heard that laugh echo through the walls of the church while they’d waited for his sister, the bride, to arrive and when he’d spotted the woman behind it he’d felt the fabric of his existence shift. He’d grabbed the first available opportunity to speak to her and had been blown away to discover she had a thirsty, inquisitive mind. He’d been smitten. In Livia he’d found the woman he’d never known he’d been searching for. Or so he’d thought.

Her dark brown eyes, always so expressive, widened before a choked laugh flew from her mouth. ‘That’s all you can think to say?’

She didn’t wait for a response; unbuckling her seat belt and springing to her feet.

She’d lost weight, he noted hazily.

Her kissable plump lips were tight as she stalked past him, the bathroom door closing sharply a moment later.

Massimo rubbed his jaw and struggled to get air into his closed lungs.

He hadn’t expected this to be easy but it was a thousand times harder than he’d envisaged.

Livia sat on the closed toilet seat and hugged her arms across her chest, willing the threatening tears back. She hadn’t expected this tumult of emotions to engulf her or for the ache in her chest to hurt so much.

She had shed enough tears for this man, so many she’d thought herself all cried out.

Massimo had never loved her. That was the truth she needed to keep reminding herself of.

But she had loved him. Truly, madly, deeply.

And in return he’d broken her.

The worst of it was he had no idea. For all his high intelligence, her husband had the emotional depth of an earthworm. She’d just been too blind to see it.

She closed her eyes and took three long inhalations.

There was no point in driving herself crazy with her thoughts. She had loved him once and while echoes of that love still beat in her heart they weren’t real. She didn’t love him any more. She was only there to honour the promise she’d made to him the day he’d let her go without a solitary word of fight to make her stay.

He’d wanted her gone. He’d been relieved. She’d seen it in his eyes.

Three more deep breaths and she got back to her feet and flushed the unused toilet.

She was Livia Briatore, formerly Livia Esposito, daughter of Pietro Esposito, Don Fortunato’s most trusted clan member and henchman until her father’s gangland murder when she’d been only eight. She’d been raised in the Secondigliano surrounded by drugs and brutal violence and she’d learned from an early age to show no fear. To show nothing.

Escaping Naples to study nursing in Rome had been like learning to breathe. Dropping her guard had not been easy—constantly checking over her shoulder when she walked a street was a habit it had taken many years to break—but she had forged a new life for herself and the joy it had given her had been worth the anxiety that had gnawed at her to be separated from her siblings. Life had gone from being a constant knot in her belly to being an adventure. She’d learned to laugh. With Massimo she had learned to love.

But her old protective barrier had never fully gone. It had sat patiently inside her waiting to be slipped back on.

To get through the next four days she needed that barrier. She needed to keep her guard up, not as protection against Massimo but as protection against her own foolish heart.

She took her seat and was not surprised to find Massimo working again on his laptop.

This time he raised his eyes from the screen to look at her. ‘I’ve ordered us coffee. Did you want anything to eat?’

‘I’ve eaten,’ she answered with strained politeness, not adding that all she’d eaten that day had been half a slice of toast. Her stomach had been too tight and cramped to manage anything else. The countdown to seeing Massimo again had wrecked the little equilibrium she’d regained for herself.

It was hardly surprising that there was an awkwardness between them but they had a long flight ahead and she didn’t want to spend it in uncomfortable silence. ‘How have you been?’

He pulled a face and turned his attention back to his laptop. ‘Busy.’

She dug her fake nails into her thighs. How she hated that word. It was the word he’d always used to justify never being there. ‘Are you too busy to stop working for five minutes and talk?’

‘I have data to interpret and an analysis to send.’

Two years ago he would have explained both the data and analysis to her, assuming rightly that she would find it interesting. The truth was she had found everything about Massimo interesting. Enthralling. The workings of his brain had never failed to astonish her. How could they not? This was the man who’d used his downtime from his computer engineering degree to create a web-based platform game that had taken the world by storm and which he’d sold upon his graduation for two hundred million US dollars. That money had been the linchpin for his move to America, where he’d formed his company, Briatore Technologies, whilst simultaneously studying for a PhD in energy physics, followed by a second PhD in applied physics and material sciences. His company, of which he was still the sole owner, now employed thousands worldwide, creating environmentally friendly solutions for many of the world’s greatest carbon-related threats. He was on a one-man mission to save the planet one invention at a time. That he’d earned himself a fortune in the process was almost incidental. Only a month ago he’d been named in the top thirty of the world’s most powerful people and in the top fifty of the world’s richest.

It would have been so easy for him to make her feel stupid but he never had. Anything she didn’t understand—which when it came to his work was most things—he would explain patiently but never patronisingly, his face lighting up when she grasped the finer details of something, like how a lithium ion battery worked and what carbon capture meant on a practical level.

She had been so thrilled that this man, clever, rich, successful and with a face and body to make the gods envious, had been as seemingly enthralled with her as she had been with him that she’d been blind to his emotional failings. Once the first flush of lust had worn off he’d retreated into the all-consuming world he’d created for himself, hiding himself away from the woman he’d married.

She wished she knew what she’d done to make him back away from her but every time she’d tried to get him to open up, the further into his shell he’d retreated.

The silence, filled intermittently by the sounds of Massimo tapping on the laptop’s keyboard, grew more oppressive.

She watched him work. The familiar furrow of concentration was etched on his brow. How could he tune her out so effectively?

But as she watched him she noticed subtle changes. Flecks of white around the temples of his thick black hair that had never been there before. The full beard, as if he’d given up the bother of shaving altogether. Dark rings around his eyes as if he’d given up sleep along with shaving. Not that he had ever slept much. His brain was too busy for sleep.

Livia swallowed back the pang that had crept through her. Massimo was thirty-six years old; old enough to not look after himself if that was what he wanted.

He reached absently for the strong black coffee on the desk beside his laptop and took a large sip. His attention did not stray from the screen before him. He tapped something else onto the keyboard. The sound was akin to nails being dragged down a chalkboard.

Suddenly she could bear it no more. Jumping back to her feet, she took the three steps to him and slammed his laptop lid down.




CHAPTER TWO (#uaa835b45-db34-569e-b4cc-308707a3c774)


MASSIMO CLENCHED HIS teeth together and placed a protective hand on his laptop to prevent Livia from snatching hold of it and throwing it onto the floor. ‘What was that for?’

Diminutive though she was in height, in presence she was larger than life and right then, standing over him, she seemed magnified, the anger rippling from her in waves. ‘We’ve been in the air for an hour and you’ve spared me only ten words.’

‘Twenty-six,’ he corrected through gritted teeth. ‘I have spoken twenty-six words.’

‘And now you’re being pedantic as well as rude.’ She pulled her hair together in a fist then released it. ‘How are we supposed to convince your grandfather and the rest of your family that we’re still together if you won’t look at me or talk to me?’

‘I’m not being rude. This is a very important time for me. On Monday we are running the prototypes on…’

‘I don’t care,’ she interrupted with a cry. ‘Whatever you’re working on, I do not care. I’m here as a favour to you for your grandfather’s benefit. The least you can do is treat me with some respect.’

‘If I’m being disrespectful then I apologise,’ he answered stiffly, biting back the retort of what did you expect? Livia had been the one to walk out on their marriage, not him. She had been the one to laugh in his face when he suggested they have a child. How did she expect him to be around her?

Damned if he knew how to act around her. Focusing his attention on the screen before him was the only tool he had to drive out the tumultuous emotions ripping through him. That these emotions were still there defied belief but Livia had always been able to induce feelings in him that had no place in his world, feelings that went far deeper than mere lust and friendship. She took up too much head space. She distracted him. That would have been easy to deal with if she’d only distracted his head when he’d been at home.

‘I don’t want your apologies. You don’t mean it. You never do. Your apologies are meaningless.’

It was an accusation she had thrown at him many times and usually preceded an escalation of her temper, which only got wilder when he refused to engage. Massimo disliked meaningless confrontation, considered it a waste of energy, and would walk away when she refused to listen to reason.

Unfortunately, right now there was nowhere for him to walk away to. To escape to.

Keeping his own temper in check—keeping a cool head when all those around him lost theirs was something he took pride in—Massimo inhaled slowly through his nose and gazed at the angry face before him. ‘What I’m working on is important. I’ll be finished before we land in Los Angeles. We can spend the time between Los Angeles and Fiji talking if that’s what you want.’

She laughed without any humour then flopped onto the seat opposite his and glared at him. ‘Great. You’re going to do me the huge favour of talking to me if I want. Thank you. You’re too kind.’

She’d folded her arms across her chest, slightly raising her breasts. He knew she hadn’t done it deliberately—intimacy between them had died long before she’d called time on their marriage itself—but it distracted him enough for a sliver of awareness to pierce his armoury.

Livia had a body that could make a man weep. Even dressed as she was now, fully covered in tight faded jeans and a roll-neck black jumper, her feminine curves were undeniable. The first time he’d made love to her he’d thought he’d died and gone to heaven. Her virginity had surprised and delighted him. Surprised him because he would never have believed a twenty-four-year-old woman with such a dirty laugh and who carried herself with such confidence could be a virgin. Delighted him because it had marked her as his in a primal way he’d never experienced before.

Sex had never been a great need for him. When he’d shot up from a scrawny teenager into the frame he now inhabited, he’d suddenly found women throwing themselves at him, something that had only increased when he’d sold his web-based game after graduation and become worth a fortune. If he’d been in the mood he’d been happy to oblige, finding sex a satiating yet fleeting diversion from his work. Livia was the first woman he’d been truly intimate with. When they had first got together they’d been unable to keep their hands off each other. For the first time in his life Massimo had found himself consumed by lust.

The loss of that intimacy had not been his choice. Their marriage had disintegrated to such an extent that the nights he had made it home, they’d slept back to back. A man could take only so much rejection from his own wife before he stopped bothering.

Had she taken a lover? It was a thought that sent a stabbing motion plunging into his chest and for a moment he closed his eyes and breathed the pain away.

It was none of his business if she’d taken a lover and it would be unreasonable to expect her to have remained celibate during their separation. If not for his grandfather they would already be divorced.

‘When did you last see your grandfather?’ she asked suddenly, cutting through his attempts to concentrate on the screen in front of him rather than the bombshell opposite.

Livia felt only fleeting satisfaction to see the caramel eyes raise to meet hers.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because when I saw him the day before he set sail for Fiji he complained that you hadn’t been in touch. I emailed Lindy about it.’

Lindy was Massimo’s PA, a dragon of a woman who ran his business life. She was the only person in the world who knew their marriage was over in all but name. As far as their respective families were concerned, they were still together.

When they’d married, Livia had hoped Massimo’s new status would encourage him to see more of his family but it hadn’t worked that way. In their two years of shared life they had spent one Christmas with his family and that had been it. Livia had made numerous visits from their house in Los Angeles to Italy alone, visiting her youngest brother and dropping in on Massimo’s family, all of whom she adored.

Since they’d gone their separate ways, her frequent visits had continued. They were used to her visiting alone so Massimo’s absence had gone unremarked. Only Madeline, Massimo’s sister, had the perception to see that anything was wrong but as she had a newborn child to take care of, her perception skills were less honed than usual. The ache that formed in Livia’s heart as she held Madeline’s baby only added to the ache already there but she would have been helpless to resist cradling the tiny bundle in her arms even if she didn’t have a show to perform.

None of the Briatores or Espositos had any idea she was back on Italian soil permanently. Whenever she was asked about Massimo—who rarely bothered to message his family and had never met his niece—she would say he was busy with work, satisfied that she wasn’t telling a lie. Massimo was always busy with work. Always. She’d lived with his grandfather as his private nurse for nine months and in that time Massimo hadn’t made one trip home. She’d accepted the family line that Massimo was too busy to fly home from California regularly but had come to her own private conclusion during their marriage that it was nothing to do with his schedule preventing him from spending more time with his family. He simply didn’t want to.

She would be glad when these evasions of the truth could be done with and they could tell his family they had separated. She hated lying, even if only by omission.

‘Lindy mentioned it,’ he admitted stiffly.

‘Did you do anything about it?’

‘I called him on the ship. He sounded fine.’ His gaze dropped back to his laptop.

‘He isn’t fine.’ Livia’s heart had broken to see how frail Jimmy had become. The elderly yet vital man who’d waged such a strong battle against his first diagnosis of cancer was fading, too weak to fly both legs of the mammoth journey to Fiji. It had been decided that a cruise was the safest way to get him to the other side of the world. Jimmy wanted to spend his ninetieth birthday with all his family around him, see corners of the world he’d never visited before and tread the soil he’d been raised on one last time.

Everything for him was now one last time.

‘I know that.’

‘Will you spend some proper time with him this weekend?’ she asked. It was pointless adding that spending real time with Massimo was Jimmy’s greatest wish. It was his parents’ greatest wish too.

Massimo thought the gift of his money was enough. When he’d made his fortune, he’d bought his entire family new homes of their own and a car each. As his wealth had increased so had his generous gifts to them. It had been Massimo who’d paid for the private treatment during Jimmy’s first diagnosis and all the associated costs including the agency fees for Livia’s wages as his live-in nurse. It was Massimo who had bought the island his grandfather came from and spent a fortune building a complex for the entire family to stay on. It was Massimo footing the bill for the cruise the rest of the family were taking with Jimmy to reach the island. He’d chartered an ocean liner for their sole use.

Yet for all his generosity, he was spectacularly blind to the fact his family would much rather have his presence than his presents. He also seemed blind to the fact that time was running out for his grandfather.

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll leave your laptop and phone switched off?’

‘You know I can’t do that.’

‘I know you won’t do that.’

His jaw clenched. ‘We can talk about this later.’

She laughed mockingly. ‘Later. Of course. Everything is always later with you, isn’t it?’

Without any warning, Massimo slammed his fist against the panel beside his seat. ‘And everything still has to be now with you. I said we could talk once I have completed my work but, as always, you don’t listen. This is important and needs my attention. If you can’t wait patiently for me to finish then I suggest you take yourself to the bedroom and give your mouth a rest.’

Massimo refused to feel guilt for his outburst, even when Livia’s face paled before him.

True to form, she refused to let him get the last word, getting to her feet slowly and glowering at him. ‘If anyone has a problem with listening it’s you. If it doesn’t involve your precious work then it’s insignificant to you. It’s been four months since you last saw me and you haven’t even cared to ask how I’ve been. If I’d had any doubts that leaving you was the best thing I could do, an hour in your company has proven me right. You never cared for me. You’ve never cared for anyone.’

She walked away, not to the bedroom but to her original seat. There was dignity in the way she moved that, despite the acrimony that thickened the air between them, touched him. Livia was a strange mix of toughness and vulnerability, traits that had first moved him then infuriated him. Her toughness meant she did not know how to back down from an argument but the underlying vulnerability found her easily wounded. He’d never known the words to say to repair the wounds he’d unwittingly inflicted on her. Eventually he’d stopped trying.

Her partition rose and she disappeared from sight.

Massimo sighed his relief and rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours and was exhausted.

Ringing the bell, he ordered a fresh coffee when the stewardess appeared. Caffeine and sugar would keep him awake long enough to get his analysis done. Maybe then he’d be able to catch some sleep.

He tuned out Livia’s husky voice when the stewardess turned her attention to his wife.

But he couldn’t tune out her presence.

The data on the screen before him blurred. His head felt so heavy. All of him felt heavy, a weight compressing him from the top down and, even with the importance of the work that needed to be done, he found his thoughts drifting to the early days of their marriage, days when he’d believed nothing could come between them.

Nothing had come between them. Only themselves.






Livia tried to concentrate on the movie she’d selected from the thousands stored on the in-flight entertainment system—a system Massimo had had installed for her benefit—but the storyline passed her by in a haze. The first movie, a comedy, had passed her by too. This second one was a critically acclaimed thriller guaranteed to keep her tear ducts intact but, even with the sound on her headphones turned up high to drown out the incessant tapping of Massimo’s fingers on his keyboard, he was all she could think about.

How had it come to this? How could a marriage formed with such passion and joy disintegrate into such bitterness?

Movement caught her attention and she removed her headphones and straightened as the head stewardess approached to see if she would like anything.

‘A blanket would be nice, thanks,’ she replied. The air-conditioning on Massimo’s jet was always set to freezing.

The blanket delivered, Livia was suddenly struck by the cabin’s silence.

Lowering her partition, she looked across at Massimo.

He’d fallen asleep.

His laptop was still open but the man himself was fast asleep, upright in his seat, his mouth slightly open as he breathed in and out heavily.

A tightness formed in her chest as she watched until, without thinking, she got to her feet and padded over to him.

For a long time, hardly daring to breathe, she drank in the features of the man she had once loved so much. His Fijian ancestry was stronger in him than in his sister. His skin was a deep olive, his thick hair the most beautiful shade of ebony. She’d liked it when he forgot to cut it, and had spent many happy hours snuggled on the sofa with him, Massimo talking, his head on her lap, Livia content to simply listen to his wonderful rich, deep voice and run her fingers through his hair. It was the closest to peace she had ever felt in her life.

She’d tried so hard to hold onto what they had but he had slipped away from her with the same ease her fingers had run through his hair.

Her throat closed, Livia carefully draped the blanket she’d been about to use for herself on his lap. She wanted to press the button that would tilt the chair back and turn it into a bed but was afraid the motion would wake him. Struck again by the dark circles around his eyes, she wondered when he’d last had a decent night’s sleep. Or the last time he’d had a decent meal.

The compulsion to reach out her hand and stroke her fingers over his high cheekbones, to feel the texture of his skin on hers, to run her fingers through his hair…it all hit her so fast that her hand was inches from his face before she realised what she was about to do and stopped herself.

Her heart thumped wildly and for a moment she couldn’t breathe.

Putting her hand to her chest, she backed away, afraid to be this close to him.

Afraid of what it did to her.






Massimo’s eyes opened with a start.

He blinked rapidly, disorientated.

His laptop was still open but had put itself into sleep mode.

Had he fallen asleep?

Getting to his feet to stretch his legs, he felt a sudden chill on his thighs and gazed down in astonishment at the blanket that had fallen to the floor.

Where had that come from?

He stared over at Livia. Her partition was still up but, standing, he could see her clearly. She’d reclined her chair and was watching something on the television with her headphones in. A blanket covered her whole body up to her chin.

‘Did you put a blanket on me?’ He didn’t mean to sound so accusatory but the thought of her doing that…

Her face turned towards him and she pulled the headphones off. ‘Did you say something?’

Before he could answer one of the cabin crew entered. ‘We will be landing in twenty minutes.’

The moment they were alone again, Massimo turned back to Livia. ‘How long was I asleep?’

She shrugged.

He swore under his breath. He hadn’t finished his analysis. Damn it, he’d promised the project manager that he would have it in his inbox before he reached the office that morning.

He bit back the demand he wanted to throw at her as to why she hadn’t woken him and sat back down.

Livia had put the blanket on him. He knew that with a deep certainty and he didn’t know if it was that simple gesture or that he was now behind on where he needed to be workwise that made his guts feel as if acid had been poured in them.

He felt close to snapping. Virulent emotions were coursing through him and his wife, the cause of all his angst, was reclined in her seat as nonchalant as could be.

But knowing her as well as he did, he knew her nonchalance was a sham. Livia did not do nonchalance.

Why had she put a blanket on him?

His eyes were better able to focus after his short sleep but, with their landing imminent, he put his laptop away and folded his desk up and secured it, all the while hating that he was fully aware of Livia sorting her own seating area out, avoiding looking at him as much as he avoided looking at her.

Los Angeles couldn’t come soon enough.

Not another word was exchanged until the plane had landed safely.

Needing to escape the strange febrile atmosphere that seemed to have infected his flight crew as much as them, Massimo grabbed his laptop and got to his feet but the moment he left his seat, Livia was there facing him in the aisle, holding her bag tightly, clearly ready to make her own escape.

He stepped to one side to let her pass but she stepped to the same side too.

Their eyes met. Their gaze held, only momentarily, but long enough for him to see the pain she had become a master at hiding from him.

A sharp compression lanced his chest, as if his heart had become a rose in full bloom, its thorns spearing into him.

And then she blinked, cast her gaze to the floor, murmured, ‘Excuse me,’ and brushed past him.

Massimo swallowed away the lump in his throat and left his plane by the other exit.




CHAPTER THREE (#uaa835b45-db34-569e-b4cc-308707a3c774)


TWO HOURS AFTER landing in Los Angeles, they were cleared to take off for the second leg of their mammoth journey to Fiji.

Livia had returned to the plane before Massimo. She guessed he’d gone to the private executive lounge in the airport to work. She’d taken herself for a walk, keeping her phone in her hand for the alert that the plane had refuelled and she could get back on, and tried to get hold of Gianluca, her youngest sibling. He hadn’t answered and hadn’t called her back either. She’d had no wish to go sightseeing or do any of the things most visitors with a short layover at LAX would do. Just breathing the air brought back the awful feelings that had lived in her the last dying months of their marriage.

She hated Los Angeles. She hated California. She’d loathed living there. For a place known as the Golden State, her life there had been devoid of sunshine.

At first, she’d enjoyed the novelty of it all. Compared to Naples and Rome it was huge. Everything was so much bigger. Even the sky and the sun that shone in it appeared greater and brighter. But then loneliness had seeped its way in. She had no friends there and no means to make them. Unlike Massimo, who spoke fluent English, her own English was barely passable. The glass home they’d shared was forty kilometres from downtown LA. An intensely private man, Massimo had deliberately chosen a home far from prying eyes. There were no neighbours. The household staff spoke only English and Spanish.

She’d become sick with longing for home.

Massimo hadn’t understood. He hadn’t even tried.

But there hadn’t been any sunshine since she’d left him and returned to her home in Italy either.

It was strange to experience taking off in her second sunset of the day. She should have slept during the first leg of the journey but sleep had been the last thing on her mind, the last thing she’d been capable of. The sun putting itself to sleep now in LA would soon be awakening in Rome.

She yawned and cast her eyes in Massimo’s direction. His partition was raised again but she could still hear the tapping of his fingers on the keypad. So much for talking. Silence for them truly had become golden.

A member of the cabin crew brought her pillows and a duvet and turned her seat into a bed while Livia used the bathroom to change into pyjamas, remove her make-up and brush her teeth.

She thought of the plane’s bedroom and its comfortable king-sized bed. An ache formed in the pit of her stomach to remember the glorious hours they had spent sharing it. Massimo would never begrudge her sleeping in it now but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t sleep in a bed they had shared knowing that when she woke the pillow beside her would be unused. That had been hard enough to deal with when they’d been together.

Massimo was on his feet stretching his aching back when Livia returned to the cabin clutching her washbag. It was the same washbag she’d used when they’d been married and his heart tugged to see it.

She looked younger with her face free from make-up and plain cream pyjamas on. More vulnerable too.

The threads tugging at his heart tightened.

‘I’m going to have a nightcap. Do you want one?’

Surprise lit her dark brown eyes before they fixed on his own freshly made-up bed. ‘You’re finished?’

He nodded. ‘My apologies for it taking so long. I didn’t factor in falling asleep.’

Her plump lips curved into the tiniest of smiles. ‘I would have woken you but you looked exhausted.’

She looked exhausted. Her seat had been made up into a bed for her too but, however comfortable it was, it was not the same as sleeping in a proper bed. ‘Why don’t you sleep in our bed?’

Now the tiniest of winces flashed over her face. ‘I’ll be fine here, thank you. You should use it—you only napped for a couple of hours.’

The only time he’d been in the jet’s bedroom since she’d left him was to use the en-suite shower. Sleeping in the bed he’d shared with her…the thought alone had been enough to make his guts twist tightly.

To see the same reluctance reflected in her eyes twisted them even harder.

He removed a bottle of his favourite bourbon and two glasses from the bar as the stewardess came into the cabin with a bucket of ice. Massimo took it from her and arched an eyebrow in question at Livia.

She hesitated for a moment before nodding.

As the stewardess dimmed the lights and left the cabin, he poured them both a measure and handed a glass to Livia.

She took it with a murmured thanks, avoiding direct eye contact, carefully avoiding his touch. He could smell the mintiness of her toothpaste and caught a whiff of the delicately scented cream she used to remove her make-up and the moisturiser she finished her night-time routine with. The two combined into a scent that had always delighted his senses far more than her perfume, which in itself was beautiful. The perfume she sprayed herself with by day could be enjoyed by anyone who got close enough. Her night-time scent had always been for him alone.

Had any other man been lucky enough to smell it since they’d parted?

She sat on her bed and took a small sip of her bourbon. As she moved he couldn’t help but notice the light sway of her naked breasts beneath the silk pyjama top.

Her nightwear was functional and obviously selected to cover every inch but the curves that had driven him to such madness were clearly delineated beneath the fabric and it took all his willpower to keep his gaze fixed on her face.

But her face had driven him to madness as much as the body had. With Livia it had always been the whole package. Everything about her. Madness.

After a few moments of stilted silence she said, ‘Are you going to get some sleep too?’

Massimo knew what Livia was thinking: that having his own seat made into a bed was no indication that he actually intended to get any rest.

He shrugged and took a large sip of his bourbon, willing the smooth burn it made in his throat to flow through his veins and burn away the awareness searing his loins.

‘If I can.’ He raised his glass. ‘This should help.’ Enough of it would allow him a few precious hours of oblivion to the firecracker who would be sleeping at such close quarters to him.

‘How long do we have until we reach Fiji?’

He checked his watch. ‘Nine hours until we land at Nadi.’

‘We get another flight from there?’ Livia already knew the answer to this but the dimming of the lights seemed to have shrunk the generously proportioned cabin and given it an air of dangerous intimacy.

What was it about darkness that could change an atmosphere so acutely? Livia had grown up scared of the dark. The Secondigliano was a dangerous place in daylight. At night, all the monsters came out.

The dangers now were as different as night and day compared to her childhood and adolescence but she felt them as keenly. With Massimo’s face in shadows his handsome features took on a devilish quality that set her stomach loose with butterflies and her skin vibrating with awareness.

‘I’ve chartered a Cessna to fly us to Seibua Island.’

‘You managed to get the name changed?’ She couldn’t remember the original name of the island Massimo’s grandfather had been born and raised on.

‘The paperwork’s still being sorted but I’ve been reliably informed it’s been accepted.’ He finished his drink and poured himself another, raising the bottle at her in an unspoken question.

She shook her head. Marriage to Massimo had given her a real appreciation of bourbon but too much alcohol had a tendency to loosen her tongue, which she was the first to admit didn’t need loosening. It also loosened her inhibitions. She’d never had any inhibitions around Massimo before but to get through the weekend in one piece she needed them as greatly as she needed to keep her guard up around him. All of this would be easier to cope with if her heart didn’t ache so much just to share the same air as him again.

‘Are you going to buy a Cessna of your own to keep there?’

He grimaced and finally perched himself on his bed. The overhead light shone down on him. ‘The yacht’s already moored there and can be used as transport. Whether I buy a plane too depends on how often the family use the island.’ The resort created on the island would be available for the entire extended family to use as and when they wished, free of charge. The only stipulation would be that they treated it with respect.

‘Knowing your sister it will be often.’ It was doubtful Massimo would ever use it. His idea of a holiday was to take a Sunday off work.

She caught the whisper of a smile on his firm mouth but it disappeared behind his glass as he took another drink.

‘When did your family get there?’

‘They arrived three days ago.’

‘Have you been to the island yet?’

‘I haven’t had the time.’

She chewed her bottom lip rather than give voice to her thoughts that this was typical Massimo, never having the time for anything that didn’t revolve around work. He’d jumped through hoops and paid an astronomical sum for the island but those hoops had been jumped through by his lawyers and accountants. He’d spent a further fortune having the complex for the family built but, again, he’d had little involvement past hiring the architects and transferring the cash. Livia had signed off on the initial blueprint for the complex in the weeks before she’d left him. She had no idea if he’d even bothered to do more than cast an eye over it.

There was no point in her saying anything. It would only be a rehash of a conversation they’d had many times before, a conversation that would only lead to an argument. Or, as usually happened, it would lead to her getting increasingly het up at his refusal to engage in the conversation and losing her temper, and Massimo walking away in contempt leaving her shouting at the walls.

In any case, Massimo’s sidelining of anything that wasn’t work-related was none of her business. Not any more. If he wanted to blow his own money on projects and assets he had no intention of enjoying then that was up to him. If he wanted to keep his family on the fringes of his life for eternity then that was up to him too. He wasn’t an adolescent like her youngest brother, Gianluca, who’d been born seven months after their father’s death.

There was hope for Gianluca. Unlike their other siblings, who had succumbed to life in the Secondigliano, Gianluca’s humanity was still there. The question was whether he had the courage to take Livia’s hand and join her far from the violence and drugs that were such an intrinsic part of the Espositos’ lives before it was too late and he was sucked into a life of crime from which his only escape would be in a coffin.

It was too late for Pasquale, who like their dead father had risen high in Don Fortunato’s ranks, and too late for Denise who had married one of Pasquale’s equally ambitious friends and was currently pregnant with their second child. Livia’s siblings and her mother all knew Livia’s door was always open for them. Gianluca was the only one she allowed herself to hope for. He could still leave without repercussions just as she had but time was running out. He’d recently turned eighteen. Should Don Fortunato decide Gianluca was worthy of joining his guard he would strike soon.

The man Livia had married, a man who abhorred violence and anything to do with illegal drugs, had made his choice when he was only a few years older than Gianluca. He’d chosen to leave Italy and leave his family, just as his own grandfather had done seventy years before him. The difference was his grandfather had left Fiji for the love of his life, an Englishwoman, and set up home with her in England. When their daughter Sera had married an Italian, Jimmy and Elizabeth had moved again, this time to Italy so they could stay close to their daughter. For them, family came first above all else. They were as close as close could be. All except for Massimo himself.

He didn’t want to change. He saw nothing wrong with how he lived his life, nothing wrong with keeping a physical and emotional distance from the people who loved him. That was the choice he’d made and Livia had to respect that. She couldn’t change it. She’d tried. When the realisation hit that his emotional distance from his family extended to her too, along with the recognition that this too would never change, she’d had no choice but to leave him.

She hadn’t clawed her way out of the Secondigliano to spend her life as a trophy in a glass cabinet masquerading as a home.

While she had spent the past four months trying desperately to fix herself back together, for Massimo there had been nothing to fix. He’d got on with his life as if she’d never been a part of it.

Finishing her drink, she put the empty glass in the holder beside her bed and got under the covers. ‘I’m going to get some sleep. Goodnight.’ Then she turned her back on him and closed her eyes.






Massimo lay under his bed sheets, eyes wide open. He’d drunk enough bourbon to tranquillise an elephant but his mind was too busy. Except now it wasn’t the project he’d spent over a year working on that stopped his mind switching off.

Turning his head, eyes adjusted to the dark, he watched the rhythmic rise and fall of Livia’s duvet. He guessed she’d been asleep for around an hour now. He always knew when she was properly asleep and not just faking it. When she faked it, she lay rigid in absolute silence.

They’d slept together the first night they’d met—once they’d got talking at the hotel bar he hadn’t let her out of his sight—and both of them had known it was no one-night stand. He’d been dozing in the aftermath, Livia wrapped in his arms, his body thrumming with the delights they’d just shared, when she’d mumbled something. That was his first experience of her sleep-talking. He’d quickly discovered that she talked a lot in her sleep. Sometimes the words were distinct. He remembered the feeling that had erupted through him the first time she’d mumbled his name. It had been ten times the magnitude of what he’d felt to be offered two hundred million dollars for the stupid game he’d developed during his boring university evenings.

But her dreams hadn’t always been good. At least once a week he’d had to wake her from a bad one. The darkness of the life she’d lived until she’d left Naples at eighteen still haunted her.

Had another man woken her from the nightmares since she’d left him?

He pinched the bridge of his nose and willed the pain spearing him away.

Livia’s sex life was no longer his business.

The thought of her with a lover was something that hadn’t even occurred to him until she’d stepped onto his plane and now it was all he could think of.

In the four months since she’d left him, his own libido had gone into hibernation. From the feelings erupting through him now, he realised he’d shut down far more than his libido.

He’d shut down long before she’d left him.

Their marriage had begun with such high hopes and such certainty. They’d both been too foolish to realise that it was nothing but lust, a flaming passion that could only burn itself out.

He’d been intoxicated by her. He’d never met anyone like her: tough on the outside but marshmallow-soft inside. Straight talking. Capable of lancing with her tongue. But tender and compassionate. Someone who would drop everything if she were needed. Someone who would give everything they had if it were needed. Massimo had never been one for showing his emotions but being tactile with Livia had come naturally. She’d brought that side of him out right from the start.

And then the tide had turned. His assumptions that he would be able to continue his life and work in the same way he always had but with his beautiful, vivacious wife to come home to had been quickly dispelled.

He should never have married her, that was the truth of it, but he’d been so swept up in the need to tie her to him and make her his in every way possible that he’d blinded himself to what marriage to a woman like Livia would actually entail. It entailed far more than he could give.






It was still dark when Livia woke. Groping for her phone, she looked at the time and was relieved to see they only had a couple of hours left until they landed.

Creeping out of her bed so as not to wake Massimo, she took her overnight bag from the compartment and made her way to the bedroom. She needed a shower. It was pure misfortune that the main bathroom was reached through the bedroom.

The moment she opened the bedroom door and stepped inside, she realised her mistake. The bathroom light was already switched on and the scent of Massimo’s shower gel seeped through the gap in the door. Before she could beat a hasty retreat, the door opened and he stepped over the threshold as naked as the day he was born.

Startled caramel eyes met hers. All the air flew from her lungs.

Seconds passed that stretched like hours as they did nothing but stare at each other.

A compression formed in her chest and tightened her throat.

For a man who rarely worked out, Massimo had a physique to die for. Lean but muscular, his deep olive skin had only the lightest brush of fine dark hair over his defined pecs and the plane of his washboard stomach. The hair thickened considerably below his abdomen to the huge…

Her own abdomen contracted, heat rushing through her pelvis as she noticed—couldn’t help but notice—his growing erection.

The heat in her pelvis spread. It suffused her cheeks with colour and she tightened her hold on her bag, crushing it against her chest.

Slowly, his features became taut, his nostrils flaring. His caramel eyes swirled with something she recognised, something that should have her spinning round immediately and leaving. But she couldn’t. Her feet were rooted to the floor.

He’d had more work done on his tattoo, she noticed dimly, trying desperately hard not to let her gaze fall back below his waist, trying even harder to contain the rush of sultry warmth flooding her veins. His tattoo covered the entire bicep around his left shoulder, all in bold black lines. The large sun, the centrepiece that he had once told her symbolised his rebirth and represented the way he strove for perfection in all he did, was encircled by sharks’ teeth, which represented power, leadership and protection, and they were now encircled by spearheads. She didn’t know what the spearheads represented but knew they must mean something to him.

Instinct told her they represented something to do with her.

The sensation in her fingers that had almost had her touching his sleeping face earlier tingled again. An ache to touch his tattoo. To touch him. A yearning to feel the heat of his powerful body flush against hers, to be swept in his arms and to lose herself in the wonder she had always found in his lovemaking. It all hit her so quickly that if he had reached out for her she would have fallen into his arms in an instant.

More seconds stretched without a word exchanged but with that thick, sick chemistry shrouding them.

And then Massimo closed his eyes.

When he next looked at her, the swirling desire had gone.

He’d shut down again.

He turned and walked back into the bathroom, locking the door behind him.




CHAPTER FOUR (#uaa835b45-db34-569e-b4cc-308707a3c774)


LIVIA GAZED OUT of the window of the Cessna they’d transferred to after landing at Fiji’s Nadi airport and soaked in the oval-shaped patch of land that rose like a majestic tropical oasis from the South Pacific below. Ringed with golden sand and light turquoise shores that deepened to ultramarine, Seibua Island was far more beautiful and exotic than even its namesake had described.

Livia had only ever travelled from her Italian homeland to the US; the scents that exploded through her airways when she stepped onto the small airfield were ones she’d never had the pleasure of smelling before.

She stared up at the rising sun before closing her eyes and savouring the sensation of the most incredible warmth on her skin.

Then she cast a glance at Massimo to witness his reaction at his first steps on his grandfather’s homeland.

Far from savouring anything, he’d immediately headed to the waiting golf buggy and was introducing himself to its elderly driver.

Like Livia, who’d changed into a knee-length red sundress, Massimo had donned summer clothing too, opting for a pair of black canvas shorts and a fitted navy T-shirt with the cover of a hellraising rock band’s album on it. Ever the chameleon, he looked as divine in these casual items as he did in a full dinner jacket but it only made her think that he never looked better than when he wore nothing at all, and she had to push hard to rid her mind of the vivid image of him standing before her naked. It was a battle she’d been losing for the past four hours.

She forced a smile at the two young men who were removing their luggage from the small plane and loading it onto a second buggy, and walked over to Massimo, who introduced her to the man he employed to run the island for him, first in English then in Italian for her benefit.

She shook the extended hand from the friendly looking man and carefully said, ‘It is nice to see you.’

She caught the dart of surprise that flashed in Massimo’s eyes but he said nothing about her attempt at English, indicating only that she should get into the buggy.

She slid into the back and was relieved when Massimo climbed in the front beside the driver.

‘How long until we get to the complex?’ she asked. The island was bigger than she’d envisaged. Naively, she’d imagined something around the size of a small field with a solitary palm tree as a marker.

‘Not long. Five or ten minutes.’

Soon the thick, scented flora they drove through separated and the golden sand she’d seen from the air lay before them, glimmering under the glorious sunshine.

Stunned, she craned her neck to take in the thatched chalets nestled—but not too closely together—along the length of a high rock formation that ended on the shore of the beach. A long wooden bridge led the eye to a further thatched chalet that appeared to rise out of the ocean itself. On the other side of the thatched cottages and lower down, separated from the beach by a wall, lay the chalet designated for Massimo’s grandfather. Beside it lay a handful of smaller though no less beautiful chalets. To the right of all these dwellings was the centrepiece, the huge, multi-purpose lodge behind which, virtually camouflaged by the coconut palms and other tropical trees and foliage that thrived on the island, were the structures that housed the great kitchens and the island staff’s living quarters. Further to the right, where the beach curved out of sight, were the mangrove saplings, recently planted in their thousands to protect the island from erosion and rising sea levels.

Everything Massimo had envisaged for the island of his grandfather’s birth had come to life in spectacular fashion.

The driver stopped in front of the main lodge and said something to Massimo before jumping out.

Livia’s heart almost dropped to her feet when Massimo followed suit and held his hand out to her.

Confused at this unexpected gesture, especially since they’d spent the past four hours after she’d inadvertently walked in on him naked ignoring each other’s existence, she stared into the caramel eyes that were fixed on her with an intensity that belied the easy smile playing on his lips.

A child’s cry rang out and in an instant she understood. Massimo’s family were already there. He was holding his hand out because they must be watching.

She reached out and wrapped her fingers loosely round the waiting hand.

At the first touch of her skin to his, her heart flew from her feet to her throat and her fingers reflexively tightened.

For that one singular moment in time, the world paused on its axis as she stared into his soulful eyes and a rush of helpless longing swept through her, long-buried emotions rising up and clutching her throat.





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