Книга - Pregnancy Of Passion

Pregnancy Of Passion
LUCY MONROE


It was a year since their tempestuous affair had ended. So why was he back?Elisa trusted Salvatore di Vitale as far as she could throw him. And, as the wealthy Sicilian was over six feet tall, that wasn't very far.Salvatore told Elisa he had come to protect her. And if their close proximity led to passion… and if passion should lead to pregnancy… all the better!Because then Elisa would have to marry him, which was Salvatore's plan all along.









Pregnancy of Passion

Lucy Monroe













To Zachariah, a true knight—

one who is both willing to fight for what is

right and who does it with integrity. You have

my love and admiration always.




Contents


CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

COMING NEXT MONTH




CHAPTER ONE


SALVATORE stood outside the small family-owned jeweler’s, feeling a wholly unfamiliar wariness.

It wasn’t normal for him to hang back from a confrontation. He thrived on the head-to-head combat in the world of big business or the hand-to-hand combat sometimes necessary in his line of work, but this was something entirely different.

It would be a confrontation all right, but it wouldn’t be related to business.

He didn’t fool himself into believing Elisa would thank him for his interference in her life, even at the instigation of her worried papa. She’d spent a whole year avoiding Salvatore as if he had a particularly deadly communicable disease. She hated him with the same passion she had once given herself to him.

And he could not blame her.

She had more reason than most to despise her ex-lover, but that did not mean he would accept his dismissal from her life. He couldn’t. His Sicilian soul would not let such a debt remain outstanding. Even if she did not currently believe it, the di Vitale family was one of honor and he would not bring shame to the name.

He pushed open the door to Adamo Jewelers and frowned when he did not hear the faint buzz that should have accompanied his entry into the store. It was a minimum security measure to alert store employees to a customer’s presence.

He took two steps inside and stopped.

She was bending over one of the cases with a young couple. Her soft voice floated toward him even though he could not distinguish her words. Glossy brown hair he remembered best spread across white silk sheets had been pulled into a neat French twist. The conservative style exposed the delicate line of her neck and the faint pulse there that became very visible when she was sexually excited.

She was dressed with her usual flair in a sleeveless button-up blouse, the color of her moss-green eyes. Her straight skirt in a darker shade outlined her slender hips and small waist without showing more than a couple of inches of skin above the ankle. However, if she moved just a little bit, the slit in the back would give him a delicious view of legs he longed to have wrapped around his body in the throes of passion once again.

He gritted his teeth at the predictable reaction to his thoughts occurring below his belt.

He wanted her. Still. He doubted the physical compulsion to merge his flesh with hers would ever diminish. It hadn’t in a year of absence. A year in which he had not even been tempted to touch another woman. Such physical desire could make up for a lot…even marriage.

The only course left open to him. The one way he could make reparation for his sins.

She said something to the couple and walked around to the back of the case to pull out a tray of diamond rings.

And saw him.

All the color drained from her face and her eyes, leaving them a bleak winter gray. It was opposite to the reaction she’d once had to his presence, when her eyes had lit up with affection and welcome. There was no welcome now.

No. Horror described her expression best.

The tray tumbled from her hand and landed with a dull thud on the top of the glass case.

“Are you all right?”



Elisa forced her gaze to focus on the man who had just spoken instead of the phantom standing just inside the jewelry store’s doorway. She managed to bare her teeth in a semblance of a smile. “Yes. I’m fine.”

She straightened the ring tray. “You wanted to look at the marquis-cut solitaire?”

The young woman’s eyes lit up and she nodded, turning to her new fiancé with such a look of love, it hurt Elisa to see it. She’d felt that way once.

But Salvatore had destroyed her love as surely as misfortune had destroyed their baby.

Pulling the ring under discussion out of its slot, she made herself smile more genuinely at the couple. It was a good thing to love and be loved in return. The fact that her own life had little hope of such an outcome was no reason to diminish the joy these two were so obviously feeling.

“Why don’t you try this on?”

The young man, named David, took the ring and slid it onto his fiancée’s finger, his expression tender.

“It fits perfectly,” she breathed.

Elisa’s smile was not nearly so hard to come by now. That would be another sale. Adamo Jewelers needed it. Desperately.

“It looks beautiful.”

She’d almost convinced herself he wasn’t there. That he’d been a figment of her imagination—a waking dream…or, rather, a nightmare.

The girl’s head came up and she beamed at Salvatore as if he was some sort of benevolent benefactor, when Elisa knew he was anything but.

“Thank you, signor.”

“From the look of the ring, congratulations are in order, are they not?”

It was David’s turn to smile. “Oh, yes. We’re going to be married as soon as we get back home.”

“Isn’t that romantic?” gushed the girl. She looked warmly at her soon-to-be husband. “We met while we were on a European tour. We loved Italy so much, we decided to stay an extra couple of weeks.”

“And then we decided to get married.” David sounded very satisfied by that state of affairs, his Texas drawl putting emphasis on the word “married.”

“Congratulations. I’m sure you’ll be very happy,” said the man for whom the word “commitment” was considered equivalent to a four-letter word of the worst order.

Elisa ignored him while the couple thanked him for his good wishes, bought the ring and the matching wedding bands that went with it and then left.

After they were gone, she busied herself arranging the jewelry in the case to disguise the hole left by the sold merchandise. She didn’t have anything else to put there and wouldn’t until after the auction. There were no funds to buy more stones, much less the gold to set them.

“Pretending I’m not here will not make me go away.”

She turned and faced him, despising the physical impact his presence even now had on her body.

Her nipples tightened and she felt a reaction in her inmost being she had not had in twelve long months. It was the reaction of her body to its natural mate. Even if her mind and her heart detested him, her body insisted on behaving as if they had been created one for the other.

Not likely.

“Why are you here?” As if she couldn’t guess.

She’d lived in Italy most of her adult life and her father was Sicilian. One thing she’d come to realize: Italian guilt was a heavy burden, but Sicilian guilt was even heavier.

And Salvatore had a lot to feel guilty about. More than he knew. More than she would willingly tell him.

Did he want absolution?

He shifted his six-foot-four-inch frame into a leaning position against one of the cases. “Your father sent me.”

“Papa?” Her heart contracted. “Is something wrong?”

Dark eyes probed hers and she wanted to close the lids, to protect her inmost thoughts from a man who saw too much while at the same time seeing far too little. He had seen her desire for him, but had not recognized the love. He had seen her reticence about becoming involved, but had been blind to the innocence that had spawned it.

In the end, he had seen her pregnancy, but not his own imminent fatherhood in it.

He sighed now, as if what he saw in her eyes bothered him. “Other than the fact you have not come home in over a year?”

“Sicily is not my home.”

“It is where your father lives.”

“And his wife.”

“Your sister also.”

Yes, Annemarie lived with her parents still. Only three years younger than Elisa’s twenty-five years, Annemarie showed no signs of wanting to move out and make it on her own in the world. Shawna, Elisa’s mother, would be appalled, just as she had been by even the slightest inclination to cling shown by her own daughter.

Elisa had been raised to be fiercely independent. Her sister had been cosseted in true Sicilian tradition. “Annemarie will probably live at home until she marries.”

“This is not a bad thing.”

Elisa shrugged. “To each her own.” She was pleased with her life in the small town outside of Rome. Her job allowed her to travel, at least when there were the funds to do so, and she had no one to dictate to her. No one at all.

“The announcement buzzer did not go off when I entered the store.”

Trust a security expert to notice. “It’s broken.”

“It must be fixed.”

“It will be.” After the auction.

“You have not asked why your father asked me to come.”

“I assumed you’d tell me when you were ready. You implied there was nothing wrong with him.”

“There is not. If you discount the fear he has for your safety.”

Had her father told Salvatore about the crown jewels? She wouldn’t put it past him. Francesco Guiliano was a traditional man. Elisa was the result of his one ride on the wild side, an affair with film star Shawna Tyler. He’d wanted marriage when the pregnancy was discovered. Her mother had said no, and meant it. She hadn’t wanted a husband to tie her down and had never allowed having a daughter to do so either.

“Why is Papa afraid for me?” She’d been living on her own for seven years.

“He does not believe Signor di Adamo has sufficient security to take possession of something as valuable and controversial as the crown jewels of Mukar.”

“That’s ridiculous. This is a jewelry store. Of course we can handle having possession of the jewels.”

Salvatore moved an impatient hand. “They are worth ten times the entire stock in this place. There is more than one faction in Mukar that is unhappy with the dissolution of the monarchy and the sale of the jewels.”

“Mukar needs the working capital. The former crown prince understands that and was willing to make whatever sacrifices were necessary to help his country survive.”

“Nevertheless, you are at risk.” He sounded so solemn, as if he actually cared.

She almost snorted. Right. Salvatore might feel guilty about the way he’d treated her, but he didn’t care about her and she’d be a fool to allow herself the luxury of that fantasy.

“I’m perfectly fine.”

“With a broken security buzzer?” He looked around the small jewelry store with a contemptuous eye. “The other security measures here are old and out of date. Even a second-rate thief would have no problem robbing Adamo Jewelers.”

“That’s not going to happen. There hasn’t been a robbery at Adamo’s since before Signor di Adamo took over the store and he’s in his sixties.”

“Sì. He is an old man. Too weak to protect you. And times change. You cannot live in ignorance of those changes, even here.” He swept his hand out in an arc, indicating the store, but even more so, the small town in which she lived.

“I’m not ignorant!”

He shook his head. “No, but you are dangerously naïve if you believe taking possession of something like the crown jewels of Mukar does not put you at risk.”

“I’ll be extra-careful. Besides, we keep them locked in the vault.”

He shook his head again, his expression grim. “That isn’t good enough.”

“Whether it is, or it isn’t, is none of your business.”

“Your father has made it my business.”

“He had no right to do that. I run my own life.”

She would have said more, but Signor di Adamo chose that moment to enter the store. He had his grandson, Nico, with him.

“Ah, Signor di Vitale. It is a pleasure to see you again. And this time you visit when my assistant is in town.”

“Signor di Adamo.” Salvatore turned and extended his hand in greeting, before doing likewise to Nico. “You are getting tall, Nico. Pretty soon you will be working with your grandfather in the store, no?”

Nico beamed with obvious delight and Elisa had to wonder just how much of a friendship had developed between her employer and her ex-lover over the year she’d been avoiding Salvatore.

“If I have a store.” The old man’s voice lowered with defeat, but then he smiled. “This little girl here, she’s given me new hope. Has she told you about the crown jewels?”

“Her father did.”

“It is a miracle she convinced the former crown prince to let us handle the auction, but she is smart and pretty enough to convince any red-blooded man of whatever her heart desires.” The old man winked at Salvatore. “Is that not so?”

She could have told Signor di Adamo that she hadn’t been pretty or desirable enough to convince Salvatore to love her, but she didn’t. Because she no longer cared. She didn’t want his love. She didn’t want his second-hand concern either. She just wanted to be left alone.

She didn’t get her wish. Salvatore stayed and discussed the shortcomings in Signor di Adamo’s security with the old man. He insisted on doing so in the store, frequently coming into close proximity to her. And every time it happened, the desires of her body betrayed the knowledge of her heart.

It didn’t matter what she did to avoid him. She moved to one side of the store and began cleaning jewelry. He followed. The same happened when she went to a jeweler’s case on the other side to rearrange its contents. Always it appeared he had been about to move there too, but she felt stalked. Considering the primitive view he had of life, it wasn’t hard to imagine him as a predator and herself as the prey.

In less than thirty minutes, her nerves were shot.

Unable to stand the pressure any longer of being around a man she had once loved, who had not loved her and whom she now despised, she sought escape at her desk in the back room. She would work on the auction. Signor di Adamo could man the store.

“You have been running away for a year, Elisa. That is over.”

Stupid. She castigated herself mentally as the voice she was trying so desperately to avoid attacked taut nerve endings. It had been really dim to take refuge in the small confines of an office that had only one exit. She faced him, wishing for the numbness she had felt for so many months after the death of her baby and the destruction of her dreams.

He stood blocking that exit—his head almost brushing the top of the doorframe, his shoulders filling it.

She refused to allow any of the emotions roiling inside her to show on her face. “I’m not running. I have work to do.”

“So, it has not been running when you manage to be gone every time I have come to visit.”

“I wasn’t always gone.”

“No, this is true. The first time I came, you were home in your apartment, but you refused to open the door.”

She’d threatened to call the police if he didn’t go away and she’d meant it. Even so, she had not expected him to leave, but he had. A male of his wealth and standing could have talked the police around, but he hadn’t even pushed it. Although she’d been relieved, she still had no real clue why he had gone.

“You came back,” she accused.

“And you left.”

“I had a buyer’s trip.” He’d made the mistake of calling to tell her he was in Rome on his way to see her. She’d left for the buyer’s trip three days early.

“You were running, just as you ran the next time I attempted to see you.”

“I owed my mother a visit.”

“Your father told you I was coming to Rome. You knew that meant I was going to try to see you again. You took off on a flight for America less than an hour before I arrived.”

“My father thought I might want to see you.” A hollow laugh escaped her. Nothing could have been further from the truth, but Papa had done her a favor in warning her of Salvatore’s intended travel plans.

“You ran away, Elisa, and I let you, but I cannot let you run any longer.”

“I don’t want to see you. That’s not running away.” Even he should be sensitive enough to realize she wanted to avoid a man who had cost her more than she had to give. “That is simply reality.”

He flinched, or maybe it was a trick of the lighting. Old wiring sometimes made it flicker.

“It is also reality that your father has asked me to look after you. This I will do.”

“I don’t need looking after.”

“You can say this?” There was no trick of the lighting now. Salvatore looked furious. “The security in this store is worse than I could have thought possible. The fact Signor di Adamo has not been robbed is by the grace of il buon dio. This store is the amateur thief’s dream hit.” His stress on the word “amateur” underscored his contempt for their security.

“There hasn’t been money to make improvements in that area.”

“That is no excuse. According to both Signor di Adamo and your father, you spend many days here alone. Is this true?”

Why was he asking her when they’d already said that it was?

“It’s none of your business.”

“You are my business.”

That possessive statement set off something inside her. Pain that had been festering for months while she tried to pretend she was over him exploded in her chest. There had been no confrontation, no final end to their relationship. She’d walked out of the hospital against doctor’s orders and refused to see Salvatore from that point on.

She shot to her feet without any thought of doing so and stormed forward until they were mere inches apart. Poking him right in his rock-solid wall of a chest with each word for emphasis, she said, “I am nothing to you.” She managed to contain the level of her voice, barely. “I was nothing to you when you were screwing me, and now that we aren’t even doing that I’m less than nothing to you. And you are nothing to me.”

“You said I was the father of the child you lost.”

She reeled from the words as if they’d been multiple body blows, staggering backwards, the pain so intense she did not know if she could contain it.

In a lightning-quick move that shocked her, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her the remaining inches while his mouth formed words she could not comprehend. Her body molded to his in a way that had once given her pleasure, but now filled her with loathing and fear. Loathing for her own physical reaction and fear that he would see it.

“Do not speak of yourself in this crude way. Whatever you were before, when we were together, you gave yourself to me. It was not ugly, as you make it out to be.”

Whatever she’d been before? A virgin. That was what she’d been, but because the physical barrier had not survived her years in gymnastics he had assumed otherwise. Had in fact assumed she was the same sort of woman as her mother. A woman who flitted from one lover to another, Shawna had been uninterested in making a commitment to any of the long line of men parading through her life.

“I’m done giving myself to you. I’ve learned my lesson,” she spat at him.

His jaw looked hewn from the hardest marble, his eyes glittered at her with fury.

She was glad. She wanted to make him angry, angry enough to leave her alone once and for all.

“We do not need to discuss this right now. I am here to see to your safety. Our relationship will wait.”

“We don’t…” She yanked herself away from him and stepped back toward her desk. “There is no relationship. None. Do you hear me? Leave me alone, Salvatore. You have no place in my life any more and you never will again.”

He didn’t say anything, just stared at her.

Then his gaze dropped below her neck and she wanted to scream. The whole time she’d been telling him off, the feminine parts of her body had been busy reacting to his scent, to the sensation of being held against him again.

“You’re lying to yourself if you believe that.”

She crossed her arms over the betraying rigid tips of her breasts and glared. “I’d rather go to bed with a sewer rat than with you, Signor Salvatore Rafael di Vitale.”

His head jerked as if she’d hit him. She wished she had.

His next words totally shocked her because they were so calm. “Signor di Adamo needs several security upgrades before either you or he will be safe in the store, and, even with them, neither of you should be here alone at any time.”

She fell back into her office chair, feeling the weight of her responsibilities too heavy to hold up any longer. Those upgrades, even the basic security measure of having two people in the store at all times, were not even pipe dreams. “I’m sure you’re right, but nothing can be done.”

“It must be done.”

“There is no money.”

Unmoved by that assertion, he said, “Nevertheless, it must be done.”

Hadn’t he heard her? Or was it that to a man like Salvatore, whose family owned one of the most prestigious and sought-after security firms in the world, the concept of not having any money did not compute?

He being richer even than her father, she supposed that was exactly the case.

“We can’t.” She sighed and rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger, for a moment not caring if her enemy saw this sign of weakness. She was so tired. “Signor di Adamo is trying to hold on to the store for his grandson, but it gets harder every year.”

“The auction for the crown jewels will bring in funds.”

“Yes. A great deal of money that he needs very badly, but I don’t know if even that will be enough. The security system isn’t the only thing needing improvement around here.”

She thought of the building’s leaky plumbing and dodgy wiring. It was old, original to the store’s inception. She shuddered to think of what sort of improvement Signor di Adamo’s private apartments required.

“I will take care of it.”

“He won’t let you.” One of the things that had drawn her to the old man was his fierce sense of independence so like her own. His pride would never accept charity.

She said so, but Salvatore just shrugged. Not really a smile, the tiny tilt at the corner of his lips reminded her of things she would rather forget.

“I know how to work around a man’s pride.”

“I don’t doubt it. You’re good at manipulating people.”

He shook his head. “I will not allow you to draw me into another argument, cara.”

“I don’t want to argue with you.” It was true. The rage that had sprung up before was all but burned out. She just wanted him to be gone.

“This is good.”

For a moment her mind could not comprehend what he had said until she realized she had only spoken aloud regarding not wanting to argue, not her desire for him to be gone. “I don’t want to see you at all.”

“We cannot have everything, dolcezza.”

Dolcezza. Sweetness. He’d used to call her that because he said she tasted and acted so sweet. It scraped at wounds that were no longer raw and bleeding, but were not anywhere near healed. “Don’t call me that.”

“Where are the crown jewels now?” he asked, as if she’d never spoken.

“I told you. They’re in the vault.”

His body went taut, his attitude one of extreme alertness. “You’ve taken possession of them already?”

“Yes.”

“Your father thought they were not being transported from Mukar for a week or more.”

“That is what the former crown prince wished. He told everyone they were being transported just before the auction. He hoped to make the transfer in secret. It worked.”

“Just because I did not know you had them does not mean no one is aware they have been brought here.”

“They’re safe in the vault,” she repeated stubbornly.

“Perhaps, but you are not safe.”

He kept harping on it and she knew he was right, but she didn’t know what to do about it. And frankly, when she’d negotiated for the auction, she hadn’t really cared about her safety one way or another.

The numbness after losing the baby and Salvatore had worn off, but a certain malaise of spirit lingered on. Sure personal happiness was out of her reach, she would risk anything, do anything to ensure it for a man who had been so good to her. Signor di Adamo.

Salvatore had moved without her realizing, while her mind had been off in its own little world. His hand brushed her cheek and she felt the gentle touch like a branding that both burned and physically hurt.

“I will never leave you alone.”

Leaving her dazed from that small interchange, he spun on his heel and left her office.




CHAPTER TWO


SALVATORE waited for Elisa to come out of her office. She’d spent the remaining hours of the afternoon working on the auction while Salvatore and Signor di Adamo discussed new security features for the store and measures to keep both the old man and Elisa safe until the crown jewels were sold. Signor di Adamo handled customers as well, showing his grandson the ropes of the business, while Salvatore made phone calls on his mobile and ordered necessary equipment to be installed immediately.

It had been a pleasant afternoon, but the next few minutes did not promise to be so pleasant. He had to tell Elisa that he was going home with her. He had no choice, but he doubted very much she would see things that way.

She didn’t.

Five minutes later she was glaring at him as if he had suggested something obscene. “No way.” She shook her head so hard part of her hair slipped out of the French twist on the back of her head. It fell over one green eye and she impatiently shoved it aside. “You are not going home with me.”

“If anyone knows of the jewels’ whereabouts, neither you nor your employer will be safe. He will be staying with his daughter and son-in-law. You have no one.”

An expression came into her eyes when he said that, a bleakness of spirit he did not like and one he did not associate with the fiery woman who had been his lover. “I don’t have you either. Wouldn’t have you. Even as a misguided gift from my father. You aren’t going with me and that’s final.”

With that she marched past him and out the door, leaving Signor di Adamo to lock up. Salvatore cursed and followed her.

“At least allow me to drive you home.” He would take care of getting in the door of her apartment once they arrived.

“I’ll catch the bus.” And then she was running to do just that and Salvatore felt a wave of shock as he realized she’d thwarted him with less effort than it would have taken a five-year-old.

Furious, he rapped out orders to one of the men he’d brought in during the afternoon. He would see to Signor di Adamo and his grandson’s safe journey home.

Salvatore slung himself behind the wheel of his black four-wheel drive and followed that damn city bus all the way to Elisa’s apartment.

He was not in a good mood when he got there.



Elisa stepped off the bus and a very unpleasant word slipped past lips stiff with frustration.

Salvatore waited for her in front of her building with the look of a man ready to do violence. Only, if she knew anything about him, she knew he would not physically harm her. Even in the midst of his rage over the baby, he had kept his blows to the verbal variety.

All the same, she couldn’t help the shiver of apprehension that skittered down her spine.

She approached the entrance warily, her eyes fixed on the spot of the red-painted door visible to the left of Salvatore’s tall frame. If she could just get inside that door and away from the man in front of it, everything would be fine.

She stopped a foot away because he hadn’t moved.

Nor had he spoken, but his body language spoke volumes and all of it bad.

“Do not ever run from me again.”

She allowed herself to meet his gaze, pretending not to feel the shards of pain such a motion caused her deep inside. “Go take a hike. You don’t dictate to me.”

“Someone needs to. You have no concern for your own safety.”

Her eyes widened at that. “What could possibly happen to me on the city bus?”

“If you don’t know, you are more naïve than a woman of your age should be.” Then he proceeded to spell out in graphic detail what could have happened to her, covering the range from a sex fiend accosting her to being kidnapped and forced to give her kidnappers the crown jewels.

When he was done, she fought both nausea and irritation.

“And if you think you are any safer in your apartment, you are a fool,” he added when she remained silent.

“You’re assuming other people know the jewels are at Adamo Jewelers, but there’s nothing to indicate that is the case.”

“Assume the worst and plan accordingly.” He made no apologies for his cynicism and she hadn’t expected him to.

Even when she’d loved him she’d recognized that he had a very pessimistic view of the world.

“Even if someone does know and wants to steal the jewels, the vault is on a timed lock mechanism,” she said with satisfaction. “Signor di Adamo cannot open it before nine in the morning, no matter how much he might want to.”

“That will not prevent you from being used as a pawn in procurement of the jewels.”

She sighed, knowing that in the most extreme scenario he could be right, but she was unwilling to believe the risk was all that great. “Please move.” She dug for her door key in her purse. “I want to go inside.”

“Have you heard nothing I have said?”

“I heard. I just don’t believe.” Aha. She’d found it. She withdrew the key and looked pointedly at the door behind him.

“Tough.” Then in another one of those moves that always took her by surprise, he took her key. It was like the first time he’d kissed her. She hadn’t been expecting that either.

She grabbed for the key ring, but he was already unlocking the door. Stepping back, he ushered her inside, her keys still firmly in his hand.

She stepped just over the threshold and then put her hand out. “Give it to me.”

He ignored her outstretched hand and followed her inside, forcing her to move backward or be in the unenviable position of touching him again.

“It’s a secured building, for goodness’ sake.”

“A locked entryway is not secure. Particularly one with a lock as old and easy to pick as that one.”

The whole building was old and she liked it. Her apartment had character and the rent was cheap. She refused to live off of either of her parents, and Signor di Adamo could not afford to pay her what she was worth.

“Stop showing off your security-guard skills and give me back my key. I’m hungry and tired. I want to get to my apartment, make my dinner and go to bed.”

“I am a security specialist, not a guard.”

Not to mention being heir apparent to the whole company when his father decided to abdicate the throne.

“Whatever.” She wasn’t going to ask for the key again.

It was a good thing she didn’t because it would have been wasting her breath. He started down the hall, his long-legged stride eating the distance to her apartment quickly.

When he stopped in front of her door, she looked at him askance. “How did you know my number?”

She had moved shortly after their breakup, unable to stand the memories the other apartment had elicited.

He rolled his dark brown eyes. “It’s not that hard to find your address. In fact, give me fifteen seconds on a computer and I can find pretty much anyone’s. However, in this case, I simply asked your father.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t told her father about her brief affair and its disastrous end.

He would have gone ballistic and she had not been emotionally prepared to deal with any more at the time.

“You did not tell him about us,” Salvatore said, mirroring her thoughts.

She shrugged and watched with a feeling of inevitability as he unlocked the apartment door with the other key on the ring.

“I didn’t tell him about the baby either.” She didn’t know why she admitted that.

“Neither did I.”

“I know.”

Her father was ignorant of her pregnancy and miscarriage. Just as he was ignorant of what a rat his best friend’s son really was. Her mother didn’t know either. In fact, the only other person in the world who knew about the precious baby she had lost was this man. And she could hardly expect compassionate understanding from her worst enemy.

He pushed into her apartment and she had no choice but to follow.

“This is nice.”

She looked around at the smallish apartment, which was almost a bedsit. It had its own bathroom, but the main area doubled as her daily living space and her bedroom when she pulled the ancient trundle bed down from the wall.

“It’s bright, like you.”

Like she used to be, maybe. She’d tried to make her home cheery and inviting with lots of yellow, white and rose-pink, but the décor had done little to improve her sense of loss and loneliness. Even the sunlight currently filtering through the window of the kitchenette seemed muted by the emotions that weighted her insides.

“Thank you,” she replied stiffly to his compliment when the silence had stretched on.

He made an impatient sound. “Change your clothes and I’ll take you to dinner.”

“What is the matter with what I’m wearing?” she demanded, immediately on the defensive.

“Nothing. Let’s go.” He took her arm and the contact seared her just as she knew touching him again would do.

“I didn’t say I was going with you,” she said, trying to pull her arm from his grasp.

“Would you prefer to fix me dinner here?” He smiled as he’d used to and she felt a twinge in the region of her heart. “It has been a long time since you cooked for me, but I remember what a wonderful cook you are. I would enjoy the experience.”

The sheer arrogance of that statement blew her away. “I would prefer you left.” She glared up at him, carefully avoiding actual eye contact. “You’ve seen me safely home. There’s no reason for us to prolong our time together.”

“You seem to be under a misapprehension.”

“What do you mean?” She gave up the struggle for possession of her arm. He wasn’t letting go and every movement, even infinitesimal, increased her awareness of his closeness.

“I’m not leaving you alone.”

Shards of fearful premonition sliced through her. “What exactly are you saying?”

“Until the auction is over, I am your faithful sidekick.”

“You, faithful?” she scoffed, trying very hard to come to terms with his grimly delivered assurance.

The grip on her arm tightened. “I was never unfaithful to you.”

She believed him, but she didn’t want to. Not when he’d refused to believe her similar claim when she told him about the baby. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of saying so, however. Instead she focused on the issue at hand.

“No.”

His fingers uncurled from her arm and began a light caress. “No, what, dolcezza?”

“You are not staying with me.” Her voice broke as his hand moved up to her collarbone. She felt like a bird being mesmerized by a snake. She couldn’t move, but she knew to let him touch her was disastrous.

“I made a promise to your father. I will keep it.”

“I don’t need a bodyguard.”

“That is not what he believes.”

“My father does not dictate my life either.”

“This is true. Unlike your sister, you have a disconcerting tendency to go your own way, but I would have thought that even so, your love for your father would not allow you to put him in a place of constantly worrying for your safety.”

She wasn’t going to be manipulated with that line. “According to him, he does that anyway.”

“He had an episode with his heart last month. Did he tell you?”

She felt as if all the air had been sucked from the room. “No.” Her voice came out a whisper. “He said nothing.”

Why hadn’t he called her? Why hadn’t his wife, Therese, told her? As she thought it, she said it.

“I do not know, but perhaps he did not wish to worry you.”

“I should have known!” The anguish she felt reminded her what an outsider she was. She belonged intimately to no one.

Salvatore studied her in a way that made her feel exposed. “Now you do. Are you willing to risk putting his heart under further stress?”

A sense of impotency filled her. Despite the fact they were not exactly close, she loved her father very much. And he hadn’t looked well the last time she’d seen him. “No.”

“Then I stay.”

With a tremendous effort of will, she stepped back, away from that insidious touch. “No. If Papa is that worried, I’ll agree to a bodyguard, but not you.”

“It is too important an assignment for me to put it in the hands of another.”

“Me, important?” She couldn’t help deriding.

His jaw went taut and fire rained down on her from those dark chocolate eyes. “Keep pushing, Elisa.”

His tone implied that, for her own sake, she had better do anything but. Only she couldn’t make herself stop. There was too much pain inside her to govern everything that came out of her mouth when she was with him.

He’d hurt her and there was a terrible part of her that wanted to hurt him back, even if it was just with digs that did no more than annoy his sense of masculine pride.

“Get me a different bodyguard.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“I’ll call Papa and tell him I don’t want you around me.”

“And will you tell him why?”

Salvatore’s smooth question stopped her progress toward the phone on the small table beside the one armchair in her apartment.

“I don’t have to tell him why.”

“He wants the best for you and I’m the best. He will expect an explanation.”

The problem was, she knew he was right. Even though several of the Vitale Security operatives were ex-military, none of them had been trained as thoroughly as Salvatore. His father and grandfather had seen to that, going so far as sending him to spend his formative years’ schooling and training in an élite academy that taught a form of hand-to-hand combat second to none in the world.

It had been followed by a technical education at the university level that put him on a par with coordinators in the government’s secret service.

“Then I shall tell him.”

“And prompt a full-on heart attack? Does he mean so little to you?”

Her hands curled into fists at her sides. “Why are you doing this to me?” She spun to face him, her body vibrating with emotions she would give anything not to feel. “Haven’t you hurt me enough?”

There it was. The truth laid bare between them. He had the power to hurt her and he had exercised it.

His face looked set in stone. “I am not doing this to hurt you. You need my protection.”

“Just being around you hurts!” she cried, not able to hide that from him any longer. Perhaps if she was honest, told him just how hard it was to be with him, he would withdraw from the fray and assign someone else to guard her. His Sicilian guilt should be good for something to her. “I can’t stand the memories, Salvatore. Can’t you see that? Not seeing you is the only way I can even begin to cope.”

Pain shot through his expression, but then it was gone. “Pretending it did not happen is not coping.”

Suddenly she knew. He wanted to force a confrontation. The man who found talking about his feelings right up there with Chinese water torture wanted to talk things out. She could see it in his eyes, in the stubborn set of his jaw.

She couldn’t bear it. Rehashing the past would only hurt more, not heal.

He didn’t realize that, of course. Because he was not hampered by the soul-destroying pain of a betrayed love. He had never felt anything more for her than sexual lust.

Desperate to avoid the confrontation she sensed was coming, she took the lesser of two evils. “You said you’d take me to dinner.”

“We need to talk, Elisa.”

She ignored that. “I’m really tired. I’d prefer not to cook tonight.”

His frown expressed his irritation with her refusal to talk, but in the end, and to her undying shock, he nodded. “All right. If you do not need to change clothes, we can go.”

“Just let me fix my hair and put on some lipstick.”

Again he agreed, giving her a much needed reprieve from his presence as she closed herself into the tiny cubicle that served as her bathroom.



Salvatore swore with frustration. He had believed it would be difficult to overcome her aversion to him, but had not been prepared for it to be almost impossible.

Elisa was not just angry with him. She hated him.

She had lost her baby because of him. She’d never said so, but their final argument, the stress of that confrontation had no doubt precipitated the miscarriage. It was a guilt he’d learned to live with, but he would not live with the knowledge he had done nothing to make it right.

However, it was patently obvious she was not prepared for talk of marriage yet.

He had to woo her. His mouth twisted cynically. He knew how he wanted to woo her. In bed. Seducing her would be far easier than talking the stubborn woman round to his way of seeing things. He would enjoy it more too.

She might not like it, but her body still reacted to him almost helplessly. Her pulse had increased with the barest touch of his hand on her neck. Given enough time and close proximity, it would simply be a matter of when they made it back into each other’s arms.

No matter what had gone before, back in her bed was a place he definitely wanted to be. Even marriage was not too high a price to pay to know that all her passion, all her fire would belong to him.

Elisa came out of the bathroom looking fragile, but lovely. She’d brushed out her hair and pulled it back with a clip. Her face had more color than it had earlier, but that was probably due to makeup rather than an improvement in her feelings. Not that her green eyes revealed anything. Their usually animated depths were blank of any emotion.

“Are you ready?” she asked, her voice as flat as her expression.

He detested that flatness, wanted to experience Elisa as she had been a year ago, not this buttoned-down stranger. But he had won one victory; he would consolidate his position before demanding more.

“I’m ready.”

Just those two words and her eyelids flinched. He wanted to curse. He’d been a stupid bastard a year ago. Even if she was like her mother, as her father had said, she’d been different in one key way. She’d wanted to marry him when she discovered she was pregnant.

He still wasn’t sure the baby was his. They’d only been together a month when she told him she was pregnant…What were the chances? But even so, he had decided to risk them because he had wanted her in his bed and in his life on a permanent basis. He’d made that decision too late and lived to regret his tardiness and stupidity.

“Let’s go.” He took her hand to lead her from the apartment.

She tried to pull away from him, the way she did from every single touch since they’d seen each other that morning in the jeweler’s. And just as before, he didn’t let go. She had to get used to his touch again. The prospect that she wouldn’t was not a circumstance he wanted to contemplate.

“Where are we going?”

“Does it matter?”

“No.”

“I did not think so.”

Two hours later, they were back in the apartment, dinner having been nothing short of a disaster. She’d avoided looking at him, touching him and talking to him if she could.

The strain of it was showing on both of them.

She yawned.

“You need to go to bed.”

She nodded.

He looked around the small apartment. The cozy and inviting undersized sofa didn’t look so cozy as a possible bed. It was several feet too short for his over-six-foot frame. The pull-down bed would have been a slight improvement, but he had no doubt she would refuse to share it with him.

He looked at the floor with even less pleasure. “I suppose you’ll expect me to bed down on the carpet.”

Her eyes grew wide and a flush suffused her face. “I don’t expect you to sleep here at all.”

“I thought we settled this before we left.” It was a blatant untruth. He’d known she would balk at him spending the night.

She stiffened in pure, independent female outrage. “You’re not sleeping in my apartment.”

“I am until the auction is over.” His voice was as grim as his mood after dinner as the undesirable pariah. It was not an experience he was used to. Usually women fawned over him, even ex-girlfriends—but not this woman.

The look of horror that came over her made no improvement on his deteriorating mood.

“I’m not going to attack you,” he ground out. “I’m here to protect you.”

“It’s impossible.”

“Do you have a better solution? I’m not leaving you alone,” he added before she could open her mouth to answer.

She gnawed at her lower lip in a gesture he remembered from before. It indicated she was in serious thought.

The look of horror turned to one of disgust. “If you insist on being my bodyguard, you can spring for a suite with two bedrooms at a hotel or sleep in the hall. You pick.”

He stared at her. It couldn’t be this easy. “A hotel.”

“Fine. Give me a minute to pack.”

Elisa threw clothes into a suitcase with little consideration for what she was packing. He’d looked shocked when she suggested the hotel, but she knew how intractable he could be. He would spend the night with her no matter what she wanted. Her apartment was out of the question. Just the thought of sharing such small living space with him made her cringe. She needed a door to shut between them, a room to call her own, a bed that would hold no memories.

Not that he’d ever shared her bed in this new apartment, but somehow, if he stayed, she knew it would feel tainted by his presence. She would have to move again.

She refused to consider why he had such a strong impact on her emotions still, or why hate sometimes felt like the other side of a bruised and bleeding love.




CHAPTER THREE


LYING in bed in the luxurious hotel suite later, memories she was too exhausted to fight washed over her.

Seeing him had brought it all back.

The debilitating pain. The sense of betrayal. The grief of loss, but also the glory of possession.

For a short while, it had been the most glorious time of her life. She had belonged to someone, had a place in his life. Not a grudging place as she had with her mother. Not an inconvenient place as she had with her father.

Salvatore had accepted and desired her for herself.

Or so she had believed.

If it were possible to go back in time she would go back, not to the point where she had met Salvatore in an effort to make a different choice with him. But she would go back to those four short weeks when she had believed herself loved as she loved, and if she could she would stay there forever.

She would never know the misery of his defection, the humiliation of his hurtful beliefs about her, the desolation of his lack of commitment to her. All of that would be in a future she would not have to live…if it could be so. Nor would she know the pain of losing the one being she had been certain to belong to forever, who she would have spent a lifetime giving a mother’s love she had only ever dreamed of. 39

Her mind took her back to the moment when she had realized Salvatore was interested in her.

She’d been in Milan, attending an estate sale for a woman who was known for her jewelry collection. She remembered that her hotel room had felt stuffy because the air-conditioning unit was broken. The phone had rung just as she stepped out of a cooling shower. She’d considered letting the front desk just take a message, but in the end had traipsed across the room to pick it up, dripping and naked but for a thin towel wrapped around her.

“Hello?”

“Elisa. Salvatore here.”

Salvatore? “My father’s friend?” she squeaked, unable to believe he was calling her in her hotel room in Milan.

“I hope your friend as well, cara.”

Oh, he was smooth. “Yes, of course. Is something the matter with him?”

“Him?”

“My f-father.” She stumbled over the words, tongue-tied in a way she hadn’t been since adolescence.

“Why should you think that?” his voice purred down the line at her.

“You’re calling me.”

“And a man cannot call a beautiful single woman with any other reason than to discuss her father?”

The gentle mockery had her knees going weak and she plopped down to sit on the edge of the bed. “Of course, I just…”

“Come, cara. Surely you realized I was interested in you.”

Funnily enough, she hadn’t. “You mean because you flirted with me?” she asked, feeling gauche for saying it. But still, “I thought you flirted with every woman.”

“Do I?”

“I don’t know.” He was practically a stranger to her. She had grown up with her mother in America and, as close as her father and Salvatore’s father were, she and Salvatore had met only infrequently over the years when she visited her father in Sicily.

“It seemed like it to me.” He’d certainly flirted with her from the moment he found her on the sunlounger by her father’s pool her second day in Sicily the summer before.

She could still remember the smooth joke about mermaids and the sexy glint in his eyes. Italian men took female appreciation to whole new levels, but she’d found Sicilians in a class all by themselves. And Salvatore was the most impressive of the lot.

He had proceeded to flirt with her on and off over the next two weeks whenever he and his family were guests in her father’s home or vice versa. Which, considering how close the two families were, was quite frequent.

She’d fallen for him like a ton of bricks.

It had never once occurred to her the feeling might be mutual.

“You will have to get to know me better,” he was speaking again, “to see that I am not a flirt, cara, far from it.”

“I will?” She liked the sound of that.

“Sì.”

“All right.”

“I’ll pick you up in forty minutes.”

“What?” Now? He wanted her to get to know him now?

“For dinner.”

“You want to have dinner with me?”

He made an impatient, but amused sound. “What do you think I am saying here?”

“That you want to have dinner with me?”

She might have been born to one of the most notorious and glamorous stars in Hollywood, but she lived a very quiet life and did not play man-woman games. She’d seen too much from a very early age and vowed never to be like her mother or the sycophants who populated Shawna’s life. She would never cheapen intimacy as she’d seen it cheapened around her.

Only her lack of experience was making her sound like she was stupid. It would serve her right if he withdrew his dinner invitation, she thought in frustration.

“Sì. I want to have dinner with you and now you have thirty-five minutes in which to ready yourself.”

He arrived thirty minutes later.

She was ready.

He took her to an elegant restaurant, where the food and the wine were delicious. They danced after dinner.

He pulled her into his arms, his hold intimate, and she did not complain.

It felt too good.

Sensations she had never experienced overwhelmed her as he swayed with her to the music.

It was sexual desire as she’d never believed it could be. Instantaneous. Hot. Unstoppable.

Pressing her even closer, he said, “You feel good, dolcezza.”

“So do you.” Her voice was husky and low.

She’d never spoken that way in her life. It sounded sexy though.

“I am glad.”

She tipped her head back to look at him and encountered eyes so intense, they burned right through her to the very core of her feminine sexuality.

“Sweet.” His head lowered toward hers. “You are going to taste so sweet.”

The kiss shattered every sense of who she believed herself to be.

She went up like a roman candle, burning with a heat she’d never even dreamed existed.

Unconscious of her surroundings, she twisted her hips against him, seeking some unnamable thing, some sort of relief from the conflagration of her senses. The caress only made it worse and he groaned, his lips taking on a hard sensuality that gave no quarter.

She desired none and responded with all the latent sensuality in her being.

Tearing his mouth from hers, he said, “We’ve got to get out of here, or I’m going to make love to you and get us both arrested for indecent exposure.”

Shockingly she heard herself teasing him. “I’ve heard the police are quite understanding about that sort of thing.”

He shook his head. “Do not joke. I am in agony. I want a bed with you on it. Now.”

Suddenly she realized where all this passionate intensity was heading and she froze. Literally. Stopping his rapid progress to the table.

He turned to her, his eyes black with desire, his mouth set in a grim line that she found slightly frightening. “What is it?”

“You expect to go to bed? Right now?”

His glare singed the edges of her heart. “What kind of game are you playing? If that kiss wasn’t a prelude to bed, what the hell was it?”

She didn’t play games, but he didn’t know that. His accusation made her take quick stock, however. She couldn’t very well tell him she’d never kissed like that in her life so had no experience of what it was a prelude to. Instinct told her that admitting her lack of experience to Salvatore would turn him right off. He was used to dating the most sophisticated sort of women.

“This is our first date.”

“We did the mating dance for two solid weeks in Sicily. I would have taken you to bed then, but to do so while you were under your father’s roof would have been disrespectful to your family.”

“And you’re so sure I would have gone?” Passion was fading, to be replaced by anger.

How dare he assume she would just fall into his bed like some—?

“Wishing would make it so,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “I wanted you, cara. I still do. Desperately. But if you are not ready, say it now. We will take it at your pace.”

Sincerity was reflected in the tone of his voice, the depths of his eyes, and she found herself falling right back under his spell.

“I want you too.”

His nostrils flared and his body went even tenser, if possible. “Then let us go.”

She nodded.

He took her to his home and it was then she learned that he lived a large portion of the year in Milan, overseeing his family’s company satellite holding there.

Milan meant big business and big business meant ultra hi-tech security and superbly trained operatives.

He kissed her again when they got inside and she lost the battle before it had ever begun. She woke up hours later, her body aching in ways it had never done before with all her gymnastics routines. He slept on beside her, the sound of his breathing in the stillness a shocking reminder that she had never once shared another human being’s bed.

Her hands stole to her cheeks. They felt hot in the darkness. She was blushing. No surprise that, not after what they’d done. He had thought she was experienced and the overwhelming passion he sparked in her had lent credence to that belief.

She edged out of the bed and tiptoed into the bathroom. She took a shower, washing a body that showed the signs of his loving. She closed her eyes against the evidence and finished cleansing herself. Stepping out of the shower, she saw herself in the full-length mirror opposite and went completely still.

The woman staring back at her was not the Elisa she had always known. This woman was a stranger. A sensual stranger. Her nipples were still hard and they ached slightly. There was a small mark on her breast. She remembered that kiss…He’d gone a little wild when she begged him to make the ache go away.

Those legs had wrapped themselves around a man with fierce urgency. Those hands had clung to his shoulders with all the strength of the supernatural, or so it had seemed. And that secret place between her thighs had experienced the most amazing pleasure she’d ever known, had welcomed him into her body with greedy need.

She felt different. As if she was connected to him on a spiritual level. Her emotions were engaged. Oh, yes, they were. She’d fallen in love so fast, she would doubt the reality of her feelings if they weren’t so strong.

But what did he feel?

He did have experience. He’d been to bed with countless women, she would bet. Could tonight have meant anything to him the way it had to her?

She was terrified of going out there to find out that it didn’t. Was he still asleep? He’d been sleeping soundly when she came into the bathroom. Maybe she should just get dressed and call a taxi, go back to her hotel. Avoid the whole morning-after awkward thing.

He’d said and done nothing to make her believe that the night was more than the temporary slaking of physical lust on his part. He couldn’t love her as she loved him. Not a man so special and sexy.

He had women crawling all over him. A night of lovemaking that meant everything to her would mean nothing to him. She couldn’t blame him. Despite years of avoiding casual sexual intimacy, she hadn’t asked for any promises. He’d given none. He hadn’t pretended to be in love, just in need.

Turning off the light before she opened the door, she let her eyes adjust to the darkness before stepping into the bedroom. She didn’t want to wake him.

Her clothes were scattered all over. She headed toward a pile of white she guessed was her panties.

“Cara, I missed you. Come back to bed.”

She stopped in the act of bending over to pick up that promising bit of fabric. “I…I think maybe I should go.”

“No.”

He moved so fast, she didn’t see him coming, but between one breath and another he was out of the bed and beside her.

He swung her up into his arms. “You should stay.”

“But…”

“But what, cara?”

The feel of his hair-roughened chest against her side was already impacting on her ability to think. “You…I…”

“Sì. You and I. We are a couple and I do not like sleeping alone when my girlfriend is within reaching distance.”

His girlfriend?

It had meant something to him, was her last coherent thought as his sensually demanding mouth settled over hers.

She was so happy over the next four weeks, she was sick with it. She spent a few extra days in Milan. He called her every night and several times a day for the next four days before showing up to stay a long weekend with her. She took personal leave and went back to Milan for a few days. He took her with him on one of his business trips to New York.





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