Pushing the gate open, she went through and huddled at the far edge of the lawn fronting the lodge, at the place where it sloped down to the edge of the cliff overlooking the Strait.
How long she stood there, her chest heaving, the tears rolling down her face, she couldn’t have said. Gradually, though, she became aware of footsteps approaching and coming to a stop directly behind her.
She knew without looking that it was Nico because every pore in her skin responded to his nearness. Every pale and tiny hair on the nape of her neck quivered to attention. The very air crackled with silent electricity.
Do not turn around, she commanded herself.
Strong masculine hands closed over her upper arms. A voice uttered her name. Nico’s hands, Nico’s voice, resurrecting near-forgotten memories of the warm, sweet night breeze of Verona sweeping softly over her naked body, and moonlight throwing dusky blue shadows over her skin. And Nico, limned in the pale light like some ancient, beautiful god come to steal a mortal’s soul, hovering above her, murmuring words of love that fell from his lips like music…tesoro…angelo…la mia moglie adorata…te amo….
She squeezed her eyes shut, so tightly they stung.
Do not acknowledge him…!
His lips settled quietly at the spot just below her ear. Slid in a smooth arpeggio down the side of her neck, and from there to the curve of her shoulder. His lashes fluttered against her skin, a charming, alluring afterthought that left a trail of goose bumps in its wake.
Do not let him in…!
Even though her flesh burned where he touched it, even though every nerve in her body jumped in shimmering anticipation of a pleasure she’d only ever found with him, she could not let him know.
Baron was the better choice, the man who offered her the constancy she craved. He was the one who should be seducing her softly.
But it was Nico who ran his palms down her night-chilled arms and laced his fingers in hers. Nico who whispered sweet Italian nothings in her ear.
Do not listen! Do not turn around!
But her body didn’t hear. Didn’t care. Instead, it took on a life of its own, swiveling in response to the persuasion of his hands, and bringing her face to face, breast to chest, hip to hip, with the one man in the whole wide world to whom she’d never been able to say “No.”
“What are you doing out here, all by yourself at such a late hour?” he asked, the question whispering over her mouth like a breeze.
“I have nowhere else to go,” she replied brokenly.
Without another word, he swung her off her feet, cradled her against his shoulder and covered the distance to the lodge in long, swift strides. The magnolia trees and lilac hedge blocked out the sight of the main house. The sleepy swish of the waves rolling ashore drowned out all the music except for the anthem beginning in her heart.
Reason couldn’t dictate the right or wrong of it, because there was nothing reasonable about the wild anticipation thrumming through her veins. The one true voice she heard was that which told her she was where she belonged.
He didn’t pretend to bother with social foreplay. No offer of a glass of sherry to warm her shivering body, of conversation to ease her afflicted mind. Instead, he kicked the front door closed behind him and marched straight up the stairs to the bedroom.
The windows stood open, letting in the sweet, heavy perfume of night-scented stocks and nicotiana. Only a smattering of stars winked between the branches of the copper beech outside, and the moon, just rising, offered next to no light at all. But a lamp on the dresser cast enough of a glow to penetrate the shadows of the room. Enough that she could see the passionate curve of his mouth as he lowered her to the floor, his heavy-lidded gaze as it traveled the length of her, the slow rise and fall of his chest.
His hands circled her waist. Inched her toward him until she stood close enough for his breath to winnow over her face. The slow torment it inflicted left her whimpering helplessly. She lifted her mouth to his, mutely begging to be kissed. But he continued to toy with her, hovering but never quite touching.
Then, after what seemed like forever, he brushed his lips across hers—one way, the other, like a bird unable to decide where it wished to settle. A fleeting taste of heaven here; a brief, burning promise there. A swift, openmouthed sweep, warm and wet across her parched lips, followed by tormenting withdrawal, and another long, silent scrutiny from eyes so dark and shadowed she hadn’t a hope of reading what lay in their depths.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Chloe,” he said at last, his voice coated in sugared gravel. “I hope that, this time, you’re quite sure I’m the one you want and there aren’t going to be any recriminations flying, afterward.”
Her breath caught on a splintered sigh. She framed his face between her hands so that he had to look at her, had to see the truth she knew he’d find written on hers. “I’m sure.”
If permission was what he’d been waiting for, he heard it in her answer. Felt it in the urgency with which she pressed herself against him. The time was past for leisurely explorations; for almost touching, almost kissing.
With a low growl of satisfaction, he ripped down the zipper of her dress, tugged at the bodice until it fell around her waist, then walked her backward until she fell across the bed with him on top of her.
In the throes of her own wild need, she tore open the buttons on his shirt, pressed her eager mouth against the smooth curve of his shoulder, slid her hands inside the waist of his pants, and over his taut, slim buttocks.
“I want you naked,” he muttered between fevered breaths. “I want to feel all of you underneath me.”
And so it was. Clothing tossed aside haphazardly. A brief, breathless suspension of time while they devoured each other with their eyes, renewing acquaintance with physical features they’d once known so intimately that they’d have recognized each other by touch alone in a crowd of thousands.
How could she have forgotten the slight bump along his collar bone, broken in a game of street soccer when he was nine? The tiny raised scar just above his ribs, the legacy of a fight when he was in his teens? The imposing width of shoulder, the narrow waist, the way the crisp haze of dark hair on his chest softened to silk as it narrowed down his flat belly, then flared again to nest around his manhood?
How could she have thought for a second that any other man could ever raise her to painful, quivering expectation just by the sight of his powerful, vibrant arousal? Nico was strong, in mind and body; a force to be reckoned with regardless of most circumstances. Yet when it came to mastering his sexual response to her, she was the one in control.
Barely had the thought taken root, though, before he reminded her of the other half of the sexual equation between them. His fingertip, running in a straight line from her throat to her navel with a feather-light touch that barely grazed her skin, made her gasp aloud. A rush of heat pulsed through her body, leaving her thighs shaking and the folds of flesh between them puddled with excitement.
“You are still beautiful,” he allowed, knowing she had learned her lesson, and that there were never any winners when it came to making love.
Wanting to punish him with similar pleasure, she let her finger skate from the indentation separating the muscled planes of his chest, and all the way down his torso until she found the sleek, vulnerable tip of his penis. “And you, Nico.”
The breath hissing between his teeth marked the end of the preliminary skirmish. No more holding back after that. No more questions, no more thinking. Just him and her, skin to skin, the way it was meant to be. Mouths seeking, tongues playing, unhindered, wherever they chose to go.
The taste and texture of him, pure male, pure sex, drove her wild. His fractured gasp of pleasure when she took him in her mouth, his steely determination not to submit to her torture…oh, they made her feel victorious, invincible—until, again, he exercised his own exquisite form of mastery and brought her tumbling into submission.
Effortlessly, he flipped her onto her
back so that she lay spread-eagled beneath him. He knelt astride her. Probed gently with his hard, heated flesh at the juncture of her thighs. Slid easily between their welcoming inner curves, then withdrew again, a nanosecond before penetrating farther. Flirted with her repeatedly, each time tossing her closer to heaven.
She thrashed beneath him, inarticulate sounds issuing helplessly from her throat as the encroaching waves of orgasm threatened to engulf her. She could not hold them back, and yet, by themselves, they were not enough to satisfy her. She wanted him—all of him—deep inside her. Wanted to welcome him with her own flesh convulsing around his.
She flung out her arm, as if by doing so, she might tame that part of her body refusing to submit to patience. She succeeded in a way she could never have anticipated.
Her fist cracked against glass. Shocked, she turned her head and saw she’d struck a brass picture frame on the bedside table, hinged down the middle and containing two photographs. The first was of her, silhouetted by sunshine and hugely pregnant; the other of Luciano, taken shortly before he died.
Never again, she’d vowed, when Nico, desperate to avoid the divorce and somehow put right a world forever gone wrong, had suggested that, in time, another baby might help ease her pain. Never again!
Yet here she was, so bent on finding escape from today that she hadn’t given a thought to tomorrow’s possible consequences. She’d ignored logic for instinct, and it had led her straight to the brink of disaster again. Good God, would she never learn?
CHAPTER NINE
Friday, August 28
HE MADE a note of the flight information he needed, and replaced the phone in its cradle. It was over. Done.
Once the anger subsided—and it had been directed at himself, more than at her—he’d known exactly what his next move had to be. Now that he’d taken it, he felt better. Less morally reprehensible, although not entirely guilt-free. But that was the price a man paid for putting his integrity on the line, and acting against his better judgment for a woman he’d once loved with an all-consuming passion.
Well, no more. She wasn’t the only one who’d changed. This time, he wouldn’t beg, and he wouldn’t sacrifice his own needs in order to satisfy hers. If she was bound and determined to screw up her life…well, hell! It was hers to do with as she pleased, and all he could do at this point was let her get on with it.
“Sorry, Chloe,” he’d said the night before, not even bothering to go downstairs and see her out. “You’re the one who showed up outside my door, this time, certain you were where you wanted to be. I did my best to give you what you said you wanted, and once again, at the last minute, you backed off.”
“You know why,” she cried. “And it had nothing to do with my not knowing what I want.”
“Perhaps not. Perhaps, this time, it’s a matter of my knowing what I don’t want. It’s over between us, Chloe. I’m finished with this whole mess.”
“Just like that? You give me an ultimatum and there’s no room for negotiation?”
“None at all,” he told her, unable to look at her tear-stained face for fear he’d cave in. “I’m all talked out.”
She’d left without another word. He’d watched her go, knowing that, this time, she was walking away for good, and he would do nothing to try to bring her back.
It was better this way.
“So…!” The next morning, Baron slid into the empty chair across from Chloe’s in the restaurant, and shook out his napkin. “Getting together for breakfast was a great idea. I’m glad you thought of it. Did you order for me?”
“Yes,” she said. “Unsweetened grapefruit juice, two poached eggs, dry toast and black coffee.”
He smiled. “You know me so well, Chloe. We’re going to do very well together.”
“Baron—”
“Are you all set for the rehearsal dinner tonight?”
“No. I’m—”
“Not that we’re having a rehearsal, as such.” Another smile, slow and sweet and heartbreaking. “We’ve both done this before, after all. We know the ropes. I suppose, to be accurate, we should be calling tonight’s affair the groom’s dinner, and leave it at that.”
“Baron, I can’t go through with it.”
“The dinner? Of course you can, Chloe. My mother’s promised to behave herself.” He made a big production of perusing the menu. “You know, I think I might change my mind and have the eggs Benedict.”
“Not the dinner, the wedding.” The words fell out of her mouth as bald and clumsy and cruel as bricks smashing through crystal. “I have to call it off, Baron. I’m so sorry. And so ashamed.”
He buried a sigh and put the menu to one side. “I was afraid this might happen.”
Too engulfed in misery for the resignation in his answer to register fully, she spread her hands in a hopeless gesture, as if they might convey the regret no words could adequately express, and said again, stammering this time, “I truly am so very sorry! I wish I didn’t have to do this to you.”
“Are you quite sure that you must, Chloe?”
“Yes. It’s the only honorable thing I can do. If I weren’t such an abysmal coward, I’d have spoken sooner. But I kept hoping…” She tried to swallow the humiliation threatening to choke her. Wished she could offer a reason that would exonerate her from culpability, and knew there was none. “I kept hoping things would work out for us, and if they couldn’t, then that someone, or something else would make it impossible for us to go through with our plans, so that I wouldn’t have to be responsible. I’m not proud of myself for that, Baron.”
“When did you reach your decision?”
“I knew for sure last night.” She ventured a glance at him, the import of his earlier response finally hitting home. “And you don’t seem too surprised.”
“I might not be the most brilliant man in the world, Chloe, but I’m not completely lacking in perception. I knew the moment Nico came on the scene that it was only a matter of time before you realized you couldn’t marry me.” He shot her a look of such utter sympathy that she flinched. “If anyone should apologize, I should, for not having let you off the hook sooner.”
“Oh, please, Baron!” she said, struggling for composure. “Please don’t make me feel any more ashamed than I already do. This was my responsibility to shoulder, not yours. And to be fair to Nico, I can’t lay all the blame on him. I was having doubts before he showed up. He just made me face up to them.”
Baron laid a consoling hand on her arm. “Listen to me. You’ve had a great deal to contend with in the last month, buried as you’ve been in a steady stream of wedding details that left you no time to stand back and gain any sort of perspective. But I have no such excuse. I saw the chemistry between you and Nico—I’d have had to be blind not to!—and I did nothing. Instead, I stuck my head in the sand and chalked it all up to wedding nerves. So you see, I’m an even bigger coward than you, Chloe.”
“I think you’re saying all this just to be kind and make me feel better.”
“No, I’m telling you the truth. This wedding took on a life of its own and steamrolled over anything that got in its path. You didn’t know how to stop it, and I didn’t care to try.” He patted her arm one last time, then withdrew his hand. “I won’t pretend my pride isn’t taking a bit of a beating, but I promise you I’m not about to drive my car off a cliff or overdose on antacids. You and Nico can go ahead and start over with my blessing.”
“No, we can’t.” She hung her head, hating what she knew she must add. But Baron deserved to know the full truth. “He…doesn’t want me.”
“Not like this,” Nico had raged, when their love-making came to a sudden and premature end because she’d undergone another last-minute attack of scruples. “Damn you, Chloe! Come to me because you can’t stay away, not because you need an excuse to leave Baron!”
“Why does it have to be all or nothing with you?” she’d cried.
“Because that’s the kind of man I am. I’m not interested in being you
r temporary savior, someone you need for just a little while. I worked too hard to come to terms with your walking out on me once before, and I’m not about to go down that road again.”
“What if we could make a real go of things, this time?”
The scorn in his laugh had flayed her to the bone. “With your screwed-up approach to coping? Not a chance!”
“Why not? Because I wouldn’t have sex with you tonight unless you used a condom?”
He’d laughed again, more bitterly than ever. “If this was just about tonight, I’d insist on using one. But it’s about tomorrow and next month and next year. It’s why you’re all set to marry Baron—because he’s willing to settle for half a life with half a wife. Well, not me, sweet face! I want a woman who’s brave enough to face the future without having it sugar-coated in a guarantee that it’ll always be safe and perfect and free from pain. A woman who stares destiny in the face and defies it to strike against her a second time.”
“Are you saying you want more children?” she’d asked, her voice hushed with trepidation.
“You bet I want more children! I won’t let one unkind stroke of fate reduce me to a whimpering coward. What the devil does a man work for, if not for a wife and children? What the hell else is there that amounts to a damn thing worth having?”
He’d seen the doubt on her face, and his own had contorted with disdain. “Your trouble is you’ve been spoiled your whole life, Chloe. Coddled to the point that you take each and every setback as a personal affront, and I’m as much to blame for that as anybody. But, guess what? You’re not the only mother to have lost a child. It happens all the time to other women. The difference is, they don’t let it cripple them. They grieve, and you can bet they never forget, but eventually they get up and go on living. But you…you might as well have died with our son because you’re right. You don’t have a damned thing left to give to anyone else.”
She’d known he was capable of rage, had seen him grapple with it when Luciano died, but never had she expected him to direct it at her with such unbridled contempt.
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