Harlequin Presents February 2013 - Bundle 2 of 2: Dealing Her Final CardUncovering the Silveri SecretBartering Her InnocenceLiving the Charade

by Jennie Lucas

  And while he’d always planned to dump her, the thought that she might hang around a little longer would have meant putting off the inevitable just that bit longer too.

  But now she’d booked, he’d have to bring his plans forward. A shame when she’d provided such a useful distraction from the working day.

  He finished pouring his drink and turned around, handing her a glass. ‘Very fortunate,’ he said, raising his glass to her. ‘In which case I propose a toast—to the time we have left. May we use it wisely.’

  She blinked up at him as she sipped her wine, her amber eyes surprisingly flat, with less sparkle than the wine in her glass, and he wondered at that. Wondered if she’d been hoping he’d changed his mind and might ask her to stay.

  He might have. But not now, not now she’d taken the initiative.

  ‘And we might as well start tonight,’ he said, putting down his glass to reach into his pocket. ‘I have a surprise for you. Tonight I have tickets to the opera, and I want you to wear this...’ From a black velvet box, he extracted the string of amber beads, a large amber pendant in the middle that glinted like gold as he laid it over her hand.

  Her eyes grew wide. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.

  ‘The colour matches your eyes.’ He turned her gently, securing the gems around her throat, turning her back around to see. He nodded. ‘Perfect. As soon as I saw them, I knew they would be perfect for you. Here, there are earrings too.’

  She cupped them in her hand. ‘I’ll take good care of them.’

  He shrugged, reaching for his wine, wanting to fill this empty hole in his gut with...something. ‘They are yours. Now, we need to leave in half an hour. It’s time to get dressed.’

  * * *

  Luca’s unexpected gift had thrown her off balance, the gems sitting fat and heavy upon her neck, weighing her down, anchoring her to a false reality.

  Nothing in Venice was real, she decided, as she caught a final glimpse of herself in the floor to ceiling gilt-framed mirror. Nothing was as it seemed.

  Least of all her.

  In an emerald-coloured gown, the amber necklace warm and golden at her throat, she looked as if she could have stepped out of a fairy tale, a modern day princess about to be swept off to the ball with the charming prince.

  As for Luca, just one glance at him in his dark Italian designer suit, all lean, powerful masculinity, waiting for her to take his arm, was enough to make her heart pound.

  She’d be gone in a week.

  Returned to the dusty sheep and their wide brown land.

  Gone.

  Why did that thought set her heart to lurch and her stomach to squeeze tight when home was where her heart was? What was happening to her?

  ‘Ready?’ he said, a kernel of concern in his dark eyes, and she smiled up at him tremulously.

  ‘I’ve never been to the opera before,’ she offered by way of explanation. ‘Never to a live performance at a real opera house.’

  ‘You’ve never seen La Traviata then?’

  She shook her head, never more conscious of their different lives and backgrounds. ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘And did you never see the film, Moulin Rouge?’

  ‘I saw that, yes.’

  ‘Then you know the story. It was based on the opera.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, remembering, ‘Then it’s a sad story. It seemed so unfair that Satine should find love when it was already too late, when her time was already up.’

  He shrugged, as if it was of no consequence. ‘Life doesn’t always come with happy endings. Come,’ he said, slipping her wrap around her shoulders, ‘let’s go.’

  * * *

  The entrance to the opera house at the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista was set inside a small square, made smaller this night by the glittering array of people who stood sipping prosecco in the evening air. Heads turned as Luca arrived, heads that took her in almost as an afterthought, heads that nodded as if to say, She’s still here then.

  Tina smiled as Luca made his way through the crowd, stopping here and there for a brief word, always accompanied by a swift and certain appraisal of the woman on his arm. It didn’t bother her any more. She was getting used to the constant appraisals, the flash of cameras going off around them. She was getting used to seeing the pictures of them turning up in the newspapers attending this function or that restaurant.

  What they would say when she was gone didn’t matter. Except there was that tiny squeeze of her stomach again at the thought of leaving.

  She would miss this fantasy lifestyle, the dressing up, being wined and dined in amazing restaurants in one of the most incredible cities in the world.

  But it wasn’t just that.

  She would miss Luca.

  Strange to think that when at first she had been desperate for the month to be over, desperate to get away. But it was true.

  She would miss his dark heated gaze. She would miss the warmth of his body next to hers in bed at night, the tender way he cradled her in his arms while he slept, his breathing slow and deep.

  She would miss his love-making.

  For there was no point pretending it was “just sex” any longer.

  No point pretending it was something she could compartmentalize and lock away in a box and shove under the bed. It was too much a part of her now. It had given her too much.

  ‘Just sex’ could never feel this good.

  He led her inside the building, more than five hundred years old and showing it, the wide marble steps to the first floor concert hall worn with the feet of the centuries, gathering in this place to listen and enjoy and celebrate music and song.

  And art, she realised, looking around her.

  The ceiling soared, the height of another two storeys above them, held up by massive columns of marble, the panels of the walls filled with Renaissance art featuring saints and angels and all manner of heavenly scenes, framed in gold.

  Here and there the floor dipped a little, rose again as they walked; here and there a corner looked not quite square, a column not quite straight.

  Unconsciously she clutched Luca’s arm a little tighter as he led her to her seat, fazed by the sensation of the floor shifting beneath her feet, as if the weight of the marble was pushing the building into the marshy ground beneath.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Luca asked beside her, picking up on her unease.

  ‘It is safe, isn’t it? The building, I mean.’

  He laughed then, a low rumble of pleasure that echoed into her bones. ‘The opera house has been here since the thirteenth century. I’m sure it will manage to remain standing a couple more hours.’ And at the same time she realised he was laughing at her, he squeezed her hand and drew her chin to his mouth for an unexpected press of his lips. ‘Do not be afraid. I assure you it is safe.’

  Was it?

  Breathless and giddy, she let herself be led to their seats.

  Was it simply the ground shifting beneath her feet, or was it something more?

  Please, God, let it be nothing more.

  Heels clicked on marble floors and then stilled, the hum of conversation dimming with the lights until finally it was time.

  The music started, act one of the famous opera, and in the spacious concert hall the music soared into the heavens, giving life to the angels and the cherubs in the delicate stuccoes, taking the audience on a heavenly journey.

  The singers were sublime, their voices filling the air, and it was impossible not to be carried along with the tragic story of Violetta, as she discovered the heroine was called in this original version, and her lovers, warring for the affections of the dying courtesan. And yet, through it all, she had never been more aware of Luca’s heated presence at her side, at the touch of his thigh against hers, to
the brush of his shoulder against hers.

  She wanted to drink in that touch while she still could. She wanted to imprint it on her memory so she could take it out and remember it on the long nights ahead, when she was home and Venice and Luca was a distant memory.

  The story built, the young lovers united at last, only to be forced apart by family.

  She seemed more acutely aware of Luca than ever. The score was in Italian and, while she caught only a snatched phrase here and there, she understood the passion, she felt the pain and the torment.

  How ironic, she thought, that he had brought her here tonight, to hear the story of a fallen woman for whom love was painful and hard won and ultimately futile.

  Had he brought her here as some kind of lesson?

  That life, as he had told her before they had left the palazzo, did not always have a happy ending?

  The third act came to an end. Despite bursts of elation, bursts of happiness, Violetta’s death had always been a tragedy waiting to happen.

  She felt tears squeeze from her eyes at the finale, wondering why this story affected her so deeply. It was just a story, she told herself, just fiction. It wasn’t true.

  And yet she felt the tragedy of Violetta’s wasted love to her core.

  Why?

  When in a few days, little more than a week, she would be free to return home.

  Free.

  There was no chance she would end up like Violetta. She wouldn’t let it.

  And yet, increasingly, she felt herself tipping, tripping over uneven ground, trying pointlessly to keep her balance and all the while hurtling towards that very same finale.

  ‘What did you think?’ he asked her as they rose to their feet, the audience wild, celebrating a magnificent performance. ‘Did you understand it?’

  And she sniffed through her tears as she nodded and clapped as hard as anyone.

  More than you will ever know.

  * * *

  That night sleep eluded her. She lay awake listening to the sound of Luca’s steady breathing, the sound of the occasional water craft passing and all overlaid by the tortured ramblings of her own mind.

  In the end she gave up on sleep entirely, slipped on the jade silk gown and resumed her vigil at the windows, feeling strangely forlorn and desolate as she stared out over the wide canal, drinking in a view that would all too soon be nothing more than a fond memory.

  And even though she tried to tell herself it was the opera that was to blame for her mood, she knew it was more. She knew it came from deep inside herself.

  She sighed as the light curtains puffed in the breeze and floated around her. The evenings were distinctly cooler now, clouds more frequent visitors to the skies blocking the moon and sun, the wind picking up and carrying with it the scent of a summer in decline. She stood there at the open windows and drank it all in, building an album in her mind of the scents and sounds and sights that she would be able to pull out and turn the pages of when she was home.

  Next week.

  Anguish squeezed the air from her lungs.

  Suddenly it was all too soon.

  She heard a movement behind her. She heard a noise like something tearing and she made to turn her head.

  ‘Don’t turn,’ he instructed.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What I knew I had to do when I saw you standing framed in the window,’ he said, and something in his voice gave her a primitive thrill, a delicious sense of anticipation that made her turn her face back towards the darkened canal. ‘Keep watching the water, and the water craft.’

  ‘As you wish,’ she said, a smile curling her lips as she felt the heat at her back as he came close and joined her on the balcony, a smile that turned distinctly to thoughts of sex when she felt him hard and ready between them. She sighed at the feel of him. God, she would miss this. She put a hand to the nearest curtain, meaning to pull it closed.

  ‘Leave it,’ he said. ‘Leave the curtains. I want your hands on the balcony.’

  And with a rush of sizzling realisation, his meaning became crystal clear. ‘But we can’t...not here...not on the balcony...with the boats.’

  He dropped his mouth to the curve of her neck, kissing her skin, his teeth grazing her flesh, stoking a fire that burned much, much lower. ‘Yes. Here, on the balcony. With the boats.’

  She gasped. ‘But—’

  ‘Keep watching,’ he said when she tried to turn, to remonstrate, but he was right behind her and she was pinned up against the cool marble balustrade, cool at her front, hot where he pressed against her back, as another craft chugged slowly by. ‘They can’t see us,’ he said, as she felt the slide of her gown up her calves, his fingertips tickling the sensitive skin at the back of her knees, making her shiver in her secret pleasure. ‘Even if anyone looks, all they will see will be shadows at a window. One shadow, where you and I join.’

  The craft disappeared, the chug of its engines replaced by the slap of water against the foundations as air curled around her legs and his fingers eased the silk of her gown higher to find the cleft between her legs and slide one long finger along that sensitive seam, teasing with just a whisper of a touch, making her nerve endings scream with impatience.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ he whispered against her throat, his teeth grazing her skin, his finger delving deeper, and it was all she could do to keep her knees locked in place and not sag boneless to the balcony floor.

  Unfair, she thought on a whimper as she felt herself being angled over the balustrade, felt the delicious press of his hardness at her very core, that he could do this to her, reduce her to a mass of tangled nerve endings that spoke the same message—need. Pure and simple, unadulterated need.

  For she needed him inside her just as she needed the oxygen in her lungs. Needed him inside her and all around her just as she needed the sun and moon and sky.

  He gave her what she needed, pressing into her in one fluid stroke that filled her in all the places that ached but one. Because there was no filling the ache in her heart.

  For in a few short days she was leaving. And she couldn’t bear the thought of it.

  Couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Luca.

  God help me, she thought, as he moved inside her, taking her once again to that amazing place, a tear sliding unbidden down her cheek, but this was more than just need.

  I love him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  HER period arrived midway through the next day and Tina couldn’t suppress a bubble of disappointment. Now there was a way to celebrate their final few days together.

  Not.

  But there was an upside of course, she reasoned, because at least it meant that this time she wouldn’t be going home with any surprises.

  And why that thought didn’t please her more than it did made no sense at all.

  She rested her head against the bathroom mirror, feeling the familiar ache deep inside, a niggling question she’d been avoiding all the time she’d been in Venice now gnawing at her to be noticed.

  Should she tell Luca about their lost baby?

  It had been so easy to avoid the question at first, when she’d thought she’d never see him again. It had been easy when she’d arrived in Venice, and when mutual resentment and a deal the devil would have been proud of had been the thing that bound them together. It had been so easy to ask herself what would be the point of rehashing the past by telling him? What purpose would it serve? It wasn’t as if she owed him after what he had done.

  But now, after these last weeks with him, she wondered how long she could avoid telling him—that there was a headstone on a grave in Australia with his child’s name on it.

  How could she not tell him?

  Wouldn’t she want to know if their positions were reversed?

&nbs
p; Wouldn’t she have a right to know?

  She peeled herself away from the bathroom mirror and drifted through the bedroom. Strange, she mused, how love could change your view on the world.

  Because suddenly there were no more reasons to avoid the truth. She wanted Luca to know everything.

  And even though the news would no doubt come as a shock and he would be entitled to be angry at her for not telling him earlier, she didn’t want secrets between them.

  Not any more.

  She’d lived with this secret too long.

  As for her love? Well, that would hardly be welcome news either—for had Luca once tried to talk her out of booking her flight home?

  That was one secret she could keep.

  Besides which, she would have more than enough trouble working out how to tell him the first.

  * * *

  Luca scanned the papers and swore out loud. His assistant came running. ‘I thought you said you’d checked these signatures!’ he yelled. ‘Didn’t you notice there was one missing?’

  The assistant dithered and flapped and promised to fix whatever was wrong right away and Luca swept his offer aside and snatched up the papers himself. ‘I’ll do it!’ he growled. He could do with a walk. He’d been in a hell of a mood all day and he couldn’t really put his finger on why.

  Yes, he could!

  He didn’t want her to damned well go, that was why. She’d melted into his arms last night on the balcony as if she’d been made of honey, golden and sweet, and he’d never wanted to let her go.

  But he had to. He had no choice. There was no other choice.

  And in a way he was grateful for his flustered assistant for finding him something to legitimately take his anger out on, because he’d been spoiling for a fight ever since he’d left Valentina this morning.

  What better reason? Because without Lily’s signature in that spot on that contract, the palazzo was still legally hers, regardless of all the other papers that had been signed and countersigned. Regardless of the fact that his people had been working on the palazzo to shore it up and get it stable before the real work began. And despite the fact that she now owned the apartment lock, stock and barrel.