It had been a great meal. But all the warm, fuzzy feelings Faith had for Nick over dinner had evaporated by the time they topped the last rise and the Certosa suddenly appeared—massive yet graceful, a powerful gem set off by the dark spears of cypress trees.
But neither spared the Certosa a glance.
They’d been arguing all the way and Faith was about ready to take a hockey stick to Nick’s other leg. She’d pleaded and cajoled and threatened. When Nick said he would pretend to be a participant, she laughed. Nick’s jaw had tightened, but he didn’t give in.
“Look,” she said finally, exasperated. “What am I going to do? I won’t be able to deal with you. I’m going to be busy. I’m supposed to be helping with the organization. I’ve been given a meeting to chair and two meetings to co-chair, and I have to bone up on them and on the work of the other co-chairs. There’s a lot of work involved and you’ll just be in my way.”
“I won’t be in your way.” Nick’s teeth were gritted. “I’ll just sleep there and get out in the morning. I’m hooking up with Dante tomorrow morning anyway. You’ll be okay in the daytime. Damn it, Faith, for someone who’s so smart, you’re being really dumb about this.”
“Dumb? Dumb?” Faith’s voice rose. “I’m being dumb because I don’t want to trip over you during the most important days of my life? That’s rich coming from you. The guy who took six years to get through high school.”
“Five. Five years.” Nick’s overlarge jaw muscles bunched and he thumped the steering wheel.
She figured if he’d had more room, he probably would have used more body language. The car was too small for someone of Nick’s size. When he’d squeezed into the driver’s seat, he’d grunted and groped until he’d managed to find something under the seat that shot it back to its full extension. It was still a tight fit, but at least his knees didn’t top the steering wheel.
He shifted a gear so hard it ratcheted. His entire profile was hard, tense.
He was angry. That was fine. Fine. She was angry, too.
Thoughts and stomach churning, Faith stared blindly out the car window, seeing nothing, until Nick jerked the car to a stop, throwing her against the seat belt so hard it caught.
“Nice driving, ace.”
Nick’s jaw muscles bunched again and he threw her a sulphurous look. He unsnapped his seat belt and maneuvered his way out of the car. When Faith realized he was coming around the car to open her door, she shot out by herself and moved toward the entrance.
They were on the gravel driveway, and his shoes made a loud crunching sound as he followed her, his limp making the noise irregular. Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch…
Faith had almost made it to the big wooden door when he growled and caught her arm. He turned her around and, when she opened her mouth to argue, he covered her mouth with his and her brain shorted.
Total static.
Faith plummeted from an IQ of one hundred fifty-five to zero in point-three seconds. She moved her mouth mindlessly under his, blasted by heat and lust. Closer…she needed him closer and she threw her arms around his thick, strong neck and tunneled her fingers in his hair.
Somewhere amidst the popping neurons, she knew that what they were doing would lead to mind-bending pleasure. She knew that for a fact.
Nick’s big hand held her head for his kiss as he deepened it and she whimpered…
“Faith?”
She jolted and tried to pull away.
“Faith?”
Oh God, Tim. With great reluctance, she wrenched her mouth away.
Nick bent again and she turned her head, wishing she didn’t have to. But kissing Nick in front of Tim was too soap opera for her. Both men had been her lovers. Exactly once, but still…
Besides, she wasn’t supposed to want to kiss Nick. She was supposed to be mad at him.
She pushed, hard, and Nick opened his big hands.
Tim came forward, smoothing down his wispy hair that had escaped the small, thin ponytail at the nape of his neck. “Do you need help, Faith?”
If she did, Tim wasn’t it. Looking at the two of them, she had a little moment of reality distortion. Tim—short and tubby and flabby. Nick—tall and strong and athletic. Did Tim actually think he could defend her against Nick?
“Okay.” Nick shifted on his feet. “Who’s this?”
“Uh, Nick Rossi, meet Tim Gresham. He’s…uh, he’s a colleague of mine. At the university.”
Tim shot her a wounded gaze, as if she should have said—this is Tim Gresham, with whom I have wild and crazy sex four times a day.
“Tim, Nick plays—used to play—for the Hunters.”
“A jock,” Tim said, with exactly the same tone of voice with which he would have said “a leper”.
“A nerd.” Nick’s voice was low and vicious. “Nice to meet you. Get lost.”
Tim straightened and sucked in his pot belly. Faith’s mouth fell open. “Listen, Nick, you can’t—”
“No, you listen,” Nick said heatedly. “What the hell’s the matter with you anyway? Do you realize that there’s a murderer here? Someone killed your boss, have you forgotten that? So who’s going to protect you—Mr. Geek here? For all you know, he’s the one who offed your prof. Did you think of that?”
Tim’s eyes went wide and he surged forward. “Why you overgrown—”
Faith shot her hand out. Tim stopped.
She turned to Nick. “Actually, for your information, Tim was in the States and only just arrived, so he can’t have killed anyone. Listen carefully, Nick. I am now going inside the Certosa, in Tim’s company, where I will be perfectly safe.”
“Over my dead body,” Nick growled.
Tim puffed up. “That can be arranged, big guy.”
Nick bristled. “Faith needs protection.”
“I can do that.”
“What the hell are you talking about? You look like you can’t protect your hat in a wind.”
“Oh yeah?” Tim stepped closer. “Just watch me.”
Faith rolled her eyes. Tim came up to Nick’s collarbone, and the most strenuous physical activity Faith had ever seen him engage in was peering at his computer screen.
Nick could punch out Tim’s lights in a nanosecond. Watching him, muscles corded, neck tendons sticking out, he was a hair’s breadth away from doing just that.
Something had to be done. She pressed her hand against Tim’s chest. There was a second as she and Tim adjusted to the polite fiction that her hand was the only thing that stopped him from stepping forward and cleaning Nick’s clock.
Tim was trembling under her hand.
Faith wanted to strangle Nick. “Listen, Nick. I’m going in now. I’m going to my room, where I will lock my door and no one will disturb me until tomorrow morning. Then I will go downstairs and have an excellent breakfast. Believe me, the only bad thing that can happen to me will be my laptop’s batteries running out.”
She turned on her heels and walked through the huge iron-hinged doors that only lacked a portcullis.
“You fucking weenie—”
“Listen, iceman, you can—”
Faith took one last look at them before rounding the corner—Nick huge and menacing, Tim, uber-nerd, trying to look dangerous. It was hard to think that she had had an affair with each of them.
She started climbing the stairs up to the second floor.
She definitely needed a Boyfriend Upgrade, Version 3.0.
She gave in at two am.
Nick had almost given up hope. Faith and that creep Gresham wouldn’t make secret agents. They’d argued about the dead guy then they argued about math as they went to their rooms and never once thought to look behind them. There was a murderer on the loose and they had prey written on their foreheads.
They could certainly talk a murderer to death, though. They didn’t stop talking until Faith went into her room, and Gresham took off down another corridor.
Fuckhead.
How do you leave a young woman alone where there was a killer? Nick
couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it to a woman he disliked, let alone Faith, who he—
He couldn’t finish that sentence. But sure as hell it wasn’t dislike.
He liked Faith, a lot. More than he’d liked a woman in…forever. He never let a woman under his skin. She was either fuckable or not, and if not, he wasn’t wasting his time. So when he went to bed with someone, it was with a stranger. And that got old fast.
Faith—well Faith was different.
She was always there while he cycled through the usual hockey groupie crew. Funny, smart, kind. Just…there. Lou liked her a lot and he never stopped to question that. Because Lou didn’t like too many people, so it was weird that she always seemed to have Faith in tow.
But right now, it wasn’t Lou who was dealing with Faith, it was him.
When the door cracked open, his eyes cranked wide. He’d been about to fall asleep though he was in the most uncomfortable position any human being could be in. Slumped against a wall, sitting on a very hard stone-flagged floor. Head on shoulder, fighting sleep.
Because if anyone was going to come for Faith, it would be in the middle of the night. Right?
When they offed the prof.
No one was going to off Faith. No fucking way.
So that was why he was sitting on a hard stone floor, back against a hard stone wall and had been for four hours. He was already beaten black and blue, so what was another night on a hard surface? Besides which, he was used to physical hardship. You don’t play pro hockey, a brutal, fast, violent game, if you need to sleep on soft mattresses.
So here he was, protecting Faith.
And, well, hoping to get back into her bed. He even had the woodie to prove it.
An unrequited boner was a novelty for him. Usually, if he wanted a woman, she wanted him right back in a happy little loop. Even though a part of him was deeply aware of the fact that most women he went to bed with didn’t want to have sex with him, Nick Rossi. They wanted to brag about bedding Nick Rossi, hockey star. The guy with a wall of trophies. The guy with the ten million dollar contract. The guy on all the sports magazine covers.
The new Nick Rossi, with a bum knee and concussed head? Probably not so much.
But the one thing about Faith he knew was that she was rejecting the real Nick on real grounds. She knew him, through and through. And if she didn’t want to sleep with him it was because he’d behaved like a jerk and not because a ten million dollar contract would never come his way again.
And then Faith’s pretty face peeked out from the door and he scrambled to his feet, wincing. Because his knee and his boner hurt.
She was frowning. “What are you doing out here, Nick?” Her voice was more a hiss than a whisper.
He told a big part of the truth. “Protecting you.”
Faith blew out an exasperated breath and held the door open wider, sticking her long, slender neck out and checking the corridor. “Come in. You can’t stay out there, someone will see you.”
Well, someone seeing him was sort of the point but Nick didn’t wait for her to say it twice. Heart and boner filled with hope, he hobbled in, happy to hear her close the door behind him.
Faith was wearing what she surely thought was a granny nightgown—yards and yards of cotton billowing down to her pretty toes—but it was almost transparent with the night light behind her.
“How did you know I was out there?” he asked, enjoying the view. He’d almost—but not quite—forgotten how sleek she was—long legs, narrow waist, high little breasts.
He made a little humming noise in his throat.
Faith shook her head. “I felt you. Like you were radiating vibes out there. Woke me up.”
More like his hard-on was sending out waves of distress and she picked up on that.
She looked around the narrow, spare cell and huffed out another breath. “Ok. There’s not much room here but I can put a blanket on the floor—“
He kissed her. He didn’t want to sleep on the floor. He wanted to sleep on that narrow uncomfortable-looking cot, on top of her.
Or under her. He wasn’t proud.
Faith kissed him right back, at which point he relaxed and became so aroused it hurt, all at the same time. Up until that moment it wasn’t entirely clear that he would ever get Faith back. And he’d realized that he wanted that with every fiber of his being.
She wouldn’t kiss him if she didn’t mean it.
Oh God, she tasted so sweet. Fresh and hot at the same time.
Faith broke away, mouth slightly swollen from his kisses, eyes dazed. “This doesn’t mean anything,” she said breathlessly.
“No,” he said and kissed her again.
She pulled back, watched his eyes carefully. “I mean, things go right back to the way they were before.”
“Absolutely,” he promised. “No question.”
He had no idea what she was talking about but if Faith wanted it, he wanted to give it to her. Kissing her, he backed her up to that narrow cot and when he felt her knees hit the back of the cot, he whipped her nightgown up and off. He caught a glimpse of pale skin, pink nipples, a small puff of light brown hair between her thighs and then he didn’t see anything else. He had to close his eyes and feast.
She felt so good in his arms, beneath his hands. He smoothed his hands over her long, narrow back, one resting in the sharp indent of her waist, the other cupping her bottom, fingers probing to find out if...yes! Thank you God. Because she was wet and ready.
Nick was usually the Master of Foreplay. It was a way to get to know the girl of the day, before getting down to business. But he knew Faith. And he was already amped up.
He normally had tons of self-control but right now it felt like he was going to blow up in a billion pieces if he didn’t enter her. This instant. Maybe the concussion had wiped out the self-control lobe or wherever it was control lived in the brain.
Faith would know. Faith knew everything.
Right now, Nick wasn’t Mr. Cool, totally in control. He felt a fever under his skin, a prickling sense that was just this side of painful. His hard-on was painful, it felt like it was going to burst open any second.
So he wanted Faith on her back right now, and he wanted in her right now. Except, touching her was so delightful. Her mouth tasted so good, as did her breasts. Like salty little ice cream cones with a cherry on top. She arched her back to offer herself, all that silky pale skin beneath his hands and his lips…
Nick eased her down carefully, not because he wanted to stop licking her but because his legs were about to give way. Even the good one.
He wanted to admire the picture Faith made, naked on the bed, pale on the dark cotton cover, but he was busy throwing his clothes off, rescuing a condom at the very last second, before tossing his jeans into a corner.
He eased down on top of her, his thighs opening hers, nearly sighing with relief at feeling her smooth skin all along his front. He wanted this, he needed this.
Faith clutched his shoulders, thighs hugging his hips. She was open to him, welcoming. He slid a little inside her and stopped.
Goddamn, she was tight.
Nick lifted his torso up off her, frowning. “Honey, did I hurt—“
“Shut up, Nick,” Faith said and pulled him back down for a kiss.
Chapter Eleven
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
The next morning, Nick stared glumly at his red, jet-lagged eyes and un-chic, non-designer beard stubble in the bathroom mirror of his grandparents’ country house and contemplated that greeting card truism.
The night with Faith had kept him from thinking about the rest of his life but when he’d woken up, she’d already showered and was in a tizzy about co-chairing something, and shooed him out. So he’d made it to his nonni, not happy with the idea of having a whole morning with nothing to do but think.
Fuck. He couldn’t even begin to think about the rest of his life and the changes that were coming.
He’d liked hi
s life just fine the way it was. Chugging along on bright shiny rails, moving right into the future. Without hockey, he didn’t have the faintest idea what to do with his day, his week, his year.
It had all been so neatly boxed up and tied with a ribbon for him.
Summers were for the yearly trip to Siena to see his cousins, scheme and yell for the Snails, and get drunk with an entire city district when they lost. Maybe beat up a few rowdy members of rival contradas in a friendly little tussle. The Snails had been losing since he’d been in junior high.
But even losing the Palio was more fun than anything else except hockey. The Palio gave him exactly what he got on the ice—noise, crowds and excitement.
It was that feeling of going to war, without actually having to shoot at anyone or having anyone shoot at you.
The ends of summers were workouts at least four hours a day, keeping fit and having fun while staying out of trouble.
September was the exhibition season, training camp, more workouts. Keeping an eye on the youngsters coming up as they kept an eye on him, wanting his job, and him thinking, not yet, kids. Not yet.
October to April…ah…the Season. Show time. With every nerve, every muscle in his body like an arrow aimed straight at winning. Which he did more times than not.
May and June were for playoffs until he left for Siena.
He’d been living this routine for twelve years now and man, he did not want to let it go.
Nick picked up his grandfather’s ancient razor and started hacking at the undergrowth on his face. He winced as it took some of his skin together with the beard.
He missed hockey and wanted it back. What was there to look forward to now? He supposed he was better off than most men who had just lost their job. In fact, technically, he was rich, though he never thought of himself that way. His agent had been about to sign another ten-million dollar season contract, though that was gone. His agent would leave him soon, too. He was worth zip now as an athlete.
Still, he’d salted it away. Or rather, Lou had.
He’d once confessed to Lou his horror at meeting up with old-timer Robert “Hulk” Gascoigne, who’d aced all his opponents on the ice while nailing everything in skirts within a thirty-mile radius all during the ’90s.
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