by Sarah Morgan
‘Fine by me. My New Year’s resolution is to just have sex without the complicated, totally-messed-up relationship part.’
His eyes narrowed, as if he didn’t believe me and his scepticism didn’t surprise me. Why would it? We could put a man on the moon, but apparently we couldn’t convince the majority of the male population that a woman could want sex without needing to hear the L word. I didn’t have any reason to believe Nico Rossi was different to the average man.
There was a long, tense silence. Snow drifted onto the windscreen.
‘Tell me how you felt at the wedding.’
‘Honestly? I can’t really explain it. Obviously you’re an incredibly good kisser. And you’re good at other things, too. I was excited. Turned on. Exasperated that both our sisters chose to knock when they did—’ I stopped, thinking I’d pretty much summed it all up.
There was a long, pulsing pause and then he breathed deeply.
‘I was asking how you felt about seeing Charlie marry another woman.’
‘Oh…’
So now instead of a sprinkler system I had humiliation, washing over my skin like boiling oil, seeping into my pores and heating me up until I thought I might vaporize.
I’d been telling him how strongly I felt about him and all the time he’d been asking about Charlie.
I’d revealed so much. Too much.
Which was the story of my life if you thought about it.
Metaphorically and literally, my whole life was a ripped dress.
‘Right. Well, this is embarrassing.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘Not for you, maybe, but you’re not the one who just put herself out there.’
‘You weren’t broken-hearted?’
‘If we’re going for honesty here, then I’d like to know why you kissed me when you don’t even like me. I’m all for sex with no complications, but self-esteem demands it’s at least with someone who likes who I am.’
His gaze was steady. ‘Did you really think I would have had my hand up your dress if I didn’t like you?’
‘You’re a man. Men do that sort of thing all the time.’
He flipped on the wipers, cleared the snow from his windscreen and pulled back into the road. ‘Some men make decisions based on something more than a surge of testosterone.’
He shifted gears smoothly and the engine purred, loving his skilled touch. I sympathized.
I shifted in my seat so that I could look at his face. It was past six o’clock and anywhere else in the country it would have been dark, but in London it was as if someone had forgotten to turn the lights off. The place blazed like the runway at Heathrow airport. ‘Are you angry?’
It was a moment before he answered. ‘Thinking about you with Charlie makes me angry. Why the hell were you with him, Hayley? He constantly tried to make you someone you weren’t.’
‘That isn’t true.’
‘When you got this job, did he help you celebrate? No, he got drunk.’
And Nico had driven me home.
As my sister had reminded me, it had been Nico who had dropped me safely at my door.
My heart hammered against my chest. It felt like a wake-up call because he was asking me the question I should have asked myself right from day one. ‘I know you disapprove of me.’
As usual his expression revealed nothing. ‘You don’t know anything, Hayley.’
He pulled up at a junction.
The lights were on red and I found myself looking at the flex of thigh muscle as he stopped the car. And then he turned his head and I glanced from his leg to his face. I felt like a teenager unable to stop staring at the best looking boy in the class. Right at that moment no one else existed for me. We could have been the only two people on an alien planet where lights blazed and the streets were empty.
‘I don’t want to talk about Charlie.’ His voice had a rough quality that rubbed over my nerve endings and made me shiver.
‘OK.’ It wasn’t exactly an eloquent response, but it was the best I could manage with him looking at me like that.
‘And just for the record, I can’t explain what happened at the wedding either.’ There was an edge to his voice. ‘It wasn’t like me.’
One look at Kiara’s face had told me that.
Now I couldn’t speak at all. My insides were quivery. Warmth spread through me because right now I was the woman he was with and I didn’t care what had happened before or what might come after.
The lights had changed, but he didn’t move and neither did I.
We were locked together by a shocking chemistry and a total inability to look away.
Honestly, whenever this sort of thing happened in the movies I rolled my eyes. Although admittedly in the movies the heroine was staring at someone like Ryan Gosling, which maybe made the whole ‘struck by lightening’ thing slightly more believable.
But I hadn’t ever imagined it could happen in real life to an everyday person like me.
The connection was so intense and powerful I wanted to bottle it. I wanted to feel that same revved-up level of excitement for the rest of my life. Or maybe I didn’t. I wouldn’t be able to eat or sleep feeling like this.
I thought about Groundhog Day and decided if I could stay in a moment forever it would be this one, suspended in the blissful, almost unbearable excitement of what was to come without any of the trauma afterwards.
Maybe with my New Year’s resolution, all my relationships would feel like this. I’d live the excitement, then walk away before the collapse part.
A horn sounded behind us and I realized we weren’t the only people on the roads.
Nico swore softly and turned his attention back to the car.
He was driving towards the river and I realized I hadn’t even asked where he lived. I didn’t know where he was taking me.
We drove along the embankment, past the Albert Bridge. It was my favorite bridge in London. Elegant and floodlit, it sent sparkles of light over the inky black surface of the water below. When I was little it used to make me think of a woman putting on diamonds for an exciting night out. Rosie called it the Bling Bridge. I didn’t believe in fairy tales, but if I did, this bridge would definitely have featured in mine.
We were in Chelsea and I expected him to drive south because I didn’t know anyone who could afford to live here, but he suddenly swooped into an underground car park.
It was spacious and well lit, but away from the bright lights of the city, the truth suddenly hit me. I was with a man I barely knew.
The blood pulsed in my ears and then he reached across and undid my seat belt. ‘It’s cold. We should go up.’
Cold? I wasn’t cold. I was burning hot.
I was also having second thoughts, despite reminding myself that the fact we barely knew each other was supposed to be a good thing. That was the point of emotionless sex.
And it wasn’t as if he was a stranger. We’d bumped into each other on and off for years, just never really spoken. But honestly, how well did any of us ever really know anyone? My Mum was married to my Dad for fifteen years before she found out he was having affairs. She’d trusted him. I’d been with Charlie for ten months and he’d behaved in ways that made it obvious to me I’d never known him. All we knew about another person was what they chose to show us. You could only know someone if they let you know them.
His apartment was on the top floor and my jaw was also on the floor because it was the penthouse, complete with balcony and views over the river towards my fairy-tale bridge.
‘Wow.’ As praise went, it wasn’t that eloquent, but it was all I could manage. Honestly, I was dumbstruck. How the hell could he afford this? ‘What sort of lawyer did you say you were again?’ He’d told me he was a good one. It was obvious he was a very, very good one.
‘Do you really want to talk about work?’
His voice came from right behind me and I turned and saw that he was holding a bottle of champagne.
I was surprised. ‘Yo
u didn’t drink anything at lunchtime.’
‘I knew I’d be driving you home.’
I licked my lips. ‘What if I’d said no?’
‘I was in possession of evidence that suggested you wouldn’t.’ His response was sure and confident. The corners of his mouth flickered and he eased the cork out of the champagne like a pro. By now I was so jumpy and on edge that when it popped, I flinched.
‘I don’t see how a few words typed into a search engine could be used as evidence. Several people had access to that laptop, including yourself.’
He raised an eyebrow and poured me the sparkling liquid into a tall, thin-stemmed glass.
I didn’t want to be impressed, but I was.
Rosie and I only drank champagne if someone else bought it and we never drank out of glasses like these. It made it feel special. He made me feel special. I wondered what he’d thought of our apartment with its non-matching plates and table designed to seat half the number of people we’d squashed around it.
His home was all polished wood and soft leather.
‘What are we celebrating?’ I watched as the bubbles rose and wondered what it was about champagne that lifted the mood. ‘Christmas?’
‘You. Naked in my apartment.’
My tummy tightened. ‘I’m still dressed.’
His eyes met mine and he handed me a glass. ‘Not for long.’
My pulse was racing and I lifted my glass. ‘Merry Christmas.’
‘Buon Natale! Salute!’
Oh, God, Italian was a hot language.
We drank and the champagne fizzed in my mouth and spread through my veins. Or maybe it was the chemistry that was fizzing, but whatever it was I could feel it all the way through me. ‘The only Italian I know is Pizza Margherita. And you’re the first Italian man I’ve met.’
The corners of his mouth flickered. ‘I’m Sicilian.’
‘Like Al Pacino.’
‘Al Pacino was born in New York.’
Shut up, Hayley. ‘I’ll stop talking.’
‘Don’t,’ he breathed and he turned to put his champagne glass down on the low glass table. ‘Don’t stop talking. I like it.’
‘You like it when I talk crap?’
‘You’re not talking crap. You’re just nervous.’ He removed my glass from my hand and I should have objected, not just because I was enjoying the champagne but because after Charlie I didn’t want any man telling me when I could or couldn’t drink.
‘Actually—’
‘I like it when you don’t censor what you say and do.’
Just when I was ready to punch him, he said something like that.
‘You didn’t look as if you liked it when my dress gave way.’
‘I didn’t want all those wedding guests having heart attacks. I didn’t think the hospital could cope with a major incident that close to Christmas.’
I was laughing and blushing at the same time because it was impossible to remember it without also remembering the moments we’d shared. ‘I still don’t know what happened.’
‘The inevitable happened.’
‘Not true. I’m not saying it hadn’t crossed my mind but not in a million years did I really think it would happen.’
He paused. ‘I wasn’t talking about the dress.’
‘Neither was I.’ I was eye level with his throat and I could see the dark stubble shadowing his jaw. I’d seen the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls, but I decided there weren’t many better views than this one. ‘I just didn’t ever see us together. I didn’t think you liked who I was.’
‘I didn’t like who you were when you were with Charlie, because that wasn’t the real you. You were constantly trying to rein yourself in.’ He stroked his finger over my jaw, studying me and I gulped, wondering how he knew so much.
‘Maybe you’re not going to like the real me.’
‘Hayley, I saw who you were the first time I met you. I spotted you across the room and you were so full of energy, so excited about your topic that I moved closer because I had to hear what you were saying.’
‘Probably something boring.’ The truth was I’d noticed him, too. ‘It was at Charlie’s party. Two years ago.’
‘Twenty months, two weeks, two days.’
I choked on the champagne. ‘Is that a lawyer thing? Remembering the tiny details?’
He looked at me steadily. ‘Some things stay in my head.’
‘You didn’t talk to me that night.’
He gave a funny smile. ‘You were talking to Charlie. And after that, I never saw that same excitement again. You reined it in.’
‘Charlie didn’t get too excited about satellites. Except the sort that gave him the sports channel.’
‘He molded you into a different person and you were so anxious to keep the relationship going, you went along with it.’
Ashamed though I was to admit it, it was all true. I suppose I’d needed to know I could hold on to a man if I’d wanted to. Turned out I couldn’t.
Little by little, I’d subdued my real self. I’d stopped talking about my work when we went out and smiled when Charlie had talked about his. It had happened a bit at a time, so I barely noticed I was doing it. I was like the Arctic fox who changed his coat from brown to white in the winter to blend into his surroundings. On the inside I was the same, but on the outside I blended with the crowd. I’d never been in a relationship that worked on any other level. Never been with anyone, apart from my sister, who only ever expected me to be me.
But I had no idea how Nico knew that.
‘I thought you disapproved of me being with him.’
He lowered his head and leaned his forehead against mine. ‘I did. It was like giving a Ferrari to someone who only ever drives to the supermarket. A tragic waste.’
‘No man has ever compared me to a Ferrari before.’ To me, it was a compliment. And so was the way he was looking at me, as if I was the best Christmas present any guy could be given.
‘He was wrong for you in every way.
I wasn’t going to argue with that. Especially not right now when Nico was moments away from kissing me. I wished I had a tenth of his control. Given that I’d been waiting all day for this moment I thought I was showing great restraint. I discovered I actually quite liked the slow, desperate build of anticipation and maybe he did, too, because instead of bringing his mouth down on mine, he gave a half smile and slid his fingers through my hair. It didn’t matter what he did with his fingers, which part of me he was stroking—it always had the same effect on me. I’d thought about nothing but being kissed by him for the past four days and the wait was killing me. It didn’t help that we’d driven each other mad all day.
I broke first.
One moment I had my hand locked in the front of his shirt. The next I was undoing buttons. Finally. The big reveal. ‘You saw me naked from the waist up. You owe me.’
His mouth hovered close to mine, but still he didn’t kiss me. He was either a skilled torturer or he knew everything there was to know about delayed gratification. ‘I always pay my debts.’ His eyes were half shut and the way he was looking at me made my stomach flip.
I had his shirt undone to the waist and my fingers went all fumbly, mostly because I saw sex in his eyes. I lost patience and yanked the shirt. Buttons skittered and bounced over the pale wooden floor, but I was too busy looking at the smooth, powerful contours of his chest through the shadowing of dark hair.
Oh, Santa, Santa, what have you brought me this year….
His eyes darkened. ‘You just ripped my shirt.’
‘Sorry.’ Never in the history of apologies had an apology sounded less sincere. I wasn’t sorry at all, and just to prove it I slid my hands slowly up his chest. I felt hard muscle and the steady beat of his heart. ‘You saw me in a ripped dress, so now we’re even.’
‘You seem to have a thing about ripping clothes.’ The gleam in his eyes made it hard to breathe.
‘It’s Christmas. You’re allowed to rip open your Chri
stmas presents. And anyway, I figured if you can afford to live here, you can afford another shirt.’ I pushed the shirt off those muscular shoulders and sucked in a breath because there, curling over the top of his biceps, was a symbol inked into his flesh.
I think my heart might have stopped. It definitely did something strange in my chest.
‘OK, well, that’s—’ I breathed and stared at it for a moment. Then I lifted my hand and traced it with the tips of my fingers. ‘Surprising.’ Not in a million years would I have expected this man to have a tattoo. ‘I thought you were this ruthlessly controlled, conservative, Eton-then-straight-to-Oxford type.’
‘Did you?’ His husky question slid against my knees and weakened them.
I thought about the wedding, when I’d spent a good ten minutes staring at him acknowledging the raw, elemental quality that lurked beneath the beautifully cut suit. About that car journey, when the tension had almost fried both of us. I’d always known what lay beneath the surface.
‘I guess I made assumptions.’
‘People do that. They look and they think they know. And sometimes they don’t look because they don’t want to know.’
‘Charlie—’
‘I don’t want to talk about Charlie any more.’
Neither did I.
I wondered how a man who never showed emotion could be so perceptive. So in tune with my feelings. It unsettled me. I was used to people believing in the person I presented to the world. I chose how much of myself I revealed. Discounting the day of the wedding where I’d revealed far more than I’d wanted to, I didn’t show much.
I thought about all the parts of myself I’d never shared with anyone. Thoughts that were all mine and not for sharing.
‘Tell me about the tattoo.’
‘A tattoo is just on the surface. You and I are going deeper than that.’
I swallowed. We were?
‘A tattoo isn’t who I am any more than a ripped dress is who you are.’ His mouth was closer to mine. I could feel the warmth of his breath against my lips.
I’d got used to thinking relationships were mostly fake and superficial, but this didn’t feel either of those things. There was nothing fake about the way his tongue traced the seam of my lips. Nothing fake about the way his hands eased my hips into his, and certainly nothing fake about the thickness of the erection I felt throbbing against me.