by Tara Pammi
“Here and there,” he said, tucking her arm through his. “I can take society only in small doses.” Which was more truth than he’d ever confided in anyone. “After the drama in the conference room that day, I needed time to recoup.”
“Time to recoup?” she repeated, but with more consideration and less belligerent disbelief this time. Like she was thinking far too much again.
Dio, the woman really needed less thinking, worrying and planning and more ravishing in her life. A good thing he was so committed to it.
“Si. But now I’m ready to be your adoring husband.” He smiled then and brought her to the huge ballroom.
He frowned as the music filtered through him.
A string quartet was playing. There was dynamics, articulation, wonderful fluctuation to the tempo but no soul to the music, no risk-taking except perfectly executed sharps and flats.
The lifelessness of it jarred through his head. A near compulsion ran in his veins to either yell for the music to stop or to stalk out of the room.
“Luca?” Sophia prompted.
Neither option was feasible, though.
Pasting on his megawatt smile—the one that had once driven a tempestuous young woman to avow love to him in the midst of her own engagement party—Luca turned to her. “Yes, bella mia?”
Light brown eyes studied him like he was a fly under a microscope.
Not the effect he intended in that perceptive face. Not even that endearing snort or roll of her eyes. “The music, you don’t like it?”
Pure panic bolted through Luca for a second. As if every facade he had built over the years was being ripped away, leaving him utterly stripped of his armor. To face who he was, what he was capable of, in front of the whole world and see the horror he’d seen in his mother’s eyes. He couldn’t bear that look in Sophia’s eyes. “Do you know what is happening with Kairos and Tina?”
“No,” she said with an arched look that told him she saw through the ploy. It was becoming harder to pretend with her. Like his mask was slowly but surely cracking, giving her glimpses of him. “We spoke briefly, though.”
She offered that tidbit reluctantly as if Kairos needed her protection. From Luca. She gave so much of herself to just a friend. “What did your friend say?” he asked casually, swallowing away the jealousy her friendship with another man aroused.
“That he’ll be waiting to offer his support as a friend when you leave me in pieces, to quote him. I think Tina is causing major ripples in his life.”
The goodwill he heard in her tone for his sister warmed Luca’s heart. It confirmed his growing belief that Sophia had only ever wanted Kairos’s friendship. “Why do you assume that?”
“Because he said ‘We should have never gone near those Contis’ in a pained voice before he hung up.”
Luca laughed. “Good for Tina,” he whispered in Sophia’s ear and pulled her onto the dance floor.
CHAPTER SEVEN
TONIGHT, SOPHIA DECIDED, as she tried to not search the huge ballroom for Luca like a desperate, clingy wife, she could be a deer. Never a gazelle or a swan, but at least not a penguin—and unlike the last Conti party she attended, this time she was not a skunk.
She also, quite uncharacteristically, decided to put away all the things Valentina had said about Luca into her newly commissioned cupboard in her head. Tonight she wouldn’t worry, plan, obsess, hide or hate. Tonight she would take a leaf out of her playboy husband’s colorful book and enjoy herself. She’d dance, drink and flirt with Luca, even. Maybe.
It was without doubt the best evening of Sophia’s life. Suddenly, it seemed, all of society, the same people that had always looked on her with begrudgingly given kindness wanted to talk to her, invited her to posh luncheons and generally wanted to figure out how she’d corralled the Conti Devil.
Even knowing that Luca had been with half the women there, Sophia met a few women whom she’d love to get to know more. It was as if by lowering her own walls, she could see the others clearer, too.
And with a haunting clarity, she realized how right Luca was. She’d always been different in this strata of society, which in turn had made her defensive. Thirteen, unpolished but streetwise, she hadn’t trusted that Salvatore wouldn’t change his mind about keeping her; she’d decided from the first moment that she didn’t belong there. Instead of risking rejection, she’d built a wall between her true self and everyone else. And then that episode of the bet had given her even more reason to hate them all. A shield, she realized now.
She danced with Luca, who was, of course, a graceful, slick dancer, then with Leandro, who to her surprise, told her she was welcome to come to him for any matter regarding the CLG board. Almost as if he’d been warned by his brother to not offend her.
Kairos was away on a business trip, thankfully.
Then there was Antonio, whom she’d avoided all evening. Sheer cowardice? Yes, but Sophia didn’t want him to ruin her perfect evening.
* * *
Luca heard the snick of the door behind him and sighed. He’d come into Leandro’s study, looking for the legal papers he’d asked Leandro’s lawyer to draw up.
Without turning, he knew who it was. He’d been waiting for this confrontation all week. Dreading it. Loathing it.
For his grandfather was quite adept at turning Luca back into that needy, emotional boy he’d been during those hard years. Unable to manage his headaches and his restlessness, unable to sleep.
Cowardly as it had been, hiding out in his studio for a week had an added advantage to it. Antonio never ventured there. For one thing, Leandro had decreed long ago that it was Luca’s space—sacred and safe and inviolate. For another, the studio was evidence that Luca had inherited more than just his father’s good looks.
Antonio preferred to believe the Contis were invulnerable to anything from simple mood swings to brilliance-induced madness. Even after Enzo’s life proved otherwise.
“You cannot give Sophia power over CLG stock or your seat on the board.”
“I already have,” Luca retorted. So there was at least no pretension to niceties to be had. He grinned; riling up Antonio was a task he’d enjoyed immensely even as an innocent child. “You have hounded us for years to marry. You even picked her as the perfect Conti bride. For the first time in my life, I agree with you. Sophia is perfection.”
“You do this now only to mess with all of us.”
Trust Antonio to know Luca as well as he did. “Sophia is my wife and has my best interests at heart.”
Antonio scowled.
The thought that riled Antonio more than Sophia sitting on the board was a bastard, self-made man like Kairos taking his place at the head.
“Let her be your proxy. That controlling stock of Contis should lie within the family members.”
Luca shook his head. “This fixation you have about the glorious Contis needs to be contained, Nonno. Haven’t you done enough damage in the name of it?”
His grandfather flinched, backed a step as if Luca would attack him physically. Provoked as he’d been, Luca had never done that.
“All I ever did was to make sure your father didn’t ruin our family name.”
His head jerking up, Luca watched, stunned. Antonio had never offered a defense before. “You knew your son better than anyone. You hushed up so many little things he’d been doing all his life. You should have seen what he was becoming. You should have protected her...” He turned away, breathing roughly, mustering his emotions under control.
“You accept Sophia or you don’t.” He shrugged. “I’ve no problem cutting you out of my life, unlike your dutiful grandson Leandro. But she will continue on the Conti board even if I have to legally give her all my stock.”
Rage filled Antonio’s eyes. “She...married you because I suggested it.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Your affairs, your reckless disregard for our name... I was desperate. So I went to her. I thought she was the one woman who c
ould handle you. I offered her a fortune if she brought you to the altar.”
Luca smiled easily, more amused than affronted by Antonio’s revelation.
Sophia had never hidden the fact that she’d do anything for her family. Dio, he knew with a faintly increasing alarm that half his attraction to her was based on that. It was her beauty, inside and out, that enthralled him.
He wanted Sophia untouched by the dirt in his family, away from the unrelenting grasp for power, the manipulations.
He wanted her to be only his, in his moments of light, separate from the dark, self-loathing part of him. But he’d not only brought her into it, he’d made her two powerful enemies already—Kairos and Antonio.
“You give her even a single share of Conti stock and I assure you, you will never see any of it back ever again. She might not be Salvatore’s blood but she is as grasping as he is.”
Luca couldn’t care less, if he tried, about what Sophia would take from him. “Go to hell, Nonno. And say hi to your son while you’re there.”
“I did not offer her up, your mother, like a sacrificial lamb to him, knowing what he was.” Luca stopped at the door, knuckles tightening on the knob. Antonio, for the first time in his life, sounded old. Frail. “He married her in secret, just like you did Sophia. He could be even more charming than you, when it pleased him. He claimed he was in love and I allowed it. I thought she would bring balance to his life...calm him. He was happy enough for a while. Your mother... She married him, Luca, of her own free will.”
* * *
It had just struck eleven when Sophia realized she hadn’t seen Luca’s prowling gait in the ballroom for over an hour. The party was in full swing, champagne was flowing, couples still dancing.
Now she wondered if he’d disappeared. Again.
Apparently, Luca was like a mirage, present for as long as it took to entice and lure. Only to disappear the second you got close.
She had drunk three glasses of champagne with Valentina and her friends. Imagining the calories in three drinks, she’d delicately munched on glazed carrots and fruit from the scrumptious buffet.
The result was that she was mildly buzzed. She walked the perimeter of the huge ballroom, smiling and nodding at people she didn’t even know. A woman pointed through the corridor with a perfectly manicured finger and a malicious smile.
Sophia’s buzz evaporated as if someone had siphoned off the alcohol from her brain. Strains of husky laughter, of the female variety, greeted her from one open door. Luca’s deep tones followed the husky laughter.
Ice slithered through her veins, rooting her there.
Run, run, run. Her brain issued flight responses as if the threat was fatal.
One breath and then another, Sophia forced herself to concentrate on just that. No, it was only her pride that chafed, she reminded herself. It was only sheer disbelief at the man’s utter lack of decency. Her heart was stout and uninvolved.
They had no claim on each other, true. He hadn’t promised her fidelity, this time or the last. But he wasn’t going to show her up as a fool again.
One evening, Dear Lord, one evening was all he’d given her and already...he was smarting at the reins? She hadn’t even demanded much of him.
She marched into the room, somehow managing to not fall on her face in four-inch heels.
The room was another lounge offering a view of Lake Como. It seemed there was an endless quantity of those at Villa de Conti but not enough distance from his family for Luca. Another fact she’d gleaned tonight. He’d happily offered her a place here because he never was here.
Was there anyone or anything Luca didn’t need escape from?
A piano was the focal point of the room and on the bench, with his fingers desultorily playing with the ivory keys, was Luca. A stylish, contemporary chandelier threw patches of light onto his sharp profile.
The notes, though played slowly and haltingly, made up a haunting tune that plucked at Sophia’s nerves. At some heretofore unknown place that had become arid from neglect.
A stick-thin blonde sat on his left on the bench, her silk-clad thigh flush against his, leaning over him to reach the keys. Which, from Sophia’s angle, clearly showed her lemon-sized boobs—thank you, Valentina, for that—rubbing against his upper arm.
Luca stilled, all sleek and wiry strength, but Sophia didn’t wait to see if it was in anticipation or in defense. She’d had enough!
Refusing to give in to the urge to run and grab the blonde by her hair, which would give credence to her reputation as a shrew, she walked, sedately, toward the couple so seemingly immersed in each other that they didn’t notice her.
“Please take your paws off my husband,” she said with a sweet smile that hurt her cheeks. “Also, get out of our house.”
The blonde had the grace to look ashamed at being caught out. Sophia fisted her hands, fighting the urge for violence. If lemon-boobs so much as smiled at Luca, she was going to lose it.
But the woman, perhaps sensing that Sophia meant business, stood up, slid out with a sort of gliding grace—another damn swan—and left the room.
Sophia counted to ten, went to the door, closed it and then leaned against it. Wrenching herself under control. Seeing the stick-thin woman sidling up to Luca... It ripped away her own self-delusions. Her pathetic reassurances.
God, when had she begun lying to herself?
When had she started believing that she was the Sophia that the world saw? How had she believed she could resist this man?
How had she convinced herself that she could take him on and come out unscathed at the end of these three months?
* * *
After his talk with Antonio—somehow, his grandfather managed to sink under Luca’s skin every time, like an eternal monument to the darker aspect of his life—Luca had felt an overwhelming need to disappear. Antonio had known what his revelation, about Enzo falling in love with his mother, would do to Luca.
Caustic fear had beat a tattoo in his head that he was like Enzo in this, too, that he was beginning to buy into his own pretense that all he wanted was fun with Sophia.
Had his father married his mother with the best intentions? Had he meant to keep his promise to love her and cherish her? Had he thought he was in control just as Luca thought he was with Sophia?
Had he been aware that he’d become a monster toward the woman he’d loved and yet hadn’t been able to stop?
Rattled by Antonio’s revelation, he hadn’t gone back into the ballroom. To her.
He had not followed the blonde, nor touched her. But he’d been sorely tempted. Here was the way to delineate from the path his father had taken, the only way, it seemed, to retain control of this farce that was already pulling him under...so destructively simple—to touch the nameless woman, to sink into her inviting body and prove to himself that his defenses were intact.
That he was intact.
Only he had looked at the woman and bile had risen in his throat.
Would the ghost of his father haunt him here, too? Was it not enough he’d passed Luca his looks and his madness? Would he now drive him into humiliating Sophia?
Even for a farce, she would never forgive him. And that was one thing Luca couldn’t bear.
He faced himself every night in the mirror and only self-loathing remained. He was never alone in his head; he was never alone when he looked in the mirror.
So he’d stopped looking and lived as best as he could. But if Sophia looked at him like that...non!
So he stayed. A little weak. A little undone. And a little ragged in his hunger for her. He wanted to be inside her. He wanted to learn everything there was to know about her. In that wanting, Luca realized there was no one else.
No one drove his actions, not stupid bets from which he thought he would protect her; no one whispered in his ears that this, too, was already set. Nothing but pure, scorching desire motivated him. No ghosts of mad fathers or distraught mothers. Nothing but Luca and his desire for her.
He was alone in wanting Sophia, like he wasn’t in anything else.
She stood there, plastered against the door. Stubborn chin tilted high in challenge. Luscious breasts fell and rose as she battered at her temper, beating it into submission.
She would not win tonight, not against him, not against her own nature. She was his. The only question was how much she would make him chase her.
But it made sense, that she was different in this, too. That she demanded to be chased, demanded to be won over.
He wanted nothing less for his wife, anyway. Half turned away from piano, he raised a brow. “That was quite impressive. Alex would have nothing on you if you decide to be mistress of the manor, or the estate in this case.”
* * *
He wasn’t grinning, which was strange in itself. She’d have thought he’d love seeing her struggle with her temper. Second, there was an almost somber quality to his expression.
“You couldn’t contain yourself for one evening?”
“So the claws are out?”
“Claws are all I have.” Damn it, how could she be feeling this sense of betrayal? Had she not truly changed where it mattered?
No, she had. She’d grown a shell to keep the world out while hiding away herself. Even convinced herself that she didn’t need or want anything or anyone.
Until this moment.
And she was truly seeing him this time, now that her own naïveté was gone. Now that she didn’t have to hide from herself. “No pretty feathers like your...numerous friends. Did you—”
“I have quite the craving for claws, cara mia, when they are yours. So stop threatening and start using them.”
It was said in a voice taut with challenge. Not mocking or teasing. Shadows moved in his eyes where there had been nothing but insouciance before.
Sophia felt like she’d locked herself in with a predator. Gone was the easy, charming Luca that she could handle, if not admire. This man who looked at her with darkly hungry eyes was not he. He seemed edgier, less controlled. More real.