A maid appeared beside the bench, arriving panting, as if she’d come down here at a run. ‘Signor Francesco ask me to bring you this, signora,’ she explained breathlessly, and handed Lexi her mobile phone.
It rang the instant the maid had turned and disappeared back up the path towards the house.
‘You sent someone to my room to rummage through my bag for my phone,’ she fired at him before he had a chance to speak.
‘I went and got it for myself,’ Franco informed her. ‘And don’t,’ he warned, ‘start lecturing me on whether striding around the house in my present condition is good for my health, because I know that it isn’t. What the hell has got into you, Lexi? Why the sudden icy exit?’
Lexi wanted to tell him. In fact she wondered why she had never told him before—three and a half years ago, when it would perhaps have meant something—but she’d run away from facing him with his unfaithfulness that time too.
‘The past is catching up with me,’ she mumbled, and wished she had not heard the thickness of tears threatening her voice. ‘And you won’t let me talk about it.’
‘Don’t start crying, cara,’ he warned huskily. ‘I will be forced to come down there to you if you do. I know we have to talk about the past.’
Rolling her lips together to try and stop them from trembling, she asked, ‘Can I talk about Marco too?’
‘No,’ he rasped.
‘Your relationship with Claudia, then?’
‘Claudia and I do not have a relationship,’ he denied impatiently. ‘Not the kind you are implying anyway.’
Lexi watched the pair of resident white swans move across the glass smooth surface of the lake, leaving triangular ripples in their wake. Swans mated with the same partner for life, she recalled, for some reason only the convoluted inner workings of her own mind could follow. It took a lot of care and trust to be so steadfast and loyal to one person.
Something that she and Franco had never had.
‘I hate you,’ she whispered, which seemed to tie in somehow with the thoughts preceding it.
‘No, you don’t. You hate yourself for still caring about me when you don’t want to care. Come back up here to me and we will talk about that if you want,’ he encouraged.
Lexi gave a slow mute shake of her head.
‘I saw that,’ he sighed.
‘From where?’ Jumping to her feet, Lexi spun round, expecting to find him walking down the path towards her, but she saw nothing but garden and leafy tree branches.
‘From my bedroom window.’
Looking up, Lexi tracked her eyes along the upper terrace until she found his window. Her breathing pulled to a stop. She could just make out his tall figure against the long pane of glass.
‘You should be lying down or something.’
‘Then have some pity on me,’ he said wearily. ‘I ache all over, and I can do without the dramatic trip down memory lane right now, where you storm out and I have to work out what the hell I have done to cause it this time.’
But Lexi gave another shake of her head. ‘You’re bad for me, Franco,’ she told him sadly. ‘I know I shouldn’t even be here with you, and … and I don’t want to become attached to you again.’
‘Madre de Dio,’ he growled, then added a torrent of angry Italian that he did not know if she could follow. Switching to English, he said fiercely, ‘I want you to become attached to me again! Why do you think I asked you to come back to me in the first place?’
‘I don’t know …’
‘But you came anyway.’
Yes, she’d come anyway. ‘Did you crash your boat because I’d sent you those divorce papers?’
Another set of angry curses was followed by an explosive, ‘No.’
‘Then how did it happen?’
A band of pain across Franco’s chest tightened, catching at his breath. He didn’t want to think about that yet—not now. Perhaps later, when—’Come back up here or I will come down there to you,’ he warned again. ‘In fact I am already walking towards the door—’
Watching him disappear from the window, Lexi cut the connection and started running—fast. She knew she’d been bluffed the moment she arrived in his room, to find him sprawled in the chair by the window, looking pathetically weak and endearingly bad-tempered as he waged an uneven battle with the cufflinks still anchoring his shirt cuffs to his wrists.
‘Help me with these,’ he ground out in frustration, cutting short whatever she’d been about to say to him as he slumped back in the chair and closed his eyes as if the small task had exhausted him.
Crossing the room to his side, she squatted down. ‘Is your vision still bad?’ she queried, taking hold of his wrist so she could work the first gold link free.
‘No,’ he grunted, annoyed that she could be so damn perceptive. ‘What made you just walk out?’
‘I don’t like the rules you’ve set up around here.’ Having freed that cufflink, she made him wince when she reached across him to lift up his other wrist—the one on his injured side. ‘If you can allow a visit from Claudia then I don’t see why you can’t let in the rest of your friends and family as well.’
‘Claudia is a special case—ouch,’ he complained.
‘Sorry,’ Lexi said. ‘I accept that she has to be a special case, but …’ Her hair was getting in her way as she bent over the task in hand, and she paused to loop the long tresses back behind her ear, meeting Franco’s fingers as they arrived to do the same thing. Like an idiot, she glanced up and caught the full power of his glowing dark gaze as the back of his fingers stroked against her warm cheek. Sensation erupted with a swirling coil of sensual heat low down in her belly.
‘But what?’ he prompted distractedly.
Lexi struggled to remember what she had been going to say. In fact she was struggling to think of anything other than that look in his eyes that she knew so well. ‘Your rules are irrationally selective,’ she managed to finish. ‘Or is it just me you don’t want to discuss the accident and Marco with?’
‘I need a shower. Care to join me?’ he invited softly, gently stroking her hair back behind her ear so that she quivered.
More blocking tactics, she thought, and decided to ignore him for a change. Frowning, she dragged her attention back to releasing the second cufflink, then she sighed, sitting back on her heels and thereby removing herself from his easy reach.
In a way it was a mistake: it gave him leave to run his eyes over the green print summer dress she had changed into, its short swirly skirt leaving a lot of naked leg on show.
That coil of heat tightened its grip on her. ‘Stop looking at me like that.’ Getting up, she turned away from him.
‘Like what?’
‘Like you have the strength to do what you’re thinking.’
‘You believe I’m too feeble to at least try?’
Walking across the room to lay the cufflinks down on top of a glossy wooden chest of drawers, Lexi turned and leant back against it, folding her arms. ‘Tell me why you brought me to Italy,’ she demanded up front.
At first she thought he was not going to answer. His silence stretched along with the steady way he was looking at her. Then he eased out a controlled sigh and heaved himself to his feet so he could slip off the shirt. The moment he did so Lexi began to feel vulnerable, as if she was suddenly being placed under threat. Yet what could he do to her? He might like to believe he was physically able to take on the seduction of a protesting woman, but she could see he was already swaying on his feet.
He was like a man of two halves, she found herself thinking. One half darkly, painfully battered and bruised; the other half pure, golden male, glowing with robust health. Even the dark bruising did not detract from what she could see was all attractively smooth and tight. He’d bulked out in the years since she’d last seen him like this, she observed, running her gaze over his wide shoulders, then his bulging pectoral muscles and the beautifully ridged stomach, unaware that her breathing had shortened or that her finger
s were clenching and unclenching where she held them tucked away beneath her arms.
‘I had an epiphany.’
Blinking rapidly in an attempt to clear her head, Lexi dragged her eyes back up to his face, saw he’d been watching her look at him, and felt guilty heat pour into her face.
‘Excuse me?’ she murmured.
His dark eyes narrowed, glinting knowingly, ‘An epiphany,’ he repeated. ‘About my life and what I wanted to do with it.’
An epiphany … Rolling the tip of her tongue over her lips, Lexi straightened up and dropped her arms to her sides—though she wasn’t sure why she needed to do it. ‘And this epiphany told you what?’
‘That it was time to win my wife back,’ he enlightened her. ‘Time to put aside the bad stuff and get our marriage back on track.’
‘It was never on track—’
‘To place our marriage on a good solid track, then.’ The flick of a hand tossed semantics to one side.
‘Stay where you are,’ Lexi told him jerkily when he started crossing the space separating them. ‘When—when did you have this epiphany?’
‘Does it matter?’ He didn’t stop walking.
‘Yes.’ Lexi knew why she’d straightened up now. Even battered and bruised Franco could be incredibly intimidating—if only because her senses liked it when he came over all domineering and broodingly macho.
‘When I finally accepted how miserable I was without you.’
‘Y-you were even more miserable with me,’ she reminded him, feeling one of the rounded brass knobs on the chest of drawers dig into her back as she backed off more the closer he came.
‘I know. That is why I called it an epiphany.’ He came to a stop six inches away. ‘Like a sudden leap of intuitive understanding that told me I was miserable with you but more miserable without you.’ He added a small descriptive shrug. ‘It is as simple and as crazy as that.’
‘You said it.’ Wishing she could stop looking at his half bruised, hair roughened torso, she asked tartly, ‘Were you suffering from another epiphany when you had Claudia clasped to your wounded chest?’
‘That was sympathy.’
‘Show me some, then, and take a long step back.’
‘So you can escape?’
‘Yes,’ Lexi nodded. ‘You know I won’t physically make you do it when you’re all bruised like that.’
‘Ah—you are attempting to appeal to my sense of fair play?’
Lexi pressed her lips together and nodded her head again. If there was one thing she knew for absolute certain about Franco it was his sporting sense of fair play.
‘Look at me, then—up here where my eyes are.’ He indicated with the movement of one of his hands. ‘Just one brief eye to eye contact, cara, and I promise I will step back.’
Thinking it was a bit like asking her to strip naked—because making eye contact with Franco had much the same effect on her already edgy senses—Lexi pushed out a short sigh then lifted up her chin.
He dared to smile, with his lips and his eyes—a tender kind of gentle humour that struck like a flaming arrow directly at her heart. ‘I wish you weren’t so handsome,’ she told him wistfully. ‘Why couldn’t you have a bigger nose, or something? Or a fat, ugly mouth?’
‘You know …’ Reaching out to run his hands around her slender waist, he carefully drew her closer. ‘Your open honesty will shame the devil one day.’
‘Are you the devil in question?’ She didn’t even try to stop her progress towards him.
Franco grimaced. ‘Probably … I suppose—yes …’ he admitted. ‘Because I am about to break my promise to you, and …’ He did not bother to finish the sentence; he just closed the gap between their mouths.
It was like taking flight without wings to help her control her take-off, and the worst thing was she didn’t even try to put up a fight. She was just a pathetic pushover, she told herself, moving closer until she felt the tips of her breasts catch hold of the heat emanating from his chest, parting her lips and sighing a helpless little sigh he caught with the sensual dip of his tongue. He kissed her until she melted against him, until she was mimicking his tongue with her own and feeling the rise of desire, tasting it like some rare, delicious fruit you could only obtain from this one source. As she let her hands drift upwards to stroke the firm muscles and smooth skin covering his arms she felt a fine tremor run through him.
Dangerous, she tried to tell herself. This—him—us.
And then she tasted the lipstick. Claudia’s lipstick. It had to be Claudia’s because she wasn’t wearing any. And that, she thought as she pulled her head back, was the reason why being anywhere near Franco was dangerous. He could warm her right through and contrarily chill her to her bone at the same time.
His eyes narrowed at her sudden withdrawal. Lexi feathered down her own eyelashes so he could not pierce into her thoughts.
‘May I go now?’ she requested coolly.
Tension was suddenly flashing between them, like microwaves probing deep into her flesh, and she almost wilted with relief when he recovered his sense of fair play, dropping his arms from her and taking the promised step back.
Mouth dry, heart just an aching squeeze in her chest, without saying another word Lexi stepped around him and walked out of the room.
Watching her depart, Franco was still puzzling over what had turned her off like that when he raised a set of fingers to his kiss warmed mouth. Something made him glance down. He saw the red lipstick he’d forgotten to wipe away after Claudia’s kisses—and let loose a string of soft curses aimed exclusively at himself for being such a thoughtless, insensitive swine.
For the next twenty-four hours Lexi avoided him. She didn’t even go to his room to protest that he’d had her moved to the suite next door to his. Zeta took him meals to tempt his appetite, only to bring them back again barely touched, and she informed Lexi she was worried because he was too exhausted to eat. The housekeeper complained that he was working up there on his laptop and refusing to lie down to rest on his bed. She conveyed her displeasure to Lexi, who spent the evening curled up on a sofa watching television and didn’t seem to care what he was doing.
Lexi was training herself not to care.
When it was time for bed she went to her new room without bothering to go in and check how he was. She just pulled on one of her new silk nighties and slipped between the cool linen sheets, switched off the lights and willed herself to sleep. The next morning she walked several circuits of the lake after breakfast, stopping to coax the resident swans with some bread she’d stolen from the breakfast table. She knew that Franco was standing on the upper terrace watching her; though she didn’t once glimpse his tall figure standing there the couple of times she allowed herself to glance up.
She had her mobile phone tucked into one of the pockets of the flowery dress she’d put on with its fashionably fitted bodice and full skirt.
But he didn’t call her.
It was like a war of attrition. The problem was that Lexi knew she was waging this particular war all by herself. She wanted to avoid him but she wanted him to call her. Where was the sense in that?
She thought he might come down for lunch, but he didn’t. She hoped he would arrive when Zeta served her afternoon tea on the lower terrace overlooking the lake, but was informed by the satisfied housekeeper that at last he was sleeping on his bed and the laptop was shut.
By dinner time Lexi was losing the battle—the part that was supposed to be training her to stop caring about him, anyway—and she knew, just knew, she was about to give in. It came over her like one of those uncontrollable rushes of weakness that made you do nonsensical things. She’d gone up to her room to wash and change before dinner, but found herself hovering outside his door instead.
Zeta had told her he was still sleeping. Taking a quick peek at him while he slept wasn’t the same as going in there cold, so to speak, having to face him with her own weakness, she convinced herself.
But it was just the sam
e, and Lexi knew it even as she twisted the handle and pushed open the door. She knew it as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her, leaning against it and breathing fast, as if she was a naughty child up to mischief. Dusk had fallen and the twin lamps beside the bed cast gentle light across the room. The long windows stood open to the soft evening breeze coming in from the garden, and as she breathed in she caught the clean scent of his soap in her nostrils before she allowed herself to look towards the bed.
He wasn’t there. Her heart started to pump that bit faster. His bathroom door stood open, so she could see that he wasn’t in there. Aware that her limbs had acquired a spongy sensation, making her feel nervously strung out, she pushed away from the door and walked across the room to the only other place she could think he might be.
Stepping outside onto the terrace, she found him sitting on one of the chairs out there with his long legs stretched out in front of him, his feet resting on another chair. He was dressed in pale chinos and a soft pale blue cambric shirt. No socks inside the casual slip-ons he wore on his golden brown feet. On the table beside him stood an uncorked bottle of red wine and two long-stemmed glasses. As he heard her step and turned his dark head to look at her Lexi knew by his steady regard that it was game over.
He knew that she knew she was giving up the fight—with herself.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HE RAISED his hand and held it out to her. That was all it took to draw her to him. Lexi walked the few metres and placed her hand in his. His fingers closed around her fingers, warm, slightly callused, strong.
‘Glass of wine?’ he asked her.
‘Please,’ she said, but it was barely a whisper that scraped over her dry throat.
Dropping his feet to the floor he stood up. She noticed straight away that his movements were smooth and lithe—pain free. As if he’d planned everything down to the smallest detail he drew her closer to his side, slid her captured hand around his waist then let go of it so he could pour out the wine without them losing physical contact.
The Man Who Risked It All Page 10