by Lucy Gordon
“Nobody’s ever called me a blushing violet yet,” he said huskily.
“Then why am I having to do all the work?” she said, chuckling. “I want you, Maurizio, and I’m going to have you.” She was working on the fastening of his slacks. “Do you object?”
“No,” he said tightly. “I don’t object.”
He didn’t wait for her to finish, but ripped off the rest of his clothes. She was there ahead of him, jumping onto the bed in delightful nakedness and opening her arms to him. “Come to me,” she said, and he went eagerly.
As he made love to her, he gave thanks for her. She was spring and summer rolled into one. Her discovery of passion had enriched her. Now she enriched him in return, giving him all of her self, with nothing held back. The full-hearted generosity of that gift overwhelmed him. She offered up her body to his touch, his kisses, and at the same time she reveled in him. In the few hours since their last loving, she’d gained the confidence to put him off while she explored him, running delicate fingers down his chest and across his flat stomach. When he tried to move, she pushed him back on the bed so that she could lean back and survey him.
“You’re blushing,” she challenged him hilariously.
To his annoyance he could feel his face going red. “I’m just not used to—this—” Self-consciously, he indicated her critical appraisal of him. “Why don’t we—”
“No, why don’t we just go on doing what we’re doing?” she said firmly, pushing him back. “I prefer it this way.” She let her fingers caress his proud manhood and watched the reaction on his face. “Don’t you like me doing that, Maurizio?” she asked innocently.
“It’s—hard to say,” he said raggedly.
“No, it isn’t. It’s easy. I think you like it. It offends your sense of propriety, but you still like it, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
He was hard and straight in her hand and she surveyed him with frank delight, taking a mischievous pleasure in his discomfiture. She didn’t need to ask why her control so disconcerted him. This man was used to appraising, not being appraised, but she wasn’t going to let him put her off.
“Well?” he demanded with an edge on his voice. “Do you approve?”
She tilted her head to one side. “I’m not sure. Let’s put him to the test.”
One second before he exploded, he caught the gleam of mischief in her eyes and his temper died. The next moment, he was caught up in her laughter and they were enfolded in each other’s arms, rocking back and forth in joyful mirth. At some point in this paroxysm, he exerted his greater strength to get her onto her back. “Now,” he said firmly, “let’s do this the traditional way from now on.”
“Yes, let’s,” she said happily. “I give in, I give in.”
But despite her words, they both knew that in an important sense it was he who had yielded. What followed was heart stopping in its passion and fulfillment, but also in its gaiety. And Maurizio, who had never associated sex with laughter in his life, found himself dazzled, astonished, enchanted—and more than ever, fearful of the future.
They dozed for an hour. Terri opened her eyes to find Maurizio looking down on her tenderly. “Who was wrong?” he asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You were muttering in your sleep. You kept saying, ‘You were wrong…you were wrong all the time.’ Who was wrong—and about what?”
“Madge,” she said. “She was my mother—at least, I thought so for a long time. When I was fifteen, I discovered she wasn’t. My father was really my father but he fell in love with—someone else. When she had Leo and me, he adopted us. Madge guessed the truth and told me everything after he died. She said my mother was a slut. The first time she caught me kissing a boy, she made me feel like a slut, as well. I suppose I went on believing it.”
She wondered if he would ask her about her real mother’s identity, but he didn’t and she pushed it aside for later. Just now she was taking frank enjoyment in the sight of his naked body and uncompromising maleness. She reached up and touched his throat with the tip of one finger, letting it trail sensuously down his chest.
“Was that why—” he seemed to be speaking with an effort “—there was no other man before me?” He seized her hand, removed it from his body, where it was wreaking havoc, and kissed the tips of her fingers.
“Yes, that was why. I could never relax with any man. Madge was always there in my head, calling me a slut, telling me I’d turn out no better than my mother, who’d borne two illegitimate children to a married man. I felt crushed by it, and I could never bring myself to trust a man.” She stopped for a moment and looked intently at his face. “Why, Maurizio, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” he said hastily.
“You suddenly had a terrible look on your face. Not exactly a frown—it was more as if—I don’t know—”
“There’s nothing wrong. You imagined it,” he insisted. It would have been impossible to tell her that she’d just added to his burden of guilt.
“I used to hate her for putting that voice in my head that I couldn’t get rid of,” Terri said seriously. “I was afraid it would be there all my life, making me frozen and incapable of ever being close to a man. But I don’t hate her anymore. You drove her away.” She lay back and looked up at him with an innocent sensuality that smote his heart. He still had hold of her hand but she’d brought the other hand into play, tracing lines on his chest again in a way that made his breath come raggedly. “I know now that she was wrong. It doesn’t make me a slut to want you as much as I do,” she whispered.
“What does it make you?” he couldn’t resist asking.
She laughed suddenly. “Greedy,” she cried, and pounced without warning, tickling him with feverish speed. He fended her off, also laughing, but she returned to the attack, caressing and kissing his body with devouring intensity. The awkward, unaware young woman of only a day ago had become a pagan nymph, sensual, erotic, at ease with her own body. Tenderness fled, taking subtlety with it. Now her young, newly awakened body demanded sexual fulfillment for its own sake, and she came on to him with astonishing force, claiming her own needs without asking what suited him. If he hadn’t been so riven with guilt, he’d have been delighted by this new side of her. As it was, her laughing face and frank lust granted him a glimpse of a glorious world from which he was excluded by his own actions.
“Love me, Maurizio—love me,” she coaxed. “Love me everywhere—every way—inside me—” As she spoke, she was urging him, parting her legs in irresistible invitation. No power on earth could have held him back then. As he became one with her, it felt like coming home.
“Yes,” she breathed, “like that—like that—I want you, Maurizio, I want you.”
She was demanding, coaxing, imperious, playful, and his heart melted. His loins and thighs were like steel and he put all his skill at her service, thrusting slowly, drawing the moment out and watching her flushed face with delight.
“Please,” she murmured at last, “please—now—”
“Wait,” he teased.
She was gasping. “No—now—” She arched against him, driving him on and overcoming his will with her own. A cry broke from her as her moment came, and while he was reveling in her climax, he was overtaken by his own, exploding with such profound pleasure that it left him drained and gasping.
When they’d both recovered, he drew her close. “I can’t believe that I found you,” he said, touching her face gently. “You’re perfect, sweet and good and gentle.”
“I’ve got a temper,” she said darkly.
“I don’t believe it. I’d trust my life to your honesty, to your goodness of heart. What other virtues do you have, I wonder?”
The joy that was bubbling up inside Terri was like a kind of madness. “Why, all of them, of course,” she said recklessly. “At least, you’re supposed to believe that.”
“And I do believe it. I believe that you can be all things, kind and loving—perhaps you ca
n also be forgiving.”
“Will I need to be forgiving?” she teased him.
He hesitated before saying slowly, “When two people dare to come very close to each other, they always discover things that need forgiveness.”
She frowned, puzzled by something uneasy in his tone. “What do you think you’ll have to forgive me?”
“Nothing,” he said quickly. “Nothing at all, for you are perfect.”
“And so are you.”
“No,” he said seriously. “I’ve lived a hard life. What I have, I’ve gained by fighting and clawing, sometimes by being ruthless. I’ve had to trust my own judgment, and occasionally my judgment—that is—no man is infallible—”
“Maurizio, what are you talking about? Do you think I care about your business decisions? The only thing that matters to me is what’s in your heart—” she touched him over the heart “—the man you truly are in there. Don’t you understand?”
For answer, he took her hand and laid his lips against the palm, making her soul sing with joy. “I dare say you’ve had to be—well, unscrupulous,” she said. “Maybe I should care about that but I don’t, I can’t. I only care that you’re true to me and I know that you are.”
His face lightened. “You do? Tell me how you know that, Teresa.”
“I feel it when you hold me in your arms. I can tell from the beat of your heart against mine, and the feel of your lips when you kiss me. But most of all, I can see it in your eyes.” She took his face between her hands and looked deep into his eyes. “I can look into the bottom of your heart,” she said softly, “and what I see there fills me with happiness. Whatever you are to anyone else, I know that you’re good and true to me.”
“My God!” Maurizio said hoarsely. “Oh, my God!”
“Now tell me,” she said gently. “What can I possibly have to forgive you for?”
To her surprise, a violent tremor went through him, and when he smiled it seemed to be with effort. “I have to go away and leave you,” he said. “We’ve only just found each other, but I have to go at once. Will you forgive me for that?”
“Of course, as long as you promise to come back to me. Are you going far, or for long?”
“I’m going to an olive estate I have near Rome—”
“Can’t I come with you?”
“One day you will, but not now. I have a lot of estate business to see to at Terranotte and you’d find it very boring.”
“I wouldn’t be bored if I was with you,” she said eagerly.
“I’ll take you to Terranotte, but not this time.”
She had an odd sense of a blank wall behind his smile, but she was too deeply in love to notice danger signals. “I shall begin to think you’ve got a dark secret there, like Mr. Rochester,” she chuckled.
“Like who?”
“He was the hero in Jane Eyre, a famous English novel. He had a mad wife that he kept hidden away from the world, and tried to marry the heroine. She really had something to forgive.”
“I promise you that I have no wife, mad or otherwise, hidden at Terranotte.”
“But you’ve got something hidden there,” she teased. “Something you don’t want me to find out about—”
“I didn’t say—” He checked himself uneasily. A gleam of mischief came into her eyes, making her enchanting but deepening his apprehension. She was walking over a snake pit but she didn’t see it.
“Let’s see—” She scratched her head and pretended to think hard. “You’ve got a harem?”
“No harem, I swear.”
“A dead body, then.” She chuckled. “That’s it. You’ve committed a murder and the body’s buried in the olive grove and—”
“It’s nothing like that,” Maurizio said quickly. “This is all your imagination.” His smile had faded and his voice was suddenly strained. “You blew it up out of nothing. Let’s drop this subject. I’ll be back in a couple of days.”
Suddenly, there seemed to be a chill in the air. Terri chided herself for taking the joke too far and irritating him. That was all it was, she assured herself.
*
They returned to Venice in the early light. Maurizio saw her to her room, kissed her goodbye and went to throw some clothes into a bag, for his trip south. As he entered his room, his heart was high with hope. With luck, by this time next day he would have restored Leo to his sister.
The first thing he saw was a light winking on his telephone, signaling that there was a message. He dialed the switchboard and grunted, “Yes?”
“Rinaldo Passi has called you from Terranotte ten times in the last twenty-four hours,” the operator informed him. “He said it was urgent but nobody knew how to contact you.”
A cold hand clutched Maurizio’s stomach. Quickly he dialed the number of Terranotte and in a few moments was talking to his estate manager. “What is it?” he barked.
“Signore, something terrible has happened. Signor Leo is missing.”
“What the devil—you mean he’s got lost somewhere on the estate?”
“Missing. Gone. Completely vanished. He went for a stroll and when he didn’t return, we all went to look for him. He was nowhere on the estate—”
“Nonsense, he must be,” Maurizio insisted, trying to reassure himself by his own positive voice. In the pause that followed, he could hear Passi gulping, as though trying to pluck up his courage. “Is there more?” he demanded harshly.
“Signore—when we first found him gone—we thought—we thought we would find him quickly, and so—”
“How long has he been gone?”
Passi gulped again. “Three days,” he whispered.
Maurizio gripped the receiver. “It’s taken you three days to tell me this?” he demanded.
“No, signore,” Passi disclaimed frantically. “It was only two days when I called you yesterday morning, but you were away and—and it’s three days now,” he finished miserably.
“You should have told me at once.”
Passi began to gabble. “When we couldn’t find him, we searched the roads. Signor Leo was seen boarding a bus on the day he left. I checked his room. His money and some of his clothes were gone.”
“Has his memory returned?” Maurizio demanded sharply.
“No. Just a few flashes now and then, but they don’t last.”
“Which bus did he take?”
“To Rome.”
Maurizio felt himself engulfed in a nightmare. In Rome, Leo could vanish without trace. He might remember nothing and never be heard of again. Or he might remember enough to make him catch a train to Venice. Maurizio remembered Terri’s conviction that she’d seen Leo two days ago. He’d dismissed it, but now he saw she could have been right.
“Send some people to Rome,” he commanded. “They must question everyone in the bus station, and then—”
He continued to give orders for several minutes, but he knew it was a forlorn hope, and he was only putting off the moment when he must hang up and find himself alone with the truth: Terri’s beloved brother had vanished into the mist, without even a clear idea of his own identity. And he, Maurizio, was to blame. Worse. His servants had delayed telling him for fear of his wrath, thereby losing precious time. For that, too, he was to blame. Was he a monster that people were so terrified of him?
As he replaced the receiver, the silent room seemed to mock his calculations of a few minutes ago. Now his careful plans lay in ruins about him, and he was full of apprehension.
Leo had gone. He was probably already in Venice. Perhaps he would find Terri and tell her everything and he, Maurizio, would be banished from the magic circle that surrounded her. Never again to see the sweet, trusting candor in her eyes or the glow of passion as she reached for him. The thought caused a bitter pain in his heart.
The next moment, he made a sound of impatience with himself. Only action would serve him now.
Ten minutes later, he was on his way to the airport.
Chapter Eight
As soon
as she stepped inside the Palazzo Calvani, Terri heard the sound of laughing voices coming from the terrace room. One was Elena’s, but the other she didn’t recognize.
“Denise has returned,” Francisco said. He was just coming out of the library at the rear of the building.
“Denise? You mean Elena’s secretary?” Terri asked in dismay. If Denise had returned, then Terri’s job here was over, and she’d accomplished nothing. Preoccupied by her love for Maurizio, she’d let the time slip by.
“Yes, but don’t worry.” Francisco smiled at her. “You can stay here and work for me. Come into the library now and I’ll explain what I need.” He slipped an arm about her shoulders to guide her to the library. It took all Terri’s self-control not to shudder. There was something about Francisco that reminded her of a snake. She managed to slip away from him, smiling to cover the snub, and moved so that he couldn’t touch her again. To her relief, Francisco didn’t seem offended. If anything, he appeared to be mysteriously pleased by her reserve.
At that moment, Elena appeared. “Terri,” she called gaily, “come and have coffee.”
Terri looked for Denise as she followed Elena into the terrace room. There was no sign of her, but a door at the far end was just closing. “That’s Denise,” Elena told her. “She’ll be back in a moment.”
“If she’s returned, you won’t need me anymore,” Terri said worriedly.
“Oh, but she hasn’t returned, not to stay. Her poor mother is more sick than she’d thought at first, so she has to leave me for good. She just came to collect the rest of her clothes.”
Terri was swept by relief. “So you still need me?”
Elena gave her warm, sweet smile. “Yes, cara, I still need you. Even if Denise had returned, I wouldn’t have sent you away because—well, because I wouldn’t. See here, I have a surprise for you.” She indicated a large box with the name Vilani printed on the side. “Open it,” Elena said eagerly, almost as though she were the recipient instead of the giver.
Inside the box, Terri found a blue dress of such elegance and simplicity that she gasped with delight. “But I don’t understand,” she said. “It’s not my birthday—”