by Lynne Graham
Vivien marvelled that such loud music did not get on her sister’s nerves and understood why her sibling would have been unlikely to hear the phone ringing out in the hall. ‘Of course not. But I was a little worried. Apparently, Fabian came to the house earlier when you were out.’
A sharp little silence fell and then Bernice snapped, ‘I wasn’t out. But when I saw it was him, I couldn’t be bothered answering the door. He’s such a bore.’
‘I’m going to be a bore too and ask you to turn down your music just a tiny bit…if Marco cries, you wouldn’t be able to hear him,’ Vivien pointed out in a tone of anxious apology. ‘Look, I can stay the night in London and return home first thing in the morning, but if you’d prefer me to come back tonight, I will—’
‘Oh, don’t be stupid. There’s no need for you to come rushing back home,’ her sister declared impatiently. There was the sound of a door closing and suddenly blessed peace stretched at the other end of the line. ‘Marco’s fine…sleeping like a log. How did it go with Lucca?’
Legs feeling hollow and weak, Vivien collapsed down on the side of the bed. ‘Badly…he’s seeing Bliss Masterson, the model, and I met her. She’s absolutely gorgeous—’
Bernice giggled like a drain. ‘Oh, dear, it’s really not been your day! I did warn you, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, you did…’ Vivien conceded thickly.
‘Lucca’s a complete bastard,’ her sibling opined with real venom. ‘Did you ask him about the money?’
Vivien swallowed hard. ‘Yes…I think that’ll be all right.’
‘Brilliant!’ Bernice exclaimed.
Vivien thought she heard another voice sounding at her sister’s end of the line and asked, ‘Have you got friends over?’
‘Why are you asking me that?’ Bernice demanded truculently.
‘I thought I heard someone speaking to you—’
‘You didn’t…it must’ve been the television. See you tomorrow!’
The line went dead.
Slowly, Vivien replaced the phone.
Lucca was never likely to be part of her life again. A pain that went as sharp and deep as a spear wound pierced her and she quivered. It was more than three years since she had run out of that party at Serafina’s apartment after seeing Lucca with yet another highly fanciable female wrapped round him. He had followed her out into the street.
‘So you do want me the way I want you,’ he pronounced with raw satisfaction. ‘Don’t worry about my companion. She’s just window dressing—’
‘Does she know that?’ Vivien was appalled by his attitude.
Lucca shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘It’s you I want, bella mia. Other women can only be substitutes. If you want to blame anyone for that, blame yourself.’
‘Don’t try to make me responsible for the fact that you’re a womaniser!’
‘I’m single…I tell no lies and I’m not breaking any rules. Don’t be such a prude. If I was as wholesome as you think you’d like me to be, I’d be a married man with children by now and you’d be tormented by the fact that I was morally out of reach. As it is, I’m available and all you need is the courage to stop running away like a little girl from what you know is between us.’
At three in the morning, he came round to her flat and, worn down by stress and longing and relief that he was not after all spending the night in the other woman’s arms, she let him in. He pulled her to him in the dim hallway and murmured intently, ‘I’ll be different with you, cara. You will have my exclusive attention—’
‘Gosh…’ she framed shakily, thinking that he was offering as an extra what she had assumed she could already take for granted.
‘And I will make you happy. It can be that easy, that simple,’ Lucca whispered with black-velvet cool. ‘Why make it difficult?’
But the only thing she found easy was loving him and loving Lucca was not something that she felt she got a choice about. They saw each other whenever they could but there was never enough time to satisfy either of them. Head over heels in love, she did not have a single doubt about their relationship. Within two months, he asked her to marry him, but the minute the engagement ring went on her finger the privacy they had once enjoyed was at an end.
His friends flattered her within his hearing and made cutting comments behind his back. Lucca, with his social pedigree and immense wealth, was seen as a great marital prize and most of the women in his exclusive social circle were downright insulted by his choice of an unfashionable academic as a bride. Continual embarrassing and hurtful allusions to his volatile reputation with her sex, his fabled libido and her own lack of sophisticated sparkle damaged her self-esteem and her faith in Lucca even before the wedding.
At the time, however, she had no awareness of that reality. The day she married Lucca had been the happiest of her life and their brief honeymoon had been sheer bliss. Yet, just ten short months later, she had been desperately lonely and unhappy. Had it not been for Jasmine Bailey’s allegations, though, she would have remained with Lucca. He had never understood exactly why she had left him, Vivien conceded wretchedly. His apparent infidelity had convinced her that her agreeing to a divorce was the wisest and kindest option she could give to a guy who had made it bitterly obvious for weeks beforehand that he very much regretted having married her in the first place…
Disgusted to find tears trickling down her cheeks, Vivien plunged upright and blundered into the en suite bathroom. Splashing her face, she decided that, since she was unlikely to fall asleep naturally at nine in the evening, she would go for a warm bath and hope it helped her to relax.
Sinking into the fragrant depths of the warm water a few minutes later, she found herself wondering quite why Bernice disliked Lucca so much. Her sister had never had a good word to say about him and, truth to tell, Lucca had always been a little cool with Bernice. Probably a personality clash. Vivien swallowed painfully and wished she had Marco to cuddle.
A light knock sounded on the bathroom door and she froze in dismay and then sat upright, water sloshing noisily round her as she hugged her knees in an instinctive need to shield her nakedness. ‘I’m not dressed!’ she yelped in warning to whoever was in the bedroom beyond.
‘It’s not a problem,’ Lucca told her, his dark honeyed drawl roughening the syllables. ‘I sent a meal up to you on a tray but you didn’t answer the door when it was brought so I said that I would take care of it.’
‘I’m not hungry…’ she mumbled.
Dark eyes narrowed to gold glittering intensity, Lucca surveyed her. As he’d walked through the door, he had been treated to a tantalising glimpse of delicate white breasts crowned with succulent pink peaks. Hunger hotter than a bonfire held him taut. There she was clutching her knees and, as always, shorn of every artifice. Yet she radiated megawatt appeal. Her baby-fine hair was tousled, damp would-be curls forming above enormous green eyes and a lush mouth as sexy as sin.
‘I am,’ he said almost fiercely.
‘Oh, you have the tray, then,’ Vivien urged jerkily, fighting to drag her mesmerised eyes from his and failing. He had incredibly beautiful eyes that were bronze in some lights and flamed gold in others. And when he looked at her, a melting sensation formed in her pelvis and thinking rationally became too much of a challenge. He had shed his jacket and tie, undone the collar of his black shirt. He looked dark and dangerous and lethally attractive and little quivers of helpless feminine appreciation were shooting along her nerve-endings.
His sculpted mouth quirked. ‘Why aren’t you telling me to get out?’
She knew why but was too gutless to tell him. Her mind had already filled with fantasy images in which he would pluck her out of the water, carry her off to bed and sate the uncontrollable craving that he had always unleashed in her.
Lucca tipped his handsome dark head back. In her unshielded and hopeful gaze he had read the answer he had already divined from her silence. In time-honoured style, it was once again his cue to take sexual charge so that she did not have
to feel responsible about what she was doing. Lucca was surprised to discover that on this occasion he wanted a greater input from her. Why not? Why should he make it all so easy for her? After all, he had already engineered the entire situation to lead to just such a denouement. Having deliberately dissuaded her from going home to be with the nerd, he had had every intention of seducing her back into his bed for the night. But he was now stubbornly determined that she make her own choice and act accordingly…
‘If you want to share my bed tonight, I’ll be in the room next door and you can come to me.’ Lucca surveyed her dismayed face with grim amusement.
Shocked embarrassment made her fine skin flush red and her mouth had dropped open in disconcertion. ‘How…how the heck can you say such a thing to me?’
‘Life’s short. I’m trying to save us both from growing old and grey while we wait for you to make a decision and act. Either you want me enough to take a risk, or you don’t, cara,’ Lucca delivered silkily. ‘The decision is yours.’
Feeling horribly mortified, Vivien listened to the door close on his exit from the adjoining bedroom. He had gone. Blinking in confusion, she stood up in the bath and hauled a towel round her streaming body. She was shaking. He knew her so well. He had recognised her shameless eagerness, realised that she was sitting there in the bath just waiting for him to reach for her. And instead of just doing what he had always done before, instead of doing what came entirely naturally to a male of his dominant temperament, he had derided her passivity and thrown down the gauntlet.
She had never been much good at taking risks. For that reason, everything she had already done that day felt very unreal because she had gone out on a limb to approach Lucca, not just once, but twice. And where had her newly discovered sense of daring got her? It had ripped the lid off all the pathetic little lies she had been telling herself for two years. It had forced her to face just how miserable she really was without Lucca. It was also now persuading her to consider a path to reclaiming her marriage that she had not previously considered.
In spite of Bliss Masterson’s wondrous beauty and perfection, Lucca was still attracted to his wife. Instead of being priggish about his blunt way of expressing that news, should she not be grateful for the fact that she could still interest him in that department? After all, if Lucca had found her unattractive there would be no hope whatsoever of achieving a reconciliation. So did that mean she just fell back into his bed?
Wasn’t it much too soon for that? Lucca did not suffer from her inhibitions, she reminded herself ruefully. He had a very high sex drive. They were still married and it was her fault they had broken up. She had devoted her entire day to telling him that she wanted him back. She could hardly complain that he had put the most literal interpretation on her request. And when Lucca challenged her to take a risk on him wasn’t he giving her the hope that they could have a future again?
This was not the time, she told herself urgently, to brood about the reality that she was not the sexy siren type. This could well be her one and only chance to save their marriage and she could not afford to surrender to her own shyness. Having put back on her bra and panties, she hesitated. It would look a little foolish if she got fully dressed just to go next door. After a lot of anxious thought, she yanked the silky tasselled throw off the foot of the bed and anchored it round her like a beach towel.
Before her nerves could seize up, she left the bedroom to blunder through the door of the next room only to find that…it was in darkness and empty and she appeared to be in the wrong place. He wasn’t in the room across the corridor either. Hunt the husband, Vivien thought hysterically. Could he have changed his mind?
‘No need to sack the house from top to bottom, I’m in here…’ Lucca drawled sardonically from somewhere behind her.
Taken by surprise, Vivien whirled round. Her toes caught in the trailing fringe on the throw and tripped her up. With a startled yelp she fell her length in the corridor and knocked the breath from her lungs.
‘Dio mio… Are you all right?’ Lucca leant down to close his hand over one of hers and haul her upright again.
‘Absolutely fine!’ Vivien gasped, writhing with discomfiture and almost in tears of frustration. It was a challenge to be bold in an area where she had never been confident. And, forced to dress in the equivalent of a sofa cover and flailing around his feet like an idiot, she felt she had hit a new lowest ebb.
For the sake of efficiency, Lucca scooped her up and carried her back into his room, where he settled her carefully down on an area of floor where there were no obstructions.
‘So what now?’ she framed, hovering like a school-girl.
‘I unwrap you before you break a leg.’ Closing long fingers into one corner of the throw, Lucca spun her deftly round and removed the offending item before she had even quite grasped what he was doing.
‘Oh!’ Stripped of her main source of concealment, Vivien crossed her arms over herself and got her first proper look at him.
Lucca was clad only in a pair of boxer shorts. A vibrant image of lean, bronzed masculinity, he made her mouth run dry and she found herself staring. Wide brown shoulders lent definition to powerful pectoral muscles roughened with curling tendrils of black hair above a stomach flat as a washboard. Something akin to a flock of butterflies broke loose in her tummy and the high-wire tension keeping her still leapt up another notch.
‘It feels…so strange being here with you again,’ she confided breathless with nerves.
‘I’d call it erotic…’ Lucca countered, strolling fluidly closer to anchor a sure hand into the fall of her tumbled fair hair and tip her head up. ‘I feel like a sultan with a slave. I feel that anything I want I can have tonight.’
An apprehensive frown dented her smooth pale brow and then she managed an uncertain laugh, for she knew he could only be joking. ‘I wouldn’t go quite that far…’
‘I think you’ll go as far as I want you to, mia bella.’ He tasted her soft, parted lips with slow, burning precision.
It was like watching a flame dance closer to dynamite; her tummy flipped and her body quivered in expectation. He lifted his arrogant dark head again to scan her with gleaming golden eyes and then he kissed her again with a hot violence of demand that left her clinging to his shoulders to stay upright.
He drew her hands down and removed her bra. Ignoring her startled indrawn breath, he caught her fingers in his before she could turn away in an instinctive need to conceal her nakedness. Appreciative golden eyes lingered on the small pouting swells adorned by coral-pink tips.
‘I’ve missed your body…’ Lucca confided.
Her flush of embarrassment started at her collarbone. Pleased though she was by the sentiment, she felt naked and exposed and far too much the focus of attention.
‘I shall enjoy becoming reacquainted with it,’ Lucca declared, letting his thumbs rub over the tender swollen peaks of her breasts and watching her jerk and strangle a responsive gasp in her throat. Bending down, he lifted her up off her feet into his arms.
‘W-where are we going with this? I mean…you and me?’ Vivien stammered awkwardly.
‘My bed…don’t ask trick questions,’ Lucca advised. ‘You’re not subtle enough.’
He laid her down onto the vast smooth expanse of the divan. He had told no lies. He had been straight with her, Lucca told himself squarely. If she chose to play the eternal optimist and reach other assumptions, it was not his problem. He wanted her and she was willing. Why make it any more complicated than that? The low light gilded the silky tumble of her fair hair, accentuating the pale delicacy of her skin and the flawless grace of her slender figure.
He was holding her wrists to the bed to keep her entrapped and a shy smile softened the anxious line of her reddened lips, for the intensity with which he was visually devouring her prone length could only entrance her. There was nothing suspect about the level of his interest. It certainly wasn’t a cruel tease. He really, really wanted her. The question of how m
uch he might have wanted Bliss Masterson threatened to intrude and, like someone slamming the door shut on hell, she shut off that thought-train fast.
‘You’re really beautiful…in your little way,’ Lucca completed almost roughly, handsome jaw line squaring as if he was afraid such a compliment might give her ideas above her station.
‘That’s just what you think,’ she dared.
‘Doesn’t Fabian think the same thing?’
‘Fabian?’ Her luminous eyes widened in bewilderment, for she could not think how he had become aware even of the existence of the other man, but was not sufficiently concerned by that mystery to enquire into it. ‘I shouldn’t think he has ever considered my looks. Like me, he’s much more interested in practical things—’
‘Dio mio…what a very sensible attitude,’ Lucca murmured between gritted teeth, displeased by the airy manner in which she twinned her own nature to that of another man. ‘But then what I think is at this moment…all that should count, bellezza.’
Her heart clenched at the assurance. ‘It does count—’
‘So stop trying to edge below the sheet to hide from me. It’s been a long time. Let me savour the view,’ he urged, directing his attention to the bikini panties she still wore and peeling them off. ‘That’s better…’
Dark golden eyes flared over her in a sensually assessing arc of confidence and he stepped back to remove his boxer shorts. He was fully aroused and more encouraged than inhibited by an audience. Her face burned hot. She closed her eyes but a wicked tingling had begun low in her belly.
‘Look at me…’ Lucca ordered thickly as he came down beside her.
Her lashes lifted. He let a knowing fingertip delicately trace the tender thrust of her pink nipples. Her spine arched, arrows of fire shooting to the tight hollow centre of her and she gasped, ‘Lucca…’
He bent his dark head and the tip of his tongue stroked the straining tips and her hips shifted against the sheet, intolerable heat beginning to burn the sensitive flesh between her thighs. It had been so long since she was touched and she was shattered by the strength of her own response. She clenched her hands tightly by her sides, striving for control and then losing it just as fast and spearing her fingers into his luxuriant black hair to hold him to her.