in no time at all. It always has with everyone else I have been involved with. It is the thrill of the chase. It is a primal urge that all men feel, some more than others.'
'If I wasn't so inexperienced would you be pushing me away right now?' she asked.
'If I thought you were developing feelings for me, then, yes, I would push you away, for your own good.'
Emma felt another piece of her heart crack. 'Isn't it up to me to decide what is good or not good for me?' she asked.
His dark eyes flashed at her angrily. 'Stop this, Emma. Stop it right now. It is not going to go any further than this. It should not have gone this far, damn it to hell.'
Tears began to course down her face and she scrubbed at them with a jerky movement of her hand. 'Do you hate me so much?' she asked.
He swore under his breath and reached for her, pulling her into his chest, bringing his chin down to rest on the top of her head. 'No, no, no, mio piccolo,' he said huskily. 'Maybe before...but not now...not now...'
Emma nestled closer, her cheek pressed against the deep thudding of his heart. 'Then...then can we be friends?'
His hand continued stroking the back of her head as if he wasn't quite ready to release her. But after a moment or two he eased her away from his chest to look down at her uptilted face. 'You are a sweet person, Emma,' he said. 'Anyone would be proud to have a friend as caring and giving as you.'
Emma rose up on tiptoe and pressed a brush-like kiss to his lips. 'Thank you for saying that. I think it's the nicest thing you've ever said to me.'
He grimaced ruefully. 'Yes, well, I have not exactly been handing out the compliments to you, now, have I?'
She smiled up at him. 'So we got off to a bad start? That doesn't mean we can't forgive and forget.'
Something came and went in his dark eyes. 'I can handle the forgiving part, Emma,' he said. 'It is the forgetting that is the most difficult. I do not know if I will ever be able to do it.'
'You are too hard on yourself,' she said. 'If things had been the other way around, would you have wanted your brother to punish himself the way you have punished yourself?'
He looked down at her for a long moment. 'No, you are right. I would not expect him to do so. It was an accident, a tragic accident that might not have happened a second or even half a second later.'
'I think your father came to that conclusion too,' she said. 'He must have thought about how he had handled things and at the last minute realised how wrong he had been.'
'But why involve you?' he asked as he released her from his light hold. 'What did he hope to achieve by that?'
Emma wrinkled her brow. 'I don't know...We might never find out why. Sometimes that's just the way it is. There is no clear-cut explanation for why people do the things they do. But I feel very strongly he would not have left his estate to both of us if he didn't think we could be of help to each other in some way.'
He gave her another rueful look. 'I have not exactly been much help to you so far, have I? I have torn strips off you at every opportunity, and then to add insult to injury I have robbed you of an experience that should have been precious and memorable, and turned it into a disgusting display of out-of-control male lust, hurting you in the process.' He shouldered open the door and added bitterly, 'I will never forgive myself for that and neither will I forget it.'
Emma winced as the door clicked shut behind him. I will never forget it either, she thought, and, once she was certain he was out of earshot, burst into tears.
CHAPTER NINE
WHEN Emma came downstairs that evening for dinner, Carla the new temporary housekeeper informed her in fractured English that Signore Fiorenza would not be joining her as he had been called away on business and would be away for the rest of the week. Emma did her best not to show her disappointment, but inside she felt crushed that Rafaele hadn't bothered to tell her about his trip face to face. What the housekeeper made of the relayed message, Emma didn't