I don’t understand the hurry.’
‘I really can’t wait that long, tesoro mio, to make you my wife. Afterwards,’ he promised with a shrug, ‘they can arrange anything they wish, but you will be mine.’
Valentina’s hand on her arm cut through Erin’s brooding recollections.
As she walked through the door Valentina stopped and turned to face Erin. ‘Look, Erin, I know what this seems like,’ she began urgently.
Erin shook her head in total bewilderment. ‘What seems like?’
‘I’m really sorry.’ ‘Sorry about what?’
Valentina shook her head, her gaze trained on a point in the room beyond Erin. Erin automatically turned.
She literally felt the blood drain from her face.
Her body responded to the sight of the tall, supremely elegant figure who stepped forward, impeccable in his light grey suit and open-necked white shirt, exactly the same way it would have to a couple of thousand volts of neat electricity.
For a split second every nerve cell in her body fired off then shut down.
She stared at him, her throat aching with the emotions locked there. An irrational part of her visualised flinging herself into his arms and she really had to fight against her genetic predisposition to do so. It would mean heartbreak all over again.
She would not let history repeat itself. One woman in the family prepared to humiliate herself to keep a man was more than enough.
This can’t be happening now. I’m not ready to do this yet.
The same sexual awareness that she had always experienced in his presence hummed in her bloodstream; it made it impossible to think rationally. It always had—that was the problem.
He was standing only a couple of feet away from her at the most. If she had reached out she could have touched him, laid her hand on his chest and felt the warmth of his skin, the thud of his heartbeat.
A strange little laugh emerged from her lips. Losing composure scarily fast, she turned her head. Her gaze met that of Valentina, who grimaced at the silent reproach in her eyes.
The older woman shook her head and mouthed, I’m sorry.
‘You planned this.’ The sense of betrayal Erin felt was intense.
She had been genuinely touched that Francesco’s cousin had made an effort to cultivate friendship even after what had happened.
‘Francesco just wanted to talk to you and … we meant it for the best.’
Sam, who had come to stand behind his wife, placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Come on, sweetheart. Let’s leave them to it.’ As he took his infant son from her arms he looked directly at Erin. ‘Val didn’t want to do this.’ He glanced towards Francesco, nodded almost imperceptibly, and guided his wife from the room.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FOR several seconds after the door closed Erin did not move or react. The silence in the room screamed.
The only way she had survived their separation was by recognising that she no longer loved Francesco. That she never actually had. Real love, the sort that endured, was slow burning. It had nothing to do with the dark, sizzling heat and mind-numbing lust their marriage had been based on, but was about shared interests and mutual respect.
Mutual respect, she muttered through clenched lips. It was a necessary reminder. It would be perilously easy to allow chemistry to confuse her when every cell in her body was reacting to him standing there.
She could be sexually attracted to him—who wouldn’t be? But attraction didn’t equate with deeper feelings.
It equated with disaster!
Concentrate, she told herself, and don’t think about his mouth. Concentrate on what a total bastard he is and getting out of this room without making a total fool of yourself … that and breathe.
Yes, breathing would be useful. She tilted her chin and took a deep, steadying breath, schooling her stiff features into what she hoped was an expression of contempt.
‘This is a pretty low trick, Francesco, even by your standards.’
Eyes trained on her face, he gave a very Latin shrug. ‘I had no alternative.’
Before she had walked into the room he had been angry. Now she was here and he was still angry, but interwoven with the anger were tenacious threads of tenderness. Hands clenched, he ruthlessly subdued a sudden strong compulsion to cradle her in his arms. Under the hostility she looked so damned fragile!
The groove above his masterful nose etched deep as his eyes continued to rake her face.
Some might have considered the recent changes in her appearance were subtle, but not Francesco, who had every line and curve of her face committed to memory.
The alterations screamed