An Inheritance of Shame - By Kate Hewitt Page 0,4

might have because of their shared history. He’d worried that she might have expected more from him, things he knew he wasn’t capable of, couldn’t give.

Looking at her impassive face now he knew any uneasy concerns he had once had were completely unfounded, and he wasn’t even surprised. Of course Lucia had moved on.

‘Do you have any tablets?’ she asked calmly, and the pain was bad enough that he answered her.

‘In my wash kit, in my bag.’

She slipped past him, and he inhaled her scent as she went by. He sank onto the edge of the bed, the flute of champagne still dangling from his fingers. Distantly over the pounding in his brain he heard her moving about, unzipping his suitcase.

A few minutes later she came back in and knelt by his side. ‘Let me take this,’ she said, and plucked the champagne from his fingers. ‘And give you this.’ She handed him a glass of water and two tablets. ‘I checked the dosage. It said two?’

He nodded, and he felt her hand wrap around his as she guided the glass to his lips. Even through the pain pounding in his head he felt a spark of awareness blaze from his fingers all the way to his groin. He remembered how sweet and yielding she’d been in his arms, without even so much as a word spoken between them. But then Lucia had always been sweet and yielding, always been willing to take care of him, even when he’d pushed her away again and again.

Clearly she’d changed, for she pulled her hand away from his, and he stamped down on that spark.

‘Thank you,’ he said gruffly. They may have shared one desperate, passionate night, but he knew there was nothing between them now. There couldn’t be.

Lucia sat back on her heels and watched Angelo struggle with himself, as he so often did. Feeling weak and hating to show it. And her, wanting to help him and hating how he always pushed her away. The story of both of their lives.

A story she was done with, she told herself now. Seeing Angelo again might have opened up that ache inside her, but she wasn’t going to do anything about it. She wasn’t going to be stupid about it, even though part of her, just as before, as always, yearned towards him and whatever little he could give.

No. He’d wrecked her before, and broken not just her heart but her whole self. Shattered her into pieces, and she wouldn’t allow even a hairline crack to appear now. It had taken years to put herself together again, to feel strong if not actually ever complete.

She rose, picking up the towels she’d dropped when she’d gone for his pills. ‘Will you be all right?’ she said, making it not so much a question as a statement.

‘I’m fine,’ he said, the words a growl, and she knew he was already regretting that little display of vulnerability.

‘Then I’ll leave you to it,’ she said, and Angelo didn’t answer. She took a few steps and then stopped, her back to him, one hand on the doorframe, suddenly unwilling to go so simply. So easily. Words bubbled up, bottled in her throat. Words that threatened to spill out of the hurt and pain she felt even now, so many years later. The pain and hurt she didn’t want him to see, because if he saw it he’d know how much she’d cared. How weak she’d been—and still was.

She swallowed it all down, those words and worse ones, broken, wounded words about a grief so very deep and raw that he knew nothing about. She couldn’t tell him tonight.

Maybe she wouldn’t ever tell him. Did he really need to know? Wouldn’t it be better to simply move on, or at least to let him think she had moved on?

‘Lucia?’ Angelo said, and it was a question although what he was asking she didn’t know. What do you want? Why are you still here?

‘I’m going,’ she said, and then she forced herself to walk out of the suite without looking back.

CHAPTER TWO

ANGELO FINGERED THE typewritten list of the hotel’s employees that lay on his desk. Matteo’s desk, because there had been no time to change anything since signing the papers on the hotel this morning. He’d gone directly from the meeting of unhappy shareholders to here, sweeping into his rival’s office and claiming it as his own.

His mouth twisted as he glanced at the tabloid headline he’d left up on

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