An Inheritance of Shame - By Kate Hewitt Page 0,56

impulse made her ask, ‘Has this lived up to your expectations, Angelo?’

‘This?’ he repeated, his voice turning just a little guarded and Lucia gazed at him openly, wanting, even needing, this honesty between them.

She wasn’t really sure what she was asking. ‘Success,’ she said after a pause. ‘Wealth. Power. Revenge, even—all of it. Has it lived up to your expectations? Is it everything you hoped it would be?’

Angelo squinted as he gazed out at the city. ‘Wealth and power have their advantages.’

‘But do they fill that emptiness inside?’

She felt him tense, saw his eyes narrow and his pupils flare. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Do you remember?’ she asked softly. ‘When your—when Carlo Corretti died, and you came and found me. Do you remember what you said?’

She could tell by the way his mouth tightened and he looked away that he did. He’d dead, Lucia, and I don’t feel anything. I just feel empty.

‘Why are we talking about this?’ Angelo asked, his tone even and yet also edged with impatience, annoyance. ‘I thought we came to Paris to forget about all that, at least for a little while.’

‘Is it wrong of me to want to know? To want to know you?’

He let out a sigh. ‘Not wrong. Just…difficult. We’ll argue about it, Lucia. I know that. You don’t see things the way I do.’ A fair point, yet she knew the implication was that he was seeing things correctly and she wasn’t.

Lucia decided to leave it. Why ruin a perfect afternoon by insisting on a discussion she wasn’t sure either of them were ready to have?

‘We don’t have to talk about it now,’ she said quietly, and with a grateful smile Angelo turned from the railing.

‘There’s plenty more to see in this city, you know.’

They spent the afternoon touring the sights, taking in the endless steps of Montmartre and the quaint, narrow streets of the Latin Quarter, the modern Centre Pompidou and the ancient Louvre.

They wandered down the Champs-élysées and Angelo insisted on buying her a dress for dinner, a strappy black number that made Lucia feel both sophisticated and sexy.

‘And we’d better not forget the shoes,’ he murmured, his eyes glinting, and she laughed, realising he’d noticed her old shoes from before. ‘How about these?’ He’d stopped in front of an exclusive-looking boutique and pointed to a pair of diamante-encrusted stilettos. The heel was at least five inches high.

‘They’re ridiculous,’ she protested.

‘True,’ Angelo agreed solemnly. ‘But you do love them.’

Lucia had to admit that she did. She’d never possessed anything frivolous or extravagant before, and suddenly those silvery stilettos seemed the best shoes in the world.

Angelo led her by the hand into the boutique, and a few minutes later he was slipping one of the stilettos onto her foot.

‘I feel like Cinderella,’ she said with a laugh, and he glanced up at her with passion-darkened eyes.

‘You’re my Cinderella.’

‘That’s the only one I want to be.’ She swallowed, her heart suddenly starting to pound, and then stood. She felt about ten feet tall in the heels, and she tottered around the shop, feeling outrageous and yet so very sexy.

‘We’ll take them,’ Angelo told the sales assistant. He pulled Lucia close so only she could hear his whispered words. ‘I have a fantasy of seeing you wearing those and nothing else.’

A blush fired Lucia’s body and she glanced away. ‘That sounds like a…an interesting fantasy,’ she murmured.

By the time they’d arrived back at the hotel Lucia was exhausted but also happy. All afternoon Angelo had been relaxed, fun, even silly. He’d been the boy she had missed, the boy she’d fallen in love with. Underneath the hard gloss of wealth and power he was still there, and the realisation made her heart sing with joy.

As she walked into the suite, still amazed by the sheer luxuriousness of the place, she stopped suddenly for the doors to the private terrace were ajar, and she could see a table there, laid with linen and flickering with candlelight.

She turned back to Angelo. ‘How—?’

‘I’d like to say it took great planning and precision, but all it really took was a phone call.’

‘Even so,’ Lucia murmured, touched more than she could say by his thoughtfulness. She gave a slight grimace, gestured to her plain T-shirt and capris. ‘I think I have half the dirt of Paris on me.’

‘There’s no reason why you can’t make good use of that huge marble shower,’ Angelo said with a glint in his eyes. ‘We both could.’

Lucia’s breath caught in her chest