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His hands brushed the length of her back. ‘Your bed or mine?’
Tilting her head, she met his midnight stare, her heart catching at the warmth in it, and the gleaming heat that was of a very different nature.
As dangerous as she knew it would be to actually spend a night sharing a bed, sharing even more intimacy with him, she didn’t care. At least not then. If she regretted it in the morning, then...well, then she would deal with it in the morning.
‘Mine.’
* * *
Taking great care not to disturb him, Grace disentangled her limbs from Luca’s and crept out of bed.
After making love again, he had pulled her into his arms and fallen asleep. Usually the sound of his deep, steady breathing was enough to pull her into slumber too but tonight her brain refused to switch off. Which was hardly surprising under the circumstances.
Padding out of the bedroom, she headed into the main room of the suite and began rummaging through the bureau. There, she found an A4-sized notepad and an expensive-looking fountain pen with a variety of nibs and ink cartridges. She hardly cared. Her fingers were itching worse than any itch she could recall. She would have been satisfied with a lip liner.
Back in the bedroom she turned the small light of the dressing table down to its dimmest setting, quietly dragged the armchair to the side of the bed and nestled into it.
She had no idea how long she had been drawing when Luca’s deep voice broke through the silence. ‘Have you given me horns?’
She raised her eyes from the pad on her lap and threw a sheepish smile. Shoving her hand down her side, she pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and threw it at him.
He sat up, unfurled the paper and smoothed it out. He looked from the paper to her and back again. There was no anger in his expression, more a sad acceptance. But that could easily have been a trick of the light.
She’d sketched him sleeping. The more detail she’d put into it, the tighter her chest had become. The longer she had drawn, the more the hate inside her had continued to squeeze out, and so, in desperation, she had drawn a thick, narrow goatee on his chin, quickly followed by a set of intricate horns above his ears. She’d even popped a red cartridge into the pen to tint the eyes, the only colour on the page. When she’d finished, her gaze had flittered between the devil on the page and the devil on the bed. Except her eyes no longer recognised the devil on the bed for what it was. All she could see was the man, sleeping, strangely innocent in his slumber. Her heart had clenched so tightly her eyes had brimmed. And she’d looked back down on that page and it had felt all wrong.
Screwing it into a tight ball, she’d started again, using nothing but her eyes to dictate what her hands drew. This picture felt cleaner somehow.
‘If it’s any consolation, the picture I’m drawing now is definitely sans horns.’ Despite her best efforts she couldn’t hide the catch in her throat.
‘It is,’ he said, his voice thick.
She looked up.
‘It is a consolation,’ he clarified, a wry smile playing on his lips.
She dropped her gaze back to the pad on her lap and added some strokes to thicken the hair. ‘Are you ready to tell me about the breakup of your partnership with Francesco Calvetti?’
Her question seemed to surprise him, catching him mid yawn. ‘There’s not much to say. I have decided now is the right time to break it.’
Dropping a tiny splodge of ink along the jaw, she rubbed it with her middle finger to represent the dark stubble of his jawline. ‘But why now?’
‘There are many reasons.’
Silence hung in the air.
‘How did you come to work with him in the first place? You never did tell me.’ She kept her voice calm and non-accusatory. The soft lighting in the dark room had created a peaceful ambiance and she wanted to keep it that way, reluctant to spoil the harmony they had created, however fleeting that harmony might be.
Expelling a deep breath, Luca swung his legs off the bed and strode to the window, drawing back the curtains.
With his back to her, his naked torso had never looked more magnificent.
Quickly she turned the page of her pad over and started on a fresh sheet.
She waited for him to speak.
‘Our fathers were great friends as well as associates. Francesco and I went to school together, spent time on holiday together, that kind of thing.’
‘Really? I vaguely remember him from our wedding, but until you went into business with him when you bought the first casino, I didn’t even know his name.’ And then they had bought another casino and then the nightclubs. It hadn’t taken long before she had grown to hate the name Francesco Calvetti.
‘Francesco’s father was a bastard.’
