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“A guy? Who was he?”
The pilot shrugged, then grinned teasingly. “Tall, dark and handsome.”
Matt? Her heart leapt and catapulted around her chest. “Is he still here?”
“Don’t know. I told him what door you’d be coming out of.”
“Thanks.”
Her mind buzzed with a mixture of alarm and excitement. Why would Matt come for her here? What did it mean? Maybe he intended to pick her up and carry her off. Matt was certainly capable of doing that...a wild impulse, a cavalier sweeping away of all objections. If he did...could she let him? She wanted to...right or wrong she no longer cared. She desperately wanted to have Matt with her again.
But was he still here?
Agitated, exhilarated, and almost scared to look, she hurried out of the staff room and into the terminal. She swung her gaze around in hopeful anticipation, and her fluttering heart stopped dead.
It wasn’t Matt waiting for her.
It was Giorgio... Giorgio Tonnelli...as elegant as ever in what was undoubtedly an Armani suit, wearing the self-possessed air of a man whose strikingly handsome face naturally drew admiring looks.
As weird as it seemed, after the initial shock of seeing him here, in Australia, Peta felt completely disconnected from him.
Even though his dark eyes hotly consumed her, she didn’t melt. Her heart didn’t race. She couldn’t even summon up the sense of having once belonged to him for two whole years of her life. The only emotion he raised was a stomach-turning disappointment that he wasn’t Matt.
He lifted his arms in a gesture of here I am for you. It evoked an instant inward recoil. No urge to run to his embrace. Not the slightest temptation, either. It seemed almost grotesque that he should invite it, expect it.
It was gong—all gone—the effect he’d had on her.
When she remained standing stock-still, he stepped closer, smiling his intimate smile, murmuring, “Carissima ... I have missed you so much.”
The velvet voice made her bristle. A voice full of deception. Not like Matt’s, always sounding direct and open and honest, meaning what he said, following through on it, a voice she could trust.
“What are you doing here, Giorgio?” she demanded, resenting the reminder of how he had fooled her, and what a fool she had been to let him—a mannequin of a man—come between her and Matt.
His eyebrows slanted appealingly. “I have come all the way from Milano to see you again. You were the light of my life, bella mia. These past few months...”
“No business deal pending?” she
cut in, seeing him as Matt would—the Latin lover, pouring out romantic words that had no real substance to them.
He shrugged. “I did a little manipulation to make this opportunity.”
More lies. He obviously wanted a convenient little fling with her while he was here. Convenience... That’s what she’d been to Giorgio, not to Matt. How had she let this man flatter her into believing him? All he had was superficial glamour.
“Well, I’m glad your trip won’t be entirely wasted,” she said dryly. “As I told you before, we’re finished. If you’ll excuse me...”
“No...” Ruffled by her cool rejection, he grabbed her hands, meaning to press them into submission. His fingers brushed over her rings. They startled him into looking down. “What is this?”
“I’m married!” Peta stated proudly, lifting her hand to flaunt the beautiful diamond Matt had given her.
She should have taken it off, given it back. The wedding ring, too. It wasn’t right to keep them. Yet, removing the last link to their marriage had seemed...heartless, another hurt on top of too many hurts. It would have to be done, of course, when it felt right.
“This cannot be.” Giorgio’s dark eyes blazed with fierce, emotional intensity. “It is me you love. You cannot have forgotten. I have not forgotten.”
“I never loved you, Giorgio,” Peta said with very clear certainty, totally unmoved by the flow of energy he was trying to wrap around her. “I only thought I did because I didn’t know any better.”
The truth finally came to her, bursting into her heart and exploding through her mind. “My husband has taught me what love is. And I’ll love him for the rest of my life,” she vowed, breaking away from the man who had no right to hold her.
Her heart was racing now.
