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‘This is the closest town for basic supplies, and a train station.’ He pointed. ‘Park over there.’
Keelin dutifully pulled into a space. She killed the engine, feeling suddenly nervous.
Gianni took off his seat belt and turned to face her. ‘One of my cars was delivered into town ahead of us. I’m going to drive it home.’
He glanced at his watch and then at Keelin, his expression completely inscrutable. ‘There’s a train to Rome in two hours. I’m going to leave you here now and you can decide what you want to do. You can be my wife in absentia, or you can own up to the fact that you want me too, and decide to try and make the best of this situation, with me.’
Keelin stared at him. There was no artifice any more. No game-playing. This was it. Straight up and unadorned. Gianni leaned over then and cupped her jaw with his hand. She felt faint calluses on his skin and her blood sizzled.
He came close enough to kiss her but stopped just short. The nerve ends in her lips tingled, as if pleading for his touch. With those black eyes locked on hers he said, ‘I want you, Keelin, and I want you to stay. But I won’t beg.’
And then he drew back, taking his hand away. He got out of the jeep and closed the door. Keelin watched him walk across the small street and get into a low-slung sports car. The engine surged to life, making her flinch minutely, and he took off without so much as a glance in her direction.
In the quiet aftermath came a sense of desolation far worse than the one she’d felt when she’d realised she was alone in the villa. Keelin wasn’t sure how long she stayed in the jeep, still a little stunned, but eventually she got out and went to a small café and ordered a coffee. She saw people come into the town, clearly for the train, sitting in cars, and more came into the café with bags.
She cursed Gianni for giving her this choice. And at the same time she cursed herself because he was right. She’d been reacting to him from the moment she’d seen him and had taken little or no responsibility for her own actions. It was all so messed up. Why couldn’t she have met Gianni outside of this crazy condition of her father’s?
That inner revelation shocked her. To finally acknowledge with brutal honesty that she hated the circumstances which had brought them together. But she didn’t hate the man. At all. He was the first man who had breached the formidable walls of her defences, without even trying very hard.
He was the first person she’d been completely honest with.
Was she so reluctant to deal with her own desires that she would have preferred Gianni to lock her in the villa and seduce her into some kind of mindless state where she could abdicate all responsibility for her own feelings and desires?
The train pulled into the station and there was a surge of people towards the platform. But Keelin didn’t move. When Gianni had said to her earlier, Do you ever stop fighting? she’d answered, I don’t think I know how.
She realised she was incredibly weary now. She’d been fighting for a long time. For love and attention. For recognition.
She didn’t like to admit that something about the fact that Gianni was prepared to admit he wanted her to stay, but was also prepared to let her go, made it almost impossible to leave.
She’d been seeking her father’s approval ever since she’d become aware of his rejection of her because she was a girl. It had informed all of her actions, including her endless teenage searching for love via whichever boy would give her the tiniest bit of attention. Until that awful night had brought her to her senses and given her a delayed sense of self-worth.
And now she was in this situation and all of a sudden everything which had been so clear and clean-cut to her was blurry. The only thing in sharp focus was Gianni Delucca and this fire he’d ignited in her belly. She’d handed more than just her virginity over to him last night. She’d trusted him. And he’d restored a piece of her innocence that had been ripped away by those boys.
A very fragile flame flickered to life inside her. Perhaps this marriage wasn’t a dead end? Or the loss of her independence? Maybe she could make Gianni see how serious she was about wanting a chance?
The whistle for the train sounded and Keelin jerked as if someone had pinched her.
This was it. She could run for the train and continue fighting, or she could stay and go back to that villa, and face Gianni and herself. As the train pulled out of the station, the inner revelation mocked her; there’d never been a choice. From the moment Gianni had been prepared to let her go, she’d wanted to stay.
* * *
When Gianni saw the dust cloud from his office window as the jeep came back down the drive, a tension he was unaware of holding on to left his body. The train would have left fifteen minutes ago and in spite of his sanguine attitude he’d been on the verge of calling for the helicopter to get back to Rome to meet the train on the other end.
It had been a gamble to give Keelin the choice of leaving. But when she’d kept insisting this wasn’t what she wanted he’d had the sick realisation that he was no better than his bullying father if he forced her to stay.
He’d had an appreciation of just how he’d steamrollered Keelin into the marriage, giving her little or no r
oom to manoeuvre. And while he certainly wasn’t about to grant her total freedom, he’d also realised that he wanted her to want to stay.
The real Keelin O’Connor was proving to be far more enigmatic than he might ever have imagined. Revealing new facets all the time, like a true chameleon.
One thing was sure—she wasn’t the malleable sweet wife he’d arrogantly assumed she would be when he’d agreed to marry her sight unseen, and she’d been punishing him for that from day one. Gianni knew on some level he deserved it, but also, he knew with a sense of disquiet that even if he had a choice, he wouldn’t let Keelin go right now.
The jeep came closer—he could make out the red sheen of her hair, the pale oval of her face. His blood leapt as she drove around to the front of the villa and a new kind of tension came into his body. A far more carnal one. And then he went to meet her.
Gianni waited in the doorway, careful to keep his expression neutral, aware that it wouldn’t take much to send Keelin fleeing again. She looked at him carefully when she came up the steps.
He just took her bags and said lightly, ‘Lucia has prepared some lunch. Are you hungry?’
