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The end of the week of the honeymoon came and went and Gianni had still made no move to go back to Rome, even though he felt the need to do so like an annoying burr under his skin. But the fact was that the lure to stay and indulge himself making love to his wife was far more powerful.
He’d looked at the woman—exhausted—in the bed beside him that morning and cursed her roundly. Merda.
He’d taken this week out to focus on his new wife and give her some sense of security in the marriage and get to know her. But the worrying thing was that he couldn’t seem to envisage a time when he would feel relaxed enough to leave Keelin to her own devices so that he could get back to work.
It was almost as if, superstitiously, he knew that leaving this place would break something apart that felt very fragile. And would also remind him of things that he was deliberately pushing to the back of his mind, like since when had he ever had the compulsion to indulge in a domestic idyll?
Staff had returned to the villa from their week’s holiday and the place resumed its usual busy efficiency. Gianni had distracted himself when he wasn’t with Keelin with half-hearted attempts to focus on things that needed to be attended to there.
Like his plans for a new vineyard and newer plans to open a stables. He’d just spoken to his friend Gio Corretti in Sicily, who he’d rung for advice on the matter, and something about hearing Gio’s children laughing and playing in the background had made something inside Gianni ache a little. Something completely alien and new.
He hadn’t told Keelin about those plans and he didn’t like how his decision made him feel a little exposed. He told himself it had nothing to do with the fact that she loved horses and that he’d thought about it after bringing her to a local stables the other day, where they’d spent the day on horseback. Her pure undiluted joy had been infectious and he’d practically had to drag her away, she’d been so happily mucking in. He also told himself it had nothing to do with the fact that he’d seen her smile, like that. Exactly like the photo in her father’s office.
It was a clinical decision based on the fact that he was merely trying to do everything he could to make Keelin feel as at home as possible.
He frowned now—where was she anyway? He got up and left his study and found her in the small garden outside the kitchen, planting herbs with Lucia. Their backs were to him so he could watch them for a minute.
Keelin rested back on her heels, wiping her brow. She was frowning and saying in halting Italian, ‘Buondìa, buongiorno, buonanotte...’
Lucia was beaming and saying, ‘Bene, molto bene.’
Keelin smiled. ‘Grazie mille.’
Gianni felt his chest get tight to hear Lucia conducting a rudimentary Italian lesson. The earth under his feet was moving, shifting. As if sensing him, Keelin looked around and smiled.
Dammit. The tight feeling increased.
She rose to her feet with a lithe move, displaying her long bare legs in cut-off shorts and her stunning curves in a halterneck top. A straw hat protected her delicate pale skin from the sun; even so, she was acquiring freckles and a golden glow.
Gianni had the most bizarre desire to never leave this place, and to feel her arms slide around him so that he could rest his head on her breast and experience a measure of peace and security that had eluded him all of his life.
She stopped before him and tilted her head. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
Before that incisive green gaze might see too much, Gianni grabbed her hand and all but dragged her into the villa. By the time they were in the bedroom with the door shut firmly behind them, they were mutually ravenous—tearing at clothes and falling into the bed in a tangle of limbs, mouths meeting with a clash of tongue and teeth.
Gianni weakly welcomed the equilibrium he regained as he embedded himself deep in Keelin’s slick heat. All he wanted right now were these incandescent moments that drowned out the voices screaming, What the hell is going on here?
* * *
Early the following morning as dawn rose, Gianni left a sleeping Keelin in bed. He couldn’t seem to rest, even though his body was sated in a way that made him nervous. Sated, but still ravenous. As if he was being kept on a knife edge at all times. It was disconcerting.
In his study he noted the flashing lights of about a million messages and passed his hand over his face wearily. Before he listened to them he opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out the small velvet box that had been delivered the previous day.
Opening it, the emerald ring Keelin had chosen in the shop in Montefalco glittered up at him. It seemed to mock him for lots of things. For being so careless with his first choice of ring. For believing her ridiculous charade at the start. For not realising that despite her natural unfussiness, she had an innate style and grace.
He hadn’t given it to her yet. Something was holding him back and he hated that it wasn’t just something he could do without feeling as if suddenly some kind of meaning was attached.
Gianni sighed and closed the box, putting it back in the drawer. And then he picked up the phone to listen to his messages. As he listened to message after message, his world stopped turning and his previous thoughts and feelings reverberated in his head, mocking him loudly.
He finally put down the phone. Shock made him feel sluggish. And all he could think about and feel was the incredible sting of betrayal. And think of the woman in the bed upstairs, the woman who had given him her innocence in a bid to make him believe that she was innocent through and through. When she wasn’t at all.
One of the most important lessons his father had ever taught him—inadvertently—was that you could only trust yourself. In the Mafia, where the code was loyalty and family, everyone knew that at any moment your own brother could shoot you in the back, so that stuff about family and loyalty? It was all rubbish.
Ever since Gianni had looked at that photograph of Keelin on the horse, and seen something pure in her smiling face—something he’d believed didn’t exist—he’d been behaving like a fool. And now he stood to lose everything.
The fact that she had to be guilty was unequivocal. She’d played him from the start and he’d fallen for it. She’d gone to incredible lengths to distract him, and ultimately seduce him so that he didn’t realise what was going on. Hadn’t she admitted to him that she’d do anything to prove her loyalty to her father? Well, she just had, by running so many rings around him that he didn’t know if he was coming or going.
He made a call, an awful terrifying feeling of rage spreading to every limb, turning him icy. Icy was better. He’d been too consumed with heat, and look where that had left him—in serious jeopardy.
