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The quality of his voice made Gracie go still. She’d touched a nerve, and she was reminded of that cataclysmic night in the kitchen when he’d told her he knew what it was like to not be noticed.
‘It’s just … it doesn’t seem that way. You have the best of everything. Expect the best without question.’
‘Because I can. Because I’ve earned it. What do you care anyway?’
What do you care? That question sent shards of fear through her. Why did it matter so much? Gracie looked at him and tried in vain to read his expression. He was so closed. She cared because she just knew there was something more to this man than the surface desire to be successful and surround himself with the trappings of the truly rich. There was a darker vein. She’d always sensed it.
There was a long, enigmatic silence and Gracie held her breath. For a moment she felt sure that Rocco was going to say something, but then he moved his hand from around her wrist, up her arm and around her neck to pull her down. He pressed a kiss to her mouth, making her open up to him.
After an intoxicating few seconds Gracie could feel herself tumbling headlong back towards ecstasy. It was like standing on the edge of a huge chasm with nothing to hold onto when she started to fall. She was terrified Rocco would see how much control over her he had.
She pulled back and he smiled at her lazily, his hand making circles on her back. He was turning on the charm, and she cursed him because it worked. When he smiled like that all she wanted to do was purr like a kitten.
Clearly he was avoiding any more probing questions.
She pulled away more forcefully this time and sat up. ‘I’m going to take a shower.’
She stood up and walked over to the bathroom with as much insouciance as she could muster, desperately aware of Rocco’s eyes burning into her back.
As soon as Gracie had disappeared into the bathroom the smile slid from Rocco’s face. He lay back in the bed, his whole body tense, hands clenched to fists over the sheet which barely covered him. He cursed himself and called himself all sorts of names. Gracie had a unique ability to push his buttons and he couldn’t help lashing out. He’d nearly smacked her hand away when she’d touched the scar from his old tattoo. Sleeping with her again had flayed him alive from the inside out. It was as if she could see right into where he was a fake. Where the thin veneer over his life was so flimsy it might fall away at any moment, exposing him.
He had not expected to feel that same out-of-control animalistic urge again. He’d imagined the edge would be gone from his need. But as soon as he’d had Gracie’s face in his hands and her mouth under his all he’d been able to remember was the urgent need to fuse with her. The plane could have gone down into Everest and he wouldn’t have noticed or cared.
And she’d met him every step of the way—even more explosively now than the first time. Rocco cursed out loud. Women did not get under his skin like this. His mother had taught him his first lesson by never putting him first. Whoever had been her current benefactor, or her pimp, had always been number one.
As a hormonal teenager Rocco had found that the girls he’d made a fool of himself over went with the boys with the biggest guns, the most swagger. To this day he gave thanks that he hadn’t joined their ranks just to get a girl who would have soon dumped him for the next big thing. That had been his second big lesson.
His third had been when his sisters—two beautiful blonde, blue-eyed princesses—had stepped over him in the street without so much as a flicker of interest in the young man who had just confronted their papa, calling him Father. They’d not even flinched when their father had spat at him and pushed him to the ground.
When Rocco had finally left Italy and clawed his way up the ladder he’d taken great pleasure in seducing women from that world. Women who were privileged. There had been a measure of satisfaction in knowing that they would never touch an icy-cold and unbreakable part of him. The colder he was, the more he gained a reputation and a slavish following. His greatest satisfaction had come from imagining the horror and recoil on their faces if they really knew his darkest past.
But Gracie, with her serious eyes, her fierce protectiveness of her brother, and her slightly choked awe at flying over the Himalayas was fast unravelling what felt like years of block-building. He’d had no defences to pull around himself when she’d told him about the passport. Nowhere to go to hide or attack, which was what he was used to doing when he felt vulnerable.
She was connecting to a part of him long buried and denied, and he didn’t like the lack of equilibrium that came with that. Rocco knew he’d be the biggest fool to believe in the track of a tear on a woman’s cheek, or a cute story about a childhood dream, and yet—for possibly the first time in his life—he found a part of himself wanted to believe. Even just for a moment.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘WHO are the clothes for?’ Gracie asked when she stepped out of the bathroom for a second time in a towel. The sun was high now outside, and she could see brown earth far below. She felt a shiver of excitement.
Rocco must have showered in another bathroom as he was just finishing buttoning up a shirt, hair damp and looking dynamic and virile. He looked at her. ‘They’re for you.’
Gracie felt herself grow tense. ‘But I have clothes.’
‘You need suitable clothes for the weather. You have no idea how hot it’s going to be. Also, I’m due to attend some functions in Bangkok and New York, so you’ll need appropriate evening dress.’
Gracie bit her lip and looked at the bags warily. ‘It feels weird, I don’t want you dressing me.’
Rocco looked impatient now. ‘It’s no big deal. Luckily I realised in time.’
Fire flashed up Gracie’s spine and she put her hands on her hips. ‘Oh? Because you’re afraid I’d embarrass you in public? Perhaps you shouldn’t have been so hasty kicking your fiancée out the other night. You wouldn’t have to dress her.’
Gracie knew she sounded petulant but she couldn’t seem to stop. The contrast between her and Rocco’s usual women was stark right now, and clearly she didn’t measure up.
‘Need I remind you that the outfit you made me wear the other evening was a size too small? But if you don’t mind me parading around with my—’
‘Enough!’
Gracie shut her mouth.
