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‘You threw me out of your life three years ago. You warned me never to darken your door again, remember?’ Her voice emerged husky, heavy with a need she was fighting desperately to deny.
‘Not because I had grown tired of the exquisite pleasure I found in your body. In fact, that was the reason I swore never to set foot in England again.’
She was shocked by this stark admission; her eyes flew to his. ‘You couldn’t trust yourself to be around me, despite labelling me as a thief?’
A grim smile twitched his lips. ‘You see what the power of sex can do? Even in the midst of bitter disillusionment and betrayal, the body wants what it wants.’ To demonstrate, he brought her closer still to his tight, masculine form so she could not fail to feel the evidence for herself.
‘God, you make it sound so cheap and sordid!’
‘Deny it if you must, but it’s the truth.’ This time his lips lowered enough to brush over hers.
The brief contact sent a wild shudder through her, the force of her own need stabbing her deep in the pelvis. A moan of pleasure escaped before she could stop it. When he lifted his head, she realised her hands had curled into his chest. She straightened them, but found she couldn’t quite remove them from the heated, cotton-covered flesh.
‘Don’t do this, Rocco. If this is the example you’re hoping to set your son, then I pray for his upbringing.’
If she’d meant the words to cause offence, she was disappointed. In true Latin style, he shrugged eloquently.
‘It’s right for him to learn that feelings should be expressed naturally. I don’t want him to be brought up with the suppressing of feelings and stiff-upper-lip nonsense you English are so fond of. It’s also good for him to see that his parents can express natural feelings towards one another.’
She knew he meant this as she’d witnessed, and envied, the open love and warmth he shared with his grandmother and cousins. But still, ‘I wouldn’t describe what I’m feeling for you right now as natural.’
Raising his head, he feathered a forefinger down her cheek, his lips curving with a hint of a smile she recalled as devastating when fully unfurled. ‘Really? How would you describe it?’
‘Murderous is a good start,’ she forced out, despite the battle she fought against the urge to curl into his touch.
He tossed out another shrug, in no way disturbed by her answer. ‘You’re not the first to want my head on a platter.’
‘You mean I’m not the first person to be falsely accused of stealing by you?’
Where the first reminder had failed miserably, this second reminder of why he’d thrown her out of his life succeeded. Like a switch, the heat was extinguished from his eyes. Mia should’ve been thankful that she’d achieved her aim, but all she felt was bereft when his arms fell from her. She cursed herself for her weakness. Why? After all he’d done to her, couldn’t she summon enough willpower to resist him?
‘Perhaps you’re right. Some things should not be aired in front of my son.’
My son.
The fierce possession in his statement fired a warning in Mia’s head. He’s my son too, she wanted to rage at him, but Gianni had already been bombarded with too many emotions this morning and her normally chatty son was now gazing solemnly at his parents. It irked her that Rocco was right, that she hadn’t considered her son’s feelings before she’d let herself be dragged into a heated exchange in his presence.
But then he’d always had that effect on her, hadn’t he? His lean, dark, heart-stopping good looks combined with that hard muscle-packed body had spelt trouble for her the first time she’d laid eyes on him two months into her employment with the London division of Vitelli Construction. But it was the deadly combination of that and his superior intellect that had tipped her over the edge of uncontrollable lust into full-blown infatuation.
And hadn’t he fed into it? He’d lapped it up as if it were his due, taken everything she had to offer and more, until she’d felt herself disappearing into the giant, larger than life force that was Rocco Vitelli.
It enraged her now to think she’d come so close to giving up everything, every damn thing she’d worked so hard for, to please him. Only to find out the real reason for his proposal: first as a means of pleasing his grandmother, and then, provided nature took its course—and why shouldn’t it, since Rocco Vitelli willed it?—as a breeding machine to carry on the Vitelli empire.
Of course, in the end it hadn’t mattered because clever, quick-thinking and infinitely superior Rocco had got the boot in first and she’d been forced to give up everything anyway. The career she’d so carefully planned and proudly achieved in spite of her every misgiving, in spite of the very loud echoes about her unworthiness, had been ripped from her in the blink of an eye.
Except now he was dangling the carrot of getting her life back, to put the horror of the last three years behind her. Was she a fool to refuse this chance to finally move on with her life, to start providing for her son the way she’d been unable to do since he was born? She could wallow in bitterness for what had happened to her, or she could dust herself off, accept his offer of assistance and start reclaiming her life.
‘How long will we be gone?’ she asked, after taking a steadying breath.
The barest hint of tension eased from his frame. A minuscule signal that he wasn’t blasé about all this. For some absurd reason, it eased Mia’s knotted insides.
‘If everything goes according to plan, the business side of things should be concluded in a few hours,’ he replied.
By teatime she could be free of the nightmare that’d been hanging over her for three long years.
Of course, it wasn’t till much later that the full meaning of his words truly sank in.
CHAPTER FIVE
