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Ranieri let out a laugh, too dark to be anything like amusement, and she knew the difference now. “Perhaps not. But then, my grandfather was a Furlan. There was no question that he loved my grandmother. He said so at the time. He loved his sons as well. But he would not be told by his wife that he should give up anything. He would not permit my grandmother to dictate his behavior. So they lived apart until they died, as he would not divorce her. And he not only kept his mistress, he took others to prove he could. He wasted a fortune on each, leaving my grandmother to fend for herself. Leaving her to raise his sons with the money she had brought into the marriage. He felt he could do as he liked, and so he did. What is that if not egregious pride? And how many lives marred because of it?”
Annika’s heart was kicking at her, as if this was perilous, this conversation. She could not see how, seeing as they were speaking of people long dead. But she could feel the danger. She felt as if she was standing on the edge of a steep cliff and the wind was high.
“Still, my grandfather is not the best example of the Furlan pride,” Ranieri continued. “His sins were only ever of a personal nature. There are far too many others who made certain that their stumbles ruined more than their marriages and families.”
“With all these cautionary tales, you must have spent your life doing your best to rid yourself of this pride,” Annika said.
Perhaps too hopefully.
His dark brows rose. “Quite the opposite. I am so proud, Annika, that I refuse to accept that I will lose anything I wish to keep. My father has lost at least three fortunes by my reckoning. One of my uncles lost his life, too proud to admit he made a mistake and too proud to recognize that he was on the wrong side of the wrong kind of people. My other uncle considers himself too good to do what he ought to do to better his situation, an abominable display of misplaced pride if ever there was one. But as for me?” He did something with his glass of wine that seemed to take in the whole of the room, the cottage, perhaps the world. Certainly her. “I have made so many fortunes that it cannot matter if I lose three. Or even ten. Call it insurance if you will.”
But he did not sound pleased by this. He sounded wrecked, and she hated it.
“Ranieri,” she whispered. “Surely you must know—”
“I will show you what I know best,” he told her then, his voice dark and grave.
But when he moved, coming to pull her out of her chair, his kiss lit them both on fire.
And he made love to her like a man possessed that night. First there on the couch in that sitting room. Then he carried her upstairs, spent some time with her in the spacious bath, and then ripped her to shreds in their bed.
Again and again.
Annika thrilled to it all.
He was ruthless and demanding, and she felt as if she’d been made for this. Made for him, to meet his need, his hunger. To match his ruthlessness with her own.
To make certain that both of them burned bright and long, together.
And in the morning, she woke as he surged inside her once more, framing her face with his big, restless hands, his gaze pinning her to the mattress in the early morning light.
Usually their mornings were flash fires, bold and bright and fast-moving, but today was different.
He moved slow, setting them both to smoldering. So slow that every thrust took forever, and every retreat felt like a loss.
Still, he held her gaze. Still, he held her face in his hands.
With every deep, beautiful thrust, he broke her heart.
And when it was done, Annika lay in the bed and understood that she was already repeating the mistake his grandmother had made.
She was in love with him. Irrevocably, unpardonably, and not at alltemporarilyin love.
And looking back, she thought as she sat in the bath again—sinking down until her whole body was submerged by the warm water, save her face—it was possible she always had been.
More than possible. Likely.
This morning’s lovemaking had stripped away the last of her defenses, and she could see everything so clearly now. She had met him when she was barely sixteen and had hated the very sight of him—but what use could she possibly have had for silly boys after a sight of Ranieri? She’d gone on to college, where so many of her friends had experimented with passion and longing, crushes and relationships, but never Annika.
Some part of her must have known all along that she could settle for no substitutes. Even though she’d continued to despise him. Even though she’d considered him the bane of her existence.
Maybe there had been something in her that had sensed the kind of fire they would kindle together, all along.
“It’s all right,” she assured herself as she rose from the bath and got dressed in her walking clothes, an easy pair of soft overalls, a chambray shirt, a wide-brimmed hat. “It’s all going to be all right.”
Because it was clear to her that last night’s storytelling had indeed been a cautionary tale—but for her, not him.
She stopped by the portrait of his grandmother that hung in the hall outside their bedroom. “I will not make the same mistake you did,” she promised this woman long gone, who had been punished for her heart. “I won’t tell him.”
