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‘What’s wrong?’ Lorenzo scanned the rapid changing expressions on her taut face. ‘And why have you turned red?’
‘I don’t know,’ Brooke gabbled, suddenly snaking free of the dress round her hips and kicking off her shoes to scramble below the sheets, desperate to be doing something rather than freezing guiltily beneath that far too shrewd and clever gaze of his. He picked up on her insecurities and it was not only embarrassing but also unnerving because it stripped away what little poise she retained.
‘You’re blushing!’ Lorenzo laughed in apparent appreciation of that achievement.
‘Did you have to mention it?’ Brooke groaned. ‘To me, being with you like this still feels verynew. I know that’s silly but that’s how it is.’
‘No, it’s not silly. I’m being insensitive,’ Lorenzo sliced in with lingering incomprehension at the concept of Brooke being embarrassed about anything on the planet. But he could see that, as far as she was concerned, she was telling him the truth and once again he marvelled at the transparency of her expressions.
‘I’m the one out of step here with the norm, not you.’ Brooke stretched up a hand to grasp his, trying to bridge the gap between them.
Lorenzo ceased trying to wrap his head around the inexplicable and came down on the bed to rub an appreciative hand over a succulent pink nipple and close his mouth there instead. When had she got so serious? When hadhebegun to behave as though what was only a temporary identity were therealBrooke? She was driving him insane again, only it was in a very different way from the first time around, he conceded fiercely. Here he was craving his almost ex-wife like an addictive drug. For the first time since the crash he wanted to walk away...and then her fingers tightened round his and she looked up at him and she smiled, and his thoughts evaporated as though they had never existed.
She stretched up, clumsily gripping his arm for support, and settled her ripe pink lips against his and the scent of her, the sweet delicious taste of her as her tongue darted against his, turned Lorenzo on so hard and fast, he flattened her down to the bed with two strong hands, his dominant nature taking over with all the passion he had once had to restrain in the marital bed. But there were no curbs now and he could not resist that lure of being himself for the first time with her or the temptation of not being with a woman who lay back like a goddess inviting worship and never touched him.
Brooke felt the change in him and welcomed his passion, realising that she had almost frightened him off with her insecurities. Her fingers delved into his luxuriant black hair and smoothed down his high cheekbones to the roughened blue shadow of stubble that highlighted his wide sensual mouth. She gasped as he dipped his head over her breasts and seized a swollen pink crest and grazed it with the edge of his teeth. She wassosensitive there that her back arched and then his skilled hands were travelling lower, tracing the damp cleft between her thighs, probing the tight entrance, making her hips rock up and a low-pitched cry part her lips.
‘You’re so ready for me,’ Lorenzo husked in satisfaction, shifting position to roll her over and up onto her knees.
Her whole body clenched in sensual shock as he drove into her hard and fast. It was electrifying, every skin cell and nerve ending in her body powering the excitement that made her heart race and her breath catch in her throat. Every sleek, powerful thrust of his body sent sensation tumbling and cascading in seismic waves through her quivering body and heightened the tight clenching low in her pelvis. Her internal muscles contracted and sent her careening with a cry into a climax that detonated like a bomb of sheer pleasure inside her trembling body. It felt so good tears of reaction burned her eyes and she blinked rapidly. But he wasn’t finished, no, far from it, and as the pressure began to build and tighten unbearably inside her again, it only took one expert touch at the most sensitive spot in her body for another orgasm to fly through her in a violent storm.
Shattered, she collapsed down on the bed, while he groaned in satisfaction and his arms tightened round her, flipping her round so that his wicked mouth could tease her parted lips and then slide between, sending a quivering tremor through her drained length.
‘Not moving for anything ever again,’ she swore limply.
‘The helicopter’s picking me up at two but I’ll be back by nine this evening,’ Lorenzo intoned, brilliant dark eyes connecting with hers. ‘Sleep this afternoon because you won’t be getting much sleep tonight,cara mia.’
‘Promises, promises,’ Brooke teased, feeling wonderfully relaxed. ‘You could be absolutely exhausted.’
Lorenzo smoothed her tumbled curls off her pale brow and curled her slight length close. ‘I won’t be too tired for you,’ he intoned huskily, purposely closing off every logical thought and living in the moment.Shewas doing that and if he wasn’t prepared to let her go yet, so must he.
Four weeks later, after Lorenzo had repeatedly extended their stay, Brooke stood back to study the table she had laid on the terrace at the side of the house. She was humming under her breath as she walked back into the kitchen to check the bubbling pots. Tonight, she was cooking because Sofia was away visiting her daughter but she wasn’t quite as adept a cook as she had hoped when she first came up with the idea of providing dinner. Sofia, however, had given her some useful tips and some even more useful shortcuts and, with a little preparation and help behind the scenes beforehand, Brooke had felt able to tackle a simple menu.
She glanced at the tiny half-knitted garment that Sofia had left lying on the dresser. The older woman was knitting a cardigan for her first grandchild. Brooke picked it up, unable to explain why it had attracted her attention in the first place as she found herself scanning the intricate pattern, and then registered that she could name every one of the stitches used and even identify a mistake. She blinked and something tugged almost painfully deep within her brain. She shook her head again in surprise. So, she knew how to knit, like lots of other people, she acknowledged dismissively, and rubbed her brow until the tightness there began to evaporate.
As she walked back out to the terrace, a bout of unnerving dizziness made her head swim and her legs falter and she swiftly took a seat, lowered her head and breathed in deep and slow. She didn’t know what was amiss with her and already planned to visit a doctor when they flew back to London the following day. She didn’t think that the faintness or the headache were linked to her head injury, any more than the nausea that had assailed her at odd moments in recent days, but she thought it was time that she had herself checked out all the same. Perhaps she was coming down with some virus, she thought ruefully.
A slim figure in white cropped jeans and a vest top, she stood up again and studied the view of the tranquil patchwork of vines and orchards and fields that spread out beyond the garden boundaries. She had never dreamt that they would end up staying an entire month in Italy and the time had fairly raced past. Lorenzo had flown off to loads of business meetings but every other day he was at home, either working or taking her out somewhere, and their peaceful stay had done wonders for her state of mind.
Regrettably, she had experienced no further flashbacks, which was a considerable disappointment to her, but, on the balance side, she was sleeping well, eating well and generally felt much stronger. A lot of that related to her improved relationship with Lorenzo though, she conceded. He hadn’t promised to make a special effort when he had said that they would see how their marriage went but he had definitely been trying.
Regardless of how busy he was, he had made time for her. She had drunk a glass of the local wine in the Piazza Grande in Montepulciano, strolled under the trees by the walls of Lucca, explored the labyrinth of underground caves in Pitigliano and wandered silent in appreciation through the gardens of Garzoni in Collodi. There had been dinners out as well in wonderful restaurants in Florence, but she had enjoyed the picnic in the orange orchard below the house even more because Lorenzo had surprised her with a sapphire pendant that took her breath away and had then made passionate love to her.
She had never felt so close to anyone as she felt to Lorenzo, and sometimes it scared her because she knew that she wasn’t in a safe or settled marriage and that, at any time, Lorenzo could again decide that he wanted a divorce. When she allowed herself to think along those lines, her nervous tension went sky-high and so she tried to enjoy what they currently had without thinking too far ahead into the future. She didn’t tell him she loved him now, no longer dared to be that confiding. Had she known the true state of their marriage, she would never have said it in the first place. She didn’t want Lorenzo to feel trapped or that he couldn’t tell her the truth, and her telling him that she loved him could only make him feel uncomfortable.
By the time the helicopter landed, Brooke had laid out the first course on the table and she stood back, smiling, as Lorenzo strode up the slope towards her, eye-catchingly gorgeous in his exquisitely tailored dove-grey suit, his luxuriant black hair ruffled, his spectacular dark golden eyes locked to her.
And, truth to tell, there was not a single cloud on Lorenzo’s horizon at that moment and his lean, dark, serious face flashed into a smile at the sight of her waiting for him. It probably made him a four-letter word of a guy but he enjoyed the knowledge that his wife’s world seemed to revolve entirely around him. She was a slender but curvy figure dressed entirely in white, her cloud of curls framing her piquant features, eyes purple as violets.
‘I made dinner,’ Brooke announced. ‘But you have to sit down now.’
Lorenzo tensed. ‘I was heading for a shower first—’
‘You can’t...if you do that the main course will be ready too soon and it will spoil,’ Brooke told him earnestly. ‘If you want to eat, it’s now or never.’
Lorenzo grinned. ‘I’ll make a bargain with you. I sit down now to eat, and you join me in the shower afterwards...’
‘That’s a deal.’ Brooke went pink and sank down at the other side of the table. ‘Dig in. It’s quite a simple meal but this timing thing is complicated.’
