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He cast another gaze to where Amelia sat poring over documents at the table. He’d spent half the night reading the same material the Aurora team had sent over while they’d been in Orvieto. They had returned to Villa Vittoria after a shopping trip that had been less than easy. Apparently offering to pay for it hadn’t made things better, only worse. The only thing that had forced her through the doors of the clothing store where Amelia had bought everything she needed was the prospect of meeting with Sofia Obeid in three-day-old clothes.
They had been nearly done when the shop assistant guided Amelia to the lingerie section.
Monk indeed.
Lace, straps, belts, hooks, bows, ribbons, ties...Cavolo.It wasn’t as if his fevered imagination needed any more to think about. There hadn’t been a single night since Hong Kong when he hadn’t woken up in a cold sweat relieving none of the fire of want and need in his body. And last night had been the worst yet. As if the knowledge that she was carrying his child had suddenly made everything so much more intense.
He looked out of the window cutting off any curiosity as to what she was wearing under the cream silk shirt that should be conservatively respectable had he not seen the lithe body beneath it.Cristo, what madness was this? And why—all of a sudden—was he fascinated by little buttons? A row of them at each wrist and another row at the nape of her neck leading all the way down the back of her top to where it tucked into a pair of wide, high-waisted navy trousers.
Sophisticated. Attractive.
They made her look confident. He hadn’t realised how much he’d missed seeing her like that, until that very moment. That he was making her less somehow stirred his conscience and reminded him of things he never wanted to think on.
He cleared his throat. ‘Talk me through the meeting.’
He knew the plan but he needed something to focus on that wasn’t Amelia, their child and their future. Especially when all it made him do was think about his past.
A villa had been booked at the hotel where Obeid had suggested they meet. Harrak Marrakech was a fourteenth-century palace set amongst twenty-eight acres of orchards that opened out towards a view of the snow-capped Atlas Mountains. Comprised of deluxe villas, each with private pools, gardens, a private chef and personal staff on hand twenty-four hours a day, it was a very impressive hotel, even to Alessandro who, amongst the sprawling property empire, owned several of his own with Gianni.
While the car took them from the airport to the hotel, Amelia talked him through the changes she’d made to the pitch document in order to cater specifically for Obeid. He agreed with most of the changes, made a few tweaks, and left her to make the required amendments, trying to ignore the fact that this was beginning to feel very much like the trip to Hong Kong.
‘She will expect you to do the talking, and she may be offended that Gianni isn’t there with you, at the meeting,’ Amelia warned as she got out of the car and waited for him to join her. His gaze caught on features he’d once thought plain, which he now knew beneath their subtlety to be exquisite.
He nodded in response to Amelia’s statement, knowing that the world was used to the Rossi cousins being two halves of the same whole. Dammit,hewas used to it. But he had to keep a lid on the irritation lashing at him, needling him, if he had a hope to claw any success back on this project.
He looked up at the building that had quaintly been called a villa and even though he had some of the most impressive buildings in the world under his company name,thiswas incredible.
‘Is...is this okay? Sofia would expect you to stay in the most expensive accommodation. Anything less would be either insult or—’
‘Weakness,’ Alessandro concluded, agreeing with her choice of villa.
A uniformed staff member opened the door to their villa and beckoned them in. A second staff member waited in the marble hallway with two trays, one with glasses of champagne, cool, refreshing orange juice, or water, and the other with dainty pastries, bright with sprinklings of either paprika or pistachio, salty or sweet.
He thanked the staff, listening with one ear as their private concierge informed them of the suite’s amenities, while the majority of his attention was spent taking in what could only be described as paradise. He felt Amelia’s wary gaze on him like a tentative caress, and in a blinding moment of clarity he realised, that was it.Thatwas what was irritating him so much.
There had been no hesitation in Hong Kong, there had been no timidity, nothing held back at all. She had met him touch for touch, taste for taste, thrust for—
‘That will be all,’ he said, cutting off the staff mid-sentence, knowing that he sounded insufferably rude, but he was being driven to distraction from wanting something that he couldn’t allow himself to have. Before he could do any further damage, he turned on his heel and disappeared into his room.
Amelia looked out at the incredible view of the Atlas Mountains, more perfect than any picture. In the garden, a long narrow pool led towards an ornamental arch to reveal the majestic snow-capped peaks in the distance. This was a luxury like she had never known or seen before.
The villa alone had more rooms, bathrooms, and living areas than she could conceive of and that didn’t take into consideration the subterranean pool and steam room. She looked over her shoulder at the dark wood table polished so that it was almost a mirror, sprawled with paperwork, charts, workflows, and research on Sofia Obeid. But what she really saw was the heated look in Alessandro’s eyes after he dismissed the staff.
She had seen the face of the man she had spent a night with in Hong Kong. The man who had broken through every single barrier she had wedged between them, the man who made her want to give everything up for just one of his touches, one of his kisses.
She laughed quietly at herself. Back in Italy she had thought she only wanted, and had only negotiated for, a fresh start. But she couldn’t afford any more lies. Not to others, or herself. She wanted more. A yearning in her heart, so deep, that only peeling back the layers of her desire for vengeance had revealed it, exposing that raw need to the air.
She wantedhim.
She wanted to feel alive in the same way that she had that night in Hong Kong. She wanted him to look at her the way that he had that night. Not with anger, or distrust, but something like wonder. As if he’d been as surprised as she, that it was happening, that it was possible to feel that way... It had created an addiction in her. It was the only way to explain it. This constant craving coursing through her veins, travelling throughout her entire body, enslaving it to a need that felt unquenchable.
Focus.
She had to focus. It was imperative that this meeting was successful, that the damage that hung above Rossi Industries like the sword of Damocles—a swordshehad put there—was removed. Only then would she be able to meet Alessandro on a level playing field. But in some ways, she also wanted to delay that moment. Because she could feel it on the horizon; building between them, getting bigger and bigger and harder to ignore. A storm, a reckoning, that she both wanted and feared.
Alessandro appeared in the arched doorway on the opposite side of the exquisitely decorated living area. If he was trying to hide his thoughts, he’d failed because she could easily read the intensely erotic images in his mind. Goosebumps broke out across her skin. Every single line of his body was drawn with tension, and more. The more that called to that secret place within her. A place that he had imprinted himself on, making sure that she would never be able to think of another man in the same way.
Amelia clenched her hands, his gaze drawn to the movement, and as he took a step forward she instinctively took a step back—halting him mid-stride. He’d opened his mouth as if to speak, when the villa phone’s ringtone sliced the air between them.
