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She lay there panting, eyes open and afraid, staring at the ceiling.
Because sex was one thing. She could handle sex. Rationalise it. Treat it as a currency if she must. And she could stick it in that imaginary box under the bed in the cold light of day and shove the lid on and divorce herself from what was happening.
But giving herself up to him, losing herself in him when she knew she was going to walk away empty-handed in a few short weeks, that scared her.
It wasn’t just the sex that was making her feel this way, she knew. It was Luca himself who was changing. Showing concern when she felt shell-shocked on the boat—buying her a new computer because her old one was decrepit and inefficient. She knew he could afford it a million times over—she knew a few hundred euro would mean nothing to him—but it was the fact he’d even bothered that cut her deepest. For he didn’t have to do those things. He didn’t even need to find Lily an apartment when she already owed him so much.
Why did he have to appear half human when she wanted him to stay one hundred per cent monster? Why did he make it so hard to keep hating him?
She wanted to hate him.
She had to hate him.
She closed her eyes and sent up a silent entreaty to the gods. Because if she was ever to walk away from here with her head held high and her ego intact, she needed a reason to hate him.
Now, more than ever.
* * *
He should take more days off. He lay in bed listening to the rumble of his stomach—he would have to get up and have lunch soon, he supposed, before it turned on him and ate him alive—but there was something so utterly decadent about spending the middle of the day in bed. Especially when you had a good reason not to get out of it.
Like Valentina.
Idly he stroked her hair, listening to her soft breathing as she lay alongside him. He liked that she didn’t feel the need to chat incessantly or ask him if it was good for him. What he liked even better was watching her eyes when she tipped over the edge. He shifted one leg, making room. God, but just thinking about it made him hard all over again.
He should do this more often.
Then again he could, at least for the next month. Or what was left of it. Plenty of time yet. Maybe even tomorrow. Thinking of which...
‘I’m seeing your mother for lunch tomorrow,’ he told her. ‘Would you like to come with me?’
He felt her body tense. Wary. ‘Why are you seeing my mother?’
‘There are some papers to be signed, to finalise the transfer of the properties, the palazzo to me, the apartment to your mother.’
‘And you want me there why exactly?’ She sat up clutching the sheets to her chest, her golden eyes bright with argument and accusation. ‘So you can gloat about how clever you are in front of us both?’
He blinked. Where had that come from? He’d thought her half asleep and she’d come out fighting.
‘I thought you might like to see your mother.’
‘Like hell, you did.’ She clambered from the bed, dragging the bedding with her, uncaring that she was pulling the sheets from him at the same time. He grabbed hold and pulled back and the sheets snapped tight between them, caught in the crossfire, stopping her in her tracks.
She spun around, trapped in the tangle of sheets. ‘You’ve got what you wanted. You’ve tricked my mother out of her house and why—’ she waved her hand around the room ‘—when you obviously need another house like a hole in the head? You’ve got a playmate in your bed for a month because it’s what you wanted and bugger what anyone else wants. What kind of sick person are you that you need to see us together like some kind of weird trophies?’
‘I thought you’d like to see your mother,’ he said through a jaw so stiff it could have been made with the same Istrian stone that formed the foundations of Venice itself. ‘I know I’d give the world to be able to visit mine somewhere other than in a cemetery.’
She seemed to cave in before his eyes, the fight evaporating from her in a heartbeat. ‘Luca,’ she said softly, making a tiny move closer to the bed.
‘Forget it,’ he said, throwing off the sheet. ‘It was a lousy idea anyway.’
He stormed off to the bathroom. So much for enjoying a lazy day in bed.
* * *
She didn’t see Luca after that and she suspected he’d taken himself back to the office. She couldn’t blame him. She’d jumped down his throat at the suggestion of visiting her mother as if it was for his spurious pleasure to have them in one room at the same time. But then, after such tender love-making, after his impromptu gift, the foundations under her seemed to be shifting and she’d needed to see him as the villain. She needed to reclaim the anger she’d felt when she’d marched into his study and practically demanded he make love to her.
