Far From Perfect (17 page)

Feeling as if they were sliding into their rightful place, her arms snaked around him, hands inveigling their way beneath his jacket, slipping between its pure silk lining and the fine cotton lawn of his dazzling white shirt. She gasped under the onslaught of his mouth, almost shocked by the pagan heat of his skin through the insubstantial fabric. And as he drew her yet closer, she felt that same heat burning through the layers of her own clothing and his shirt, scorching the aching, puckered tips of her breasts as they pressed against the hard, unyielding wall of his chest.

He was like a rare, vintage wine to her, delicious and intoxicating, full of dangerous power that warped her ability to reason. When she felt him plucking at the buttons of her blouse her hands flew to help him, tugging and pulling at them until the garment was open. Wrenching the panels of fabric apart, she offered her near-naked breasts to him. Her delicate bra was like vapor, and no barrier to speak of between her and his nimble, narrow-tipped fingers.

Anna groaned as he cupped one breast and flicked his thumb insistently over the crest, strumming it, inciting it to a greater and more aching sensitivity. Between her legs she felt a jolt of heat and a kind of calling flutter, her intimate flesh crying out to him. Wanting his touch.

Driven by desire, Anna scissored her thighs, moving to ease the ache at her feminine core, moving to incite and entice, to draw Nick’s hand. She heard his groan, an echo of her own voice, and felt the vibration of it in her mouth. The fingertips that had fondled her breasts slid down, down, down, to settle and then grip possessively at the delta of her sex through the sturdy, hindering denim of her jeans.

The rough, almost primal contact made her jack-knife, and in a fraction of a second, the very quick of her convulsed in a series of hard, intense contractions. A virtually instant orgasm, her need had been so great.

Sobbing against his lips, she clawed at his back through his shirt, one hand sliding down to clasp at his tight male buttock, instinctively pulling closer and trying to feel his erection against her.

Still pulsing, she reached her goal, but it was wrenched away from her as Nick dragged himself back along the seat, rudely separating their bodies and their mouths.

“
Dannazione
!” he muttered, lifting the hands that had caressed her to run them through his gilded hair, once, twice, ruffling it wildly. His eyes were black as the night sky, his high, elegant cheekbones flagged with heat.

Through eyes hazed with confusion, pain and after-pleasure, Anna looked at him and thought him more beautiful and more male than she’d ever seen him.

“What the hell is wrong with me?” he demanded, though to her ears, the accusation was aimed at her. “I haven’t groped a woman in the back seat of a car like a hormone-crazed teenager since I
was
a hormone-crazed teenager.”

Frozen herself, Anna watched as Nick closed his eyes for a moment, long lashes sweeping down like fans as he seemed to center himself. Then, the fugue of sexual fervor appeared to drain out of him, leaving his face cool and almost distant as he straightened up, smoothed some order back into his mussed up hair, and then adjusted the set of his jacket.

When he looked back at her his blue eyes were as clear and blank as ice.

“You’d better tidy yourself up.” His voice was clipped and as expressionless as his face.

Yet still she couldn’t move. How could he suddenly be so cold? Surely he’d been as stirred as she’d been. Dear Lord, she’d felt it. His erection had been hard as a bar of iron against her.

But even that seemed to have subsided, she realized, unable to prevent herself glancing down at his groin, her fingers, suddenly all thumbs, plucking ineffectually at her shirt buttons.

Something indefinable flared in his blue gaze as he tracked her eye line, then his spectacular mouth thinned and he edged impatiently towards her.

“Anna, we’re nearly at the clinic. Please cover yourself.” In an impatient gesture, he dashed her fumbling fingers aside and began to re-button her disheveled white shirt.

Snapping to life at last, she in turn knocked his hands away and fastened herself up with a haste and efficiency fuelled by anger.

“I can manage, thank you very much, Nick,” she said crisply, restoring order as best she could.

If only it was as easy to restore order to her senses and her heart. Every time she was around him, in close proximity, she seemed to lose all control on her judgment and sense of self. All she could do was to throw her body at his. Like some crazy person who could only think with parts of herself that were fatally prone to bad decisions.

“And as for this business of being ‘friends’, and ‘taking pleasure in each other’, I’m not so sure that it’s such a good idea if you think it gives you carte blanche to maul me and manhandle me whenever the fancy takes you.”

She secured the last button and twitched her shirt collar a little further up her throat. “I think we should keep this…this arrangement strictly businesslike from now on.” She paused, her chin up defiantly. “As it was supposed to be in the first place.”

Nick’s eyes slid insolently over her, and Anna’s ire flared. What was the matter with him? Was he thinking he could start all over again?

“What happened a moment ago was entirely mutual,” he observed, as blandly as if he’d been observing the passing scenery. “You were the one who turned to flame in my arms, Anna.” His voice deepened to dark velvet. “You were the one who had an orgasm and rubbed herself against me like a cat on heat.”

Her hand whipped back ready to strike, but unlike the occasion back in the office, this time Nick anticipated her and caught her wrist before she had chance to complete the motion.

“Oh no, not this time,” he said, teeth gritted, even though his body language remained composed. “It wouldn’t do to meet my father and his doctors with my cheek red from a slap, would it?”

Gently but unequivocally, he brought her arm down and then released it.

At that moment, Anna could cheerfully have gone fifteen rounds with him and felt so angry, confused and fired up that she might have won. But instead she summoned reserves of sense and self-possession that had been sadly unavailable a few minutes ago.

“Perhaps not,” she said coolly, then reached for her bag and drew out a compact and comb. With focused care, and studiously ignoring Nick, she tidied her own untidy hair and checked her face. Thank goodness she’d been wearing a minimum makeup and only needed to replace the slick of clear gloss that had disappeared somewhere during their turbulent kisses.

When she returned her attention to her antagonist, he gave her another long, assessing look, then a small nod as if to say “you’ll do”.

The urge to strike him funneled up inside her again, but again, she quelled it. She was a grown woman, not a headstrong kid prone to scrapping and fisticuffs.

She took a deep breath, and as she held Nick’s gaze as bravely as she could, he shrugged, and then reached down into his abandoned briefcase and pulled out a small, cube-shaped leather-covered box.

Anna knew what it was and felt all the last remnants of fight drain out of her.

“You’d better put this on,” said Nick, his voice suddenly weary and resigned sounding as he flipped open the little box to reveal a ring.

Chapter Eight

For perhaps the hundredth time in a day, Anna glanced down at the ring.

It was a thing of beauty—a flawless cabochon ruby cradled in a floral setting fashioned from antique gold—but felt like a lead weight on her finger. It was a sham, a deceit, and for all the genuine emotion in its giving, it might as well have been a chunk of colored plastic.

Staring out across the rose-adorned loggia at Villa Rosa, towards the flat blue mirror of the swimming pool, all her girlish dreams of being presented with this, the Lisitano betrothal ring, came back to her on a dark, bitter wave.

She’d cherished those fantasies and embellished them again and again in her imagination. The basis had always been Nick, down on one knee on this very spot. Often, moonlight bathed them in magic, the scent of roses and lemons intoxicating in the air. The moment when he professed his never-ending love for her was always utterly perfect.

“Idiot!”

She curved one hand around the other and hid the ruby. Her blood seethed when she thought how mundane and non-magical the moment had actually been.

He’d just handed her the box, and when she’d fumbled and dropped the ring in the foot well of the limousine, he’d as good as tutted at her, then fielded it effortlessly and slid it onto her engagement finger with an insulting lack of ceremony, much less emotion.

It was an action for which she’d never be able to forgive him.

Reaching for her glass of chilled lemonade, her fingers made contact with the bloom of condensation and she wished could find the same degree of cool for herself. These last couple of days had been confusing and stressful, and she’d spent the entire time simmering with antipathy towards Nick.

Oh, and fighting the unwanted rip of desire every time she set eyes on him didn’t help either. Ever since La Girandole and then the tussle in the limousine her erotic sense had chimed like radar in his presence.

I don’t want to want you, Nick!

She set aside her cool drink because it wasn’t lemonade she thirsted for. Grimly, she stared out across the weathered stone flags, towards the pool, seeing nothing of the shimmering water or the rambling banks of spring flowers beyond.

And I want to love you even less, Nick, because it’s pointless and futile.
She exposed the ring again, and twisted it on her finger, disturbed that it was a perfect, faultless fit.

On arriving at the clinic where Carlo was recovering, she’d not relished having to put on a bravura dramatic performance.

One half of a blissfully engaged couple?

Oh, please, that was the last thing she’d felt. But still it had been essential not to disappoint, disturb or upset the elder Lisitano.

Thankfully, her acting skills hadn’t been taxed as much as she’d feared. A sense of shock and genuine happy surprise had carried her through what should have been a tricky ordeal. And she could still see those same emotions of incredulity and then pure joy on Nick’s face as they’d been ushered into Carlo’s presence. Not to mention the fugitive hint of suspicion that also passed across his beautiful carved features.

For the nurse led them not into a hushed ICU where the only sounds were the beeping of life-preserving monitors and machinery, but into a light, cheerful and frankly luxurious private room complete with television, huge banks of flowers and a commanding view of the clinic’s landscaped gardens.

Carlo Lisitano was sitting up in bed wearing silk pajamas and a very elegant designer robe. He was animatedly engrossed in the football match being shown on his large screen TV, but when he caught sight of them, his brown, weathered face creased into a delighted smile.

“Anna!
Cara mia. Che bella.
” Sitting up in his bed with astonishing energy, he opened his arms and held them out to her. “Come here and let me look at you.”

Her eyes flicked to Nick, noting his puckered brow and a deepening look of disbelief. They exchanged glances and he shrugged, infinitesimally.

Carlo’s hug was astonishingly vigorous for a man who was supposed to be recovering slowly and with difficulty after major heart surgery. Anna returned it with caution, worried about his post-operative wound.

“Hello,
Zio Carlo
,” she said as he released her. She’d always referred to him as uncle because he was so kind to her. “It’s a relief to see you looking so…so well.”

The older man’s appearance was indeed miraculously robust. He’d lost weight since she’d last seen him, obviously, but his color was good, his eyes were bright and his thick iron-grey hair seemed to spring from his scalp with health and life.

“
Si, ragazza
,” he growled, his accent thick but his affection clear. “It’s amazing what a little good news can do for a man. Eh,
figlio mio
?” He flashed a smile that was heavy with meaning at his son and then held out an arm to him too. Nick dutifully came forward to receive an enthusiastic fatherly greeting.

Anna frowned now, still twisting the ruby ring. Father and son had conversed in rapid, idiomatic Italian that she’d not been able to follow as well as she’d liked. Some phrases had sprung out, and though Nick was obviously deeply relieved to see Carlo’s much improved condition, it was obvious he had suspicions about it too.

When at last the nurse had ushered them from the room, as it was time for Carlo to undergo a series of tests, Anna had expected Nick to remark on his father’s condition, but instead he’d spoken only in barely more than monosyllables. Deep preoccupation was set forbiddingly across his brow, and all her attempts to engage him in conversation, about Carlo or any other topic, had been met with brief answers that had bordered on taciturnity.

He’s tricked you, hasn’t he? And now you’re pissed off and you’re working out how quickly you can wriggle out of this ridiculous sham.

The more time passed in Italy, the more she became convinced of this deduction. She saw little of Nick, other than when they were visiting the clinic, and the more she saw of father and son together, the plainer it became that the younger Lisitano was not pleased that he’d been deceived.

Oh, it’s okay for you to deceive others, but when someone pulls a fast one on you—even your own father—there’s hell to pay.

And yet the game went on. The charade they played out in Carlo’s room at the clinic. Hands were held. Cheeks were subjected to the occasional kiss. Nick’s arm would slide possessively around her. In spite of the fact that his father was clearly well on the road to recovery and would not suffer an irrevocable relapse if his son were
not
engaged, they still acted like a betrothed couple in love.

But only in public.

It was almost as if Nick had lost all desire for her since those incendiary moments in his limousine. He made no sexual overtures, and the fact that Anna had been assigned a bedroom of her own, for old-fashioned Italian propriety’s sake, seemed to bother him not at all.