The Medici Mistress: Nothing and no one would stop him from having her. (6 page)

Patrice winced in sympathy. “Lay low here. I’ll go and catch you up on anything important you miss.”

“Thanks,” Annie said with a breath of relief. “You’re a life saver.”

It was a sentiment she came to regret. Less than half an hour later, her gratitude evaporated completely.

A darkening of her room made her look up. Straight into the angry, emotionally charged face of Giacomo Medici.

He stepped into her office wordlessly and shut the door. She had a small window that looked out onto the hallway. He pulled on the cord so that the slats closed, making her room completely private. For good measure, he clicked the lock in the door.

“You look exhausted,” he muttered, moving around the desk so that he was standing directly above her.

With deliberate care, she screwed the lid back onto her Mont Blanc pen – a graduation present from her parents – and eyed him squarely. He looked perfect, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.

“Thanks,” she remarked drily. “Nothing a girl likes to hear more than that.”

“Do you make a habit of staying out so late on a work night?”

The lawyer in her spoke. “How do you know when, and if, I returned home?”

His dark eyes shone. “I waited in my car.”

“You… you waited for me?” She wasn’t sure if she was angry or perplexed. “What? Why?”

“Why do you think, Annie?”

She frowned up at him. He was so close that their knees were touching. She looked away jerkily. “I have no idea.” She slipped her feet into the soft leather of her Jimmy Choos and stood. Sitting down, he had every advantage. At least, standing, she felt less physically overwhelmed by his sheer strength.

“Have lunch with me.”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. I’ve checked your schedule.”

She shook her head, an angry epithet on her lips. He stalled it with one, quietly spoken, emotionally charged word:

“Please.”

She opened her mouth, and closed it again. “Fine,” she said wearily.

Confidence restored, he cast a glance at his gold wrist watch. “Let’s meet in an hour.” He named a restaurant renowned for its expensive meals and difficulty to get into. At least she wouldn’t run into any of her colleagues there.

“Fine,” she said again, shrugging as if the matter was of no concern.

But, of course, it was.

When she emerged from the office a short time later, her nerves were stretched to breaking point. An enormous part of her wished Giac would disappear into thin air. She’d never gotten over him, but over time, she’d managed to at least appear to move on with things. Now that he was back, old emotions were making it impossible to put him out of her mind.

The restaurant was only a few blocks from the high rise building which housed Amicus. She walked with her usual efficiency, grateful that the sun was shining and the air fresh. Her exhaustion had been replaced with a wired electricity.

He was already there, when she arrived; he stood as she was shown to their table. His eyes locked with hers, the whole time she made her way across the crowded space. The waiter held her chair out but Giac moved around the table, to relieve the man of the job. He held the chair himself, breathing in her fragrance as she sat down on the leather seat.

“Water? Wine?”

“Scotch?” She was only half joking. She wasn’t sure her nerves could take much more time in close proximity to Giac.

He raised his brows.

“I’m joking. Water’s fine. I have to work this afternoon.”

Actually, she didn’t, but Giac wasn’t sure she’d appreciate the fact that he’d cleared her afternoon so that she would be at his disposal for the day.

He poured some sparkling water into her wine glass. “I am glad you joined me,
cara.
”

“I didn’t feel I had much choice,” she said drily, sipping on the water for something to do with her hands.

“Perhaps not,” he mused. He couldn’t help himself. He reached out and touched the ends of her hair. So silky and smooth, so dark and shining. He was struck with the memory of how she had looked, lying across his white bed linen.

Instead of pulling away, as she felt she should, she stayed perfectly still. Her breath hitched in her throat. “Please don’t,” she whispered, fluttering her eyes shut, as his fingers drifted from her hair to her shoulder.

“I seem as completely unable to help myself with you now as I was then.”

Her green eyes flew wide. “Giac, you’re married. Are you trying to start an affair with me?”

“Carrie and I are getting divorced.”

She made a small, choking sound, as her whole perception of reality began to fuzz and fade around the edges. Two years ago, she would have died to hear those words. She would have thrown herself in his arms, and pretended that everything was okay. That he hadn’t slept with her a month before marrying another woman. But, over time, things had changed. Her love for him hadn’t lessened, but her resentment had grown. And her determination that she would never be vulnerable to him again was at the forefront of her mind. She pushed down on her reaction and nodded, her face a mask of bland disinterest. Of impersonal sympathy, as might suit a long lost friend mentioning that a parent had passed away. “I’m sorry; that’s too bad.”

She looked down at her menu, scanning the French words with assumed interest. They were blurry before her eyes. “I hear the food here is excellent. What are you going to have?”

He pushed her menu aside and took her hands in his. “Is that all you have to say?”

She intentionally misunderstood. “I have only heard a few reports of the food,” she said with a shrug. “I think that the chef is famous for his lobster Thermidor. You know how everything old is new again?”

Not everything, she silently added. Their relationship would not be renewed. It couldn’t be.

“Madre di Dio,
Annie. Does it not interest you at all that I am leaving my wife?”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re leaving her, or she’s leaving you?” It made no difference. “Forget it. It doesn’t matter.”

“It was a mutual decision.”

“So, what? You think that atones for the past? Three years down the road, you want to pick up where you left off, because you tried marriage on and decided it didn’t suit you?”

It was so much more complicated than that, but respect for Carrie kept him silent as to the details. He had foolishly believed the strength of his connection with Annie would be enough to overcome whatever objections she might have had. “The details are irrelevant.”

Not to me, she thought. Her eyes were heavy with emotion. “I don’t want to talk about the past.”

“So let’s talk about the present, then.” He leaned closer towards her, his eyes purposeful. He waved away an approaching waiter, his bearing unconsciously dictatorial.

She stared at him, unseeing.

“I want you back in my life,
cara.
”

“NO.” She looked around self-consciously. A few diners were staring at her curiously, after the shouted word. She dipped her head forward, and her black hair fell like a curtain about her blushing face. “It’s not going to happen, Giac.”

“I thought we agreed last night that our being together was inevitable.”

“Not if we don’t see each other again,” she demurred, leaning backwards to put some vital space between them. “I’ll quit, if I have to.”

His nostrils flared. “I would follow you. I would find you.”

“Why?” She was weary. “I’ve had a long time to think about this, you know.” Her voice shook a little but she forced herself to carry on. “I can’t imagine I was the first woman you cheated with.” She could see that he was about to interrupt, and so she carried on. “You were too comfortable seducing me for it to be a first. You were so utterly without shame for what you were doing.”

“Which led you to believe that I made a habit of taking virgins to my bed, while engaged to another woman?”

She flushed. “Yes, if I’m honest.”

She had been the only one. There had been no one else. A waiter appeared and Giac cast a glance at the menu. He ordered quickly, and for both of them. When the waiter left, Annie’s face was thunderous.

“That’s just like you,” she sipped her water angrily. “You don’t know me anymore. You can’t just boss me around. You can’t just order lunch for me. You don’t know what I like. I’m a very different woman to the one you used to know.”

“Somehow, I doubt that. At least, not in the ways that matter most.”

“Sex? Is that all that matters to you?” She stared across at the man she had once loved fiercely and overwhelmingly. Her pulse was skittish at the base of her neck. She looked away and grabbed the attention of a passing waiter. “Can I get a glass of the 2008
La Tour Sauternes
?”

Her nerves needed something. She was stretched tighter than a wound spring.

Giac watched as she smiled brilliantly at the poor, defenseless man. With every natural charm she possessed unknowingly focused on the waiter, what hope did he have? He fumbled his order book and it dropped to the ground. When he’d retrieved it, he was flushed to his shaved head.

“Make it a bottle,” Giac said without looking at the young man again. His attention was focused squarely on Annie Carlton. “You’ve come a long way from the girl who didn’t know her chardonnay from Chablis.”

Her smile was intentionally saccharine. She hadn’t known until that moment how much she wanted to wound Giac. The flip side to loving someone so intensely was, of course, the rampant hate and resentment that was invoked when things soured. “Thomas is quite the oenophile. He’s been teaching me.”

CHAPTER FIVE

If Giac had been holding anything, he would have crushed it beneath the table. Instead, he flexed his fingers into fists. The idea of the artist teaching Annie anything was abhorrent to him, and he fully understood what a hypocrite that made him. He was, after all, still married. He had married Carrie after bedding Annie, and yet he hated the fact that she’d replaced him. It was ridiculous. Then again, Giac had never been good at sharing, and he still considered Annie to be his.

Several retorts flashed through his mind. Smart remarks about how a struggling artist could afford two hundred pound bottles of wine. But they all reeked of jealousy, and Giac didn’t want to seem petty.

“In any event, a bottle of wine is overkill. I don’t intend on stretching this out longer than is necessary.” Annie was being intentionally provocative. She didn’t want him thinking she was willingly submitting to his plan.

“It does not matter if it is left.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s a wasteful attitude.”

“Nothing spent on you is wasteful.”

Her skin tingled at the compliment. But it was a practiced line in seduction, that was all. The sommelier appeared with the wine and made an ostentatious presentation of displaying the label as he uncorked the bottle. “That will be fine,” Giac spoke dismissively, taking the bottle and pouring the glasses himself.

The sommelier didn’t take the hint. “Pardon me, sir, but you are who I think you are. Are you not?”

Annie watched as impatience flittered over Giac’s face. “Quite possibly.”

“Giacomo Medici?”

Giac’s nod was curt. He wanted the man dispensed with.

“I was just reading the article in The Times last night,” he said, a gushing smile on his slim, bespectacled face.

Annie leaned forward, unconsciously fascinated. “What article?”

Giac shook his head. Inexplicably, he didn’t want to talk about that now.

“What article?” She asked again, looking towards the wine expert.

“Mr. Medici is to be awarded a CBE by the Queen.”

“A CBE?”  Her eyes widened as she looked at  the man opposite.

“A Commander of the British Empire,” he explained unnecessarily.

“I know what a CBE is,” she whispered. “I just didn’t have you pegged as the typical recipient.”

“That will be all, thank you,” Giac spoke firmly now, leaving the sommelier in little doubt as to Giac’s desire to be alone with his date.

“Yes, of course, sir. Congratulations, from all of us.”

“
Grazie
,” he acknowledge with a terse smile.

Giac turned his attention back to Annie. “And why, may I ask, are you surprised that I am to receive the honor?”

Her eyes flashed. “Apart from your obvious lack of morals?”

His face was somber. “My morals were part of the problem with us.”

She frowned. “Not for me.”

“No. Not for you,” he agreed with a twist of his lips.

“So what is it for?” She queried, moving the conversation back to safer ground.

“Charity work.” As responses went, it was reasonably inconclusive.

“Charity work, like…?” She prompted, sipping her wine. It ran as cool silk down her throat. She sighed as she felt it unfurl in her stomach, like a slow blooming rose.

He was uncomfortable, and she couldn’t fathom a reason. But she wasn’t prepared to beg. “Suit yourself. Be secretive. We can sit here in total silence, if you’d prefer.”