hands and worship them for what seemed like long, endless hours while he murmured heated Italian words in homage.
His gaze darted back to hers and she knew he was remembering too. Remembering how he’d loved them even more when they grew fuller with her pregnancy.
She couldn’t take it any more. Her eyelids grew heavy, her blood thickening with unbearable yearning even as she tried to pull away.
He held her easily.
‘Cesare...’ She wasn’t sure whether she was pleading or protesting.
His eyes darkened to a burnished gold. He wanted her too. Desperately. The thought sent delight racing through her veins at the exact moment he gave a strangled groan.
‘Cesare, please.’ She wasn’t even certain that she wanted him to answer the sexual need clawing through her. All she knew was that she wanted answers.
She saw his withdrawal even before Annabelle’s distressed voice reached them. ‘Papà, they flew away. I wanted them to stay but the butterflies flew away!’
‘Mi dispiace, piccolina, but these things happen. It wasn’t meant to be.’
She knew his words were directed at her. He continued to stare at her as he curled her fingers over the napkin and placed her hand on the table.
She closed her eyes, willing away the intense pain spiralling through her. Breathe...just breathe. In. Out. Over the sound of her fracturing emotions, she heard Cesare soothe his daughter’s disappointment.
What about me? What about this gaping ache I carry inside because I don’t know what’s happened to us?
Questions crowded in her head as she sat there, the ice doing its job to soothe her palm while, inside, confusion congealed into a tight ball behind her breastbone. Slowly it dawned on her that she’d let it happen again; she’d let Cesare toy with her emotions, disrupt her thought patterns until she wasn’t sure whether she was coming or going.
Dear Lord, she’d been in his presence less than half a day and already she’d let him weave his potent spell around her twice. What was wrong with her?
Intensely irritated with herself, she let Cesare take over entertaining Annabelle, listening to her delight as he swam up and down the pool with her on his back.
Dinner was brought out to the poolside just as the sun started to sink over the lake. Annabelle started to flag soon after with the effects of jet lag. By the time Cesare carried her upstairs, she was almost asleep.
Weariness sapped Ava as she lingered over Annabelle’s bedtime story. For a moment she contemplated walking through to her own suite, crawling under the covers and letting the whole world fall away.
No. She straightened her spine.
Cesare had demonstrated in the last year that he could erase her comprehensively from his life. That he had every intention of continuing to do so.
But, for the sake of her sanity, Ava needed to know why.
* * *
Cesare picked up his wine glass and tried to marshal his thoughts. But even thinking had become a gut-wrenchingly difficult task. Unbidden, the scent of Ava’s orgasm rose to torture him. Dio, he’d been close—so close—to experiencing that sweet heaven again. But he knew, as much as it killed him, he had to walk way. And continue walking away. Every single time.
For Roberto’s sake, as some small, pitiful measure of penance for what he’d done to his brother, he couldn’t give in to the craving.
Besides, the last thing he needed on top of the trauma and devastation life had thrown his way was the complication sex brought. Especially the uncontrollable kind that always felt a heartbeat away whenever he touched Ava.
This afternoon he’d boldly laid down his plan for ensuring he and Ava wouldn’t run into each other more than necessary for the next few weeks. But already he saw the plan unravelling. The incident in the hallway and the few hours he’d spent with her by the pool had refuelled the sizzling attraction he’d tried and failed to bury. An attraction he had no right to rekindle. Or crave.
That only left him with one option.
Light female footsteps approached. Cradling his wine glass in one hand, he watched Ava emerge onto the terrace, child monitor in hand and a look of fierce determination in her eyes.
Although his heart sank a little, a part of him welcomed the situation.
Because, if nothing else, being caught in the middle of an earthquake had hammered home just how unpredictable life could be. He’d ruined his brother’s life. He refused to remain in a situation where he could ruin another.
He’d tried to reason with Ava. Now it was time to be cruel to be kind.
She stopped in front of him and set down the monitor. ‘I’m hoping being home will make them stop, but if she has another nightmare we’ll hear her.’
He merely nodded. A flash caught and drew his attention to his wedding ring. He’d slipped it on when he’d lunched with his mother during his quick stopover in Rome. His parents had suffered enough in the last month; the last thing he’d wanted was to distress them further by exposing the state of his marriage.
Before him, Ava shifted from one foot to the other. Then she exhaled. ‘What you said this afternoon...about things not meant to be. What did you mean?’ she demanded, her arms once again crossed in battle stance.
He took his time to twirl his wine glass, allowed his gaze to rise slowly from her bare, stunning legs, linger at her rounded hips, past her deliciously full breasts, to capture hers.
His grim smile felt as strained as the tightening in his groin. ‘When we met, I was blown away by your beauty. You were sexy, vivacious, with a reckless streak that drew me like a moth to a flame. And the sex...’ His breath stalled, his pulse kicking up another dangerous notch. ‘The sex was unbelievable, better or quite possibly the best I’d ever had.’ Her shocked gasp bounced over him and disappeared in the night breeze. ‘Unfortunately, I let it blind me into making an unforgivable error.’
Her eyes darkened. ‘What was that error?’ she whispered.
He threw back his drink in one greedy, hopefully fortifying gulp and set the glass down. ‘I think you’ll agree that catastrophe has a way of bringing into sharp focus what’s important.’
‘Yes.’
‘Two things became clear to me in the aftermath of the earthquake, cara mia. The first was that my daughter means more to me than my life itself and I would rip my heart out before I let anything remotely close to that devastation happen to her again.’
The fire in her eyes told him she felt the same. For a moment, he didn’t want to utter the next words, but he knew he needed to. ‘The second was that I...as deliciously tempting as you were...as mind-altering as the sex was, bellissima, I know now that I should never have married you.’
I SHOULD NEVER have married
