the comment about her looking for his rooms made sense.
What better way to force a commitment than to arrange for them both to be found together in his rooms at the castello? Anger and a burning sense of shame that he should think she would stoop that low sliced through her. “I hadn’t considered that angle.”
Why would she when she had assumed Lucas wanted her?
He ignored her statement. “If it’s marriage you want, you won’t get it by pressuring me.”
Which meant he really had thought about the different ways she could force him to the altar. She took a deep breath against a sharp spasm of hurt. “At what point did I ever say I was after marriage?”
His gaze bored into hers, as fierce and obdurate as the dark stone from which the fortress was built. “Then we have an understanding?”
“Oh, I think so.” She forced a bright smile. “I wouldn’t marry you if you tied me up and dragged me down the aisle. Tell me,” she said before she could gag her mouth and instruct her brain to never utter anything that would inform Lucas just how weak and vulnerable she really was. “Did you ever come close to loving me?”
He went still. “What we had wasn’t exactly about love.”
No. Silly her.
“There’s something else we need to talk about.”
“In that case, it’ll have to wait. Now I really do have a headache.” She fumbled in her clutch, searching for the painkillers she’d slipped in before she’d left the villa, just in case. In her haste the foil pack slipped out of her fingers and dropped to the terrace.
Lucas retrieved the pills before she could. “What are these?”
He held the foil pack out of her reach while he read the label. “Since when have you suffered from headaches?”
She snatched the pills from his grasp. “They’re a leftover from the virus I caught in Thailand. I don’t get them very often.”
She ripped the foil open and swallowed two pills dry, grimacing at the extra wave of bitterness in her mouth when one of the pills lodged in her throat. She badly needed a glass of water.
Lucas frowned. “I didn’t know you were still having problems.”
She shoved the foil pack back in her clutch. “But then you never bothered to ask.”
And the last thing she had wanted to do was let him know that she had been so stressed by the unresolved nature of their relationship that she had given herself an even worse stomach ulcer than she had started with two years ago.
After the growing distance between them in Thailand, she hadn’t wanted to further undermine their relationship or give him an excuse to break up with her. Keeping silent had been a constant strain because she had wanted the comfort of his presence, had needed him near, but now she was glad she hadn’t revealed how sick she really had been. It was one small corner of her life that he hadn’t invaded, one small batch of memories that didn’t contain him.
She felt like kicking herself for being so stupid over the past couple of months. If Lucas had wanted to be with her he would have arranged time together. Once, he had flown into Sydney with only a four-hour window before he’d had to fly out again. They had spent every available second of those four hours locked together in bed.
Cold settled in her stomach. In retrospect, their relationship had foundered in Thailand. Lucas hadn’t liked crossing the line into caring; he had simply wanted a pretty, adoring lover and uncomplicated sex.
Lucas was still blocking her path. “You’re pale and your eyes are dilated. I’ll take you home.”
“No.” She stepped neatly around him and made a beeline for the open door. Her heart sped up when she realized he was close behind her. “I can drive myself. The last thing I want is to spend any more time with you.”
“Too bad.” His hand curled around her upper arm, sending a hot, tingling shock straight to the pit of her stomach as he propelled her into the hall. “You’ve had a couple of glasses of wine, and now a strong painkiller. The last thing you should do is get behind the wheel of that little sports car.”
She shot him a coolly assessing look. “Or talk to the paparazzi at the gate.”
“Right now it’s the hairpin bends on the road back to the villa that worry me.”
Something snapped inside her at the calm, matter-of-fact tone of his voice, as if he was conducting damage control in one of his business takeovers. “What do you think I’m going to do, Lucas? Drive off one of your cliffs into the sea?”
Unexpectedly his grip loosened. Twisting free, she grasped the handle of the door to the suite she had briefly checked out before, thinking it could be a bathroom. It was Lucas’s suite, apparently. Forbidden territory.
Flinging the door wide, she stepped inside. She was about to prove that at least one of Lucas’s fears was justified.
She was going to be her control-freak, ticked-off, stressed-out self for just a few minutes.
She was going to behave badly.
Four
The paralyzing fear that had gripped Lucas at the thought of Carla driving her sports car on Medinos’s narrow roads turned to frustration as she stepped inside his suite.
Grimly, he wondered what had happened to the dominance and control with which he had started the evening.
Across boardroom tables, he was aware that his very presence often inspired actual fear. His own people jumped to do his bidding.
Unfortunately, when it came to Carla Ambrosi, concepts like power, control and discipline crashed and burned.
He closed the door behind him. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Carla halted by an ebony cabinet that held a selection of bottles, a jug of ice water and a tray of glasses. “I need a drink.”
Glass clinked on glass, liquid splashed. His frustration deepened. Carla seldom drank and when she did it had always been in moderation. Tonight he knew she’d had champagne, then wine with dinner. He had kept a watch on her intake, specifically so he could intervene if he thought she was in danger of drinking too much then making a scene. He had been looking for an opportunity to speak to her alone when she had walked out halfway through dessert. Until now he had been certain she wasn’t drunk.
He reached her in two long strides and gripped her wrist. “How much have you had?”
Liquid splashed the front of her dress. He jerked his gaze away from the way the wet silk clung to the curve of her breasts.
Her gaze narrowed. A split second later cold liquid cascaded down his chest, soaking through to the skin.
Water, not alcohol.
Time seemed to slow, stop as he stared at her narrowed gaze, delicately molded cheekbones and firm jaw, the rapid pulse at her throat.
The
