slipped past him, and he inhaled her scent as she went by. He sank onto the edge of the bed, the flute of champagne still dangling from his fingers. Distantly over the pounding in his brain he heard her moving about, unzipping his suitcase.
A few minutes later she came back in and knelt by his side. ‘Let me take this,’ she said, and plucked the champagne from his fingers. ‘And give you this.’ She handed him a glass of water and two tablets. ‘I checked the dosage. It said two?’
He nodded, and he felt her hand wrap around his as she guided the glass to his lips. Even through the pain pounding in his head he felt a spark of awareness blaze from his fingers all the way to his groin. He remembered how sweet and yielding she’d been in his arms, without even so much as a word spoken between them. But then Lucia had always been sweet and yielding, always been willing to take care of him, even when he’d pushed her away again and again.
Clearly she’d changed, for she pulled her hand away from his, and he stamped down on that spark.
‘Thank you,’ he said gruffly. They may have shared one desperate, passionate night, but he knew there was nothing between them now. There couldn’t be.
Lucia sat back on her heels and watched Angelo struggle with himself, as he so often did. Feeling weak and hating to show it. And her, wanting to help him and hating how he always pushed her away. The story of both of their lives.
A story she was done with, she told herself now. Seeing Angelo again might have opened up that ache inside her, but she wasn’t going to do anything about it. She wasn’t going to be stupid about it, even though part of her, just as before, as always, yearned towards him and whatever little he could give.
No. He’d wrecked her before, and broken not just her heart but her whole self. Shattered her into pieces, and she wouldn’t allow even a hairline crack to appear now. It had taken years to put herself together again, to feel strong if not actually ever complete.
She rose, picking up the towels she’d dropped when she’d gone for his pills. ‘Will you be all right?’ she said, making it not so much a question as a statement.
‘I’m fine,’ he said, the words a growl, and she knew he was already regretting that little display of vulnerability.
‘Then I’ll leave you to it,’ she said, and Angelo didn’t answer. She took a few steps and then stopped, her back to him, one hand on the doorframe, suddenly unwilling to go so simply. So easily. Words bubbled up, bottled in her throat. Words that threatened to spill out of the hurt and pain she felt even now, so many years later. The pain and hurt she didn’t want him to see, because if he saw it he’d know how much she’d cared. How weak she’d been—and still was.
She swallowed it all down, those words and worse ones, broken, wounded words about a grief so very deep and raw that he knew nothing about. She couldn’t tell him tonight.
Maybe she wouldn’t ever tell him. Did he really need to know? Wouldn’t it be better to simply move on, or at least to let him think she had moved on?
‘Lucia?’ Angelo said, and it was a question although what he was asking she didn’t know. What do you want? Why are you still here?
‘I’m going,’ she said, and then she forced herself to walk out of the suite without looking back.
CHAPTER TWO
ANGELO FINGERED THE typewritten list of the hotel’s employees that lay on his desk. Matteo’s desk, because there had been no time to change anything since signing the papers on the hotel this morning. He’d gone directly from the meeting of unhappy shareholders to here, sweeping into his rival’s office and claiming it as his own.
His mouth twisted as he glanced at the tabloid headline he’d left up on his laptop. Not that he actually read those rags, but this one blazed bad news about the Correttis. Alessandro Corretti was meant to have wed Alessia Battaglia, but she’d run off with his cousin Matteo at the very last second. Angelo smiled grimly. The chaos that had ensued was devastating for his half-brothers and cousins, but good news for him.
With Matteo out of the way and the other Correttis scrambling to make sense of the chaos, he could saunter in and take another slice of the Corretti pie, starting with the docklands regeneration. Antonio Battaglia, the Minister of Trade and Housing as well as Alessia’s father, would be all too willing to consider his bid, since he was already funding a housing project in the area. Angelo had made initial overtures, and planned to cement the deal this week.
He glanced back at the list of employees. Anturri, Lucia was the first name under the housekeeping section. As soon as he’d arrived back at the hotel he’d pulled up the employee files and seen that Lucia had been working here for seven years, the entire length of time since he’d last seen her.
Why did that hurt?
No, it didn’t hurt. Annoyed him, perhaps. From his bed to making the Correttis’. Had she had a moment’s pause, a second’s worth of regret, before she took a job working for the family he hated, the family who had rejected him even as his association with them had defined and nearly destroyed his life?
Or had she just not cared?
Yet Lucia had always cared. She’d always been there when they were children, waiting for him to come home, ready to bathe his cuts or just make him smile with a stupid story or joke. More often than not he’d pushed her away, too angry to accept her offers of friendship. Mi cucciola, he’d called her. My puppy. An endearment but also a barb because she had been like a puppy, dogging his heels, pleading for a pat on the head. Sometimes he’d given it, sometimes he’d ignored her and sometimes he’d sent her away.
Yet still she’d come back, her heart in her eyes just like it had been the night he’d shown up at her door, too numb to feel anything except the sudden, desperate passion she’d awoken in him when she’d taken him in her arms.
Guilt needled him again as he thought of that night, how he’d slipped from her bed before dawn without a single word of farewell. He should have said goodbye, at least. Considering their history, their shared childhood, she’d deserved that much. Even if it didn’t seem like it mattered to her any more. It mattered, annoyingly, to him.
He stood up, pacing the spacious confines of the office with his usual restlessness. He should be feeling victorious now, savagely satisfied, but he only felt uneasy, restless, the remnants of his migraine mocking him.
He’d spent another sleepless night battling memories as well as his migraine. For seven years he’d schooled himself not to think of that night, to act as if it hadn’t happened. Yet last night in the throes of pain he’d been weak, and he’d remembered.
Remembered the sweet slide of her lips against his, the way she’d drawn him to herself, curling around him, accepting him in a way he’d never been before or since. How he’d felt tears spring to his eyes when he’d joined his body with hers, how absolutely right and whole that moment had felt.
Idiotic. He was not a romantic, and a single encounter—poignant as it may have been—didn’t mean anything. It obviously hadn’t meant anything to Lucia, who had seemed completely unmoved by his appearance last night. And if Lucia, who had hero-worshipped him as a child, could be indifferent and even cold towards him now, than surely he could act the same. Feel the same.
In any case he had too
