doorbell began to ring. It was only when the man from the flat upstairs began banging on the floor and it became obvious that her visitor was not going to go away that she made any attempt to respond.
‘All right, all right,’ she muttered, running the back of her hand across her damp cheeks and glancing with disinterest in the mirror as she passed. The glance revealed a blotchy, tear-stained face and swollen eyes surrounded by a halo of wild, slightly damp red curls.
Sniffing and pushing her hair back from her face, she opened the door a crack, but before she could either tell her noisy visitor to go away or even just check them out the door was thrust open and she was lifted backwards into her cramped hallway as Cesare Brunelli’s broad-shouldered, six-foot-five frame entered her flat.
For thirty seconds she was too stunned to say or do anything at all.
As his hands fell from her waist Cesare was unable to dispel the illogical feeling that they had belonged there—they fitted. Shrugging off the whimsical idea, he drew a hand through his hair and it came away wet. It had been raining outside.
‘Say something or I will start to think I have wandered into the wrong flat.’
It was a lie. He could have picked out her subtle womanly fragrance in a room crammed with hundreds of bodies, and he didn’t think this had anything to do with some sensory compensation he had developed. His sixth sense had not come out of hibernation, but there was, it seemed, just something about her that he reacted to on an almost cellular level.
The mass of raw masculinity in such an enclosed space sent Sam’s nervous system and her brain into chaotic confusion. She expelled a long shaky sigh as her wide-eyed glance slid down the long, lean length of him, a weakness invading her limbs as a deeper shuddery sigh left her with parted lips. He looked incredible—the epitome of male beauty standing close enough for her to touch. Only she wasn’t going to—she still had a grain of good sense left and past experience had taught her that when any form of physical contact with the Italian took place things got dangerously unpredictable.
She stared covetously at him and wondered what to do next—the question might be academic if her heart beat any faster. The moleskin jacket he wore hung open to reveal a close-fitting cashmere sweater, black, like the jeans that emphasised his long, muscular thighs and snaky hips.
She tried to drag her eyes away but couldn’t stop staring. There was a sheen of moisture on his golden skin making it gleam, and the same moisture clung in silvery droplets to the long eyelashes that framed his beautiful eyes.
He had not hidden them behind dark glasses, but then Cesare Brunelli was not a hiding sort of man. He was more of a hit-obstacles-head-on sort of person.
She suspected that most things moved—or even ran—when they saw him coming! If she had shown as much sense, she reflected bitterly, she wouldn’t be in this mess. Although she supposed she would still be out of work, only it would be because she hadn’t made the grade, which wasn’t as bad as out of work because she hadn’t made the grade and was pregnant!
She finally managed to speak. ‘You didn’t wander in, you barged in uninvited.’ She tried hard to inject the necessary degree of coldness and disapproval into her voice, but it was an uphill battle because it was hard to be cold when she was staring at his mouth. ‘How did you get here?’ She started at the sound of the door being closed with an audible click. ‘And what are you doing here?’
Hearing the rising note of escalating panic in her voice, she stopped and cleared her throat.
‘Actually this is a bad time for m-me…’
The husky catch in her voice had a similar effect on Cesare as a nerve ending being exposed to cold air. His brows drew together in a stern line as his forehead puckered into a frown. ‘You’re crying!’
Scalding shame washed over him. He firmed his jaw, causing the muscles along the strong angular outline to quiver. This was not the place for sentiment; he was doing the right thing. It was necessary.
Sam sniffed and placed both hands across her mouth to muffle the sob she felt welling up in her throat.
‘Will you just go away?’ she pleaded.
‘No, I couldn’t if I wanted to.’ He passed a hand across his eyes and smiled sardonically. ‘I’m blind, remember.’
‘I remember.’ It was still hard to believe, even more so now that he had conquered the demons of primitive fear he had been wrestling in Scotland. Did he resent the fact she had seen him when he was not totally in control?
‘In case you didn’t recognise it, that was black humour.’
‘No, that was bad taste.’
‘I’m famous for it.’
Sam couldn’t respond to the quip; her facial muscles felt locked in a tragic expression. ‘Look…’ She paused, wondering what to call him. She couldn’t call the father of her child Mister! ‘Look, Cesare—’
Some emotion she could not interpret flickered at the backs of his eyes. ‘Was that so hard?’ he asked.
Her eyes widened. Even though he couldn’t pick up on the cues of body language and facial expressions everyone took for granted, he was scarily perceptive.
‘Was what so hard?’
‘Saying my name.’
She was too emotionally whacked to prevaricate. ‘Yes, it was.’ And why not? Anything connected with him was hard work!
‘Cesare, the fact is I’ve had a bad day. The last person in the world I want to see is you!’ Unable to stop them, she felt the tears start to roll down her cheeks once more and she wiped them away with the back of her hand.
‘Sometimes it helps to talk about it.’
‘For goodness’ sake, don’t turn kind and understanding now—not unless you want me to cry all over you, and that isn’t a pretty sight,’ she warned him darkly.
Cesare, who was well aware that even the most generous of critics could not have termed his recent actions either kind or understanding, reached out and touched the side of her cheek. She twisted her head away, but not before the shiver that ran through her body communicated itself to him through his fingertips.
‘The advantage of being in the company of a blind man, cara, is you can relax about the way you look and not worry about bad-hair days.’
He might not be able to see her face or read her body language, but Sam recognised with a sense of dismay that she felt more exposed on every level when she was near him.
‘I could never relax in your company.’ She bit her quivering lips and added before he could read something revealing into her retort, ‘I tried to talk to you…Cesare, and all it got me was a headache. Look, I’m sorry. I know you were only trying to do the right thing by suggesting we get married…you’re Italian and the family thing is…’
She stopped as her shoulders began to shake with the effort of biting back the sobs that were locked in her throat. Her head sank to her chest as she began to sob in earnest.
Her muffled cries tore at Cesare’s heart the way no woman’s tears ever had.
