The Vengeful Groom. SARA WOOD

sweeping up and down her bare arms. His eyes impaled hers, blazing a message she didn’t understand. “I wish I could walk away right now,” he said huskily. “But the memories have drawn me back, and I can’t escape them any longer.”

      Nor could she. All she could think of right now was what it would be like to be in his embrace again, clasped to the big curves of his muscular body. She felt a flash of fire deep within her slumbering core, and she tensed, her hands curling like claws to stop her maverick fingers from humiliating her by touching him. He had to go. Now, before she said or did something she’d regret for the rest of her life. She had regrets enough.

      “You must leave town,” she said flatly. “Or…”

      “Or what?” he murmured. “You’ll call the police and claim I harassed you?”

      “I don’t want to, Gio. But push me and I might,” she muttered.

      “I’d be arrested.”

      Her head tipped high. “Not if you left,” she pointed out.

      “You’d get me into trouble again just because you can’t cope with your own sexual response to me?” he asked in clipped tones. “Like the last time?”

      He showed no shame, no guilt, no recognition that he’d been in the wrong. Tina felt the color in her face drain away, the beat of her pulse ticking like a time bomb.

      “The evidence was overwhelming,” she rasped. “You drove your car on the night of the accident. You kept denying it and you’re still stubbornly denying it, but I saw you and so did dozens of others, and there is no doubt in my mind that you drove the car that…that…” She choked, but forced herself to say it, however much it hurt. “That killed my sister—and her baby!” she finished hoarsely.

      And she felt her heart jerk in pain, remembering the last time she’d seen her sister, Sue, and her baby, Michael, alive—she and Sue splattered with apple-and-banana puree, laughing fondly at little Mikey’s determined attempts to feed himself. A sob rose in her throat, choking her, and she gritted her teeth to hold back the threatening tears.

      Gio’s lips had whitened in anger. “How could you believe that? I’ll never understand….” he said, shaking his head.

      “Beth said—” she began miserably.

      “Didn’t it matter what I had to say?” he asked roughly. “Wasn’t I owed any loyalty? I was your lover. You were supposed to be in love with me and I deserved a hearing. You gave me none! How do you think I felt when you abandoned me?”

      “I’m asking you for the last time. Leave me in peace!” she moaned.

      “Peace? Il quieto vivere? I wish to God I had peace in my life! If only you had believed me, I could have survived anything!” he said bitterly. “But no, you blanked out everything we’d been to one another, all knowledge of my feelings about honor and life and women, and descended into behaving like a petulant bitch who’s been denied the dog she wants!”

      She snatched breath from somewhere, her huge eyes dark with pain. Giovanni and Beth. Her lover and her best friend. That had been hard enough to take, seeing them together that night. Worse was seeing the two smashed cars and knowing that each contained someone she loved.

      She put her hands over her ears, wishing she could shut out forever the sound of Beth screaming that awful night of the accident, hating the memory of the white-faced Giovanni shaking Beth violently and snarling at her to shut up before he reversed his car away from Sue’s.

      He had changed. There was no gentleness in him at all now. And she shuddered, wondering what two years in prison could do to an eighteen-year-old who’d loved his family and life with a wonderful zest and optimism. Every Christmas, each New Year, each Thanksgiving that she’d celebrated with her grandfather and Adriana, she’d wondered how Giovanni was coping, because he was so alone and no one was visiting him. Tears welled up to wash the blue eyes and she turned her head away.

      “Prison…prison has brutalized you….”

      Her voice trailed away, choked by relentless emotions, and then his fingers were drawing her chin back, tilting it up so she was forced to meet his unreadable eyes. Emotions were taking their toll on him, too, perhaps the memories of the dark days in jail, and she winced in heartfelt sympathy. It was misplaced.

      “You brutalized me,” he accused harshly. A thumb scooped the tears from her cheeks without tenderness. And the sickness threatened to overwhelm her. Hastily she brought her hand to her mouth and swallowed back the hard lump in her throat. Giovanni’s breath hissed in through his teeth, his merciless eyes flashing a spine-chilling warning that rooted her to the spot. “So you think you’re suffering!” he mocked. “You don’t even know you’re born! But you will soon.”

      And she saw the raw anger in him, the sense of injustice he bore her as though he’d been brooding for all the intervening years and planning revenge. Nervously she looked around, hoping to catch the eye of a passerby and evade Giovanni, but the street was empty. In any case, she knew her only hope was to make him go. If he stayed for any length of time, even if there was a restraining order on him, he’d find out about Adriana.

      Her heart lurched with sheer horror at the prospect. She had to shield Adriana from Giovanni, or he’d move heaven and earth to take her away. And the bewildered Adriana would scream and cry and he wouldn’t give a damn.

      A sense of tender protectiveness engulfed her at the horrible scenario. It must never happen. She’d make sure Giovanni left. Now.

      Her head snapped up, her mouth tight with determination. “You’re crazy to come here!” she said coldly. “You’ll be recognized at any moment! Given half a chance, folks here’ll tar and feather you!”

      “And you?” he said, in a sinister tone.

      “I’d be selling the brushes,” she said curtly. “You really don’t appreciate how strongly some folks feel. They have long memories.”

      “So do I,” he said quietly, his eyes raking her body. And in the wake of his appraisal there came a sudden heat that radiated over her skin and made her suck in a breath sharply. “Memories that make me desire…action.”

      “Like what?” she asked huskily, and foolishly, before she knew it, she’d responded to the sudden dryness of her lips by licking them. She scowled, hoping to cover up her giveaway reaction.

      Giovanni smiled faintly but didn’t answer the question. “You really think there’s still bad feelings in Eternity about me?” he asked casually. “Even after all this time?”

      “I know there is,” she said in a low tone. Go! She pleaded with her eyes. Go and leave us all alone!

      Unperturbed, he shifted his weight against the low parapet of the bridge and folded his arms confidently. “Bad feeling,” he mused. “That’s awkward.”

      “Why?” she asked warily.

      “Because I’m coming back to live here,” he replied with a pleasant smile, and walked off in the direction of her apartment while she stood staring at his retreating back in horror.

      CHAPTER TWO

      IT WAS A DREAM. A nightmare. But Tina saw the tall resolute figure in the cool cream suit turn to give her a mockingly seductive smile, and she knew from the hot spilling of hormones into her bloodstream that this was cold reality.

      She could ignore the come-on and be safe. Walk away, get on with her day. Her finger slicked over the perspiration on her upper lip as she dismissed that choice.

      Adriana’s welfare came first. The last thing she wanted was for Giovanni to find out that she and her grandfather weren’t alone anymore. Tina’s heart thudded in alarm. If he was insensitive enough to hang around, he’d hear everything there was to know.

      Adriana needed