Italian Deception: The Salvatore Marriage / A Sicilian Seduction / The Passion Bargain. Michelle Reid

of truffles to make a dive for his trousers where they lay discarded on the floor. Trembling fingers dipped into a pocket and came out with a cellophane wrapped packet.

      She didn’t even need to speak. Luca saw the packet and caught on at last. ‘Idiota,’ he breathed, then had the absolute utter gall to offer her a lazily sheepish grin. ‘We never did like those things, did we cara? Too much messing around when we were under the influence of much more compelling forces.’

      She threw the packet at him. It impacted with a god-like bronze shoulder then dropped with ironic accuracy onto his lap. ‘I will never forgive you,’ she snapped at him furiously. ‘How could you take such risks with me, Luca? How could you!’ she cried.

      He stared at her for a moment longer, then his own mood altered. ‘We both took the risks, cara,’ he pointed out grimly. ‘We fell upon each other without doing much thinking at all, if you recall. It was not a one-way slaking.’

      ‘I wasn’t trying to say it was!’

      ‘Then what are you so mad about?’ he snapped, rolling off the bed to land on his feet on the other side of it.

      She could barely get any words out across the lump of incredulous fury strangling her throat. ‘I’m standing here in real danger of already being pregnant and you wonder why I’m mad?’ she choked.

      ‘Pregnant? What is this?’ he demanded. ‘You take the pill,’ he stated with supreme confidence, ‘and this kind of joke is not funny!’

      ‘You can bet it’s not funny,’ Shannon breathed hotly. ‘Because I am not on the pill—why the heck do you think I’m so upset?’

      A thick silence clogged up the air for a second. Then, ‘Madre di Dio,’ he muttered, ‘we have been talking about different risks.’

      ‘What different risks?’ she shot at him, bewildered.

      ‘Why are you not on the pill?’ he shot back.

      ‘Why did you buy condoms if you believed I was?’

      He didn’t answer. Instead he grabbed the back of his neck and swung his back to her, leaving Shannon to use up the next few suffocating seconds drawing her own conclusions, which she did with a shuddering gasp of dismay. ‘Is what you’re not saying here,’ she framed very slowly, ‘that you’ve been indulging in unsafe sex with other women and still didn’t think to protect me for my health?’

      ‘I don’t believe this conversation.’ He turned on her angrily. ‘I do not indulge in unsafe sex and I am perfectly healthy!’

      ‘Oh, you’re so very positive about that!’ she snapped.

      ‘Si!’ he declared.

      ‘If that’s so and you obviously thought I was taking the pill, then why did you bother to buy the—?’

      The answer arrived before she’d even finished asking the question. The sudden taut cast that arrived on his face was like a physical slap of confirmation. The condoms had been bought to protect him. He thought he was at risk from her.

      Shannon stopped trembling. It was amazing, she realised, how calming the ice-cold wash of truth could be. She was the bad guy here, the one that took different men to her bed.

      And he was the man who had hurt her once too often.

      ‘Get out of my room,’ she said, then turned and walked into the bathroom, thrusting the door shut behind her with a foot as she went.

      The door didn’t even make it into its housing before it was thrust open again by an angry hand. ‘I did not mean what you thought I meant,’ a still-naked Luca uttered stiffly.

      ‘Yes, you did.’ Snatching a bathrobe from the hook behind the door, she wrapped herself in it.

      ‘I denied your charge,’ he defined angrily, ‘which did not mean I was then throwing the blame onto you!’

      No, Shannon thought bitterly, his silence did that for him.

      ‘But we have been apart for two years and no one—man or woman—in their right minds takes unnecessary risks these days!’

      ‘You did—twice!’ she flashed.

      ‘And so, mia cara, did you,’ he returned.

      There was no answer to that so she didn’t offer one; instead she picked up a towel and tossed it at him. ‘Cover yourself,’ she said with contempt and went to push past him, but he stayed her with a hand on her arm.

      ‘Stay right where you are,’ he commanded darkly. ‘We have a problem here and we need to talk about it.’

      ‘I think we’ve done enough of that.’ She tried to tug free.

      But he was not going to let her. ‘Two years ago you took the legs from under me,’ he threw at her harshly. ‘Now here you are doing the same thing to me again!’

      ‘Where do you think my legs are?’ she cried. ‘You’ve just issued me with the worst insult a man can pay the woman he’s just sank his body into!’

      He winced. ‘I apologise.’

      ‘It’s not enough,’ she tugged.

      His fingers tightened. ‘Then what do you want me to say?’

      ‘Nothing!’ She was feeling so chilled it was as if she had ice running in her veins. ‘I just want you to leave this room.’

      ‘But I can’t do that. You could be carrying my child—’

      ‘Oh—don’t say that!’ She rounded on him, hair flying, face white, tears beginning to blacken her eyes. ‘I don’t want to have your baby!’

      He paled. ‘You may not be left with the luxury of choice!’

      If anything put the lid on the whole wretched mess, then that declaration did. A strangled sob escaped. Luca answered it with a teeth-grinding curse, then let go of her arm and moved away from her, wrapping the towel around the lean, bronzed, tightly moulded buttocks as he went.

      Spying the box of truffles lying on the floor, he stooped to pick it up and put it back on the chest of drawers with a thump that said a lot about the feelings rumbling inside him. His hand went back to his neck, grimly grabbing onto the rod of tension that was threatening to snap muscle there.

      One part of him was searching for words that would put right the ugliness of what had just happened, but another part—the angry part—was telling him to let it drop because the truth was the truth, even when it was a bitter-tasting truth.

      He had been thinking of himself with the risk thing. She did have a sexual history he could not afford to ignore. How many different ‘boyfriends’ names had Keira dotted into conversations in her stubborn, stubborn determination to keep Shannon’s name alive in his head? Had Keira really believed that it made him feel great to know that Shannon was getting on with her life while his own stagnated?

      Keira … He’d allowed himself to forget about Keira and his brother Angelo in this madness. He released a sigh, closing his eyes on a picture of his beautiful but slightly obsessive sister-in-law who used to remind him of a fragile spark of electricity travelling along an endless loop of wire supported by the strong, patient, loving Angelo. That spark had been snuffed out now along with its support, leaving behind a shattered family, an orphaned baby girl and Shannon, who had been knocked about enough by this tragedy without him knocking her about some more.

      Dio, he thought. It was not supposed to be like this. Hurting Shannon had not been part of his plan. His sole objective when they’d set out this afternoon had been to remind her how good it used to be between them, not how ugly it could be. He’d wanted her receptive to what they could have again if they both wanted it badly enough—before he’d meant to hit her with his big proposition.

      On the bed,