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

maybe that was it, she then consoled herself as she used a trembling hand to pull out one of the two high stools that sat in front of her white laminate breakfast bar and hitched herself up onto it. Maybe obsessing about Luca was her mind’s way of distracting her from what was really threatening to tear her apart.

      ‘How are your mother and your sisters coping?’ she asked as she pulled the plate of toast towards her.

      ‘They’re not,’ he replied with a blunt economy that turned her stomach inside out. Then he relented slightly, sighed and added, ‘They are keeping themselves occupied at the hospital, taking turns to sit with Keira and the baby. It—helps them to be there.’

      ‘Yes.’ Shannon acknowledged her acceptance of that.

      Luca used that moment to pull out the other stool and sit down beside her. His thigh accidentally brushed against hers as he reached over to pour coffee into her mug. Shannon’s mind went blank—although blank was nowhere near the right word to describe the sudden burning sensation that sprang to life low in her abdomen. Nor did the word suit the sudden fire-burst of images that went chasing through her head. Images of what that thigh felt like naked when brushing against her naked thigh, images of her hand stroking along its muscle-packed length and of his hand making the same sensual journey along the silken length of hers.

      The old vibrations started up, running riot round her system and warming the sensitive place at her core. In an effort to pretend it just wasn’t happening, she reached for a slice of toast and lifted it to her mouth. She bit but didn’t taste, tried chewing though she knew she would struggle to swallow. Her mouth was too dry and she needed that coffee.

      She needed him to move away so she didn’t have to feel like this. She needed to remember why he was here! Oh, God, she thought wretchedly. She was ashamed of herself—she could smell him, feel him, she could even taste him! What was it with her that she couldn’t keep her stupid, rotten appalling thoughts under control?

      Her throat closed as she tried to swallow—hot, bright tears burned in her eyes. She despised herself; she despised him for coming here and doing this to her—for showing her up for the weak-willed, shallow person she had to be to be letting him get to her at a time like this when—

      ‘Milk?’ he asked.

      Shannon looked at the two mugs of steaming black coffee and recalled how little it had always taken for them to want to fall upon each other. A look, a word, an accidental touch like the light brushing of thighs and they could lose themselves quite appallingly in the pleasures of the flesh. Making love with Luca had been passionate and daring and uninhibited. He had shown her pleasure she’d never known existed, lowered her so deep into her own senses that sometimes she’d struggled to float back out again.

      Only twice had he actually hurt her: the first time they’d made love and the last time they’d made love. The first time Luca hadn’t understood what kind of woman he’d been dealing with and she hadn’t bothered to tell him that he would be her first lover so she’d accepted all the blame. When she’d cried a little afterwards he’d wrapped her in his arms and shown her a different kind of loving with the power of comfort and a need to put right what he saw as his own failure. He had done so, of course, many times and in many, many ways.

      ‘No,’ she managed to offer in answer to his question—while her mind rocketed off to recall the second time he had hurt her.

      He had been blinded by fury, lost inside a frighteningly jealous rage. He had called her everything from slut to harlot and she had been so appalled that he could see her that way that she’d riled him on with biting sarcasm until he had snapped.

      And it had not been the compulsive roar of sex that followed that hurt her, but the contempt with which he’d cast her aside afterwards that had ground her emotions to dust. Since then—nothing. No word, no contact—not even an acknowledgement to say that he had received back his ring.

      Therefore—yes, she reiterated very grimly, she was over Luca Salvatore. The simple act of remembering those dark times was enough to kill anything she’d ever felt for him. Even if the truth came up and hit him in the face right now as they sat here pretending to be civilised and he got down on his knees to beg her forgiveness, she would not forgive.

      So let her senses respond to his closeness, she invited. Let her foolish pulse quicken and her weak flesh vibrate and her shameful head try recalling the good times if it felt it had to do. But the bad times would always overshadow those good times.

      ‘I’m going to pack a bag.’ Getting up with an abruptness that startled him, she walked away without sparing his over-still, over-watchful frame a single fleeting glance.

      CHAPTER TWO

      LEFT alone in the kitchen, Luca stared into his mug of coffee and wondered grimly if she had actually seen him at all through that glaze of shock that covered her eyes.

      Did he really care? he then questioned in outright rejection of what was rumbling around inside him. He already knew the inner Shannon too well to want to make contact again.

      Been there, done that, he thought with a cold lack of any humour, then hunched forward and folded his hands around his coffee mug wishing to hell he hadn’t come here. In the way he’d always believed that these things worked, life should have drawn a story on her beautiful face by now. She should look distinctly jaded but instead she was more stunningly beautiful than ever.

      Lies, all lies, he contended tightly. Those too-blue eyes had turned lying into a fine art. The same with her lush, soft, kissable mouth and the way she held her chin so high whenever she allowed herself to look at him.

      Challenge and contempt. He’d seen both in her face before he’d felled her with the news. What did she think gave her the right to look at him like that when she had been the one who had taken another lover into his bed?

      His bed. ‘Dio.’

      Letting go of his cup, he sprang to his feet on an explosion of anger and disgust, versus a strange, unwanted, stomach-clutching fight with regret.

      She had been his woman. In every way he had ever looked at it he had been her man—her love, her for ever after. It had been in her eyes, in her smile, in the way she’d taken him inside her, so why—why had she thrown it all away?

      A harsh sigh sent him to stand by the kitchen window. The rain was still lashing down outside, the night so stormy it promised to be a rough flight out of England.

      Irritation shot down his backbone. Why had he come here?

      He wished he knew. He wished he knew what it was that was driving him. Had he really believed that he was man enough to bury the past in this time of tragedy and deal with this situation with understanding and compassion? Or had his motives been driven by something much more basic than that—like a need to assuage this thick bloody grief churning around inside him by witnessing some sign of remorse or regret for what she had thrown away?

      Well, so much for the compassion scenario because one look at her standing there at her door, one glance at the way she cowered back against the wall, and his stupid head took him back to the last time he’d seen her cower like that. So he’d pulled the lousy trick with the doors and deserved the contempt she’d thrown back at him for doing it.

      And as for signs of remorse?

      ‘Dio,’ he grated.

      He was a fool for coming here in person. He was a fool for expecting to see remorse from a woman who had shown none when she’d been caught cheating on him. He should have stayed where he belonged in Florence with his mother and sisters. He should have left a message on her cell-phone as she’d suggested—There’s been a car accident, your sister is dying and my brother is dead.

      ‘Hell,’ he cursed. ‘Hell!’ as his own brutal words ground his body into a clutch of agony.

      Angelo—dead.

      His heart began to pound like the rain on the window. He caught sight