Читать книгу: «Italian Deception», страница 3

Did he want to talk to Shannon about anything? he asked himself suddenly.

No, he did not.

Did he want her to wake up?

No, to that question too.

He paced away again, then turned and grimly made his way back to her side. She still hadn’t moved a single eyelash. Her face was relaxed but very pale. Her lips were together, soft and flushed with their usual rose-like bloom, but if she was breathing through her nose then he could see no evidence of it, no hint that her breasts were moving up and down.

Don’t be a fool, man! he told himself harshly. You know how she sleeps—you know! Yet still he found himself leaning over her to place light fingertips against her pale cheek.

Shannon came out of her haven of sleep to find Luca standing over her. He was so close she could feel his breath on her face. Their eyes clashed, two years shot away with the force of a gun crack and she was looking into his face as it had once looked minutes after his loving, one that had shattered her for ever. She saw anger, the contempt and dismay. She saw eyes turned black with the same emotion that had been driving him and felt the full wretched impact of hurt surge up once again.

Tears flooded into her eyes. ‘I hate you,’ she choked and struck out at him on impulse with a trembling clenched fist.

‘Hate?’ he echoed and caught the fist before it could land, closing it inside an iron grip. ‘You do not understand the meaning of the word,’ he bit back harshly. ‘This, cara, is hate—’

With a tug he yanked her up against him, aiming her mouth up to his so that they collided, and he smothered her shrill cry of protest with the demanding thrust of his tongue. He kissed her in anger, he kissed her in punishment, but it was the heat of his passion that set her struggling wildly to break free. An arm snaked around her waist and she found herself standing with the front of her body clamped to his. Her fist was released so that he could claim the back of her head and maintain the pressure of the kiss.

He ravished her mouth; he uttered thick curses deep in his throat. Her hair came loose to tumble around his fingers. He kissed her and kissed her until she stopped fighting and started trembling. Two years of abstinence and the reasons for it didn’t matter any more because they were back where they’d left off, at war with each other and using sex as their weapon. She scraped her nails down his shirt front, she scored them into his hair, their lips moved in a hungry, sensuous feasting—then as suddenly as it had begun it finished.

Luca thrust her away so violently that she landed in a huddle back in her seat. Dizzy and disorientated, shocked beyond trying to think, Shannon watched him spin on his heel and stride down the cabin. When he reached the far end he picked up what looked like a bottle of whisky, poured some liquid into a glass, then tossed it to the back of his throat.

Staring at the rigid set of his shoulders, she wanted to say something—spit insults at him for daring to grab and kiss her just to prove a stupid point. But her lips felt hot and bruised and she was shaking so badly inside that she didn’t think she could make the words coherent. Instead she lowered her face into her hands, let her hair fall around her like a curtain and prayed that he had been too busy punishing her to notice that she had been kissing him back.

The silence after that was like a razor blade slicing through every second they had left to travel. They landed under clear, dark Italian skies but it was cold enough for Shannon to be glad of her warm coat.

Luca had left his car in the airport car park. Shannon climbed into the passenger seat leaving Luca to stow her things. They drove towards Florence in total silence; their only exchange of words since the kiss in the cabin had been his terse information that he’d rung the hospital and there was still no change.

Familiar landmarks began to flash by her window. They were nearing Florence and the closer they got to the city, the more anxious Shannon became. Eventually the car slowed and turned in through an entrance in a high stuccoed wall. Shannon saw a building which, despite the gardens neatly surrounding it, still had the look that all hospitals had, even if this one was obviously a very exclusive place to be ill.

As Luca brought the car to a halt her skin began to prickle. Taking a deep breath in an effort to brace herself, she unlocked her seat belt and got out. Her legs began to shake as she walked towards the hospital entrance. Luca came to walk alongside her but made no attempt to touch.

She didn’t want him to touch her, she told herself. But the moment she stepped into the hushed hospital foyer she was having second thoughts about that. Luca indicated towards the lifts. As they stepped into one Shannon began to feel strange—alien to herself almost.

Maybe he sensed it because as the lift doors closed them both inside, he questioned, ‘OK?’

She nodded, swallowing on the build-up of tension that had begun to collect in her throat. Her body was tense, her flesh creeping with feelings no one, unless they were about to face a similar situation, could begin to understand. And she was pale; she knew she was pale because her face felt so cold and washed out.

‘Don’t be alarmed by the amount of equipment you will find surrounding her,’ Luca seemed compelled to warn. ‘It is standard practice in cases like these to monitor just about everything they can …’

He was trying to prepare her. It was all she could do to give a jerky nod of her head in response. The lift stopped. Her heart began to pump so oddly that it made it difficult to draw breath.

The doors slid open on a foyer similar to the one they’d walked through downstairs—and Shannon’s courage seemed to drop like a stone to her feet, stopping her from moving another inch.

She closed her eyes, tried to swallow again, felt her breasts lifting and falling on small tight gasps for air as a stark sense of dread closed her in. Then the lift pinged, giving notice that it was about to close its doors again. Her eyes flickered upwards at the same time that Luca shot out an arm—not towards her but to hold back those impatient doors.

His eyes were fixed on her, narrowed slightly and shadowed by concern. His face was pale, lips slightly parted on tense white teeth as if he was struggling to control an urge to make a grab for her.

‘I’m all right,’ she breathed in whispered assurance. ‘Just give me a second to—’

‘Take your time,’ he said gruffly. ‘There is no rush.’

No? Shannon fretfully contradicted that assertion. She might already be too late!

Too late … She groaned in silent agony. Too late belonged to the years she had avoided coming anywhere near Florence. Too late belonged to the way she had cut Keira right out of her life for months and even after they’d made up—in a fashion—she’d kept her strictly at an arm’s length by being cool, being remote, piling on the guilt and the—

The lift gave another ping and kept on pinging, trying to close its doors against Luca’s blocking arm. On a mammoth dragging-together of her courage Shannon made herself move. The first person she saw was Luca’s mother. She looked dreadful, her beautifully defined face withered by anxiety and grief.

The ever-ready tears rushed into Shannon’s eyes again, her voice wobbling on the words that had to be said. ‘I’m so sorry about Angelo, Mrs Salvatore,’ she murmured in unsteady Italian as she moved on instinct, reaching out with her arms to draw the poor woman in an embrace.

It took a few seconds to realise that the embrace was not welcome. Stiff and unbending, Mrs Salvatore was accepting of her touch out of politeness—but that was all. As Shannon drew away, shaken by the cold reminder of how Luca’s family felt about her, she saw the other faces bearing witness to her rejection.

Then Luca stepped up behind her, bringing his hands up to curve her shoulders in what Shannon could only describe as a declaration of some kind. He didn’t say a single word, but all eyes lifted to his face, then dropped away uncomfortably.

‘To your left,’ he quietly instructed her.

Dry-mouthed, inwardly struck to her core, Shannon forced herself to start walking again. With Luca’s hand still curving her slender nape and with a new kind of silence thickening the air, they entered a corridor that put the rest of his family out of view—thankfully, because she didn’t need any cold witnesses when she faced what was to come.

And it came quickly—too quickly. Through the very first door they encountered, in fact. Luca paused, so did she, watching as he pushed the door open then gently urged her to move again. Her body felt heavy, that sense of dark dread placing a drag on her limbs as she made herself step through the opening into a well-lit room with white walls and staffed by a white-uniformed nurse who stood by a white-sheeted bed.

And then there was the white-faced creature lying in the bed.

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS the point when her control split wide open. Shannon had thought she was prepared, she’d truly believed she was ready to deal with whatever she had to face in this room. But she found she couldn’t cope with the sight of her sister lying there so pale and still as if life’s essence itself was slowly seeping out of her.

The choked sob that attempted to escape had to be rammed back into her mouth by a shaking fist at the same moment that she took a staggering step backwards, pressing herself against the full muscle-packed length of Luca, who acted like a wall to halt her cowardly retreat. Eyes blurred, throat thick, mouth trembling, she fought to get a hold on herself.

It was awful. It took a fierce effort to force herself forward on legs that didn’t feel supportive. Arriving at the side of the bed, she reached for one of her sister’s limp hands. It felt warm and that was comforting. Warmth meant life.

‘Keira?’ she called out unsteadily. ‘Keira—it’s Shannon. Can she hear me?’ she demanded of the nurse. Then, before the woman could answer, her attention honed right back on the white face lying against white pillows. ‘Oh, Keira,’ she burst out painfully. ‘Wake up and talk to me!’

‘Here …’ a deep voice prompted. A pair of hands carefully eased the overcoat from her shoulders, then a chair arrived at the back of her knees, giving her no choice but to sit.

The diversion stopped her from falling apart as, she realised, she had been about to do. ‘H-how deeply unconscious is she?’ she asked huskily.

‘Some of it is drug induced,’ Luca offered with what she supposed was meant to be a comfort. The nurse seemed to have slipped away, making her exit without Shannon noticing.

‘Has she woken up at all since the accident?’

‘No,’ Luca answered gruffly.

‘Does that mean she doesn’t even know she’s had her baby?’

‘No,’ he said again.

Shannon felt her insides begin to burn as a whole new set of emotions went raging through her blood. How many failed pregnancies had poor Keira endured through the years before she’d managed to carry this baby to almost full term? Five or six, Shannon was sure, since she’d married Angelo.

Would a girl child be enough for her? With her own life hanging in the balance here, would her sister now give up on her obsession to give Angelo a male heir?

Angelo—what was she thinking? There was no more Angelo. ‘Oh, Keira,’ she whispered painfully. How was she going to cope without her beloved Angelo?

Then began long hours of torment. Nothing around her felt real. She sat by the bed and talked to Keira. When she was gently removed from the room by medical staff who needed to check Keira, she sat outside in the corridor and lost herself in grief for Angelo. Occasionally Luca would appear, or his mother or one of the sisters. It didn’t occur to her that she was never left entirely on her own or that the family attitude towards her had taken a complete about turn. Perhaps, if she had noticed, she would have started to realise that their sharing of her vigil was a bad sign. But she didn’t notice and she rarely spoke, unless it was to Keira—then she talked and talked and talked without remembering a single word.

At one point someone gently asked her if she would like to see the baby. She thought she should do, for Keira’s sake, but that was all. So she agreed and was utterly blown away by the tiny scrap of human life lying in her clear plastic cocoon fighting her own little battle.

Keira’s daughter—Angelo and Keira’s.

She burst into a flood of tears and wept for everyone, her emotions like a driverless vehicle wildly out of control. When she went back to sit with Keira her voice was as calm as a slow-running stream as she talked and talked and talked.

‘You’ve had enough—’

The light touch on her shoulder brought Shannon’s limp head lifting from the crisp white sheet that she had not been aware of resting against. Sleep-starved eyes blinked uncomprehendingly up into a determined gaze that was brown flecked with gold.

‘You can do no more here tonight, Shannon,’ Luca said quietly. ‘It is time for us to leave and get some rest now.’

‘I …’ can be here, she was about to insist, but Luca silenced her with a shake of his head.

‘Keira is stable,’ he stated firmly. ‘The people here know where to contact us if they need to. It is time for us to leave.’

The voice of authority, she recognised. Luca was not going to take no for an answer and if she was honest she knew he was right. She was so utterly used up she was barely functioning on any sensible level.

But it felt like desertion when she made herself get up from the chair and she lifted up one of Keira’s hands and pressed a soft kiss to it before leaning over to leave another kiss on her cheek.

‘Love you,’ she whispered, then she was turning to walk away with wretched tears blurring her progress to the door with Luca following close behind.

‘Where are you going?’

She blinked, her sleep-starved brain taking whole seconds to realise they were now outside her sister’s room, the door having been pulled shut so silently she hadn’t even heard it. ‘The baby,’ she murmured, waving a decidedly uncoordinated hand in the direction of the nursery. ‘I want to …’

‘The baby is fine,’ he assured. ‘I have been with her for the last hour while you sat with Keira.’

An hour? Shannon blinked again. Luca had been with the baby for a whole hour? The picture that produced in her head just didn’t correspond somehow with the man she thought she knew.

‘I watched the nurse attend to her, then they let me hold her for a while …’

Something passed over his face, a wave of unchecked emotion that emphasised the ring of pain that was circling at his mouth. Guilt made a sudden clutching grab at her aching heart. This man had just lost his beloved brother but, while she had been selfishly absorbed in her sister’s plight, Luca had been too busy supporting others to find the time to deal with his own loss. She had been existing in a fog since they’d arrived here, but he’d split his time between comforting his grief-stricken mother or one of his two sisters as well as attending to her.

Now here he stood, doing what he did best: being the strong Salvatore male. But when she looked into his eyes she saw the desolation beneath his glossy black lashes. She also witnessed another painful image of him slipping away to go to the nursery to hold a tiny baby girl who was the only link to his brother.

Her heart ached again, everything ached, for Luca as well as herself.

‘Oh, Luca,’ she murmured as impulse made her take a step closer to him with soft words of sympathy trembling up from her throat.

He saw it coming. His face closed up. ‘Here,’ he clipped. ‘Put this on …’

He held out her coat. Shannon stared at it, aware that she’d just had a door slammed shut in her face again. And why not? she asked herself bleakly as she swallowed the words of comfort and felt the tremor that came with them shiver its way to her feet. Her sister was alive but his brother was dead. Accepting comfort from his ex-lover-turned-enemy would be a blow to his dignity he could do without.

So she let him feed her coat sleeves up her arms without uttering another syllable. As the heavy garment settled on her tired shoulders she pushed her hands into its deep pockets to hug the warm wool around her, then walked towards the bank of lifts. The chairs in the foyer were empty now; the rest of the Salvatore family had been sent home to their beds long ago.

The silence between them held as they drove away into the cool dark night. A glance at the clock illuminated on the car dashboard told it was one o’clock in the morning. It felt as if a whole week had gone by since she’d got out of bed yesterday at six in the morning and rushed out to catch the commuter flight to Paris. Such a lot had happened since then. Too much—too much, she thought dully as she rested her head against the soft leather headrest, then closed her hot, tired, gritty eyes.

Luca watched as she slipped into an exhausted slumber and grimaced to himself. He knew the impression he had given her back there in the hospital, but she could not be more wrong about his motives if she’d tried. However, receiving comfort from a warm and sympathetic Shannon right now would have shattered the control he was hanging onto by a thread.

And it was not over yet—though he was aware that Shannon didn’t know that. There was more to come—a battle—he predicted, because she was not going to like it when she discovered where she was staying. Let his defences drop before the fight was won and he would turn himself into a target for someone of Shannon’s fiercely stubborn independent nature.

Dio, he thought tiredly as he drove them through the silent streets of Florence. He was not that sure that he wasn’t already that target. A mere glance at her sitting beside him with her long legs stretched out in front of her, the white oval of her face so exquisite in repose, he experienced that telling needle-sharp sting of Man on the prowl.

She got to him. She always had done. Love or hate her, he always wanted her and it was knowing that that made him such a target. Give her reason to spark and he was going to catch a light. He was so sure of it that he would try anything to keep her asleep until he had her safely ensconced in a bed—and he’d put himself on the other side of the bedroom door.

A sitting duck. Angelo’s words, he remembered starkly. Angelo had said that the two of them were both targets for a pair of Irish witches to enchant at will.

Angelo … A collapse took place inside his chest. It was a sensation he had grown familiar with during this long, miserable day. He missed his brother—already. He wanted Angelo back. Tears stung hot and dry against the backs of his eyes and he felt his skin stretch across his cheek-bones with tension.

His foot hit the accelerator, using a surge of unnecessary bodily power to release the pressure in his chest. Familiar landmarks flashed by the side window. He saw a set of traffic lights ahead glowing red; he aimed for them—felt the burning rush swell inside him, challenging that bastard called death. It was compelling, seductive.

Shannon stirred. He glanced at her, saw beauty personified in his stark eyes and, clenching his jaw tight and gritting his teeth, he forced himself to slow down. One car crash in the family was enough. The moment of madness eased, leaving Shannon still asleep beside him with no idea how close he’d come to putting her safety at risk.

The sensation remained, though, burning like acid in his gut, anger at the waste of his brother’s life overlaying the numbing sense of grief. It was going to need assuaging and he had a grim suspicion he knew by what source.

It was feeling the car swing sharply down a steep incline that stirred Shannon awake. Opening red-rimmed eyes, she sat up to peer out at the lines of cars parked in the basement car park and, as Luca slotted the car into its reserved parking slot, he waited for recognition to spark.

It didn’t happen. Probably too tired to notice anything much, she yawned then opened her door and stepped out. He did the same, eyeing her carefully as she waited in weary silence for him to recover her luggage then walked beside him to the lift.

They stepped into it together. While he used a plastic security card to activate the lift she went to lean against one of the metal cased walls, thrust her hands into her coat pockets, then proceeded to stare at her booted feet.

‘You have access, then,’ she remarked, smothering yet another yawn.

‘Yes, I have access,’ was all he said.

‘Good of them.’

‘Hmm?’

‘Angelo and Keira. It’s good of them to trust you with security access to their apartment.’

He didn’t answer, keeping his expression blank while he wondered if she was even aware that she’d used his brother’s name as if Angelo were still alive.

That anger stirred again; he crushed it down. The lift began to rise. He wanted to hit something and wished he didn’t feel like this.

‘But then, that’s nothing new,’ she added with a sudden tinge of bitterness in her voice. ‘Security access to each others’ homes has always been the norm for the Salvatores.’

‘You think that’s a bad thing?’

‘I think it’s bloody stupid,’ she replied. ‘I know Italian families like to be close, but having the right to walk in and out of each others’ homes when they feel like it is taking family unity to the extreme.’

‘Because you were once caught out by this—extreme perhaps?’

The taunt hit home. She flinched, then lifted her chin to send him a clear cold stare. He countered it with a thin smile. Mutual antipathy began to sing. The lift stopped. She was so busy defying him to take that comment further that when the lift doors slid open she still did not notice where she was.

So he said nothing and merely mocked her with a gesture of his hand to step out of the lift. Head up, eyes like ice, she walked forward, stooping to collect up her bags from where they sat at his feet before saying tightly. ‘Goodnight, Luca. I’m sure you know your own way out again.’

Then she walked—or did she flounce? Luca mused curiously. Whichever, she did it sensationally in her ankle-length coat and flaming red hair; it was almost a shame that reality was about to spoil it.

She was several strides in before she began to take in the décor of rich cream walls and inlaid wood floors on which stood the kind of heavy antique pieces that she would never have connected with Keira’s more homely tastes.

Luca watched her freeze, watched her take stock, watched her pull in a sharp breath before she spun to stare at him as he slid the plastic security card back into his leather wallet while the lift doors closed behind his blocking frame.

‘No,’ she breathed in stricken protest. ‘I’m not staying here with you, Luca. No way.’

It took fewer strides to bring her back to him. Eyes bright with defiance, she snaked a hand over his shoulder to gave the lift-call button a firm press.

‘It won’t come without my authorisation,’ he reminded her gently.

‘Then authorise it.’

She was standing so close that he could feel her breath on his face. She smelled of Chanel and the hospital, and the tumbled untidiness of her hair flamed like a warning around her face. She was trying her best to defy him but underneath the defiance he knew alarm bells were ringing because she did not understand his motives for bringing her here of all places, back to the scene of the crime, so to speak.

He could reassure her that he had nothing sinister on his mind and that she had to stay somewhere and even he wasn’t so brutal that he take her to a dead man’s house then leave her there alone—but it would not be the truth. Something had happened to him during the mad drive here, and he now wanted her so badly that it burned in his gut like a pounding fever. He wanted to pick her up and throw her over his shoulder, find the nearest bed and drop her down on it, then follow with some good, hard sex. No preliminaries, just a quick, hot slaking of all this stuff he was struggling to deal with: his brother, her sister—Shannon back here and within his reach. She had made the last two years of his life a misery—the least she could do in reparation was help him assuage his grief!

Shannon knew what he was thinking—it was vibrating all around them like some dark, compelling force. The desire, the old burning attraction, that needle-sharp prick of sexual awareness that made his eyes glow gold and made her need to run the tip of her tongue around the sudden dry curve of her lips.

‘No,’ she breathed in husky denial.

‘Why not?’ He watched that telling little gesture and smiled. ‘For old time’s sake.’

For old time’s sake? Her own affronted gasp almost choked her. She couldn’t believe he was behaving like this! Didn’t it matter to him that there was a life-threatening situation taking place not far away, or that one person had died and another two were fighting a battle with death?

‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ she told him, then turned on her heel and walked away across the large square entrance hall with all its familiar trappings of wealth, like the exquisite antique chest set against one wall with the magnificent bronze statue of Apollo standing on its top. She strode beneath the wide archway through which she gained access to the rest of the apartment. And she walked with purpose, knowing exactly where she was making for.

The kitchen, which led to the utility room, which in turn led to the rear exit door. A locked rear exit door, she soon discovered. Her heart sank—but not her resolve, she determined as she dropped her bags to the floor then turned, eyes wearing such a hard glint now that they should have turned him to stone where he stood propping up the other door, watching her lazily.

‘I’ll get out,’ she warned, ‘if I have to break windows.’

‘We are four floors up,’ he reminded her.

‘Broken windows upset people,’ she explained, undeterred. ‘They tend to call in the police when glass comes showering down on top of them.’

His hard mouth gave a mocking twist. ‘Well, that might have been fun,’ he drawled. ‘If the glass wasn’t shatterproof.’

Her shoulders sagged; this was getting stupid. ‘Look,’ she snapped. ‘It’s late. I’m tired—you’re tired. We’ve both had a rotten day! Can we just stop this now?’ She tried a bit of pleading. ‘Let me out of here, Luca—please!’

‘I wish it was that simple,’ he grimaced.

‘It is!’ she insisted.

‘No, it isn’t,’ he returned with a snap that altered his taunting mood to the grimly serious. ‘So let’s get a couple of things straight. You are staying here in my apartment, because it is situated so close to the hospital—’

‘I’d rather stay at Angelo and Keira’s place.’

He stiffened suddenly, dark eyes flaring up with a blistering rage. ‘Angelo is dead!’ he barked at her. ‘So will you stop dotting his name into every damn sentence, for goodness’ sake?’

Shannon blinked in surprise, her face turning as white as a sheet. Had she been doing that? She hadn’t been aware of it. When she thought about her sister she automatically put Angelo with her. Angelo and Keira—it had always been that way. ‘I’m s-sorry,’ she stammered, not knowing what else to say.

Luca frowned. ‘Forget I said that,’ he dismissed, then sucked in a deep breath. ‘The point is,’ he went on, ‘that Angelo and Keira have moved since you were last here. It is now more than an hour’s drive out of the city to their new home. My mother is not fit to be on her own right now so she has gone to stay with Sophia, which leaves you with a choice, Shannon,’ he offered finally. ‘You either stay here with me, stay with Renata, or you go and stay with my mother at Sophia’s house.’

Which was absolutely no choice at all, she acknowledged heavily. His mother hated her. So did his sisters. Staying with them would be just a different kind of hell. And anyway, his family had a right to do their grieving together and without an unwanted interloper in their midst.

‘There are such things as hotels, you know,’ she pointed out stubbornly.

‘Are you really so selfish that you would go to a hotel knowing that such a choice would not only offend my mother, but would hurt Keira beyond all that is fair if and when she discovers it?’ He sent her a look that stung. ‘She will blame the family, she will blame me for not being man enough to put my own feelings about you to one side for her sake.’

‘But you aren’t putting your feelings aside!’ she cried.

‘I will if you will.’

‘Liar,’ she breathed. But as for the rest he was, oh, so frustratingly right that, on acceptance, her ability to remain standing upright any longer disintegrated and she sank wearily against the locked door behind her and dropped her face into her hands.

It was a surrender. He knew it and well and she knew it. But Shannon could not resist dropping one final comment into the throbbing silence that fell. ‘I hate you,’ she whispered from the all-enveloping shield of her tumbling hair.

‘No, you don’t,’ Luca denied. ‘You still fancy the hell out of me and that, cara, is what you hate.’

‘That’s a lie!’ The hands dropped so she could spit the disclaimer at him.

‘Is it?’ His eyes were cold now, hardened by his arrogant belief in what he was claiming. ‘Cast your mind back to the kiss on the flight over here,’ he suggested. ‘If I had not stopped it you would have gone up in a plume of smoke.’

‘My God,’ she gasped. ‘You conceited devil!’

‘Maybe.’ He gave an indifferent shrug. ‘But I know what I know.’

‘You kissed me, if you remember!’