Chapter Seven #2
Oh, he’d needed to see that curve in her mouth. Unable to resist a moment longer, he stalked around the table and grabbed the hem of that tormenting T-shirt with both fists. She lifted her arms, enabling him to have her naked in seconds.
‘I know it’s terrible to appreciate a personal win when its possibly a crisis for the others, but then, I’m a selfish jerk, right?’ he said roughly, moving in close to breathe in her soft warmth. ‘I already said yes to them.’
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his hips. ‘Good.’
He groaned as she pressed her hot, wet core against him.
He’d clearly been wrong about her needing a break.
He hoisted her onto the table and kicked off his shorts, immeasurably glad he’d had the presence of mind to shove a condom in his pocket earlier.
Her chuckle encouraged him to kiss her wilder, faster. Again.
Which meant he immediately needed another round to prove he could take his time.
An hour later he sprawled with her on the sofa, idly watching the rain trickle down the windowpanes, refusing to react to the intense relief streaming through his system.
He didn’t just have another night with her, but all of this afternoon as well.
He ran his fingers through her hair, indulging in constant touch even though they were both boneless.
But he would savour her silkiness, take what he could, while he could. Because it had to be enough.
‘This place is just beautiful.’ She gazed up at the ceiling. ‘You have quite the library.’
His biggest collection was here. He could lose himself for hours in either the garden or the books.
‘If I were you, I would never leave. Just work from home,’ she chuckled.
‘I thought I was supposed to show up more?’ he teased.
She considered him, those blue eyes glinting like jewels beneath lowered lashes. ‘You leave messages for them all the time in the project files.’
He tightened his arms around her, appreciating that she’d acknowledged that. But her comment about never leaving a place like this made him curious. ‘You travel a lot—don’t you enjoy it?’
‘I can save more when the accommodation is thrown in.’
Right. He understood. He’d done the same when he’d first returned to Sicily and needed to claw his way up from nothing.
But she shouldn’t need to save money. Not only did she come from a wealthy family, her brother was also as much of a billionaire as Sante was, so why the hell had he abandoned her?
‘Why do you use Simonini, not Lorenti?’ he asked before thinking better of such blatant curiosity.
‘It’s another name from my mother’s side of the family.’
‘You don’t want to be associated with your father?’
She turned her head and shot him a level look. ‘You might have some understanding of why I wouldn’t.’
He froze, regretting entering this minefield. It would kill the mood by reminding Mia of the enmity her brother had for him. This time with her now was too precious. Too short. But what of Dario? Didn’t she want to be associated with him?
Sante didn’t blame Mia for believing her father about the accident being his fault, that he’d accepted a pay-off.
She’d been a kid. But Dario had known Sante better than anyone back then.
Sante had even told him a little of his childhood, yet Dario had chosen to believe the worst—that Sante had abandoned him and taken money to stay away.
Sante knew all too well that people generally believed the worst whether they knew about his past or not. He reached for his coffee, scalding his mouth instead of speaking more. Because Sante was selfish and he didn’t want the past to ruin this moment.
‘I don’t believe you took money from him,’ she said, eventually filling the lengthy silence that had grown.
‘After a decade of thinking the worst of me?’ His disbelief was immediate and impossible to contain.
Because no one had ever just believed him. Not without solid proof and even then…
Her colour deepened but her gaze remained steady. ‘Yes.’
His confusion grew. ‘You simply believe my word? Now? Why?’
‘It’s not only about believing you.’ She licked her lips nervously.
‘I know my father. He was a bully who did whatever he deemed necessary to get what he wanted. Including lie. He’d have thought nothing of lying about you.
’ She looked worried, her volume dropping.
‘He told Dario you’d taken his money. He didn’t want you in Dario’s life. ’
Sante flinched but she saw. The blooming compassion in her eyes rooted him in place.
‘He had very specific plans for my brother and me, and he eliminated anything he saw as a distraction.’
Sante didn’t give a damn about Dario now but he found he was curious about what Mia’s father had wanted for her. Because he was fairly sure flitting from one random job to another wasn’t in that snob’s master plan. ‘What or who did he eliminate from your life?’
Mia didn’t answer. She’d been the distraction.
She’d been eliminated. Not that she wasn’t telling Sante that; it was irrelevant and he was only asking to avoid the crux of the conversation.
He didn’t trust her belief in him. But actually, this was exactly the sort of thing her father would have done.
‘Did he chase off all the boys who flocked the second they caught sight of you?’ Sante muttered.
Her father certainly hadn’t liked her getting attention as she’d gotten older.
But as she’d not had much from him, she’d liked it.
She’d done the inevitable and made a very bad choice mostly because—despite her father’s best efforts to squash her natural spirits—she’d been a romantic who believed in love.
That full-on at-first-sight, deep and irrevocable, no-obstacle-could-ever-deny-it kind of love that only actually ever happened on a movie screen. She’d been so naive.
Mia could see Sante holding back now. In the rare instances that Dario had mentioned Sante since the accident, he’d insisted Sante was a user—only interested in people for what he could get out of them.
Dario had referenced all that time he’d spent showing Sante coding and apps—which was why Mia had thought Sante had stolen Dario’s idea.
She knew that all Sante wanted from her was sex.
But that was all she wanted from him, too, right?
This was merely a wrinkle in her system that needed smoothing out.
Dario would be appalled if he knew, but he never needed to. No one would ever know.
And she didn’t need to know more about Sante.
Yet, every minute she remained here, her curiosity deepened.
The fact that he was so guarded and reticent only aggravated her more.
She knew little of his past other than he’d come to her brother’s school on scholarship when he was in his teens.
But there was nothing about him or his past online—not even anything on his company website—not that there was anything deeply unusual about that; Mia knew super-wealthy people were often notoriously private.
So she didn’t know where he’d gone after the accident.
He’d just vanished. She’d assumed he’d returned to his home town—to his family, but he’d never mentioned any family at all and there certainly was no evidence of family here.
There were no photos, no personal ‘things.’ The only constant person in his life seemed to be Adele.
And she couldn’t ask her because she was occupied caring for Bruno.
She tried to remember more from the summer Sante had stayed at her father’s house now.
Only there was one moment she couldn’t bear to touch on, and the bigger problem was Mia had been so young.
The boys hadn’t been around her much. Plus, they’d spoken in Italian together—the language had sounded so familiar yet was foreign to her by then.
Her loss had made her ache. Her father had banned them from speaking Italian when they’d moved—they were to be English.
Mia’s Italian still wasn’t all that great now.
That was partly why she’d agreed to help Adele.
But she wasn’t going to ask more about Sante’s past. She wasn’t going to pry over the boundaries they’d drawn.
This wasn’t anything more than a two-night stand and only about getting this chemistry out of her system.
The one pure distraction was to occupy her mouth in another way entirely.
This weekend had to fix her fascination.
Her lust had to be sated because this couldn’t be anything more than physical chemistry.
And surely, she wasn’t screwing up her job because this was only a short-term placement.
This was nothing like what had happened with Oliver.
She wasn’t going to end up publicly shamed and fired.
When she returned to Rome tomorrow, they would move forward and forget all about it. But that meant she couldn’t waste a minute on sleep now, nor on talking about things that couldn’t be changed. So she turned to him, tempting him, moving with him until she simply couldn’t move anymore.
* * *
Sante wasn’t in bed beside her when she woke early Sunday morning.
Heart seizing, Mia immediately glanced out the window.
Not only had the rain stopped, the sun had actually appeared.
Which meant she’d be able to leave for Rome this morning.
Sucking in a breath, she swiftly grabbed her own clothes, showered and dressed.
Sante was in the kitchen. He was also fully dressed, not cooking in nothing but boxers this morning.
Not cooking at all. Breakfast was ready on the table but it was a cold spread and Sante was on a call.
Glancing at her, he ended it and put his phone on the table.