Chapter 3
Chapter Three
It was still pitch dark when Niccolo pulled up outside Benjamin’s manor house.
He’d first been there five years earlier for Benjamin’s thirtieth birthday party, a raucous affair that had gone on for the whole weekend.
Niccolo’s hangover had taken him through to the following weekend.
Dante hadn’t fared much better. All Niccolo’s subsequent visits had entailed monster hangovers too, mostly on account of Benjamin’s excellent wine cellar and whisky collection.
Georgia, who’d fallen into a doze, must have sensed they’d arrived for she sat up, yawning widely. “We’re here?”
“Yes.”
“How are we getting in?”
“The spare key.”
“You have one?”
“No, but I know the code to access it.” During his last visit, they’d been due to go out for dinner with the old university gang when an emergency had come up at the company Benjamin owned.
He’d told Niccolo to go to the dinner without him and given him the codes for the key and internal security in case he wasn’t back before the meal ended.
Niccolo didn’t want to think about what he’d do if the codes had been changed.
“Does your friend know we’re here?”
“No.”
“You haven’t asked him?”
“I’ve no way to – I’ve binned my phone. It was being tracked.” And all his calls and messages had been monitored, which in itself would have made it foolhardy beyond belief to call an old friend and ask for the use of his home.
A hint of alarm entered her voice. “What about this car? Is it being tracked, too?”
“It’s a hire car. I left mine at the airport in Naples when I dumped my phone. I hired this one in France.” No doubt the Espositos were already aware of this and had put out an alert for the registration.
Niccolo had bought the last ticket for a flight to Paris that was boarding as he roared into the car park.
The next direct flight to London had been five hours away.
Hanging around the airport for any length of time would have been dangerous.
When he’d landed in Paris, he’d gone straight to the car hire place.
Instinct had told him they would be watching all the English airports for him. Safer to drive than fly.
Now they were at Benjamin’s, all he wanted was to rest. He felt depleted of energy.
Just twisting his legs to step out of the car pulled at his wound, and when he stood up, he felt fresh blood trickle out of the bandage he’d allowed Georgia to put on it.
They’d found a twenty-four-hour supermarket with a pharmacy an hour earlier.
He hadn’t wanted to let her go in alone, but as she’d pointed out, a six-foot-four man saturated in blood was hardly inconspicuous, and so he’d dropped her by the entrance, given her his jacket to wear and his wallet stuffed with cash he’d withdrawn on a whim, and told her to be quick.
The twenty minutes she was in there were the longest twenty minutes of his life.
She’d returned carrying a large bulging bag. As soon as she’d got back in the car, she’d ripped a bandage open and taped it to his wound.
The spare key was in a box to the left of the front door. Niccolo punched in the remembered code and expelled a short breath of relief when it released the key. Inside, he punched in a different code to turn off the internal alarms.
Thank fuck for that.
“I’m going to park the car in the garage,” he said as he led her into the large country-style kitchen.
“We need to sort out your wound.”
“Hiding the car is the last thing I need to do. Make yourself useful and see if there’s any food in the kitchen. I’m starving.” Not waiting for a response, Niccolo headed into the quadruple garage. To his relief, there was room for one more car. He hit the button that opened the shutters.
Now that they’d reached safety, the pain from his wound had grown in intensity, and it took all his concentration to reverse the car into the garage’s confines. Dio, the wound throbbed and burned like a bitch. Still, he’d dealt with worse.
Back in the kitchen, Georgia had unloaded her supermarket bag on the table. Next to all the paraphernalia she’d bought was a bowl of steaming water.
“That doesn’t look like food,” he noted with a wry smile.
“I’ve made you a coffee, but you can eat once I’ve fixed you up. Take your shirt off.”
A memory flashed of Georgia giving that same order but in a very different tone.
His energy levels perking up a touch, he raised an eyebrow.
“Already? I thought you’d make me wait a few more hours before demanding I strip for you again.
” He’d never had a lover who’d taken such unashamed delight in his body as Georgia had.
She’d touched, kissed and licked every inch of him.
But that had been then.
Now, if looks could kill, Niccolo would be dead on the floor.
“Unless you want to bleed to death, take your shirt off, sit down and shut up.”
“I love it when your bossy side comes out.”
“Nic…” Her pretty white teeth gritted, and she speared him without another death-stare before turning her back and reaching for the cup on the side. “Just pack it in.”
Funny how Georgia could look drained of all life and be wearing ordinary jeans and his zipped-up leather jacket, which drowned her everywhere except across the bust, and still look as sexy as hell.
Her sexiness was as innate as the white-blonde of her hair, and when she turned back around to hand him the coffee she’d made for him, he was struck again at just how tired she must be.
Her fresh-faced beauty had the look of someone who’d forgotten how to sleep.
“Now that you don’t need to concentrate on the road, you can tell me what happened today,” she said as he unbuttoned his shirt.
He grimaced, both at the pain from peeling the shirt away from his torso and at how he imagined she would react. “I jilted the bride.”
Her only reaction was a slight stillness. “Oh?”
“I couldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t marry into that family.”
“Right…” She nodded and pulled a tight smile. “Perch yourself on the table.”
Amongst her bagful of goodies were a number of cloths to clean his wound with. Dipping one into the steaming water, she wrung it out and then gently pressed and swiped it around the injury.
Niccolo gritted his teeth. When she pressed the cloth to the wound itself, he damned near snapped his jaw.
“Grit your teeth harder,” she said. “I’m going to pour vodka over it.”
“Vodka?” Only now that she’d mentioned it did he notice the litre bottle of Sweden’s finest nestled with all the other goodies.
“To try and sterilise it. God knows what bacteria’s got into it.”
“But vodka?”
“It’s what they do in films.”
“Oh, well that makes perfect sense then.”
“We can always go to the hospital and have it done properly.”
“No.”
She unscrewed the vodka bottle. “Then shut up and keep still, because this is going to hurt… lean over a little.”
Fists clenched and his teeth locked together, Niccolo squeezed his eyes shut and made not a whimper of sound. He’d felt worse pain.
“Nic, the wound’s deeper than I thought. It needs stitching.”
He took a deep breath. Now that it had been vodkaed, he could feel the depth of it. “No hospital.”
“What about a private doctor?”
“No one.” Amidst the concentration of getting out of London and to Benjamin’s house, a plan on how he was going to get them out of this mess had begun to formulate.
It was a different plan from the one he’d made when thinking he only had his own life to consider, but Lorenzo’s death had changed everything.
The threats to Georgia had changed everything.
The Espositos wanted vengeance, and nothing short of a miracle would stop them from extracting it.
Niccolo’s half-formulated plan might just be the miracle they needed. “Bandage it as best you can.”
“If you’re not prepared to have it stitched professionally, you’ll have to let me do it.”
“You? With what?”
She smiled and lifted a sewing kit off the table. “Thought I’d better be prepared for you being a stubborn arse.”
“It will heal without stitches.”
“It will be an open wound prone to infection.” As she spoke, she took a mug from a cupboard and poured vodka into it, then unwound around a foot of string, snipped it, and placed it in the cup. “That should disinfect the string.”
“You are not serious?”
“I’m sure if this were a TV show it would come with the caveat of not trying this at home, but as you’re so adamant about not getting proper medical attention, needs must, so stop being a baby and let me stitch it up.”
She examined the needles closely before selecting one and taking it to the oven.
There, she turned the gas hob on and held the chosen needle over the flame.
Blowing it to cool it down, she placed it in the vodka cup with the string and then washed her hands thoroughly.
Only then did she find a wooden spoon from a drawer and meet his stare again. “You might need this.”
“Have we gone back to the dark ages?” he quipped.
She gave him a look only marginally brighter than her death stare. “Have you got any anaesthetic on you?”
“I left my emergency anaesthetic in my car in Naples. Give me the vodka.”
She pushed the bottle to him. “Save some for me.”
“Since when were you a vodka drinker?” She’d always been a gin or rum woman.
“It’s not for me, it’s in case I need to douse the wound again.” Plucking the string out of the vodka cup, she gave it a quick shake before gripping the sterilised needle and holding it to the ceiling light. Eyes narrowed with concentration, she threaded the string through the needle’s eye.
A deep breath later, she met his stare again. “Ready?”
He took a deep, deep slug of the vodka and nodded.
“Use the spoon too, okay?”
He had another slug of the vodka then put the spoon between his teeth and grinned.
She gave a half smile back, but her large eyes were full of apprehension. “I need you to keep still.”