Chapter 4 #2
Sweet, sweet, sexy Georgia. Beneath the sheets, the voluptuous lover with a sexual appetite to match his own; outside them, a soft-hearted dreamer who was so much more.
She was complex. Shy with strangers, but once comfortable in someone’s company, fun and quick to laugh.
Affectionate… Infectiously affectionate.
As happy to spend hours reading a book as she was to climb the Eiffel Tower or party.
Content in silence. Content to listen. Content to just be.
She didn’t need or want constant entertaining.
She just needed and wanted you to be there.
That was all she’d ever wanted from him.
To be there. She’d made no demands. She hadn’t asked anything of him but his time, and he’d given it freely. More freely than with anyone else.
And, as he’d learned that afternoon in Paris and as his wounds bore testament to, she was also capable of turning into a Tasmanian Devil when angered or threatened.
So yes, a sweet and lovable but complex woman. It sickened him to think of the danger he’d put her in.
Why the hell were the Espositos targeting her?
He could understand it if they’d continued their relationship, but it had ended before his and Siena’s engagement party.
Other than her message on Monday about her psycho sister coming to Naples to stop the wedding, they’d had no contact at all in four months.
Dio, he’d felt those months, he finally admitted to himself. His moment of regret at walking away from Georgia had been the longest moment of his life.
The deep sleep Georgia’s exhausted body craved wouldn’t come.
Instead, her brain rewound four months, to their last day in Paris.
Niccolo had whisked her away for a long weekend.
They’d climbed the Eiffel Tower. The weather had been icy cold, but the sky the clearest blue.
Not a single cloud had marred it. The rest of their time had been spent in their hotel suite screwing like rabbits, only coming up for air for food and snatches of sleep.
It was while they were sharing a mountain of chips in bed in what turned out to be their last meal together that he’d dropped his bombshell.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” he’d said casually.
She’d dipped a chip in ketchup and smiled at him. She’d just enjoyed the best weekend of her life and had been ridiculously happy. “What?”
“Hear me out, okay? Don’t jump to the conclusion that I’m calling an end to us, because I’m not. Believe me, carina, ending things is the last thing I want to happen.”
The fear had been instant. The chip had fallen from her fingers, forgotten. Dressed only in a hotel robe, Georgia had tightened the sash and braced herself.
By the time he’d finished speaking, her skin had turned cold from shock.
She’d known since they’d become lovers that Niccolo’s business partner in The Diamond skyscraper venture was Lorenzo Esposito. Although he hadn’t said it in so many words, she’d formed the impression it was a partnership he regretted making.
That Parisian afternoon, she’d listened in silence as Niccolo explained how the partnership had been formed.
Lorenzo had approached him about the venture, which had already completed all the planning and preliminary stages and was ready for construction to begin.
Lorenzo wanted the build completed within a year and, as he put it, wanted a partner who would take control to ensure this happened.
Niccolo had managed many successful building projects, and so, as far as Lorenzo was concerned, this made him the ideal business partner for The Diamond.
As Niccolo had been suffering a slump in his investments and could only afford to stump up a hundred million of the needed down payment, he’d turned the opportunity down.
This had not been a problem for Lorenzo, who had contacts in a bank that would arrange the finance for the whole of Niccolo’s share, not just the down payment, at a dirt-cheap interest payment rate.
As the deal and terms being offered were so good, Niccolo had got his lawyers to look over the contract.
By unanimous agreement, they’d said the terms were excellent and the repayments easily affordable to him.
He’d been unaware that Lorenzo had paid his lawyers off.
A few weeks before Paris, a year after signing the contract, the bombshell had been dropped.
The favourable repayment rate was good for only twelve months, not twelve years as the original paperwork had shown.
Those twelve months were up. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the bank had sold the debt to Lorenzo, and Lorenzo had no interest in negotiating a new rate – he wanted the debt repaid in full and gave Niccolo five days to make good on it.
Five days to find four hundred million euros in cash.
The interest on the debt would increase and accumulate by fifteen per cent each day it remained unpaid.
There had been no way for Niccolo to get his hands on that kind of cash in that short a time frame, and Lorenzo knew it.
He’d purposely designed it that way. After letting Niccolo sweat for twenty-four hours, he’d called another meeting with him, and this time he’d made an alternate offer: Lorenzo would write off the debt and allow Niccolo to keep his joint-majority interest in The Diamond in exchange for one little thing – he required Niccolo to marry his daughter.
Fail to marry Siena and the debt would need to be paid immediately.
Interest would be more than that of the financial kind.
Niccolo, the son of an Italian Duke, had been set up, hook, line and sinker.
Lorenzo wasn’t content with being Italy’s richest and most powerful man.
He wanted to be accepted into the upper echelons of Italian society, and marrying his daughter off to the son of a Duke was a guaranteed way to achieve this.
Knowing that to refuse Lorenzo’s deal would mean far worse than bankruptcy, Niccolo had accepted.
Her head reeling, her heart aching at the mess he’d walked into, Georgia had silently digested all this. And then he’d casually mentioned the engagement party was only a week away.
That’s when it had hit her. Niccolo had spent the weekend making love to her when he’d promised himself to another woman.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, he then told her his marriage wouldn’t affect their relationship.
On the contrary. He wanted to take things up a notch between them and make Georgia his official mistress because, he’d explained in all seriousness, she deserved more than being his bit on the side.
Furious did not begin to describe how she’d felt.
Cheapened, insulted, humiliated, all those feelings had converged along with a wrenching in her heart too painful to dissect.
She could barely remember the ferocious argument that had followed, only the ending when Niccolo had jumped off the bed and with gritted teeth had snarled, “Screw this, Georgia. I’ve got enough shit in my life without you adding to it.
Forget my offer – we’re over.” He’d then stalked to the bathroom, shouting over his shoulder, “Pack your stuff. I’m taking you home. ”
And that had been that.
In complete shock at all that had just happened, she’d travelled from the Parisian hotel to her suburban flat with him, the silence between them poisonous enough to taste, both completely unaware that deep in her womb the spark of life had been created, and as she thought this, the little ripples beneath the skin of her belly started up again.
Rubbing the spot under which her tiny baby – their tiny baby – was playing, she wondered if she would live long enough to ever get over him.
From the moment she’d first set eyes on him, Niccolo had been her first thought on waking and her last thought before sleeping and there in all her thoughts, waking and sleeping, in between.
The life they’d created together that fateful weekend had destroyed any hope she’d had of moving on and forgetting about him.
Would she have been able to move on without the baby?
Her head wanted to say yes, but all the dreams she’d had of him since he’d ended them told the truth.
The dreams were always the same, of Niccolo walking past her with Siena’s hand clasped in his, deaf to Georgia’s screams of his name and blind to her streaming tears.
Always she woke from those dreams with her pillow soaked and an unbearably tight pain in her chest.
And now he’d jilted the beautiful Siena, and he was here in England with her. He’d come to her. Come to her to protect her.
Georgia closed her eyes even tighter and buried her face deeper into the pillow.
Now was not the time to start softening towards him.
If he’d come to save her, it was because his actions had put her in danger.
Niccolo had been explicit about the kind of family the Espositos were.
Mafia in all but name. A family that always demanded its pound of flesh.
A family whose fortune was built on other people’s misery.
Niccolo had jilted a member of that family at the altar.
He couldn’t have humiliated them more. He’d jilted Siena knowing there would be potentially deadly repercussions.
He probably hadn’t anticipated the first danger he’d come across would be in the form of the woman he was seeking to protect, she thought with a sudden burst of morbid humour.
God, what if he did have a latent concussion? Niccolo was a natural side sleeper, but what if the wound on his side made him roll onto his back?
The morbid humour vanishing as quickly as it had emerged, Georgia sat up and gazed at the wall separating them.
Her heart was racing, the beats pounding in her ears.
All she could picture was Niccolo lying in a pool of his own blood and choking on his own vomit, and the longer the picture stuck, the tighter she hugged herself to stave off the growing coldness.
She had no notion of throwing the duvet off and climbing out of bed, not until she’d pushed through her bedroom door and was standing in front of his ajar door.
Her hands fought a war with her brain over whether or not to knock, but either he saw her shadow or simply sensed her presence because, before she’d decided what to do, his voice rang out. “You can come in if you want, Georgia.”
She pushed the door open.
He was lying in the large bed on his back, his head turned to her.
Their gazes locked.
Her chest filled, the tears she’d fought earlier stabbing the back of her eyes again. Even with his face etched with exhaustion, Niccolo was the most beautiful man in the world.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked quietly.
She shook her head in miserable agreement. She hadn’t slept properly since Paris, but this was different. So many thoughts. So many fears. It was all too much.
His lips curved in a fleeting smile. “Neither can I.”
“Can I sleep in here with you?” she whispered, the question coming before it had fully realised itself in her brain.
As contradictory as she knew it was, what with all her combustible internal reactions to him, there was something about Niccolo’s hulking presence that made her feel a little less vulnerable and a little calmer in herself.
Shutting her brain off from the world felt a little less frightening with him there.
The biggest current fear, that he would choke on his own vomit, would also be salved.
She would be right there if concussion did strike and he needed her.
There was no gentle teasing at her change of mind about the sleeping arrangements. Instead, he stretched an arm and pulled the duvet back in invitation.
Her heart beating harder than ever, Georgia padded over and climbed in beside him. She could smell mint, and it lightened the weight in her heart a little more to know he’d found toothpaste and a toothbrush, too.
Resisting the marrow-deep yearn to envelop herself to him, she settled on her side with her back to him. Instantly, the lids of her eyes became heavy. She cleared her throat. “Don’t sleep on your back, Nic.”
The mattress moved as he obediently rolled over. “Worried about me dying in my sleep?” he asked with tired dryness.
He’d rolled close enough that his warm breath danced into her hair. Her heart caught in her throat again. The beats were so huge that it felt like they could explode out of her chest. “Only because I wouldn’t know how to get rid of a six-foot-four corpse,” she managed to jest.
His laughter at this was light, but it brought a smile to her face. Niccolo’s laugh had always made her smile. He’d always made her smile. Made her laugh. Made her giddy. Made her fall in love…
Georgia’s last painful thought as sleep finally claimed her was that remnants of that love still chimed strongly in her thrumming heart.