Chapter Five #2
He hadn’t been in a relationship since Violetta’s death. After discovering his addictive nature when he tried to drown his pain—in drink or sex with strangers—he had effortlessly adopted celibacy as a form of control.
Cristo, he didn’t remember the last time he had checked a woman out, much less wanted her with this soul-consuming intensity. And yet, here he was, pulse quickening at the sight of a woman bent over a sketchbook. A woman who was his brother’s ex and far too young for him.
His fingers curled into fists at his sides—a pathetic attempt at holding on to control when he was already losing.
Sam looked up just as Alessandro’s shadow stretched across the table. No wonder her pulse had been going haywire in the last few minutes.
Tall, lean, dressed in black slacks and a dove-gray shirt rolled up at the sleeves, he looked like the opposite of sun—dark but still blindingly beautiful. Power thrummed under his skin in that quiet, coiled way he had, like the threat of a storm behind glass.
Her breath caught, not because he was simply beautiful—though he was, in that severe, carved-from-marble kind of way—but because he made a long-held wish of hers come true.
It had been three days of losing herself in art. Of walking until her legs ached and her heart pounded with something other than fear, of losing herself in stories that had been told long before she’d been a speck in the scheme of life.
She felt more alive than she had in years.
“Please tell me your appetite for art has been temporarily satisfied, Ms. Fischer.” His fingers moved toward her cheek and pulled back jerkily. “You look tired.”
A spurt of stupid, grateful joy rose through her too fast to stop. Without thinking, she rose and wrapped her arms around him.
It was a quick hug, her cheek brushing the fabric of his shirt, arms going around his waist, his corded arm caught between her breasts. Over in the blink of an eye. Yet the scent of him—clean, sharp and expensive—coiled through her, making her limbs heavy and aching.
His body stiffened under hers even as his heart thudded violently.
Sam jerked back in a rush, embarrassed heat flooding her cheeks. She’d always been a tactile person, but she had no business touching him like that. Flustered, she moved back toward her chair too fast and almost toppled it.
“Thank you,” she said, voice too bright, fiddling with the flaky cannoli on her plate.
“For what?” Alessandro asked, settling into the opposite chair.
“For calling in those favors and getting us access to those private collections,” Sam said, heart still pounding.
And because she hated feeling like an unsophisticated bumpkin, she added, “I guess there are some perks to being your fake, last-minute mistress. Maybe my vacation would look drastically different if I became a rich Italian’s plaything for a while. ”
She meant it as a joke. When she looked up to meet his eyes, she realized it was anything but. The words hung between them, sharp and strange, like a spark catching in dry grass.
His gray eyes held her in a challenge. “Is that what you’re looking for, now that any chance of making up with Matteo is impossible?”
Sam refused to let him provoke her. Because, for some goddamned reason, he was trying to. “Do you have no memories of being young and reckless and foolish and so achingly in love that nothing mattered?”
A sudden, raw bleakness flared in his eyes that made her stomach tighten. He looked as if he was far away, where she couldn’t reach him.
Sam gripped his forearm and shook him. “Alessandro?”
Gripping his neck, he shook his head. “I do remember being in love,” he said softly, shocking her anew.
A fleeting flash of warmth made his gray eyes pop before they defaulted to blankness.
“Feeling as if I couldn’t stop smiling. As if the world was a symphony of colors and sensations.
But reckless and foolish and out of touch with reality… no. I never had that luxury.”
For the first time since they’d met, Sam felt the awareness between them shift and morph, fractured by something so painful that she instinctively hated it. Curiosity about his past and the fear of what she’d find battled it out inside her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I’m not so delicate that your paltry insults wound me, Ms. Fischer.” He leaned forward over the table, pinning her under his weighty gaze. “Now I have a question for you.”
She waited.
“Did you run away from home?”
Sam sighed. Of course he’d overheard her angry call with her mother yesterday. “I am twenty-three so the whole running away idea sounds wrong. But yes. How old are you?”
His nostrils flared.
Sam flushed. God, he knew what direction her thoughts were going in.
There was no mockery, no satisfaction when he said, “Thirty-eight.”
Instead of serving as a deterrent, his age only made her more curious. Who was the woman he’d been talking about when he said he’d been in love? Why wasn’t he with her now? Or perhaps he was in a relationship even as she had filthy dreams about him?
“Do you—” his jaw clenched “—need protection from your parents? Are they abusive?”
“What? Jeez, no.” Her laughter cut off at his serious expression.
“If anything, they’re extra protective. Like pumped-up-on-steroids extra.
They love me too much, if we can call it that.
Beyond common sense and reason.” His continued frown made her elaborate.
“I grew up pretty sheltered. This is the first time I’ve ever traveled without either of them watching over me, checking my every… And I did it without telling them.”
“What if Matteo had been—”
“A horrible villain who took advantage of poor old me?” she said, irritation replacing the earlier warmth. “Is there no Off button to you?”
“I’m the one who cleans up his messes.”
After three days with him, Sam could see the situation objectively.
Matteo was charming, fun, larger-than-life.
But she hadn’t missed that he drifted into the easiest paths in life.
“I’ve known Matteo for nearly five years,” she said, wanting Alessandro to understand.
“Yes, he lied to me. Yes, he started dating Angelina while we were not yet over. Yes, he got engaged to her and didn’t even have the decency to tell me.
But that doesn’t make the entirety of our relationship a lie. I know the distinction.”
“Do you? You admit your upbringing was sheltered.”
Her temper flared. “Either you respect me enough to know my own mind or you don’t. If it’s the second, please get out.”
Gray eyes gleamed with humor. “I’ve never been dismissed with such politeness before.”
Her anger vanished as fast as it came. “I wonder anyone ever dared dismiss you at all.”
He dipped his head, and a thick lock of hair flopped onto his forehead. Combined with his grin, he looked younger, much more relaxed. “So your parents do not know where you are.”
God, the man had tunnel vision. “They didn’t know until yesterday when I told them on the phone. They didn’t know I have a valid passport and a visitor’s visa. This trip was my step toward freedom.”
Getting everything ready for the trip, calling the hospitals nearby, getting her travel medical insurance sorted, making sure she had enough medication for the trip, shopping for essentials, contacting friends of friends to establish a network of reliable people if the need should arise—all of it had been a big step toward trusting herself.
Toward flying out of the safety of her nest. With her next step toward college all mapped out for the summer.
And she’d succeeded too.
She was here. And she hadn’t fallen apart at the news of Matteo’s engagement.
“Your parents were asking after Matteo on the call,” Mr. Ricci prompted, deflating her imaginary fist bump.
Leaning her forearms on the table, she glared at him. “Did you listen to the entire conversation?”
“Your mother’s voice was loud.”
“She’ll rip him to shreds if she finds out he’s already engaged to someone else. The fact that she’s six thousand miles away won’t make any difference.”
“Even without knowing that, she doesn’t trust him.”
“Do you miss anything?”
“When I’m interested in the subject matter? No.”
The truth was that her parents had never warmed up to Matteo. Sam sighed, another knot unraveling in her mind.
Had that been Matteo’s appeal—that her parents thoroughly disapproved of him? Was that why she hadn’t broken up for years after she realized they weren’t romantically compatible?
Her dad liked reliability and steadfastness, which made sense as he was the most dependable guy ever. Her mom thought everyone—except Sam herself, duh—should make a mark in the world with whatever abilities they had.
Matteo had possessed none of the qualities her parents wanted in a partner for their precious daughter. As if there were queues of men lining up to date someone with her history.
But Matteo had made her laugh, had made her feel like a normal girl, had given her hope.
He’d been exactly what she’d needed at eighteen, having known nothing of a normal adolescence.
Her friends and cousins had moved on—to colleges and new lives and new loves.
She’d been too old to go back and finish high school and hadn’t had enough credits to go to college, even if she could convince her mom.
She’d felt so isolated and lonely and lost.
She’d survived multiple surgeries, made it through periods of painfully slow recovery, but she’d never learned what it was to live. What to do with her time. How to connect with people.
Until Matteo had walked into the hospital café and flirted so outrageously with her that she’d spent her entire afternoon with him. He’d been the bridge that had pulled her back into her own life. He’d been her hero when she’d desperately needed one. For that alone, she’d always care for him.