Chapter Six
AFTER BEING ALONE at the villa for two days, Sam began to feel like a hapless heroine in a gothic novel, creeping along its marble-tiled hallways.
She hadn’t seen either Alessandro or Matteo since the chauffeur had brought her back from the café.
Their parents and Angelina and her thuggish cousins, everyone had been gone.
The villa, so breathtaking and boisterous when she’d arrived, now felt cavernous and quiet. As if to add to the dreary ambience, the rain hadn’t let up once. Just sheet after endless sheet of gray falling over the lake, blurring the view into something shapeless and cold.
She’d tried asking the staff where Mr. Ricci and the rest of the family were, but they just smiled politely, while bringing her endless meals. In the end, she’d taken to curling up in the armchair in Alessandro’s study and sketching him from memory, as if that might conjure him out of thin air.
Worried that the Bianchis might’ve gotten wind of her or that Matteo was in trouble, she stayed put.
Alessandro didn’t owe her anything, of course. Not as his fake mistress. Not as his reckless little brother’s ex. Not as an unwanted guest. But two days of radio silence while being stuck at a palatial mansion would make anyone cranky.
Watching hour upon hour pass was as painful as waiting for her number to come up for surgery years ago.
What she loathed the most was the needling thought that Alessandro, back in his sophisticated life, had forgotten the na?ve, dull, boring Ms. Fischer.
The last of the sun’s rays were dancing over the lake when the bedroom door opened to reveal Alessandro.
Dark shadows clung to his eyes as he stilled and stared at her. His gray shirt was rumpled, and his wavy hair was in such disarray that it was clear he’d tugged at it.
Legs trembling, Sam came to her feet just as he said, “Is something wrong, Ms. Fischer? You look troubled.”
Usually, she wasn’t an overly emotional person.
It had been drilled into her that stress could kill her, literally.
But this man was like a specially designed aggravation machine.
“No, I’m not okay. You left me here, and your staff wouldn’t say anything.
” She fisted her hands. “I expect that from Matteo, not you.”
The flare of his nostrils told Sam what she’d just blurted out.
“I apologize. I didn’t have your—”
“You must have told yourself the poor fool has neither the choice nor the self-respect to walk away,” Sam said, cutting him off.
He reached for her, and she jerked away. “I thought no such thing.”
Tears clogged up her throat. “Nothing justifies leaving me here like some rotting vegetable in the fridge. You made fun of me from the moment I showed up—”
“Matteo had an accident.”
“What? When? How is he?”
“He was driving his motorbike and took a curve too fast. He has multiple fractures in his legs, and he hit his head. They worried he’d slip into a coma, but he gained consciousness two hours ago.
” His exhaustion weighed down the words.
“I left the hospital for the first time since they called me at the café.”
“Wait, that was the phone call you got? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Sameera, look at me.”
She lifted wary eyes to his face. Exhaustion was etched into his sharp features, making him look even more austere than usual.
“I couldn’t think straight. All they said on the phone was that he had an accident.
When I arrived, though…” A groan rattled through him.
“I would not have left you alone for so long out of choice. Say you believe me.”
She nodded, even though his request was a demand. As if it was imperative that her trust in him wasn’t broken. “I thought I got Matteo into trouble with the Bianchis and that you hated me—”
“Shh, tesoro. Take a deep breath.” His arm came around her waist, and she fell into his embrace, like a puppy starved for attention. He pressed his mouth at her temple, his breath warm on her skin.
Sam thumped at his chest, as if he were her very own punching bag. “Stop ordering me around. I’ll push myself into hysterics, if that’s what I want.”
He fell back against the wall, taking her with him.
Her body jostled against his, sending a different kind of shiver down her spine.
“You have every right to be angry,” he whispered, dry humor coloring his tone.
“But I didn’t forget about you for a minute.
I left the hospital the instant I was free. I needed to explain in person.”
Her anger over him had had two whole days to build, but it blew out of her in two seconds flat. “Is he still in danger?”
“He’s slipping in and out of consciousness, but there’s no risk of him falling into a coma.”
She buried her face in his chest, worry twisting her stomach. “Whatever Matteo’s faults, he’s my friend. My anchor to the world when I…” She swallowed the lump of tears in her throat.
The corded arm around her loosened. Alessandro’s hand lifted and hovered over her face, an uncharacteristic hesitation in his eyes. “I’m sorry I made you defensive about your relationship.”
Standing so close, Sam felt the tension in his lean body. How his movements were taut and economic when he touched her, as if he didn’t want to cross his predetermined limit.
She pushed back and instantly missed the warmth of his body. “How are you doing?”
A ghost of a smile tipped up the corner of his mouth. “I’m fine now.”
“Will Matteo get back to normal?” That she was asking the question to probe into his heart as much as for info on Matteo was not lost on her. When he gave her that condescending expression she was beginning to know well, she held up a hand. “Not the version you told your parents or Angelina.”
“Everyone wants optimism and faith from me. Not you?”
Now that she could see beyond her own distress, now that she was beginning to know the man beneath the remoteness, she saw the strain of the past few days in his eyes, the worry lines digging deep grooves around his mouth.
If the truth was painful, she wanted to give him the small comfort of not bearing it alone.
“No one should have to shoulder life alone.”
His gaze clung to hers. “I’m used to it.”
“But I’m here now.”
His chin dipping, he looked taken aback. As if she had morphed into someone else right in front of his eyes.
“I’ve handled hard things in life, Alessandro.”
“I’m beginning to see that.” He walked past her into the room and opened a bottle of sparkling water. When he raised one in her direction, Sam shook her head.
She watched the play of the muscles at his throat. His tone was flat when he spoke. “Matteo will need at least two more surgeries. Many months of physical therapy to build back strength in his right leg. But yes, he can make a complete recovery.”
Sam threw herself at him, joy overriding any sensible caution. “Thank God!”
He caught her, and this time his arms went around her.
From chest to abdomen, she was plastered against his powerful body.
All that ache in her breasts came back with a twofold intensity.
This time, their embrace didn’t soothe her.
It sparked that hunger that never seemed to be far.
He was deliciously hard and lean against her, and all Sam wanted was to press her hips closer, lean her thighs against his until she could feel every inch of him intimately. Until she could provoke his hunger too.
Gentle but firm hands nudged her back. “From enemies to such a warm embrace,” he said, clearing his throat, “that’s quite a turnaround.”
“I never said we were enemies. I admit you’re growing on me.”
One brow arched in that arrogant face. But that conscious movement couldn’t hide the flash of desire in his eyes. For the first time in her life, Sam bemoaned her lack of sophistication when it came to sex and attraction and affairs.
Walking around the lounge, she picked up the loose sketching paper, books and other stuff she’d scattered about.
The bedroom was as much hers now as it was his.
“Matteo’s been through hard stuff before, right?
He told me his asthma had been really bad.
That he was teased at school mercilessly for being a small, scrawny kid and you stopped some bully who made his life hell. ”
“He confided in you?”
“He said he was a runt next to you. But that he overcame…” She sighed. “You’re surprised he told me.”
“Matteo likes to pretend that he was never weak. He sulks when my aunt reminds him of the almost fatal episode he had once. I think he’s even convinced himself that he was always this charming and dynamic.”
Sam hugged her sketch pad to her chest. “Is it such a bad thing if you don’t want everyone to know your weaknesses?”
“If they make you ashamed, yes,” he said, casually picking up her hairclip and her two pencils, before settling into the armchair that had the perfect view of the lake.
Awareness zipped down her spine at how easily this ruthless, powerful man seemed to have accepted her presence—and her innumerable things—in his room. As if she belonged there with him.
“Matteo is ashamed of his physical vulnerabilities and goes to any lengths to make up for them.”
She stared, arrested, at the picture he made.
Head thrown back against the chair, long legs sprawled in front of him, with her pink hairclip clasped between elegant fingers, Alessandro was all subdued vitality and masculine perfection. Even with his hair and shirt rumpled, he looked like he belonged on the cover of a magazine.
And she could see how being compared to this man—who was a natural leader—would’ve bred resentment in Matteo. Being ruthlessly perfect himself, Alessandro would demand the best of everyone. “Does he know that you don’t think he has anything to be ashamed of?”