Chapter Seven
IT WAS ANOTHER week before Matteo was brought home and settled comfortably with round-the-clock nurses.
Sam visited him once at the hospital when Angelina had been elsewhere, and he’d been unconscious the whole time.
That trip into Milan in a chauffeured car with Alessandro had been unbearable.
His extreme solicitousness, as if she were a stranger, had made her want to scratch her nails down his face.
Back home now, Matteo on painkillers mostly slept.
Sam was desperate to tell him she’d forgiven him, that she didn’t want to lose him. She wanted to share her confusion about his brother with him, as inappropriate as that sounded. And she wanted to hug him and see him laugh.
More than anything, she didn’t want to stay another minute at the villa. Not in Alessandro’s bedroom, not in his bed.
Because even when he avoided her, he was entrenching himself into her very thoughts.
The morning after she’d begun sketching him, she’d been shown to an airy, sunny room on the second floor where a variety of painting supplies had been waiting for her in pristine, unopened packages. Complete with two new smocks.
Another shock had been when her mom had called two days later, doing a complete one-eighty, asking Sam to live it up and have fun.
Because the great and mighty Alessandro Ricci of Ricci International Finances had personally called to reassure her parents that she was being looked after very thoroughly.
In a few minutes of transatlantic conversation, Alessandro had achieved what Sam hadn’t been able to achieve her entire life: talked her mom down from the ledge.
He didn’t step into her bedroom—his bedroom—anymore. There were no more needling remarks to make her gasp, no probing to make her react, no penetrating looks that made her want to burrow into him. Just unrelenting politeness.
He’d put distance between them, distance the blasted man should’ve kept when he’d found her waiting in his study for his brother. Instead, he’d let her see him, know him. Made her want him.
Yep, she was blaming it all on him.
Unbearable as it was to be subjected to his politeness, on top of Alessandro’s aunt’s interest in her, Sam couldn’t bring up leaving. At least until she was finally able to talk to Matteo.
One bright morning a week after Matteo’s arrival home, his parents were arguing in the kitchen in a volley of Italian that enveloped Sam.
Outside the French doors, sunlight shimmered on the lake, and inside the kitchen the scent of coffee and croissants pervaded.
Antonio Ricci—an older, warmer and more smiling version of Alessandro—whispered something to his wife Maria that made the older woman smile softly.
Alessandro’s aunt was a lovely woman, but Sam was glad she spoke little English. Maria asked a lot of questions about her and Alessandro. Girlfriend, affair, marriage and babies were words she said so frequently in Italian that Sam had been compelled to learn their English translations.
A surge of homesickness hit her as she watched the clear affection between the older couple.
Never far behind, as always, was guilt. She had clear memories of her parents like this, arguing with smiles, kissing each other in the kitchen, competing about whose side of her heritage Sam would learn more about.
And then, on a beautiful day like this, she’d collapsed and they’d begun falling apart.
God, she wanted them to be happy so badly that her stomach knotted every time she thought of them.
“Sameera, stai bene, cara mia?”
Coloring, Sam smiled at Maria. “I’m fine, thank you. Just lost in thought.”
“You miss Alessandro, sì?”
Sam nodded, because it was easier to go along with Mrs. Ricci than explain the twisted complexity of her nonrelationship with Alessandro, who’d been on a trip the last two days.
At least she hadn’t been forced to socialize with Angelina who’d been ordered by Alessandro to limit her visits to the villa to see Matteo to mornings. Especially since she came with an entourage of cousins and bodyguards.
If Sam didn’t know Alessandro as well as she did, she’d have thought it a lucky coincidence. But he knew she painted in the morning and took an online class in the afternoon and that it kept her out of Angelina’s way.
She was glad to sit with Matteo after dinner when Maria’s energy lagged. That Maria didn’t wonder that Sam spent more time with a sleeping Matteo than an awake Alessandro was just pure luck.
She’d just poured herself a cup of freshly squeezed orange juice when Angelina, thankfully alone for once, entered the kitchen.
Sam froze, taking in the simple beige shirt and dark trousers that did nothing to dampen the woman’s beauty.
She turned toward the doors when Angelina blocked her, her temper in full control of her.
Before Sam could blink, Angelina grabbed the cup from her and threw it in Sam’s face.
Sam gasped at the cold slosh of the liquid on her skin preceding the jarring thump of the glass against her shoulder. The sound of it breaking against the marble floor made her falter.
Pain shot through her bare foot as a piece pierced the skin.
A torrent of Italian filled the room as she was bodily lifted from behind. She knew that scent, that body, even the warmth reaching for her. Relief surged through her as she sank into Alessandro.
“Porca miseria! Did she hurt you?” Gentle fingers dabbed at her face. “Look at me, tesoro.”
“It was just orange juice,” Sam said trying to corral her shuddering relief. “I’m fine, Alessandro. She scared me. But it was more…”
He lifted her onto the breakfast table, cutting her words off. “There’s a shard stuck on top of your foot”
“Yes and…”
“Zia, bring me the first-aid box.” He turned around, his back a tense wall. “How dare you treat my guest like that?” His words were soft, slow and yet the quiet rage in them fell like a shroud on the room.
“Matteo is dying because of her.” Angelina’s voice quivered. “While she—”
“Dio mio, Matteo is not dying. Sam is not the reason—”
“She is. She made him crash the bike. He was not happy since she came. You have to throw her out—”
“She isn’t leaving,” Alessandro bit out in that quiet voice that would’ve been less scary if he’d shouted.
“Then I will ask my father—”
“Sam. Is. Mine.” Each word dropped like a crashing cymbal into the space. “If you touch her again, if you so much as come near her, I’ll cut you out of Matteo’s life. Permanently.” Sam gasped at the vehemence in his tone. “I do not give a damn if your father rules all of Milan. You crossed a line.”
“Alessandro, wait—” Sam started before he cut her off.
“You’re not welcome in my house anymore. Get out.”
Brown eyes filled with shock, Angelina stared at him.
“Alessandro, you can’t simply throw her out,” Sam said, her words drowned out by his aunt begging the same.
“Stay out of this, Sameera.”
Italian flew back and forth between him, his parents and Angelina, but he didn’t relent. The quiet rage in his eyes when he checked her face made her swallow.
He felt guilty for not protecting her, she knew. Guilt and pity and politeness weren’t what she wanted from him. Still, pathetic as she was, she couldn’t help touching him. She bent her forehead to his back, clutching the taut muscles of his biceps. “Alessandro, give her a chance to explain.”
“There is nothing to explain,” his voice softened instantly, the muscles clenching under her touch. “Papà, get her out of the house. If she makes a fuss, call security.”
A thundering silence followed his harsh dictate.
Antonio sent Sam a reassuring glance before he walked a hysterical Angelina out. Still, she cast an astonished look at Alessandro’s protective stance around Sam.
The moment she left, Alessandro pushed in to stand between her legs.
Her belly rolled, sensation making her thighs quiver. When she looked up, his face was a taut mask. The man wasn’t even aware how provocative their positions looked.
Sam flushed as his aunt approached, a first-aid kit in her hand.
“Leave us, Zia.”
Maria gave Sam a quizzical look and left.
Deafening tension crackled around them. Sounds from the outside breezed into the room, the table dappled in bright morning light as if the universe itself was orchestrating the moment.
That sharp pain persisted in her foot, but the feel of Alessandro’s powerful thighs pushing hers wide apart trumped every other sensation.
Awareness pulsed with a vengeance between her thighs.
With that tightness to his movements that betrayed his lack of control, he undid the cuffs of his dress shirt and pushed the sleeves back. The sight of his corded forearms sprinkled with dark hair made her think of those arms holding her down, of those long fingers touching her everywhere.
God, everything about the man made her think of sex.
“Alessandro…” she said, suddenly glad for Angelina’s stunt. Which made her more than a little twisted in the head. “It was just juice—”
Pushing the wooden bench back, he brought her foot to his thigh. Even the sight of her foot in his large, elegant hands made her core flutter. Not looking at her, he laid out a bunch of things from the kit on the dark wood of the table.
Sam pressed her heel into the hard muscle while he, with infinite care, pulled out the shard stuck in her foot. Her heart expanded to dangerous proportions as she watched him clean up the cut, apply an antibiotic and wrap her foot in layers of gauze.
A muscle jumped in his cheek as he packed up the supplies. “Do you still think I’m overreacting?”
“I never thought that.” Gripping his wrist, she whispered, “Won’t you look at me?”
Those long lashes lifted, and the cocktail of emotions there made her swallow.
Not because she was afraid of him. Never.
But she’d never seen him at the edge of control like this. The devil in her wanted to push a little more to see what she could get out of it. God, when had she become so conniving? “You’re very angry.”