Chapter Six
CHAPTER SIX
T HE CLEAR BLUE eyes Victoria had always been able to read so well suddenly snapped onto hers. They glittered with a darkness that turned her stomach to mush and made the beats of her racing heart thrash.
She forced herself to gaze into the darkness. She didn’t have to force the words that came next. ‘Do you think I wanted to become attracted to you?’ Something was building in her chest, a sob or laughter, she didn’t know, but she pinched the bridge of her nose in a valiant attempt to stop it escaping. ‘Never mind that you’re my boss—were my boss—you’d give Casanova a run for his money.’ A short bark of laughter escaped at the same moment a tear spilled over. ‘Whatever stupid feelings have developed on my part are just a side-effect of the virus, and even if the attraction was returned I would never be stupid enough to act on it, so—’
‘For God’s sake, Victoria, are you blind ?’ Slamming a hand on the floor beside her thigh, he leaned his taut face down to hers. ‘How can you not see it?’
Trembling, trapped in Marcello’s stare, she had no choice but to stare even deeper into the darkness that she suddenly saw with a kick in her heart wasn’t darkness at all, but a swirling vortex pulsing a mirror of what she was feeling.
The world moved around her. Sensation throbbed in her chest, like he’d squeezed her heart with his bare hand.
As if she were a magnet irresistibly drawn to his hypnotic pull, her face moved closer to his. She could hardly raise her voice above a whisper. ‘Then why...?’
The pained look she’d seen earlier flashed over his rugged features. The look she’d interpreted as a mixture of disgust and pity... ‘Why do you think?’
But the world was moving too fast around her to think with any coherence. The realisation that her feelings were shared was hitting her in an ever increasing crescendo of waves. Now that she could see it, it was all she could see, right there in the depths of the blue eyes glittering with his desire for her.
He tilted his head. Now he was the one to bring his face closer.
His voice dropped. ‘I do not want to hurt you, Victoria, and I do not want to lose you. I want you by my side for the rest of my professional life. To act on our feelings...’ He inhaled deeply through his nose. His exhale landed like a whisper against her mouth. ‘I have done marriage. You know that, don’t you?’
It was a statement rather than a question.
Her chest hitching, she nodded.
The intensity of his stare deepened. ‘I will never marry again. I will never live with anyone again. I have committed to being a bachelor for the rest of my life and I date from a pool of shallow vipers precisely for that reason. I can end it with one message and move on without a second of guilt or regret. You deserve so much more than to be treated like that, and your friendship and value as my right-hand woman are worth more to me than any short-lived fling.’
It wasn’t just the hoarse delivery of his words compelling her to listen but the demons glimmering in his pulsing eyes. The demons she’d always sensed lived beneath his affable exterior. Marcello’s demons, showing themselves to warn her away.
‘You’ve given it a lot of thought,’ she said, shaken at the depth of emotion she was seeing.
‘I have thought of nothing else since my eyes opened to just how beautiful you are.’
Victoria’s shoulders slumped. Her eyes closed. She tried to breathe through the smashing of her heart and the ripples of its beats.
The only people who’d called her beautiful before were drunken, lecherous men. To hear it from Marcello filled her with such an ache ...
Oh, this was madness ! It felt like only five minutes ago that all the reasons he’d just laid out to her had already been firmly lodged in her mind. She hadn’t needed telling. She’d known only fools let themselves fall for Marcello Guardiola.
And now she was that fool. She’d woken from the worst illness of her life and gazed at him sprawled out on the sofa he’d been keeping watch over her from, and felt something fundamental shift inside her.
But he was right. However deep the longing to press her hand against his stubbly cheek and breathe in the scent of his skin and the undertones of his cologne deep into her lungs, and however deep the burning yearning to fuse herself to him, to act on her feelings would be to press self-destruct on her whole life.
Pride filling her with resolve, she lifted her gaze back to him. ‘I think you’re forgetting something.’
His shoulders rose. ‘What is that?’
‘I don’t work for you any more.’
For the first time since the glass shattered, the tautness of his features relaxed and, though his eyes didn’t lose an ounce of their intensity, the lines around them crinkled. ‘Yes, you do. And I will pay any price to keep you.’
And if that meant keeping his desire contained then that was how it had to be. Marcello would not hurt Victoria for anything. He would not lose her for anything.
Victoria sat on the sill staring out of a bedroom window. The wind had picked up again. If she strained her ears she could imagine its howl. The sun had set. Another night under the same roof as Marcello was closing in.
A light tap on the door made her heart thump. She tightened the sash of his robe, taken earlier from the back of the bathroom door, and took a deep breath to compose herself before turning to face him.
He stood at the threshold, arms loosely crossed around his chest. It was the same stance he’d adopted when he’d checked in on her a few hours earlier. As with earlier, he made no comment about her wearing his robe. But he’d noticed. She knew he had. It had been in the flare of his eyes before he’d turned his stare away.
This time he kept his gaze on her. ‘I am going to work on my cooking skills. Is there anything you want for dinner?’
‘Anything that’s readymade works for me,’ she managed to jest. Lunch had gone in the bin. Once the broken glass had been cleared, she’d tried the pasta he’d made for her. It had been inedible and not just because it was cold. Her stomach had been too tense and knotted to accept his offer of something else. He hadn’t forced the issue. He’d retreated to his office and given them the space they both needed.
He might as well have brought his computer into the bedroom.
He’d kept the bedroom door open so she could call if she needed him. His voice had carried into the room from his office. The words of his conversations had been indistinguishable but the effect of them a torment. She’d never known a distant voice could soak through skin and squeeze a heart.
His laughter was as forced as the bonhomie they were both faking. ‘No more pasta?’
She made herself smile. ‘Only if you want to kill me off.’
More forced laughter. ‘You will be pleased to know the storm is expected to ease soon. I am making arrangements for a snowplough to be sent to collect Bernard in the morning.’
‘The chef?’
He nodded. ‘And some cleaners.’
‘ You’re making the arrangements?’
He preened. ‘I know. There is no end to my talents.’
She only had to half force a snigger at this. ‘How are Christina and Patrick doing?’
‘They are improved but they are not recovering as quickly as you...’ A line creased his forehead. ‘You are still feeling improvement?’
‘I’m getting stronger by the hour.’
His head inclined. ‘Bene.’ He straightened and made to leave.
‘I’m going to take a quick bath if that’s okay?’ she said quickly, before she lost her nerve. For someone who showered twice daily, Victoria was acutely aware she hadn’t bathed since falling ill. While her strength was increasing by the hour, her yearning to feel clean was accelerating by the minute.
There was a slight stiffening of Marcello’s shoulders. The air, already laden with tension, thickened. ‘You are sure you feel strong enough?’
She nodded.
He lifted his stiff shoulders into a shrug. ‘Help yourself to whatever you need. Clean T-shirts are in drawers to the left of the dressing room door. I would offer you jeans to wear too but...’
He didn’t need to finish his sentence. They both knew they were both thinking it. There was no way Victoria was going to get a pair of jeans designed for his snake hips past her curves.
His breathing had become heavy. His throat moved before another taut smile curved his cheeks. ‘Food in an hour?’
‘If I must.’
The smile widened into something more genuine. He tapped the side of his forehead with two of his fingers. ‘Do not drown.’
‘I’ll try not to.’
Victoria had never been in Marcello’s dressing room before. She’d seen glimpses of it but those glimpses had failed to convey its vastness. Stepping into it reminded her of walking into that tailor’s shop on Bond Street with him. The difference was in size. Marcello’s dressing room had twice the floor space. It smelled crisper too. Unthinkingly, she rubbed her nose into the collar of his robe and breathed in the underlying scent of his cologne. She’d put it on only to cover her flesh and make it easier for the two of them to be with each other. After spending days in his T-shirt, she hadn’t expected to feel such intimacy wearing his robe. Hadn’t expected it to feel like an embrace.
Expelling the breath, she closed her eyes.
If Marcello was right and the storm did ease overnight, then that meant it should soon be safe for her to leave. If she continued improving as she was then, come the morning, she would dig her clothes out of the laundry pile Marcello had added them to. Get a lift on the snowplough. Return to her apartment. Hope the physical distance from him gave her the head space needed to decide what she should do next.
Resign officially or stay and hope for the best?
She couldn’t think clearly in Marcello’s home, wearing his clothes and feeling his presence like a vibration in her skin.
Selecting a grey T-shirt, she left the dressing room for his en suite. Another room stamped as essentially Marcello. As masculine a bathroom as could be imagined. Charcoal tiled walls. Hard black flooring. A huge walk-in shower that could be mistaken for a cave. Even the chaise longue that separated the shower side from the rolltop bath was black leather, and as she poured the citrus-scented bubble bath into the gushing water, it came to her again that he hadn’t marked every single part of his apartment with his own stamp for aesthetic reasons, but as a warning to the many women he’d invited into it.
Do not get close.
Marcello tried to focus on the food he’d selected and laid out before him on the kitchen island. Tried not to think that at this exact moment, Victoria was naked in the bath.
In the back of his mind had been the unacknowledged knowledge that at some point Victoria would feel well enough to want to shower. A shower would have been hard enough to handle. A bath was a whole different level of torture.
He’d stayed in his office while she ran it. Had somehow heard over the blood roaring in his ears the sloshing of water as she’d stepped into it. Only when he’d assured himself that she was safely settled did he move downstairs to the kitchen, the furthest point in his apartment from his en suite. With the electricity racing through his veins it could be the other side of the bathroom wall.
He ripped the seal around the steaks with his bare hands and placed them on the heated pan as the Internet instructed. Washing his hands, he closed his eyes in another effort to eradicate the image of Victoria submerged in the bath. Naked. Fully naked. Water swirling around her breasts and pubis...
He groaned and dragged his wet fingers through his hair.
Earlier, it had taken superhuman control to back away from her but there was no self-control of his mind. Not any more.
The so very erotic images behind his eyelids became suddenly distorted.
Snapping his eyes back open, he found himself in darkness.
Victoria had been trying to summon the strength to get out of the bath when the lights extinguished.
It wasn’t physical strength she’d been seeking but the mental strength needed to leave this temporary sanctuary from Marcello and deal with seeing him again. Talking to him. Pretending.
Pretending that when the storm passed and she’d fully recovered, things could go back to how they used to be.
And then she found herself lying in the bath in the pitch black.
The door was closed. No light spilled through the cracks from the bedroom. It must be a full-blown power cut. She’d closed, too, the expertly fitted blinds. No residual light from the outside could penetrate it.
Groping carefully for the rolled sides, she sat up and called Marcello’s name. The bathwater had been cooling and now goosebumps flecked her skin.
She hugged her knees and called his name again. She’d put a towel on the chaise longue but couldn’t even make out its shadow.
And then she heard her name.
‘I’m still in the bath,’ she called back.
‘Are you okay?’ His voice came from behind the door.
‘Yes, but I can’t see anything at all.’
The door opened. A circle of orange light filled the doorway. It took a moment for her brain to catch up and see it was the torch from Marcello’s phone. Of him, she could see nothing, not even his outline.
‘There has been a power cut,’ his disembodied voice informed her grimly. ‘From what I can see, most of Central Park is down.’
Acutely aware that he could see her, she covered her breasts and tried to speak normally. ‘Doesn’t the building have a back-up generator?’
‘I would assume so. I will check with the concierge once you’re out of the bath. Can you see enough to get out safely?’
The orange glow now coming from the doorway was emanating just enough light by the bath to create shadows. ‘I think so.’
He must have picked up on her uncertainty. The light moved closer until its source stopped by the double sink. ‘Better?’
‘Yes...’ She swallowed and strove even harder for normality in her voice, as if what she was about to ask were an everyday occurrence. ‘Can you pass me the towel please? It’s on the chaise longue.’
‘Sure.’
The light source moved again. She saw the gleam of an outstretched arm at the same moment she heard the rustle of a bath towel being lifted.
The light moved closer.
She reached for the towel. Once she had it in her clasp, the light source retreated a few steps.
‘I will stay close in case you need me,’ he said tightly.
She nodded and tried to open her throat to breathe. The light from the phone had put her under a dimly glowing spotlight. The man behind it was still indistinguishable but she could feel him through the vibrations of her naked skin that no longer felt cold. Could hear the long pauses between each of his breaths...
Marcello turned his face from her. He could not turn off the rest of his senses.
Water sloshed and, as much as he tried to think about anything else, all he could see in his mind’s eye was the illuminated figure in the bath tub rising slowly to her feet.
He’d had to brace himself before entering the bathroom knowing it would be impossible to avoid Victoria’s nakedness. And so it had proved. Her wet hair, part covering her breasts, had contrasted strongly with the luminescence of her skin. A mermaid come to life. A siren leading a man to danger...
‘Can I borrow your hand while I step out, please?’ she whispered.
Everything inside him contracted sharply then pulsed in a rush. He had to tighten his grip on the phone before he could force the steps needed to reach her side.
Closing his eyes, he reached out to her and did his damnedest to banish the image of Victoria in full, curvaceous naked bloom. It was futile. One glance had etched in his retinas. Even with only the dim torchlight, that one glance had been enough to see that the soft down of hair between her legs was the same beautiful shade of red as the hair on her head.
Dio , his blood had never pumped so hard.
The tips of their fingers connected. Electricity crackled through his skin and deep into his loins.
The silence as their hands clasped together was so complete he could hear the individual droplets of water run off Victoria’s naked skin and splash back into the bath.
The loudest sound, though, came from the drum of his heart beating in his ears.
The heat of the water had opened her pores. His lungs opened to breathe in the scent clinging to her. A scent that should be masculine but on Victoria’s skin became something distinctly feminine. Distinctly Victoria.
Awareness and desire had never thrummed so deeply, and he clenched his jaw tighter than he’d ever clenched it before in an effort to control it. Never in his whole life had he fought such a war with his own body.
Never in the entirety of her life had Victoria been so conscious of the skin that wrapped her body, aware that it was a living, breathing organ in its own right. It was breathing in Marcello, her hidden Adonis. Only the hand holding her so securely had emerged from the shadows but she could feel the substance vibrating from his own cloak of flesh.
Pulses thrashing wildly, she lifted her leg over the bath.
The floor was lower than anticipated and the extra depth as her foot searched for hard floor caught her unawares and she wobbled, would have fallen into an ungainly heap if Marcello hadn’t wound an arm around her waist to steady her. A moment later he’d lifted her out of the bath.
The phone slipped from his hand at the same moment both her feet made contact with the floor. She had only a dim awareness of the clunk it made because in an instant her thrashing pulses ran out of control and she lost the ability to think coherently.
The towel she’d wrapped around herself had slipped to her waist and she was pressed against Marcello, pressed so tightly her breasts were squashed against his hard chest. His hands were flat against the small of her naked back, the pads of his fingers biting into her flesh.
And she was clinging to him. One hand was holding his shoulder, the other gripping the side of his waist. The pads of her fingers were biting as hard into him as his fingers bit into her.
Blood zoomed through her in a rush, its heat fizzing and throbbing through her skin, deep into her bones and into the places kept secret even from herself. Helpless to do anything else, she lifted her face.
The light from the phone on the floor arched upwards and suffused them both in the spotlight of its glow. Marcello’s chiselled jaw was as rigid as his body holding her so securely and yet so stiffly. His eyes, though, locked straight onto hers. If she’d had any air left, the emotion and hunger contained in them would have knocked it out of her.
An age passed before his nostrils flared and he expelled a short but heavy breath. It danced over her forehead like a caress.
‘Walk away, Victoria,’ he muttered raggedly, his stare continuing to burn into her.
She rose onto her toes without thought.
His eyes became hooded, his breathing even heavier. One hand dragged slowly up her back. ‘Walk away. Walk away now.’
Shivers racing down her spine at the pleasure of his touch, unable to tear her stare from his, she slowly slipped her fingers beneath his T-shirt. His warm skin was smooth. Heavenly.
His eyes closed as if in prayer. His other hand moved, fingers sliding beneath the fallen towel to clasp her bottom. His stare fixing back on hers, he made a barely perceptible twist of his hips and clasped her tighter.
She gave a short gasp as the towel fell to the floor and his hardness pressed into her naked abdomen.
‘Walk away, Victoria,’ he urged hoarsely even as he pressed his thigh between her legs to drive his hardness tighter against her and his taut, pained face inched closer. ‘Walk away...’ his mouth was so close his hot breath soaked into her lips ‘...before it’s too late.’
Desire pulsed through the very fabric of her being and, her hand now palming the back of Marcello’s neck and her fingers tugging at the dark hair at the base of his skull, it was all she could do to stay on her feet. All those long months of pretending to herself...lying...that Marcello meant nothing more to her than the man who paid her salary had been blown away. She’d wanted him from that very first meeting, when he’d walked into her then boss’s office with an arrogant swagger she would have hated him for if he hadn’t captured her gaze with those blue eyes flashing a twinkle that had made her insides melt.
His procession of lovers...she’d hated them all because deep down she’d been jealous of them. All of them. It had made her burn to imagine them in his bed, and, whatever happened now, she would always feel that irrational burn of jealousy. But now she would know it for what it was. Pandora’s box had been opened and she could no more keep its contents contained than she could stop the tides from turning.
Whatever happened now, she was going to be hurt. That was her fate. You didn’t fall for Marcello Guardiola and expect a happy ending. The most she could hope for was a happy-for-now.
She’d imagined he would be the worst person in the world to fall ill with when he’d turned out to be the best. If just to be held by him like this felt like heaven then...
She sighed against his mouth before staring deep into his eyes and whispering, ‘It’s already too late.’