Italian Bachelors: Irresistible Sicilians. Michelle Smart

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СКАЧАТЬ God she’d had Lily in her arms. There had been a moment when her fingers had itched to slap him while her lips had tingled to kiss him.

      To do more than kiss him.

      Why had she not had the good sense to take Lily back to her room immediately, without striking up a conversation with him, without antagonising him?

      Deep down, she knew why.

      Seeing Luca and Lily together had disturbed her on so many levels she’d had to fight, lest the softening in her bones became a permanent thing.

      They had looked so...so...perfect together. Seeing them like that... The guilt had almost split her in two.

      Then, when Luca had woken, his defences against her down, his hatred still sleeping, he had looked exactly like the man she had married.

      She didn’t want to remember anything good about him. She didn’t want to remember how convinced she had once been that he would make a fantastic father, even if his offspring would be unable to breathe without his knowledge.

      He had been more of a father to Lily in one night than her own father had been to Grace in her entire lifetime.

      It had been hard enough to leave Luca the first time. How easy would it be to leave if Lily fell in love with him too? She had to remember the man he had become by the end of their marriage. The man she had run away from.

      She cast her mind to the cheap phone currently stuffed in a pair of boots in her wardrobe.

      She didn’t know how it could help in her escape plan but just having something that was hers and untraceable felt precious.

      If Luca found it, she would be thrown out on the streets. It made no difference that he still wanted her. That was just chemistry. He didn’t love her. He would cast her out as if she were nothing more than uneaten food.

      She couldn’t quite believe she’d been able to acquire it. She hadn’t gone shopping with the intention of buying a phone—her only intention had been to buy her mum and Cara a Christmas present each; something to let them know how special they were to her. To make amends.

      Not that Billie thought there was anything to make amends for. When she’d spoken to her mum, it was as if she’d never been away—Billie had made some appropriate-sounding noises of relief and appropriate squeals at being a grandmother before discussing, in great detail, her latest commission. By all accounts Grace’s dad was somewhere in Africa with no plans to return any time soon. If he knew or cared that she’d been missing, she didn’t know. And she didn’t ask. Some questions were better left unasked.

      Cara’s reaction to Grace’s reappearance had been somewhat different. Other than a couple of vague text messages, her best friend was being decidedly elusive. She couldn’t blame her, not after she’d been so flippant about Cara’s fright the day they’d first met Luca. Cara had been the one with the sense to be frightened of a man with a gun. And somehow Cara had been the one tricked into giving up her phone so the secrets contained within it could be revealed.

      Her three bodyguards had been glued to her side for the whole trip until she had come to a bustling market. One stall had sold scarves. Out of the corner of her eye she had noticed a row of cheap phones behind the busy seller’s table.

      Snatching the opportunity, she had grabbed a scarf, given the pram to her bodyguards and dived into the throng. When she had reached the front of the table, the crowd thick behind her, she could only hope her guards didn’t have X-ray vision. She’d quickly wrapped the phone inside the scarf and, acting as casual as a woman whose heart rate had quadrupled could, placed her purchases in Lily’s large baby bag.

      She could only pray Luca never found it.

      * * *

      Luca knocked on the door to the blue room. He was confident that, given a little more time, he would start thinking of it as Grace’s room. He was also confident that, given a little more time, he would stop thinking of the master bedroom as their room.

      He ignored the thought that he’d had well over ten months to stop thinking of it as theirs.

      When there was still no response, he pushed the door open. Neither Grace nor Lily were anywhere to be found. A small suitcase lay closed on the bed, the dress he had bought her draped over it as if it had been thrown there without any thought. The fancy box it had been perfectly folded into at the boutique had been thrown in the waste bin.

      She hated that dress. Really hated it. It had given him a perverse pleasure buying it for her, knowing she would have to obey his wishes and wear it. He had seen it as a fitting punishment for a woman who thrived on colour and light, one of many punishments she would have to endure.

      Turning to leave, he caught sight of his reflection in the full-length mirror and stopped short, suddenly certain he had seen a pair of horns sprouting from his head. He blinked to clear the image.

      It was just him. Luca.

      Not the monster Grace was adamant he had become.

      For a moment though...

      What did she see when she looked at him?

      Did she really see a man with horns on his head?

      An image of his tiny, defenceless daughter floated into his head. Lily was an innocent, dependent on the adults who cared for her. She had no voice.

      But one day she would. One day she would be old enough to form her own opinions. If she was anything like her mother, those opinions would be contrary to his. Would his daughter look at him and see a monster, an ogre...?

      Another, equally powerful thought occurred to him.

      What would his father say if he could see him now?

      His father. The man who had gone to such great lengths to leave the old life—indeed had taken the final necessary steps mere months before his great heart had failed.

      Would his father see a monster too? Would his father understand the route he, Luca, had taken? Would he understand his need to strike out on his own, to step out from under Pietro Mastrangelo’s shadow and do something for him, to form partnerships and invest in businesses that were nothing to do with family, or vineyards, or olive groves?

      When his father had died, all of Luca’s dreams of founding his own business empire had died a death with him. He’d had to step into the breach. There had been no other choice, unless you considered letting the estate fall to ruins a choice.

      His mother had fallen to pieces. His brother had been about to head off to university. None of the uncles or aunts in his family had been in a position to help, not for any substantial length of time.

      That had left him, Luca, to bury his own grief and step into the breach. With one hand he’d learned the ropes while the other hand had been busy keeping at bay the vultures, led by Salvatore Calvetti, who would snatch the estate from them.

      For thirteen years he had done nothing but push the estate onwards, investing surplus profits into new vineyards and olive groves across Southern Europe and beyond, new bottling plants, new everything, in the process making the Mastrangelos billionaires.

      For thirteen years he’d done his duty.

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