LITMIR.BIZ

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door and then looked back and blurted out, ‘It was you. You made me like this.’

      All Valentina saw before she fled was Gio’s face darkening even more. She made her way back to the kitchen and busied herself, silently begging everyone around her to leave her alone.

      Where did she get the nerve to say these things to him? It was as if every time he came within feet of her she had to lash out. Say the worst thing possible, terrified that if he got too close he might see her cruel words for what they were—a very flimsy attempt to keep him at a distance at all costs.

      Valentina knew on some rational level that Mario’s death had been a tragic accident; Gio hadn’t forced her brother onto that demonic horse. She’d even heard him discouraging it, initially. The knowledge that her parents appeared able to forgive him had been a huge blow to her own justification to stay angry at him. But the fact was, for so long now she’d held Gio responsible.

      Her anger had been compounded by the way he’d disappeared after Mario’s death only to turn up playing the part of a playboy bent on nothing but slaking his basest needs. Disgusted with herself for having been so invested in what he was doing, Valentina had nevertheless stored up every tiny example of Gio carousing and generally acting as if he didn’t have a care in the world, while they’d mourned Mario.

      Her anger at him had always comforted her on some level. It was familiar and...necessary. For her sanity. In all honesty Valentina knew that she was very afraid of looking at what might be left behind if she couldn’t hold Gio responsible. If she couldn’t be angry with him. That thought was so terrifying that something must have shown on her face.

      ‘Val? Are you OK?’

      Valentina sucked in a big breath and forced a smile at Franco, who was looking at her intently across the island they were working at. She nodded abruptly. ‘Fine...I, ah, just remembered something I need to do.’

      Thankfully he left her alone and that evening Valentina escaped to the clinic to see how her parents were settling in, rather than unpack in her new accommodation, telling herself it was more than just a ruse to avoid bumping into Gio again.

      * * *

      That evening Gio cursed volubly outside Valentina’s suite of rooms. There was no answer. She wasn’t there. Even though he knew logically she was most likely visiting her parents, he had to battle a spiking of something very proprietorial. And he didn’t like it.

      Women had never been anything more than a diversion to him. His long childhood years of feeling less than, and inadequate, had left him with too many scars to trust anyone, apart from Mario. His subsequent successes had done much to chase away that sense of inadequacy, but since Mario’s death, the joy had been taken out of it to a large extent.

      Gio’s mouth twisted wryly just remembering how Mario had been the one who’d fallen in and out of love like some besotted Romeo. Something within Gio had always remained aloof with a woman. They hadn’t ever touched some deep secret part of him. In the two years after Mario’s death there had been an endless parade of beautiful women but none he’d connected with, and more often than not Gio had found himself waking alone.

      Valentina. She’d always been different. She’d snuck into a place that was locked away deep inside him. But he’d been acutely aware that his feelings and desires for her were strictly forbidden.

      When he’d left Sicily first she’d been only ten or eleven. A gap-toothed child only on his radar as his best friend’s kid sister who had trailed them with almost religious devotion.

      But when he’d returned years later—a millionaire, the new owner of the racetrack in Syracuse with plans to rebuild—she’d been fifteen. And Gio had found himself aware of her in a way that had made him ashamed. So he’d flung himself into socialising with Mario, pursuing the local beauties, anything to push dangerous thoughts and desires from his mind.

      Over the next two years she’d only grown more and more beautiful and mature. She’d started to flirt with him, but with such sweet innocence that it had twisted his heart. One day he’d been weak. She’d arrived to look for Mario, who’d already left. A miscommunication. Gio had seen her get startled by Misfit and had acted on an impulse, lifting her onto the horse.

      He’d swung up behind her, wrapping his arm around her taut young body. The weight of her firm breasts had been heavy on his arm. Those stolen indulgent minutes had been the most erotic in his life....

      Gio grimaced now and turned away from Valentina’s door. What was he doing hanging around like some besotted fool? Yes, he still wanted her. More than ever. But that was all. The capacity to feel anything more had long ago withered to dust inside him, poisoned by grief and guilt.

      And Valentina...? She hated him with every cell in her body and if she had ever felt anything for him, physical or otherwise, it had been destroyed that night in the hospital in Palermo when she’d seen her dead brother laid out on a slab in the morgue.

      * * *

      The Corretti Cup was fast approaching. Valentina and her staff were flat-out making sure they had everything ordered and organised. That evening as she hung up her apron, she had to concede reluctantly that Gio had done her a favour by insisting she stay on-site. She wasn’t half as exhausted as she had been. And the lines of worry and stress had disappeared from her parents’ faces.

      She’d avoided him since their last cataclysmic meeting the day before and she didn’t like the way guilt pricked her conscience again. Driving down that disturbing feeling, Valentina walked around the front of the stadium to get back to her accommodation.

      She had a suite of rooms to herself, complete with a kitchenette, living area and en suite bedroom. The understated opulence of the accommodation had blown her away. It was in an old reconverted stone stables. She had a private balcony which looked out over the back of the stadium where the gallops, stables and training ground was based.

      But she loved this view over the racetrack. The sun was setting over the sea in the distance, turning everything golden and orange. She stood at the railing and sighed deeply, and then heard from not far away, ‘It’s beautiful when it’s like this, with no one around. That’ll all change in a few days though.’

      Valentina had tensed at the first word. She turned her head and saw Gio sitting on one of the stand seats behind her—that’s how she’d missed him. The thought of him watching her for those few seconds made her feel warm. Instantly she doused it. ‘Yes,’ she said stiffly, ‘it’s lovely.’

      She made to walk on but Gio lifted something out of an ice bucket beside him and she realised he was holding out a beer, and that he had his own one in his other hand. Ice cold water droplets ran down the side of the cold bottle and suddenly she was parched.

      She looked at Gio and all she could see were those broad shoulders and his messy hair, flopping over one eye. She felt weak. He said easily, ‘I bring out some beers for the racetrack workers most evenings. It’s a tough few weeks getting ready for the cup.’

      Torn between wanting to run and wanting to stay, which was very disturbing, Valentina remembered what she’d said the previous day and then stepped forward and took the bottle. Her fingers brushed off Gio’s, sending a spark of awareness jumping between them. ‘Thanks.’

      She stepped over the bottom seat and sat down near him, and then looked at the view again as if it was the most absorbing thing she’d ever seen. She took a gulp of cold beer, not really tasting it. Silence grew and lengthened between them and she fiddled with the label on her bottle. Unable to stand it any more she turned to face him. Awkwardly she started, ‘I...I’ve said things to you...’

      She stopped, cursing her inability to be articulate and tried again. ‘I owe you an apology. What I said yesterday...’ She shrugged one shoulder minutely. ‘You seem to bring out the worst in me.’

      Gio shook his head, his eyes unreadable in the growing gloom. ‘Valentina, what happened in the past—’

      She cut him off with an urgent appeal, suddenly terrified he’d mention

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