LITMIR.BIZ

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she explain that when one was in the grip of something like a panic attack, the last thing you did was the logical one?

      ‘I couldn’t find your number, and my phone was dead,’ she supplied weakly. And then stronger, ‘There was no one here. Even Lucia disappeared after a while. I was all alone. Anything could have happened, did you think of that?’

      Irritation crossed Gianni’s face. ‘For God’s sake, Keelin, it was only a day. You are in one of the most luxurious villas in Italy. There’s an indoor pool and an outdoor pool—’

      Keelin whirled away from him and the suggestion she should have been happy to amuse herself, emotion reaching her eyes, making them sting. Making her chest hurt with the pressure it took to contain it. She’d not cried in years, learning that tears only caused her parents to look at her with bafflement. So rousing their ire had become her default position.

      Gianni sounded exasperated. ‘Look—’

      She kept her back to him and cut him off, saying with a low voice, ‘When I was fourteen I got a taxi home from the train station for my summer half-term holidays. The whole house was locked up. When I rang my father he was in Sao Paulo in Brazil and wouldn’t be home for days. My mother was in St Barts with friends. They’d given the staff a week off. They’d not even bothered to find out what I was doing.’

      She turned around to face Gianni, arms folded tightly. ‘They had to send the housekeeper back to take care of me and she was not happy to have her holiday cut short but at least it wasn’t anything new so she wasn’t surprised.’

      Gianni interjected in a tight-sounding voice, ‘This had happened before?’

      Keelin lifted one shoulder in a gesture of assent. ‘It was a fairly regular occurrence except usually there’d be staff at home. When I was three they left me alone with my nanny for two and a half months while they went to America on business. When they came back I didn’t recognise them.‘Today...’ Emotion tightened her chest again but Keelin forced out, ‘Today, it just got to me. It’s isolated here. I don’t speak the language. I hate that it affected me. But I just—don’t do it again.’

      Gianni came closer, all traces of exasperation and irritation gone. In his eyes was not pity, because Keelin couldn’t have handled that. But something else. A kind of understanding.

      He cupped his hands around her face, and it was only when he smoothed his thumbs back and forth across her cheeks she realised that she was crying. Mortification rushed through her and she tried to take his hands down but he wouldn’t let her.

      She’d planned on being icy and dismissive when he returned and instead she was blubbing all over him and spilling her guts. Keelin said, ‘Look, it’s not a big—’

      He cut her off. ‘I shouldn’t have left you here with no explanation. The truth is that I was still angry after last night and I took it out on you by leaving you to go to Rome today. And the reason no one is here apart from Lucia is because I gave the staff a week off in a bid for some privacy. Today is Sunday so Lucia goes to her family in the local village for the day and night.’

      Gianni’s mouth was a tight line. ‘It was careless and rude of me.’

      Keelin’s heart flip-flopped. Uh-oh.

      And then he changed the subject abruptly. ‘Have you eaten today?’

      Keelin thought about it for a second and shook her head, feeling mortified again. Imagining he must be thinking, She’s such a drama queen. ‘Not since breakfast.’‘How about we get something to eat then, hmm?’

      Keelin looked at him. ‘Okay.’

      He stepped back and took her hand and led her out of the room. All of Keelin’s anger was washing away, to be replaced by something far more disturbing.

      When they got down to the huge open-plan and surprisingly modern kitchen, Gianni directed Keelin to sit on a stool while he prepared pasta with a pesto sauce. Even though Keelin could see that he wasn’t exactly making pasta from scratch, he seemed to know his way around a kitchen.

      He poured her a glass of red wine and when she took a sip he said dryly, ‘I take it that you do like wine?’

      Keelin flushed and put the glass down, answering a little sheepishly, ‘Yes.’

      Gianni had rolled his shirtsleeves up, and taken his tie off, and even though he wore smart trousers, this was the most relaxed she’d seen him since they’d met. The open top button of his shirt drew her eye to the strong column of his throat. His jaw was dark with stubble. Keelin thought of him being angry enough to go to Rome that morning and sensed that he didn’t normally let things provoke him to that extent. The realisation that she’d got to him made her feel somehow hollow though.

      He looked at her as the pasta cooked, his gaze incisive. ‘I’m also guessing your views on children and boarding school were not entirely accurate?’

      She met his gaze. She guessed she deserved to give him an answer after stringing him along. And she was passionate about this. She shook her head. ‘No child of mine will ever go to one of those places.’

      Gianni quirked a brow and instantly looked younger and even more devilishly handsome. ‘Care to revise any more of your opinions?’

      Keelin grimaced slightly and took another fortifying sip of wine before gesturing to her shirt and jeans. Bare feet. ‘I’ve always been inclined to dress down more than up. And,’ she admitted sheepishly, ‘I hate shopping with a passion.’

      But before he could probe any further and already feeling far too exposed, Keelin asked, ‘What about you? You always seem to be so composed, pristine.’

      Heat fizzed in her belly at the thought of what Gianni might look like completely undone. Naked.

      Thankfully he was dishing up the pasta now and indicating for Keelin to go to the table, so he wasn’t looking at her too closely. He put the plates down, brought over the wine. When Keelin tasted a mouthful of the perfectly al dente pasta with pesto sauce she closed her eyes for a second in appreciation. It was simple and rustic but it was heaven.

      When she looked again, Gianni was taking a sip of wine, eyes unreadable, on her. Awareness made her self-conscious. She’d almost forgotten what she’d asked him when he said, ‘Almost everything I do, and am, is a direct result of wanting to be the exact opposite of my father.’

      Keelin remembered the way he’d retreated so spectacularly when she’d mentioned his father before, and his rage when he’d seen those men at the wedding, and kept silent.

      He swallowed some pasta and put his fork down. Keelin couldn’t seem to stop herself focusing on those lean hands. He spoke again, distracting her.

      ‘My father was rough, tough, uncivilised. He got in with the wrong people at a young age in Sicily, and believed that the way to getting ahead was via violence and terrorising people, including my mother. I needed to prove to myself that I could be different.’

      A million questions flooded into her brain but she sensed that Gianni was already regretting saying too much as he looked away and ate some pasta. She ignored the questions and said, ‘Your mother seemed nice, quiet.’

      Gianni grimaced slightly. ‘She is. And she refuses to leave our old home just outside Rome. When my father died, I thought she’d move back to Sicily but she won’t. She insists on keeping our home like a shrine.’

      He shook his head and Keelin could understand that he didn’t get why a woman who had been brutalised by her husband would want to do that. And it surprised Keelin too, but on some level she could understand that Gianni’s mother perhaps still felt a sense of loyalty, and even love. After all, look at how far she herself had gone in a bid to prove something to her father after a lifetime of disinterest.

      Quietly, before she could lose her nerve, she said, ‘I’m sorry about what I did at the wedding, encouraging her to invite those men. I had no idea.’

      Gianni

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