Niccolo didn’t wantto open his eyes. He wanted to stay right there, in this exact moment in time, forever.
Let the world turn without him.
From the way Georgia clung wordlessly to him, she felt the same.
But time never stood still. It couldn’t. Always it moved forward. Always the world turned. He had no more choice about moving forward and turning with it than a moth had a choice about flying to the light.
With the deepest reluctance, he drew back and clasped Georgia’s sodden cheeks. Sodden from the tears spilling out of her eyes.
She didn’t need to explain where the tears had come from. His chest was filled with so much emotion a part of him wished he could cry to release it too.
He kissed the tip of her upturned nose, then kissed her mouth. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
She shook her head and burrowed her face in his neck.
Stroking her back and her hair, he held her close until the tears were spent and she unburied her face and smiled shakily. “Your coffee’s gone cold.”
A short burst of laughter escaped his throat, and he planted a kiss on the top of her head. Breathing in her scent, that unique essence of Georgia, the tightness in his chest loosened a fraction. “I’m afraid to look. It’s probably spilt all over the table.”
She sniggered lightly, a sound that loosened his chest that little bit more.
“Is it an expensive table?” she asked.
“Undoubtedly.”
“Shall we blame it on mice?”
“That works for me.” He kissed her on the mouth one more time before stepping back and reaching down for his trousers. A quick glance showed a large puddle of coffee that ended barely an inch away from Georgia’s bottom.
She followed his stare and shrugged. “Stupid mice.”
Hardly able to believe he was grinning, Niccolo pulled his trousers on, following Georgia with his eyes as she crossed the kitchen floor with her arms hugged across her breasts.
Only when she’d disappeared through the door did the grin fade.
Swallowing for breath, he drew his fingers through his hair and closed his eyes as he forced himself to contemplate what he’d just allowed to happen.
Sex had always been a great means of release for him. Sex pulled him away from the world he inhabited into one where only pleasure mattered. He’d never needed an emotional connection with a woman to want to screw her. Basic attraction would do. Basic attraction was preferable. He’d never wanted to marry or create a family of his own, not after all he’d lived through with his own family. In all his thirty-five years, a succession of fun, casual relationships was the most he’d wanted.
What he’d just shared with Georgia had been the antithesis of fun. It had been the most emotional experience of his life on any level.
He should have realised from the start that his feelings for her were different. Forget basic attraction – his desire for her had been instantaneous and off-the-charts hot. Forget, too, his old opinions on emotional intimacy. He could blame it on her virginity for making him feel a tenderness towards her that he’d never felt for anyone else, but screwing Georgia had always been more than physical. He’d never hidden this truth from himself. The only lie he’d told himself was that he was in control of it.
He’d sensed that control slipping the afternoon he’d told her about his agreement to marry Siena, he realised, finally allowing himself to relive that scene in detail instead of the flashes of it he always drove away. He’d watched Georgia’s face whiten and seen the pain in her eyes with a weight in his heart he’d never felt before. Even before she’d turned into a Tasmanian Devil at his suggestion she become his official mistress, the chimes of doom had been sounding in his head.
He’d known she would turn him down, he now forced himself to acknowledge. Georgia wasn’t from his world. What to any woman from his world would be an honour, for her had been an insult.
But she’d been more than insulted. His offer to make her his mistress had crushed her far more than his news that he was marrying another woman.
Her anger had come from pain, but it was his own pain he’d been unable to deal with. The pain that had come from hurting her.
And so he’d switched off from it.
Niccolo had taught himself at a young age how to switch off from pain of both the physical and emotional variety. He could not remember a time his father, a brute of a man, hadn’tdespised him. Physical punishments for minor offences had been the norm for as long as he could remember. Those physical punishments had escalated in severity as he’d got older. His mother had turned a blind eye.
For a long time, he’d made excuses for her, told himself she was frightened of his father, but the lies people told themselves could not stay hidden forever. The truth was his mother hadn’t loved Niccolo enough to care that he was her husband’s whipping boy. The only member of his family who’d loved him was Gennaro, which was ironic as, until only days ago, Gennaro had had the emotional synapses of a chickpea.
It was Gennaro who’d put a stop to the beatings one fateful day when Niccolo had been fourteen and their father had lost all semblance of control. He couldn’t even remember what he’d done to provoke his rage, but if sixteen-year-old Gennaro hadn’t been in his bedroom to hear the commotion, he would never have stepped in and stopped their father using Niccolo’s head as a football. He’d been lucky to get away with a severe concussion.
