He laughed into the top of her hair.
Dio, he loved this woman. Loved her. Suspected that she loved him too. Suspected even more strongly that now was not the time to declare himself.
He’d hurt her badly. Barely an hour earlier, he’d told her he despised her. She’d told him he’d destroyed her, and he believed it.
He would make it up to her, he silently vowed. He’d rebuild her shattered trust…
His priority, though, had to be the Espositos. He needed a solid plan to save them from their wrath, and for his formulating plan to become solid, he needed to make contact with Dante.
Whatever happened, he would keep Georgia safe. The Espositos could do whatever they wanted to him, but hell wouldfreeze over before he allowed them to harm a precious hair on her precious head.
God help him, it wasn’t just Georgia he needed to keep safe, but the baby growing safely inside her. Their baby.
As if she could read his thoughts, the glimmer of humour left her voice. “Nic, please believe I always intended to tell you about the baby, but I was scared about the repercussions of telling you before you married Siena. I didn’t know how you’d react or what you’d do.”
He pressed his mouth tightly into her precious hair. Niccolo never believed he could hate anyone more than he hated his father and Lorenzo Esposito, but the hatred he felt for himself in that moment burned like sulphur through his veins. “I do believe you,” he dragged out heavily.
She tightened her hold around him. “I’m sorry for lying to you about Callie.”
“If anyone needs to apologise, it’s me. You were trying to protect me, whereas I…” He inhaled the scent of her hair. “Believe me, I would never have jilted Siena if I’d known they’d come for you in retaliation. I will never forgive myself for the danger I’ve put you in.”
The danger he’d put Georgia and their unborn child in.
“I swear, I will not let anything happen to you or our baby. I swear.”
He would do whatever it took to protect them.
He could only pray that he, too, would get through whatever was coming for them and live long enough to meet their child.
“Is your friend a health freak?” Georgia asked an hour later as she placed bowls of risotto on the kitchen table Niccolo had laid.It was the only thing she’d allowed him to help with. He was in pain – although his pain threshold was much,muchhigher than other mortals; a gazillion times higher than her own – and needed to rest and let the painkillers he’d finally taken get to work.
“Somewhat,” he answered from the seat he’d taken at the head of the table. “Why?”
“He has no ice cream. I’ve looked everywhere, but nothing.”
Niccolo’s expression of mock-horror at this made her smile. His, “I will have to reconsider our friendship,” made her laugh. Only a little, but it felt good. Needed. Whipping up the mushroom and pine nut risotto had felt good, too. Normal.
But there was absolutely nothingnormalabout their situation. Georgia had whipped up the risotto after re-dressing his wound. She’d been terrified of finding signs of infection, but, mercifully, the skin around the wound had been healthy. It frightened her to think that nothing would ever be normal for her again.
She still couldn’t get her head around what had happened on this kitchen table just a short while ago. Not the sex itself, but how emotional it had all become. Watching Niccolo’s fury dissolve into…
No. She must not read too deeply into what they’d shared. Their relationship had always been hugely physical, the chemistry between them strong enough to taste.
It had been inevitable, given the situation and their confines, that they would become lovers again. This was a highly pressured and fraught time for them both, certainly notnormal. Throw a pregnancy into the mix and emotions ran even higher.
Pretending to herself that she’d seen love in Niccolo’s eyes was a pretence that would only hurt her in the long run… if there even was a long run.
Niccolo could never love her the way she loved him.
What she’d thought was a relationship had, for him, been an affair. The closeness they’d shared… She’d thought it was special. Meaningful. If she’d had lovers before him, she’d have had something to compare their relationship to, but he’d been her first and only. Worse, she hadn’t understood just how different their worlds were, and she didn’t mean the fact that she was English and he was Italian. Niccolo was from a world of glamour and money, a world where taking a mistress was considered normal, even by the wives. Georgia’s world was just ordinary.
If she’d understood those differences before they’d become lovers, had understood exactly what she was walking into, would they even have become lovers?
It was a question for which she wished she could say a resounding no, but she’d been besotted with Niccolo from the moment he’d taken her hand and she’d stared into those beautiful dark chocolate eyes.
That he was here and not spending his millions in safety on some Caribbean island was a testament to his feelings for her. He did care for her, deeply, and maybe in his own way, he was in love with her, but it was not the kind of love that she could live with. She could live only with exclusive, faithful, monogamous love. One man and one woman.
Here and now, though, none of that mattered. The here and now might be all they had left.
