Georgia had gone from stark terror to overwhelming rage in the blink of an eye: terror that she’d been caught and had a gun against her head before the need to fight andprotect her baby had exploded in a hot furnace of rage. She remembered a moment of lucidity when Niccolo had called her name and the reality thathewas the intruder had penetrated her consciousness. Him. Niccolo. The man who’d hurt her so badly and caused all this. The red mist had enveloped her again, stronger than ever. She’dwantedto hurt him, had wanted to transfer all the anguish she’d suffered from his actions and make him feel an ounce of the pain she’d lived with since he’d destroyed her dreams and broken her heart, and she wasn’t the slightest bit ashamed of her behaviour, which was strange as she’d never laid a finger on another human being in the whole of her life.
And now she was putting her life in his hands.
What other choice did she have? She couldn’t stay here or return to her flat. Where else could she go? Callie was in Italy. Her parents? Ha. That was a joke. Besides, as cold and as distant as their relationship was, she didn’t want to put them in any danger.
They’d reached the bottom of the stairs. Niccolo put his hand to the deadbolt and turned his head. His tone low but with an edge to it, he said, “Ready?”
Her heart stuttered with fear, and she instinctively moved closer to him before jerking her head.
Niccolo opened the door and used his huge frame to block the threshold while he checked the coast was clear. For all that he was currently furious with Georgia, he was damned if he’d allow so much as a single strand of her hair be harmed.
In his thirty-five years, Niccolo had walked away from many women. Georgia was the only one he’d had a moment of regret over. She’d refused to be his official mistress. Her exact words before she’d transformed into a Tasmanian Devil had been, “I’m not a prostitute, so fuck you and fuck yourgenerousoffer.”
Those words had insulted him. Infuriated him. She hadn’t cared that in his world, mistresses were honoured. Having a mistress was normal. Expected. The sex between them was hot… scorching… and they shared a humour, so why not make it permanent? At least it was his own choice and not something being forced on him like his marriage. But Georgia hadn’t seen it like that. She’d been angrier about his offer than his confession that he’d agreed to marry another woman. He’d been honest about the circumstances of it and his reasons for doing it, namely that being given the choice between finding nearly half a billion euros out of thin air within five days or ‘suffer the consequences of defaulting’ on his debt, and the choice of having the debt wiped out by marrying Siena had been no choice at all. Georgia had been given the free choice of making their own relationship permanent and had reacted like he’d offered to give her a window in Amsterdam’s red-light district. Having had enough crap to cope with, he’d retracted his offer and ended them on the spot.
He'd never imagined he would see her again.
Niccolo supposed it was her psycho sister’s reckless attempt to stop the wedding that had put Georgia back so firmly in his mind this past week. When he’d received Georgia’s message the morning the pre-wedding celebrations had started…
Her name had flashed on the screen of his phone, and his heart had almost exploded out of his ribs. And then he’d read her message warning him of her sister’s plot.
Once the Callie problem had been solved, he should have pushed Georgia from his mind. He’d been only days away from marrying Siena. Except, the closer the wedding had come, the more vivid Georgia had become in his mind’s eye. Those oversized blue eyes and beautiful heart-shaped face had sharpened into focus until she could have been standing in front of him, and now, with the taste and feel of her tongue still inhis mouth and the taste of his blood where she’d bitten him mingling with it, he had an energy in his veins he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
Not since the day he’d called time on them.
It was long past midnight, but there were still a number of people walking the street. None of them looked like the meatheads the Espositos employed or raised his antennae. Even so, danger laced the air, and he grabbed Georgia’s hand. “Stay by my side.”
If she had any objection to her hand being clasped in Niccolo’s, she kept it to herself. Her fingers laced tightly in his, they stepped into the cool night air.
One last check of their surroundings, and Niccolo set off at a walk that wasn’t far from a run. Only his awareness of Georgia’s much shorter legs stopped him moving faster. On the approach to his car, he unlocked it remotely, headed straight for the passenger door, and threw it open. “Get in.”
The interior light had come on, and as he closed the driver’s door, he was able to see Georgia clearly for the first time, just a sweeping glance as he turned the engine on and checked the street again, but it was enough to absorb the exhaustion on her pale face and the dark bruises beneath her tear-stained, large blue eyes. And it was just enough for him to see the widening of those eyes.
“Nic… you’re hurt.”
“You bit me, remember?” He was about to turn the wheel and hit the accelerator when she gripped his arm.
“Not your mouth,” she whispered, and it was the fear in the whisper that had him put his foot on the brake and look at her again. Her wide, horrified gaze was fixed on his stomach.
His white shirt was soaked in blood. Saturated in it. His blood.
A brief flash of memory flittered before his eyes, of being ten and soaked in blood, a corrective punishment from his father that had gone too far. All his corrective punishments had gone too far.
Niccolo had felt Georgia’s knife slice his skin, but the burn of pain had been quickly masked by the adrenaline of the situation and everything that had followed, and now that he was aware of it again he became aware of a deep, throbbing sensation, and tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
Taking a short but deep breath, he put his foot back on the accelerator.
“Let me drive,” she said as he pulled the car out onto the street. “We need to get you to a hospital.”
“We need to leave the city, and you can’t drive,” he reminded her.
“We need to get you to a hospital.”
“No.”
“Look at all the blood you’ve lost,” she beseeched. “You’re in no state to drive – you need medical attention. Let me drive. I’ve been having lessons.”
“When we leave the city, we will find an all-night pharmacy and get a first-aid kit.”
