Sam licked at her lower lip, the resolute look in his eyes telling her he wasn’t going to let this go. And she was equally resolute that he see her as a woman, his equal, an object of desire.
Jesus,an object of desire? Why was her mind running away like this? And why was her damned body following as if an affair with this man was even within the realms of possibility?
The shrill ring of his cell phone broke the silence. He held her gaze for an eternity before he answered it.
Like a curtain being pulled shut, that austerity returned to his expression. His torrent of Italian was too rapid for her to follow.
“I have to leave. I will send another chauffeur to pick you up.”
Sam nodded, his forbidding expression cutting off her questions.
Shooting to his feet, he turned, then paused. “Why do you think you messed up in your relationship too?”
Sam stared at him, even as her confusion suddenly untangled.
Matteo wanted easy, surface stuff. Forget pain, he didn’t even want discomfort. He didn’t want messy emotions and digging through one’s feelings and assumptions and the raw awareness that could only be found beneath one’s fears. The fierce realness of pleasure once you’ve tasted the worst kind of pain.
A life with her would never be easy or fun. And not just because she’d already tasted the primal fear of losing life itself. But because that fear had also given her an appreciation for things borne out of pain and failure and grief.
Like attraction that went beyond looks. Like the connection between her parents. Like her perception of this man’s true nature within seconds of meeting him.
“I didn’t understand myself and clung to him for too long,” she said, finally seeing past her own insecurities. It wasn’t her lack of adventurous spirit. Not her wanting to cling to the safety of her parents’ home and love. Not knowing that she’d changed from the eighteen-year-old who’d found Matteo so fascinating. “I used him to feel safe, to feel good about myself.”
Alessandro stared at her, unblinking, those gray eyes consuming.
Ask me what I mean, her mind chanted relentlessly.
For a man who’d pushed and prodded her from the moment she’d arrived, he backed off now. The damned man could write a thesis on how to keep her unbalanced.
“Buona serata, Sameera.”
Sam shivered at the sound of her name on his lips. But he was already gone. “Good night, Alessandro,” she whispered to herself.
It was a long time before her thoughts stilled. Before she could stop thinking of how greedy and hungry she was for another moment—quiet or sparring—with Alessandro.
For another conversation.
For another day with that dark, stormy gaze consuming her.
Chapter Six
AFTER BEING ALONEat the villa for two days, Sam began to feel like a hapless heroine in a gothic novel, creeping along its marble-tiled hallways. She hadn’t seen either Alessandro or Matteo since the chauffeur had brought her back from the café. Their parents and Angelina and her thuggish cousins, everyone had been gone.
The villa, so breathtaking and boisterous when she’d arrived, now felt cavernous and quiet. As if to add to the dreary ambience, the rain hadn’t let up once. Just sheet after endless sheet of gray falling over the lake, blurring the view into something shapeless and cold.
She’d tried asking the staff where Mr. Ricci and the rest of the family were, but they just smiled politely, while bringing her endless meals. In the end, she’d taken to curling up in the armchair in Alessandro’s study and sketching him from memory, as if that might conjure him out of thin air.
Worried that the Bianchis might’ve gotten wind of her or that Matteo was in trouble, she stayed put.
Alessandro didn’t owe her anything, of course. Not as his fake mistress. Not as his reckless little brother’s ex. Not as an unwanted guest. But two days of radio silence while being stuck at a palatial mansion would makeanyonecranky.
Watching hour upon hour pass was as painful as waiting for her number to come up for surgery years ago.
What she loathed the most was the needling thought that Alessandro, back in his sophisticated life, had forgotten the naïve, dull, boring Ms. Fischer.
The last of the sun’s rays were dancing over the lake when the bedroom door opened to reveal Alessandro.
Dark shadows clung to his eyes as he stilled and stared at her. His gray shirt was rumpled, and his wavy hair was in such disarray that it was clear he’d tugged at it.
