In that moment where his imagination lured him into filthy places, he admitted the truth to himself. Matteo was nothing but an excuse he was using to stop himself.
Because Sameera was not meant for men like him.
If he touched her, he could show her everything she wanted to taste, but after…he would discard her. He was empty to give her what she needed.
If he knew one thing about the woman who made him realize how empty his life was, it was that she wasn’t made to be used and discarded, even if she were a willing participant.
Sam was made for forevers made up of long, cold nights and bright sun-kissed days, filled with laughter and love and joy and connection.
And he’d already had his forever—a flicker flame of joy followed by lifelong kiss of pain.
Chapter Seven
IT WAS ANOTHERweek before Matteo was brought home and settled comfortably with round-the-clock nurses.
Sam visited him once at the hospital when Angelina had been elsewhere, and he’d been unconscious the whole time. That trip into Milan in a chauffeured car with Alessandro had been unbearable. His extreme solicitousness, as if she were a stranger, had made her want to scratch her nails down his face.
Back home now, Matteo on painkillers mostly slept.
Sam was desperate to tell him she’d forgiven him, that she didn’t want to lose him. She wanted to share her confusion about his brother with him, as inappropriate as that sounded. And she wanted to hug him and see him laugh.
More than anything, she didn’t want to stay another minute at the villa. Not in Alessandro’s bedroom, not in his bed.
Because even when he avoided her, he was entrenching himself into her very thoughts. The morning after she’d begun sketching him, she’d been shown to an airy, sunny room on the second floor where a variety of painting supplies had been waiting for her in pristine, unopened packages. Complete with two new smocks.
Another shock had been when her mom had called two days later, doing a complete one-eighty, asking Sam to live it up and have fun.
Because the great and mighty Alessandro Ricci of Ricci International Finances had personally called to reassure her parents that she was being looked after very thoroughly. In a few minutes of transatlantic conversation, Alessandro had achieved what Sam hadn’t been able to achieve her entire life: talked her mom down from the ledge.
He didn’t step into her bedroom—his bedroom—anymore. There were no more needling remarks to make her gasp, no probing to make her react, no penetrating looks that made her want to burrow into him. Just unrelenting politeness.
He’d put distance between them, distance the blasted man should’ve kept when he’d found her waiting in his study for his brother. Instead, he’d let her see him, know him. Made her want him.
Yep, she was blaming it all on him.
Unbearable as it was to be subjected to his politeness, on top of Alessandro’s aunt’s interest in her, Sam couldn’t bring up leaving. At least until she was finally able to talk to Matteo.
One bright morning a week after Matteo’s arrival home, his parents were arguing in the kitchen in a volley of Italian that enveloped Sam.
Outside the French doors, sunlight shimmered on the lake, and inside the kitchen the scent of coffee and croissants pervaded.
Antonio Ricci—an older, warmer and more smiling version of Alessandro—whispered something to his wife Maria that made the older woman smile softly.
Alessandro’s aunt was a lovely woman, but Sam was glad she spoke little English. Maria asked a lot of questions about her and Alessandro.Girlfriend,affair,marriageandbabieswere words she said so frequently in Italian that Sam had been compelled to learn their English translations.
A surge of homesickness hit her as she watched the clear affection between the older couple. Never far behind, as always, was guilt. She had clear memories of her parents like this, arguing with smiles, kissing each other in the kitchen, competing about whose side of her heritage Sam would learn more about. And then, on a beautiful day like this, she’d collapsed and they’d begun falling apart.
God, she wanted them to be happy so badly that her stomach knotted every time she thought of them.
“Sameera,stai bene, cara mia?”
Coloring, Sam smiled at Maria. “I’m fine, thank you. Just lost in thought.”
“You miss Alessandro,sì?”
Sam nodded, because it was easier to go along with Mrs. Ricci than explain the twisted complexity of her nonrelationship with Alessandro, who’d been on a trip the last two days.
At least she hadn’t been forced to socialize with Angelina who’d been ordered by Alessandro to limit her visits to the villa to see Matteo to mornings. Especially since she came with an entourage of cousins and bodyguards.
