His Fantasy Bride (Things to do Before You Die… #3)(9)

“To talk.” His answer was clipped. “Don’t you think you at least owe me that?”

Of course she did. She’d behaved atrociously. For a moment, she considered telling him the truth. But just for a moment. She couldn’t reveal the extent of her bad behavior without mentioning Luca, and there was a chance that would get Luca in trouble. She needed to clear it with him first, which she would as soon as she had the money to pay him back. Hopefully that would be soon, but not yet, so she had to put Vito off some other way.

But right now, she didn’t have the time. “I’m late for work,” she muttered, taking his arm and almost dragging him away. She didn’t want him and Theresa meeting up and introducing themselves. That would be seriously bad news.

He raised an eyebrow but allowed himself to be pulled out of the building. “I’ll drive you.”

The theater was a fifteen-minute ride on the underground from Theresa’s small flat, maybe the same by car if the traffic wasn’t too bad. She chewed on her lip as she decided, then gave a quick nod. He raised his hand, and a long dark, expensive car pulled up beside them. Of course he would have a driver. He was a billionaire. Or he had been—he’d told her it was purely temporary. That was when she’d started to realize that no way was he the monster Luca made him out to be.

She climbed into the back and shuffled across to the far side, fastening the seat belt as he got in beside her and the car pulled smoothly into the traffic. She stared out of the window, totally conscious of his big presence beside her, her body tingling with sexual awareness.

They’d spent a month together on Sicily, and she’d not felt a fraction of what she was feeling now. Oh, she’d wanted him from the moment she saw him, but guilt had held her back from giving in to the sexual pull between the two of them. Plus, she’d been acting a part—a good girl. But how many times in the last six months had she wished they’d made love just once so she had one memory to take with her when she’d run? Well, she had her memory now.

She gave him a quick sideways glance. Tonight he was dressed in black pants and a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up over his forearms. His hands rested on his thighs, big hands with long fingers. Fingers that had touched her intimately, pushed inside her. Wet heat flooded her core, and she shifted on the seat.

Stop thinking about sex.

She so didn’t need sex complicating things.

He turned to face her, and she was caught in his dark-eyed stare. He was all Mediterranean hotness, and just looking at him did weird things to her insides. This side of his face showed the scar, an angry line that ran from just below his right eye to his upper lip. He’d always had an air of total civilization and control, but the scar gave him a dangerous look, and if she wasn’t mistaken, he’d lost weight in the last six months.

“Tell me what happened,” she said, raising her hand to his face but dropping it at the last minute.

He shrugged. “I told you I was on a ship—”

“What sort of ship?”

“A cruise ship. It belonged to the D’Ascensio Corporation, and I was in negotiations to sell the line when a storm struck. The ship caught fire, and I was hit by a burning cable.”

A shiver went through her. “You could have been killed.”

He glanced out of the window, then back to her. “At one point I thought we would be trapped, cut off by the flames.”

“We?”

“Just a couple of guys who helped me.” He gave a tight smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “When it seemed I might die, you were the one thing I thought about. Never seeing you again. Never understanding why you left so suddenly.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Shit, Gabrielle. Why the hell did you run? Why not stay and talk to me? Tell me what the f*cking problem was.”

She winced. Vito rarely swore. She’d never seen him lose his temper, but now he was like a bomb waiting to blow. Had she done that, or had it been the accident? Maybe a bit of both. The thing was, despite his asking her to marry him, she’d never really believed that her running would bother him long-term. She’d thought he would get over it quickly. Maybe because it hadn’t seemed real to her, she’d kidded herself that his feelings were equally superficial. It made her feel better, lessened the guilt.

“I wasn’t ready.”

“And you couldn’t just come and tell me that? You had to run?”

“I thought you would persuade me to stay and go through with the wedding. I felt like everything was moving too fast, and that you couldn’t really want to marry me. That you didn’t really know me.” She took a deep breath. “That I didn’t really know myself.”

He seemed to latch on to those words, his eyes narrowing on her face, running over her, from her pink-streaked hair to her matching T-shirt and tight jeans. “Is that what this whole change of…image is about?”

She couldn’t have asked for a better response. But part of her hated herself, because she was still lying. She nodded quickly. “I just needed to try something different. To find myself.” She almost winced again as she said the trite words, she sounded like a complete cliché.

The car was slowing, and she glanced out of the window. They were pulling up in front of the theater. She looked back at Vito and frustration flashed across his face.

“On the lifeboat, after the ship went down, I made a vow that I would come and find you, discover why you had run. Prove to you that I do love you.”