A Shadow of Guilt(55)

Eventually she wound her way back from the centre to the entrance of the labyrinth and reluctantly left the garden behind. She couldn’t shake the feeling that some bruised part of her heart had been healed.

When she got back up to the kitchen door of the castello a grim-faced Gio met her. He’d shaved and changed and was holding car keys, and a bag which she suspected contained her dress. ‘I can take you now if you’re ready to leave?’

Valentina knew that she should be jumping at this opportunity to run as far away as she could, as fast as possible. But in light of Gio’s clear desire to have her gone something inexplicably rebellious rose up within her.

She lifted her chin. ‘What makes you think I’m ready to leave?’

She saw the quickly hidden flare of confusion in his eyes before they narrowed again. Almost as if wanting to goad her now he said, ‘I assumed that seeing where Mario had died would be a passion killer.’

Valentina sucked in a breath at his crude words. But amazingly, hurt didn’t grip her. She couldn’t articulate it to Gio but it felt right to be here with him. Her blood was already flowing thicker in her veins just standing in front of him, his freshly clean scent on the air between them.

‘I was the one who wanted to come here, remember?’

Again that flare of confusion. Valentina focused on Gio and not on the confusing tumult of emotions within her. She walked up to him and took the keys out of his hands and dropped them to the nearby countertop. Then she took the bag out of his other hand and dropped it to the floor.

Gio’s eyes were dark, burning. Almost censorious. ‘Do you know what you’re doing, Valentina?’

Her voice sounded thick to her ears. ‘I want you, Gio, that’s all.’

Gio smiled and it was grim and hard. ‘As long as that’s all. I’d hate for there to be any confusion.’

Valentina’s heart lurched but she forced herself to say, ‘No, there’s no confusion.’

Gio reached out and pulled her into his body and Valentina had to fight not to close her eyes at the way her body sang.

‘You’re right,’ he said harshly. ‘There’s nothing but this.’ And then his mouth was on hers and the confusion in Valentina’s heart faded away to be replaced by heat.

Just over twenty-four hours later Valentina was standing in a private room in a state-of-the-art clinic in Naples listening to a consultant tell them about the operation which her father would undergo the next day. Her father was in bed, pale, and her mother was sitting by his side, looking worried but stoic, holding his hand tightly.

Gio stood in a corner of the room, arms crossed and face stern as he, too, listened. Dressed in chinos and a white shirt, he looked cool and crisp. And gorgeous, and remote.

Valentina’s body ached minutely in very secret places. She trembled with awareness just to be this close to Gio. Her brain was still reeling from an overload of sensation and lack of sleep.

She darted Gio a quick glance now but he wasn’t looking at her. His jaw was tight, impossibly stern. She felt conflicted, confused. From the moment she’d challenged him in his kitchen yesterday, something unspoken but profound had shifted between them.

She hadn’t had time to dwell on it though—Gio had used his considerable skill and experience to render Valentina all but mute with pleasure.

When Valentina had woken late that morning, disorientated and more physically replete than she could have imagined possible, it had been to a cool and fully dressed Gio telling her, ‘It’s time to go. The plane is ready to take your parents to Naples.’

Valentina’s attention came back into the room, guilt washing through her to think that Gio was distracting her even now, when her father’s life was being discussed. She did her utmost to ignore him and her roiling emotions and concentrated on her parents.

When the consultant left the room and Valentina had made sure her mother was comfortable in the private room that had been set up for her beside her husband’s, all courtesy of Gio, she left, feeling incredibly weary all of a sudden.

She was surprised to see Gio outside the clinic, not sure what she’d been expecting, but half expecting him to have left. Gio faced her now and held out what looked like a plastic hotel room key. ‘It’s to a suite in the Grand Plaza Hotel. It’s not far from here.’

Valentina blanched. It was also one of the most expensive hotels in Italy. She started to protest but Gio took her hand and curled it almost painfully over the card and said curtly, ‘I don’t want to hear it, Valentina. Take the key and use it. You need to stay somewhere while you’re here.’