An Inheritance of Shame(6)
Yet still she’d come back, her heart in her eyes just like it had been the night he’d shown up at her door, too numb to feel anything except the sudden, desperate passion she’d awoken in him when she’d taken him in her arms.
Guilt needled him again as he thought of that night, how he’d slipped from her bed before dawn without a single word of farewell. He should have said goodbye, at least. Considering their history, their shared childhood, she’d deserved that much. Even if it didn’t seem like it mattered to her any more. It mattered, annoyingly, to him.
He stood up, pacing the spacious confines of the office with his usual restlessness. He should be feeling victorious now, savagely satisfied, but he only felt uneasy, restless, the remnants of his migraine mocking him.
He’d spent another sleepless night battling memories as well as his migraine. For seven years he’d schooled himself not to think of that night, to act as if it hadn’t happened. Yet last night in the throes of pain he’d been weak, and he’d remembered.
Remembered the sweet slide of her lips against his, the way she’d drawn him to herself, curling around him, accepting him in a way he’d never been before or since. How he’d felt tears spring to his eyes when he’d joined his body with hers, how absolutely right and whole that moment had felt.
Idiotic. He was not a romantic, and a single encounter—poignant as it may have been—didn’t mean anything. It obviously hadn’t meant anything to Lucia, who had seemed completely unmoved by his appearance last night. And if Lucia, who had hero-worshipped him as a child, could be indifferent and even cold towards him now, than surely he could act the same. Feel the same.
In any case he had too many other things to accomplish to waste even a second on Lucia Anturri or what had happened between them. Nothing would happen between them now. He’d come back to Sicily for one purpose only: to ruin the Correttis. To finally have his revenge.
Determinedly Angelo pulled the phone towards him. It was time to call Antonio Battaglia, and start carving up that Corretti pie.
Lucia felt the throb in her temples and wondered if headaches could be contagious. She’d had one since she’d left Angelo in the penthouse suite last night, and spent a sleepless night trying not to remember their one night together.
Yet far worse than the pain in her head was the ache seeing Angelo had opened up in her heart. No tablet or pill would help that. Swallowing hard, she pushed the trolley of fresh linens and cleaning supplies down the corridor. She had to finish all the third-floor rooms by lunchtime. She had to forget about Angelo.
How can you forget him when you haven’t told him?
Last night, she knew, hadn’t been the right time. She’d even half convinced herself that he need never know the consequence of their one night together. What point was there, really, in raking up the past? It wouldn’t change things. It wouldn’t change him.
And yet Lucia knew if the positions had been somehow reversed she would want to know. Yet could she really assume that Angelo would feel the same? And if she did tell him, and he shrugged it off as irrelevant, wouldn’t that break her heart all over again? Just one brief conversation with him last night and already she felt it starting to splinter.
She was almost finished the third floor, her head and heart both aching, when she heard the muffled sobs coming from the supply room at the end of the hall. Frowning, Lucia pushed open the door and her heart twisted at the sight inside the little room stacked with towels and industrial-size bottles of cleaner.
‘Maria.’
Maria Dibona, another chambermaid, looked up at her with tear-streaked eyes. ‘Scusi, scusi,’ she said, wiping at her eyes. Lucia reached for a box of tissues used to supply the hotel bathrooms and handed her one. ‘Is it Stefano?’
Maria nodded. Lucia knew her son had left Sicily for a life in Naples, and his sudden defection had broken his mother’s heart.
‘I’m sorry, Maria.’ She put her arm around the older woman. ‘Have you been in touch?’
‘He hasn’t even called.’ Maria pressed the tissue to her eyes. ‘How is a mother to live, not knowing if her son is healthy or not? Alive or not?’
‘He will call,’ Lucia murmured. ‘He loves you, you know. Even if he doesn’t always show it.’ She meant the words for Maria, yet she felt their mocking echo in herself. Hadn’t she told herself the same thing after Angelo had left? Hadn’t she tried to convince herself that he would call or write, reach her, even as the heaviness in her heart told her otherwise?