THREE DAYS OF trying to ignore the woman living and breathing in the same suite was driving Antonio insane. He was now thoroughly regretting the impulse he’d had to stay and see Emma’s last outfit at the shop. Ever since that moment he’d been imagining what it would be like to peel her out of the silky dress and enjoy every delight her stunning figure had to offer.
But he couldn’t. Emma was nothing like the women who graced his bed. The women who lived and played in his world—the women who had the hard edge needed to take his emotion-free entanglements. Emma didn’t know how to play that game, and although she might hide it well she would break in his arena.
Besides—as he reminded himself for the hundredth time—there was far too much at stake.
He had done everything needed to ensure the meeting with Bartlett would be a success. He had orchestrated an irresistible deal the man would be insane to refuse. But he didn’t like the silence from his father. Didn’t trust it. The man must be up to something.
For the first time Antonio found himself wondering just how far he would go to get his revenge.
And the only answer in his heart was, However far it took...
It was gone eleven, and Emma had retired to her room almost an hour ago. In that time he’d pulled out all the files on Bartlett they had collated in the last week and turned the sumptuous living room into a practical office. The meeting with Bartlett was set for tomorrow evening—and the day of races that would commence the first leg of the Hanley Cup would start the following morning. Everything was lining up nicely... But he couldn’t shake the feeling of an approaching storm.
As if he had summoned demons for Emma too, he heard sounds of distress coming from her room. Worried, he got up from the sofa and was halfway towards her door when he heard her scream. He rushed into her room, barely noticing as the door slammed back against the wall, probably leaving a dent, and took three strides to her bed.
She was tossing and turning, caught up in the cotton sheets, kicking out desperately. He could see the trails of tears on her cheeks. Dio, it must be some nightmare.
Remembering how his sister had suffered so badly from them in the year following their departure from the States, he sat down on the bed beside Emma’s restless form and gently took hold of her arm.
‘Emma...’ he whispered. ‘Emma, it’s just a dream.’
She thrashed against his gentle hold and let out a whimper that struck his heart.
‘Emma, come on. It’s just a dream. You need to wake up.’
Her eyes sprang open, searching for focus. A shudder racked her body, and she gasped on an inhalation of much needed breath.
‘You’re okay. It was just a dream.’
But the hurt in her eyes told him he was wrong.
She looked so vulnerable, so in need of comfort, that it took everything in him not to take her in his arms, to replace the fear in her eyes with want, with arousal. He wanted her to feel the same need, the same desire that burst into life against his skin when it met hers...something he knew could only be satiated by a touch, by a caress.
He cursed himself to hell and back. He couldn’t take advantage of her. Not now...not like this. Not ever, he warned himself.
*
Emma took in Antonio’s presence. The light filtering through from the living room cast his face in night-time shadows, so much more welcome than her awful dream. For a moment—just a moment—she thought he might reach for her. Might kiss her as she so desperately wanted to be kissed. But seconds passed and he didn’t. He held himself back.
She nodded. Resting her hand on his where it held her arm. ‘I’m okay. It’s okay. I’ll be through in a minute. I just need...a minute.’
As Antonio left her room she willed the fierce beating of her heart to slow. Her fingers brushed away the traces of the nightmare from her eyes and she realised that the tears she had thought contained by the dream had escaped.
She moved to the en suite bathroom, passing the wardrobe full of the clothes they had bought two days ago with an accusatory glance, as if they could be held responsible for causing old fears to surface. The fear that the cancer would come for her again, just when she was beginning to hope that she could reclaim her sense of self, reclaim the sense of her body.
She splashed water on her hot cheeks, finally shaking off the hold of her terror. Wide awake, and not ready even to consider going back to bed, she pulled on the hotel’s silk robe and padded into the living area of the suite on bare feet.
She took in the devastation caused by Antonio’s preparation for the meeting with Bartlett with a rueful smile.
‘I am very glad you don’t usually work like this. I’d have the cleaners quitting on me each and every day if you did.’
He looked up from the papers he held in his hands, his hawk-like gaze refusing to be distracted by her attempt at small talk.
‘Nightmare?’
‘Yes. Clearly,’ she replied.
She was surprised to see his chiselled features soften.
‘My sister used to get them regularly. Would you like some tea?’
‘Because I’m English?’ Emma asked, holding on to the warm offer like a lifeline.
‘Yes. Clearly.’
She smiled as he gave her words back to her.
‘What would you have given your sister?’
‘Well...’ he said, as if searching his memory. But she knew that the answer would immediately be on his lips. ‘She was thirteen at the time, but a little limoncello didn’t hurt her one bit. Not that this hotel has limoncello stocked in the suite’s bar. But there is whisky?’
‘I’ll take the whisky. Thank you.’
As she watched him step behind the corner bar that edged one side of the suite she took in his powerful appearance. Even three days of solid work, constantly sorting through all the figures and research data that they’d been able to put together, hadn’t put a dark hair out of place. Dressed in his suit trousers and a shirt, sleeves rolled back on strong tanned forearms, he was mouth-wateringly handsome.
The brief glimmer of concern in his eyes as he had woken her from her nightmare had been devastatingly tempting, and not for the first time Emma wondered what it would be like to rely on that power, that compassion. A compassion he was yet to show, however, in any of his business dealings.
She turned away from the temptation of his presence and stepped towards the windows that looked out over the stands of the race course. In just a few days they would be full of spectators, sound and chaos. But at that moment they seemed peaceful and quiet. She pressed her hand against the glass and allowed it to leach away some of the fevered heat she reluctantly attributed to the man behind her.
As he approached, a glass of whisky in each hand, she became horribly conscious that she was only wearing a silk negligée and the robe. The cool, delicate touch of the fabric did nothing to ease the prickles of heat racing across her skin at the mere sight of his reflection. Her mind, torn between the horror of her nightmare and the ecstasy of Antonio’s proximity, warred between her hurt and her heart...
Her heart should know better. But it didn’t. Her heart wanted him to put those damn glasses down and take her in his arms.
Schooling her features, calming the erratic beating of her pulse, she watched as he waited for her to turn, clearly knowing that she had seen him in the reflection in the window.
‘My sister never really wanted to talk about her fears, but in the end she saw that it helped.’
Desperate to hold on to any thread that took her away from her desires, and also curious, given how little she knew about his past and his family, she turned and accepted the glass he offered her.
He moved back to the beautiful sofa and cleared some of the paper from it, making room for her on the opposite end, a safe distance away from his presence.
‘How long did she have nightmares for?’
For a brief moment Emma wondered if Antonio would choose to ignore her question, but after a small sigh he started to talk.
‘They carried on for a year after my parents’ divorce.’
His eyes turned dark, consuming the golden flecks she sometimes saw there.
‘It was public and very messy. In order to reduce the settlement, my father paraded my mother’s affair through the courts and the international press. He had the divorce granted in Italy, where people are still notoriously moralistic about such things. Had we been in North America, it might have been different. But whatever continent he might have chosen, it didn’t seem to affect the press interest.’
He shrugged—such an Italian gesture of dismissiveness for clearly such a painful thing. Emma could only guess at the depths of the emotions he was struggling with.
‘How old were you?’
‘I was sixteen, but Cici was only thirteen. Without Michael’s financial support my mother couldn’t stay in America. Her father offered to help, but only if we came back to Italy. So we left.’
‘That must have been hard.’
Emma knew what it was like to have her entire world change at such a young age. It had dripped onto her experiences like rain falling through leaves. Each tear-shaped drop hitting another aspect of her life. It could not have been much different for Antonio, his sister and his mother.
‘It was. Everything we knew—friends, school, staff. That’s where John worked. In my father’s stable.’
‘You had a stable?’
Emma had known that he must have had money growing up—he had some mannerisms that only financial security could give—but the idea of having a stable was almost inconceivable for a girl who’d had a struggling artist mother and a state school teacher father.
Antonio smiled ruefully. ‘The full American package. Stables, private education, piano recitals—for Cici, not me. I was on track to be a member of the American polo team. But...I left that behind too.’
She let the silence fall, not wanting to interrupt the hold of his memories. Her heart reached out to the boy who had lost his dream.
‘Cici struggled with it more. Losing her friends. And, even though he’s an evil bastard, she suffered from the loss of her father too.’
Emma couldn’t help but notice how he referred to his sister’s pain, but not his own. Her father, not his. As if Antonio had cut him out of his vocabulary as determinedly as his father had cut them from his life.
She took a sip of her whisky. His was neat, but he’d added ice to hers which she was thankful for. The ice-cool liquid took the edge off the warmth of the rich Irish blend.
‘Cici needed stability in that year, and I worked very hard to give it to her.’
‘What about your mother?’
A small smile graced his lips. ‘She was—is—a beautiful Italian socialite with little education and less work experience. Her father was rich, but bad financial investments had stolen much of his wealth by the time we returned to Italy. He gave us what he could, but I wanted Cici to stay in private education. In order to do that I needed to work after school.’
‘And what about you?’
‘I,’ he said with mock sincerity, ‘am an academic genius.’
And she wished he hadn’t said it. The playful mask he wore was just as alluring as the truth behind it.
‘I didn’t need private education. I got my scholarship to NYU...met Dimitri and Danyl. They became my family, each of us having experienced our own hardships. There we were, foreign students, not unaccustomed to America, but perhaps our differences forged our friendship as much as our similarities. We worked hard and played harder. It was at university where we first conceived the Winners’ Circle syndicate. My interest in horses had never faded and it was matched by Dimitri’s and Danyl’s. It was they, along with a small investment from my grandfather, who helped me start Arcuri Enterprises. Within two years I had paid them all back with interest, and bought my mother and sister a house—a home—in Italy. Dimitri and Danyl helped me ensure that they would be okay.’
‘You protected them. Your sister and mother.’
She cursed her foolish heart for unfurling beneath the warmth of his words as he spoke of his friends, his family. And finally she began to understand Antonio’s determination to secure the Bartlett deal. He wanted revenge—that much was clear. He wanted to hurt his father in the only way that he knew how.
But Emma couldn’t help the feeling growing within her that he might not like what he found once he’d achieved it.
‘Yes,’ he said simply, in relation to her earlier statement, as if it was the only way it could have been.
‘It must have been a hard responsibility to bear,’ Emma observed.
‘I would do it again and again.’
‘Where are they now?’
This time his smile broadened fully and her heart nearly stopped at the sight. It illuminated his dark features with light and pleasure, and in that moment she was thankful that he wasn’t like this all the time. It would be...devastating.
‘A beautiful estate in Sorrento, on the Amalfi coast, with olive trees and lemon groves.’
His simple words conjured a million images in her mind, and she could almost smell a hint of citrus in the air about them.
‘And your sister?’
‘No more nightmares.’
‘Nothing more to fear,’ Emma said, her own nerves beginning to twist at the way the conversation was going.
‘No.’
‘And what is your fear, Antonio?’
Emma didn’t know what gave her the courage to ask. Perhaps it was the darkness outside, or the intimacy created by the only light in the living room dusting them with a warm, gentle golden glow.
But even in that soft lighting she saw his features grow dark. Something bitter entered the air, and the determination that had hung around Antonio since he’d come back to the New York office and asked her to research Benjamin Bartlett returned.
‘That my father will never pay for what he did to my mother and sister.’
And for what he did to you, Emma added silently as the ripple of his words sent icy shivers through her body.
She took another sip of the cool whisky, trying to forestall the question she knew was next on Antonio’s lips.
‘And what is yours, Emma?’
*
Antonio watched Emma pull the thin silk robe around her shoulders, covering and protecting herself from the memory of her nightmare. He wished for a moment that she hadn’t. The way the soft material had opened just slightly at the V of her chest, the smooth creamy skin thinly veiled, had been his only anchor—his only tie in the storm of emotions that had surfaced beneath his stark words as he’d recounted his past.
He heard the chink of ice in her glass, drawing him back to the present as she rested it between her palms as she might hold a hot drink.
‘Well, I suppose the nightmare started in pretty much the usual way—I was being attacked by zombie cats.’
He couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Zombie cats is usual?’
‘Well, hyper real, at least. They were attacking me, and I was managing to escape, but they were keeping me from something. And then I realised that they were keeping me from getting to a doctor’s appointment. I was waiting for new test results.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘The cancer had come back.’
Shivers covered his forearms. He couldn’t even begin to imagine that kind of fear. ‘What was it like?’
‘Horrible,’ she said simply, without malice or anger, or any of the kind of emotions he would have projected onto the situation.
He wasn’t sure about continuing to ask, but he felt that she needed to talk about it, and he trusted her enough to tell him to stop if he caused too much pain.
‘How old were you when you got ill?’
‘Seventeen.’
Antonio cursed. It fell from his mouth without thought or he would have held it back, but Emma only smiled her gentle small smile.
‘What surprised me was how utterly practical it all was. The diagnosis was shocking, terrible, but there was a chain of events to follow—things to be done and so much to organise. After a few days the diagnosis became a fact. Just a fact. A hurdle—a thing to overcome. All the stress and worry about A levels, about boys, about who was better friends with who...the things that had seemed so important in my day-to-day life...suddenly just seemed so small in comparison.’
‘Weren’t you angry?’ he asked.
‘Yes...and no. There wasn’t really time to be angry. There was the operation, and then the chemo. And through it all I just felt that I couldn’t let the anger take hold. I felt that my anger would feed the cancer, somehow. It’s so very different for each person it happens to. Some people are able to use anger to fight it, to give them energy. But I didn’t want anything else eating away at me. If I clung to being positive, if I held to the determination that I would beat it, then I knew I would win. I would take back my life.’
She took a breath and he marvelled at her strength.
‘I had to put my A levels on hold during the treatment. I had a double mastectomy, then chemotherapy followed by breast reconstruction. Some women choose to have the reconstruction immediately following a mastectomy, but after speaking to my doctors I wanted to make sure that the cancer was completely gone before moving forward. And at that point I really didn’t want another operation.’
Antonio saw the fierceness in her gaze as she spoke. The fire he had only seen glimpses of before was there now, shining in her eyes, burning in flushed cheeks, and it was glorious. He relished her strength and determination, allowed it to feed him too.
‘It took about a year, all in all. And by that time, although supportive, my friends had moved on...found relationships, started university, gone travelling around the world. None of which I begrudged for a second. But I felt out of step. Just a little behind. Like this thing had happened to me and no one else. But that wasn’t quite true.’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘One of the hardest things was telling other people. I felt as if I had to manage their emotions, their reactions. I’d find myself reassuring them that I would be okay. That it would all be fine. More often than not it was just—’ she shrugged ‘—awkward.’
She took another sip of her drink and a little shiver rippled across her skin as she swallowed the oaky alcohol.
‘I had a boyfriend at the time,’ she revealed, swirling the ice cubes around her empty glass. ‘He was a...a sweet boy. But I think telling him was the hardest. Because the look in his eyes...’ She shook her head against the memory. ‘It was fear, guilt, anger... Fear of what might happen, guilt that he didn’t want this, that it wasn’t what he’d signed up for, and anger that this had happened to him. Yes, clearly it was happening to me, but it was something that he might have to deal with.’
‘He left you?’ Antonio asked, hearing the growl vibrating in his own words. The sheer anger and fury swept up in him by her simple words shocked him.
‘No. We’d only been dating—if you could even call it that—for a few months. It wasn’t serious, and it probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer. So I let him go. He argued with me. I could see that he wanted to do the right thing. But I needed to focus on me, on my fight, not on ensuring that he was okay.
‘I was determined to ensure that the cancer cells didn’t multiply and spread—didn’t affect things outside of my body. It’s so hard not to let cancer become everything around you. Everything you see. Family.... Friends. Cancer is a thief if you let it be. It doesn’t just take lives, it takes body parts, time, experiences, relationships...
‘My parents’ marriage broke down soon after my treatment,’ she confided. ‘They’re much happier now, and that’s great. But nothing was the same after the cancer. My home, my parents...my body. Everything had changed.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Even as he said it, he knew the words to be inefficient, wrong...too little.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ she said, a flash of anger sparking in her eyes. ‘Don’t apologise. Because cancer shouldn’t be excused. It’s not a thing to pardon or to forgive. It is not a thing to be normalised. You don’t get to apologise for cancer. You can help fight it. Help beat it. Help those who do fight against it. But never apologise for it. There’s funding for research and new technologies...that’s why charity foundations are so important. That’s why yours could be so much more.’
Antonio held the weight of her gaze, held the weight of her accusation. He knew she was right.
She seemed to gather herself before him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Don’t be. You’re right. I should have been more involved. I should have made the time to attend the yearly galas. And you’re absolutely right about getting rid of Greenfeld. I’ve already put motions in place that will remove him from his position. After the success of the gala—which was mainly down to you—the board supports my decision and we’re already considering other options. Once this deal is done, I promise you it’s the first thing on my list when we return to New York.’
Emma smiled—almost as if she had a secret.
‘What?’ he asked, suddenly incurably curious about her—everything and anything about her. He wanted to know it all.
‘I have a list too.’
Emma couldn’t believe that she was telling him about her list. During chemo she had heard people talk about their bucket lists, and had felt overwhelmingly sad that the supposition was at the end there would be death, not life.
‘It’s my Living List. My mum helped me to make it,’ she said, smiling at the memory of being in her parents’ sitting room, pen and paper in her hands, as her mother and father encouraged her to write down everything she wanted to do when it was all over.
‘What’s on the list?’ he asked, drawing her from her memory.
She looked at him and realised how their bodies had shifted position on the sofa. Somehow during their conversation she had turned towards him, her back against the armrest, her legs stretched out. If she moved an inch her feet would be in his lap. And Antonio had turned towards her, mirroring her position, one leg bent, anchored over the other.
It was beguiling, having Antonio Arcuri’s full attention. The low light from the small lamp on the table beside him shaded half his features, highlighting the cut of his cheekbones, the hollows of his throat...a throat she wanted to run her fingers over, her tongue...
But it was the look in his eyes as he asked the question. Curiosity and something else. Something almost pleasurable.
She felt heat swirl in her stomach and, desperate to dampen this quickening attraction for her boss, she focused on his question.
‘A whole lot of things—big and small.’
‘What’s the biggest?’
‘Only a man would ask that first,’ she joked, and appreciated the humour that was returned to her in his eyes. ‘Okay—I think the biggest would be that I want to see the sun rise over a desert and set over the Mediterranean.’
‘In one day?’ Antonio asked, his surprise almost funny.
‘Not necessarily. I’m not fussy. Just a sunrise. Just a sunset. But, yes, deserts, sea views... I want to see the world. I’m really looking forward to Hong Kong,’ she confided.
‘I know the perfect place to take you.’
‘Where?’
‘It’s a surprise. But you’ll like it,’ he assured her, and that thrill of excitement began to unwind throughout her body and across her skin. ‘The smallest?’ he pressed.
‘Ah. The smallest I have achieved. I wanted to eat a stack of American pancakes with crispy bacon and maple syrup. It was divine.’
He laughed as she groaned with remembered pleasure.
‘What else?’
And once again Emma’s thoughts went to the one thing that she hadn’t been able to write on the list in front of her parents. She was sure that her mother would have understood, but writing losing my virginity had just seemed more than a little uncomfortable.
But it was about so much more than simply having sex. At the time, Emma had been approaching her reconstructive surgery with the same practicality that had pushed her through the other areas of treatment.
Now, when she looked in the mirror she just saw shapes. The shapes that had been taken away and then put back on her body. It was hard for her to see her breasts, her body, as her own. To own them, to glory in them. She had a good figure—she knew that. But somehow she had never felt able to exalt in it. To see it as her own.
‘You didn’t ask me to help you achieve anything on your list,’ Antonio stated when she didn’t answer his question.
‘When?’
‘When I offered you whatever you wanted.’
‘No,’ she said. She hadn’t. ‘These are things I want to achieve Antonio. I want to make them happen. Asking you to do them for me...kind of feels like cheating.’
He let that lie between them, and the silence was consumed whole by the tension and crackle of attraction on the air between them.
Antonio’s declaration to dedicate more time and energy to the charity had been almost fierce. And Emma found herself wondering what it would be like to have that dedication and power directed at her. As a woman. As someone or something beautiful.
She couldn’t help but study him once again in the half-light of the room, seeing the way it illuminated his masculine beauty. She could lie to herself and pretend to think that it was her wayward thoughts about her virginity that had conjured her attraction to him by association—not the curve of his almost cruelly sensual lips, the feel of his eyes on her body. She could blame it on the new and surprising intimacy that had been created between them in these last few hours and not on the way his direct gaze, eagle-eyed and intense, seemed to reach into her and kick up her pulse.
But she wouldn’t.
She had always found Antonio powerfully attractive. Had always felt prickles of awareness when he was nearby. He was as tempting as the devil.
Those gold flecks had returned to his eyes, surfing the waves of molten chocolate that seemed to radiate...heat. And desire. It became a tangible thing, and she could almost taste it on the air. She felt every single inch of her skin where the silk robe rested against it, felt the smooth material of the sofa beneath her calf muscle. She felt the space between them that seemed at once so small, yet almost insurmountable.
She willed her breath to become silent, knowing that she couldn’t give in to the temptation burning between them, reluctant to let sound or action break this strange hold.
But sanity prevailed. Yes, she’d seen more to her handsome boss than she could have imagined. The grief and pain of his childhood had called to something within her. But she couldn’t get involved with him. Because for all his promises she couldn’t rely on anyone if the worst was to happen. Because it never lasted. Not really. People left, people changed, people wanted other things... And in the end the only person Emma could rely upon was herself.
She looked about the room, finally severing the connection that had formed between them. And then, lifting up a stack of papers, she asked him about Bartlett—a line of questioning that Antonio seemed equally relieved to take up.
‘Bartlett’s company is a fourth generation, family-owned heritage business and—’
‘No, I didn’t mean his company. Who is he? What makes him tick?’
Antonio paused for a moment, as if he honestly hadn’t given it much consideration. He picked up the files and she shook her head, a gentle laugh falling from her lips.
‘Antonio...’ She couldn’t help chuckling as she gently reprimanded him. ‘He is the father of two children, Mandy and James, both are at university, both studying business. Mandy, by the way, certainly seems to be enjoying it thoroughly from her Instagram account—’
‘You follow her Instagram account?’
‘Yes, you asked me to research Bartlett, so I did.’
He nodded, as if slightly surprised. ‘How did you get all this?’
‘Bartlett’s PA—Anna—used to work for someone who does a lot of business with the boss of your London office. We know each other quite well. She helped with some of the information, but she wouldn’t cross any lines. Perhaps you should take a look at the notes in the blue folder. They’re a bit more personal than business facts.’
But the word personal brought back memories of the earlier moment they had shared.
Realising that she had lost his concentration, Emma felt a wave of tiredness sweep over her, and as Antonio took up several of the documents in the blue folder she decided to leave him to it and return to her room. This time hoping not to avoid her nightmares but dreams of her handsome boss.