NICO WALKED OUT to the terrace with two crystal tumblers balanced in one hand and an unopened bottle of vintage cognac from the back of his liquor cabinet cradled in the other.
He paused. Marietta sat in her wheelchair at the table by the pool with her back to him, her slender form silhouetted by the dying light of the sun, which was now no more than a sliver of fiery orange on the horizon. Her long mahogany hair spilled in loose waves down her back, and before he could censor his thoughts he found himself wondering how it would feel to slide his fingers through those thick tresses, wind them around his hands...
He tightened his jaw. Shook off the thought as swiftly as it had surfaced. Marietta was his friend’s sister and right now her safety was his responsibility. This incessant awareness of her was an unwelcome distraction and he needed to shut it down. At the very minimum he needed to control his thoughts and reactions around her—especially after today, when he had not reacted well to finding her at Julia’s desk...had not known how to handle the unexpected gut-punch of emotion or the glitter of sympathy in Marietta’s eyes.
Seeing the woman who’d lit a slow-burning fire in his blood these past forty-eight hours alongside the only mementoes he had of his dead wife had unbalanced him, had fired a shock wave through his brain that had stolen his ability to do more than clip out a few terse words.
And that look he’d seen on Marietta’s face... Apology mixed with pity, of all things. His gut had hardened, everything within him rejecting that look. Rejecting the idea of Marietta feeling sorry for him. Of anyone feeling sorry for him. Nico elicited a range of reactions from people—respect, obedience, trust, fear—but rarely sympathy or pity. If ever. Witnessing both in Marietta’s eyes had left him feeling sideswiped. Exposed. Something he had worked hard for the last decade not to feel. And yet even now, years later, he didn’t always succeed in burying his feelings—did he? Occasionally the darkness would try to claim him. The guilt and the burning sense of failure that had dogged him ever since Julia’s death would rise up and torment him.
He strode to the table and set down the bottle and glasses. He’d come out here to make peace, he reminded himself. Not to examine his inner workings.
Marietta looked up, her liquid dark eyes startled at first, then veiled and wary. One graceful eyebrow rose. ‘Are we celebrating something?’ She looked from the bottle to him. ‘Perhaps you’ve caught my stalker and you’re gracing me with your presence to tell me I can return to civilisation tomorrow?’
Nico let the sarcasm slide. He’d avoided her for much of the day and she was upset with him. Women didn’t like to be ignored—he remembered that much from his too brief time as a married man. He took in her pale cotton pants, the soft green halterneck top which clung to her generous curves and left her golden shoulders exposed. Had she changed especially for dinner? A needle of guilt pricked him. She’d knocked on his study door an hour ago, offered to fix a meal for them, and he’d grunted a response through the closed door, telling her to eat without him.
He opened the bottle and poured a double shot of cognac into each tumbler, put one in front of Marietta and settled in a cushioned seat beside her. ‘You do not consider Île de Lavande to be civilised?’ He swirled the cognac in his glass. ‘Or perhaps you are referring to the company?’
Colour crept into her cheeks but her chin stayed elevated. ‘I’m sure parts of Île de Lavande are very civilised—I’m simply yet to see most of the island. As for the company—so far it’s been...’ She shrugged minutely. ‘Satisfactory.’
Despite the tension in the air Nico felt his facial muscles twitch, and then his lips were stretching into a rare smile. Had a woman ever described him as ‘satisfactory’ before? No. He didn’t think so. On the infrequent occasions when he indulged in female company, he made damn sure the woman was a great deal more than satisfied when he was done with her.
He raised his glass. ‘Touché, Marietta.’ He swallowed a mouthful of the expensive cognac and noted she hadn’t touched hers. ‘You are angry,’ he observed.
‘No...’ she began, and then stopped, shook her head and puffed out a quiet sigh. ‘Si. A little,’ she confessed. ‘I made a mistake and you won’t accept my apology. I’m angry with myself and with you.’
He lifted his eyebrows. ‘That’s a candid statement,’ he said, which maybe shouldn’t have surprised him. Marietta had never struck him as a smoke-and-mirrors kind of woman. She was headstrong and honest. Unafraid to speak her mind.
She reached out suddenly, and curled her hand around his wrist. ‘I didn’t mean to intrude, Nico,’ she said softly. ‘And I truly am sorry—about your wife.’
Heat radiated from her touch—a sharp, unsettling contrast to the inevitable icy chill that swept through him whenever he thought about his wife—and then she was sliding her hand away, sitting back.
‘How long were you married?’
His chest grew uncomfortably tight. ‘Two years.’
‘She was very beautiful.’
So she had taken a good look at the photograph. He didn’t know how he felt about that. He took another generous sip of cognac, held the liquid in his mouth for a moment before letting it burn down his throat. He did know he wasn’t going to have this conversation.
‘Who did you call?’ he asked, and the abrupt change of subject elicited an immediate frown.
‘Scusi?’
‘You said you went into my study to use the phone,’ he reminded her. ‘Who did you call?’
‘My sister-in-law.’
‘Because...?’
Her shoulders stiffened. ‘Because I wanted to hear a friendly voice,’ she said, her tone turning defensive, faintly accusing.
Nico cursed himself silently. He’d come out here to make peace, to defuse the tension between them before it sprouted claws—not to pick a fight. He had no wish to speak of his late wife, no desire to dredge up the darkness that lurked too close to the surface, but he could have deflected Marietta’s curiosity in a less antagonistic manner.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, his voice gruff, the words alien on his tongue.
Rarely did he apologise or seek forgiveness. The last time had been ten years ago, the day of Julia’s funeral, and on that day his father-in-law had been disinclined to forgive.
‘You may call whomever you wish, whenever you wish,’ he said. ‘The house and its facilities are yours to use as you desire. However, I will ask one thing of you.’ He held her gaze, kept his voice low. Measured. ‘Please do not ever again speak of my wife.’
For a long moment Marietta’s gaze didn’t falter from his, then her lashes lowered, shielding her expressive eyes from him. She backed her chair away from the table.
‘Understood,’ she said, glancing up, her gaze reconnecting with his briefly. ‘Buona notte, Nico.’
And then she turned her chair around and wheeled into the house, leaving her drink sitting untouched on the table.
Nico watched her go and something pierced him. Something, he thought darkly, like regret. He reached for her glass, downed the double shot of cognac and scowled into the empty tumbler. That had not gone at all how he’d planned.
* * *
‘It’s not the ex-boyfriend, boss.’
Nico leaned back in his chair, his phone pressed to his ear. ‘Are you positive?’
‘Yes,’ Bruno said. ‘The guy was in Vienna on business all day Friday. And my gut says it’s not him. He’s settled, content. Devoted to his wife and kid. The wife’s a looker, too.’
Nico ignored that last comment. He ran his hand through his hair, across the back of his neck. A long, restless night had left him edgy. Irritable. ‘Forensics?’
‘Waiting on a DNA profile from the hair strand found in the bedroom.’
‘Chase it up. Today. Then contact those fools from the polizia and check their records for a match.’ He drummed his fingers on his desk, cast a brooding look out of the window. ‘And the neighbours?’
‘One left to interview. Female. In her fifties.’
‘Okay. Bien. Review that list of artists I emailed to you yesterday and get—’ Nico broke off, sat forward, then surged up out of his chair. What the hell? ‘Bruno, I’ll call you back.’
He slammed down the phone, strode through the house and out onto the limestone terrace. Raising a hand to shield his eyes against the midmorning sun, he stared beyond the pool to the cliff’s edge—and felt his heart punch into his throat.
He paused, drew a deep breath and loosed his voice on a furious bellow. ‘Marietta!’
She didn’t hear him—or chose to ignore him. The latter, most likely. Anger spiked and he spat out a curse.
He veered onto a little-used dirt path that meandered through tall grasses and clusters of wild lavender and rosemary. The wheels of her chair had left tracks in the dirt. Tracks that led directly to the edge of the plunging forty-foot cliff.
‘Marietta!’ he shouted again, and knew she’d heard him this time because her shoulders flinched. And yet she didn’t so much as turn her head.
Another few strides and the pump of adrenaline through his veins gave way to relief. She was sitting farther back from the edge than he’d thought. He reached her side, balled his hands lest he curl them over her slender shoulders and shake her.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
She looked up, her expression faintly astonished. ‘Enjoying the scenery,’ she said, her air of calm making his jaw clench.
He jammed his fists in his jeans pockets. ‘Is there something wrong with the view from the terrace?’
‘Of course not. But I sat on your terrace all day yesterday. I need a change or I’ll go mad. Besides...’
She rolled forward and he pulled his hands out of his jeans so fast he heard one of the pockets rip.
‘I’ve been dying to look at the beach down there.’
He stepped in front of her. ‘That’s far enough.’
She huffed out a breath. ‘Seriously, Nico. You’re as bad as my brother. What do you think I’m going to do? Push myself over the edge?’ She craned her neck to peek around him. ‘Are those steps cut into the cliff?’
He ground his molars together. ‘Oui. But they’re extremely old. Probably eroded. Unsafe.’
‘Probably? You mean...you don’t know?’ Her eyebrows arched. ‘As in...you’ve never been down there before?’
He folded his arms over his chest. ‘It’s just a beach.’
‘But it’s your beach...and it’s a beautiful beach. Why would you not go down there?’
A vein throbbed in his temple. Mon Dieu. Had he ever met a woman so infuriating? So unpredictable?
He let his gaze rake over her, from her high glossy ponytail to her sun-kissed shoulders, all the way down to the pink-painted toenails poking out of her strappy white sandals. Her white knee-length shorts left her pale, delicate shins visible and her stretchy pink spaghetti-strap top made her breasts look nothing short of magnificent.
How could a woman look so alluring and be so annoying all at the same time?
He brought his gaze back to her face. Colour flared over those high cheekbones and a pulse flickered at the base of her throat. Their eyes met and hers widened a fraction—and he wondered if she felt it too. That pulse of heat in the air. That pull of attraction.
Belatedly he realised she’d spoken again. ‘Pardon?’
‘A prisoner,’ she repeated, frowning at him. ‘I feel like a prisoner, Nico.’
A prisoner.
His gut twisted hard, turning in on itself, and his mind descended instantly to a dark, savage place.
Julia’s final, terror-filled days on this earth had been as a prisoner, held captive by the kidnappers who’d extracted a hefty ransom from her father—then left her in a ditch to die.
‘Nico?’
Marietta’s voice penetrated the sudden thick haze in his head.
‘Are you all right?’
He gave himself a mental shake, shoved a lid over that dark, bottomless hole before it sucked him into its destructive vortex. ‘I’m trying to keep you safe, Marietta. That’s all.’
‘I know. But my stalker’s in Rome—there’s no threat to me here.’
She edged her chair forward until her toes nearly touched his shins. When she tilted her head back the appeal in her huge brown eyes had a profound effect on him.
‘Nico... I spent six months of my life in a rehabilitation unit—two of those months flat on my back, staring at the same ceiling and walls, day in, day out. I had no control...no choice... I felt angry and scared and trapped—I guess that’s why I get a little stir-crazy when I’m cooped up in one place for too long.’
Guilt coiled inside him. He hadn’t considered that the isolation in which he found solace would, for Marietta, feel like captivity.
Silently cursing his thoughtlessness, he dropped to his haunches in front of her. ‘Tell me what you’d like to do today.’
Her face broke into a smile and for a second—just a second—Nico felt as if he’d stepped out of the darkness into the light.