Italian Deception: The Salvatore Marriage / A Sicilian Seduction / The Passion Bargain

But she was carrying his child. In his mind it was already a statement of fact—it had to be or his arguments crumbled to dust at his feet. If the witch believed he was going to allow her to walk away carrying that child with her, then she was in for a very big shock.

Turning on his heel, he walked out of her room and down the hall into his own room. Once safely shut away in there he went to take a shower—while planning his next line of attack.

There was a moment once his anger had cooled and he began to think like a rational man again that he questioned what the hell it was he was trying to do to himself by getting involved with her again.

Trust? He could never trust her out of his sight! Shannon had been right when she had faced him with that.

Did he really want a future of forever wondering who she was with when she wasn’t with him?

No, he damn well did not.

Of course he could not trust her. Just as he could not dare to trust his own judgement where she was concerned, because if anyone had suggested to him that she was playing around behind his back two years ago he would have laughed in their faces—before knocking them flat.

The old dark feelings returned with a vengeance. Pushing his head beneath the shower spray, he rinsed off shampoo and saw images of that afternoon when he had come home unexpectedly to find Shannon standing in the doorway to the bedroom trying to block him from seeing the truth.

And what a truth. ‘What are you doing back?’ She could not have appeared more horrified to see him.

‘I could ask you the same question. You were supposed to be in London until tomorrow.’

‘I came back early.’ She tried pulling the bedroom door shut behind her.

‘So did I,’ he answered absently. ‘I needed some papers from my safe …’ Instinct made him step around her and push the door open again.

‘Damn,’ he muttered as soap got in his eye. Switching off the shower, he reached for a towel and tried not to let his mind take him into that room as he wiped the stinging soap away.

The room was a mess. The bedding pulled back and lying half on the floor. He picked up the scent of male cologne. Not his cologne, not his red silk boxer shorts that he pulled quite calmly from the tangle of white sheeting. He never wore silk underwear; he never wore red. He preferred cotton, black, white, grey—any damn colour but red.

‘Who do these belong to?’ He saw himself swing round in time to catch her sliding something into a bedside drawer.

‘I came back to f-find it like this. I don’t know wh-what—’

His hand reached out to open the drawer Shannon had pushed shut. He saw her stiffen then start to tremble, then lower her eyes when he drew out the packet of condoms.

Condoms, bloody condoms, he thought viciously. The blight of his bloody life!

One was missing—not that it mattered that one was missing; the fact that they were there at all was enough to turn his blood to bile. They did not use condoms. And that scent—that damned strong male scent had clung to his nostrils while he’d stood there trying to deal with what it was he was being forced to face.

‘I can explain …’ She’d sounded deep-voiced and husky, like someone suffering from an intolerable amount of anxiety and stress.

Without saying a word he put the packet back in the drawer and closed it, then turned to look at her. ‘Before you jump to your rotten conclusions—it wasn’t me, Luca, it wasn’t me!’

‘Who, then?’ he challenged.

Her face was white, her eyes black pools of utter torment; tears trailed down her cheeks and worked at her throat. ‘Keira,’ she whispered.

Keira. Of all the lying excuses she could have come up with, she had to choose to place the blame on the one person who would never betray her man—never. Her willingness to do that to her own sister broke his calm. What followed had been another nightmare that had lived inside him ever since.

A telephone began ringing somewhere, bringing him out of the blackness of that second nightmare to discover that he was standing in the bathroom staring at the ceramic tiles covering the floor where water was dripping from his body to form a pool around his brown feet. He lifted his head and caught sight of his face in the mirror. It was not him. It was like looking at a stranger. A man with no colour and no warmth.

Only Shannon could do this to him.

And he had offered her marriage again?

Pulling on a bathrobe, he made himself walk on legs that felt oddly stiff, as if he had just run a marathon. Maybe he had done—run a marathon through agony, lies and deceit.

He had left his jacket on the chair by the lift. His mobile phone was in one of its pockets and he strode through the apartment to collect it. The call was from Marco, his assistant. He frowned at the lateness of the hour and felt a hard snap of irritation because if Marco was still in the office then he was probably being snowed under trying to keep up in his absence.

He was bringing the call to an end when Shannon appeared in the archway. She was wearing the skimpy blue pyjamas beneath a thin blue cotton wrap, which hung open down her front. Her face was scrubbed and shiny, her hair piled up on top of her head leaving her slender neck exposed. Her eyes were like two dark bruises set on a background of porcelain white and her mouth looked tiny, pinched and—pink.

Hunger roared to life inside him followed by a self-contempt that wrapped itself like a steel band around his chest. He turned his back on her to listen in grim silence to whatever it was Marco was asking him. The poor devil sounded harassed and bone weary. Luca knew both feelings. Shannon still hovered in the archway; he wondered what she wanted.

‘Just leave it for tonight, Marco,’ he commanded quietly. ‘The business is not going to go down the tubes if you go home and get some sleep.’

He ended the call and dropped the phone onto his jacket, then had to flex his shoulders before he could bring himself to turn and face Shannon again.

She blinked at the toughness hardening his features. ‘I’m sorry to intrude,’ she apologised stiffly. ‘But we left my shopping in the car and I need to hang up my suit …’

He sighed at the stupid oversight and the pendulum swing of his emotions took yet another violent swerve. What kind of selfish bastard was he to be adding to her stress at a time like this?

Misreading the reason for his sigh, she walked towards him with her hand outstretched. ‘If you let me have your car keys I’ll go and collect the bags myself.’

Let her loose in a basement car park at this time of the night dressed like this? ‘Not while I still breathe,’ he hissed, making her frown because she didn’t understand.

And he was not going to enlighten her.

‘I’ll go,’ was all he said, and turned to get his wallet and car keys from where he’d placed them on the table by the lift.

She was waiting at her bedroom door when he came back with her shopping bags.

‘Thank you.’ She took them from him.

‘Prego,’ he replied.

She took a step back, and closed the door in his face.

A sudden blistering urge to push the damn door open again and have this out almost had him doing just that. Then common sense arrived and along with it a burst of frustration, which had him aiming a clenched fist that didn’t quite land on the oak panelling.

Then he went back to his own room to fester in silence.

While Shannon threw herself down on the bed to cry her eyes out again.

She hated him but she loved him and that was her toughest problem—she loved, loved—loved the brute!

The next day was a day Shannon hoped she would never have to endure again. From the moment she donned the black outfit the full weight of what she was about to face took her deep, deep inside herself.

She met Luca in the foyer. A fleeting glance at him standing there in his sombre black suit, white shirt and black tie, his lean face drawn into a pale grey mask of steely composure, and she knew he was feeling the same way she did. He studied her briefly, taking in her own waxen composure before he enquired expressionlessly if she was ready to leave.

Fredo drove them in a black limousine that made no attempt to disguise what it was. Even the day had decided to wear a grey cloud cast as if it knew that this was not a day to fill with warm sunlight.