Far From Perfect (23 page)

“How did you do that? What are we doing here? Who owns this place?”

Anna’s eyes darted to and fro, noting the spacious, low-ceilinged entrance hall that still exuded a friendly air of being lived in and loved even though it appeared to be almost entirely bereft of furniture. The walls were painted a mellow honeyed peach above half-paneling in some warm and polished wood.

“Questions. Questions. Questions.” Nick’s voice now bore a note of amusement as he locked the door and pocketed the key, before taking her hand again and drawing her closer to him.

“
I
own this place,” he said, looking down into her eyes.

“Oh,” was all Anna could manage, transfixed by the sight of his beautiful mouth just inches above her own. Insane thoughts, fantasies and hopes began to racket around inside her. They threatened to get out of control, and she fought, desperately and ruthlessly, to splat them down.

Don’t hope!
she commanded herself.
Don’t even begin to harbor the tiniest little bit of it. He could have bought this house for Maria. He might just have brought you here to look it over for him. To give a woman’s opinion on furnishings and decor.

But surely he couldn’t be so cruel? Not even Nick at his most ruthlessly expedient would rub her nose in the failure of her unspoken aspirations this way.

She had to distance herself from him in order to preserve her feelings and her sanity. Trying to disengage her hand from his, she tugged away from him. Only to feel her fingers gently but irrevocably held.

“What’s the matter?”

His voice seemed to dance across her nerve-ends, and she was afraid he’d feel her shuddering. As she stopped pulling, his thumb began to move slowly against her palm.

“What do you mean ‘what’s the matter’?”

She tried to bristle, but found it almost impossible. The hypnotic movement of his thumb was doing the strangest things to her heartbeat and her breathing.

But still she persisted.

“You kiss me off with a peck on the cheek and as good as disappear with Maria Rossi for six weeks…then suddenly materialize again and act as if nothing’s happened!”

Nick released his grip, but in the beat of a heart, he held her again, one hand on each shoulder, fixing her in place as he looked down at her.

It was impossible to look away, and she didn’t want to. The emotions in his extraordinary blue eyes were confused, shifting at astonishing speed between regret, guilt, determination…and others, more fiery yet less definable, ones that she hardly dare dream about, much less name.

“I’ll explain everything to you,
cara mia
.” His voice was low, ragged in pitch, intent. “And I pray that you’ll hear me out…and perhaps, if you think I deserve it, forgive me for hurting you.”

“Who says you’ve hurt me?”

She forced herself to remain strong, not to succumb, even though every fiber of her being was urging her to melt, to fling herself forward, to taste those perfect lips. Why not grab what she could now in case there never was a chance again?

A frown puckered his broad brow. She wasn’t fooling him at all. And yet when he took her hand again and drew her towards the broad, oak staircase with its solid no-nonsense banister, she still balked.

“Hey, not so fast!”

She dug her heels into the polished floor, halting him too. She did want what he wanted, yet it still seemed more foolhardy than flinging herself headlong off a cliff.

His frown deepened, but she saw sudden fear in his eyes too. Real fear.

“What is it,
cara
?”

“Look, this business of us sleeping together because it seems like a good idea at the time…and then deciding afterwards that it was a mistake. I’ve had enough of that. I…I—” She faltered, aware that she was revealing herself but overwhelmed by weariness at the thought of yet more dissembling with him. “I can’t take it anymore, Nick. Not again.”

“And you won’t have to,
tesoro mio
,” he said, no guile in his eyes.

Anna dragged in a breath, finally sensing that the complete truth was about to fall from his lips. For the first time. If she could take it.

“I didn’t bring you here with the sole purpose of making love to you, Anna,” he said, his face a picture of conflict that surely reflected her own. “But I can’t deny…” His lashes swept down and up, so long and preternaturally dark in comparison to his lighter hair. “I can’t deny that I want to.”

“Then why upstairs?”

He shrugged.

“You’ll notice if you look around, that there’s no furniture to be seen. The only seating in the house is up there.” He nodded towards the stairs, his strong shoulders lifting expressively.

The truth. The truth. Could she accept it? Bracing herself, she preceded him up the stairs. What if that truth meant that he was going to explain to her that he was planning to live here with—and marry—Maria Rossi?

Oh, but it was a lovely house. Even without the enhancement of furniture and art, Anna felt herself falling in love with the place. It was spacious, yet idiosyncratic, full of personality. She couldn’t imagine an international film star, used to urban Italian chic, wanting to live here. But then she couldn’t see a sophisticated cosmopolitan businessman like Nick here either.

And yet he was here. Courteously, he held open the door to a room that she deduced would look out on to the gardens that led down to the river, and let her enter.

She gasped. Not at the room, which was light and airy and inviting, but at the familiar piece of furniture that dominated it. One adorned with traditional dark carvings of fruits and vines…

“What’s your bed doing here? I thought we were coming up here to sit on chairs?” she demanded, spinning around, her heart thudding.

What was he up to? The presence of his bed, the one from Villa Rosa where her life had changed forever, screamed of sex regardless of what he’d said.

“I thought it would make us feel more at home.”

His eyes were on her as he loosened his fine silk tie and shrugged out of his dark suit jacket. In the absence of anywhere to hang it up, he folded it and placed it on top of a chest of drawers, the only other item of furniture in the room.

“Well, it’s making
me
feel very nervous,” Anna shot back, thoroughly confused. Seeing that bed made the prospect of ever resisting him recede even further, but she knew she had to know what was going on, where she stood.

“Look. If you want to talk, let’s talk?” she rushed on, “Although I don’t know what about. You made your thoughts on this ridiculous relationship of ours pretty clear the last time we met.”

“Well, basically, I wanted to talk about me being a complete fool.”

Nick’s voice was calm, wry and almost fatalistic. He strolled across to the bed and sat on the side of it, his long, dark-clad legs stretched out. “Please come and sit,” he added softly, patting the duvet at his side.

Quite incapable of sorting out what she felt and what she wanted, Anna stayed where she was, just staring at him.

Nick measured out a good couple of feet on the surface of the coverlet. “Here—” he indicated, “—nowhere near me. I won’t touch you or invade your space.”

Fighting to appear composed, Anna moved forward and sat gingerly beside him.

“So talk,” she said tightly. It was becoming very difficult to breathe. Especially as his cologne seemed to be seeping into her brain now, acting like an aphrodisiac and reminding her of other times when they’d been in close proximity, on this bed.

Nick looked down at his hands where they rested on his thighs. They were beautifully shaped, golden against the dark fabric of his trousers, but they were also tense, as if he were resisting some activity. Perhaps it was the urge to reach out?

A seemingly endless aching moment stretched between them. It seemed extraordinary that an articulate, accomplished man like Nick didn’t seem to know what to say, where to start, but it did appear that he was lost for words. He’d always been such a smooth operator…

But finally, he said, “There’s so much I have to explain. So much I want to elucidate and apologize to you for. But there’s really only one thing I want to say first.”

His eyes were like blue stars as he stared at her, and brilliant with such an expression of yearning that it almost stopped her heart. Despite his assurances of a moment ago, he reached for her hand and enclosed it in his own.

“
Ti amo
, Anna,” he said simply, his gaze steady, open, inescapable, “I know you probably don’t believe me. After what I’ve said and what I’ve done. But it
is
the truth. It has been for a long time. I just didn’t recognize it.”

The heart that had seemed to stop did a strange, slow, flip-flop inside her. She should tell him she didn’t believe him—but she
did
believe him. He’d said it was the truth, but he hadn’t needed to.

The truth was here, at last, in those beautiful blue eyes. Eyes that mirrored her own emotions, that reflected back the love she felt for him.

Suddenly, she didn’t need the explanations and elucidations she knew he was about to offer. She would hear them in good time, but now her needs were different. She wanted just one thing. Well, more than one thing. She wanted to kiss him, to hold him, to be with him.

No questions. No strings. No doubts. No question of not trusting him.

She lifted their linked hands to her lips and pressed a kiss on the back of his.

“I believe you, Niccolo,” she whispered against his hot skin, “And I love you.” She looked at him, at his eyes again, recognizing a matching sense of wonder there.

“Anna.”

The single word was ragged, intense, heartfelt, and the instant it left his lips they were in each other’s arms, kissing, hugging, sighing and laughing as their hands roved hungrily over each other’s bodies. It wasn’t just a sensual exploration, but an affirmation. A renewed familiarization with all that was longed for and best loved.

As Anna began to tug at Nick’s tie and his shirt, he halted her for a moment.

“Don’t you want to—”

She stopped his hoarse, fevered words with the tip of her finger.

“Afterwards,
amore mio
,” she whispered to him, feeling a surge of assured female confidence. Nick was the most alpha of alpha males, but for now
she
would choose.
She
would decide what happened when. Her love had empowered her.

With a soft laugh, and giving one of his extraordinary and toe-curlingly expressive and sexy shrugs, he threw himself wholeheartedly into helping her with the task of undressing him.

Chapter Eleven

Later, much later, Anna lay watching the golden evening wane outside as she considered all the things he’d told her after they’d first made love.

It had been the most intense coming together yet. Passion had combined with ultimate tenderness, both of them gasping and sobbing with joy and relief, as happy to simply touch and hold each other and to lie with their bodies pressed together as they were to soar towards the pinnacle of pleasure.

Not that they hadn’t soared, she reflected happily, aware of the foolish, Cheshire-cat grin that crept across her face, and the crimson blushes every time she relived the amazing chain of orgasms she’d experienced. That
they’d
experienced.

But afterwards, when they could both breathe again, the communion had been just as precious.

“I’ll tell you about Maria now,” Nick had begun, stoking her damp hair away from her brow.

Then he’d gone on to explain the circumstances of the Italian actress’s car smash.

Anna’s heart ached with sympathy for the beautiful but troubled woman who’d resorted to drink and drugs whilst worried about her career, the transitory quality of her beauty, and her confused, befuddled feelings about men and being loved by them. Maria had piled her Jaguar into a tree, under the influence, and then in the emergency room had asked frantically for Nick, the only man on her long list of former lovers whom she knew she could trust to help her and not reveal what had happened.

“She swore me to absolute secrecy,” Nick had told Anna, gazing into her eyes as they lay facing each other, heads on the same pillow.

“Her career would be jeopardized if the circumstances of the crash got out—and she’s been hurt before by exes spilling her secrets. I had to help her. Organize a discreet clinic, rehab and therapists, and yet tell nobody except the professionals involved.”

Pain and regret darkened his eyes, but he didn’t look away. “But I should have trusted you,
tesoro mio
.” He reached out and touched her cheek. “You’re the one I’ve always been able to trust. You never ratted on me when I was a wicked young man, sneaking out at night from Villa Rosa. Never once.”

She pressed her hand to his, soothing the fingers that lay against her skin. “But you gave your word. And you kept it. I wouldn’t expect anything less of you.”

Nick’s gaze was intense, amazed, but still shadowed.

“I’m a flawed man,
cara mia
,” he sighed, “I’ve broken women’s hearts…even though I never meant to. That was the last thing I ever meant to do to any woman. Least of all you.” He paused, his long lashes flicking down for just a second, “And yet in the very act of trying to save you from me, I did it just the same. I’ve hurt you so much. Admit it. Haven’t I?”

She drew in a long breath. This was the time for honesty.

“The situation between us has been…well…not so great. At times…yes.”

She struggled for words, overwhelmed by the emotions she felt now, and those she had felt over the years, about this man. “But I see now that you had your reasons. Things that your father said to me made me see that. They shed some light on the way you’ve acted. Or appeared to act.”

Nick drew her closer to him, kissed her lips very softly, and then began to speak again.

“In the last few weeks I’ve spent more time talking with Carlo than ever before in my life. We’ve always both been busy, prickly with each other, unable to open up. But now, at last, I’ve learnt so much.” He gave a small, fond smile, and Anna saw the great love there that he bore for his father, a man as strong, fiery and mercurial as he was himself.