Hold On to Me (23 page)

Stella moved her hand down his shoulder, to his ribs and the ridge of muscle on his side, tracing the vine on his skin. ‘Tell me about your tattoo.'

‘It's a grape vine,' he explained. ‘I'd always wanted one and when I went to Italy a couple of years ago I had it done in Rome. I wanted something I could hide, you know, for work. Older people get a bit freaked out about tats—think we're all bikies or something.'

‘How long were you in Rome?'

‘A month.'

Something about the way he said it made Stella ask. ‘You followed a girl, didn't you?'

‘Yeah.' He gave her a how-did-you-know? smile. ‘She broke up with me on the Spanish steps. So I got a tattoo.'

What had Sully done when she'd tossed him out of her life? He'd got loaded and ended up in St Vincent's Hospital. ‘I've never been to Rome. I've been to London and Paris, but nowhere in Italy.'

‘You should go.'

‘Yeah, I should have done a lot of things.'

‘So why didn't you?' he asked.

The answer to that question was so complicated and personal and buried deep. ‘Because life got in the way, Luca. And sometimes … well, sometimes people don't have choices.'

Luca studied her face, questions in his eyes, and she changed the subject in case he voiced any of them.

‘There's something I want to know.' Stella shifted, propped her head in her hand and turned to him. ‘Why don't you have a girlfriend?'

He considered the question. ‘Hadn't met the right woman.'

Stella paused. ‘Do you want all that, what Anna and Joe have?'

‘You mean the loved-up stuff?' He smiled. ‘As a matter of fact, I'm working on that right now.'

Something squeezed her heart. She'd seen how he was with Francesca. She had to know. ‘I mean, a family.'

‘Sure. One day.' He paused. ‘What about you?'

‘No.' She averted her eyes from his. She was used to the judgement in people's eyes when she told them she didn't want to have children. Was it a surprise, really, given her own childhood? Luca was fortunate: all he'd experienced was happiness and affection and the loving embrace of his family and those who'd been welcomed into it. Those who hadn't experienced dysfunction couldn't understand it—and why on earth would they want to? Stella had long ago vowed never to risk passing on any faulty trait she might have in her own DNA to another generation. The chaos and the dysfunction and the illness had to stop with her.

‘You're not that old, are you, that you couldn't have kids if you wanted them?'

‘It's not about my age, Luca.'

‘Really? You don't want kids?' Luca stroked her cheek, so softly, so gently, she closed her eyes against how it made her feel.

She shook her head and finally looked at him. When she saw understanding instead of assessment, compassion instead of disbelief, the tightening in her chest wound harder.

‘I've been wanting to ask you something.' Luca's voice was soft, almost a whisper. ‘What happened to your parents, Stella? How come you lived down here with your auntie?'

The old lie came out again because the truth was too big. ‘They died.'

She could feel Luca's shock. He involuntarily shook, then held her tighter. ‘Holy fuck. How old were you?'

‘I was ten years old.'

Luca was silent.

‘Yes. But I had Auntie Karen and she was amazing.'

Luca was silent. She knew he was going over and over what she'd just told him, figuring out all the ways something like that could screw up a person.

‘Is that why you don't want kids?' he started quietly. ‘Because of what happened to you?'

His question was so close to the bone in a way he couldn't possibly know that it brought tears to her eyes and that familiar tightening in her chest gripped her heart, squeezing the life from it.

‘I don't know, Luca. I don't know.'

He waited a while before saying anything. ‘So how long have you lived down here?'

‘I came back from Sydney five years ago. It took me a year to get enough money together for the shop so it's just four years since I opened it.'

‘You never told me the real reason you came back.'

‘It's complicated. I was involved with a guy. He had … a drug problem and … to cut a long story short … I couldn't stay there. This is the only place that's ever felt like home to me, so I came home.'

‘He sounds like a piece of work.' How tender he sounded.

‘Yeah. That's the understatement of the century. So back to you. No girlfriend, huh? It must take a mighty effort not to have a girlfriend when you look like you do.'

He watched her fingers and took in a deep breath. ‘No comment.'

‘Many older women in that mix?'

‘You're my first. Not that I ask to check birth certificates, but I figure you're my first.'

‘Well … I'm honoured,' Stella said.

‘So am I,' Luca said. He lowered his face to her breast and kissed her there. One night and he already knew what drove her wild. When his playful biting turned into a full-lipped wet kiss, the feel and the sound of his lips on her was too much. She found his hair, teased her fingers through it and took hold. He let go and laughed against her skin.

‘Great tits,' he said, grinning as he looked up at her through a lock of hair.

And then it hit her.

It clenched her chest, the shimmer, the shaking, the nausea. The panic rose in her throat and Stella felt like she was choking. It had been so long since she'd felt it that she had imagined, hoped, begged for it to be gone from her life forever. But no, it was back, and in every cell in her body she felt the primal threat to her heart and her soul.

Stella's quaking legs found the floor and she stumbled across the room to her door, where her silk kimono was hanging on a hook. She glanced over her shoulder and, of course, he was watching her.

She looked away, tried to breathe.

‘Where are you going?' he asked, sounding confused.

She tightened the tie around her waist, put her costume back on.

‘I—' Stella replied before fleeing to the bathroom.

Stella didn't want to recognise the face in the mirror. Pale, haunted, her ten-year-old eyes, alongside her Sydney pain, her face was marked with long-buried memories that were rising to the surface like liquefaction after an earthquake.

Her heart broken. Her trust betrayed. Her life ruined.

Sully Brown had disappeared from Sydney the day she got a call from her bank checking a number of unusual transactions on her credit account.

‘Are you in Noosa, ma'am?' the friendly voice had asked her down the phone line.

‘No,' she'd replied, as she looked out across the shopful of customers and into Newtown's South King Street. ‘Not the last time I looked, anyway. Is there a problem?'

‘There have been some large cash withdrawals on your account in that location. Would you like us to stop the card?'

‘No,' she'd replied hurriedly. Suspending the card would be a nightmare since she did all her business on it and she wanted to get in touch with Sully and ask him if he knew what was going on. There had to be some explanation. ‘Can I call you back? I'll check in with my business partner.'

Stella served her queue of customers and waited out the lunchtime rush before calling him. Her increasingly worried calls went unanswered. Her numerous text messages sat out in cyberspace unacknowledged, and by the time her fears had risen in her throat like bile to choke her, and she'd called the bank back, twenty thousand dollars was gone. It was more than she had in her personal savings account, which she'd had the sense to keep separate from her business and from Sully.

He had stolen from her. Left her. Lied to her.

In the dark days that followed, Stella came to the realisation that he'd never really loved her—that all she was to him was a woman he could manipulate and control.

From the very beginning, he'd sensed her weakness and exploited it. She knew clothes and fashion, but had always struggled with the money side of things. She knew the two went hand in hand, and she'd have to master both if she was to be successful, but it always took way longer than it should. For a year, as the business had grown, she'd been finding it hard to do it all.

And then she'd met the charismatic Sully Brown on a blind date, set up by one of her best customers. And from the first, she was smitten. He was tremendously handsome and there was something about him that tapped into her deeply buried need to be looked after. Such a great listener, so kind, caring and attentive: he opened doors for her; he brought her flowers on that first date. She'd loosened up over a couple of glasses of wine and a delicious Vietnamese meal, and they'd fallen into a long conversation about work and life balance and she'd been honest about what it was like operating a small business in Sydney on her own. He understood. He said all the right things. He told her he was an accountant, working in a big international firm in the CBD.

He'd said all the right things, looked at her in just the right way, and she'd fallen for him. She'd been lonely so long that she'd enjoyed the attention and the sex.

And looking back, which she had done in forensic detail to decipher why it had all gone wrong, where she had made her mistakes, she realised he'd pursued her because he'd seen an opportunity. He'd planned the whole thing from the start. He'd laid the groundwork by being generous with his own money: lavish dinners, gifts of jewellery and wine, tickets to concerts at the Opera House that had sold out months before. Nothing was too much trouble for him. When he offered to help, she was so relieved not to be doing it all on her own, and agreed.

‘I'm an accountant, Stella. Why don't you let me handle the books for you? I'll do the numbers. That'll give you more time for your customers.'

And then, yes, it was easier. So much easier.

Until everything she worked for was gone.

It took her four days to track him down. His phone had gone flat, he'd explained, and he'd only just heard her messages. Turned out he'd been in Noosa, partying, on her money. It turned out that he'd also missed messages from his employer warning that, since he'd been absent for four days without explanation, he was sacked.

Once that happened, once he was caught out in his own lies and deceptions, it all became her fault in his eyes, and he raged and accused and spat hateful words and threats at her.

All she could think was that she should have known. She'd grown up around drugs, had seen her parents smoking and snorting and dealing. How could she have let herself be with someone exactly the same? That awareness, that realisation about her own blindness, had compounded her shame. She'd felt worthless and deceived and stupid.

When Sully returned to Sydney, her shock and anger had transformed into a steely determination to get him out of her life and survive. With her new accountant—a woman—Stella negotiated a repayment plan with the bank so she wouldn't have to declare bankruptcy. They had discovered that from the first day Sully had the authority to transact in her accounts, he'd been skimming her. He'd also set up new software and practices, telling Stella that her systems were unnecessarily complicated and old school, and she'd believed him.

The times she tried to understand where she was financially, nothing made sense to her anymore. There were different spreadsheets, new passwords, codes she didn't know. Everything was hidden from her. And when Sully reported that turnover was dropping, Stella had put it down to the GFC, which had hit everyone in retail at the time.

He'd ruined her business, but he wouldn't ruin her.

Stella sold everything she had and left Sydney. The drive across the dusty Hay Plain to Adelaide allowed her plenty of time to think. She'd lived with shame and humiliation as a child, but when her world had imploded as an adult, when she was supposed to be a strong, independent woman, the hurt and the blame were scarring. They burnt. And those scars and experiences made her more determined than ever to succeed on her own. Everyone she'd ever loved had let her down. Her parents. Auntie Karen, who she loved most of all, had died. Sully had betrayed her.

It was time to place her trust in the only person she could rely on. Herself.

Just shy of her thirtieth birthday, she had driven back to South Australia to the last place she'd been happy, and started over.

She was beginning to make the same mistakes: she could feel it. Trusting. Caring. Opening up her business, her home. And her fragile heart.

Stella splashed her face with cold water and she didn't even flinch. It was time to go back to thinking with her head.

Luca sat up, rubbed his chin. He wasn't sure what the hell had just happened. He'd woken up feeling like a million bucks. Shit, what man wouldn't when they'd spent the night with a woman like Stella? The incredible woman he'd wanted since he'd walked into her shop a month before. The one who'd teased him, inspired him, driven him nuts, rejected him, flirted with him and finally succumbed to him.

Or maybe he'd succumbed to her.

Hell, he didn't give a shit how it had happened. All he cared about was that it had happened. He'd had sex with Stella. The hot older woman. He chuckled at the thought that his teenage fantasy had come true. Man, he loved women. He loved their curves and their secrets and their teasing laughs and all the possibilities. And he loved sex. He loved the build-up, the tension, the wild release of it, the letting go. And he especially loved the power it gave him over a woman, knowing he could take her to the edge of a climax and hold her there, gasping, calling his name. He'd done that with Stella, teasing her, taking her to the brink and back, until she reached down and held his head, pulled his hair and pushed him harder against her.

He'd had good reviews before. He knew he had skills as a lover that sent women wild. Yeah, so he had an ego about it. And he knew, was absolutely sure beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he'd driven Stella wild too. He'd seen it in her eyes every time he made her come. He'd felt it in her body when she'd tensed and clenched around his fingers. He could still hear her voice in his ear, gasping, when he plunged into her just now. He probably had scratches up and down his back from her fingernails, and just thinking about that made him want her all over again.