Her Last Night of Innocence (8 page)

‘…I’d only found out an hour before I had to leave for the airport that I was coming,’ she was saying, in her soft, slightly
self-deprecating way, squashing brioche crumbs beneath her thumb as she spoke. ‘My boss was supposed to be doing the interview, but his wife had suddenly gone into labour so he had to send me instead. I was terrified.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of the whole thing—getting on a plane, watching the race, meeting you. Luckily there wasn’t too much time to get into a state about it, but there wasn’t any time to think about what to wear either. It was raining in Yorkshire, and I thought I ought to look smart and professional, but of course I’d never been to a Grand Prix before.’ She glanced up at him with a rueful smile that brought dimples out in her cheeks. ‘I put on the tailored grey suit I usually wear to meet new clients. All the other girls were wearing—’

‘Hardly anything at all,’ Cristiano said acidly.

‘Exactly. And they were all so beautiful and glamorous, and I felt so…out of place. Fast cars scare the life out of me anyway, and I was totally unprepared for the noise and the petrol smell and everything. It was all a bit of a nightmare.’

She was talking faster now, her head bent, her hair falling forward and partly covering her face. He wanted to reach over and tuck it behind her ear, so he could see her properly, but didn’t trust himself to touch her.

‘I watched you qualifying from the balcony of the Campano building,’ she went on, ‘and then afterwards I went to the press suite to do the interview. Your PA said you’d want to shower and rest for a while first, so I waited. Everyone else had disappeared to a party on some yacht and the place was deserted. When you didn’t appear I thought you must have gone with them, and I felt really stupid for waiting like that.’ She took a deep breath. ‘So I went to look for you…’

She faltered and stopped, seeming to search for words for a moment, before shaking her head and saying nervously, ‘But I’m sure you don’t want to know all of this.’

Cristiano reached out and took the plate from her crossed legs, placing it back on the tray. The brioche had been reduced to a heap of crumbs.

‘Yes, I do,’ he said, with quiet irony. She couldn’t begin to understand how much.

‘I found the room with your name on the door,’ she said very quietly. ‘You were asleep.’

Cristiano gave a hollow laugh. ‘A classic interview-avoidance technique.’

Kate moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue and darted him a quick glance from behind that curtain of honey-coloured hair. Her cheeks were pink.

‘The thing is you were really deeply asleep.’ Her voice was little more than a whisper now. ‘You were lying there, very still, and you hardly seemed to be breathing and…and…I thought you were…d-dead.’ She raised her head and looked at him with those luminous blue eyes. ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it?’

Cristiano was about to make some sardonic remark, but stopped himself when he saw the stricken expression on her face. ‘Not ridiculous at all,’ he said gravely. He hesitated, and then almost unwillingly found himself continuing, ‘When I first started driving my biggest weakness was my inability to concentrate, so I taught myself deep meditation techniques. They helped me to focus, and also to come down from the adrenaline rush after a race because they slow your heart-rate.’ Keeping his eyes fixed on hers, he picked up her hand and laid it against his chest. ‘Mine is unusually slow to start with anyway…see?’

Her clear eyes widened. Darkened. The room was very still and quiet as the moment stretched and she waited…listening…feeling the beat of his heart.

Which, of course, had accelerated the instant she touched him.
Maledetto
. What the hell was he doing, telling her about his weaknesses anyway? That was the second time he’d let slip something private. He’d be spilling everything before he knew it—all the shameful details of his past.

That at least would bring this thing to a quick and painless end, he thought bitterly, noticing the jump of her pulse beneath the rose-gold skin of her throat. Suki was right. She wasn’t his type at all. There was no future in this, and it wasn’t fair
to let her believe for a second that there was. Later he would mention something about getting her back to Monaco. After he’d found out what he needed to know.

‘So, what happened next?’ he asked roughly.

She pulled her hand away, curling her fingers and burying them in the folds of his white shirt. She took a quick breath. ‘I was feeling for a pulse…and you woke up…and…’

‘Let me guess. I took full advantage of the situation?’

She gave a breathy laugh, but there was an edge to it. ‘No. You tried. But I…I stormed out.’

‘Buon per te.’

‘You came after me. It was getting pretty late by then, so you offered to take me back to your house to do the interview.’

‘Which is how I managed to scare the living daylights out of you on the way, and then take full advantage of
that
situation,’ Cristiano said cuttingly.

It was surprisingly uncomfortable being given an insight into his past mode of operation. Sitting up abruptly he punched a goosedown pillow into shape and leaned back against it, putting a bit more distance between himself and the bit of her bare thigh that wasn’t covered up by the shirt.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ she said carefully. ‘You cooked dinner for me.’

‘Pasta?’

She gave a little indrawn breath and lifted her head. ‘You remember?’

Cristiano gave a twisted smile.

‘No. It was a race weekend. I eat nothing but pasta.’

‘Oh. Of course.’

She got up then, unfurling her legs and wrapping her arms across her body as if she was cold. ‘We sat outside, by the pool, and…we talked. I asked you the questions I’d been given.’ She walked over to the window and stood there with her back to him, so he had a perfect view of her long legs beneath the shirt. He thought fleetingly of all the enticing, erotic creations of silk and lace and even on occasion leather
that women had worn to please him in bed over the years, and wondered why none of them had ever had quite the same effect as this. This girl with skin like cream and her soft voice and her gentle hands.

‘Did I answer them?’ he asked blandly, making a desperate effort to keep his mind on what she was saying.

She turned round, leaning back against the glass. With the sunlit snow-covered mountains behind her, and the morning sun making her hair gleam, she looked like an advert for some kind of wholesome milk-and-honey-type product. She smiled.

‘Not really. Somehow you managed to focus the conversation on me more than you, and I ended up telling you all about my brother and my father. You listened.’

Maledizione.

Of course he’d listened, he thought disgustedly. Diverting the subject away from himself and listening instead of talking was just one of the techniques he’d honed to perfection over the years, and one of the ways he avoided giving anything away about himself. It meant nothing. To him, anyway. To her it had obviously been significant enough for her to think he was worthy of her virginity.

He rubbed a hand over his face, pressing his fingers into his temple as if he could somehow erase the realisation of what he’d been. Often in the hospital he’d thought that the accident was a punishment for the suffering he’d put his mother through, but now it seemed just as likely to be some kind of divine retribution for the way he’d used people.

Women. So many of them that their beautiful faces, their willing bodies, blurred into one.
Too many to remember.

Caro Dio,
the irony.

Reaching for one of the towels that was folded on the chair beside the bed he got up, wrapping it around his hips as he walked towards her. Suddenly he didn’t want to hear any more.

‘Kate…’

She lifted her head slightly, meeting his gaze with an expression
on her face that was almost defiant. ‘It helped,’ she said simply. ‘To admit how scared I was—how scared I’d always been, of so many things. You told me that a life lived in fear is no life at all.’

Cristiano grimaced. ‘And that was the line I used to get you into bed?’

Her shy smile pierced his heart. Or perhaps it was just his conscience. She was blushing again.

‘Ah, well…it wasn’t bed…’

‘Where, then?’

He was standing right in front of her now, close enough to see her pupils dilate and catch the sweet scent of her skin, the musky base note of sex that still clung to her body from last night. The towel around his waist suddenly seemed pitifully, dangerously inadequate.

‘The swimming pool,’ she said huskily, looking straight into his eyes. She was still leaning back against the huge window, only now she didn’t look tense, or cold, or shy. There was something very sensual about her tousled hair, the smudges of kohl beneath her eyes, her sweet, plump lips as she spoke.

‘You made me close my eyes and you took my hand.’ She reached out and took his hand, lacing her fingers through his. ‘And very gently you led me into the water, with all my clothes on, and you picked me up and held me against you.’

Cristiano felt his fingers tighten reflexively around hers, echoing the rest of his body.

‘I had never felt anything like your strength,’ she went on. ‘Your certainty. It made me feel so safe. I wrapped my legs around you and very slowly you peeled off my wet clothes…’

He closed his eyes. For a moment, a dizzying, disorientating moment, he thought he felt the warmth of the water against his skin, the smell of the chlorine, the weight of her in his arms. And then all of that was obliterated by the urgency of the moment. Of wanting her.
Now.

The towel fell to the floor as he grasped her shoulders and pulled her into him.

A second later it was joined by the white shirt, and then, hoisting her up into his arms, he carried her back to the bed.

K
ATE
stood in front of the gleaming stainless steel range cooker in a sort of dream, stirring the fragrant contents of a large saucepan with absent-minded languor. The wooden boards were warm and smooth beneath her bare feet and her body ached and glowed. Outside the short February day was fading, and the mountains were ice-blue against the flame-streaked sky—a more gaudy and flamboyant version of the pastel-coloured sunrise.

How could the day have slipped by so quickly? she wondered. A smile pulled at her lips as she realised the answer to that question. They’d spent most of it in bed and time had become meaningless as they’d explored each other’s bodies and drifted in and out of sleep. But now she became conscious of the gentle ticking of the long-case clock, and, rather than simply providing a soothing background to her thoughts, it reminded her of reality.

Guiltily she reached for her phone, listening for a moment before she pressed Lizzie’s number. From outside she could hear the steady thud of the axe as Cristiano chopped logs for the fire. A delicious shudder of remembered pleasure rippled up her spine as she imagined the movement of his muscles as he unleashed all that tightly restrained power and strength, and, waiting for Lizzie to answer, she found herself walking towards the window to see if she could catch a glimpse of him.

He had his back to her as he took another big cross-section
of pine bough from the haphazard pile and put it down on the deeply scarred cutting block. Kate’s mouth dried as she watched him pick up the axe, weighing it between his hands for a second before swinging it down. The wood split cleanly open, showing its pale inside.

For someone so strong he moved with an easy, mesmerising grace. He had been wearing a soft and faded denim shirt, but with the heat of exertion he’d taken it off and tied it around his waist, so that she could easily see the outline of his body beneath his fitted white T-shirt. The palms of her hands tingled as the memory of gripping his iron-hard shoulders as he’d thrust into her came back to her. She’d dug her fingers into his flesh and cried out with—

‘Hi—you’ve reached Dominic, Lizzie and Ruby…’

Kate jumped out of her skin as Lizzie’s cheerful answer-machine message cut right through her X-rated reverie, and guilt and shame washed through her. She’d completely forgotten she had the phone pressed to her ear. Unable to form a coherent message, she quickly cut the call and darted back to the stove, just in time to pull the furiously bubbling pan off the heat.

Slipping her phone into the pocket of her jeans, she began to stir the pan again, breathing in the wine-and-herb infused steam and distantly thinking that usually she would be frantic with worry if Lizzie didn’t answer, imagining all sorts of catastrophes had befallen Alexander. But it was as if Cristiano’s touch had stilled her and some of his strength had seeped into her.

After her attempt to explain the events of that night had come to such a breathtaking conclusion, they had spoken little. Drugged with pleasure and drained from exertion they had simply lain together, and Kate had understood in some deep-down part of herself that if this was all there was, if there was no future for them, the quiet bliss she felt then would last her for a lifetime.

But she wasn’t going to think like that. Not yet. She still had this evening…tonight…to help him remember, or to make
him feel that way again. To get past the remote, guarded stranger with the expressionless eyes and the cynical smile and find her way back to the man she had got to know that night in Monaco. The man who had told her his secrets and cried in her arms.

It wasn’t over yet.

Cristiano stood up, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He should go in. The low sun had moved around to the other side of the house now, the light was fading, and the heap of logs he had split in the last hour was enough to keep the fire blazing for a month.

In truth there had already been more than enough logs, and although he’d told himself that the least he could do to repay Francine’s kindness was build up supplies for next time she visited, he knew that his real reasons were far more selfish.

He’d come out here to try to rouse himself out of the unfamiliar lethargy that had gripped him since they’d arrived last night. He carried an armful of logs around the corner of the house and looked out towards the distant slopes. The dying sun was painting the snow an unlikely shade of orange, and he paused to watch two skiers weave their way down, plumes of white flying up in their wake. Usually he would be desperate to get out and join them, but today, with his body still sated and slow with pleasure, the impulse to throw himself down a black run was spectacularly absent.

It bothered him.

During the endless weeks Cristiano had spent lying on his back in a hospital bed he’d been so restless that the doctors had had to inject anaesthetic into his spine to immobilise him and give his body a chance to recover. Every minute had felt like an hour, and he had vowed then that when he was back on his feet he’d never take it for granted again. Never waste a moment.

And yet this afternoon it had cost him almost as much effort to drag himself out of bed with Kate as it had to get out of the bed in the hospital four years ago. He had never imagined
that he would actually choose to spend the best part of a day doing nothing when there was some of the best skiing in the world literally right outside the door.

Although they hadn’t exactly been doing nothing, he acknowledged with a sudden shaft of sharp desire, tightening his grip on the armful of logs and heading towards the house. After four years of near-celibacy it was as if he had discovered sex for the first time and was now experiencing it with the hungry, focused intensity of a teenage boy. But with more skill, thankfully. Never before had he lost himself so thoroughly in the simple act of sleeping with a woman, and God knew in the old days he had given himself enough opportunity.

The problem was he didn’t want to be lost. He had come here to find his way back.

Kicking the basement door open, he put the logs down and began stacking them in the neat woodpile against the wall. He needed to get back to Monaco. Back into training. Francine’s theory had so far failed to deliver, as had his own idea that sleeping with Kate Edwards again might help him to remember.

The reverse was true, he thought despairingly as the pulse of unease that had been beating at the back of his mind all afternoon seemed to get louder and more insistent. It was as if she had some mysterious hold on him, and every minute he spent with her in his arms dragged him deeper into blissful oblivion so that he forgot about things like getting back on the track and pushing himself again. In fact he forgot about everything that drove him. Everything that mattered.

Suddenly he froze, a log in his hand, then swore with quiet brutality as realisation slammed into him like an iron fist. Realisation of what else he had forgotten. Why he was uneasy.

Throwing the log down again, he headed for the stairs.

‘That smells good.’

Startled out of her indolent trance, Kate glanced up and felt
herself blush—partly at being so deeply lost in thought that she hadn’t heard him come in, and partly because standing there in the doorway, with his hands dirty and his hair clinging to his forehead with sweat, he looked so outrageously sexy. She looked away again, turning her attention very pointedly to the saucepan.

‘So it should, with a store cupboard like this to cook from,’ she muttered shyly, stirring hard. ‘Where I come from “essentials” means a tin of baked beans and a packet of cheap chocolate digestives—not organic beef and a complete A-Z collection of freeze-dried herbs. Are you sure it’s OK to use all this stuff?’

‘I’ll replace it all.’

Something about his voice made her look up again, and her heart gave a little skip of foreboding as she noticed the dangerous blankness of his expression. There was a muscle jumping above his jaw.

‘Cristiano? Is everything all right?’

He detached himself from the doorway and came towards her, bringing with him a blast of ice-cold fresh air and pine resin. His eyes were the hard, opaque black of marble.

‘I just remembered something.’

Kate gave a little hiss of breath.

Cristiano smiled: a hollow, bitter smile. ‘Unfortunately I don’t mean that I’ve suddenly undergone a miraculous recovery. Just that I realised—’ He pushed a hand through his hair, and for a moment the cold, impassive mask slipped a little. ‘The first time we slept together…I wasn’t thinking straight. I didn’t use protection.’

The room darkened. Heat roared behind her eyes. Kate struggled to keep her breathing normal as Alexander’s face swam in front of her eyes.
Oh, God, I must try ringing Lizzie again
, she thought irrationally as a wave of protective love for her son almost knocked her sideways. Leaning against the kitchen worktop, Cristiano’s voice reached her from a long way away.

‘It might be a good idea if we contacted a doctor for some emergency contraception.’

Kate bit back a burst of hysterical laughter, and was just about to point out that it was a bit late to think about that now when realisation dawned. He wasn’t talking about the night four years ago when Alexander had been conceived—what she thought of as the first time they had slept together—but
last night
. The first of the three or four times they’d made love in the last twenty-four hours.

Weak with relief, she picked up a teatowel that had been draped over the bar of the range door and pretended to wipe her hands on it, simply just to have something to occupy them while she composed herself enough to speak normally.

‘There’s no need. It’s fine.’ She gave a slightly shaky laugh, ‘As long as you’re not trying to tell me you’ve got some terrifying disease.’

‘Of course not. I just wanted to know if there’s a risk you could be pregnant.’

Risk
. The word jumped out at Kate as if it had been written in ten-foot-high fluorescent letters and hung with flashing lights. She was the most risk-averse person she knew, while Cristiano Maresca was someone who courted it, flirted with it. In every area except this one, apparently. He was quite happy taking his chances with death, she thought sadly. But not life.

She shook her head. ‘I’m on the pill. I would have said something if I wasn’t.’ Her hands were twisting the teatowel round and round, tighter and tighter, but she made another attempt at a laugh, trying to make it sound as if the whole subject was a matter of little consequence to her. ‘Especially since one of the questions I asked you in the interview we did in Monaco was whether you wanted a son to carry on the Maresca name and reputation. Your answer was a resounding no, so unless anything’s changed…’

As she spoke he turned his back and walked across the kitchen, away from her. The clock ticked, marking out the seconds as her fate hung in the balance.
Now!
a little voice
in her head cried.
Tell him now!
But words loomed and faded in her head, and none of them seemed to connect up to make the right sentence.

‘It hasn’t.’

And with those terse, ice-edged words the tentative hope she had carried in the deepest, most secret recesses of her heart was snuffed out. She blinked, trying to swallow the boulder that seemed to have lodged in her throat, glad of the solid wood she was leaning against.

‘Look, I’ve been thinking…I really must get back to Monaco tomorrow.’ Her voice sounded a little hesitant, but otherwise astonishingly normal. ‘I was wondering if there’s a train or something I can get?’

Opening the fridge, Cristiano took out a bottle of champagne. She watched him tearing off the foil with ruthless expert fingers.

‘I’ll drive you.’

Kate licked her dry lips and looked away. ‘Oh, no, really—there’s no need for that. You came here to ski.’

He twisted the cork out of the bottle. His eyes met hers over the top of it and he gave a bland smile.

‘I didn’t, actually. And I need to get back too. Pre-season testing starts soon, and I have to put in a lot of hours on the track before then.’

A shadow passed over his face and he turned away abruptly, opening a cupboard behind him and taking down two crystal flutes. Kate watched him, the constant low-level desire she felt whenever she looked at him now spiked with an unbearable sadness.

‘How can you want to do it again? After what happened?’

‘It’s not a choice,’ he said coldly. ‘It’s just what I do.’

‘It doesn’t have to be.’ Her voice was so quiet that even in the silent kitchen it was almost inaudible.

‘Yes, it does.’ His face was expressionless again as he came towards her. Leaning past her, he turned off the heat on the stove and took hold of her wrist.

‘Come with me.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘I want to show you something.’

And that was all it took—the low rasp of his voice and the warmth of his touch—to unleash that hot, liquid rush inside her.

Letting him lead her up the stairs, Kate felt bruised and brimful of emotion—so fragile that the slightest touch might make her dissolve. But somewhere she also felt freed. All this time she had been carrying the burden of her knowledge, wondering how to share it with him. By telling her that he still didn’t want to be a father he had released her from that responsibility.

For now. The time would come when he would have to know, and she would be able to tell him without emotion or agenda or pressure. But that time wasn’t now. Now was for something altogether different.

Shadows sloped across the floor as he led her into the bedroom. She was quivering with want, with need for his touch, but he didn’t stop by the bed. Kate felt a stab of disappointment as he let go of her hand and pushed open the doors onto the balcony.

‘Close your eyes.’

After the warmth of the house, the frozen air made her gasp. She tensed, trying to hold herself steady against the trembling that gripped her, which was only partly to do with the cold. She heard the clink of glass as he put down the champagne, and then jumped as she felt his fingers—cool from the chilled bottle—close around hers again and draw her forward.