The Truth About De Campo (13 page)

She trembled in his arms. Dug her nails into his shoulders. He pushed her back, held her hair away from her face so he could see her. “You are the most beautiful, responsive woman I have ever had,” he said huskily. “Never ever doubt your ability to feel, Quinn.”

Her chin quivered, her fingers curling around his shoulders in a fierce grip that telegraphed her struggle. Then she brought her mouth to his and kissed him blindly. Soulfully. Until their union was taken to another level completely.

He dug his hands into her hips and lifted her. Brought her back down on him in a rhythm so slow and deliriously good he closed his eyes and savored it. The sound of them filled the air, the raw push and pull of their bodies heart-stoppingly erotic. Quinn buried her head in his shoulder and whispered encouragement.
Faster. Harder.

Her body tightened around him. Brought him torturously close to the boiling point. She begged him to make her come, needed his guidance. And he did, pulling her hips hard against him, placing a hand against her bottom and grinding them together. “Like that,” he told her. “Use me.”

She leaned forward and rubbed her flesh against him with every stroke. His body tightened, ready to explode, and he cursed and told himself to hang on. Hold on for ten more seconds so that she could get there. Be with him.

Her soft cry shattered the air. She shook wildly beneath his hands as the orgasm tore through her and caused his. He arched his hips and let loose a guttural, primal grunt of satisfaction that might have traveled to Pluto it rocked him so furiously. They stayed like that, aftershocks ricocheting through their bodies, until he picked her up and carried her to the shower. Sensuously, reverently, he washed her beautiful body all over until he couldn’t help but want her again and took her against the wall.

It occurred to him he might never stop wanting her.

CHAPTER TEN

O
N
THE
LAST
LEG
of what seemed like an impossible journey to reopen Le Belle Bleu, things were finally falling into place. The night before the reopening, Quinn could almost see the light, although she wouldn’t dare say it aloud for fear some other disastrous calamity might occur. But she was smiling for the first time in a week.

Optimistic enough that she had agreed to a stir-crazy Matteo’s plan to take an hour’s break to go for roti at the shack on the beach, legendary with the locals for its version of the piquant Caribbean specialty.

They both needed a break. Needed to let off some steam. A walk on the beach might do it. She pulled on shorts and a T-shirt in the bedroom she and Matteo were sharing in the suite at Le Belle Bleu in the hectic lead up to the relaunch, his clothes left in the other bedroom for optics, and pulled her hair into a ponytail as he showered. She hummed to herself while she slicked on some lip gloss, the glimmer of Matteo’s sleek gold watch catching her eye on the dresser. She picked it up and tested the weight in her palm. It was an exquisite timepiece with diamonds marking the hours and an understatedly elegant black pearlescent background. A collector’s edition, likely.

She turned it over to examine the back. Saw there was a finely drawn inscription laced across the matte gold surface. It was in Italian. And although she knew she shouldn’t do it, that it was private to Matteo, she sat down and typed it into her computer to translate.

You meant everything to my son. Take him with you always
.
Affonso.

Her heart stuttered in her chest. The
watch was Giancarlo’s.

She replaced it on the dresser. Stood looking at it. Matteo’s darkness had receded since that night at Paradis, but it still had him in its grip. She saw it in those unguarded moments, when his mask slipped and the haunted look returned. As if it never really went away.

She frowned. He called her a closed book. If
she
was a closed book, then he was a buried story. Pretending to be open to the world when he was anything but.

The sun was setting as they walked along the beach to the restaurant, if you could call the ten-foot-by-ten-foot brightly painted slatted wooden structure that. She kept the conversation light while they shared their rotis on the sand in front of the rolling waves, a cold beer beside each of them.

Matteo lifted his beer to his mouth and took a long swallow. “Have you heard from Warren yet?”

She shook her head. “I rarely hear from him while he’s in Asia with the time difference. He may not get back to me until he returns to Chicago.”

“He needs to know,” Matteo said sharply.

“And he will.” She slid him a sideways look. She didn’t understand why he seemed so anxious about her telling Warren and the board about them. It was s
he
who should be stressed. It was she
that was severely curtailing her career with this decision. Her father and the board would ultimately make the right choice. The fair choice.

“He’s back tomorrow regardless.”

He nodded. Looked out at the ocean. “Have you talked to Thea today? How’s the foot?”

Quinn grimaced. A fifteen-hundred-pound stallion had stepped on her sister’s left foot yesterday while she was conducting an examination, shattering the bones in multiple places. “She’s at home twiddling her thumbs, cursing that damn horse. You see,” she pointed out, “I was right all along.”

That won her a smile. “That was just bad luck.”

Quinn pushed her roti aside and decided the only way to get him to talk might be to start talking herself. “I’m thinking while I’m making all these radical decisions I might like to get to know my sister in Mississippi.”

“Have you had any contact with your birth family?”

“No.” The hollow feeling that invaded her every time she thought about the parents who had given her away made her chest ache. “I don’t really have anything to say to them. They chose not to keep me. They had another girl. End of story. But my sister—it wasn’t her fault. I just feel like I should know her at some point. Even if we aren’t ever close.”

He lifted a brow. “You don’t think there might be more to your parents’ decision than that?”

She brought her beer to her lips and took a deliberate sip. “They gave me away and had my sister a couple of years later, Matteo. How else can you interpret it?”

He swiveled to face her. “Like maybe they weren’t ready when they had you. Like maybe there are complexities involved you know nothing about. Life isn’t black and white, Quinn, as much as you’d like to think it is. There are a lot of gray areas.”

Gray areas
.
That’s what you called giving your child up, never to see them again? Marking her defective in the process?
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“Why don’t you try?” he challenged. “There are no prizes for being an island, Quinn.”

She turned to face him, latching on to the opening. “I don’t know about that, Matteo, you are. You pretend to be everyone’s man, but you’re no one’s man really.”

His mouth flattened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what I said. You talk, but you don’t really talk.”

He sliced her an even look. “How about we finish with you before we move on to me? How is it you think I cannot understand what you’re going through?”

“Because you have a family who loves you. Who are
yours
. Your flesh and blood. How could you possibly understand what it’s like to not be wanted? To have Warren and Sile so desperate for a child they adopt me, then months later get everything they ever wanted in Thea? To not be good enough for my old family, and not be needed by my new one?” She blinked against the fire burning the back of her eyes. “It was heartbreaking, Matteo. Heartbreaking to grow up knowing that.”

“And finally we get somewhere...” He pushed his dinner aside, sat back and wrapped his arms around his knees. “You know what I know, Quinn? I saw how much Thea adores you that night at the cocktail party. I
heard
how much your father respects you when he talked about you. Do you have any idea what I would do to have that same level of acceptance from my father? My family? I have spent my life fighting for it.”

She pushed her beer into the sand, thrown again by another of Matteo’s perspectives that upended her own. Was her frame of reference really so totally off when it came to her family? Was she so colored by the past it distorted all else?

“You live in a family of gladiators,” she finally offered when the silence had stretched taut between them. “Isn’t that what you do? Fight to be the best?”

He gave her a long, gray-eyed stare. “Perhaps.”

She clasped her hands between her legs and looked over at him. “Giancarlo’s father gave you his watch. Why?”

His shoulders stiffened. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, “I was admiring how beautiful it was and I saw the inscription.”

A shutter came down over his eyes. “There is nothing to be gained by talking about Giancarlo. He’s gone. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” She waved a hand at him. “
You
accuse
me
of being an island. You’re so far out there you aren’t even a speck in the ocean.”

His eyes flashed with that lightning-storm intensity that signaled a clash of the elements was on its way. “
I
was responsible for his death, Quinn.
I
caused it. Is that what you want to hear me say? Giancarlo’s father gave me that watch so I wouldn’t feel guilty about what I did. Because he knew I would every day for the rest of my life.”

Her mouth dropped open. “I’m sure that can’t be true.”

Matteo stared out at the horizon, his back ramrod straight. He was silent for so long she thought she’d pushed him too far. Then he dropped his hands between his knees. “Giancarlo was everything to me. My brothers, we’re close, but I’ve never had the bond with them Giancarlo and I had. We grew up in Montalcino together, both of us groomed to be powerful men with the accompanying responsibility. Giancarlo became the CEO of one of Europe’s largest car companies, a star of the corporate world, and I was running De Campo’s European operations. We had power, money and youth. We were on top of the world. Drunk on our success...”

“Power can be an intoxicating thing.”

He turned to look at her. “Giancarlo didn’t handle it well. He drank too much, drove too fast, partied too hard. Maybe it was in his blood, I don’t know. He had an alcoholic father with a high-flying job who managed to bury his issue under his success for years. It was not a good example. G told himself he could handle it, but he couldn’t stop. Couldn’t recognize his limits like the rest of us.”

A chill settled over her. “Was he drinking the night of the accident?”

“Si.”
His hands curled into fists between his knees, a dark glitter entering his eyes. “I was annoyed with Riccardo for always handcuffing me, for holding me back from the things I wanted to do with the company. He didn’t think I was ready and I knew that I was. So to spite him, to blow off some steam, I went on a tear with Giancarlo in Monte Carlo. We partied hard, won a lot of money, had more than a few women hanging off us willing to divest us of it. But at some point, my rational brain kicked in and I suggested we leave. G insisted we have one more drink to finish the night off...”

Her stomach rolled, pitched in a sickening twist. “That’s why you reacted like that when Daniel pushed the drink on you.”

His olive skin took on a white sheen. “Cognac was G’s drink of choice...or perhaps I should say his weapon of choice.” He shook his head. “I should have shut him down. I should have known it would put him over the edge. Instead I got caught up in the competitive thing we always had going on, had the drink and suggested a race back to our hotel.”

“After
drinking
like that?” She couldn’t keep the horror out of her voice.

He nodded jerkily. “I was out of control.
We
were out of control. We left—took different routes back to the hotel, and when I got there, G wasn’t there.” The blank expression on his face made her blood go cold. “I knew. I knew right away.”

She put a hand to her mouth. “He’d crashed.”

Matteo nodded. “I backtracked. He’d taken a one-way street the wrong way and wrapped his car around a tree. When I found him, the police were there, but there was nothing we could do to save him. He died in front of me while we waited for the ambulance.”

Quinn’s heart contracted. “Oh, God, Matteo—”

“He wasn’t paying attention to any of the women that night.” He went on, tonelessly. “He told me he was in love with his girlfriend, Zara. That he wanted to marry her and settle down and become a father because he knew this life we were leading was crazy. And he wanted better than what
he’d
had.” His gaze moved to hers, a flash of agony darkening the emptiness. “A few weeks ago, I saw Zara’s engagement announcement. That she’s marrying someone else.”

Quinn’s throat swelled, thickened, until it was physically hard to get the words out. “You were both out of control, Matteo. You cannot blame yourself for what happened.”

“
I
was the stronger one.” He lifted his chin, the brief glimpse of pain she’d seen dissipating into cold, hard steel. “I should have known better. I could have saved him.”

She took his jaw in her fingers, her eyes burning. “You can’t save other people. We have to fight our own demons.”

His jaw twitched under her fingers. “I should have done better. I
will
do better from now on. It will be my legacy to him.”

A tear slid down her face. “You’re a good man, Matteo. You have to believe that. I’m sure if Giancarlo could see you now, he would be so proud of you.”

He was silent, the dying rays of the sun lighting the hard contours of his face. “Why should I get to be vibrant and enjoy the best years of my life when he is gone? I don’t know if I can ever accept that.”

She shifted closer to him, swung her leg over his, straddled him and brought his face to hers, the tears streaming down her face now. “Because somewhere up there he wants you to. Because the only tragedy worse than what’s happened already would be for you to spend your life grieving for him instead of honoring him.”

“But how?” he asked hoarsely, resting his forehead against hers. “How do I do it?”

“One day at a time,” she murmured, absorbing the warmth of his skin. “My mother Sile once said it’s not the mistakes we make that define us, it’s what we choose to do with them
. Choose
your path, Matteo. Be better than your mistakes. And know, as G’s father said, you were everything to him.”

She sat there holding him, absorbing his pain, until his body seemed to give beneath her hands. Until she thought maybe, just maybe, what she’d said had gotten through to him.

They were silent as they walked back to the hotel, ankle deep in the sea, hand in hand. She had chosen
her
path, was starting to make pivotal decisions which would define her future. She just wished she
knew
they were right. Hoped they would carry her where she was going. Because she no longer knew where that was. She only knew she couldn’t stand still any longer.