SHE had no thought of refusing him.
Not in that moment when the past did not matter. Too much had happened in the present. Later it would all matter again, but not now.
Her mouth parted and he took immediate advantage, deepening the kiss, sliding his tongue against hers. Tasting her, letting her taste him.
Her body arched toward him.
It had been so long.
Hands curling around his neck, she reveled in the intimacy of his kiss…his touch.
He cupped her bottom, kneading her flesh and letting his fingers slide dangerously close to the apex of her thighs.
She moaned.
“Sì, amorino. That is right.” His lips moved against hers in affirmation, exciting her even more as his breath teased her lips. The kiss grew voracious, desires long denied exploding between them with the power of a pyrotechnic display.
She sucked his bottom lip into her mouth and bit lightly.
Suddenly she was being lifted and they were moving. He stopped when she was against the cold metal wall of the vault. The fact that she could feel the chill on the backs of her thighs only registered in her periphery. He’d pulled her skirt up and left her bottom half exposed to his wandering hands, but she didn’t care.
All she wanted was to feel his skin against hers. She scrabbled for the buttons on his shirt, undoing them with more haste than finesse. Her dress came off and they were flesh to flesh with her breasts nestled into the fine curls of hair on his chest.
“I want you, dolcezza.”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t—his lips were pressed against hers with passionate intensity—but she wanted him too.
Then he was kissing her neck. “Sweet, so sweet…”
And for no reason she could fathom, those words, words he had spoken so many times when they had made love before, woke other memories. Pain she had thought anesthetized for this brief span of time sliced through her, annihilating her ardor and leaving her trembling with dark emotions, not desire.
Her head fell back against the wall, her hands immobile against him. “I’m so sweet you thought I tried to land you with another man’s child.”
“Do not think of this now.” He sounded desperate.
No doubt he was. Salvatore was more than a little oversexed and there was no denying he wanted her. Not with the bulge of his erection pressing so hard against her stomach.
“I can’t stop thinking of it,” she whispered, her own despair trimming her voice to almost nothing.
His groan was primal man deprived of his mate. “Not now, Elisa. Let us speak of this later.”
“We don’t have a later.”
He went completely still. The silence screamed between them. He stepped back, letting her stand on her own, and dropped his hands away from her. “You are wrong about this. We have a past. We have a present.” He emphasized each point with one hand slicing down toward the other. “And the future will see us together as well.”
“I won’t have another affair with you.” Even he had to have more sensitivity than that.
“I want you for my wife.”
One year ago those words would have thrilled her to bits. Now they were more like backhanded blows than the declaration she had once longed for.
“So only marriage will assuage your Sicilian guilt.” She shook her head hard enough to make her dizzy. “Forget it.”
He would have to find his personal absolution someplace else. It would not happen in marriage to her.
“You wanted to marry me once.”
“I didn’t—”
His hand covered her mouth, the touch gentle despite the tension vibrating off of him. “Do not lie. You wanted this, or you would not have told me about the baby, no?”
“A man deserves to know when he is going to become a father.”
“And what did you expect?” His hand slid down to cup her neck. “You expected me to do the honorable thing, to offer marriage. Why not? We were already lovers. Our families are close. What could be more natural?”
Having him repeat all the beliefs that had once gone through her head added another subtle element to the mixture of sorrow inside of her.
“That was then. This is now.”
He sighed and stooped down to retrieve her shift dress from the floor. “Here, put this on.” His eyes went over her like two hands. “If you do not, we will both probably regret the consequences.”
She took the pile of rust-brown fabric with a trembling hand and then slipped it over her head. Once she had it on, she did not feel appreciably less vulnerable.
The ease with which he had taken it off haunted her.
How could she want this man who had hurt her so much?
What was she, some kind of masochist?
He shrugged off his jacket and left his shirt unbuttoned. He hadn’t been wearing a tie.
While fresh air piped into the vault in case of just such an emergency, the air-conditioning was minimal. It was not stifling, but it was not comfortably cool either and there was some justification for him leaving the shirt undone. That did not make it any easier for her to deal with all that sexy male muscle on display.
Ignoring him and his half-naked appearance, she staggered to the back of the vault. Her legs were still shaky from her close brush with death and lovemaking.
She stepped into a commode the size of an airplane bathroom that had been walled off in one corner of the vault, complete with a bi-fold door for privacy. Pushing the door closed, she leaned against it. After several deep breaths she leaned over the tiny sink and splashed cold water onto her face.
There was no mirror, but she could feel her hair falling down around her face. She pulled out the combs holding it in a now lopsided bun and finger-combed it. She left it down, knowing there was no chance she could get it back into a tidy up-do without a mirror or comb.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled the bi-fold open.
He was standing just on the other side.
Waiting.
She sidestepped him. “It’s free if you need it.”
“When I was eighteen years old, I had a girlfriend.”
“That’s not exactly breaking news, Salvatore. Women flock to you like bees to honey.”
He didn’t respond to her sarcastic jibe. “Her name was Sofia Pennini. She was beautiful. She was sexy and she was experienced. She was also four years older than I was.”
His opening up like this so shocked her that she found herself stopping in front of him and listening with more attention than she’d been willing to give him in a year.
Muscles in his jaw corded with tension. “She seduced me the second time we went out.”
Elisa’s snort of disbelief came as no surprise to Salvatore. In their relationship, he had done all the seducing.
He shrugged in acknowledgement of her skepticism. “I had spent my teenage years surrounded by males. The training I received was accompanied by an austere life that did not include exposure to a woman’s sophisticated wiles.”
“You’ve certainly made up for it since then.”
“I can do without the commentary. I am trying to tell you something.” And he did not like sharing this memory with her. It made him a fool, but she deserved to know the truth. “When I met Sofia I thought I knew the score, but the truth was I was a babe in arms compared to her. She knocked me sideways with lust. I could not get enough of her.”
Elisa huffed out a breath and glared at him. “I’m supposed to want to hear this?”
This evidence of jealousy gave him a small seed of hope. “It is important, for what I experienced with her had a great deal to do with how I reacted to you last year.”
Sexy lips firmed in a grim line, she nodded. “Go on.”
“We had been sleeping together for about six weeks when she told me she was pregnant with my baby.”
“I bet you believed her.”
He refused to be baited by the sarcasm. “I did.”
Elisa’s mouth dropped open and then it snapped shut and her eyes shot messages of murder and mayhem at him. “I guess her father never told you she was a tramp.”
“Your father did not call you such a name.” He deeply regretted telling Elisa what her father had said at all. It had hurt her and that only added more weight to the guilt he carried regarding her.
“Whatever. You were telling me about this pannini person.”
“Not pannini, Pennini.” He felt his lips curve at her sarcastic wit. “She is not a loaf of bread, cara.”
“She’s not your ex-wife either. You’ve never been married.”
Remembered humiliation made him frown. “No. She is not my ex-wife. I planned to marry her though.”
“Lucky her.”
He shrugged, feeling uncomfortable all of a sudden. “She thought so. My family is rich. I am my father’s only heir. Already I was being groomed to take over the business.”
“What are you saying, that she tricked you?” Again Elisa sounded disbelieving. “I suppose that baby wasn’t yours either.”
“Exactly.”
Suspicion narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Sì. Very sure. My father, he was furious when I told him I intended to marry this girl. He threatened to cut me off, but I did not care.”
“He didn’t want you to marry the mother of your baby? That doesn’t sound very Sicilian.”
“He did not believe the baby was mine.”
“So it’s hereditary.”
He wanted to touch her so badly, to once again kiss her and wipe that look of distrust and antipathy off her face, but he knew she would not accept it. “My father was right.”
Elisa’s arms crossed under her very lovely breasts. “Sure he was.”
“He investigated her and discovered she had been sleeping with another man, who happened to be ten years her senior and married, only a week before she and I became lovers.”
“That doesn’t mean the baby wasn’t yours.”
Too tense to remain motionless, he paced to the other side of the vault. “No, it does not, but the blood tests done during her pregnancy did.”
“Blood tests?” Her voice sounded close and he turned.
She was standing right behind him, having followed him the few feet across the vault.
“She had to have an amniocentesis. I do not even know why, but my father got hold of the results. The baby’s blood type was neither hers nor mine.”
“And he told you.”
“On the night before I planned to elope with her and marry against my father’s advice.”
“What did she do when you confronted her?”
Elisa knew him well. “She cried. She was desperate. The father refused to leave his wife for her. Sofia’s family were angry and threatening to disown her.”
“She must have been terrified.” The sound of compassion in Elisa’s voice reminded him how gentle her heart was.
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“I gave her money to begin life over somewhere else.” He had been unable to just walk away.
“What happened to her?” She rolled her eyes when he didn’t answer. “Come on. I know you didn’t just dump her like that.”
“I dumped you.” It was a shameful truth he would have to live with for the rest of his life.
Even the dim light could not disguise the fact that her face drained of color, but she didn’t back down. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about her and your eighteen-year-old self.”
“She married a year after the baby was born.”
“A happy ending for her.”
“But not for me.” Because the experience had left him distrustful and that distrust had cost both him and Elisa dearly.
“Did you love her?”
“I wanted her.”
“As you wanted me.”
He did not like hearing her compare their relationship to the one he had had with Sofia. “It is not the same.”
“Right. You trusted her more than you trusted me.”
“My lack of trust in you was because of her.” Frustration made his voice biting when what he wanted to do was soothe the look of hurt from those beautiful green eyes.
“And there was the fact my father told you I was like Shawna.”
“Sì.” Something he never should have told her.
Elisa’s head and heart were reeling. A year ago she had paid the price for another woman’s sin and Salvatore’s lacerated male pride.
It made sense of so much she had not understood. Inconsistencies that had haunted her and made her wonder what she had done wrong to make him distrust her so much.
She’d had two strikes against her and hadn’t even known it. Her own father had talked her down to Salvatore. That was not a truth she was ready to deal with on top of everything else and yet she had no option but to do so. Papa thought she was like Shawna despite the fact that she’d never done anything to make him think it.
Had she?
Second-guessing a past she knew was blameless, even if others did not, was a useless exercise she refused to get into.
Then there was the fact she had got pregnant too fast for Salvatore to believe the baby was his…because of what he had gone through with Sofia.
She flicked him a glance that encompassed his whole person, but denied eye contact. She could not handle that right now.
“Thank you for telling me.” Having had all she could take of emotional drama for the time being, she was ready to focus on the more prosaic. “We’re going to be in here all night; we might as well get settled.”
Turning away from his silent, watchful figure, she walked back to the corner with the lavatory and the emergency stash of food stored in the small cabinet on the other side of the bathroom’s back wall.
Like many jewelers, Signor di Adamo had equipped the vault in case there ever was a robbery and he or another employee was forced to take refuge in it. The timed locking mechanism meant that huge metal door would not open before nine the following morning. Her boss did not have an override code and the vault was so old she doubted the security company that had installed it still had the code on record.
Even if they had, it would take a burning building for them to agree to use it.
It was a security precaution meant to protect the owner from being forced from his bed by would-be thieves and intimidated into opening the vault. Only this time it was useless. Because of her argument with Salvatore, she hadn’t gotten the stock moved into the vault.
“Poor Signor di Adamo. Those men probably stole all the jewelry before leaving the store. He is insured, but this might be enough to make him give the store up.” And that would be sad after all she and the old man had sacrificed to keep the business going.
“They were after the crown jewels, not the modest collection in the storefront. Once they realized the jewels were locked safely in the vault, I doubt they took the time to clear the cases before running.”
“At least the crown jewels are safe. We can still have the auction. There is a chance Signor di Adamo can save the store.”
They had not been taken out of their storage drawer in the vault since their arrival.
“For now.”
She looked up from rummaging in the cupboard for foodstuffs that might make an adequate dinner for the two of them. “Why do you say that? Surely they won’t risk coming back now that the police will know to be looking for them?”
He reached out and brushed her cheek, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “You are innocent in many ways.”
She jerked back from the touch. It was an involuntary movement, but it made him frown. Tough.
“Just not the ones that count.” The words tumbled out before she thought and she regretted them. Not because she didn’t think he deserved the dig, but because she did not want to re-open that conversation. “Forget I said that.”
“It is forgotten.” The grim set of his mouth said differently, but she wasn’t about to take issue with him over it.
“Elisa, piccola. Are you in there?”
The sound of Signor di Adamo’s voice echoing in the small enclosure shocked her, and for a minute she could not quite figure out what was going on.
Not so Salvatore. He was on the other side of the vault in a flash and speaking into the small black box recessed in the thick metal wall near the door. “This is Salvatore. Elisa is with me.”
“Are either of you hurt?” Signor di Adamo’s voice sounded strained, older than his sixty-two years.
“No. Can you open the vault?”
“The security company that installed it went out of business two years ago.”
That was news to her. Had she known, she would have tried to get her boss to do something about transferring the override information to another company.
Salvatore swore. “This means you have no way of overriding the timed lock, no?”
“This is the truth. Praise the good God that you are both all right.”
Salvatore said something succinct, but did not press the communication button, so Signor di Adamo did not hear.
They discussed the details of the break-in and how she and Salvatore had ended up locked in the vault. Her boss’s exclamations were replaced by the cool authority voiced by the local police. They took Salvatore’s statement via the intercom box while Elisa chewed on her lower lip in worry.
“Ask them about the inventory,” Elisa told Salvatore.
Salvatore pressed the button. “Elisa wishes to speak to Signor di Adamo.”
He moved out of the way, allowing her to ask for herself.
She pressed the button and spoke into the small box, all the while hoping Salvatore had been right. “Signor di Adamo, I did not have the opportunity to put the trays in the vault before the break-in.”
“I noticed this.” His voice was quizzical, but not unduly worried.
“So, they, um…didn’t take anything?” She’d been derelict in her duty to her boss and would be devastated to discover her neglect had resulted in his loss.
“No, piccola. They must have been after the crown jewels.”
“That’s what Salvatore thought.”
She looked at the opposite wall without seeing it, lost in thought. “You’ll have to take the rest of the jewelry home with you. I don’t think that’s safe.” She turned to Salvatore. He was the security expert and had insisted on forcing himself into her life. He could make himself useful now. “What shall we do?”
“Let me speak.”
She stepped back, satisfied as the two men made arrangements for one of Salvatore’s operatives to come and take possession of the jewelry.
She spoke briefly again with her boss before he left the store, promising to be back when the vault’s timed lock opened in the morning.
Returning to the storage cupboard, she perused the contents with more interest than the first time around. Now that she knew the inventory was safe and Signor di Adamo was not worried about her and Salvatore, she could consider dinner with more equanimity. Besides, she was hungry.
A round of cheese hung from a hook on the ceiling of the cupboard and she pulled it down. She also withdrew two bottles of mineral water with twist tops, a tin of tuna, crackers, and some small jars: olives, sundried tomatoes under oil and carrots under vinegar.
Stacking them together on the floor, she arranged the contents of the cupboard, so she could pull one of the shelves out to use as a table. Thankfully, Signor di Adamo had also included paper plates, utensils and napkins in his emergency store and she and Salvatore would not be reduced to serving with their fingers.
She arranged the crackers, tuna and cheese on two plates and put the small jars between them so both she and Salvatore could reach what they wanted. He hadn’t said anything as she prepared the food, but he popped the tops off both bottles of mineral water and opened the other jars with quick precision.
He sat down on one side of the makeshift table while she gingerly settled on the floor on the other. “This is a far cry from what I intended our dinner to be tonight, cara.”
Remembering his dinner reservation, she couldn’t decide if reliving memories would have been worse or better than their enforced intimacy. “We haven’t got much choice.”
Salvatore shrugged, making the exposed muscles of his chest ripple in a very distracting way. OK, so it was warm, but buttoning up his shirt would not kill him.
“What do you know about my father’s heart condition?” she asked as she sliced a thin sliver of cheese and put it on a cracker with one of the olives cut in half.
Salvatore sighed, as if his mind had been elsewhere. “It is not serious if he follows the doctor’s recommendations and avoids stress.”
Like that caused by worrying about his daughter’s safety. She got the message without Salvatore having to spell it out.
“What happened?”
“He had a small episode a couple of months ago and ended up taking an emergency visit to the hospital. The doctor said that while the episode itself was not that serious, it was a harbinger of things to come if he did not change his lifestyle.”
“And did he?”
Again the shrug and she wanted to just yell at him to button up his darn shirt. “Francesco has been working less, increasing his exercise, eating healthier.”
“I’m sure Therese is making sure of that.” Her stepmother loved her father very much.
“Sì.”
“I still don’t understand why he didn’t tell me.”
“I do not know.”
If she hadn’t been running from Salvatore for the past year, she would have visited Sicily at least once and no doubt found out about her father’s health then. Guilt weighed on her as she finished her small dinner. Cleaning up was easy and thankfully, with the help of the running water in the small bathroom’s sink, they were able to avoid a lingering odor of tuna in the enclosed space.
Afterward, they settled back on the floor, but its ungiving hardness quickly grew uncomfortable. She shifted her sitting position, drawing her knees up to her chin, having long since abandoned her shoes.
“It is going to be very uncomfortable sleeping.”
Her head came up at the sound of Salvatore’s voice and her conscience pricked her.
She should tell him about the blow-up air mattress in the cupboard. The thing was, it was a single and they would have to share. It was the only option that made sense, but her mind rebelled at the prospect of sleeping in such close proximity to him. Even the thought of slumber on the hard floor had more appeal. It would definitely be better for her sanity.
Besides, there was no saying if it would still hold air after all the time it had sat unused on that shelf, she tried telling herself. In the end, her conscience would not let her keep it to herself however.
Grimacing, she stood up. “There’s an air mattress.”
His brow rose in question.
“You know, a blow-up thing we can use to sit on now.”
“And sleep on later.”
He caught on quick, but then he was a smart guy—about everything but her. “Yes.”
“We will have to sleep together.”
There was nothing for it. She forced herself to nod. “Yes.”
She almost offered to sleep on the floor at the look of satisfaction that crossed his features. “Don’t get any ideas, Salvatore. If you try anything, I’ll push you right off the mattress, got it?”