Her Last Night of Innocence (15 page)

Cristiano gathered his son’s small body into his arms, silently praying for the ache of his arousal to subside.
Dio
, he had never wanted a woman so much, for so long.

He’d known immediately that having a child would affect his life profoundly, in lots if different ways, but the impact on his libido wasn’t something he’d anticipated, he thought with rueful amusement as he carried his small son into the house. He’d been used to having sex pretty much whenever his appetite demanded. This protracted craving was new to him, and it was as exquisite as it was excruciating.

Being near to Kate and not being able to touch her had driven him nearly to distraction. The most ordinary things seemed to take on extraordinary sensual significance—the way she’d smoothed her hair behind her ear when she was bending over to feed Alexander a morsel of lobster at dinner, the glimpse of a pale pink bra-strap against her creamy skin as she’d sat back, sipping wine, with the glow of the fire reflected in her eyes.

He wanted to peel off her clothes and examine the body that had carried his child. He wanted to cup her breasts that had fed his son in his hands and stroke them. He wanted to make her his again.

He reached the top of the stairs, ducking his head to avoid knocking himself out. Three doors opened off the landing, but Cristiano could tell which one was Alexander’s room because it had a wooden plaque in the shape of a car with a letter A on it. The house was so small that he’d have to make love to Kate very, very quietly later on…

‘Not tired,’ said Alexander firmly as Cristiano pushed open the bedroom door with his shoulder. ‘Want a story. Want Cristiano to read me a story.’

Maledizione o ostia.

He hadn’t even seen it coming. Carefully keeping his expression blank, he put his son down on the bed and switched on the lamp. Soft light illuminated a small room in which everything from the bedlinen to the frieze painted around the top of the walls was a homage to cars.

Kate appeared in the doorway behind him. Her voice was hushed and soothing.

‘Come on, sweetheart. Pyjamas, then teeth.’

Diving under the pillow, Alexander pulled out a pair of soft blue pyjamas, unsurprisingly featuring a picture of a racing car on the front. Tucking them under his arm, he raced out of the room.

Left alone, Cristiano stood in the centre of the room. His heart was thudding and the palms of his hands were suddenly slick with sweat. A tall bookcase stood behind the door,
crammed full with books—serious-looking ones, with gold-embossed spines, mixed in with millions of slim, brightly coloured ones.

He should have anticipated this. How could he have been so stupid?

That was easy, he thought with an inward laugh of bitter despair. Hadn’t he always been stupid? For the last twenty years he’d put everything he had into running away, trying desperately to prove that he was something other than the worthless failure he had been labelled by the teachers at school and by his disappointed mother. But this tiny room, with the frayed carpet and the line of toy cars on the windowsill, was where his demons had caught up with him at last. Where he finally had to admit that there was nowhere left to run.

Alexander came in again. He was wearing his pyjamas and his face was scrubbed clean of chocolate ice cream. As he climbed into bed he looked unbearably small and sweet. Looking down, Cristiano could see the hollow at the nape of his fragile neck, the bumps of his spine. His heart felt as if it was splitting open.

His child.

His son.

Alexander looked up at him with liquid brown eyes that were full of trust. ‘Please can you read me a story?’

‘I—’

The words dried up in his mouth. Cristiano thrust his hand through his hair. He felt slightly faint.

‘No story tonight.’ Kate’s voice was firm as she crossed the room, bending swiftly to turn out the light and give Alexander a kiss. ‘It’s late, and you’re tired, but if you lie down I’m sure Cristiano will talk to you for a little while about the racing cars he drives.’

‘
Si
. Of course.’

As Kate walked past him to leave the room she glanced up at him. In the half-light from the landing his face bore an expression that was somewhere between relief and despair.

‘I love you, Cristiano.’

‘I love you too.
Ti amo, piccolino
.’

Pulling the door shut gently behind him, Cristiano stood out on the landing. Leaning against the wall, he exhaled heavily, despair weighing on him like a curse.

I love you.

He had never said those words before. He wasn’t even sure that he had felt them before—not in the fierce, primitive way he had felt them just now, when he had bent to kiss his son’s cheek. The impact of what it meant to be a father had hit him with the force of an avalanche, and he knew that he would do anything—
anything
—for his child.

If he could.

But what about the things he couldn’t do? What about those? Could he really be a good father? Or was it just another thing that he was destined to fail at? Was he going to let his son down in the same way as his mother?

He had got away with it tonight, thanks to Kate’s lucky intervention. But how long could he hide it? How long could he go on fooling her that he was something he wasn’t?

A shaft of light fell across the dark landing, and suddenly a shadow moved across it. He watched her move, watched the outline of her body perform its silent shadow-dance across the floor, and his spiralling thoughts stilled.

Arousal hardened him, temporarily blotting out the bitterness and the doubts.

A floorboard creaked as he moved across the floor, and the shadow twisted and undulated as she came to the door. And then he forgot about the flat monochrome outline of her because she was there in front of him, the lamplight turning her skin to warm honey and her hair to molten gold.

‘All right?’

Wordlessly he nodded, a lump in his throat. Suddenly he wanted to tell her—wanted to spill it all out and lay himself bare before her.

‘Cristiano…I—’ Her voice vibrated with an emotion he couldn’t quite identify, but which seemed to reach down
and touch him inside like ethereal fingers. In his state of heightened, painful arousal it was almost more than he could bear.

And he knew that at that moment he didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want to think. He just wanted to lose himself in her sweetness. Crossing the landing in one stride, he pulled her into his arms, pushing the door shut as he pressed his mouth down on hers. Her body was warm, her mouth as eager as his. With hungry, hurried fingers she pulled his shirt free of his trousers, sliding her hands up his chest, moaning her pleasure against him.

Swiftly he undid the button of her jeans, pulling them downwards along with her underwear as they both fell back onto the bed. The springs gave a screech of protest that made both of them freeze for a moment, clinging together as they listened for sounds from outside.

None came. But the interruption had altered the tempo of their passion. For long moments they gazed at each other before their lips slowly met again, hesitantly exploring, tasting, caressing. Rising above her, Cristiano unhurriedly trailed the tip of his tongue down the sweep of her throat. Her skin tasted faintly of the sea. She let her head fall back and he could hear her uneven breathing as he reached the neck of her T-shirt.

Gently he took hold of the hem, bringing it up over her head, his head reeling as her beautiful body was revealed. Her breasts were spilling out of the pink bra, so he slid his arms around her, pulling her against him as he unhooked it.

He had to clamp his teeth together to stop himself shouting out as he felt her warm, lovely flesh against his chest. Trailing his fingertips across her back, he lowered his head so that his lips hovered over one rose-tipped breast.

Time stalled.

Dio…Mio Dio…
She was so beautiful. So incredibly beautiful. Opening his mouth, he let out a deep, shuddering sigh, watching her flesh tighten and harden as his breath caressed it. His whole body burned with the need to sink inside her, but he held back, forcing himself to take it slowly as he covered
her breast in whisper-soft butterfly kisses, gradually moving his lips inwards towards her nipple.

She gave a whimpering gasp, raising her hands to cover her mouth. Cristiano felt wild, visceral satisfaction surge though him as her body tensed with pleasure. Her pleasure, her happiness, were the only things in the world that mattered.

But then she was gripping his shoulders, pulling him away. He raised his head, his head swimming with lust.

‘Kate?’

‘I want to see you,’ she breathed brokenly. ‘I want to feel your body against me and I want to look into your eyes.’

Very slowly she began to undo the buttons of his shirt, her gaze never faltering, her eyes gleaming like sapphires in the lamplight, seeming to look right down into his soul. It took every ounce of the self-control it had taken Cristiano a lifetime to acquire to keep still, to keep silent as her hands moved down to the fastening of his jeans.

Her breath quickened as she undid them. Her lips parted and for a brief second her eyelids fluttered.

It was enough. Almost delirious with need, he kicked off his jeans and hitched her further up on the bed, rising above her as she opened herself up for him.

Biting the insides of his cheeks he entered her very slowly, watching her face, noticing how her eyes never left his. They were locked together. Lost together. Her hands were on his shoulders, and then, as the rhythm of their bodies grew faster, she let him go, throwing them wide on the pillows, her fingers curling and uncurling as waves of pleasure rocked her.

He sensed her tensing, arching, and felt his own body gather itself in response. Then she brought her hand to her mouth, covering it as her hips ground against him and her internal muscles tightened convulsively on him.

For a moment he stilled completely as her high, breathless gasp quivered in the silence, then he gathered her to him, holding her tight against his chest as he shattered inside her.

Kate lay very still, listening to the beat of her own heart, the distant sound of the traffic on the main road that bypassed the village. Ordinary sounds, the sounds she had heard almost every night for the last three years, since she had moved here with a newborn Alexander.

This was the floor she had paced with him during those sleepless nights when he had been fretful and colicky, when she had stood at the window rocking him and staring out into the darkness, watching the lights of the cars. Counting them. Wishing and praying that one set of them would belong to Cristiano’s car as he came to find her.

He was here now. And in that moment nothing else mattered.

I
T WAS
still dark outside as Cristiano eased himself from the warmth of the old brass bed. The floorboards were icy beneath his feet.

Dio
, he must sort out something formal with Kate about money, he thought grimly, picking up his clothes from the floor and making his way as quietly as possible across the creaking landing. Just in time he remembered to duck his head as he went into the miniature bathroom. This house seemed to have been built for dolls, or for families of Victorian Yorkshire miners, so used to crawling along claustrophobic tunnels that they would have had no problem walking around with a permanent stoop at home.

Unlike him. If they were going to be a proper family they would need a proper family home to live in. More than one, probably. He imagined that Kate would want to keep a base here, near her family and friends, but it was important for him to have somewhere in Europe, to be close to the best facilities for training. It didn’t have to be Monaco, he thought vaguely as he splashed water on his face. Monza was good…

Straightening up, he looked at his reflection in the mirror above the basin.
It’s over,
he thought hoarsely.
The years of running away are over. I’ve found someone I want to stay with.

There was just the small matter of telling her about his past, he reflected soberly as he pulled on his clothes. He paused, feeling panic grip him for a second at the thought of what she
might say. Would she despise him for his lack of academic ability? Would she be able to spend her life with someone who wasn’t her intellectual equal and who had spent his teenage years bunking off school and stealing cars?

He clenched his fists, pressing them against his throbbing temples for a moment, closing his eyes as he struggled to regain his grip on rationality.

It was the first Grand Prix of the season in just over a week. If he could get back out there and prove himself, maybe he would be worthy of her. Maybe then she would see him as someone she could spend her life with.

The thin light of dawn was stealing through the curtains as he went softly back into the bedroom. His leather holdall lay on the floor by the window and he unzipped it, wincing slightly at the noise, and took something out of the inside pocket.

‘Cristiano?’

Her voice was soft and throaty. Tensing himself against another onslaught of desire, he turned to look at her.

‘
Si?
’

‘You’re dressed.’ As she struggled to sit up he saw the look of bewilderment on her face.

‘I have to go.’

She lifted one slender arm to her head, frowning as she pushed her tumbled hair back from her face. ‘Where?’

Cristiano felt desire stab him in the guts again, and steeled himself against it. If he gave in to the temptation to have her again now, there was a very real danger that he’d never leave.

‘Bahrain,’ he said with an apologetic smile.

‘Oh.’ It was a little indrawn breath, as if she had just got a paper cut.

‘It’s OK,’ Cristiano said gruffly, going towards her and putting the envelope Suki had organised for him down on top of a pile of thick novels on the bedside table.

‘What’s that?’ Her eyes were huge and frightened as she looked at the envelope.

‘Tickets. For you and Alexander—flights and a hotel and the Grand Prix itself. He’ll adore—’

‘No.’ Her face was suddenly ashen, her expression closed and blank. Clutching the bedcovers across her breasts, she reached for the washed out silk kimono that hung from a hook on the back of the door. ‘Sorry, Cristiano. I can’t.’

For a moment he thought it was something to do with the money, and that he’d offended her prickly sense of pride by making a gesture that she considered too extravagant. ‘Don’t be silly, Kate. It’s nothing—’

She’d got out of bed. His voice faltered as she turned away from him and he caught a glimpse of her pale, slender back and the curve of her perfect behind just before it was covered by faded rose-pink silk.

‘You don’t understand.’ She was trying to keep her voice quiet, so she didn’t wake Alexander, but he could hear the edge of hysteria in it. ‘I can’t go. I can’t watch you do that again. And I don’t want my son watching either.’

With that, she walked out of the room in a rustle of pink silk, leaving Cristiano standing by the bed. A slow beat of anger started up inside him. Cursing softly in Italian, he gathered up his bag and swung it over his shoulder as he followed her down the stairs.

He found her in the tiny kitchen. Her back was to him and she was filling the kettle at the sink.

‘He’s my son too.’

His voice was dangerously quiet. Kate turned. Standing in the doorway, he looked impossibly huge and intimidating. And distant. Very, very distant.

‘Then you shouldn’t want to encourage him,’ she whispered.

‘Encourage him? In what way, exactly?’

‘To do what you do. To think it’s a good idea to put his life on the line for public entertainment.’

Cristiano’s eyes glittered like black diamonds. The bliss they’d shared only a few hours ago, the intimacy, was like a fragment of a delicious dream, fading into oblivion with the
gathering light. Kate’s head spun. She felt as if she had stepped into a lift, only to find it was on some other floor and she was plunging down a dark, empty shaft.

‘That’s what you think I do?’

‘That
is
what you do, Cristiano. I watched you, remember?’ Kate’s voice was harder now, firmer, as she busied herself with the familiar, mindless routine of making coffee. ‘I watched women draping themselves all over you, and film crews and journalists swarming around, and crowds all screaming your name. And then I watched your car smash into a barrier and burst into flame—’ She broke off, giving a bitter parody of a laugh. ‘There’s nothing clever about killing yourself in a car, you know—any amateur can do that. Like my brother. Like my father.’

And that was it. It was the old nightmare from her childhood, back to get her after all these years. She had lowered her guard—just as she had in Courchevel—and this was what happened.

Leaning against the doorframe, Cristiano tipped his head back, looking at her through narrowed eyes. ‘I never claimed to be doing something clever,’ he drawled softly. ‘I’m just doing what I can to—’

‘What?’ Adrenaline pulsed through her as she cut him off. ‘Show the world that you’re not a failure? The fact is Cristiano, no one but you thinks that. You might have had a hard time at school, but to everyone else you’re a god—and to Alexander more than anyone.’

It was as if she’d slapped him. Suddenly the languor was gone and he was standing bolt upright, rigid, his hands clenched into fists as he came towards her.

‘What did you say?’

Her chin rose an inch. ‘I said your son needs you.’

‘Before that.’ His lips barely moved as he spoke. ‘About school. How did you know about that?’

‘Because you told me.’ The words came out with quiet emphasis. ‘You told me everything on that first night we spent together. You told me about the struggle you had at school,
and about the sacrifices your mother made to give you an education. You told me about how disappointed she was when you didn’t do well, when you started skipping lessons and hanging out with a bad crowd. You told me about how Silvio came to your rescue when you stole his car, offering you an apprenticeship instead of pressing charges, and you told me how angry she was when you accepted it.’

‘Enough.’

The word was like the lash of a whip on Kate’s tightly reined emotions. For a while yesterday it had seemed so possible because it had felt so
right
—the three of them together. But now she knew that she had been fooling herself. There could be no happy ending because she had fallen in love with a man who represented everything that scared her most.

‘I know how she felt, Cristiano. She loved you. She just wanted you to be safe.’

‘No,’ he spat, his eyes burning in a face that was suddenly parchment-pale. ‘You’re wrong about that. She
didn’t
love me. She hated me. I made her life an utter misery, and then I killed her.’

There was a small, stunned silence.

Turning away, Cristiano dragged a hand over his eyes. Suddenly he looked unbearably weary. ‘See—I didn’t quite tell you
everything
, did I?’

‘That’s not true,’ Kate whispered, in a voice that sounded as if she had just swallowed strychnine.

‘Yes, it is. She had cancer. She didn’t tell me. Who knows? She might have tried, but I was never there—sometimes I didn’t come home for days. She must have known that she had it for ages, but she didn’t go to the doctor because all her money was taken up with paying for my education. And because she knew that if she went into hospital I’d go completely off the rails.’

‘But that shows that she was thinking of you.’ Kate was pleading the case of a woman she’d never met. ‘Putting you first.’

‘She wanted me to
better
myself.’ His voice dripped irony.
Pulling out a chair, he sprawled into it, propping his elbows on the table, raking his hands through his hair. ‘To pull myself out of the poverty my waster of a father had left her in. To her, that meant getting a good education and being a doctor or a lawyer. When I started my apprenticeship with Campano she thought I had signed up for a life of dead-end manual labour. It was like throwing everything she’d ever given me back in her face.’

The coffee stood cooling in mugs on the table. Neither of them picked one up. Kate’s head throbbed as she struggled to find the right words. It felt like picking her way through a shark-infested swamp.

‘That’s why it mattered to you to win, I know,’ she said hoarsely. ‘To prove to her that you were a success. But that’s over now. You don’t have anything to prove to anyone.’

‘Yes, I do. To my son.’

There was something terrifyingly final about the way he said it. Looking up at him, Kate knew with a chilling despair that the sharks were circling, closing in on her.

‘He’ll love you anyway—no matter what you do,’ she said, unable to keep the desperation from ringing through every syllable. ‘That’s the thing about being a father: to your child you’re always a god, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a bus driver or a racing driver.’

Leaning back in his chair, he smiled, but his eyes were flinty. ‘Exactly. That’s why I have to do something to deserve that respect—or else one day he’ll find out that I’m nothing.’

‘You’re not nothing.’ Kate suddenly realised she was very cold. Speaking through clenched teeth, she pulled her robe more tightly around her. ‘You’re dyslexic, Cristiano. You have a really common condition that makes reading and writing and letter recognition difficult. It’s not usually fatal, but in your case it just might be—because it’s combined with an arrogant pride that means you have to prove yourself all the time.’

He got to his feet, looking at her with hollow eyes. ‘You knew about this all along?’

‘Yes.’ It was a breathless whisper. She could feel the tears burning at the back of her eyes, the sobs swelling in her throat. ‘I knew because once you trusted me enough to tell me. You felt enough to want to explain. When I came to find you again, I hoped that you might still feel the same way—’ She broke off and gave an odd, hiccupping gasp. ‘And then I found out that the crash had made you forget. And I
so
wanted you to feel that way all over again. But you didn’t.’

He was utterly still, as if he had been turned to stone. The expression on his face was one of tightly restrained pain. Raising his hands, he held them up for a moment, and then let them fall to his sides again.

‘I asked you to marry me once before, and you said no,’ he said, in a voice like barbed wire. ‘Well, I’m asking again now. Marry me, Kate—not for Alexander’s sake, or to give him a stable background, but for yours. For ours. Because I—’

‘No, Cristiano!’ The words came out on a great tearing sob. ‘I can’t spend the rest of my life waiting to lose you! I can’t sit on the sidelines, or in the pit lane, or at home, and watch you kill yourself. I can’t live off the money you earn from gambling with your life.’

He backed off, his hands curling into fists now, his expression hardening so that his perfect face might have been sculpted from marble. ‘So you’d rather not be happy, because then that happiness can’t be taken away from you?’

Kate made herself look at him—even though it hurt, even though her whole face felt numb, as if she was standing in the teeth of a raging, icy gale. Slowly she shook her head.

‘I wouldn’t be happy.’

It was a whisper. Like a confession. Hearing it, Cristiano closed his eyes for the briefest moment before his face became expressionless again.

‘In that case I won’t ask you again,’ he said harshly. ‘I’ll get my solicitor to be in touch about Alexander. I hope we can sort it out amicably.’

And then he turned and went, and Kate was left standing dry-eyed and shaking in the kitchen. She didn’t move at all as she listened to the throb of the car’s engine grow fainter in the distance, until the silence swallowed it up and she was alone.