Ripped (4 page)

‘Come,’ he ordered softly, and normally I was very bad at doing what I was told but this time our objectives were clearly aligned and I tightened my hand around the glorious thickness of him and then heard someone calling my name.

‘Hayley?’ It was my sister, using one of her frantic stage whispers, knocking on doors as she searched for me. Presumably she’d finally stopped laughing for long enough to work out I might be in trouble.

Shit
.

Nico and I stared at each other, eyes and mouths still locked together. My body was suspended in a state of intense excitement.

For once in my life I wished Rosie had just carried on laughing and not tried to help me out.

Here I was, hovering on the edge of what I knew was going to be the best orgasm of my life with the hottest man I was ever going to meet and my sister was banging on the door.

I was going to kill her. Slowly. If I was going to die in agony then I was going to make sure she did, too.

‘Hayley? Are you OK?’

It was a measure of how turned on I was that having my sister banging on the door hadn’t made any difference to the way I felt.

Nico swore against my mouth (in both Italian and English, in case you were wondering), and I was just about to ask whether he’d locked the door when it burst open.

Fortunately Nico had his back to our audience, shielding me. I had yet another reason to be thankful for those broad, muscular shoulders.

With admirable calm, he removed his fingers and his mouth from my body and somehow managed to pull my dress down and draw the lapels of his jacket together at the same time. He was impressive in a crisis—smooth and composed. Rosie had seen most of it before, of course. We’d lived together since we left home to go to college and we didn’t lock doors very often, so at this point I was more exasperated than embarrassed.

But then I looked past his shoulders (and that took some willpower, I can tell you, because it was the best view I’d seen in a long time) and saw a shocked face that didn’t belong to my sister.

Nico’s sister was staring at him as if she’d never seen him before.

Oh crappity, crap, crap
.

Her eyes were wide and shocked, her mouth slightly agape.

She obviously thought I’d corrupted her usually controlled brother. And maybe I had. I was certainly well on my way. From the moment he’d touched me, I’d thought about nothing but him. And before you judge me I can tell you without a flicker of doubt that if this man had kissed you, you wouldn’t have been thinking of anything but him either.

He swore under his breath. ‘Go back to the church, Kiara.’ It was a command, and she colored and stepped back without question.

If he’d spoken to me like that I would have posted his Tom Ford suit to a worthy charity, but she didn’t say a word. Just obeyed him like a puppy in an obedience class.

I decided it must be the shock that had stopped her from standing up for herself. And I was responsible for that shock.

So much for having a sexual relationship without emotional involvement
. It seemed that no matter what rules you played by,
someone
always got hurt.

I wanted to tell her not to worry, that we hated each other really, but she’d already gone and I was left with more than a split dress to worry about.

I’d thought my embarrassment couldn’t get any deeper.

Turned out I’d been wrong about that, too.

Chapter Four

‘Best wedding
ever
.’ It was Christmas Eve and Rosie was stretching on the living room floor, surrounded by half-wrapped Christmas presents. She spent a lot of time stretching. I’d learned to give her a wide berth because there had been more than one occasion when I’d moved too close and ended up with her foot in my face. She’d started karate at the age of six, then she’d added in Muay Thai when she was eighteen and met— But I wasn’t allowed to mention him. Let’s just say we call him He Who Shall Not Be Named (and he’s not that Voldemort guy from
Harry Potter
, although from the smile on my sister’s face at the time I think he might have had a magic wand hidden somewhere).

‘Glad you were entertained.’

Snow drifted lazily past the windows. The streets of London were white and everyone was wrapped up against the cold in bright scarves and outrageous hats. That was one of the many things I loved about living in London. People weren’t afraid to dress creatively, especially where we lived. In Notting Hill we were surrounded by artists, musicians and writers. And my angel-faced, karate-loving, kick-boxing sister.

I snuggled deeper into the sofa, my laptop balanced on my thighs because I couldn’t be bothered to walk to the table and anyway, it saved on heating bills. ‘Can we stop talking about the wedding?’

She’d been laughing non-stop for the past three days.

Sisterly love was wearing thin.

I pretended to be absorbed by my laptop, but if I was honest I’d barely done any work since we’d arrived home from the wedding. I couldn’t concentrate. My brain was jammed up with the hottest memory of my life. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. About
him
. Mostly about the way Mr Super Cool had gone from ignoring me to virtually having sex with me. The change in him had been shocking and, well, exciting. What wasn’t so exciting was the fact it had been interrupted and there was no chance of a repeat performance, which basically meant I was doomed to die of sexual frustration. Not that I hadn’t tried to do something about that, but no vibrator was ever going to come close to the unique bedroom talents of Nico Rossi. It was like watching a boxed set, ending an episode on a cliffhanger and then realizing you’d lost the final DVD. I desperately wanted to know what happened next.

But I was never going to because Nico hadn’t liked me before the wedding, so he was going to like me even less since I ruined the day and walked off with his Tom Ford.

For a couple of days I’d nurtured a fantasy he might contact me, but of course he hadn’t. Real life is a split dress and embarrassment, not a hot guy ringing you.

I answered another email, trying to block out the memory of the wedding. I’d scoured YouTube for days, checking that no one had uploaded a video of my dizzying descent into ignominy. So far all seemed well, but if I could have dug a hole and lived underground for a while, I would have done. ‘Why the hell did you have to walk in when you did?’

‘Why the hell didn’t you lock the door if you were planning to have sex? I’ve wrapped a load of “spare” presents by the way. They’re the ones without labels.’ She spun and kicked, almost removing a lamp from the table. If the lamp had been a person, it would have been unconscious. And she wondered why men were intimidated by her. Sex with my sister could probably have been classified as a lethal sport.

And talking of sex…

‘We weren’t having sex!’ I watched as Rosie paused to arrange the presents in a pile under the perfectly shaped fir tree we’d picked up from the garden centre. I would have had a fake one, but she said we had so much fake in our life growing up, we deserved the real thing. Personally I didn’t see anything romantic about picking dried green needles out of the bottom of your feet in March, but that was just me. ‘Haven’t you overdone the “spare” presents this year?’

My sister always bought extra Christmas presents. She said it was because it made the tree look festive, but I knew her idea of a terrible Christmas would be for someone to turn up and her not have a gift for them. She was very generous—it was all linked with her fairy-tale view of the world. Not that she was idealistic, but she believed you could make your own fairy tale if you worked hard enough at it. Who needed a prince when you had a credit card and online shopping? When we were little she was the one who danced around the room in pink tights with a tiara on her head, pretending to be a princess. Then our parents split up and she decided she’d rather be the Karate Kid.

My sister’s most important self-created fairy tale was Christmas. Because we’d never had a proper family Christmas, she overcompensated madly. Hence the tree, the stockings and her determination that no one we knew would spend the day alone.

‘I’m going to pick up the turkey.’ She spun and executed another kick and her blonde hair flew around her face. There were times when I thought she should have auditioned to play Bond (and I do mean Bond, not the dopey girl planted in the film so he can have sex). She trained for hours every day, but it had paid off and she’d landed a great job coaching martial arts at Fit and Physical in the City. She was also building a list of clients for personal training. Her results were startling, but I guessed that was because they were all terrified of my sweet-faced sister. If you didn’t put in effort she kicked your butt. Literally.

Another ten emails pinged into my inbox. We were in the middle of this huge project at work and it wasn’t going away just because most of London had shut down for the holidays.

Half of me was hoping one of those emails was from Nico. I didn’t need to tell you which half but let’s put it this way—I was wondering if it was too late to ask Santa for a new vibrator. Was there one called The Niccolò? That was the one I wanted.

Idly I typed ‘vibrator—the Niccolò’ into the search engine. ‘I have to send the jacket back.’

‘You can’t do it today—he won’t be in the office. It’s Christmas Eve and it’s snowing.’ Rosie grabbed her coat. ‘Come with me. Better than moping.’

‘I’m not moping.’

‘You’re moping. And dreaming in Italian.’

I closed the lid of my laptop so she couldn’t see what I’d just typed. I had
some
secrets. ‘If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t have had to dream. I would have had reality. I would have put my New Year’s resolution of emotionless sex into practice.’

‘It would have been a waste to rush something so good with a man that hot.’

‘So instead I didn’t get to do it at all? How is that better?’ I ducked as she threw me my coat. ‘I’m not going out. I still haven’t recovered from being naked in church. Someone might recognize me.’

‘The advantage of being naked from the waist up is that no one was looking at your face.’ Rosie threw my scarf. ‘Unless what you’re working on is an emergency, you’re coming.’

I wished she hadn’t used those exact words.

I wasn’t coming. That was the point. And yes, it was close to an emergency. At this rate I’d need resuscitation. Mouth-to-mouth. And mouth to— Well, you get the point. All I could think of was sex, which wasn’t good when there was no immediate hope for a satisfactory resolution.

Maybe freezing cold and snow would reduce the need for a vibrator.

It didn’t, but I had to admit there was something uplifting about walking through Notting Hill on Christmas Eve. Shop windows sparkled with lights and decorations and everyone was smiling, which didn’t make sense when you thought about the number of people who found this a miserable time of year or didn’t celebrate, but maybe they’d all stayed indoors.

A family strolled past, dragging an enormous tree. They were all holding hands. A mother, father and two very excited children with pink cheeks and shiny expressions. Something twisted inside me. I didn’t understand how I could envy that when it wasn’t what I wanted.

I caught Rosie’s eye and she shrugged, reading my mind.

That was one of the things I loved about my sister. Not only did she know what I was thinking without me saying it, but the past was the past. If something was messed up, then she was going to make sure she did it differently in the future. She was all about moving forward.

Snow was falling on her hair and I thought how pretty she was. Dancer-slim with amazing green eyes and blonde hair that licked around her face and fell to her shoulders. Long, slim limbs that could knock you out with one kick. It was her superpower.

Everyone else was thinking about Christmas, but I was thinking about the wedding. ‘Do you think I ruined their big day?’

‘No, but it would serve them right if you did. It was mean of them to insist you be a bridesmaid. Not that he was right for you, but they never should have put you in that position.’

She was my sister. It was her job to try and make me feel better, but I really wanted to believe her. It was Christmas Eve and no one wanted to feel bad about themselves on Christmas Eve.

‘It’s kind of ironic that I went because of my pride, and ended up half-naked in public and then kissing a man who hates me.’

Rosie made a snorting sound. ‘He doesn’t hate you. The two of you have chemistry. You always have. You two have always been much better suited than you and Charlie.’

I stopped dead and gaped at her. ‘How can you say that?’ I analyzed the evidence. ‘Nico Rossi has barely ever spoken to me. Whenever we’re in the same room, he ignores me. He doesn’t like me.’ Which made the whole thing all the more confusing. How could I possibly have had such a hot encounter with a man who didn’t like me?

‘He arranged for a car to drive us home from the wedding so you didn’t have to face the guests. That must have cost him a fortune.’

And I’d already tucked the money into the pocket of his Tom Ford. I didn’t want to be in debt to Nico. ‘He did it because he wanted to get us out of there. I’d already ruined the wedding.’

‘He rescued you when everyone else stood around gawping.’ My sister had stopped, too. Snow settled on her blonde hair. ‘He gave you his jacket. He didn’t have to do that.’

I frowned. ‘He didn’t want me naked in a church.’

My sister bent gracefully and scooped up a handful of snow, forming it into a snowball. ‘Who gave you a lift home the night you invited a load of us to celebrate your new job and Charlie proceeded to ignore you and get wasted?’

‘Nico.’ That evening had been the beginning of the end for Charlie and me. He’d proposed the day after, as an alternative to taking the job. I’d thought he was still drunk and kidding. Turned out he was sober and dead serious. He saw marriage to him as a preferable career option. ‘Nico, but he was driving past my house anyway.’

I waited for her to say ‘yes, you’re right’, but instead she watched me steadily and suddenly I wondered what explanation Nico had given his sister. Maybe he’d told her it hadn’t been his fault, that he’d been assaulted by my bare breasts and had merely been defending himself. He was a lawyer. I was pretty sure he could plead self-defense better than anyone.