The Secret She Can't Hide (8 page)

She breathed in sharply, struggling to sit up. An expression of exquisite desolation flickered across her face.

‗
Cristiano…
‘

‗I‘m here.‘ He answered automatically, instinctively lowering his voice to a whisper in the velvety silence of the dark house.

Her eyes opened. They were filled with anguish, swimming with tears. For a moment they fixed on his face with a sort of hazy, unfocused pain, and then they closed again, the tears silently spilling over.

‗Kate…‘

His heart faltered. Without thinking he lowered himself to sit on the bed beside her and pulled her against him, pressing his mouth against her hair and murmuring soothing sounds that were somewhere between English and Italian. Her hair smelled clean and sweet, and her body felt soft and voluptuous in his arms.

Unlike his. His body felt uncomfortably taut and rigid.

He lay very still, his teeth gritted against the huge, powerful waves of lust and want that battered against him, not daring to move, calling up every ounce of the iron self-discipline and will-power that had got him through the last four years.

And then, very gently, he felt her pull back from him and raise her head, so that she was looking up into his face.

‗You really
are
here…‘ she breathed.

And then, as if compelled by primitive forces completely outside their control, their mouths met. Kate‘s limbs were stiff, and chilled from sleeping in the cramped seat, but the touch of Cristiano‘s lips against hers brought her to life again, until her body was flaming and fluid with want.

She was still in some place halfway between sleeping and waking. Dimly she was aware of warmth, the scent of woodsmoke that filled the house, and moonlight spilling silver through the window onto the blissfully smooth sheets of a bed. But all of that was simply a background to the otherworldly ecstasy of his kiss. The anguish of the familiar dream still lingered, firing her with a fierce, focused passion, and as her fingers slid into his silken hair her senses reeled with the scent of his skin—carried in her head all this time.

She clutched at his back and felt hard muscles moving beneath her palms as he tore his mouth from hers and gazed down at her with eyes that burned through the half-light.

‘Kate…?’

It was a thousand questions in a single rasping word. She answered them by slowly reaching up and pulling off the jumper she had put on over her dress earlier that night. Her cheeks were still wet with the tears she had shed when she‘d thought this was just another dream, another goodbye.

She‘d said goodbye to him so many times in her dreams these last four years and woken alone. But now he was here, and the sheer miracle of that fact made her uncharacteristically bold. She wanted him. She had wanted him for so long that her body cried out with an urgency that wouldn‘t be hushed until he was inside her.

Her eyes never left his face. It was set like granite—as cool and pale and expressionless as an effigy on a tomb—but she saw the flare of molten desire in his eyes and it made her blood quicken and sing. Reaching up, she began to undo the buttons of his shirt with shaking fingers. Delicious, desperate want was building inside her like a silent scream as, inch by inch, his olive-skinned chest was revealed.

With a muffled curse he brought his hand up, trapping hers.

‗Is this what you want?‘ he growled.

‗Yes.‘ Her voice was a breathless shivering whisper. ‗I want
you
.‘ Freeing her hands from beneath his, she reached up and took his face between them, speaking with ferocious longing into his eyes. ‗I want you to
remember
.‘

For a second they gazed mutely at each other, and then with a sort of moan of surrender he was pulling her against him as his mouth came down on hers. The quiet room was filled with the sound of their breathing, the rustle of satin, and Kate‘s whimper of bliss as his hand slid beneath her skirt to meet the bare flesh of her thigh. Arching her back reflexively, she lifted her knees, bringing them up around his waist, opening herself for him.

The bed was soft and wide, and the black and silver world of moonlight and shadow beyond it had ceased to exist. Their fingers tangled together as they both fumbled with the buckle of Cristiano‘s belt. Kate raised her hips, desperate to be free of the tiny silk knickers Lizzie had insisted on buying, wriggling out of them and spreading herself starfish-like, throbbing with anticipation, on the feather quilt.

Every inch of her skin tingled with the need for his touch. She wanted him—all of him—on her and in her, with an urgency that struck her dumb.

But he understood. His hands moved up the insides of her thighs. Big hands.

Clever, strong, capable hands. Expert hands that left a quivering trail of rapture in their wake. His face was inches from hers. Their mouths opened and clashed again in a searing, devouring kiss before he pulled back again, holding her in his dark, hypnotic gaze as he entered her.

Oh, God, the relief. The screaming, delirious relief and joy and rightness turned her boneless and emptied her head of thought. She grasped a fistful of his silken hair as the rhythm of their movements grew more urgent and the old wooden bed creaked with every hard, hungry thrust.

Bliss opened up in front of her like a chasm. She felt Cristiano falter, heard his indrawn breath as his body tensed, and for a shimmering, breathless moment she teetered on the brink as time stopped and tears rained down her cheeks. And then she was falling, her fingers digging into the hard muscle of his back as she hurtled downwards into ecstasy.

Her high cry of pleasure echoed through the dark house, then faded into silence. Downstairs a clock ticked steadily, and the mountains stood around like watchful sentinels, impassive witnesses to her fragile joy.

Chapter Five

DAWN came, painting the sky a translucent and delicate shell-pink. Kate watched the last few diamond stars blur and dissolve, and the moon fade until it was little more than a pale fingerprint.

She had slept little and woken when it was still dark, watching as the room that had been no more than a shadowy background to last night‘s bliss gradually assembled itself into wood-panelled walls, a sloping, heavily beamed roof, solid pieces of furniture. Cristiano‘s arm was hooked around her waist, his hand resting between her breasts, his body hard and delicious at her back.

She felt warm, sated, oddly at peace. It was as if her brain, shocked by an overload of pleasure last night, had simply shut down, leaving nothing but the physical sensations of the moment. The past seemed as distant and unreal as a bad dream, and the future beyond this room, this wooden house surrounded by pine trees and snow-covered mountains, was impossible to contemplate.

She stretched her legs out, twisting carefully onto her back so that she could look into Cristiano‘s sleeping face. He stirred slightly, moving his arm and letting it come to rest again with his palm against her midriff, but his dark lashes barely flickered.

She felt her heart crack open.

Against the white pillow, beside her pale English skin, his was exotically dark, but aside from that, and the shadow of stubble on his jaw, every line of his face reminded her with exquisite poignancy of Alexander. She let her gaze wander over his fine dark brows and perfectly straight nose, downwards to the steep curve of his upper lip, the slight indentation in the lower one, the firm, square chin.

God, he was so beautiful. But, more than that, he was the man who had helped create the little boy she loved so much. The father of her child.

Gently she eased herself out of his arms and slid out of the bed. Taking great care not to wake him, she reached for the shirt he had worn last night and slipped her arms into it, then picked up her velvet evening bag from a red-upholstered armchair and opened it up to get out her phone.

Beside it was the letter. The letter with its bald lines stating the facts of Alexander‘s existence, the address of the sterile solicitor‘s office where any further contact should be directed. She felt a small pulse of pain and quickly snapped the clasp shut again. Dropping the bag back onto the chair, she tiptoed out of the room.

None of the curtains had been closed, so the clear pink light flooded in, making it easy for her to find her way downstairs. It was like a treehouse, Kate thought in wonder as she made her way silently through the smoke-scented living room and into the kitchen. Everything—from the panelled walls and beamed ceilings to the rug-strewn floor and hand-made kitchen cupboards—was made of polished, mellow wood. As she filled the kettle at the huge porcelain sink she felt like Goldilocks, making herself at home in the house of the Three Bears.

Champagne bottles clinked in the door of the fridge as she opened it to look for milk, and she saw that the shelves were stocked with eggs, slender packets of smoked salmon, and paper-wrapped parcels of butter and cheese.

Francine Fournier was a life-saver in more ways than one, she thought wryly.

A Scandinavian long-case clock ticked softly at one end of the low room, and, glancing at it, Kate picked up her phone. It was still very early, and an hour earlier in England, but as both Alexander and Ruby were horribly early risers it was highly likely that Lizzie and Dominic would have been up for a while. Waiting for one of them to answer, Kate looked out of the window at the silent mountains, as pink as marshmal-low in the rising sun, and pictured their familiar big, untidy kitchen. She felt as if she was on another planet, rather than merely in another country.

‗Hello?‘ The voice on the other end of the line sounded distracted.

‗Lizzie—it‘s me.‘ In the silent house Kate kept her voice low. ‗Did I wake you?‘

‗Kate, honey! Of course you didn‘t wake me—we‘re on our second game of Snakes and Ladders here. I just didn‘t expect
you
to be up this early. You‘re supposed to be either lazing around in bed and making the most of valuable child-free time to sleep, or having wild sex with the gorgeous Signor Maresca.‘

‗Well…‘ Kate found she was smiling as her insides constricted sharply at the memory of last night.

There was an ear-splitting squeal at the other end of the line. ‗Kate, you didn‘t! Oh. My. God. He recognised you?‘

Kate felt her smile fade again. ‗Not exactly. It‘s a long story. But I‘m with him…‘

‗He‘s there now?‘ Lizzie dropped her voice to a theatrical whisper. ‗Have you told him about Alexander?‘

‗No. And no.‘ The kettle had finished boiling and, wedging the phone against her ear, Kate spooned coffee into a glass cafetière and poured on water.

‗It‘s not that simple.‘

That was an understatement. She didn‘t know where to begin to explain about Cristiano not being able to remember her, but suddenly she realised that that wasn‘t actually the most important thing. She frowned. ‗He‘s not how I remembered him, Lizzie. It‘s not…the same.‘ She paused, a shiver running through her as she remembered the hardness of his face when he‘d looked at her in the Casino, the chips of ice in his eyes. Outside the window the sun had just begun to appear over the top of the mountains, pouring down biblical beams of gold. Kate closed her eyes, feeling its tentative warmth on her cheek.

‗Well, that‘s not surprising.‘ Lizzie‘s voice, with its familiar, down-to-earth Yorkshire vowels, was reassuringly brisk. ‗Four years is a long time, and a lot has happened to you both. But the main thing is that you‘re with him, and the old chemistry is obviously still there. You just have to come out with it.‘

‗It‘s not the kind of thing you can just casually drop into conversation.‘

In her head it had been clear-cut, black and white: either he would reject her completely or—and she had hardly allowed herself to go down this route—they would have the kind of emotional reunion people did in films, just before the credits rolled, accompanied by a lot of swelling music and preferably a sunset. Not for a moment had she considered finding herself in this position. Being with him, back in his bed…but a million miles from the place they had been last time. The place he didn‘t even know existed now, to which she somehow had to try to find her way back.

‗I don‘t want him to feel like I‘ve trapped him,‘ she said softly. ‗I don‘t want to force him into anything.‘

‗You‘re hardly forcing him—or rushing him, for that matter.‘

Kate could vividly imagine Lizzie raising her eyes to heaven as she spoke.

‗You‘ve been bringing his son up single-handed for the last three years, and you didn‘t exactly have a lot of choice about it.‘

‗I know.‘ Kate sighed. Lizzie was on her side, she knew that, but she also knew that she would never understand. Strong, forthright Lizzie would never recognise the feeling Kate had now—as if she was cradling a butterfly between her hands, afraid of holding it so tightly she crushed it, afraid of letting it go and watching it fly away. ‗It‘s just I‘m scared—‘

‗Now, look—don‘t do your usual trick of jumping straight into the worst-case scenario.‘ Lizzie cut her off, sounding suddenly distracted and impatient. In the background Kate could hear a child crying. A frisson of alarm ran through her.

‗Is that Alexander? Is everything all right?‘

The line crackled and her own voice echoed back in her ear, sharp with anxiety.

‗Everything‘s fine.‘ Was it the slight delay on the line, or did Lizzie hesitate before answering? ‗Now, go and get straight back into bed with your man, and stop worrying about everything. Have a fabulous time, and we‘ll speak later, honey—OK?‘

‗OK. Thanks, Lizzie. Give Alexander a big kiss from me, won‘t you? And tell him…‘

She trailed off, picturing Alexander‘s sweet face as emotion swelled inside her.

‗Sorry, what was that?‘

‗Just that I love him. And I‘ll be home soon.‘

But as she cut the call she found she didn‘t want to think about that.

Ten minutes later, very carefully balancing a tray laden with fresh coffee, warm brioche, yellow Normandy butter from the fridge and a jar of honey that had been left on the worktop, Kate gently pushed open the bedroom door.

The sun spilled into the room, warming the bare-boarded floor and turning the tangle of crisp white linen on the bed into a mini-replica of the snowy landscape outside. Cristiano was lying on his front, one bronzed, muscular arm thrown out across the pillows. The duvet lay loosely over his hips, exposing his bare back.

Glancing at him, Kate instantly felt her throat dry, and the china on the tray rattled as a tremor of pure lust went through her. He was a study in masculine perfection—a Leonardo sketch brought to warm, satin-skinned life. The muscles of his massive shoulders were clearly defined, the ridges of his ribs visible beneath the butterscotch-coloured flesh where his body tapered down to his narrow hips.

‗
Buongiorno
.‘

She jumped, placing the objects on the tray in further jeopardy and letting out a little gasp of shock. She‘d been so busy gazing at his delicious body that she hadn‘t noticed that his dark, hooded eyes were half open and he was watching her.

‗Oh…S-sorry,‘ she stammered as the colour flooded into her cheeks. ‗I‘m just…I mean, I was trying not to…wake you.‘

He sat up in one lithe, rippling movement, like a panther uncurling itself, and pushed his tousled hair back from his forehead.

‗I was awake already.‘ His voice was deep and husky with sleep.

Setting the tray down on the edge of the bed, Kate busied herself moving things around on it to stop herself from staring at him with her mouth open.

‗I heard you talking downstairs.‘

‗I was on the phone.‘ Oh, God, she hoped he hadn‘t heard what she was saying. She could feel her blush intensify as she looked up at him through her hair and smiled shyly. ‗I was calling a cab, actually. Last night didn‘t quite live up to my expectations, so I thought there was no point in sticking around.‘

His lips quirked into a sardonic half-smile. ‗Not as good as last time? I must have lost my touch.‘

Pouring coffee and handing it to him, Kate kept her face completely straight.

‗Probably you just need a bit more practice. It‘s all about training and focus, you see…‘

Joking about it was the only way she could think of handling this. She had to keep it light. Casual.

‗You sound like Silvio.‘ He put the cup down and caught hold of her hand, pulling her down against his chest. ‗And you seem to know quite a lot about it.‘

The musky, masculine scent of his skin made her feel lightheaded with longing. ‗Only what you told me last time when I interviewed you.‘

He raised an eyebrow. ‗I told you about sex?‘ With one hand he lazily started to unbutton the white shirt. In an instant Kate was drenched with want.

‗No,‘ she gasped. ‗About racing. The sex part was more of a…practical demonstration.‘ His fingers moved downwards, skimming her quivering skin as he slowly undid each button. She gave a breathless laugh. ‗It was my first time.‘

His hand stilled. Kate felt a tiny prickle of alarm and looked up into his face.

His eyes were impossibly dark and utterly unreadable, and although she was still lying in his arms there was something about him that had quite suddenly withdrawn from her.

‗In that case I probably owe you an apology.‘

‗Why?‘

He detached himself from her, leaning over and picking up the mug of coffee he‘d put on the bedside table a few minutes ago. ‗Because I‘m quite sure as first times went it left a lot to be desired—emotionally, if not technically,‘ he drawled.

The sun streaming through the huge window turned his skin to gold and made him seem more beautiful and unreachable than ever. Kate‘s heart constricted.

Sitting up, reaching for her own coffee, she breathed in the fragrant steam for a second and shook her head.

‗No. No, it was…‘ She paused, taking a mouthful of coffee and hoping it would dislodge the hard lump of emotion in her throat.

This was her chance to try to bring alive some of the magic of that long, deep, breathless night.

But how?

‗Well?‘

His heavy-lidded eyes were mocking, but she found the laughter that had been bubbling up inside her had vanished and she couldn‘t joke about it any more.

‗It was…special.‘ She stared down into her mug. Her voice sounded husky with the emotions she was trying to hold back. ‗It was
good.
Not just the s-sex bit, but all of it.‘ She looked up at him, trying to keep the pleading note from her voice.

‗Didn‘t last night make any of it come back?‘

‗No.‘

Aware of the ice in his tone, Cristiano leaned forward with deceptive nonchalance, reaching for a brioche and tearing into it with quiet savagery. He had woken up feeling more at peace than he could remember at any time since the accident, and had lain for a while in the warm, sun-filled room, looking at the majesty of the mountains, his mind going slowly over what had happened.

But it was the moonlight on the snow, the rustle of satin, the taste of salt tears on her skin as he‘d kissed her that filled his head. Not the faintest echo of a hot night in Monaco four years ago. No miraculous revelation. No sudden blinding epiphany. Just the same black hole—only now it seemed even darker and more fathomless than ever.

Making a huge effort to keep his voice neutral, he said, ‗You‘ll just have to tell me about it instead.‘

‗I don‘t know where to start.‘

She sucked a drizzle of honey off the side of her hand. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, wearing his shirt, with last night‘s make-up smudged beneath eyes that were the same blue as the sky above the mountains, she looked absurdly young and heart-wrenchingly pretty. So much for being plain and boring, Cristiano thought acidly as desire uncoiled inside him again. It would be a lot more convenient if she was.

‗How about at the beginning?‘

‗Well,‘ she began hesitantly, ‗it was a really hot day…‘