chapter EIGHT
THE FORTIETH DAY dawned with no less than three emails from his assistant detailing the precise time the helicopter would arrive to transport him back to Sicily, and Alessandro still wasn’t ready.
He’d run out of excuses. He had to return home or risk damaging Corretti Media in a way he might not be able to fix, and despite his attempts to cut off the part of him that cared about that, he knew he couldn’t let it happen. He was the CEO, and he was needed. And he had to deal with his family before they all imploded, something his mother’s daily, increasingly hysterical voice-mail messages suggested was imminent.
He had to go back to his life. His attempt to leave it behind had only ever been a temporary measure, a reaction to that cursed wedding. It wasn’t him. Duty, responsibility—they beat in him still, and grew louder by the day.
But he couldn’t leave Elena. Not now that he’d discovered she was the woman he’d believed she was from the start. Not now that everything had changed.
He didn’t know what she wanted, however, and the uncertainty was like a fist in his gut. It had been hard enough to convince her to remain on the island once she’d discovered she wasn’t pregnant.
“There’s no reason to stay here any longer.” She’d attempted that calm, cool smile he hated and he’d taken pleasure in the fact she couldn’t quite pull it off, sitting there so primly in the sitting area of his bedchamber, dressed only in one of his shirts and all of the smooth, bare flesh of her legs on display. “Our arrangement was based entirely around waiting to find out—”
“That arrangement was based on the premise that you were still engaged to Niccolo Falco,” he’d said, cutting her off. “Working for him, in fact. A spy.” He’d smiled. “You are none of those things, cara.”
“Most importantly, I’m not pregnant,” she’d argued, with a stubborn tilt to her chin. “What you thought about me until yesterday is irrelevant, really.”
“Do you think he’s still searching for you?” he’d asked calmly when he’d wanted nothing more than to put his mouth on her—to remind her how they were anything but irrelevant. And despite that black punch of murderous rage that slammed into him at the thought of Niccolo.
“I know he is,” she’d said with a shrug. “He sends me an email every week or so, to make sure I never forget it.” She’d smiled then, but it was far too bitter. “It was a good thing I stopped waitressing and took the yacht job. He was in Cefalù only a few days behind me.”
He’d had to force his violent fury down, shove it under wraps, before he’d been able to say another word—and even then, the dark pulse of his temper was in every clipped syllable.
“Do you really believe I will simply let you go like this?” he’d asked. “Wash my hands of you and go about my business while that bastard runs you into the ground? What makes you think that’s a possibility?”
Something he hadn’t been able to identify chased over her face then, but had echoed in him all the same.
“It’s not your decision,” she’d said after a moment. “It’s mine.”
They’d stared at each other for a long while.
“You must know I can keep you here,” he’d said quietly. “No one comes or goes from this place without my permission.”
“You won’t do something like that,” she’d replied with conviction, her eyes meeting his. Holding. “You’re better than that.”
And, damn her, he’d wanted to be.
He’d reached over to take her hands in his, threading his fingers through hers, then pulling their joined hands up to his mouth. She’d sighed, her eyes filling with all of that heat and passion that had delivered them here in the first place. And he’d willed her to relent. To bend. To yield.
To want to hold on to him the way he needed to hold on to her.
“You’re the one who wanted forty days,” he’d said, searching her face, trying to see what he needed to see written there. “There’s almost a whole week left.”
She’d shaken her head. “Playtime is over, Alessandro.”
“Forty days,” he’d repeated, because he hadn’t known what else to say, how else to convince her. She couldn’t leave. This wasn’t over—it had only just begun.
“Alessandro …”
“Elena. Please.” He hadn’t recognized his own voice, much less what coursed through him as he’d said it. “Stay.”
He’d begged. There was no other word for it.
But she’d looked up at him then and he hadn’t cared at all that he’d bent in a way he’d previously believed impossible. He’d only cared that it worked.
“I’ll give you forty days,” she’d said when he’d begun to lose hope, her eyes changing from blue to gray. “But that’s it. This can’t go on any longer than that.”
He’d only moved closer to her, and then he’d taken her mouth with his, answering her as best he could.
It had all gone by too quickly, he thought now, glaring out his window at the sea as if it had betrayed him. As if nature and time had conspired against him. He sensed her come into the master suite before he heard her, that familiar spark of lightning down his spine and straight into his sex—and that fist in his gut seemed to burrow deeper.
“Are you ready?” he asked without turning around. He had to fight to keep his voice level, to keep his temper under control, and it was much harder than it should have been. How could he lose her when he’d just found her? “The helicopter will be here any moment.”
“Of course,” Elena said, back to that smooth voice he loathed. “I packed everything that’s mine.”
“And my staff packed everything else,” he said evenly. “What use do you imagine I have for the clothes you wore while you were here?”
She didn’t answer. He shoved his hands into his pockets so she wouldn’t see that he’d balled them into fists. He knew she was still standing there—he could feel her—but the silence stretched out between them, sharp and treacherous. He didn’t know what to do, or say.
He only knew he couldn’t stand this.
Alessandro heard the unmistakable sound of his helicopter then, roaring toward the meadow for its landing. Coming down fast to hasten this unacceptable ending.
Too late, he thought. It’s always too late.
He turned then, abruptly, and caught the look on her face. Resolute. Miserable. Brave and determined. He concentrated on miserable.
“Stay with me,” he bit out. An order this time, with no silk or seduction or even begging to sweeten it.
“Stay?” she echoed, as if she didn’t understand the word. “Here?” She shook her head, sketched that airy smile. “You can’t keep hiding away here, Alessandro. It’s time to go home.”
She was dressed for the outside world. No flowing dress, no tiny shorts, no skimpy bikini. She wore those white denim trousers that made him uncomfortably hard, another pair of wicked heels and a peach-colored top that flirted with her curves beneath a cream-colored scarf looped lazily around her neck. Her hair was slicked back into a sleek ponytail, and she had sunglasses perched on her head, ready to slide over her eyes. She looked casually fashionable, impenetrably lovely, and he knew it was armor.
He hated it.
“Come to Palermo with me,” he threw out without thinking, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t care how complicated that could become. He didn’t care if it started a damned war with the Falco family. He’d fight it with his own bare hands if he had to. He didn’t care about anything but her.
And if an alarm sounded deep inside of him then, he ignored it.
“You know that’s impossible,” she said fiercely. As if he’d finally struck a nerve. “You know I have to go.”
Alessandro remembered that night, so long ago now, when he’d told her he would chase her through the house if she wanted him to do it. That he would let her abdicate any responsibility for what happened between them, let it all be on him, if that was what it took. Was that what she needed?
But he couldn’t do it.
“I won’t hold you against your will. I won’t even beg.” His voice was low, but all of their history was in it. That dance. This island. All the truths they’d finally laid bare. “Come with me anyway.”
“This isn’t fair,” she whispered, and he shouldn’t have taken it as a kind of harsh victory that she sounded as agonized as he felt. As torn apart. “We agreed.”
“Just this once,” he said fiercely, “just this one time, admit what’s happening here. What’s always been happening here. For God’s sake, Elena—come with me because you can’t bear to leave me.”
Whole worlds moved through her gaze then, and left the overbright sheen of tears in their wake. And it wasn’t enough, that he knew she wanted him, too, that he knew exactly how stark her need was. That he could feel it inside of him, lighting up his own. That he knew he could exploit it, with a single touch.
He needed her to admit it. To say it. He needed all of this to matter to her. And the fact that he was uncomfortable with the intensity of that need—that it edged into territory he refused to explore—didn’t make it any less necessary.
A moment dragged by, too sharp and too hard. Then another.
“I’m not a good person,” she said finally. Her hands opened and closed fitfully, restlessly, at her sides. “And neither are you. A good person would never have allowed what happened between us in Rome to happen at all. I was engaged. And you knew I was with Niccolo when you approached me.” Her gaze slammed into his. “All we do is make mistakes, Alessandro. Maybe that’s all this is. Maybe that’s what we should admit.”
He started toward her, watching her face as he drew closer. He had never been so uncertain of anything or anyone in his life, and yet so oddly sure of her at the same time. So sure of this. He didn’t understand it. But like everything with Elena, from that very first glance, it simply was. Undefinable. Undeniable. But always and ever his.
“I know that you don’t trust me,” he said when he reached her, looking down into her troubled blue gaze. “I know what the name Corretti means to you. I know you think all manner of terrible things about me, and I know you’re waiting for the next blow.” He reached over to trace the vulnerable curve of her mouth with his thumb, making her tremble. “Come to Palermo. Have faith.”
He read the storms in her eyes, across her pretty face. And he forced himself to do nothing at all but wait it out. Wait her out.
“I don’t believe in faith anymore.” A great cloud washed over her, across her face and through those beautiful eyes, and left them shadowed. She pulled in a deep, long breath, then let it out. “But I’ll do it,” she said finally, as if the words were wrenched from her. “I’ll come with you.”
Satisfaction and intense relief ripped through him, making him feel bigger. Wilder. Edgy with a ferocious kind of triumph.
But he wasn’t finished.
“Tell me why.”
Her eyes darkened, and she started to shake her head, started to retreat from him. He slid his hand along her jaw, and held her like that, forcing her to look at him. Keeping her right there in plain sight. Her lips parted slightly, and her breath came hard, as if she was running away the way she no doubt wished she was.
“Tell me,” he said quietly. “I need to hear you say it.”
She gazed back at him. He could feel her pulse against his hand, could see it wild and panicked in her throat. “Because …” she began, and had to stop, as if her throat closed in on her. Her eyes were filled with heat and damp. She swayed on her feet as if there was a great wind howling around them, and it threatened to knock her flat.
But she didn’t fall.
He brushed the knuckles of his other hand over her soft cheek, her distractingly elegant cheekbone.
“Say it,” he whispered.
“Because I can’t leave you,” she said finally, in a broken, electrifying rush. He felt it from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet, as if he’d been struck by lightning, by her, all over again. As if she’d shone that bright light into all of that darkness within him, chasing it away at last. “Not yet.”
The helicopter ride was bumpy and noisy, despite the bulky headphones she’d been given to wear, but Elena was happy enough to stay silent while Alessandro and the assistant who’d flown out to meet him discussed Corretti Media business concerns. She soaked in the beckoning Mediterranean blue far below, and pretended the only thing in her head was the sea. The golden sun. The lovely view.
But it didn’t work. The enormity of what she’d done was like iron in her chest, making it harder and harder to breathe. It had been one thing to hand over her body, another still to offer up her story to his mercy, such as it was. But she was very much afraid that, today, Alessandro had demanded she give him her soul.
And she’d done it.
She couldn’t believe she’d actually done it.
Too soon, the helicopter was making its way through the Palermo skyline, and then setting down on the roof of the landmark Corretti Media tower. Elena climbed out slowly, staying behind Alessandro and the assistant who hadn’t stopped talking in all this time, trying to pretend she was not in the least bit overwhelmed. That she gave away her soul like it was little more than a trinket every day of the week. That she was in control of this.
“Signorina Calderon and I are going to eat something,” Alessandro said then, breaking into his assistant’s stream of chatter in a steely tone she’d never heard before. It brought Elena back to the present with a jolt.
“But, sir,” his assistant said in a rush. “Since you’ve been gone, your family …” His voice trailed off as Alessandro glared at him, but he visibly rallied. “The Battaglia situation is only getting more heated, and time is nearly up for the new docklands proposal—”
“I will come into the office later, Giovanni,” Alessandro said with wintry finality.
Elena’s stomach twisted. He was cold, harsh, commanding—but with none of that dark fire she knew so well beneath it. This must be Alessandro, the much-feared and much-respected CEO. Alessandro, the eldest Corretti heir. No wonder people spoke of him in such awed, cowed tones. He was terrifying.
“My apologies,” his assistant said smoothly, inclining his head. “Of course, that is perfect. We will expect you after lunch.”
“If you want me to sign those papers,” Alessandro continued in an impatient tone, stalking across the rooftop toward the entrance to the building, “I suggest you do it in the elevator. Quietly.”
Elena walked faster as Alessandro’s assistant got on his mobile, ordering the car brought around and demanding that someone make sure that Alessandro’s favorite table was waiting for him. She reminded herself to breathe as she stepped into the shiny, gold-plated elevator where Alessandro waited, looking for all the world like a surly, caged animal. Dangerous and unpredictable.
The elevator started its descent. Alessandro signed the papers his assistant handed him on a hardbacked folder, one after the next. Without bothering to read them, Elena thought in some surprise—but then he scowled down at one of them.
“These terms are unacceptable. As both you and Di Rossi are well aware.”
“He insisted that you had caved,” his assistant said mildly, as if he heard that tone from Alessandro every day.
“Send it back,” Alessandro ordered. “If he has a problem with it, tell him he can take it up with me personally.”
His assistant’s brows rose. That was obviously a threat.
The elevator stopped smoothly, discharging Alessandro’s assistant on one of the higher floors, and then the doors swished shut and they were alone again. Elena told herself there was no reason at all to be so nervous. Alessandro lounged against the far wall of the car, looking deceptively languid in what was clearly a bespoke suit, the way it marveled over every fine line of his physique. The bright golden walls seemed to shrink into her as the car kept moving. His dark green eyes found hers, and Elena’s heart picked up speed.
“Second thoughts?” he asked softly. A challenge.
“You’re a very formidable man,” she said. “Do you enjoy it?”
He only watched her, that arrogant face a study in careless, encompassing masculine power. His dark brows rose in query.
“Wielding that kind of authority like that,” she said. “Making that poor man jump through your hoops without even the faintest pretense of politeness.”
Dark green eyes lit with amusement. “Are you calling me rude, Elena? Or just a bad boss?”
“If that’s how you treat your employees, I shudder to think how you treat your enemies.” She smiled coolly. “Oh, but wait. I already know.”
Alessandro’s mouth crooked. “Point taken,” he said gruffly, surprising her. “I apologize.”
“Your assistant is very likely weeping in the toilet,” she continued, her tone dry, burying her confusion. Alessandro? Apologizing? “Don’t feel you have to apologize to me.”
“For the record,” he said, laughter in his voice, “‘that poor man’ comforts himself with a new Maserati every fiscal year. He’s certainly not weeping as he cashes his paycheck.”
“If you say so.”
“Come here.” His voice dropped, became something else. Something that wound through her like honey, golden and slow, making it hard to remember that he even had an assistant, or why on earth she cared.
“You’re at your place of business,” she said primly, but she went to him, anyway. “Smiting down every assistant in your path, apparently. All in a day’s work, no doubt.”
He slid a hand around to the back of her neck and then tugged her off balance so she sprawled against his chest.
This was familiar, finally. His scent, his heat. That gleam in his eyes. Her immediate reaction, molten and hot. And only as it washed through her did she understand how much she’d needed the reminder. That it didn’t matter how formidable he might seem here. How distant. That this was still theirs, this electric current. This need.
It was why she was here.
“Ah, Elena,” he murmured, simply holding her there against the wall of his chest, his thumb moving against her nape, his expression so intent it made her knees feel like water. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Do you mean in general or in this elevator?” she asked, aware of the breathlessness in her voice, the pounding desire that she had no doubt he could see all over her, the way he always did.
His mouth curved. “I already know what I’m going to do to you in this elevator,” he told her, his other hand wrapping around her hip and pulling her against him, letting her feel how much he wanted her. His voice lowered to that sexy growl that lit her up, heating her blood, making her melt. “It might be acrobatic, but I think you can handle it.”
Elena heard the ping that announced they’d arrived at the ground floor, but Alessandro didn’t move. Her hands were pressed against the fascinating muscles of his perfect torso as she arched into him. It wasn’t enough, and she didn’t care where she was. This was his company—let him care. She lifted herself up on her toes and moved her mouth so close to his that if she licked her lips, she’d taste him.
“Go ahead, then,” she whispered, daring him. “Show me some acrobatics.”
On some level she was vaguely aware of the elevator doors sliding open, but all that mattered was Alessandro. That dark, consuming green gaze. That familiar fire, still so devastating and far too hot. As if he blacked out everything else.
He laughed, sex and heat and delicious challenge, and she shivered in anticipation, because she knew that sound, she knew its sensual promise—
And everything exploded.
Flashing lights, shouting. The press of too many bodies, the harsh slap of all that noise—
It took her too long to make sense of it—to understand that a scrum of paparazzi crowded into the open elevator door, cameras snapping and tape rolling, while Elena was still plastered against Alessandro’s chest, clinging to him, announcing their relationship in stark, unmistakable terms.
But then she understood, and that was worse.
It was the end of the world as she knew it, right there and then.
Elena couldn’t stop pacing.
Alessandro’s penthouse spread out over the top of the Corretti Media tower, three stories in all. It was magnificent. Glass, steel and granite, yet decorated with a deep appreciation of color and comfort. Lush Persian carpets stretched in front of fireplaces and brightened halls. Stunning, impressive art hung on the high walls, all bold colors and graceful lines. He favored deep chairs, dark woods, and all of it somehow elegant and male. Uniquely him.
And she couldn’t enjoy any part of it. She could hardly see it through her panic.
“Of course he’ll see the pictures,” she said, not for the first time, worrying her lower lip with her fingers as she stared out the great windows. “You can count on it.”
Alessandro was sprawled on one of his couches, a tablet computer in his hand. He shot a dark, unreadable look in her direction, but he didn’t answer. But then, Elena was really only talking to herself.
He’d dealt with the paparazzi as best he could. He’d stepped in front of her, concealing her from view. He’d alerted his security, then whisked her up to his penthouse and hidden her away from any more cameras.
“Jackals,” he’d snarled when the elevator doors finally closed again, leaving them in peace once more. “Nothing but scavengers.”
But it was too late. The damage was already done.
Elena’s head had spun wildly. She’d let him lead her out of the elevator bank and into his opulent home, and as soon as he’d closed that heavy penthouse door behind them she’d grabbed hold of the nearest wall and sunk down to the floor. Six months of fear and adrenaline and grief had coalesced inside of her and then simply … broken open. Flooding her.
“Don’t you understand?” she’d cried. “Niccolo will see those pictures! He’ll know exactly where I am! It will take him, what? A matter of hours to get to Palermo?”
Alessandro had gazed down at her, an enigmatic expression on his hard face.
“He won’t go through me to get at you,” he’d said. “He’s a coward.”
“I’m thrilled for you that you don’t have to take him seriously,” she’d thrown at him. “But I do. Believe me, Alessandro. I do.”
“Elena.”
She’d hated the way he said her name then, the way it coiled in her, urging her to trust he’d somehow make this go away. To have faith.
“You can’t make this disappear simply because you command it,” she’d told him, caught between weariness and despair. “You have no idea how devious he is, or how determined.”
“If you must insult me,” Alessandro had said then, “please spare my security detail. Aside from today’s disaster, they’re very good at their jobs.”
“For how long?” she’d demanded. “A week or two? Another forty days? When will you tire of this—of me?” She’d stared up at him, daring him to contradict her. Daring him to argue. “Because when that day comes, as we both know it will, Niccolo will be waiting. If I have faith in anything, it’s that.”
Alessandro’s expression had shuttered, but he’d only held her gaze for a strained moment before turning on his heel, murmuring something about unavoidable paperwork and walking out. Leaving her there on his floor to drive herself out of her head with worry and the cold, hard fear that had spurred her on all this time.
The fear she’d set aside when she’d been on Alessandro’s island. When she’d been safe.
She had to leave, she thought now, frowning out the towering windows at the coming dark. She had to run while she still could. That was the obvious conclusion she’d been circling around and around, not wanting to admit it was the only thing that made sense.
Because he’d been right. She didn’t want to leave him. She loved him. It was that simple and that complicated. It always had been.
She turned to look at him then. He was so impossibly, powerfully beautiful. He’d stunned her from the start. And now she knew how that proud jaw tasted. She could lose herself for hours in his hard, cynical mouth. She knew what he could do with those elegant hands of his, with every part of his lean, hard frame. She knew that he felt deeply, and darkly, and that there were mysteries in him she desperately wanted to solve. She knew he’d comforted her, soothing something in her she’d thought ripped forever raw. She knew what it was like when he laughed, when he teased her, when he told her stories. She wanted all of this to be real, for him to be the man she so desperately wanted to believe he was.
She wanted to have faith. She wanted to stay.
God, how she wanted to stay.
He’d thrown off his jacket when he’d returned to the penthouse, lost his tie and loosened the top buttons of his shirt. He looked like what he was. The infinitely dangerous, ruthless and clever CEO of Corretti Media. A man of great wealth and even greater reach. The man who’d taken her body, her painful history, her heart and even her soul. And would take much more than that, she had no doubt. If she let him. If she stayed.
But he didn’t love her. She didn’t kid herself that he ever would. He spoke only of want.
This was sex. Need. A shockingly intense connection mixed with explosive chemistry. Clear all of that away and Elena was as on her own as the day she’d realized even her parents’ home wasn’t safe for her, and had gone on the run. The past forty days had been nothing but consuming lust, blinding fireworks, and all of it a distraction from that ugly little truth.
He looked up then, his dark green eyes searing and too incisive.
“They’ve been posted,” he said without inflection. That was it, then. The paparazzi pictures were online. The clock had started ticking. She had to assume Niccolo was on his way even now. Which meant she was standing here on borrowed time.
“I have to go,” she said, quick and fierce, before she could talk herself out of it. Before he could. “I have to leave immediately.”
“And may I ask where you plan to go?” That cool CEO’s voice. It felt like nails against her skin. “Do you have a plan or are you simply … running away? Again?”
“It doesn’t matter where I go,” she said, trying so hard to keep all of her feelings out of this. They could only hurt her—and so could Niccolo. It was better to think of him, and run. “So long as it’s far from here.”
Alessandro tossed his tablet to one side. He gazed at her for a long while, as if he’d never seen her before. As if he saw too much.
Elena repressed an involuntary shiver, and found she couldn’t breathe.
“I think you should marry me,” he said.