Italian Surgeon to the Stars (11 page)

‘So why didn’t you tell me about your ex-fiancée?’

He looked back at the road. ‘I wanted to put it behind me. To move on. I hated thinking about how I’d failed to make someone I cared about happy.’ He let out a whoosh of a breath. ‘But you’re right. I should have told you. It’s yet another regret I have to live with.’

‘How long had you been with her?’

‘All through my specialist training—which, looking back, was part of the problem,’ he said. ‘I was doing a PhD as well as
my fellowship. Work and study took up most of my time. I invested in my career, not in our relationship. She got bored.’

I waited a beat before asking, ‘Did you love her?’

There was a pause that seemed to go on for ever, but it was probably only a second or two.

‘I think what I loved was being in a relationship,’ he said. ‘Coming from the background I had, I wanted the security of it. Knowing there was someone who wanted the same things in life. Who had the same values. Although on reflection her values were not the same as mine. It was only when I met you that I realised that.’

Did you love me?

The words were balanced on the end of my tongue like a terrified novice diver on the ten-metre springboard. But of course I didn’t say them. I sat there staring at my hands and wondering how different my life would have been if I hadn’t met him that day in Paris.

I would probably be married to some guy—a fellow teacher, perhaps—and living in the suburbs. I might even have a baby by now. I would have an ordinary life. A predictable, ordinary life that would have been exactly what I’d wanted right up until I met
Alessandro. But meeting him had changed everything. It had changed me.

He
had changed me.

He suddenly reached across the console and picked up my right hand. He brought it to his chest, holding it against the deep, steady throb of his heart.

‘There were so many times I wanted to call you. To apologise for how I handled things.’

I should have pulled my hand away, but something about the solid warmth of his chest and the husky honey depth of his voice stopped me. It occurred to me then that we had communicated more about our backgrounds in the last few minutes than we had in the whole month we’d been together. It was like we’d been pretending to be other people back then—happy, carefree people who didn’t have difficult relatives or issues from the past.

‘Why didn’t you?’ I said, but strangely not in the accusatory tone I’d intended to use.

His hand squeezed mine and I swear I felt the contraction as if his long, strong fingers had surrounded my heart.

‘The usual reasons,’ he said. ‘Pride. Stubbornness. Regret that I’d screwed up yet another relationship so why bother trying to salvage it. Stupid reasons.’

What was he saying? That he had loved me after all?

I could feel my resolve slipping like a silk wrap sliding off a bare shoulder. But then I pulled myself up short. So what if we were communicating now? As far as I was concerned it was too little, too late. I wasn’t handing out second chances. No way.

‘Careful, Alessandro,’ I said, with a return to my mother tongue: sarcasm. ‘You might fool me into thinking you were really in love with me back then.’

There was another beat or two of telling silence. A pulsing, simmering silence that made the air tighten.

‘Why haven’t you had a date in years?’ he asked.

I decided I was going to kill my father when I got home. I had it all planned. I would force-feed him my steak. I’d pump him full of chocolate and ice cream and frozen yoghurt. I would stuff a loaf of white bread down his throat. I would tie my mother up and make her watch. It would be death by a thousand processed calories.

‘I told you the other day. I’m a career girl. I don’t have time for a full-time relationship.’

‘What about a fling? Had any of those?’

‘Not recently—but, hey, if a guy comes along and offers me five million quid to open my legs I’ll do it. No problem.’

He threw me a hardened glance. ‘Don’t play the cheap hooker with me, Jem.’

I raised my brows in an exaggerated fashion. ‘Cheap? At five million? You could get a blow job around here for two hundred pounds.’

‘And you know that
how
?’ he asked, with a distinct curl of his lip.

I wasn’t sure what demon was riding on my back, but I wanted to push Alessandro into expressing some of the anger I could feel brooding in him. Or maybe it was my own anger I wanted to unleash. God knew I had enough of it.

How
dared
he tell me he had regrets over the way he’d handled things? I’d spent the last five years trying to forget him. How dared he waltz back into my life and apologise? To
communicate
, for pity’s sake? It was too late.

‘I’ve slept with men for money,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that what a girl does when a guy pays for dinner?’

His jaw locked so tightly I heard his molars grind together. ‘I know what you’re doing.’

I glided a fingertip from the top of his
shoulder down to his thigh. ‘What
am
I doing, big guy?’ I said in a smoky whisper.

He sucked in air through his nostrils. ‘Stop it. I’m driving.’

‘What if I don’t want to stop?’ I sent my fingertip closer to the swollen heat of him, tracing over the tented fabric of his trousers.

To tell you the truth I was a little shocked at myself, but I couldn’t seem to stop my wanton come-and-get-me behaviour. I was relishing in the rush of power it gave me. So far he had been the one with all the power. Now it was my turn to show him he had more than met his match.

He let out a muttered curse and turned the car into a side street so quickly I was thrown back against the seat.

But I wasn’t there for long.

The engine hadn’t even died when Alessandro’s strong arms pulled me towards him and his mouth came crashing down on mine.

CHAPTER SIX

H
IS MOUTH TASTED
of mint and anger and lust and longing. The same intense longing I could feel throbbing through my own veins. His lips moved over mine with devastating expertise, demanding I open to him with a bold stab of his tongue.

I had recklessly taunted the tiger and now I was experiencing the full force of his reaction. And, quite frankly, I was loving every pulse-racing second of it.

I received him with a sound of approval that came from somewhere deep inside me. I wound my arms around his neck, fisting my hands into the thickness of his hair, and kissed him back with all the pent-up passion that had been lying in hibernation for what seemed like most of my life.

His freshly shaved jaw scraped the skin of my face as he changed position to deepen
the kiss. His arms relaxed their iron grip on me and moved to cup one of my breasts in a caressing and yet possessive movement that made my insides twist and contort with lust. His other hand went to the nape of my neck, underneath my hair. He knew instinctively that it was one of my most sensitive erogenous zones. As his fingers moved in amongst those finer hairs, I tingled all over and my toes curled in my shoes.

His mouth softened against mine, his kiss less punishing now, but no less passionate. Our tongues danced around each other in a cat-and-mouse caper, stopping to play every now and again before doing another round. I heard myself whimper as his lips nipped at mine in playful little nudges and bites that made every cell in my body shudder with delight. His warm breath mingled with mine, his taste lingering in my mouth like the bouquet of a top-shelf wine.

I wanted more. I wanted to get drunk on his kiss. To be completely and utterly intoxicated with him.

He slowly pulled back from me, but my lips clung to his as if they didn’t want to let him go. He cradled my face in his hands—a gesture that was sure to win any girl’s heart, in
my opinion. I looked into molasses-dark eyes that were glittering with hot-blooded desire and felt another fissure open like a fault line in the cold, hard armour around my heart.

His thumbs stroked over my cheeks in slow motion, back and forth in a mesmerising caress that made it impossible for me to think of anything witty or pithy to say. I was in a sensual stupor. Stoned on the power and potency of his masterful mouth and the combustion of passion it had triggered in me.

There was a pleated frown between his brows. ‘That was…’ he paused for a moment, as if searching for the right word ‘…unforgivable.’

Unforgettable, more like
, I thought.

I moistened my lips with a quick dart of my tongue. ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘It was just a kiss. No big deal.’

One of his hands cupped my cheek as if it were a priceless piece of porcelain. His touch was so gentle it made the tight knot of my bitterness towards him unfurl like satin ribbon spilling away from its spool. The pad of his thumb pressed ever so lightly against my lower lip. The desire to suck his thumb into my mouth was almost unbearable. His eyes met mine and I felt a jolt of something hot
and electric run through me from head to foot and back again.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘For…?’ I could barely get my voice to work, let alone sound normal. It came out husky and breathy. So
not
like matter-of-fact me.

He drew in a deep breath and let it out on a sigh, his hand still cradling my cheek. ‘I don’t want it to be like this between us,’ he said. ‘Fighting. Scoring points. Being bitter.’

I moistened my lips again. ‘So…what are you saying?’

His eyes went to my mouth, as if he found it the most fascinating thing in the world. And I must admit I found his pretty fascinating—especially when I could see a trace of my lip gloss on his lower lip.

I lifted my hand and blotted it away. ‘Buy your own lip gloss,’ I said, with an attempt to lighten things.

I was feeling threatened by his disarming gentleness. It was reminding me of how easily I had fallen in love with him in the past. It was his gentle sensuality that had bewitched me. He wasn’t a man to lose control of his emotions or his passions. He had always been in control. He had shown me that in so many
ways. It had built my confidence, made me feel secure and safe and able to express my own sensuality without fear of exploitation. He hadn’t steamrollered me or pressured me.

And yet he was a deeply passionate man. I could feel the heat of that simmering passion in his body, sitting so close to mine. I could see it in his gaze when it meshed with mine. I was left in no doubt of his desire for me. I suspected he was in no doubt of mine for him, in spite of all of my paltry attempts to disguise it.

His smile was canted to one side. ‘Is it so impossible for us to be friends?’

I cocked my head in a guarded manner. ‘What sort of friends?’

His eyes measured mine for a long moment. The back and forth movement of his gaze to each of my eyes in turn made me feel as if he was seeing beyond the starchy, don’t-mess-with-me facade I’d erected over the last few years. I got the feeling he was looking for the girl he’d met in Paris.

But I was no longer that girl…or was I?

Was there a faint trace of the old-fashioned romantic in me? Like an old sweater I should have thrown out long ago but had kept just
because…just because it was warm and comforting and stirred a lot of memories.

Why else was I finding it so impossible to resist Alessandro’s touch? He had come back into my life and turned it upside down. I couldn’t control my response to him. It was programmed in my DNA to respond to him on a primal level. I wanted him—no matter how much he had hurt me. I wanted him regardless. I wanted to feel the passion only he evoked in me. I wanted to experience the rapture of being desired by a man who could have anyone he wanted but for some reason had chosen me.

Wasn’t that the thing I found most thrilling? Alessandro Lucioni wanted
me
. I was an ordinary girl and he was an extraordinary man—a gifted man who had saved so many lives, changed numerous lives for the better. He was a leader in his field—a giant on whose shoulders others would one day stand. How could I not be flattered that he wanted me? How could I possibly resist the longing he triggered in me?

I wanted to feel alive again. To feel passion and excitement and the hot rush of lust and release race through my body until I was boneless and mindless and breathless.

‘The sort of friends who can put the mistakes of the past aside and move forward,’ he said.

‘Forward into what?’

My voice was back to normal now. Shoot-from-the-hip normal. Don’t-mess-with-me normal. Even though I wanted him, I wasn’t going to spring into anything serious. Why would I set myself up for heartbreak and disappointment again? I know how to take care of myself these days. I can separate my emotions from my physical needs. Sure I can. No problem. Men do it all the time. Sex is just sex. It’s like eating or drinking. You do it when you’re hungry or thirsty.

Sex was just another appetite and I could satisfy it—
temporarily
—with him.

A one-off binge—that was what it would be. A gourmet feast of the senses that would hopefully overload my system so the craving stopped. That’s how I cured my chocolate addiction. I ate two family-size blocks and was so sick afterwards I was frothing chocolate at the mouth like one of those chocolate fountains you see at a party.

The reason I ate those two blocks was that I’d seen Alessandro walk into the restaurant where Bertie and I were having lunch that
day. I’m not normally a comfort eater, but seeing him with that blonde had been like a rusty dagger to my heart. They had looked so good together. Like they’d stepped straight out of the pages of a glossy magazine. I could scrub up pretty well if I worked at it, but there was no way on earth I could compete with the sort of glamorous arm candy he squired around. Or employed. Or whatever the case might be.

Reading Alessandro’s expression was like trying to read a closed book. I knew there was a lot going on between the covers of his mind, but he was showing none of it on his face.

‘Would you be interested in taking it a day at a time to see how things go?’ he said.

I screwed my mouth up and shifted my lips from side to side in a musing manner. I didn’t want to look too keen. I wanted to appear cool and in control, even though my body was already leaping with excitement.