The Medici Mistress: Nothing and no one would stop him from having her. (5 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

“I’m not kidding,” Thomas said with a laugh, reaching up and pulling a leaf from a tree as they walked beneath its ample foliage. “I really was afraid of the dark until I was sixteen.”

Annie shook her head, a smile of amusement lifting her lips. For the first time in days, since seeing Giacomo Medici again,, she was starting to feel like herself. She could almost believe she’d conjured Giac up out of her nightmares. She hadn’t seen him again, since that afternoon in the executive conference room. She knew he was still around. Amicus Incorporated was abuzz with an over-efficient desire to please the owner of the company. Everyone was bending over backwards to meet deadlines and boost efficiency.

Everyone except Annie.

For two reasons.

She always, without exception, worked herself to the ground. She’d never missed a deadline, never filed so much as a permit application late. And she didn’t give a rat’s rear-end what Giac thought of her. Not anymore.

“How did you get over it?”

“Ah,” his Irish accent lilted into the warm night’s air. “I have three older brothers, Annie. You don’t think they’d let me sleep with a bedside lamp indefinitely do you?”

“What’d they do?”

“They locked me in the cupboard under the stairs for one very long, very cold night.”

She clasped a hand to her mouth, torn between amusement and pity. “That’s… horrid!”

“You don’t know the half of it. Our family estate is on the southern coast of Ireland. We have rats and bugs in abundance.” He shivered, just remembering the musty smell of the small closet. “Strangely, it worked though.”

“All’s well that ends well, I guess,” she sympathised with a shrug. She slowed her stride as they reached the front steps to her apartment. She looked upwards, hesitant to invite him inside. Their relationship was not serious, but she knew Thomas wanted it to be. She smiled at him, nervously.

“I’d invite you up for supper, but I’m afraid my cupboards are bare.” As excuses went, it was pretty poor.

He caught the excuse with both hands. “There’s an express shop around the corner. I’ll go grab a bottle of wine and meet you upstairs in a few minutes?”

She looked into his face, willing herself to like him more. If Giac hadn’t reappeared into her life, would she have agreed? Thomas Jones was everything she wanted in a guy. Handsome, intelligent, funny, interesting and definitely kind… he was patient and generous, and seemed to understand her. Yes, he was a catch, only she couldn’t bring herself to catch him for herself. “I don’t know,” she prevaricated with an apologetic smile.

“Naw, come on, Annie-belle,” he said, leaning forward and stroking her cheek. “Just as friends. I like spending time with you. It’s only early.”

It was a spur of the moment decision. “Okay, sure.” Her smile was unconsciously inviting. “I’ll see you soon.”

She took the steps two at a time. A very clear recollection of the pigsty her apartment was in spurred her into a manic tidying frenzy. Clothes were tipped into drawers, dishes stacked into the dishwasher, cushions rearranged on the sofa to look semi-neat. When Thomas rang her door bell minutes later, she was reasonably confident that the place looked acceptable.

She scooped a couple of long stemmed wine glasses into her hands and padded to the door. “You bring wine, I bring glass,” she quipped, as she pulled the door open and propped it there with her hip.

But it wasn’t Thomas’s friendly face that stared back at her.

It was Giac’s.

She stifled a groan. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you,” he muttered, pushing past her and nudging the door shut behind him.

Annie swallowed past her emotion. The truth was, it was hard to look at him. To see him in her apartment, while she was dressed for a date. Her walls were lowered; she was relaxed. “It’s not a good time.”

“I know. I saw you downstairs.”

She placed the wine glasses on her coffee table, and looked across at Giac, fixing him with a direct stare. He looked tired, she thought, forcing the thrill of compassion back inside her chest. “You have no business coming to my house.”

“I had to see you again.”

Remembered affection and shared love threatened to burst into the present. She made herself ignore those feelings. “No, you didn’t. And I don’t want you here.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want you seeing him.”

Her jaw dropped. “I haven’t seen
you
in over three years. You’re married. And you seriously think you can come here and tell me who I can and can’t date?”

“You are damned right that’s what I think.”

His possessive tone made her breath hitch in her throat. “You’re crazy.”

“Is it serious?” She caught his aftershave and inhaled deeply.

“He’s a great guy. He adores me. We’re good together.”

He rolled his eyes. “Such lukewarm sentiments would never be enough for you,
cara
,” he remarked, dragging his eyes away from her face to look around the living room.

Her apartment was fine. Nice. No Mayfair penthouse, but a decent one bedroom flat just removed from London Bridge, with views of the river and a good size living space. She’d furnished it nicely, and made it feel like home. Through his eyes, though, it felt small and eclectic.

“I tried that whole red hot passion thing once. It didn’t work out so well for me. Can you please get out of here before Thomas gets back?”

“I’m not going anywhere.” He sat down on the sofa and crossed his feet at the ankles. His thighs had always been so powerful, so strongly muscled. The sight of them now made her  mouth dry. “We’re not done talking.”

“Like hell we’re not,” she responded, sending him a fulminating glare.

He didn’t show any signs of moving. She made a sound of frustration and threw her hands in the air. “Fine, if that’s the way you want it.” She stormed out of the lounge room and into her bedroom. She pulled clothes out of her drawers at random.

“What are you doing?” Giac was reclined casually against her door frame. She startled.

“If you’re staying here, then I’m going.”

“Where are you going?” He asked, his eyes narrowed.

“Where do you think?”

His tone was implacable. “Not to his place.”

“God, Giac, what the hell? You have no right to come back after all this time and play the part of the jealous boyfriend. I’m just some girl you screwed before getting married. Why are you pretending we meant something more than that?”

He paled beneath his tanned skin. “We
did
mean something.”

“Not enough,” she shouted, slamming a drawer shut in an angry haste and catching her fingertips in it. She cried out, and tears instantly formed on her eyes. She pulled her fingers out and examined them.

Giac swore loudly, crossing the small bedroom and pulling her hand into his. He lifted it to look at the crushed tips beneath the light.

“They’re fine,” she whispered. Her eyes were pale as they drifted over his tanned, symmetrical features. His lips were so close, she could almost touch them. She was fighting a losing battle to ignore the attraction between them.

“I’m not so sure.” He lifted her index finger to his mouth and slowly, seductively, he sucked on it, down to the knuckle. His eyes held hers, as he rolled it with his tongue, then moved onto the next finger.

Annie threw her head back, staring at the pale, cracked ceiling, as sensations more overwhelming to handle besieged her body. Her limbs were weak and her flesh tingled as though spiders were running over her skin.

“You still want me.” It was a statement. He had no doubts on that score.

“No,” she denied, but her body was as completely his now as it ever had been. She pressed her hips forward, aching for his touch, his fulfilment.

Thomas knocked three times before Annie heard him. It was like being doused in a bucket of ice cold water. She pushed away from Giac, her skin flushed, her pupils enormous in the middle of her mossy eyes.

“Get rid of him.” Demanding, confident, overbearing.

“No.” She stuffed some things into a rucksack that was hanging behind her door. “You’re in the past, Giac. Thomas is my present and my future.”

“Does he make you feel like this?” Giac caught her wrist and pulled her against him, trapping her against a wall with his powerful frame. His legs were her prison, one on either side of her slender body keeping her held in the apex of his legs. He kissed her neck, where she had always loved it. His stubble was rough on her skin, his lips were soft and warm, his hands were like the icing on the cake, as they roamed freely and took what they wanted. She closed her eyes and whimpered. She wanted him, but her body’s needs were at complete odds with her sanity’s voice of reason.

“How is your wife?” She asked hoarsely, in a last ditch effort to halt their attraction.

“Carrie is fine,” he said honestly.

She squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t do this again.” She shook her head.

“Annie,” he moaned, lifting his mouth to hers and tasting her hungrily. “We don’t have any choice. Do we?”

She sobbed. He was right. The force between them was overpowering. It was inevitable. The best she could hope for was to buy some time. “I’m not staying here with you.” She shoved his chest, hard, feeling satisfaction as he stumbled backwards. “You don’t get to be back in my life. You’re nothing to me now, Giac. You can’t just have me when it suits you. That’s not fair to me.”

His eyes were like black coal in his hard face as he watched Annie walk from the room.

Thomas was grinning when she opened the door. “Thought you might have changed your mind.”

Annie slipped out of her apartment. “My place is a tip. Can we go to yours?”

Thomas hooked an arm around her shoulders. “Sure thing, princess.”

She regretted it later, when they were ensconced in his artistic, elegant loft. His kiss felt like a snail was crawling on her mouth. She hadn’t felt that the last time she’d seen him. But then, there had been no Giac back in her life to compare him to.

Thomas was perfect in every way. On paper, he was her dream guy. But, as he kissed her mouth, and her neck, her body was cold. Her heart didn’t stir. Her fingers didn’t long to lift and run through his hair. There was nothing there. She pulled back, guiltily, her smile paper thin. “I should get going.”

He swiftly hid his disappointment. “It’s almost three in the morning. Why don’t you stay the night?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair to him. “Not tonight.” She regretted the words as soon as she’d said them. Did they imply that another night she
would
stay with him? Her head was a muddle.

“I’ll walk you out.”

“No need.” Thomas lived right in the middle of Chinatown. Even in the middle of the night, there was a din of noise outside his flat, as people carried on about their business. She smiled reassuringly. “Go to bed. It’s so late. Thanks for a great night. I had fun.”

She
had
had fun. And, for the three or four minutes she hadn’t been obsessing over Giac Medici, she’d really unwound and enjoyed herself. A black cab pulled up almost as soon as she raised her hand in the air. Another virtue of living right in the heart of the city, she thought with a small shake of her head. At that time of night, it was easy to get from the west to east side of the city; none of the daytime congestion to slow their journey. She made as much small talk as she had the stomach for with the driver before settling back into the seat sleepily.

The second she had paid him, and stepped out into the cool night air, she realized she’d been expecting Giac to still be there. Her apartment, upstairs, was darkened. He wasn’t on the street. Her heart dropped, and she told herself it was from relief.

It was little wonder that the next day was excruciating for an exhausted Annie. Three coffees before she left the house, a Starbucks on the way to work, and a pot on her desk, had gone some of the way to jolting her brain into activity, but not enough. She muddled through her morning, but her usual enthusiasm and attention to detail were completely absent.

“You coming, Annie?” One of her friends and colleagues popped her head into Annie’s office.

Annie looked up, her eyes bloodshot in the corners. “Coming?” Her expression was blank.

Patrice, who had joined the company precisely twelve months before Annie and therefore felt infinitely more experienced, moved into the neat office. Her bemusement was obvious in the way her bright red lips quirked in the corners, her brown eyes quizzical. She sat down at Annie’s desk. “Briefing?”

“Oh, shoot, right.” She nodded. Mondays always included a touch-base briefing, in which the whole team was able to get a clear picture of what their work priorities were for the week ahead. Attendance was expected, but not compulsory. “I… I’m going to skip it today,” she said, lifting her coffee to her lips.

“You look terrible,” Patrice said thoughtfully, skimming her eyes over her friend’s usually immaculate appearance. “Are you okay?”

Annie nodded. “The kids downstairs had a party last night. I don’t think I slept a wink.”