If trying to get through a meal with him had been hard, what on earth was it going to be like spending the next six weeks lying in his bed beside him?
CHAPTER FIVE
‘I HAVE some emails to see to on the computer in my office,’ Patrizio informed Keira once they had returned to his house. ‘I will leave you to prepare for bed. I will try not to disturb you when I join you later.’
She swallowed. ‘Which side do you want me to sleep on?’
His eyes hardened slightly as they meshed with hers. ‘What is your preference these days?’ he asked. ‘Right or left, or do you still lie right in the middle?’ Sprawled like a whore, he added silently, his gut twisting all over again with the venomous vipers of jealousy.
‘I don’t have a preference.’
His top lip lifted sardonically. ‘Then perhaps we should toss a coin.’ He took one out of his trouser pocket and started turning it over in his hand. ‘Your call. Heads is the right side, tails is left.’
‘Heads,’ she said, feeling her stomach trip over itself in apprehension.
He tossed the coin and, deftly catching it, turned over his hand to show her. ‘You lose.’
Yet again, Keira thought. She had never won anything when it came to a contest with Patrizio. He had an innate ability to turn things to his advantage. Even their bitter break up—splashed all over the newspapers as it had been—had generated a huge groundswell of public support for him, taking his business to the heights of success. Shares in the company had doubled overnight, investors had clamoured to get on board, property developers wanted his and only his luxury home designs for their new estates. He had made millions out of her betrayal and, in spite of his obvious bitterness and anger towards her, she couldn’t help feeling he had probably been laughing all the way to the bank ever since.
‘Goodnight, Keira,’ he said into the pulsing silence.
She turned away without answering, her shoulders going down as her legs carried her upwards.
Patrizio tore his gaze away from her passage up the stairs, his jaw rigid as he clenched and unclenched his fists until his fingers ached.
Six weeks.
It wasn’t long. He could do it. He could lie next to her for forty-five nights without touching her.
He had to do it.
Keira had the dream again. She hadn’t had it for several weeks but it was just as terrifyingly real as the last time.
She shot upright in bed, her chest heaving in panic, her heart racing as the sound of her scream still reverberated off the walls.
‘What the hell?’ Patrizio woke with a start, his pupils instantly shrinking as Keira turned on the bedside lamp.
‘Sorry…’ she mumbled as she got out of bed, hug
ging her arms across her chest, her oversized pyjamas making her look more like a child than a woman of close to twenty-five.
‘Did you have a nightmare or something?’ he asked.
She rubbed her hands up and down her arms. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you…I had a bad dream…Sorry…’
He flung the bedcovers aside and went to where she was standing, her body still visibly trembling. He touched her on the shoulder and felt her flinch, her body shrinking away from him. He let his hand fall and sent it on a rough pathway through his hair instead. ‘Would you like a drink of water or something?’ he offered.
She gave a little shudder and turned to face him, her eyes meeting his briefly before slipping away again. ‘Yes…that would be good…thanks…’
Patrizio was glad of an excuse to leave the room while he got his reaction to her vulnerability under some sort of control. Surely she had never been this fragile before. It got to him. It really got to him. It made him want to protect her, to hold her close and soothe away her fears as he had done so often in the past.
Fool, he reprimanded himself. She was probably doing it deliberately. The divorce settlement wasn’t going her way, he had been making it as difficult as he could and she was no doubt using this brief reconciliation to her advantage, making him desire her all over again so he would agree to her outrageous demands.
He’d have to watch himself around her. She was a temptress. She had always had that look of little-girl-lost innocence about her. She had claimed to be a virgin when he’d first met her but now, with hindsight, he seriously doubted it. She had slept with him on that first night without hesitation. He had fallen in love with her when she told him he had been her first lover. It had knocked him sideways to think she had waited when so many young women of her age had numerous notches on their belts. He had been blinded by lust and the dream of having her exclusively to himself. He had married her as quickly as he could, never once realising that she still held a candle for her childhood sweetheart, Garth Merrick.
And if it hadn’t been for Bruno’s and Jamie’s education hanging in the balance he would be free of her by now.
God, how he wanted to be free of her!