As she’d pulled back, he’d feathered a masculine command across her lips. Vieni con me.
She’d understood the Italian words as though it was her primary language and the desire to comply had been dangerously thick in her blood. Leave with me.
And then Ryan’s chilly voice had asked, “What are you doing?”
For one heartbeat Paolo’s grip on her had tightened. She’d understood what it meant to be a kill between two hungry wolves.
Or a female between two alphas.
Her domestic breeding had kicked in at that point and she’d suddenly seen what this looked like from the outside, from Ryan’s perspective and the handful of family who’d gathered behind him. A bride in her lace regalia embracing another man, her lips still swollen from the pressure of his kiss, her cheeks flushed with arousal.
She’d been appalled with herself and quickly done everything in her power to excuse and minimize what had happened. Paolo was drunk. He was angry at marriage and her, and was expressing it by messing with her.
And she had moved back to Ryan’s side because he was the safe choice. When he kissed her, she felt a warm glow, not like she was falling into the lava of an erupting volcano. Ryan only came as far into her heart as she let him; Paolo would steal it and own it and probably break it.
Lauren lowered her gaze, trying to believe she’d made the right choice that day even though it smacked of severe cowardice.
“I’m trying to quit apologizing all the time, but I really didn’t mean to behave like that.” His ego didn’t need to hear that yet another female was gaga over him. “I don’t know what came over me, letting you kiss me like that.”
“Lust,” he said pointedly, making her heart dip with horrid embarrassment, as if a protective veil had been yanked away to reveal her nudity. Then he added, “I’d like to blame my kissing you on my broken marriage or the fact my father had passed away two weeks before, but you and I have chemistry, Lauren.”
A spike of pleasurable heat clenched in her belly. She wanted to look away, so self-conscious her skin hurt, but she hung on every word.
“That doesn’t excuse asking you to leave with me, though. Who the hell does that? To his best friend? I was sick with myself when Ryan caught us. It never should have happened and I swore to him it never would again.”
Finally her gaze dropped to the floor, but she didn’t see anything but the cold, distant looks Paolo had been throwing her ever since. That was why. Their night in Charleston had broken that promise and he was a man who didn’t break promises.
“My marriage, everything about my relationship with my ex-wife, was a trail of arrogant decisions,” he muttered. “My situation at the time, giving up what I wanted in order to take over the bank, couldn’t be turned to my advantage. I didn’t want to believe it and, yes, wanted to assert my own will, but throwing away common sense and kissing you was the wrong way to do it. I damaged a lifelong friendship and knew I had to make changes within myself.”
Her stomach twisted in anxiety. Paolo was far too competitive to lose, especially to himself. That determination to master himself meant he would fight showing further weakness where she was concerned. He didn’t want to be attracted to her. It galled him. Lessened him.
She felt tears smart behind her eyes, not wanting to be an instrument of his downfall. He would always resent her for it.
“After behaving like that at his wedding, what would Ryan have thought a few years later if I had told you that yes, I suspected he was cheating?” Paolo asked with quiet fervor. “I didn’t have proof. He would have thought I was making a play for you, especially because I could hardly keep my eyes off you that night, either. If you hadn’t gone home early and left us to drink ourselves blind, I don’t know what I would have done. All I knew was that I couldn’t destroy his marriage.”#p#????#e#
The admission held so much bitterness, she flinched. Her fingers were numb and icy, her legs stiff and aching as she stood and set the bag on the island, not looking at Paolo as she digested his rationalizations for not telling her the truth.
“I felt guilty, too,” she acknowledged. “I had kissed you back and shouldn’t have. That’s why I talked myself out of believing he was cheating a million times, dismissing certain signs...” She drew a long, deep breath and released it in a grievous sigh. “Sometimes things happen that shouldn’t. I knew that.”
“Esattamente. Sometimes there is a physical connection that can’t be helped.”