I was going to kill her. Slowly. If I was going to die in agony then I was going to make sure she did, too.
‘Hayley? Are you OK?’
It was a measure of how turned on I was that having my sister banging on the door hadn’t made any difference to the way I felt.
Nico swore against my mouth (in both Italian and English, in case you were wondering), and I was just about to ask whether he’d locked the door when it burst open.
Fortunately Nico had his back to our audience, shielding me. I had yet another reason to be thankful for those broad, muscular shoulders.
With admirable calm, he removed his fingers and his mouth from my body and somehow managed to pull my dress down and draw the lapels of his jacket together at the same time. He was impressive in a crisis—smooth and composed. Rosie had seen most of it before, of course. We’d lived together since we left home to go to college and we didn’t lock doors very often, so at this point I was more exasperated than embarrassed.
But then I looked past his shoulders (and that took some willpower, I can tell you, because it was the best view I’d seen in a long time) and saw a shocked face that didn’t belong to my sister.
Nico’s sister was staring at him as if she’d never seen him before.
Oh crappity, crap, crap.
Her eyes were wide and shocked, her mouth slightly agape.
She obviously thought I’d corrupted her usually controlled brother. And maybe I had. I was certainly well on my way. From the moment he’d touched me, I’d thought about nothing but him. And before you judge me I can tell you without a flicker of doubt that if this man had kissed you, you wouldn’t have been thinking of anything but him either.
He swore under his breath. ‘Go back to the church, Kiara.’ It was a command, and she colored and stepped back without question.
If he’d spoken to me like that I would have posted his Tom Ford suit to a worthy charity, but she didn’t say a word. Just obeyed him like a puppy in an obedience class.
I decided it must be the shock that had stopped her from standing up for herself. And I was responsible for that shock.
So much for having a sexual relationship without emotional involvement. It seemed that no matter what rules you played by, someone always got hurt.
I wanted to tell her not to worry, that we hated each other really, but she’d already gone and I was left with more than a split dress to worry about.
I’d thought my embarrassment couldn’t get any deeper.
Turned out I’d been wrong about that, too.
Chapter Four
‘Best wedding ever.’ It was Christmas Eve and Rosie was stretching on the living room floor, surrounded by half-wrapped Christmas presents. She spent a lot of time stretching. I’d learned to give her a wide berth because there had been more than one occasion when I’d moved too close and ended up with her foot in my face. She’d started karate at the age of six, then she’d added in Muay Thai when she was eighteen and met— But I wasn’t allowed to mention him. Let’s just say we call him He Who Shall Not Be Named (and he’s not that Voldemort guy from Harry Potter, although from the smile on my sister’s face at the time I think he might have had a magic wand hidden somewhere).
‘Glad you were entertained.’
Snow drifted lazily past the windows. The streets of London were white and everyone was wrapped up against the cold in bright scarves and outrageous hats. That was one of the many things I loved about living in London. People weren’t afraid to dress creatively, especially where we lived. In Notting Hill we were surrounded by artists, musicians and writers. And my angel-faced, karate-loving, kick-boxing sister.
I snuggled deeper into the sofa, my laptop balanced on my thighs because I couldn’t be bothered to walk to the table and anyway, it saved on heating bills. ‘Can we stop talking about the wedding?’
She’d been laughing non-stop for the past three days.
Sisterly love was wearing thin.
I pretended to be a
bsorbed by my laptop, but if I was honest I’d barely done any work since we’d arrived home from the wedding. I couldn’t concentrate. My brain was jammed up with the hottest memory of my life. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. About him. Mostly about the way Mr Super Cool had gone from ignoring me to virtually having sex with me. The change in him had been shocking and, well, exciting. What wasn’t so exciting was the fact it had been interrupted and there was no chance of a repeat performance, which basically meant I was doomed to die of sexual frustration. Not that I hadn’t tried to do something about that, but no vibrator was ever going to come close to the unique bedroom talents of Nico Rossi. It was like watching a boxed set, ending an episode on a cliffhanger and then realizing you’d lost the final DVD. I desperately wanted to know what happened next.
But I was never going to because Nico hadn’t liked me before the wedding, so he was going to like me even less since I ruined the day and walked off with his Tom Ford.
For a couple of days I’d nurtured a fantasy he might contact me, but of course he hadn’t. Real life is a split dress and embarrassment, not a hot guy ringing you.
I answered another email, trying to block out the memory of the wedding. I’d scoured YouTube for days, checking that no one had uploaded a video of my dizzying descent into ignominy. So far all seemed well, but if I could have dug a hole and lived underground for a while, I would have done. ‘Why the hell did you have to walk in when you did?’