/> She had discovered a woman who was wild and alive and demanding, and she liked that woman. She wanted to find out more about her, and that was another reason she needed time and space.
Time and space—those words again.
She wouldn’t have either living at home with Papà. But sooner or later she was going to have to tell him that she had slept with Vicè, and then he would insist on her marrying someone of his choosing.
Her pulse slowed and she sat up straight, biting her lip, listening to the distant sound of the waves.
Maybe, though, there was another option...
* * *
Clenching his jaw, Vicè stared around the empty bedroom.
He was still in shock. The script he’d planned for today had unravelled so fast, so dramatically, and in a way he could hardly believe possible.
Just when everything had been falling into place so beautifully.
Everything.
She’d even agreed to marry him.
So how come he was standing here with his face still stinging and her ultimatum ringing in his ears?
Behind him the tangled bed sheets were like a rebuke or a taunt and, feeling as if the walls were starting to shrink around him, he crossed the room, yanking open the door and stepping through it in time with his pounding heartbeat.
It was his fault.
Actually, no, it was hers.
If she had told him the truth about being a virgin in the first place he might not have been so distracted, so caught off balance.
He might even have locked his phone.
His chest tightened. How could he have been so unforgivably stupid and careless? When Ciro found out he was going to go ballistic. He might never speak to him again.
The one consolation in this whole mess was that Ciro had already managed to get the house back. He knew his brother: Ciro was a fast worker. Claudia had agreed to sign over the house before she’d learned the truth, and those documents would be signed and witnessed by now.
But what did he have to show for himself?
Niente, that was what!
He had nothing.
He gave a humourless smile. He was trapped on an island with a woman who basically wanted to cut off his palle and fry them up for brunch.
Glancing back into the bedroom, he ran a hand over his face, wishing he could as easily smooth over the last few hours of his life.
The shock of being unmasked had shaken him more than he cared to admit—as had Imma’s threat to speak to his mother. Although now he’d had a chance to cool off he knew she’d been bluffing.
But what had really got under his skin was the sudden devastating loss of the woman who had melted into him just hours earlier.
Gone was the passion, the inhibition of the night, when she had arched against him, her body moving like a flame in the darkness. Now in her eyes he might as well be something that had crawled out from under a particularly dank and slimy rock.
And, even though he knew logically that it shouldn’t matter what Imma thought about him, he didn’t like how it made him feel. Didn’t like being made to feel like he was the bad guy.
There was only one bad guy and that was her father.
From somewhere nearby a phone buzzed twice. Glancing down, he saw that it was his.