The questions that had taunted her yesterday night swirled back into her brain.
Why didn’t he do emotional attachments? Quite apart from anything else, didn’t he get unbearably lonely?
While she’d always shied away from sexual intimacy, she’d found it incredibly hard to live without emotional intimacy, especially in the last few months.
How many times had she had to resist calling the De Rossis, homesick for the sound of Megan’s voice, Dario’s gruff advice, or Izzy’s inane prattle about unicorns, Disney Princesses and her latest Lego construction? How many times, particularly in the first few weeks, had she latched on to groups of people because being completely alone had terrified her? People like the German backpackers she’d partied with for one glorious weekend after meeting in an Amsterdam hostel. Or the bar staff in Paris she’d hung out with every night after lights out while working for a few weeks in a Bastille brasserie.
If anything, being alone had made her appreciate so much more the company of others.
A pang dug into the center of her chest. Why would anyone commit themselves to a lifetime without those connections if they didn’t have to?
Hot on the heels of that thought came the memory of Jared’s caresses, so urgent, so addictive. Heat spiraled down to her core—the yearning acute, despite the soreness still lingering in her sex, and making her blush when Inez brought in a breakfast tray.
There was a folded note propped up against the coffee pot with her name written on it in Jared’s thick black scrawl.
Katie forced herself not to grab it off the tray but she couldn’t control the kick of anticipation as the maid poured the coffee and arranged a dish laden with frittata and ham on the balcony table. The tempting scent made her empty belly growl.
As soon as Inez had left the room, Katie lifted the note and flicked it open.
Her heart beat an uneven tattoo as she scanned the three short sentences.
Last night shouldn’t have happened. It won’t happen again. I’m not in the habit of deflowering virgins.
Caine
Her heart sunk into the pit of her stomach and the paper fluttered to the floor from nerveless fingers. The warmth, the feeling of safety and security, even the insistent buzz of sexual arousal, was replaced by the sharp stab of hopelessness and inadequacy.
* * *
“Everything’s good, Dario. The passport should be here by Monday,” Jared spoke into his cell phone, his voice hoarse as the guilt threatened to strangle him.
He’d had another nightmare last night. Had woken up aching and sweating, his head splitting, the terror so huge his throat had been raw from the shouting—and his penis as hard as an iron spike. Because in his nightmare Katherine had been locked in that squalid room with him.
Thank God he had remembered to close the terrace doors this time before falling into a restless sleep.
He had spent the morning immersed in a conference call with the San Francisco office at the resort’s business center and harassing his PA to get onto the British consulate again and get an answer out of them about the ETA on Katherine’s passport.
It hadn’t helped. Instead of calming him down, he now felt even more shaky and tense.
“Jared, is there a problem?”
He thrust an impatient hand through his hair, clinging on to his usual cool by his fingertips as he recalled the sweet, seductive light in Katherine’s heavy-lidded eyes as he’d placed her in her own bed the night before.
Can’t you stay with me?
“It’s nothing,” he said down the phone line. “I guess I’m just tired and kind of stressed.” Not surpris
ing, given that he hadn’t had an uninterrupted night’s sleep since Katherine had burst back into his life. “The Borelli buyout was more complicated than I thought,” he added.
He heard Dario’s wry chuckle. “Owning and operating a billion-dollar company sucks sometimes, no?”
Jared let out a strained laugh.
If only that were the problem.
A loud rap sounded on the door and he ended the call with Dario as he beckoned his executive assistant into the room. The efficient young man looked agitated, which was not like him.
“What’s wrong, Carlo?” he snapped, the little patience he had left evaporating.