And Alex wanted nothing more than to sink into his strong body. Nothing more than to share the grief that choked her sometimes. Nothing more than to give herself over to him.
But the girl who’d been seen by her own mother as a punishment, the girl who’d always wondered what she’d done wrong, the girl whose heart had been seriously dented over the last few months, reared its head. Bringing rationality along.
She looked up into those magnetic eyes, forcing herself to break the spell. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you act as if this marriage is so important to you?”
His curse rang around in the garden. “Because it is.” He ran a hand through his hair and she realized, even he didn’t know why. “It just is.” But the conviction she wanted was there. In his gaze. In the set of his mouth.
“Why?” she pushed, instinctively realizing they were standing on the cusp of something vital.
“Because you made me see a future for myself. All my life, I had no plans beyond the destruction of the Brunettis. I came to Bali because I had been so curious about you, about your role within the family. But when I got there, when we met, it… I have never acted like this with a woman before. There’s no precedent for my actions.”
A burst of air burned her lungs as Alex took in a deep breath. All around her, fragrance filled the air. The sounds and scents of life itself underscoring the hope flickering in her chest.
He was right. She couldn’t do justice to anyone this way, sitting on the fence in the middle of everyone. She had to choose. She wanted to choose him. She wanted to bridge this gap between them. She wanted to hope that everything would turn out for the best.
“You really want to spend time with me?”
“I’ve barely seen you for more than a few hours since the wedding. Either you’re finishing off a contract, or saving them from me, or showing up for Charlie on the other side of the world.” His thumb traced the dark circles under her eyes. “I would feel quite the neglected husband if I didn’t see that you’re neglecting yourself too.”
She shrugged. But she couldn’t conjure the energy to dislodge his hands. No, she didn’t want to dislodge them. She was tired of fighting. She wanted to be held. By him. It was an ache in her belly, this want. “We both have busy lifestyles.”
“I miss you, bella. That’s why I moved in here. I miss—” he swallowed, his eyes glinting with desire and awareness, slamming into Alex like a bulldozer “—spending time with you.”
She snorted, a lightness filling her despite the emotional roller coaster of the last week. It was hard not to be moved by the raw need in those eyes. “You mean you miss sex?”
“Si.” He ran a hand through his hair. “But I miss having sex with you.”
And just like that, he felled her where she stood with that raw admission, with that naked hunger he made no attempt to hide in his eyes.
Electricity arced between them, and she found herself swaying toward him. Every cell in her begging to give in.
His palm kneaded her hip with gentle pressure, his powerful thighs teasing sinuously against her own. “Stop running away, Alex,” he whispered in her ear.
He touched his mouth to the line of her jaw, his breath a caress against her skin. Heart beating a thousand to the minute, Alex leaned into him. Those soft lips drew a lightning path down her cheek until they reached the corner of her mouth. And stilled. A meteor dropping on them couldn’t have moved her then.
“Maybe catch up on your sleep first, bella.
“Because we have a lot to make up for.”
* * *
Vincenzo closed the door of Alessandra’s bedroom softly behind him. The gaunt set of her face—maledizione, she looked like stretched glass—haunted him as he walked through the long corridor toward the room he had set up as a temporary study.
Lust he understood. She was gorgeous and more than matched his appetite in bed.
But this tenderness when he’d found her fast asleep on top of the bedcovers, still in the sweats and old T-shirt she’d worn this evening, dark shadows under her eyes—this he didn’t understand.
He stayed inattentive all through the conference call with Massimo and BFI’s CFO, two of the most dynamic board members of BFI, both Leo’s recruits.
Frustration raked through him as the call ended. The second man left while Massimo closed his laptop with a hard thud that spoke all too loud.
“You won’t find anything against him,” Massimo said calmly.
“What?” Vincenzo spat out, his mind all too focused on his wife. And the very real grief he’d glimpsed in her eyes earlier that evening. Grief for her mother that she still refused to share with him.
“You won’t find any dirt on Leo. Or me, for that matter.”
Vincenzo looked back at the younger man he was unwillingly coming to more than respect. “Look, Massimo—”
“Don’t insult my intelligence, Cavalli. You’ve been like a rabid dog these past few weeks trying to find ammunition against Leo.
“The men who are hungrily following in your wake to oust him…those are the kind of men Leo took on in the first place in his fight to turn BFI around. Who didn’t agree with him when he instituted an ethics committee, who didn’t want to give up even a small share of their profits to clean up the mess Silvio created.
“But then you already know all this.”
Massimo picked up his laptop and crossed the room. “For a man who hates the name Brunetti and everything it stands for, you very much act like one, Cavalli.”
The air left his lungs as if he’d been gut punched. “Don’t you dare—”
“No? It’s a Brunetti trait to destroy the very people who might save us.
“Didn’t you realize that in all the research you did on us? Didn’t Natalie tell you I almost lost
