He quirked an eyebrow. “Really? You would expect me to believe a woman of your experience has liked every man she’s ever bedded?”

Her jaw clenched. She should have realized where this conversation would go. “I prefer not to discuss this with you.”

“Why not? Ashamed?”

“Of course not!”

“So how many has it been, Antonella? How many men have you lured to your bed?” He looked haughty, cruel. It made her furious.

“Lured? Lured? You make me sound like I’m running a stall at the market! Come get your peaches, come get your plums—hurry before they’re all gone.”

His expression seemed in danger of crumpling for a split second. She thought he might laugh, but he turned and looked out the window at the rain, ignoring her. He also didn’t move his arm. Fury cycled through her in waves until she decided the hell with it and flopped back on the seat, wedging him over where he took too much of her space.

What a hypocrite!

His body was hard, solid, and hot. Antonella folded her arms over her chest and leaned her head back—on his arm since he hadn’t moved it. He infuriated her with his accusations. He knew nothing about her, and yet he smugly thought he knew everything.

Arrogant man!

He took up all the air in the taxi. She wanted to roll down the window and stick her head out, but it was raining too hard. She was just so tired. So damn tired. As her temper deflated, her eyes drifted closed in spite of the effort she made to keep them open.

Cristiano’s scent wrapped around her senses. He smelled like rain and spice, and a pang of sadness pierced her. Why? It took her a moment to realize that it reminded her of something out of her childhood. Was it when her mother had fixed spiced tea for her when she was sick?

Yes, that was it. Spice equaled comfort back then. She could picture her mother as if it were yesterday—her sad, beautiful mother who’d died far earlier than she should have. Was that when her father had grown violent?

She couldn’t remember. She’d always tried to block those memories. Like the time he’d squeezed the life from Dante’s gerbil because Dante had forgotten to feed it. Her brother, who’d been ten at the time—far older than her impressionable five years—had taken the incident stoically.

Antonella had cried and cried. It was the first time she’d ever experienced such cruelty. She’d never forgotten it, used to burst into tears at the oddest times when the memory crashed in on her. Even years later.

Her face was suddenly cool, and she realized it was the air against her wet cheeks.

No, not now. Please, not now.

She opened her eyes, blinked against the blur. Then she swiped her hands over her cheeks, trying to stop the flow before Cristiano noticed and mocked her. She hadn’t cried over that memory in so long she couldn’t even remember the last time.

“Crying won’t work,” Cristiano said coldly—but his voice sounded oddly thick.

Antonella turned away from him. She didn’t want him to be here, didn’t want him to become a part of her struggle to be a normal person. It wasn’t his business! Nothing in her life was his business. “I’m just tired. Leave me alone.”

Would she never be free of this? Would episodes from her past always move her to tears when she least expected it? She felt weak, helpless—and angry. Sometimes, in these moments, she thought she could kill her father if he were in front of her and at her mercy.

And she hated that feeling most of all. The tears came faster now, turned into gulping sobs. She couldn’t stop the memories, couldn’t stop the guilt. She should have done something, should have—

Cristiano swore, then wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him.

“No, let me go,” she begged, trying to rip his hands away from her body. “Let me go.”

But he didn’t. He turned her toward him, cupped the back of her head and pressed her to his chest. She bucked against him, trying to get away, but he was too strong. Eventually, her shoulders slumped.

And once she gave up, his grip softened, his hand rubbing rhythmically up and down her neck while he spoke to her softly. She strained to hear the words over the roar of the rain and wind outside, over her own crying, and realized it was a song.

A song.

Shock was the least of what she felt at that moment. It was such an oddly tender gesture, and from the last person in the world she would have expected it. It was as if he understood somehow.

Her fisted hands curled into his shirt, held tight as she worked hard to stop the tears. She had every reason to hate him, but in that moment he was her ally. He held her for what seemed like hours. It was the closest she’d felt to anyone in a very long time.

THE taxi took them to the villa located on a remote beach. By the time they reached the house, Antonella’s tears had dried and she’d pushed away from Cristiano again. Fresh embarrassment buffeted her in waves. How could she have lost control like that? And with him, of all people? His shirt was wrinkled where she’d crumpled it in her fist, and a hint of mascara smudged the white fabric, but Cristiano said nothing.

Madonna mia. If the owner took them in, she was locking herself in a bedroom and not coming out again until the storm was over. The less time she spent in Cristiano’s company, the better.

Antonella waited in the car while Cristiano went to the door and checked to see if the island tycoon was home. He wasn’t, and yet a few minutes later Cristiano had managed to somehow get a call through to the man in New York.

“The staff is on holiday,” he said when he returned to the taxi, “but we are welcome to stay until the storm has passed. There is a caretaker in the cottage we drove by. He will let us in.”

“Wouldn’t we be better off in town?” Despite her earlier relief at not going to a hotel, she suddenly preferred it to being alone with this man for the foreseeable future. She felt too exposed, too raw. She couldn’t keep up the barrier of strength she needed simply to be in his company. It was like living on a battlefield.

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