"How old were you when you married Angelo Terlizzi?" "Twenty-two."
"Very young," he muttered.
"It felt right," she asserted, needing to justify the decision in the face of this far stronger attraction that seemed to just reach out and seize her. She had loved Angelo for many, many reasons. There was no reason at all behind what she was experiencing now with a man she barely knew on any personal level. Yet his compelling tug on her had a vibrant life of its own, impossible to ignore or deny.
She should be asking him questions. But would any more knowledge of him make any difference? Why was he asking these questions of her?
Was he trying to reason away an attraction he didn't want, that he found inconvenient? Maybe he was trying to convince himself she was totally unsuitable for him anyway, that Michelle was a much better match.
An angry pride stirred in Gina. She hadn't asked for this. She wasn't chasing him. He'd made all the moves, stirring what shouldn't be stirred if he didn't want to explore it further.
"Did you go on working after you were married?" he went on.
"Not in the florist shop. I used to do the lunches for Angelo's deep-sea fishing charters."
And I was more a helpmate to my husband than Michelle Banks will ever be to you, she thought on a wave of fierce resentment over whatever judgements he was making.
"You played hostess to his clients on board?"
"Yes. I enjoyed that, too," she said on a wave of belligerence. "Until I fell pregnant and started getting seasick. Then I did the lunches at home and Angelo served them on board."
Most work was about service to other people, she argued. Even dress designing catered to clients. She didn't see that what she'd done was any more lowly than what his fiancée did. It certainly didn't make as much money but so what? She had nothing to be ashamed of.
"So you've been a stay-at-home mother since you had Marco." "Not completely."
She didn't want to recall the time of empty nothingness—the shock, the grief, the numbness about any future at all—following on from Angelo's death. Only Marco had been left from the plans they'd made for a big happy family, her wonderful little son who was both a comfort and a reminder of what had been taken away from her. She didn't try to foresee a future anymore, perhaps from a fear of tempting fate.
In a way she'd been drifting, just taking each day as it came, coping more than making opportunities for herself. Isabella King had opened another door for her. Peter Owen might open up more, but suddenly they didn't seem important. Alex King had taken centre stage and she couldn't think of anything else, yet she still had no real idea of where she stood with him. This fever in her blood probably was madness.
"You mean your singing engagements," he prompted when her silence went on unbroken by further explanation.
"I'm also working part-time in my aunt's florist shop," she answered slowly, realising the job formed a pleasant stop-gap rather than a step to some reason for being. "I can take Marco there with me," she added, acknowledging what an advantage such a situation was for a single parent who didn't want to surrender the care of her precious child to anyone else, not on any regular basis.
"Who's minding him tonight?"
It burst upon her that she'd completely forgotten what she'd been about to do before he'd taken control of everything. "Rosita. Your grandmother's housekeeper." The reply tripped out as she rose to her feet, agitated by the sense of having selfishly indulged what was beginning to feel like a stupid flight of fantasy, instead of sticking to the reality of a life with her son. "I should go and check on him."
"He's here? At the castle?"
Alex swung on her, his surprise and the sharpness of his tone halting any further movement. Her heart skittered again, setting her pulse leaping haphazardly as the full force of his personality was aimed directly at her. Her mind skittered, too. Did he find something wrong with this arrangement? Wasn't she good enough to be his grandmother's guest?
Instinctively her chin tilted, defying any negative opinion he might hold. "Mrs. King kindly invited us to stay overnight to save disturbing Marco's sleep with travelling."
"So you'll be sleeping here, too."
Tension poured from him, swirling around her like a tightening net, holding her captive. "I've been given the nanny's room in the nursery quarters," she said, then wished she hadn't told him that. Although the arrangement was most suitable for her and Marco's needs, it sounded as though she didn't rate a proper guest room.
This status thing was really bothering her. "Why are you asking me all these questions?" she burst out, her inner anguish demanding some satisfaction. "Why don't you say what's really on your mind?" Her hands jerked out in an emphatic gesture of appeal. "This isn't fair!"
"I know it's not!" he retorted in a darkly savage tone. "I wanted you to help me out of my dilemma but there is no help. I have to make the choice myself."
It fired all the resentments she'd been silently nursing. "Well, how very lucky you are to have a choice. Seems to me I didn't get one. But that's okay. I can walk away."
It was like dragging her body out of a magnetic field to take a step backwards, to force her legs to turn aside from his powerful presence, to will herself into some dignified retreat.
"No!"
He caught her wrist and with a strength that had her stumbling off balance, spun her back towards him. In almost a blur of motion he loomed much closer, releasing his grip to take a far more comprehensive hold, his arms wrapping around her so fast, her hands slammed against his chest in an instinctive warding off action.
"Don't play with me!" she cried, her gaze lifting to his in a torment of protest at his arbitrary use of her.
A dark blue fire blazed down at her. "Does this feel like play?" he demanded harshly. "Did it feel like play on the dance floor?"
Her resistance instantly weakened. There was no stopping his intensity of feeling from flooding through her, re-igniting all the powerful sensations of wanting him, a very immediate primitive wanting that craved action. It wasn't enough to be held in this close contact. It was nothing but a tease, a torment, a prolonging of conflict that begged at least some resolution.
One of his arms clamped her more tightly to him as he lifted the other to touch her face, light fingertips sweeping her hair from her forehead, trailing down to her cheek, feathering the line of her lips, flowing over her chin, her neck, under the long flow of her hair, stroking her nape. The tingling skin-to-skin contact was so mesmerising, Gina couldn't think. The challenge she might have made melted from her mind. Feeling filled it...and the raging desire for more.
His chest heaved against her breasts as he dragged air into his lungs. "I have to do this," he murmured, the low words carrying a deep throb of need that was echoed in the thundering of her heart.
The kiss came hard and fast—an explosion of pent-up passion from both of them, a stampede of tasting, tangling, an urgent assault on any inhibition, a fierce giving and taking that flowed into an all-consuming sense of merging.
Gina was barely aware that her hands had flown up around his neck and were clutching his head to hers. Her body was arched against his, exulting in the imprint of his hard masculinity, straining to indulge the rampant desire to feel all of him. Everything within her yearned to be immersed in total intimacy with this man.
It was as though she had never known what could be... and here it was... the promise of how it would be when the chemistry was perfect, and the recognition of it was singing through her entire body, pulsing from her heart, jamming her brain with a host of needy signals.
Even when he pulled out of the kiss, the promise was still there, gathering a momentum of its own. His cheek rubbed against her hair as he regathered breath, the pressure of his embrace almost crushing as though he couldn't bear to release any other part of her.
"Believe me...this is not play, Gina," he rasped. "But it has to stop now because...you're right. It isn't fair."
The feverish burst of words floated past her consciousness, tapping on the door of a mind that was too full of more compelling messages to admit them. It was not until he stiffened away from her and the squaring of his shoulders caused her hands to slide from his neck, that the sense of what he'd said began to sink in.
Stop?
Not fair?
He dropped his hold on her, his arms falling to his side as he took a step back, watching her with keen concern as she swayed on her feet. With her hands so abruptly dislodged from his shoulders, all physical support removed, still giddy with sensations that had been given no time to abate, Gina instinctively wrapped her arms around her midriff to hold herself steady. A shivering started, cold attacking heat, the sense of loss growing sharper and sharper.
She stared at him in paralysed disbelief, not understanding how he could stop this. Or why he would want to. It felt as though everything inside her was churning around in frantic futile circles, finding only emptiness because the promise of fulfilment had been broken and there were only jagged edges left of it.
She didn't know what he saw in her eyes—the open wound of rejection? A devastated heart? A truth he didn't want to face?
His brows dipped into a pained frown. His mouth moved into a vexed grimace. "I'm sorry," he said.
Sorry...
It was unbearable.
A fierce surge of pride gave her the strength to turn and walk away, blindly at first, the need to flout his belittling apology driving her legs to put a decisive distance between them. The entrance to the castle was straight ahead of her and her focus gradually zeroed in on it.
Marco slid into her frayed mind. Marco was real.
Her little son loved her unconditionally.
There was a big difference—huge—between love and sexual lust. Best to be with Marco.