A Shadow of Guilt

Gio was sitting behind his desk looking absurdly out of place in his grey T-shirt. He looked far too vital and virile and sexy to be sitting at a desk.

Valentina dragged her attention back to his question. ‘It’s the advance on my pay that you gave me. I need to pay you back for what you’re doing for my father. I realise that it’ll take a lot—’

Gio stood up abruptly, making Valentina stop talking. His face had darkened visibly and he held the cheque back out to her. ‘Don’t insult me, Valentina. Please.’

Valentina refused to take the cheque, her own face darkening as blood rushed into it. She felt embarrassed. ‘When I came to you looking for work it was to make enough money to support and care for my parents. What I earn should go into their care and as you’re paying for that at the moment …’ She trailed off, a little scared at the way Gio’s eyes had darkened almost to black by now.

‘I offered to pay for your father’s treatment with no strings attached.’

Valentina observed scathingly, ‘There’s always strings attached.’

Gio shook his head and looked at her pityingly, making a hot rush of humiliation rush through Valentina. He came around his desk to face her and she wished he hadn’t. In flat runners he towered over her own not inconsiderable five feet seven inches.

‘What happened to you? What made you become so cynical?’ He frowned. ‘Was it a love affair gone wrong?’

Valentina nearly choked. A love affair gone wrong? Gio had no idea. She’d had plenty of men chasing after her but she’d kept them all at arm’s length. Terrified on some level of getting close to anyone. Terrified of the way one minute someone you loved could be there, and the next minute they could be gone. For ever. That realisation seemed to explode into her consciousness like a bomb going off. She’d never even really articulated it to herself like that before. She’d just always instinctively avoided relationships. Losing Mario had made her cynical. It had twisted something inside her soul.

Made weak by this insight, Valentina was barely aware when Gio took her hand a

nd folded the cheque back into it, closing her fingers over it. His hand was big and warm around hers and she looked up at him. They were standing much closer than she’d realised and his scent, musky and warm, unleashed an avalanche of vivid memories in her imagination.

Jerkily she pulled her hand back from his, with the cheque in it, and stepped back. The only coherent thing in her head was that she needed to get out of there now. Before Gio saw something she herself couldn’t really understand.

She got to the door and then looked back and blurted out, ‘It was you. You made me like this.’

All Valentina saw before she fled was Gio’s face darkening even more. She made her way back to the kitchen and busied herself, silently begging everyone around her to leave her alone.

Where did she get the nerve to say these things to him? It was as if every time he came within feet of her she had to lash out. Say the worst thing possible, terrified that if he got too close he might see her cruel words for what they were—a very flimsy attempt to keep him at a distance at all costs.

Valentina knew on some rational level that Mario’s death had been a tragic accident; Gio hadn’t forced her brother onto that demonic horse. She’d even heard him discouraging it, initially. The knowledge that her parents appeared able to forgive him had been a huge blow to her own justification to stay angry at him. But the fact was, for so long now she’d held Gio responsible.

Her anger had been compounded by the way he’d disappeared after Mario’s death only to turn up playing the part of a playboy bent on nothing but slaking his basest needs. Disgusted with herself for having been so invested in what he was doing, Valentina had nevertheless stored up every tiny example of Gio carousing and generally acting as if he didn’t have a care in the world, while they’d mourned Mario.

Her anger at him had always comforted her on some level. It was familiar and … necessary. For her sanity. In all honesty Valentina knew that she was very afraid of looking at what might be left behind if she couldn’t hold Gio responsible. If she couldn’t be angry with him. That thought was so terrifying that something must have shown on her face.

‘Val? Are you OK?’

Valentina sucked in a big breath and forced a smile at Franco, who was looking at her intently across the island they were working at. She nodded abruptly. ‘Fine … I, ah, just remembered something I need to do.’

Thankfully he left her alone and that evening Valentina escaped to the clinic to see how her parents were settling in, rather than unpack in her new accommodation, telling herself it was more than just a ruse to avoid bumping into Gio again.

That evening Gio cursed volubly outside Valentina’s suite of rooms. There was no answer. She wasn’t there. Even though he knew logically she was most likely visiting her parents, he had to battle a spiking of something very proprietorial. And he didn’t like it.

Women had never been anything more than a diversion to him. His long childhood years of feeling less than, and inadequate, had left him with too many scars to trust anyone, apart from Mario. His subsequent successes had done much to chase away that sense of inadequacy, but since Mario’s death, the joy had been taken out of it to a large extent.

Gio’s mouth twisted wryly just remembering how Mario had been the one who’d fallen in and out of love like some besotted Romeo. Something within Gio had always remained aloof with a woman. They hadn’t ever touched some deep secret part of him. In the two years after Mario’s death there had been an endless parade of beautiful women but none he’d connected with, and more often than not Gio had found himself waking alone.

Valentina. She’d always been different. She’d snuck into a place that was locked away deep inside him. But he’d been acutely aware that his feelings and desires for her were strictly forbidden.

When he’d left Sicily first she’d been only ten or eleven. A gap-toothed child only on his radar as his best friend’s kid sister who had trailed them with almost religious devotion.

But when he’d returned years later—a millionaire, the new owner of the racetrack in Syracuse with plans to rebuild—she’d been fifteen. And Gio had found himself aware of her in a way that had made him ashamed. So he’d flung himself into socialising with Mario, pursuing the local beauties, anything to push dangerous thoughts and desires from his mind.

Over the next two years she’d only grown more and more beautiful and mature. She’d started to flirt with him, but with such sweet innocence that it had twisted his heart. One day he’d been weak. She’d arrived to look for Mario, who’d already left. A miscommunication. Gio had seen her get startled by Misfit and had acted on an impulse, lifting her onto the horse.

He’d swung up behind her, wrapping his arm around her taut young body. The weight of her firm breasts had been heavy on his arm. Those stolen indulgent minutes had been the most erotic in his life….

Gio grimaced now and turned away from Valentina’s door. What was he doing hanging around like some besotted fool? Yes, he still wanted her. More than ever. But that was all. The capacity to feel anything more had long ago withered to dust inside him, poisoned by grief and guilt.