A Shadow of Guilt

Just over twenty-four hours later Valentina was standing in a private room in a state-of-the-art clinic in Naples listening to a consultant tell them about the operation which her father would undergo the next day. Her father was in bed, pale, and her mother was sitting by his side, looking worried but stoic, holding his hand tightly.

Gio stood in a corner of the room, arms crossed and face stern as he, too, listened. Dressed in chinos and a white shirt, he looked cool and crisp. And gorgeous, and remote.

Valentina’s body ached minutely in very secret places. She trembled with awareness just to be this close to Gio. Her brain was still reeling from an overload of sensation and lack of sleep.

She darted Gio a quick glance now but he wasn’t looking at her. His jaw was tight, impossibly stern. She felt conflicted, confused. From the moment she’d challenged him in his kitchen yesterday, something unspoken but profound had shifted between them.

She hadn’t had time to dwell on it though—Gio had used his considerable skill and experience to render Valentina all but mute with pleasure.

When Valentina had woken late that morning, disorientated and more physically replete than she could have imagined possible, it had been to a cool and fully dressed Gio telling her, ‘It’s time to go. The plane is ready to take your parents to Naples.’

Valentina’s attention came back into the room, guilt washing through her to think that Gio was distracting her even now, when her father’s life was being discussed. She did her utmost to ignore him and her roiling emotions and concentrated on her parents.

When the consultant left the room and Valentina had made sure her mother was comfortable in the private room that had been set up for her beside her husband’s, all courtesy of Gio, she left, feeling incredibly weary all of a sudden.

She was surprised to see Gio outside the clinic, not sure what she’d been expecting, but half expecting him to have left. Gio faced her now and held out what looked like a plastic hotel room key. ‘It’s to a suite in the Grand Plaza Hotel. It’s not far from here.’

Valentina blanched. It was also one of the most expensive hotels in Italy. She started to protest but Gio took her hand and curled it almost painfully over the card and said curtly, ‘I don’t want to hear it, Valentina. Take the key and use it. You need to stay somewhere while you’re here.’

Valentina reeled at the further evidence of this cool stranger. As if his silence on the journey over here hadn’t confirmed that something was very wrong. Suddenly she didn’t know where she stood any more; she was on shifting sands. This wasn’t the same man who had been clutching her hair, thrusting so deep inside her just hours ago that she’d wept openly.

‘I have to go back to Syracuse this evening. But I’ll be back to see how the operation went tomorrow.’

Valentina crossed her arms tight against how badly she wanted to touch Gio, have him touch her. To have him explain this abrupt emotional withdrawal. But a deep and endless chasm seemed to exist between them now.

She fought to match his cool distance in a very belated bid to protect herself. ‘You don’t have to come back tomorrow, you’re busy.’

In the same curt tone he replied, ‘I’ll be here.’

He gestured with a hand to where a driver stood by a car at the bottom of the clinic’s steps. ‘Dario will take you to the hotel and wherever you need to go. He’s at your disposal while you’re in Naples.’

‘Gio …’ Valentina began helplessly before stopping at the look on his face. She threw her hands up. ‘Fine, all right.’

Gio stepped back. ‘Till tomorrow.’

And then he was gone, down the steps and sliding into the back of his own car before it left the clinic car park and disappeared into the noisy fume-filled Naples traffic, and in that moment Valentina felt as if something very precious had just slipped through her fingers.

Less than an hour later Gio was watching the bright lights of Naples recede from beneath his small private Cessna plane. His gut ached. His whole body ached with a mixture of pleasure and pain. His hands were clenched to fists on his thighs and he had to consciously relax them. He smiled bleakly in recognition of the fact that he could relax them now because Valentina wasn’t near enough to him to tempt him to touch her.

Standing on the steps of the clinic he’d had to battle not to pull her into him, bury his face in her hair, feel how those soft curves would fit into his body like missing pieces of a jigsaw.

He’d gorged himself on her for the past twenty-four hours. And it wasn’t enough, it would never be enough. But it would have to be enough.

When she’d insisted on seeing where Mario had died, it had spelt the end of the affair to Gio as clearly as if it had been written on a board with indelible ink. When he’d left her standing in that garden, he’d been fully prepared for her return, and for her demand to leave straightaway.

But … she hadn’t asked to leave. She’d asked to stay.

And yet it hadn’t filled him with a sense of triumph. She’d said, I want you, Gio, that’s all. And that had reminded him more succinctly than anything else of what was between them. And what wasn’t. There wasn’t even the anger any more.

Valentina had cut herself off from what had happened in the past between them, and she had no problem continuing the physical relationship with him because there was no emotional investment. That’s why she hadn’t reacted the way he’d anticipated to seeing where Mario had died. That’s why she’d had no problem going to the castello in the first place.

Gio accepted a tumbler glass of brandy from the attentive air steward. He threw it back in one gulp and winced as the liquid turned to fire down his throat. He cursed himself for having thought for one weak moment that perhaps emotions were involved.

If anything, Valentina’s emotions where Gio was concerned had become the worst possible of things: benign. Soon, Valentina’s desire would wane and she would look at Gio with nothing but pity. He’d already seen a flash of it when she’d asked about his house and why it wasn’t furnished.

That would be the worst thing of all … to endure Valentina’s pity for him. After everything, that was the one thing he wouldn’t stand for.

The knowledge sat heavy in his gut. He’d always believed that he was empty inside, after years of contracting inwards to protect himself from his father’s cruelty and his mother’s ineffectualness. Mario had been the only one he’d trusted and allowed himself to love like a brother. And Valentina, a small voice mocked gently.