‘You will never, ever get into a car with her again, amore,’ Andreo intoned harshly, long fingers closing into her shoulders and giving her the tiniest, barely definable shake in emphasis of that embargo.
‘She got a terrible fright and I’m sure she’ll be much more cautious in the future. I gather the road is usually very quiet—’
He closed one hand into her vibrant mane of curls to tip her head back and scorching golden eyes assailed hers. ‘I think if you had died, I would have wanted to die too,’ he breathed in a raw, driven undertone. ‘You are so much like a part of me now and when you are not with me, I don’t feel right. Had I lost you, I should never have felt complete again, bella mia.’
Stunned at the extraordinary emotional intensity of that passionate declaration, Pippa stared up at him with parted lips, her amazement palpable. He cared about her, he really, really cared about her. Some of the hard, hurting tension with which she had braced herself to face him began to yield inside her. ‘I suppose you’ve already guessed but I was a-about to take off on you again—’
Dark colour accentuated the sculpted perfection of his masculine cheekbones. ‘Sì…but I was asking for it. I wasn’t honest with you. I was still trying to play it cool and of course you needed my reassurance and I had too much pride to let you see how I felt about you…’
Brooding golden eyes veiling below lush black lashes, Andreo fell frustratingly silent at that point when Pippa was hanging on his every word with superhuman concentration and attention. ‘How you feel about…er…me?’ she prompted shamelessly.
‘I’m working on that,’ Andreo assured her between compressed lips, graceful brown hands curving briefly to her cheekbones while he continued to study her and then dropping from her again.
‘Oh…’ Just for an instant there she had thought he might be about to say he loved her or something crazy like that, and she was really mortified by the fantasy element able to bloom within her own imagination. For the merest instant she wanted to kick him for saying that insane thing about thinking he would have wanted to die had she died. On that score he had undoubtedly led her up the garden path but she was quite sure he had not meant to do so. He had been very much shocked by the sight of that crashed car and he felt very protective towards the baby she carried, and at least she now knew where the Latin reputation for romantic and dramatic exaggeration came from…
‘I had backed into your corner and challenged you. I suspected that you were ready to take flight again and I cut short my time with the notaire,’ Andreo volunteered, his hands dropping from her to accompany the speech.
At the stark look of reproach in his gaze, Pippa reddened with guilt. ‘My thinking was all skewed and—you know? I was trying to save face too but I wasn’t being fair to either of us in running away from things just because I couldn’t handle them—’
‘You need me to keep on proving myself to you. That’s all and for what it’s worth, I would have chased after you again, carissima,’ Andreo confided huskily. ‘And I would have done it again…and again until I won your trust.’
‘Is that what I was doing?’ That was when Pippa saw her own behaviour in a different light. On a subconscious level, she had been testing him out, hoping that he would make the effort to follow her and convince her that he was a guy she could rely on. ‘Well, it won’t be happening again. I haven’t been fair to you. Apart from that misunderstanding we had about Lili Richards, you had been very honest with me—’
‘What I had with Lili was strictly casual. I should have called Lili and told her I’d met you but ditching her by phone would have been tacky. It would also have felt like overkill when Lili and I had agreed that we were free agents before she left. I also…’ his strong jawline squared and he forged on grimly, ‘I also think that I was reluctant at that point to accept how important you had become in my life, cara.’
He was firing that fantasy element in her imagination again. ‘Important? Was I?’
Andreo frowned. ‘I haven’t been serious about a woman since Fia.’
‘My goodness…you don’t get serious much.’ Pippa heard herself make that inane comment in a distinctly squeaky voice.
‘I made such an ass of myself over her that I had no wish to allow any woman that much power over me again,’ Andreo confided with a grimace.
Pippa smoothed her hand in a soothing gesture across one broad shoulder and her fingers lingered to maintain a physical connection between them. ‘You were very young. You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.’
‘I lost face in my own eyes. My family were very forgiving but I was deeply ashamed of my own lack of judgement,’ Andreo admitted curtly. ‘I fell in love with an imaginary image of Fia rather than with the woman she really was—’
‘I made the same mistake with that student Pete when I was seventeen,’ Pippa rushed to tell him. ‘I saw him as Mr Perfect but I haven’t done that with you…’
Andreo tensed and gazed down at her with rather touching wariness.
‘I mean, I know you’re not perfect! No human being is perfect,’ Pippa hurried to add, recognising too late that he really, really wanted her to think he was the most perfect guy imaginable. ‘But I swear you’re the closest thing ever—’
‘No…I’ve made too many mistakes.
If anything had happened to you or to our baby today, I would never have forgiven myself for not telling you how I feel about you,’ Andreo proclaimed.
‘I felt the same way,’ Pippa whispered tenderly.
‘I’ve been a lost cause from the first night I saw you, cara,’ Andreo interposed. ‘Why do you think I was so hot for you? I’ve never felt anything that powerful before.’
Cheeks burning, and suspecting that he was referring to lust alone, Pippa mumbled, ‘I hadn’t either—’
Andreo looked down at her with glittering golden eyes and, closing his hands round hers in a sudden movement, breathed, ‘Being with you feels wonderful but at the beginning that unnerved me—’
‘Feeling wonderful unnerved you?’
His hands tightened on hers and she flinched, soon appreciating that he was so deep in serious thought that he had not a clue that he was crushing her fingers. ‘Falling in love when you’re not expecting it can be…’ Andreo hesitated in search of the right word ‘…traumatic.’