Shadow Warrior (Shadow Riders 4)

Vittorio immediately caught her body and steadied her. “You can’t move around yet, Grace. Dr. Arnold was very clear that the car ride had to be smooth. No jarring you. That means when you shift positions, you have to take it very slow. Let me know ahead of time so I can help you.”

She bit down on her lip and struggled not to cry. She refused to be a baby in front of him. She was exhausted and wanted to lie down. More, she wanted the pain to stop, just for a few minutes, just long enough to allow her to catch her breath.

“It looks so beautiful, Mr. . . .” She hesitated. She was unsure what to call him. “Mr. Ferraro” sounded a little formal for being engaged—even when the engagement was pure fiction.

“Vittorio,” he supplied, his hand moving to the nape of her neck, massaging slowly to help ease the tension from her. “It isn’t that difficult to say my name, is it, gattina?” Amusement spilled over from his laughing eyes to his voice. “I’ve been waiting to hear the way my name sounds when you say it.”

She didn’t understand how he could look and sound and even smell so sexy and still, somehow, make her feel beautiful. Desirable. How did he do that when she was such a mess?

“The property looks so beautiful, Vittorio. I wanted to see it better.”

He smiled down at her and once again leaned in to brush a kiss along her temple. “Saying my name wasn’t that hard, was it?”

The car had come to a halt, but she was caught in his eyes, staring up at him, feeling as if the world around her was spinning and he was the calm center. “A little,” she admitted truthfully. “I feel like I know you, but the reality is . . .” Again she trailed off. The reality was he’d been her fantasy man for so long, she felt like she was caught in a bizarre dream. Between the painkillers and her overactive imagination, she was a little afraid of what she might blurt out.

His smile twisted her insides into knots of anticipation. She loved to see that smile, the way it transformed his face from rugged, dangerous, very masculine beauty to something much softer and approachable. She could pretend he was hers alone and that look was reserved for her. Still, she knew the difference between fantasy and reality and she wasn’t going to be so ridiculous as to believe in something not real. In the meantime, she was going to keep pretending.

“Don’t move, Grace. Let me come around and get you. I’ll describe the house and property to you, if you’d like.”

He slid across the seat, putting distance between them as one of the bodyguards she recognized—Emilio—opened the door for him. She was familiar with quite a few of the Ferraro bodyguards because they accompanied each of the Ferraros to the fund-raisers KB Events put on for their clients. The names were always on the lists and their faces became familiar out of necessity.

The moment Vittorio slid across the seat to the door, she felt unsteady and alone. Once again, the pain in her shoulder and arm was overwhelming, as if somehow his mere closeness had taken some of the agony from her. She watched him go around the hood and then he was opening her door and bending in, those incredible eyes of his moving over her face, assessing how bad the pain was just from the ride to his home.

“I’m so grateful to be out of the hospital,” she assured him, wanting to take some of the worry from his eyes.

“You don’t have to pretend everything is all right with me, Grace.”

Vittorio very gently unsnapped her seat belt. She tried not to feel like a child, wanting him to see her as a woman, not a broken thing that he had to take care of. She inhaled his scent, all that alluring woods and spice that shouted pure power and danger. Grace pressed her lips together to keep from blurting out again how good he smelled. Instead, she took another deep breath, wanting to concentrate on him and how good it felt to be cared for when she knew the lift out of the car was going to be excruciatingly painful.

“Don’t tense up, bella. Let me do the work. Just slide your arm around my neck and I’ll bring you out. We don’t want your shoulder jarred at all. Doc said he stabilized it very well, but you weren’t to move it yet.”

“I can’t believe you call him Doc.” She had to say something. Anything. She didn’t want to feel what was coming.

“Look at me.”

He waited until she did, his arm around her back, the other arm under her legs, his face very close to hers. That close he looked . . . intimidating. Reassuring.