A Shadow of Guilt

He came closer to her and she fought not to move back, every muscle screaming with tension. She felt as if she’d woken a slumbering lion.

‘For two years I lived like that and it was no fun.’

‘That’s not the impression you gave to the world.’ Valentina ignored the little voice of conscience that reminded her that Gio hadn’t looked happy in any of the photos she’d seen of him in the press. He’d looked intense, as if driven by something.

Now Gio emitted a curt laugh that made Valentina flinch. He put a hand through his hair and stalked away from her to stand looking out the window with his back to her. Finally Valentina could breathe again. Every line of his body was taut. Shoulders broad, leading down to slim hips in low-riding worn jeans. Even now, in the midst of this high emotion, her attention was wandering, gaze captivated by his perfect backside, those powerful thighs and long legs.

Disgusted with herself, she swallowed back a curse and crossed her arms and lifted her gaze to the back of that dark head. And something inexplicably tender lanced her. She didn’t have time to question it before Gio started talking in a cool voice.

‘I ran away from here, something I’m not proud of.’

He turned around then and Valentina sucked in a breath at the bleakness on his face, in his eyes. ‘If I could have been the one to die, do you not think I wished it a million times? Every time I woke up in the morning? I knew what I had done … I know. If we hadn’t been friends, if I hadn’t badgered him into coming out that night, if I hadn’t had that damaged horse at my stables …’ He broke off and then continued huskily. ‘Do you not think I know that Mario’s death was my fault? If I hadn’t been arrogant enough to assume I could tame the most untameable of horses … Mario wouldn’t have wanted to try himself, to prove me wrong.’

Bitterness laced Gio’s voice now. ‘I came from a life of excess I hadn’t even earned, from a family connected only by their disconnectedness. Mario came from everything that was good and real.’

His eyes seemed to be skewering Valentina to the spot. She couldn’t move. His voice roughened. ‘The night Mario died … I went back to the palazzo and put Black Star down, even though he was physically uninjured. He was untameable, there was something wrong in his head, or genes, but I’d let him live. Me. He should have been put down months before, when that jockey had died.’

Gio’s mouth was impossibly flat. ‘It took another death before I saw through my sheer arrogance. When I left here I wanted to die too. I wanted to kill myself but that would have been too easy, too self-serving. So I did everything imaginable to court death, without it actually being by my hand.

‘I jumped out of planes, I climbed impossible mountains, I went to war-torn regions in Africa—ostensibly for charity purposes but secretly hoping I’d find myself a target of some drug-crazed faction.’

Something cold went down Valentina’s spine when she thought of the cavalier way in which Gio had played with his life.

But he wasn’t finished. His mouth twisted in evident self-disgust. ‘Instead I found myself being lauded as a champion of philanthropists, and became a pin-up for extreme-sport enthusiasts. So then I immersed myself in the debauched and shallow world of the truly idle and rich. Because that’s what I deserved.’

He laughed curtly. ‘After all, isn’t that what I was? I’d never done a decent day’s work in school and yet Mario, with infinitely less resources, had succeeded against all the odds. Do you not think that I know how much Mario’s life was worth over mine?’

Valentina felt as if she’d just been punched in the gut with his words. She even put a hand there as if she could stop pain from blooming outwards. She couldn’t say anything though, too stunned, too shocked….

Gio continued in a flat voice. ‘The days were meaningless and morphed into one another, interspersed with whatever my next desperate flirtation with death would be. I lost and won back my entire fortune in the space of twenty-four hours many times over. One night in a casino I was so drunk I could barely see straight, but I was about to use Misfit as collateral in a bet with a renowned and very ruthless gambler. He’d been waiting for his moment to get my horse.

‘And right then, I truly didn’t care about Misfit, I didn’t care about anything. I’d slept with a woman the night before and couldn’t have even told you her name. She was just one of many.’

Valentina was silent. In shock. Not disgusted. Everything about him spoke of his own self-recrimination. She found herself inexplicably understanding his need to lose himself in something, anything.

Gio’s mouth tightened, even as one corner turned up imperceptibly. ‘It was in that moment, as I was about to let everything I’d ever cared about go, that I heard Mario’s voice as clearly as if he were standing here now, in this room. He just said, Enough. And somehow … I got up and walked away.’

He looked directly at her. ‘So no, those two years were not fun. I was living the empty life of an even emptier hedonist. I was half alive but not as dead as I wanted to be.’

Gio’s words sank in and choked Valentina’s vocal chords. She believed his wish to die; she’d seen it on his face that day at the graveside and she’d welcomed it at the time because she had wanted to hurt him as she hurt. Yet only now she was realising how etched into her memory it had always been.

Helpless tears pricked her eyes at the thought of Mario’s presence coming to Gio like that. She believed that too, because she’d felt him around her at certain times. It’s exactly what he would have said to Gio.

Overcome and floundering badly at Gio’s emotionally stark confession that gave her no room to attack him, Valentina put her hands to her face to hide her blurring vision as if that could hide the emotion that was rising like a dam breaking deep inside her. She faintly heard a sound and felt Gio’s presence come closer and suddenly Valentina could do nothing but obey a deep need and instinctively she reached for Gio, wrapping her arms blindly around his waist. Within seconds she was

sobbing into his chest.

For a long moment he did nothing and Valentina knew she was clinging to him like a limpet but she couldn’t stop it. And then slowly, his arms came around her and he was holding her so tight she thought her bones might crush. She cried for a long time, until little hiccups were coming out of her mouth. She’d cried for Mario so many times she’d lost count, but this was infinitely different. There was something cathartic about this.

When the hiccups had stopped and Valentina’s breaths evened out again, she felt wrung out but also very aware of being held so tightly in Gio’s arms. Her breasts were crushed to his belly and her nipples were tight and hard against the lace of her bra. Sensitised and tingling.

The material of Gio’s shirt was damp under her wet cheek and she could feel the delineation of hard muscle, the rise and fall of his chest. His heartbeat was slightly fast under her cheek, his scent musky and earthy. And down lower, where her hips were all but welded to his hard thighs, Valentina could feel his arousal pressing into her soft belly.

This realisation didn’t shame her or disgust her. It excited her, and thrilled her. She didn’t want to move, or breathe. Didn’t want to break the spell that seemed to hover over them. It was as if the intense flood of emotion had washed something acrid away.

Finally, reluctantly, Valentina pulled back within Gio’s arms. She couldn’t stay welded to him forever.

His hold slackened fractionally and she looked up. His face was stark, intent. She could still feel him, rigid against her, and she wanted to move her hips. Her sex tingled in response and her heart thumped because she knew she wanted this man. No other man had ever managed to touch or arouse this very secret part of her.