Orla had huddled under that blanket sharing chips with him, oblivious that he was worth more than a small nation.
If he could turn back time and re-enact history, he would return to that night and tell her the truth of who he was. His mistake had been to not trust her with the truth. He’d been afraid the truth would change how she was with him.
He should have realised that night that his wealth would mean little to her. For Orla, money was a means to an end. Her brother’s wealth had been welcome only for what it could do to improve Finn’s life. Orla didn’t value possessions. She valued family. She valued those she loved.
Driving them back home, Tonino opened a window to get some fresh air into his lungs. He felt lightheaded even though he hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol.
Awareness throbbed through him, his mind busy recalling the way she’d wiggled her shoulders to the music; he shot surreptitious glances at her, catching the surreptitious glances she kept shooting back at him… So shot was his concentration that it was a miracle they made it back in one piece.
He brought the car to a stop in the courtyard. A member of his staff would park it in the underground garage for him.
For a long time they just sat there, the only sound their individual breaths.
He turned to face her at the exact moment she turned to face him. The soft lighting of the courtyard’s perimeter cast her in an ethereal shadow that made his lungs tighten along with his loins at the beauty before him.
He reached out to capture a lock of her hair in his fingers.
She stilled, eyes wide on his as if in a trance.
‘Have I told you how beautiful you look tonight?’ he whispered, releasing the lock of hair to trace his fingers around the rim of her ear.
She shivered at his touch. Her breathing deepened.
Lowering his tone to a purr, he spoke into her hair. ‘I have spent the night fantasising about us making love.’
Orla knew Tonino’s seductive words and tone were deliberate. His voice had always been an aphrodisiac to her, something he’d taken full advantage of four years ago and which she knew he would not hesitate to use as a weapon again. Her shameful lack of resistance was her own fault.
She tried to breathe, tried to grit her teeth in a form of mental defence, all the while praying, Please don’t touch my body…
Her aching body begged to differ. Her aching body craved his touch.
When he’d touched her in the back of his car she’d melted into butter.
His finger drifted down her neck to the top of her chest then skimmed lightly, almost nonchalantly, over a breast.
Her insides became liquid and she instinctively pressed the tops of her thighs together, a motion she knew didn’t escape his attention. Nothing escaped Tonino Valente’s attention.
His hot breath whispered through the strands of her hair to burn her scalp. ‘We should go in.’
She swallowed and instead of the bright, ‘Yes, that’s an excellent idea, I’m tired and want to go to bed. Alone. See you in the morning!’ she intended, all she managed was something that sounded like, ‘Hmm?’
‘I said we should go inside…unless you want me to make love to you right here in the car in the middle of the courtyard?’
The liquid inside her heated to unbearable levels. The finger that had skimmed her breast had settled on its underside and was making the lightest circular motions that had her wanting to grab his hand and place it over her breast properly. She wanted to feel his hand there without the barrier of clothes, to feel the heady sensations that had so enraptured her all those years ago.
While her body’s responses contradicted everything in her brain, his hand swept over her belly then left her body altogether to unlock her seat belt.
For a moment all she could do was stare into his hooded eyes before the tiniest smile curved on his firm lips and she was suffused in his scent as he leaned over her to open her door.
She got out of the car, her legs like overcooked spaghetti, a different kind of weakness than she usually felt in her limbs. This weakness was nothing to do with her brain. It was all to do with Tonino. Her legs would have felt like spaghetti even without the after-effects of the accident still grabbing at her.
Orla stared up at the black night sky and prayed for the strength to resist this undeniable attraction.
Attraction? If her tongue weren’t so tied to the roof of her mouth she would laugh at this pathetic description of the powerful feelings engulfing her.
All the years when she’d tried so hard to remember his name, his face had haunted both her dreams and her waking hours. Her first dream of him after the accident, around the time the doctors had ended her sedation, had been so vivid and real that if she’d been able to get off the bed and walk she would have stalked every inch of the hospital for him.
The accident had wiped his name from her memory bank. It had wiped their time together. It had wiped Sophia’s confrontation with her and Orla’s discovery of his lies.
The one thing it hadn’t wiped, apart from the image of his face, was her feelings for him. But only in her dreams had she dared let those feelings out.
Her heart thumping hard against her ribs, she walked beside him into the chateau and slipped her shoes off. There was not a sound to be heard within the thick stone walls.
Not until they reached the sleeping quarters did she manage to untie her tongue. ‘I need to check on Finn.’
She turned the handle of her son’s bedroom door and slipped inside. The night light in the corner of the room gave just enough illumination for her to see him sleeping peacefully. The adjoining door to the nurse’s room was ajar. Loud snores could be heard from it.
Orla watched her son sleep until the thuds of her heart settled into a gentle rhythm. She crept silently back out, her heart lifting right back to a canter when she found Tonino with his back against the corridor wall, arms loosely crossed over his chest, waiting for her.
Their eyes met. His chest rose.
Her throat caught.
Long, electrified moments passed before Tonino unfolded his arms. Straightening, he took a step towards her.
Her bare feet refused her brain’s order to move into the safety of her bedroom, remaining rooted to the terracotta floor.
Two more steps and the distance between them had closed.
A muscular arm hooked around her waist and pulled her flush against him.
She gasped and gazed up at the face that had haunted her dreams for so, so long. Another long, electrified stare passed between them.
She gasped again as she was lifted off her feet, a gasp smothered by the firm, sensuous mouth she had kissed a thousand times in her dreams crushing her lips.
Oh, but this was a kiss that could turn a nun’s head, never mind a love-starved Irishwoman whose heart had been given to, then broken by, the only man her body had ever ached for. A thousand brand-new feelings erupted in her and, wrapping her arms around his neck, she returned the kiss with all the passion in her soul, scraping her fingers down his nape as their tongues collided and their mouths moulded into one.
Heat fizzed through her veins as her every atom made a collective sigh that had her tightening her hold on him.
Tonino held her just as tightly. Only when they finally came up for air did he remove an arm from her waist and reach out for the door handle, pushing it open before wrapping the arm back around her.