She dug her fake nails into her thighs. How she hated that word. It was the word he’d always used to justify never being there. ‘Are you too busy to stop working for five minutes and talk?’
‘I have data to interpret and an analysis to send.’
Two years ago he would have explained both the data and analysis to her, assuming rightly that she would find it interesting. The truth was she had found everything about Massimo interesting. Enthralling. The workings of his brain had never failed to astonish her. How could they not? This was the man who’d used his downtime from his computer engineering degree to create a web-based platform game that had taken the world by storm and which he’d sold upon his graduation for two hundred million US dollars. That money had been the linchpin for his move to America, where he’d formed his company, Briatore Technologies, whilst simultaneously studying for a PhD in energy physics, followed by a second PhD in applied physics and material sciences. His company, of which he was still the sole owner, now employed thousands worldwide, creating environmentally friendly solutions for many of the world’s greatest carbon-related threats. He was on a one-man mission to save the planet one invention at a time. That he’d earned himself a fortune in the process was almost incidental. Only a month ago he’d been named in the top thirty of the world’s most powerful people and in the top fifty of the world’s richest.
It would have been so easy for him to make her feel stupid but he never had. Anything she didn’t understand—which when it came to his work was most things—he would explain patiently but never patronisingly, his face lighting up when she grasped the finer details of something, like how a lithium ion battery worked and what carbon capture meant on a practical level.
She had been so thrilled that this man, clever, rich, successful and with a face and body to make the gods envious, had been as seemingly enthralled with her as she had been with him that she’d been blind to his emotional failings. Once the first flush of lust had worn off he’d retreated into the all-consuming world he’d created for himself, hiding himself away from the woman he’d married.
She wished she knew what she’d done to make him back away from her but every time she’d tried to get him to open up, the further into his shell he’d retreated.
The silence, filled intermittently by the sounds of Massimo tapping on the laptop’s keyboard, grew more oppressive.
She watched him work. The familiar furrow of concentration was etched on his brow. How could he tune her out so effectively?
But as she watched him she noticed subtle changes. Flecks of white around the temples of his thick black hair that had never been there before. The full beard, as if he’d given up the bother of shaving altogether. Dark rings around his eyes as if he’d given up sleep along with shaving. Not that he had ever slept much. His brain was too busy for sleep.
Livia swallowed back the pang that had crept through her. Massimo was thirty-six years old; old enough to not look after himself if that was what he wanted.
He reached absently for the strong black coffee on the desk beside his laptop and took a large sip. His attention did not stray from the screen before him. He tapped something else onto the keyboard. The sound was akin to nails being dragged down a chalkboard.
Suddenly she could bear it no more. Jumping back to her feet, she took the three steps to him and slammed his laptop lid down.
MASSIMO CLENCHED HIS teeth together and placed a protective hand on his laptop to prevent Livia from snatching hold of it and throwing it onto the floor. ‘What was that for?’
Diminutive though she was in height, in presence she was larger than life and right then, standing over him, she seemed magnified, the anger rippling from her in waves. ‘We’ve been in the air for an hour and you’ve spared me only ten words.’
‘Twenty-six,’ he corrected through gritted teeth. ‘I have spoken twenty-six words.’
‘And now you’re being pedantic as well as rude.’ She pulled her hair together in a fist then released it. ‘How are we supposed to convince your grandfather and the rest of your family that we’re still together if you won’t look at me or talk to me?’
‘I’m not being rude. This is a very important time for me. On Monday we are running the prototypes on…’
‘I don’t care,’ she interrupted with a cry. ‘Whatever you’re working on, I do not care. I’m here as a favour to you for your grandfather’s benefit. The least you can do is treat me with some respect.’
‘If I’m being disrespectful then I apologise,’ he answered stiffly, biting back the retort of what did you expect? Livia had been the one to walk out on their marriage, not him. She had been the one to laugh in his face when he suggested they have a child. How did she expect him to be around her?
Damned if he knew how to act around her. Focusing his attention on the screen before him was the only tool he had to drive out the tumultuous emotions ripping through him. That these emotions were still there defied belief but Livia had always been able to induce feelings in him that had no place in his world, feelings that went far deeper than mere lust and friendship. She took up too much head space. She distracted him. That would have been easy to deal with if she’d only distracted his head when he’d been at home.
‘I don’t want your apologies. You don’t mean it. You never do. Your apologies are meaningless.’
It was an accusation she had thrown at him many times and usually preceded an escalation of her temper, which only got wilder when he refused to engage. Massimo disliked meaningless confrontation, considered it a waste of energy, and would walk away when she refused to listen to reason.
Unfortunately, right now there was nowhere for him to walk away to. To escape to.
Keeping his own temper in check—keeping a cool head when all those around him lost theirs was something he took pride in—Massimo inhaled slowly through his nose and gazed at the angry face before him. ‘What I’m working on is important. I’ll be finished before we land in Los Angeles. We can spend the time between Los Angeles and Fiji talking if that’s what you want.’
She laughed without any humour then flopped onto the seat opposite his and glared at him. ‘Great. You’re going to do me the huge favour of talking to me if I want. Thank you. You’re too kind.’
She’d folded her arms across her chest, slightly raising her breasts. He knew she hadn’t done it deliberately—intimacy between them had died long before she’d called time on their marriage itself—but it distracted him enough for a sliver of awareness to pierce his armoury.
Livia had a body that could make a man weep. Even dressed as she was now, fully covered in tight faded jeans and a roll-neck black jumper, her feminine curves were undeniable. The first time he’d made love to her he’d thought he’d died and gone to heaven. Her virginity had surprised and delighted him. Surprised him because he would never have believed a twenty-four-year-old woman with such a dirty laugh and who carried herself with such confidence could be a virgin. Delighted him because it had marked her as his in a primal way he’d never experienced before.
Sex had never been a great need for him. When he’d shot up from a scrawny teenager into the frame he now inhabited, he’d suddenly found women throwing themselves at him, something that had only increased when he’d sold his web-based game after graduation and become worth a fortune. If he’d been in the mood he’d been happy to oblige, finding sex a satiating yet fleeting diversion from his work. Livia was the first woman he’d been truly intimate with. When they had first got together they’d been unable to keep their hands off each other. For the first time in his life Massimo had found himself consumed by lust.
The loss of that intimacy had not been his choice. Their marriage had disintegrated