The Italian Read online

  Across the room were French windows with gossamer curtains fluttering in the evening breeze. Outside was a stone-flagged terrace, and beyond that a formal garden lit with torches and candles in glass vases.

  A man rose from the table set before the window and her heart, still beating triple-time, started hammering. She could barely breathe as she watched Stefano cross the marble tiles toward her.

  He was even taller than in her memory. Even more handsome, even more charismatic…more everything. A man seemingly designed to please women, but beneath the looks and manners was pure steel.

  His face was somber as he crossed to her. At the very last second, he smiled and her heart simply turned over in her chest. Without a word, he bent and kissed her.

  She opened her mouth to him and, too late, realized it was meant as a social kiss. Whatever it started out as though, it changed in an instant. They both inhaled sharply, as if something had stung—or hurt.

  The kiss didn’t hurt; it was more like an electric shock. Something that crackled and burned.

  His eyes narrowed when he lifted his head. The kiss hadn’t been long enough to wet his lips but he already had the look of male arousal—lips suffused with blood, dark red over his cheekbones, nostrils flaring whitely. A vein in his temple pulsed.

  “Dio mio,” he murmured. “That was…something.”

  Jamie had no comeback. She didn’t even have any defenses.

  She was so cool with the guys. All her friends admired her sang-froid. She always felt in control, even slightly apart from what was happening, in and out of bed.

  Now she felt as if someone had flayed her alive, simply stripped away her skin, and what she felt was apparent to anyone. Certainly to this man. She was sure her pounding heart was visible. The blood that had rushed to her breasts and sex—surely he could see that too.

  This was where she’d step back and crack a joke. Or ask for a glass of wine or comment on the room.

  Instead, she was frozen in place, in time. Staring up at a man who aroused her so strongly she could barely feel her toes and fingers.

  “Help,” he whispered, leaning his forehead down against hers, eyes closed. “I have manners, I promise. My mother insisted. Let’s do that again. I stand up when you walk into the room, meet you halfway, kiss your hand. State once more how happy I am that you accepted my invitation. Ask how your day was.”

  “And I say how delighted I am to be here and say my day was fine, how was yours.” Jamie managed to smile, happy her throat had loosened enough to speak.

  His eyes opened and she lost her ability to speak again. His gaze was fierce, direct, eyes the color of a sword in moonlight. Dark gray, almost black, penetrating. His gaze dropped to her mouth and it was as sensuous as a kiss.

  “And I’ll say my day was fine. But that’s all for politeness,” he whispered, gaze meeting hers again. “When in truth I couldn’t concentrate on work. All I could think about all day was kissing you.”

  “Me too,” she whispered, brain too blasted to lie.

  She knew perfectly well how to handle men and rule number one was never to let them know when they affected you, never let them see you as anything but cool and detached. That rule flew past the gossamer curtains billowing in the air, right out those gorgeous French windows, straight past the garden below and up into the star-scattered sky.

  There was no question of hiding anything from this man. She seemed to have this primal connection to him that stripped her bare of all defenses.

  Any other man would have smiled at her confession. Men and women have a constant game going on, with points awarded to each side. What she’d just said awarded points to him. He didn’t look like he’d won points. At her words, the skin tightened over his cheekbones, his eyes narrowed, jaw muscles clenching.

  This time the kiss was hotter, deeper, darker.

  She fell into it as you fall into an abyss. His arms tightened around her, lifting her up into his kiss, mouths open, slanting for a deeper taste. Each stroke of his tongue against hers sent white-hot lightning throughout her body. She clung to his shoulders not in an embrace but in a desperate attempt to stay upright, though she couldn’t fall. Not right now. Not with those strong arms holding her tightly to him, so tightly she could feel the buttons of his shirt, the rough texture of his linen pants against her shins.

  His huge erect penis against her belly.

  He shifted his arms, pulling her backside even more tightly to his body, and she moved helplessly, rubbing against him. His cock swelled, a strong pulse she could feel against her, almost feel inside her, as her vagina contracted sharply in answer.

  Stefano lifted his head again. He looked as if he were in pain. Jaws so tight the muscles at the side of his face were clenched. His mouth was now wet from hers. He was breathing hard and she could feel that broad chest expanding and contracting. Everything she did to him was right there for her to read, in his face and in his body.

  Just as he could read so clearly what he did to her.

  He’d said it best.

  Help.

  Chapter Four

  The woman was witchcraft. Had some magic potion. Not slipped into his drink but transferred by her mouth. Or maybe her skin had magic properties and touching her cast him under a spell. She’d done something to him, there was no doubt about that.

  He’d been perfectly serious when he said he’d thought about this all day. What she couldn’t possibly understand was how rare that was for him. Scratch rare. Unheard of. He was known for his powers of concentration. Every action for the past three years had been aimed at the capture and downfall of Salvatore Serra, and he could honestly say that every day since he’d accepted the post he’d been dedicated to the task. He knew Serra’s life better than he knew his own. Knew the man’s black soul inside out.

  To be distracted by a woman for an entire day—well, that was impossible. But there it was.

  Two days ago he’d been handed a dossier reporting the interrogation of a foot soldier of the Serra clan, caught during a raid on a high-end Manhattan club drenched in drugs. The transcription of the interrogation was sent by NYPD to the Ministry of Justice in Rome when the New York cops understood who they had caught in their mesh.

  Serra was slipping if this was the quality of foot soldier he was recruiting. The old-school Mafiosi would have let themselves be cut open before they’d talk. This young punk started crying after one night on Ryker Island, demanding to spill everything he knew.

  The dossier was fascinating. Stefano had realized that from the start. Page one gave him more info than he’d had in six months. But today when he’d reopened the dossier, he simply couldn’t concentrate. The words blurred on the page, dissolved into the curves of a slender redhead, her pale, beautiful hands reaching up from the pages to grab him and down he went. Down, down, straight into thoughts of her.

  So instead of tracing Dante LoIacono’s bank accounts from Palermo through Luxembourg then on to Aruba, instead of following his flights, which interestingly enough touched down twice in Pakistan—once in Peshawar and once in Islamabad—instead of reading the transcriptions of phone calls from Manhattan to Catania, he thought of Jamie.

  He fucking felt Jamie. Felt her soft hands on him, tasted her mouth in his mind, ran his hand along the smooth skin of her back.

  He’d gotten an erection for his trouble, with nowhere to go with it except to the bathroom to jerk off. Something he hadn’t done in years. Before Palermo, it hadn’t been necessary. The one thing he and his ex-wife hadn’t fought over was sex. Money, ambition, having children…they’d gone toe to toe bitterly over all of that. But the bedroom was the one place they’d been in agreement.

  After their separation, there had been no end of women who’d made themselves available. Though he’d been faithful to Caterina, he’d had offers during the marriage and when he was free, women called him on an almost industrial level. He’d had plenty of sex, though none of it truly satisfactory. Still, he was a man, and so-so sex
was always better than none, no?

  But ever since his arrival in Palermo, his cock had simply switched off in the search for Serra. Like someone had pulled a plug. He’d entered a sexless world of men—of hunters focused exclusively on their prey. There not only hadn’t been time for sex, there hadn’t been the opportunity or even the desire.

  Jamie had thrown that switch back up and now he was on fire. Every nerve ending, every thought was concentrated on getting this woman into his bed. And once he did, he had no idea how long it would take to let her out again.

  It wasn’t just a three-year dry spell being broken. It was this one woman being a key that unlocked him.

  He’d stood in his spare, unadorned office bathroom, infinitely grateful for the fact that he knew there were no vidcams because his men swept his office and bathroom twice daily, pulled his swollen cock out of his pants and leaned one-handedly against the cool white tiles as images ran through his head.

  The one that stuck was of Jamie outlined against the office door last night, the harsh light of the corridor showing her exact contours. It was as if someone had reached inside his head and pulled out the shape of the perfect woman. That long, slender torso narrowing dramatically to a tiny waist, flaring out lusciously again. Those long legs, perfectly visible beneath the lightweight pants… He could see, he could feel those legs around his waist as he moved inside her, and the image was so arousing even his fist—such a poor substitute for her sex—could get him off in under a couple of minutes.

  He’d come so hard his knees had nearly buckled.

  But as much as he’d imagined what it would be like to touch her, to kiss her, so enticing he’d gotten off on it, reality was a million times better.

  Their mouths fit together like they’d been made for each other. Though she was much smaller than him, when he held her tightly, she automatically rose onto her toes and her sex rubbed against his cock. He unexpectedly started a swift slide toward climax, totally out of his control.

  She dropped back down on her feet and pulled away from his kiss. He was instantly ashamed. Sex had rushed back into his life and he’d been so busy celebrating it he’d forgotten about the woman who was responsible. She didn’t look as if she was celebrating. She looked lost, pale, slightly shocked.

  Well, of course. She obviously felt the tug as strongly as he did. But where he was rejoicing, she was frightened. She was a foreigner in a strange land. Palermo felt like a foreign country to him, an Italian. He could only imagine how it felt to this American woman.

  They’d spent maybe half an hour in each other’s company and already he was kissing her, primed to enter her. She had all the hallmarks of a lady. This would be unknown terrain for Jamie.

  He hadn’t been joking when he’d said his mother taught him manners. He winced to think what she’d say to a man who treated a woman the way he had Jamie. A woman who’d had to put up with being frisked to come see him and bring him a present.

  Stefano stepped back. It was fucking hard to do, and that was the second biggest surprise of the evening. He had tons of willpower. His wife—who had been seeing her Freudian analyst twice a week for years—said he was all superego and no id.

  Right now he was nothing but id. Raw, naked desire. All he wanted was to sink to the floor with this woman, rip off her clothes and enter her.

  No.

  He was better than this.

  He’d stepped back but found it impossible to stop touching her. He compromised by taking her hand, bringing it to his mouth. Walking with her to the table.

  “I asked—” His voice was hoarse. As if he hadn’t spoken in years. He cleared his throat. “I asked Francesco to set up the table in front of the window. I hope the breeze doesn’t bother you. It’s such a beautiful view I couldn’t resist. And I asked for the entire meal to be delivered at once. I didn’t want waiters trooping in and out all evening. I hope that’s all right with you.”

  He watched her face carefully.

  Okay. Color had come back into her face and she smiled, her first smile since entering the room. She felt better when he showed some restraint.

  Christ, he was so ashamed of himself. He’d learned how to make a woman smile at fourteen. And here he was at thirty-six, having forgotten the art. Having lived exclusively in a world of hard men for the past three years was no excuse.

  She squeezed his hand gently, let it go. He missed the warm connection immediately.

  “It’s wonderful,” she said softly. Eyes closed, she drew in a deep breath. “The smells from the garden mingle with the smells of the food. It’s a heady mix.”

  Startled, he drew in a deep breath himself. She was right. An intoxicating perfume of night jasmine and candle wax and glorious food, and the tang of the open bottle of the Ravizza estate wine breathing on the table…and something that was Jamie.

  Smells. He hadn’t noticed smells in years. He’d been surrounded by the smells of paper and law books, gun oil, leather and sweat. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d noticed pleasant smells.

  It was as if someone had cut off his nose when he’d landed in Palermo.

  And his dick.

  They were now both fully online once more.

  He was almost painfully aroused. He had to work not to hobble. At least he was so turned on it was lying against his stomach and not bobbling in front of him, tenting his trousers. They were linen, and besides apologizing for his manners he’d have had to apologize for being as uncontrolled as a teenage boy in front of the prettiest girl in school.

  Keep her eyes fixed on your face, cretino!

  “Come,” he said and put his hand on her back. He nearly sighed with delight. The dress was some silky jersey thing—no doubt his mother would have known the exact material—and he could easily feel the warmth of her skin through it, the sleek muscles beneath his hand.

  She glanced up at him with a smile and he was glad her gaze didn’t drift below his belt. He bent and dropped a soft kiss on her lips, manfully straightening up and not plunging back in again.

  But oh shit, it was a temptation.

  In a moment he had her seated next to him, both of them facing the garden, and had dropped a huge, thick linen napkin over his crotch. From now on he could only serve food he could reach without standing up. Luckily that included the wine.

  He poured then she joined him in a toast, their glasses clinking together with that light peal of the finest crystal. Another sound he hadn’t heard in years. He mainly ate at the police mensa—the mess hall. The food was surprisingly good but the cutlery was cheap steel, the dishes ugly supermarket earthenware and the glasses thick and unbreakable.

  Just one more sense coming back to life with this magical woman.

  Stefano drank, watching her. She sipped, put the glass down with a smile, and he smiled too.

  “Wow. That was like liquid sunshine.”

  He turned the bottle so she could see the hand-printed label. “Francesco’s private collection. They sell their wine, of course, but they keep about a thousand bottles a year for the extended family and the restaurant.”

  She tilted her head, studying his face. “He cares for you. He said so. You could eat here every day if you wanted to.”

  “Yes.” Stefano held the glass up by the stem. The wine gleamed ruby red in the candlelight, almost glowing. “His estate was under attack by a secondary clan of the local Mafia. He was being squeezed for protection. Then his nephew was kidnapped.”

  His mouth twisted as he remembered the long nights, the police poring over infrared aerial photographs of the desolate countryside. He’d spent four nights and four days going over deeds in the catasto, the land register, discovering a large, isolated property owned by a shell company that tracked back to Serra. He’d told the carabinieri, a night helicopter had captured the IR image of a boy-sized mammal in a shed, and they’d broken in to find the fourteen-year-old shackled to a wall.

  She was searching his face. “You rescued the nephew,” she said.


  Stefano laughed. “The carabinieri, the local police, rescued the nephew. Who’d lost fifteen pounds and still needs therapy after a year and a half, but is mercifully alive.”

  “Francesco feels you are responsible for rescuing him. He feels a huge sense of obligation to you. It was clear to me.”

  Stefano nodded. It was true, though the gratitude was misplaced. Hardly a week went by when Francesco didn’t call him up and beg him to come eat at Palazzo Ravizza.

  “I’m glad you rescued the nephew,” she said simply and drank again. She liked the wine, he could tell. It pleased him. “And I hope you catch this Serra monster.”

  He’d been taking another sip and it went the wrong way. He coughed. “I beg your pardon?”

  Those brilliant turquoise eyes slanted in his direction. “Stefano, I might not be an investigator but I know how to Google with the best of them. And I can read enough Italian to follow articles in La Repubblica and La Stampa. You’re after the top Mafioso in the country. You have quite a reputation. For bravery, most of all.”

  “Idiocy is more like it,” he muttered and clinked his glass to hers again. “Let us drink to more pleasant things, my dear. Tell me about yourself, and what specifically brings you to Palermo.”

  “A lion,” she said, smiling. “Much like yourself, only mosaic.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  Jamie huffed out a laugh. “The one in the Palazzo Normanni. Standing over Frederick’s tomb.” She laughed again at his expression. “Surely you’ve seen it? In the Palatine Chapel?”

  He saw the streets of Palermo through darkened windows as he was driven from his apartment to the Palazzo di Giustizia. He once had the driver stop so he could see the façade of the cathedral. That was about it.

  “I don’t know much about art,” he said. Actually, to be truthful, he knew nothing about art. “You said you were gathering…ideas?”