The Chatsfield: Series 2

Gianni wrapped two hands around Keelin’s waist, hauling her into his hard body. His hard, hot body.

‘Bella, I know exactly what you are now. An amoral spoilt little liar who seeks only to get her own way, but I’ve won this round and now it’s time for my prize and I’m going to claim it before I die of frustration.’

Then his mouth was on hers, hot and hard and demanding and so ruthlessly passionate that it scrambled every one of Keelin’s functioning brain cells. Every corner of her body wanted this in spite of what her head was telling her about going slowly.

It was only when she felt his hands come to the zip at the back of the dress that some sanity broke through. She pulled her mouth away and pushed both hands against his chest. Hard. ‘No.’

Gianni looked at her. About to explode. Fingers poised to undress her completely.

‘We need to stop, you need to stop.’ Her mouth felt swollen. She backed away, dislodging his hands, and sucked in a deep quivering breath. ‘The thing is that I’ve never done this before. I’m a virgin...’

Gianni just looked at her. Disbelief was etched onto his face. And then other expressions followed: derision, disdain and disgust. He backed away too.

Humiliation made her skin prickle to know she’d laid herself so bare for his ridicule. ‘Gianni, wait, I—’

He put up a hand. ‘Basta. I don’t want to hear it, Keelin. I’ve had enough of your lies and playacting. Just go to bed. Damn you.’

And then he turned around and walked out, the door closing with incongruous softness behind him. Keelin looked at it in the gloom for a long time before reaction set in and she started to shake. The slivers of lace on the floor mocking her.

Her mind mercifully went to some numb place, induced by shock, fatigue and an overload of emotion. Vaguely aware of what she was doing, she kicked off her shoes and found the zip at the back of the dress, yanking it down. She stepped out of it and went to the bed, and climbed into it, pulling the luxurious covers over her body. And then she weakly shut out all of the voices and recriminations and slept.

* * *

When Keelin woke in the morning it took her long minutes to figure out where she was and why she was in her underwear in the most sumptuously soft bed she’d ever lain in.

Then she opened her eyes and took in the room and it all came flooding back, along with the reality of opulent dark red furnishings and antique furniture.

She came up on her elbows and looked around. The curtains hadn’t been drawn so she pushed back the covers and got out, squinting a little at the daylight outside. A robe was behind the bathroom door, so after splashing some water on her face she pulled it on.

There were French doors and a balcony so she opened the doors and stepped out. The view took her breath away. Undulating green hills as far as the eye could see. For a moment she felt absurdly homesick as it reminded her of Ireland.

And then a low but powerful noise impacted—and she realised that that must have woken her up. And just as she thought that, she saw the helicopter rise up from the back of the property and bank to the left before disappearing off into the horizon, quickly becoming a small black dot. She hadn’t been able to see who was in it but she assumed the pilot was taking it back to Rome.

Something skated over Keelin’s skin to think of Gianni and how angry he’d been last night. And of facing him this morning. Recalling the events of the previous day felt a little dreamlike. Had it really happened?She looked down and saw the enormous diamond of her engagement ring and the slim wedding band.

Oh, yes, it had happened. She’d exchanged vows with the man in front of witnesses. And even now she could recall the strange kind of paralysis that had gripped her.

Knowing she’d have to face him sooner or later, Keelin went back inside and found that her things that had been sent on ahead were hanging up or in drawers. Along with a lot of clothes that looked brand-new. Her blood boiled slightly to think of him instructing someone anonymous to pick things out for her.

After a quick shower she dressed in worn jeans and one of her favourite plaid shirts and thought to herself that if Gianni didn’t like it, then he’d have to get used to it because this was the real her.

But as she found her way downstairs she had the uncanny sensation that Gianni wasn’t here. And until now she hadn’t even realised she’d been so aware of his whereabouts at any given time.

Lucia the housekeeper appeared as Keelin got to the bottom of the stairs looking a little worried. She spoke fast and made some kind of gesture with her hands, as if something was flying away. It was the unmistakable concern mixed with pity in her kind brown eyes that sent the knowledge into Keelin’s gut.

Gianni had been in the helicopter. He’d gone somewhere and left her here. For a second she almost couldn’t breathe. Her belly lurched. Lucia was taking her by the arm, still speaking unintelligible Italian, guiding Keelin to a gorgeous outdoor terrace where a table was set for breakfast.

Lucia fussed around her but Keelin was struggling to compute what that might mean, if Gianni had left. Mechanically she ate what was put in front of her and drank hot strong coffee.

She didn’t like the awful creeping sensation of isolation, of being somehow powerless. She was in a villa in the middle of nowhere—it seemed—with not a word of Italian and no idea why Gianni had left or when he’d be back.

She tried to ask Lucia if he’d left a note but Lucia just shook her head, clearly not understanding. Smiling at Keelin apologetically, she seemed to make some more motions as if to say that Gianni would return.

When she’d bustled off again, Keelin decided to try his office in case he’d left a note there, but there was nothing but blank paper.

She sank down into his chair. Maybe this was it? She’d pushed him so far that he’d just left her here? So why didn’t that evoke some sense of satisfaction or triumph? A kind of hysteria bubbled up but she pushed it back down. But she couldn’t stop the edges of panic from gathering in the wings, ready to pounce and drag her back to her childhood.

Telling herself that he must have left momentarily and that there had to be some explanation, Keelin got up and forced herself to explore the villa. It was only when she returned about an hour later after having seen not another soul that the panic started to grip her in earnest.

Lucia couldn’t be found now. It didn’t even occur to Keelin to try and phone Gianni. He’d given her that card with his numbers when they’d met but she had no idea where it was now. And in any case her mobile phone battery was dead and she couldn’t find her charger.

She was entirely alone in this vast villa somewhere south of Perugia and as the day wore on with no sign of Gianni returning, Keelin wasn’t in Italy any more. She wasn’t twenty-three. She was back in her past, at some indeterminate age, and she knew that there was not one person in the world who cared remotely where she was. Or that she was alone.

And slowly, the walls that she’d so painstakingly built over the years started to crumble, because she’d sworn she’d never allow this to happen again.

* * *

As Gianni drove back to the villa late that night the anger he’d been feeling all day was still there. His eyes were gritty from fatigue, and frustration pounded like a pulse in his blood.

Damn her. His wife, who he should have bedded last night. His wife. He’d almost been tempted to stay in Rome for the night but some very unwelcome sense of guilt had stopped him. Even though he shouldn’t be feeling guilt.

When he thought of Keelin now though, all he could see in his mind’s eye were the lurid images from last night, and how feral he’d felt as he stood in front of her. How badly he’d wanted to just rip that dress apart completely, baring her to his gaze.

And then Keelin had spouted the latest lie from her pretty mouth. A virgin. Ha! Virgins were as extinct as the dodo as far as Gianni was concerned. He’d stopped believing in virgins right about the time that the sixteen-year-old girl he’d been in love with had said to him patronisingly, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle. It’s your first time, isn’t it?’

The memory faded...last night he’d felt as if he was climbing an interminable mountain. He’d also felt raw and exposed in his desire for Keelin when she kept pulling back, denying her own desire. A shudder of disgust went through him, to have been reduced to something almost mindless. Again. It had been enough to make him leave, get some space.

He cursed softly as he drove into the forecourt of the villa. No lights shone. Irritation surged, along with a sense of panic at the thought that Keelin might have gone. Disappeared.

A faint sense of unease prickled over his skin. He got out of the jeep and went up the steps, opening the door, flicking on a light. There wasn’t a sound. But somehow Gianni sensed that she was here and something eased inside him, even as that irritation remained.

He took off his jacket and made his way up to the bedroom. It was dark up here too, and for a moment Gianni thought Keelin might be in bed asleep but then he saw a shape by the window.

He flicked on a light and Keelin was illuminated sitting in the window seat, legs drawn up under her chin, hair long and wild around her shoulders. And just like that, lust gripped him with a force that almost made him sway.

But something wasn’t right about the picture. She wasn’t moving. Gianni came further in. Feeling afraid now and not liking it, he rapped out, ‘Keelin?’

Slowly she turned to look at him and he sucked in a breath at how pale she was and how huge her eyes looked. And as he watched, she seemed to come back to life, emotion making those eyes flash and burn like bright jewels.

She got up from the seat and came straight over to him, and lashed out, landing a blow to his chest before he could deflect it. It had enough force to make him take a step back.

‘Don’t you ever, ever, leave me alone like this again. Do you hear me? Never.’

Gianni stared at her. The anger in her voice was palpable. She looked haunted. Not piqued that he’d left her for a day. Haunted.

He said slowly, ‘I would have thought that’s exactly what you wanted since the day we met.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

KEELIN MIGHT HAVE agreed with Gianni if being abandoned wasn’t her particular pyschological demon. Sensations were rushing into limbs that had been locked tight for hours, giving her shooting pains and pins and needles. Her hand throbbed from where she’d hit him. His chest was like a steel wall.

And worse, emotion was rising. Just to see him again. He’d come back. Damn him.

‘You said nothing.’ Keelin was accusing. ‘You didn’t even leave a note.’

Gianni’s jaw tightened. ‘I thought Lucia would tell you.’

Keelin let out a short harsh laugh. ‘Via sign language? I don’t speak Italian and she doesn’t speak English.’

‘You could have phoned me.’

Keelin felt a kind of shame wash over her. She’d slowly become more and more paralysed as the day had gone on. How could she explain that when one was in the grip of something like a panic attack, the last thing you did was the logical one?

‘I couldn’t find your number, and my phone was dead,’ she supplied weakly. And then stronger, ‘There was no one here. Even Lucia disappeared after a while. I was all alone. Anything could have happened, did you think of that?’

Irritation crossed Gianni’s face. ‘For God’s sake, Keelin, it was only a day. You are in one of the most luxurious villas in Italy. There’s an indoor pool and an outdoor pool—’

Keelin whirled away from him and the suggestion she should have been happy to amuse herself, emotion reaching her eyes, making them sting. Making her chest hurt with the pressure it took to contain it. She’d not cried in years, learning that tears only caused her parents to look at her with bafflement. So rousing their ire had become her default position.

Gianni sounded exasperated. ‘Look—’

She kept her back to him and cut him off, saying with a low voice, ‘When I was fourteen I got a taxi home from the train station for my summer half-term holidays. The whole house was locked up. When I rang my father he was in Sao Paulo in Brazil and wouldn’t be home for days. My mother was in St Barts with friends. They’d given the staff a week off. They’d not even bothered to find out what I was doing.’

She turned around to face Gianni, arms folded tightly. ‘They had to send the housekeeper back to take care of me and she was not happy to have her holiday cut short but at least it wasn’t anything new so she wasn’t surprised.’

Gianni interjected in a tight-sounding voice, ‘This had happened before?’

Keelin lifted one shoulder in a gesture of assent. ‘It was a fairly regular occurrence except usually there’d be staff at home. When I was three they left me alone with my nanny for two and a half months while they went to America on business. When they came back I didn’t recognise them.‘Today...’ Emotion tightened her chest again but Keelin forced out, ‘Today, it just got to me. It’s isolated here. I don’t speak the language. I hate that it affected me. But I just—don’t do it again.’

Gianni came closer, all traces of exasperation and irritation gone. In his eyes was not pity, because Keelin couldn’t have handled that. But something else. A kind of understanding.

He cupped his hands around her face, and it was only when he smoothed his thumbs back and forth across her cheeks she realised that she was crying. Mortification rushed through her and she tried to take his hands down but he wouldn’t let her.

She’d planned on being icy and dismissive when he returned and instead she was blubbing all over him and spilling her guts. Keelin said, ‘Look, it’s not a big—’

He cut her off. ‘I shouldn’t have left you here with no explanation. The truth is that I was still angry after last night and I took it out on you by leaving you to go to Rome today. And the reason no one is here apart from Lucia is because I gave the staff a week off in a bid for some privacy. Today is Sunday so Lucia goes to her family in the local village for the day and night.’

Gianni’s mouth was a tight line. ‘It was careless and rude of me.’

Keelin’s heart flip-flopped. Uh-oh.

And then he changed the subject abruptly. ‘Have you eaten today?’

Keelin thought about it for a second and shook her head, feeling mortified again. Imagining he must be thinking, She’s such a drama queen. ‘Not since breakfast.’‘How about we get something to eat then, hmm?’

Keelin looked at him. ‘Okay.’

He stepped back and took her hand and led her out of the room. All of Keelin’s anger was washing away, to be replaced by something far more disturbing.

When they got down to the huge open-plan and surprisingly modern kitchen, Gianni directed Keelin to sit on a stool while he prepared pasta with a pesto sauce. Even though Keelin could see that he wasn’t exactly making pasta from scratch, he seemed to know his way around a kitchen.

He poured her a glass of red wine and when she took a sip he said dryly, ‘I take it that you do like wine?’

Keelin flushed and put the glass down, answering a little sheepishly, ‘Yes.’

Gianni had rolled his shirtsleeves up, and taken his tie off, and even though he wore smart trousers, this was the most relaxed she’d seen him since they’d met. The open top button of his shirt drew her eye to the strong column of his throat. His jaw was dark with stubble. Keelin thought of him being angry enough to go to Rome that morning and sensed that he didn’t normally let things provoke him to that extent. The realisation that she’d got to him made her feel somehow hollow though.

He looked at her as the pasta cooked, his gaze incisive. ‘I’m also guessing your views on children and boarding school were not entirely accurate?’

She met his gaze. She guessed she deserved to give him an answer after stringing him along. And she was passionate about this. She shook her head. ‘No child of mine will ever go to one of those places.’

Gianni quirked a brow and instantly looked younger and even more devilishly handsome. ‘Care to revise any more of your opinions?’

Keelin grimaced slightly and took another fortifying sip of wine before gesturing to her shirt and jeans. Bare feet. ‘I’ve always been inclined to dress down more than up. And,’ she admitted sheepishly, ‘I hate shopping with a passion.’

But before he could probe any further and already feeling far too exposed, Keelin asked, ‘What about you? You always seem to be so composed, pristine.’

Heat fizzed in her belly at the thought of what Gianni might look like completely undone. Naked.

Thankfully he was dishing up the pasta now and indicating for Keelin to go to the table, so he wasn’t looking at her too closely. He put the plates down, brought over the wine. When Keelin tasted a mouthful of the perfectly al dente pasta with pesto sauce she closed her eyes for a second in appreciation. It was simple and rustic but it was heaven.

When she looked again, Gianni was taking a sip of wine, eyes unreadable, on her. Awareness made her self-conscious. She’d almost forgotten what she’d asked him when he said, ‘Almost everything I do, and am, is a direct result of wanting to be the exact opposite of my father.’

Keelin remembered the way he’d retreated so spectacularly when she’d mentioned his father before, and his rage when he’d seen those men at the wedding, and kept silent.

He swallowed some pasta and put his fork down. Keelin couldn’t seem to stop herself focusing on those lean hands. He spoke again, distracting her.

‘My father was rough, tough, uncivilised. He got in with the wrong people at a young age in Sicily, and believed that the way to getting ahead was via violence and terrorising people, including my mother. I needed to prove to myself that I could be different.’

A million questions flooded into her brain but she sensed that Gianni was already regretting saying too much as he looked away and ate some pasta. She ignored the questions and said, ‘Your mother seemed nice, quiet.’

Gianni grimaced slightly. ‘She is. And she refuses to leave our old home just outside Rome. When my father died, I thought she’d move back to Sicily but she won’t. She insists on keeping our home like a shrine.’

He shook his head and Keelin could understand that he didn’t get why a woman who had been brutalised by her husband would want to do that. And it surprised Keelin too, but on some level she could understand that Gianni’s mother perhaps still felt a sense of loyalty, and even love. After all, look at how far she herself had gone in a bid to prove something to her father after a lifetime of disinterest.

Quietly, before she could lose her nerve, she said, ‘I’m sorry about what I did at the wedding, encouraging her to invite those men. I had no idea.’

Gianni looked at her and just inclined his head before smiling a little wryly. ‘I can see how tempting it must have been to maximise a PR disaster.’

Keelin winced, but then he was saying, ‘I’ve asked my mother to move here as I know she’d love it, but she won’t.’

‘It is beautiful,’ Keelin offered, and he looked at her, surprised. She responded to his look with a dry, ‘You know, if you’re into that isolated bucolic crumbling idyll.’

He grimaced slightly as he pushed his empty plate away. ‘It is isolated. Which is why I love it, but I never thought about what it might be like for someone else.’

Keelin felt a bit light-headed and knew she couldn’t put it down to the wine, as she’d only had a drop. There was tension crackling between them but it was different to the tension she’d come to recognise. After all, things were different—they were married, so Gianni had won this round. But in that moment, Keelin couldn’t seem to rouse herself to care all that much.

All she could see was the powerful man lounging just feet away from her, full of latent danger. And suddenly all she could think about was how he’d ordered her to take off her dress last night and how easily he’d ripped off the lace. And how badly she’d wanted him to rip off the dress.

She needed to explain. ‘Look, about last night—’

He put up a hand, cutting her off. ‘It’s just us now, Keelin. No more lies, or acting, okay?’

She sat up straight, protesting hotly, ‘But I wasn’t lying about—’

Cutting her off again he said, ‘It doesn’t matter, okay? Let’s have a cessation in hostilities. For now.’

Keelin’s heart thumped hard. A truce. She was irritated he wouldn’t give her a chance to explain but at the same time she was feeling incredibly vulnerable and didn’t exactly want to go into it. But she had to.

‘No,’ she said firmly, ‘I need to tell you this.’

Gianni looked at her, exasperation clear on his face. Keelin couldn’t be so close to him and think straight. She got up and moved away, standing with her back to the sink, arms folded. She bit her lip and then said quickly, ‘I wasn’t lying last night. I am a virgin. I’ve never slept with anyone.’

He straightened up, his mouth thinned. ‘Have you forgotten what you told me? Are you getting your stories so tangled up now that—’

Keelin cut him off. ‘I told you that to wind you up. Why would I lie about this? It’s not as if it wouldn’t become pretty apparent.’

The blood seemed to leach from Gianni’s face. He stood up and shook his head, clearly not understanding. ‘You’re twenty-three, how is it possible?’

Humiliation coiled in her belly. ‘I know.’ She steeled herself. ‘The truth is that something happened to me—it kind of put me off wanting to have sex with anyone.’ Except you. The knowledge beat like a drum in her blood.

Gianni folded his arms. ‘What happened?’

Keelin couldn’t stay still under that black gaze. She started to pace back and forth. She stopped and looked at him and took a breath. ‘When I was seventeen, I was in a boarding school in Switzerland—it was my last school.’

He frowned. ‘The one you ran away from?’

Keelin exhaled. ‘Yes, that’s the one.’

She went on. ‘It was a weekend and I’d snuck out of school with some friends to go to the local town. We were drinking at a bar and a group of guys came over. We all paired off, but then the guy I was with brought me outside to a secluded spot.’

Keelin felt embarrassed now to remember how she’d hungered for the male attention. ‘We were fooling around, just kissing, nothing heavy, and then some of his friends came out.’

Something in Gianni’s face hardened. ‘Go on.’

Keelin’s hands were curled to fists by her sides. ‘I thought he’d tell them to leave, but they were laughing and joking. I tried to go back into the bar to find my friends but one of the guys blocked my way.’

She spoke quickly now. ‘To be honest I don’t remember much of what happened next...they overpowered me pretty quickly. Tripped me up and held me down on the ground. Two held my arms and someone else had my legs. They pulled my top off, tried to undo my trousers.’

‘Dio, Keelin.’ He looked shocked.

‘Nothing happened,’ she said quickly. ‘I screamed and kicked out. I got one of them on the jaw. A staff member heard me and found us. The guys ran.’

Gianni was disgusted. ‘Animals.’

Something very vulnerable moved inside Keelin to have blurted all that out. ‘In a way it made me grow up. After that I focused on getting into college and studying. I did self-defence classes while I was in college, so I’d never feel helpless again. But that’s why I shut down for so long.’

Gianni crossed the space between them and Keelin’s heart thumped heavily. Gruffly he said, ‘Do you feel threatened by me?’

Stripped bare of her defences, intoxicated by his proximity and infused with a headiness to have unburdened herself like that, she just shook her head. ‘No.’