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‘Antonio—’ she tried, but he cut her off before she could finish.
‘I need to concentrate on the drive,’ he announced through his teeth, and she wondered what demons he was battling.
It was an uncomfortable forty-minute drive back to the villa.
She didn’t want to have done something wrong, she realised. She didn’t want to disappoint him. The hostility she’d felt directed towards him from some members of his family was horrible and unjust, whether it was because he was adopted or just because he stood to inherit half a business that they wanted to get their hands on themselves.
He might have been watching out for her throughout the visit with his family, but she’d been paying him just as much attention. She’d seen the way he’d been with Maria and his mother. She’d seen the way he’d been easy with those he’d got on with, and polite even with those who he hadn’t.
She liked him. Admired him—how he handled himself. She might not agree with how he went about things—she still wasn’t sure that using marriage as if it was part of some business deal was okay. But she understood why he was doing it now. Understood what Maria meant to him.
But understanding Antonio and what made him tick was a double-edged sword, deepening her already risky feelings for him while at the very same time making it heartbreakingly clear that he would never feel the same way about her. Because his bond with the people he had chosen to be loyal to, his mother, Maria—his family—the very thing that she admired most about him, would always come before her.
When the car finally pulled up at the villa, the winding drive strangely familiar and welcome, Antonio turned off the engine and neither of them moved. They sat in silence as the car engine ticked. But while the car cooled, the tension in the air between them heated. Not like the heat from last night, but a different kind of heat. Angry, restless, but unsure and dangerous.
Ivy got out of the car first, heart bruised already, and was halfway towards the villa when she heard Antonio’s car door open.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about Micha?’ she heard him ask from over her shoulder.
Breath shuddered in her lungs and she dropped her head. She huffed out a small laugh.
Why hadn’t she told him that Gio had tried to buy her off?
She wasn’t sure he’d actually believe her if she told him that it was because she hadn’t wanted to hurt him. That she had been keeping her vow to protect him. Because she knew. She knew that you could cut ties and still be hurt by the people who should have loved you the most.
And no matter what she’d felt waiting in that hospital room, hoping against all hope that he might come for her. No matter what she’d felt then, Antonio had never deserved what Gio Gallo had tried to do.
She turned and took in the sight of him. Halfway out of the car, his arm braced across the top of the door, his sunglasses hiding his gaze from her view, he was even more unreadable than usual. But she saw it. The tic in his jaw, the tension. The hurt.
‘I didn’t want to make things worse between you and your grandfather,’ she admitted.
He took off his sunglasses and a part of her wished he hadn’t. Confusion, hurt and frustration were quickly masked, as if the strength of his feelings was finally enough to make cracks in his usually unbreakable mask. The grip he had on the top of the car door was white-knuckled and she wanted to go to him.
But she couldn’t move. Not if she had any dignity left. Because if she did go to him, she might actually beg, plead with him to lift that mask. To let her see the real Antonio beneath it, because the glimpses she was beginning to see here and there were enough for her to half fall in love with him.
‘What did Micha say? When he approached you.’
‘Why do you need to know?’ she asked.
‘I just do,’ he demanded belligerently.
She shook her head. The sun setting behind the villa reached out a warm glow across the rolling hills dropping away in the background, but picked Antonio out in near perfect detail. Unconsciously, her left eye closed just to take him in, in single form, but she blinked her eyes back open when it became too much.
Noticing the flicker in her left eye, Antonio extricated himself from the car, closed the door and went to stand before her. Boosted up by a few steps from where he stood, they were at eye level. And he needed that. He needed to see her expressive features up close, to see behind the words she carefully chose. Because no matter how hard Ivy tried to conceal it, her expressions made the truth as clear to him as a person’s future to a palm reader.
‘Micha found me about a year ago at the library. He introduced himself as working on behalf of your grandfather. He explained that they understood that we were married, but that it was only one of convenience. That Gio believed your point had been made, but he was still adamant that you should marry Maria.’
Antonio nodded, barely able to keep himself in check as he asked his next question. ‘Did they threaten you?’
The quick flicker of confusion and disbelief across Ivy’s face were answer enough, even before she spoke.
‘No. My dealings with Micha were…’ she shrugged ‘…cordial? I like him, actually.’
This time it was Antonio’s turn to be full of disbelief. ‘Youlikehim? Micha?’ he demanded, unable to stem the sudden burst of jealousy that poured through him like a freshly tapped oilwell. ‘He’s arrogant and manipulative,’ he pointed out. ‘He’s mulish and disrespectful. I do not see what there is to like.’
Ivy smirked, her eyebrow artfully disdainful of his observation, and for some reason the look was breathtaking on her.
‘Really? I found him quite similar in personality to you, actually.’