Page 33 of The Virgin’s Dance with the Devil (The Martinelli Wedding #3)

Nico liked getting to places early. It probably came from his training as a news photographer – figuring out the best vantage point. There were only a few of the production team at the location for the fashion photo-shoot. His own assistants hadn’t arrived yet.

The caterers were setting up and Nico grabbed a cup of coffee gratefully. He was still getting used to the different pace since he’d come home from working the Middle East, and, before that, Africa.

Home . He made a face as that word resounded in his head.

He might have returned to the place where he’d been born and had grown up, but it had been a long time since it had felt like home .

He’d left his own home many years before after yet another futile argument with his mother, pleading with her to leave the toxic environment of her marriage with his father.

She’d refused.

The guilt for leaving to work abroad had never stopped eating at Nico, but, as the experts he’d consulted with had told him at the time, she had to be the one who would make the move or she’d never really be free.

His father hadn’t been physically violent in recent years – not since Nico had told him he’d call the police if he ever touched her again ... but the abuse had continued mentally and psychologically.

Nico’s mother had told him categorically that if he tried to intervene on her behalf again, she’d cut him off. Fearing he’d lose all contact or influence, he’d settled for keeping his distance, but he’d never let her forget he was there if she needed him.

She was still with his father. She said she loved him. If that was love then Nico was glad he’d steered well clear of it. As far as he could see, love made you vulnerable. Made you loyal to someone else at all costs, even if the cost was your own well-being.

Nico diverted his mind away from thinking about that now, about his mother’s pale face and sad, defeated eyes silently asking her son to understand something that to this day he still couldn’t. And, his father’s belligerent expression.

In the meantime, he’d done well for himself and made a name as a respected news photographer, but more and more it had been weighing on him – the relentless parade of wars and famines and human misery.

It was almost as if he’d had to punish himself for turning his back on the very personal war being waged in his own domestic sphere.

He’d always known his chosen career had a sell-by date.

But it had really hit home, sitting in a bar one night with one of the industry’s most respected photographers.

He’d listened to the man’s bitterness as he’d recounted the latest failed relationship and the fact that his own children didn’t talk to him, and something inside Nico had snapped.

He knew what he didn’t want and he also knew he didn’t want that . To end up in some anonymous bar, crying into his drink about a life lost. No amount of kudos or Pulitzer-Prize-winning images could make up for that. It had scared the hell out of him.

Nico had never been under any illusions about the existence of happy families. Not after the battlefield of his parents’ marriage and the loneliness of being an only child. And it wasn’t as if any of his friends’ parents were still together to buck the trend.

So, it had been something of a revelation to know that he’d retained a part of himself that hadn’t become totally jaded and cynical. That was capable of changing. Capable of hope . For what exactly he wasn’t even sure.

So here he was, embarking on a new path, taking pictures of people modelling clothes. He sighed. But he couldn’t deny that something inside him had felt more at peace since he’d returned to New York. If New York could make anyone feel at peace.

He turned away from the view from the piers across the water to New Jersey and back towards the location for the day’s shooting. More people were arriving. He saw a flash of distinctive wild red hair and pale skin, and his insides clenched. No . It couldn’t be her.

Jenna MacAuley, the girl whose presence had been another reason he’d left New York five years ago. Because he’d started to notice that she wasn’t just his friend’s kid sister. It was as if scales had fallen from his eyes.

He’d tried to pretend he wasn’t aware of her, he’d known it was so wrong.

He’d known her for ever, growing up through all those stages of life, out of girlhood and into awkward adolescence and then .

.. into a stunningly beautiful young woman with a lithe body and curves, and wild untameable hair and flashing green eyes.

One day shortly before he’d left New York, Nico had looked at her across the back of someone’s garden and he’d wanted her.

So badly he could still taste it in his mouth.

He’d been fighting a losing battle in his very inappropriate attraction to her.

And not even that had stopped him picturing her underneath him, or astride him, or – fuck. He cursed himself.

He was getting a hard-on just thinking about it. About her. He shook his head. He was seeing ghosts, that was all. He needed to get laid. He hadn’t had sex in months and it was screwing with his brain. She couldn’t still be affecting him five years later.

Jenna MacAuley was as good as related to him. There was no way no how that they could come together like that in this world or the next, and the sooner he found a suitable woman to help him reassemble his brain cells the better. He was just thinking of her because he was home.

He adjusted his clothes, told himself to calm the fuck down and walked over to the building where they were setting up inside. He rounded a corner just as someone else was also rounding the corner and they collided with an oof .

Suddenly his hands were full of a small waist and soft curves, and he was looking down into two startled eyes of green.

Jenna MacAuley.

Those two eyes blinked and then recognition dawned. They got wide and her cheeks went pink.

‘Nico ... it’s you ...’

And dammit to hell if his hands couldn’t help themselves tightening around that small waist, digging in. Blood pounded and his libido roared. Shit. He was so fucked. Because she was the one woman he couldn’t have and now all he could see was her.

He forced his brain to work. ‘Hi, Freckles.’

CHAPTER FOUR

Jenna/Freckles WTF?!

At least a couple of hours had passed since my world had imploded in a big Nico Donato shape and I still wasn’t right.

He was here . Right here. Literally feet away from me.

Shooting the model who stood against a white background contorting her body into various shapes that looked outlandish, but which would be amazing on the page.

Thankfully our new assistant stylist, Lucy, was doing the on-set tweaking for the shoot, because I wasn’t sure if my hands would ever be steady again.

Nico Donato. Maybe if I said his name enough times he’d disappear in a puff of smoke. Thankfully he had his back to me, and I could watch him and try to absorb the enormity that out of all the shoots in all of New York he’d had to walk onto my one.

He hadn’t been on the call sheet. Sheenagh was the photographer who did most of the shoots we were involved in. I said this almost accusingly to my friend – who also happened to be the production manager – who was standing beside me.

Peter turned to me and raised a brow. ‘ Nico? You’re on shortened-name terms with the hottest guy I’ve seen in a decade – no, scratch that, in my entire life?’

I scowled. ‘We go back ... he’s my brother’s friend.’

Peter made a low whistling sound. ‘Lucky brother.’

I swatted at him. ‘He’s not gay.’

Now Peter scowled. ‘The best ones never are.’ He looked at me again. ‘He wasn’t on the call sheet because he was a last-minute hire when Sheenagh couldn’t work. She recommended him, said he was home from working abroad and looking for work.’

‘Is she OK?’

Peter shook his head. ‘I think it’s her mom.’

I mentally vowed to call our friend to check on her. In the meantime, I had bigger fish to fry. Namely the fact that I could still feel the impact of my body colliding with what had felt like a steel wall. An even more ripped Nico Donato than I remembered. Was he taller, too? Broader?

And the way his hands had curled around my waist to hold me. Tightening on me, those grey eyes boring down into mine with an intensity I’d felt right between my legs where I was still tingling.

And then he’d said, ‘Hi, Freckles,’ and it had been as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over me. A good reminder of how he viewed me.

I’d managed to lever myself away from his body even though my hands had wanted to linger on the very defined muscles I’d felt beneath the thin covering of his T-shirt.

‘Are you sure he’s not gay?’ Peter asked now wistfully.

I gazed at Nico, taking in that dark T-shirt and the dark worn jeans that clung to his ass and legs in a way that was downright pornographic. The short, thick hair, longer on top and messy. Stubbled jaw. ‘Believe me,’ I said, equally wistfully. ‘I wish I could tell you he was.’

CHAPTER FIVE

Jenna

Somehow I’d managed to get through the rest of the long day. Luckily I hadn’t had to work too closely with Nico, but even hovering around the edges of the set like a total peepingTom perving over him hadn’t been enough distance.

He looked as if he’d filled out, bulked up. Definitely more ripped. And that air of brooding intensity still surrounded him like a forcefield. Everyone with a pulse on the shoot had been ogling him.

Peter had said to me after lunch, ‘He’s actually too distracting to have on a shoot. The poor model is tripping over her own feet every time he asks her to move.’

‘So you won’t hire him again?’ I asked hopefully.

Peter looked at me as if I was dense. ‘Of course I’ll be hiring him again.’ He sniffed. ‘It would be discriminatory not to, Jenna, he can’t help his beauty.’ I’d rolled my eyes at that even as I’d been just as affectd by his ‘beauty’.

And now almost everyone was gone, including Nico, and I was cursing myself for not being more proactive in trying to talk to him.

I would’ve talked to him at lunch, but he’d been eating with his assistants, and Lucy and I’d had to do a last-minute repair to a dress for the afternoon.

I like to think I’d felt his eyes on me, but every time I’d glanced at him he’d been looking away.

Why had I been so weird? I gathered up the last bag, hefted it over my shoulder and headed to the elevator, which would take me to the first floor.

Inside the elevator I pushed the button and the doors started to close, but at the last second a hand stopped them and they opened again, admitting a tall, broad-shouldered person dressed in black.

‘Sorry, forgot my light meter.’ Nico held up the the small hand-sized device photographers used to measure light and then saw that it was me. The polite smile slid off his face and his mouth closed.

He was hovering between the doors, holding them open. Looking at me. We hadn’t spoken since the brief exchange earlier. Hi, Freckles . And me, like some breathless groupie. Nico ... It’s you. That reminder made me say sharply, ‘Get in, Donato.’

He looked as if he was seriously debating it, but then he stepped in and the doors shut. I reached forward to press the button again and had the space of the elevator suddenly compressed? Because now it felt like a small box. And all I could smell was him. Musky and spicy, and very male.

I pressed the button with more force than I’d intended. Nico was looking at me sideways. ‘ Donato? ’

I moved to the opposite wall and raised a brow. ‘ Freckles? ’ Even though I’d always told myself I was outraged by it, I’d also been secretly delighted he had a nickname just for me. And I did have freckles. Lots.

The elevator started to ascend with a sort of juddering lurch that threw me off balance slightly.

It also made a weird wheezing noise. And then after ascending what must have been about ten feet, it stopped moving, suddenly dropped a couple of inches and stopped again, with an ominous, groaning, clanking noise.

Nico was looking around. ‘What the ..?’

Nothing happened. Silence. Then the lights flickered and went out. My belly plummeted. The bag slid off my shoulder to the floor. Suddenly I wasn’t feeling so sparky. ‘Nico?’

He reached for me and his hand first of all collided with my belly, and then found my hand, fingers wrapping around mine, ‘It’s OK.’

He must have pulled his phone out of his pocket, because a light came on and the small space was illuminated again, albeit, not by much.

Keeping hold of my hand, Nico moved to the control panel by the buttons and pressed something.

There was a long beeping sound and then the crackle of a voice, ‘Yo, what’s up? ’

‘Hey, man, we were with the shooting crew today and the elevator isn’t moving.’

The voice crackled back. ‘I thought you’d all gone.’

Nico pressed the intercom again. ‘No, there’s two of us here.’

The man cursed. ‘That elevator has been giving me a …’ The rest of whatever he said was lost in a crackle of white noise.

Nico looked at me, his face all stark planes and angles in the shadows. ‘You OK?’

I nodded and swallowed. I wasn’t claustrophobic, but I had to admit I wasn’t loving the sensation of knowing I was in a metal container between floors and hovering on steel cables in a shaft that was God knew how deep.

In an elevator that had clearly been having problems. That hadn’t been on any health-and-safety sheets.

As if sensing my growing unease, Nico hit the intercom again and it rang. For ages. Eventually the disembodied and seriously pissed-off sounding voice came back. ‘All right, all right, the maintenance guy is coming, but it’ll be at least an hour. You guys OK for that?’

‘Do we have a choice?’ Nico said, with more than a trace of sarcasm.

‘No, ’fraid not. Look, if he comes any sooner I’ll let you know. Hang tight.’ The intercom shut off.

My insides sank. No sugar-coating it. An hour. Incarcerated in a small, dark space with the man who I’d lusted after ever since puberty. A man who still saw me as someone called Freckles. Fantastic. Just fantastic.