Page 225 of Modern Romance November 2024 5-8

Fingers slid slowly across the back of his waist then curved to a rest around his hip. Her temperature had dropped considerably since those frightening witching hours yet the burn of her touch cut through the cotton of his pyjama bottoms and seeped into his skin.

Breathing heavily, doing everything he could to block the sensations alive in him, Marcello steered Victoria to the bed and helped her into it, lifting her legs when she didn’t have the strength to lift them herself.

‘Duvet on?’

The tiniest of nods.

He covered her in it. ‘Go back to sleep. I will wake you when it is time for more painkillers.’

When he was about to step away, her eyes fluttered open and locked onto his. A hand poked out of the duvet and stretched to him. He took hold of it. She gave his fingers the lightest of squeezes before giving the deepest sigh and falling back into sleep.

The first thing Victoria registered was that the pneumatic drill in her head had dimmed to a dull ache. Opening her eyes, she registered that she wasn’t in a guest room but in Marcello’s bedroom. The guest rooms, though spacious, were smaller, and decorated luxuriously but neutrally. Marcello’s room by contrast was huge, and had deep grey panelled walls with splashes of deep, rich colour in the artwork and plentiful soft furnishings. She’d always imagined he’d hired an interior decorator and told them to create the most masculine bedroom possible so as to repel any woman from thinking she could stay more than a night in it.

How many nights had she slept in here? One? Two? Time had slipped away from her. The curtains were open on the floor-to-ceiling window her eyes had opened to, the light diffusing through the thick snow still falling telling her daytime was slipping away.

Bracing herself for pain, she lifted her head. The pain was enough to make her wince but nothing as bad as what she’d suffered before.

The worst really was over. Or had she imagined Marcello saying that?

And there he was, sprawled out on the leather sofa at the far wall opposite the bed, phone in hand, an arm hooked behind his head, hooked-together ankles and bare feet dangling off the end. A heap of bedding had been dumped on the floor beside him.

Blurry memories played like snapshots before her eyes and a swelling like she’d never experienced before released in her chest, gratitude and something indefinable filling her and rising up her throat with force enough to stop her calling out to him.

To see him lying there in...pyjama bottoms? Marcello was wearing pyjama bottoms? She would never have imagined that...and plain black T-shirt, ungroomed thick black hair mussed and sticking out in all directions, strong jaw covered in thick black stubble...

He must have sensed her stare for he turned his face.

Their eyes locked. After a long beat, the smile that had caused a thousand women’s hearts to break lit his face. Laughter lines crinkled the corners of his eyes and for the very first time Victoria was unable to stop herself from seeing exactly what it was that other women saw when they looked at Marcello Guardiola.

The swelling in her chest crushed against her ribs.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, swinging his long legs to the floor.

It took a long time before she was able to answer. ‘Better.’

‘You look better,’ he said approvingly. ‘I have been worried about you.’

She couldn’t take her eyes from him. All the things about him that she’d steadfastly refused to see on anything but a superficial level were right there before her, and she was helpless to stop herself drinking in every inch of the ruggedly handsome face and the hard, lean body he’d used as a pillar and shield to stop her falling.

‘Hungry?’

She shook her head, unable to speak through the pulses suddenly raging in her throat.

‘Not even for soup?’

Why couldn’t she drag her gaze from him?

‘I will make you chicken soup,’ he decided at her non-answer. ‘Dr Internet and my mother—she sends you her best wishes—say it is the best thing for you. If you can’t manage it, I will eat it.’ He looked at his watch. ‘You can have more pain relief soon too.’ He rose to his feet and stretched. His T-shirt rose, exposing the flat of his abdomen and the swirls of dark hair around his navel. ‘There is water on your bedside table. Do you need my help to drink or need me for anything else before I go downstairs?’

The beats of her heart were racing like a drum in her ears. She gave another shake of her head.

He leaned over to the round table at the head of the sofa, picked up her phone and placed it on the bedside table. ‘If you are feeling up to it, you should call your family.’

She stared at him blankly.

‘They called to see you were keeping safe from the storm,’ he explained.

Did they? she wondered dimly as her gaze remained glued to Marcello’s ruggedly handsome face.

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