Page 249 of Modern Romance November 2024 5-8

Following her, Marcello closed the door firmly behind him. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Now no one can see or disturb us.’

‘How do you live like this?’ she asked, shaking her head with bewilderment.

‘It has never been a problem before.’ And it never would be again. The few women he’d allowed to stay the whole night before Victoria had been dispatched back to their own homes first thing in the morning. He could not even imagine allowing them to do that much in the future.

Coldness filled his chest to imagine allowing another woman into his bedroom at all.

It was the intensity of what he and Victoria were sharing, he assured himself as he shook off the unsettling feeling. The closeness. Opening up to her about his son and his marriage.

He stepped to her and ran his finger in the dip where the robe joined together from her neck to her cleavage. Then he pulled it apart, exposing her to him. ‘Where were we?’

Victoria sat at the desk Marcello had long ago designated as hers in his home office and, for the first time in—how long? A week...? Time had flown—turned on the desktop he’d also long ago designated as hers, and opened her emails. Over four hundred new messages.

The cleaning staff had all gone. Christina and Patrick were in their own quarters. The only person who was going to disturb her was Marcello and he’d fallen asleep. She was taking no chances though, and had put her jeans and vest top on. A quick glance in the mirror had made her put her bra on too.

Back to the real office tomorrow. Back to the real world.

The real world had already found its way back to her though, and she stared at her mammoth inbox without seeing.

She’d been too caught up in the bliss of everything she was experiencing to realise Christina had figured out that they’d become lovers, and it made her cheeks burn with humiliation to imagine what the older woman must think of her. Made them burn harder to imagine what it would be like dealing with her in the future.

She knew Marcello wasn’t any more ready than she was to say goodbye as lovers yet, but the unspoken deadline of their return to the office marking the end of them would not change.

The grief that had brought Marcello to Manhattan had cut too deep for him to ever dare open his heart in the same way again. He’d let her in as much as he could and tomorrow he would let her go. For him, life would return to how he needed it to be.

She’d let him so far into her heart that he’d nestled inside it with no means of release.

She closed her eyes to the swelling tears and took a long breath.

How long until he re-joined his usual dating pool? She no longer believed he would ask her to keep evenings free for him or do any of the old stuff he used to do when he had a lover on the scene—she might tease him for being a monster but he wasn’t. Marcello was often thoughtless but he was never cruel—but the tabloids took a keen interest in his sex life. His shallow lovers saw to that, many using their affair as a springboard to craved fame. Victoria would once again find herself reading about his sexploits and fielding calls from disgruntled women cast aside without a thought, and know that they’d shared the bed she’d found such joy in.

All the things she’d known lay in her future and known would hurt her...

And now she knew she could not endure any of it. Because she hadn’t known just how deeply in love with him she would fall.

Putting a hand to her pounding heart, she took another deep breath and blinked away the tears until she could see more clearly.

She knew what she needed to do.

Another deep breath and then she composed an email to the head of HR. She would send it in the morning, after she’d told Marcello that it would be impossible for her to go back to how things used to be.

Marcello straightened his black bow tie, flicked a speck of dust off the lapel of his black dinner jacket, then patted cologne into his shaven cheeks and neck. He was ready.

In the bedroom, Victoria stood before the full-length mirror putting on the diamond teardrop earrings he’d had delivered as a surprise for her only an hour before. If he hadn’t wasted an hour of the day sleeping, he’d have snuck out and chosen them from the real-life versions and not the online versions.

He still struggled to believe he’d fallen asleep in the afternoon. His mother still regaled family and friends with stories of how, even as a toddler, Marcello had refused to nap. Since moving to Manhattan, his body’s need for sleep had diminished to such an extent that he rarely slept more than five hours a night. He could only assume the copious amount of sex he’d been enjoying with Victoria was the cause of his unintended snooze. He’d woken from it, rolled over to cuddle into her and coax her into more lovemaking, only to find the bed empty. She’d returned to the room inconveniently clothed before he could seek her out. Her face had coloured when she’d explained that she’d been sorting out work stuff.

‘Never mind that,’ he’d said thickly, throwing off the duvet. ‘Come back to bed.’

And so she had, and this time she’d been the one to doze off afterwards. When she’d woken, she’d been the one to instigate more lovemaking.

Just as he struggled to believe he’d had an afternoon snooze, he struggled to understand why his mind kept substituting the word sex for lovemaking. And why his mind flatly refused to imagine a time without Victoria in his bed.

Tomorrow they would part as lovers and return to the rhythms of their old working lives. There would be a period of adjustment but he was confident they would get through it. He was sure that throwing himself back into his pool of shallow vipers would take off the edge of his craving for his executive assistant. He would just have to be discreet, and throw himself back into the pool away from his apartment until Victoria’s imprint had faded to nothing.

Back to the bland, vaguely satisfactory couplings that demanded nothing of him but his body.

Damn it, if he could keep this affair with Victoria going until it was naturally spent then he would, but this was as much as he could allow, and he had to think, too, of what it would be like for her if they did continue things a little longer. Offices could be febrile places filled with gossip and innuendo. He would not have her humiliated. He needed her as his assistant. Needed her in his life.

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