Page 20 of Innocent's Wedding Day with the Italian

There was another painful clenching in her heart to remember that she should already be in bed. With her husband. Making love for the first time. Celebrating a love that had never existed.

His velvet voice drifted to her ears. ‘Stay a little longer. I have something for you.’

She closed her eyes. ‘The shares?’

‘No. Something else.’

‘There is nothing else that I want from you.’ Other than for time to be reversed five months and to refuse a hot drink by the hotel fire with the most gorgeous man she’d ever set eyes on.

Too heartsick to breathe the same air as him a moment longer, Rebecca headed for the dining room door.

‘Five minutes,cara. Stay with me until the clock strikes midnight.’

She stilled, closing her eyes again as fresh longing swept through her. ‘You don’t have a clock that strikes anything.’

‘I was trying to be poetic.’

Despite herself, she smiled. Only a small smile but she was glad her back was to him and he couldn’t see it. He shouldn’t be able to amuse her still. She wished he didn’t.

Footsteps sounded behind her. ‘If we go now, we will be in the garage when midnight strikes.’

‘Why the garage?’

‘It’s where your birthday surprise is.’

She shook her head violently. ‘I don’t want anything from you. Whatever you got for me, send it back.’

‘That is not possible.’

The roots of her hair tingled at the warmth of his breath swirling through it. He was so close that every atom in her Enzo-starved body leapt towards his heat, and as she clenched her hands into fists to fight her yearning, she instinctively knew he was fighting the impulse to put his hands on the top of her arms and slide them down and then...

She started walking again, through to the main living room, fighting with everything she had not to look back. To look at him now, to find herself captured in the eyes that always pierced her soul, would drive her to madness.

‘Okay, I’ll have a look at your surprise.’ She was thankful for the defiance in her voice. ‘But don’t expect me to be all gushing and grateful for whatever it is.’ Undoubtedly a car. Enzo was a collector. His garage, filled with dozens of gleaming supercars that each cost more than her English home, had a larger footprint than her English home multiplied three times. Thankfully, Rebecca had no interest in cars. Her attachment to her father’s old car that had led her into putting it into storage rather than selling it or, as she should really have been done, scrapping it, was purely emotional. Whatever car Enzo had bought her would have no emotional impact, and it surprised her that a man who’d proven himself so intuitive to her emotional needs—intuitive enough to manipulate her, she quickly reminded herself—would think otherwise.

Still not looking back, she crossed the vast room to the corridor and headed to the far end and through the door that opened into the stairwell and led down to the garage. Absolutely no way would she dare risk sharing the elevator with him.

Only the tread of Enzo’s steps in her wake let her know he was behind her. That and the buzz in her veins and the pounding in her chest; the hyperawareness of his closeness she had once revelled in.

She quickened her pace down the stairs and stepped into the sprawling whitewashed underground lair that was as much a garage as a bed-sit was a mansion.

Folding her arms across her chest, Rebecca craned her neck in all directions. She would give her birthday car a cursory glance and then she would lock herself in the bedroom she’d never expected to sleep in again and take as cold a shower as she could stand and freeze all the dreadful heated feelings zipping through her veins and pounding in her heart.

In the third row to her left she caught the glimpse of a giant red bow. ‘Is that it?’

‘Yes. Come and see.’

It was only when she’d weaved through the second row and caught a glimpse of yellow that her heart lurched up into her mouth.

On legs that suddenly felt made of water, she virtually staggered to the vehicle she’d covered with a blanket only three weeks ago with the promise that she wasn’t abandoning it and that when the time was right, she would take it out of storage and find someone to finish her father’s restoration of it.

It took a long, long time for her to be able to speak and even then all she could muster was a choked, ‘How?’

‘I think you know the answer to that,’ Enzo murmured before digging into his jeans pocket and pulling out a key. He held it out to her on his palm. ‘Happy birthday,cara.’

She dragged her stare away from the car, and locked eyes with the man who’d made good on her father’s dream.

The faded, battered vintage car that had so recently possessed so many dents it was impossible to count them all was now as smooth as the other cars in the showroom garage and gleamed with the same intensity, the ripped and stained upholstery now a richly textured leather... Nothing had been missed. Even the steering wheel and gear stick looked brand-new. And yet, it retained the original charm her father had fallen in love with. It was still the same car that had thrilled him so and which he’d been determined to wind the clock back on and restore to its former glory.

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