Page 7 of The Sicilian’s Deal For 'I Do'

What was happening?

Luca showed no emotion. His face was carefully muted of it, but in the depths of his eyes she saw something,feltsomething. Too quickly, he concealed that, too.

‘Forgettable?’ he prompted, the derision in his voice showing how easy it was to see through her lie. Damn it! She’d tried to hurt his pride, to dent his ego, to prove how much she’d grown, but why bother when he could so easily scatter her resolve?

‘Yes,’ she spat, anger vibrating through her, the lie one she clung to even when he’d just proved it to be exactly that: a lie. ‘You say you’ve thought about me, Luca? Well, I haven’t thought about you at all, except to reflect on how glad I am I didn’t end up married to such a heartless bastard!’

Again, his eyes shuttered, hiding something from her, but Mia was too incensed to care. ‘How dare you come here and think you can...you can...’

‘You kissed me,’ he reminded her quietly.

‘Yes, but only because you—’

‘Because you wanted to,’ he interrupted, so close she could feel his breath. ‘Don’t lie to me again, Mia.’

She frowned. ‘When haveIlied to you?’

His brows shot up with evident surprise. ‘I didn’t come here to litigate the past.’

‘Good, because I have no interest in talking to you.’

He spoke as though she hadn’t. ‘I am offering you one night, Mia. One night that we should have shared then, that I think we both still want. Our engagement was a mistake, our marriage would have been doomed to fail from the start, butthis—’ he gestured between them ‘—is undeniable.’

‘What the actual hell?’ she shouted, spurred to raise her voice by the tide of feelings threatening to engulf her. He pressed a finger to her lips, reminding her where they were, and that they were far from alone.

‘Come home with me. Stay the night.’

The words were the most seductive she’d ever heard, rendered that way by the sexual awareness he’d awoken within her over a year ago.

‘Why on earth would I do something as stupid as that, Luca Cavallaro?’ She was pleased with the derisive anger in her words, with the way her brain was asserting itself over her libido, even if her voice did shake a little.

‘Because you want to,’ he prompted, eyes holding hers with the force of a thousand suns. ‘As much as I want you to.’ His finger lifted to the corner of her lips, brushing her soft flesh. ‘Come to me, Mia.’

It made no sense. He was the one who’d walked out on their marriage. ‘You left me on our wedding day.’

‘And I don’t regret that,’ he responded sharply.

She glared at him. ‘I seriously hate you.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘This isn’t about hate, or love, or a wedding. It’s about one thing, and one thing only. So ask yourself, do you want me enough to forget the past, Mia?’

How on earth could she admit to that? Even when he was right, she hated herself for being willing to ignore the way he’d treated her and go home with him! She clung to defiant anger with difficulty. ‘Pigs will fly before I’d ever do anything quite so stupid.’

Their eyes locked and it was a silent, angry war of attrition, a fierce battle. But before she could stalk away, he caught her hand, her wrist, his thumb padding over her flesh. ‘We’ll see,cara.’

And with that, he turned on his heel and disappeared around the corner, his dark head joining the crowd. She watched him until he was absorbed by the milling guests. Mia collapsed into the seat, a maelstrom of feelings and uncertainty.

CHAPTER TWO

MIADIDN’TGOto him that night. How could she? He’d torn her pride into tatters, but she’d worked hard to rebuild it in the intervening twelve months. She’d rebuilt herself.

Not to mention, she was technically engaged.

Okay, her engagement was definitely not normal. She wasn’t in a relationship with Lorenzo and they both understood that. Their marriage would be barely more than a business partnership, only they intended to live together afterwards. Lorenzo was free to see whomever he wished until they were married and he’d made it abundantly clear that he expected her to do the same.

She couldn’t hang her resistance on the idea of infidelity—it was so much more complicated.

She was afraid.

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