Page 20 of Private Reserve
It does beg the question—is he holding himself back on purpose? The marriage might be a ruse, but there is nothing fake about the way he touches me. I see the protective way he looks at me, and the love in his touch fills my heart. Maybe he’s too afraid of hurting the good girl. Maybe that’s the real reason he left me all those years ago. If that’s the case, I seriously need to set him straight, to tell him I want him to own me, possess me, to devour me like Luca’s lover devoured him.
Talk to him, Olivia.
I curl my fingers, worry gnawing at me. I’ve never been able to open my mouth before, but if I don’t say something, I’m going to end up back in Seattle, unhappy and alone. Summoning every ounce of courage I possess, I push from the plush chair and stand. I scan the hills outside, looking for the man I love. He left an hour ago, saying Luca needed to talk to him.
My search for him comes up empty, so I leave his office to find his grandfather going through papers at the front counter.
“Hey Granddad,” I say, since I’m now family and he insists I call him that.
His blue eyes brighten. “Olivia, my darling. What can I do for you?”
“Have you seen Gio?”
He frowns and looks skyward like he’s thinking. “His folks have gone to town for supplies. Perhaps he’s gone with them. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, just some things we need to go over,” I say, which is not a lie.
The door jingles as one of the elderly couples step inside. I give them a smile and inch away as they approach the counter. As Granddad attends to them, I head upstairs to the suite Gio and I share. Since the floors were being sanded in the cottage where we’re to move into together now that we’re married, we decided to stay put in the honeymoon suite—although I still had a few things in the Abrusco villa. It’s not like I had to clear it out, since it hadn’t been rented in ages.
I search for Gio, desperate to talk to him, but when he’s nowhere to be found, I decide to check the winery. I hurry to the brick building on the other side of the property and wave to a few silver-haired guests sampling wine at the outdoor bar. I check the winery, but once again, there’s no Gio. Perhaps he’s in his old bedroom in the main mansion.
The cannon sounds as I hurry through the lobby, giving Granddad a quick wave as I rush up the steps and stand outside his old bedroom door. “Gio,” I say as I knock. I try the knob, and it twists open. “Gio, are you here?” I ask as I slowly inch the door open. My ears meet with silence, but it’s what I see that nearly drops me to my knees. Air leaves my lungs in a whoosh, and my vision fades as the walls begin to close in on me.
As I stare at the blue hat, I suck in a breath, barely able to fill my oxygen-starved lungs as I rewind and replay the last two weeks over and over in my rattled brain. All the little things niggling in the back of my head, all the pieces of the puzzle, snap into place, and the truth comes to me in a blinding flash.
Gio is Luca’s lover. He’s the powerful man who’d sent Luca to his knees.
I stumble backward, my hands holding the wall for support.
Gio is Luca’s lover.
My mind races, and I blink, willing the world around me to stop spinning so I can catch up. Gio cares about me, but he loves Luca. This has to be why he left me.
Needing answers, I hurry from the main house to the honeymoon suite, then search the vineyard high and low, but he’s absolutely nowhere to be found. Needing to occupy my hands and mind until Gio shows up, I decide to gather the last of my things from Abrusco villa.
When I reach the cottage, I hurry inside and race up the steps, but voices outside stop me. My heart crashes, and I pad quietly to the patio doors. Oh God, it’s Gio and Luca. Could they be…
I quietly open the door and hear, “All that’s left is to stop pretending in this marriage. Go do what you have to do.”
Chapter Nine
Olivia
Tear
s burn my eyes as I overhear the two lovers discussing me, and apprehension surges inside me. It hurts so much to know that Gio has only been pretending with me, that he doesn’t want me the way I want him. He probably only went at me like a predator that day in the office because he’d been with Luca moments before. It had to be him Gio was thinking about, who he really wanted to be with. It wasn’t that he was afraid to hurt the “good girl” at all. I just didn’t inspire that passion in him. His intensity was reserved for his lover. A tortured sound crawls out of my throat as I spin and rush down the stairs.
How could I ever have thought I could build something with Gio? He only needed me to get what he wanted, has only been using me. I have never been enough for him, have never inspired him in the bedroom the way Luca does.
Phone in hand and desperately needing to get as far away from here as possible, I continue to run. I don’t care about my luggage, all I need is my passport. I can send for my things later. I rush to the main road and find in my history the number to the cab company that had dropped me off two weeks ago. The line clicks through, and I’m about to give my location when Gio’s voice stops me.
“What are you doing?” he asks, his tone hard, deep. I spin to face him, and he takes my phone and shoves it in his back pocket.
“I’m leaving, Gio.”
“You think I’m going to let you leave?”
“I heard you and Luca,” I blurt out.
