The Vengeful Groom

Oh, God!

Her skin paled beneath its tan, washed with gray from head to toe, her huge, dark-lashed eyes suddenly great sinking navy pools in her horrified face. Suddenly she didn’t want to stay around the dime-tossing stranger any longer. Just in case. Her heart stopped beating for a brief moment as the ground seemed to heave beneath her feet and she tried to steady herself.

It could well be Giovanni.

Hazily she focused on the feet, the legs, the dancer-slim hips. It couldn’t be. No, some other guy. Why had she thought of Gio? Her intuition had gone crazy. He could never afford to rent a Lamborghini, let alone buy one. Surely… She swallowed. No man in his position would want to come back. The shame, the accusing stares, the stony silence from everyone would be unbearable for him.

Yet there was the familiar thud in her chest that came when Giovanni was close, the melting of her body into a molten heap, ready to erupt when he touched her, spoke, fixed her with his brooding, heavy-lidded eyes.

Since his departure so long ago, nothing had changed the way she felt deep inside. A crowd of guys had dated her; a few had kissed her. She scowled, firmly pushing back the inevitable thought that none of them had taken her all the way to heaven the way Giovanni had.

Perhaps it was just as well. The lush red of her lips parted in a grimace of pain. Never again in her entire life did she want to feel that she was dying inside because of a man’s rejection and his casual betrayal. Or to realize that the man she’d loved was without honor or backbone. No wonder Gio’s adoring parents had disowned him!

She inhaled sharply, slamming the door on a pain ten years old. That was how you dealt with tragedy; when it was too huge, too hurtful to cope with, you eliminated it from your mind and threw yourself into work one hundred percent and made some kind of a life for yourself.

Her mouth trembled. Every now and then, a word, a gesture, the angle of a jaw or a word spoken on the television, caused her to learn the cruel lesson that her love for Giovanni had never faded; it was merely suppressed. Which made her a mindless fool, because only a mindless fool carried a torch for a cheat and a liar.

Men like Gio were virtually programmed to build up a woman’s hopes, to deceive and disappoint—then to vanish. He was a coward. No, worse than that, she thought unhappily. Much worse. As bad as a man could be.

She pressed a trembling hand against the cerulean blue of her T-shirt. Beneath her soft breath, her heart beat in an alarmingly erratic rhythm.

“Miss Murphy? You okay?”

“I…oh, too many waffles for breakfast,” she told Brad, taking a quick gulp of oxygen to fill her crushed lungs. “I’ll give the pecs a miss. They’re a dime a dozen now that everyone works out,” she continued hurriedly. “Ask him if they do Countachs in a ragtop!” Her attempt to sound casual began to fall apart. The feet and legs had edged forward ultraslowly, and the beefy torso was being revealed in all its masculine glory. Giovanni, her brain told her. “Have fun, you guys! Gotta go!” She whirled around, striding fast as a whippet toward the street.

To her acutely tuned ears came the rasping sound of trolley wheels on the clamshells. She hastily flung open the drunken gate and strode onto the sidewalk. “There’s no earthly reason that it should be him!” she muttered to herself. “None at all—”

“Teeenaaa!”

“Ohhhh!” she gasped.

Quickening her pace, she pretended she didn’t recognize the rich, rolling, elaborately drawn-out extension of the syllables of her name. But no one in the world except Giovanni had the ability to caress even the most ordinary word. Those lilting cadences, a rough edge and an Italian’s way with women had given him advantages over other men, and the easily won adoration had flawed him fatally. Women came willingly to his arms, she thought, sick at heart.

“Teeenaaa!”

Grim faced, she faked deafness and forged on till a painfully remembered musical whistle stopped her as dead as if she’d hit a brick wall. Their call!

Their secret call, when they’d needed one another. How could he? How could he? Emotions coursed through her in destructive waves. Love. Regret. Shame. Anger. And contempt by the bucket. Too much to cope with. Tina got her leaden feet working again, her mind still in turmoil. Giovanni! Not in a million years had she expected to see him again—or ever wanted to!

Why had he come? Her dazed mind whirled, seeking an explanation for his hiring an ostentatious car when it was unlikely he could afford such extravagances. He’d never made it to college, and there’d been that period in… Tina’s white teeth savaged her lower lip as she fought to keep her emotions under control. Jail. She’d said it. Jail had taken up two years of his life. Not much opportunity to make money with that track record.

Reluctantly she faced the truth she’d been avoiding. He’d sworn he’d return one day—and make everyone sit up and take notice.

An image burned itself in her mind. She closed her eyes briefly in anguish, but the image was even clearer, and when she snapped them open again he was still there—in court, just after the sentence had been read, his eyes flickering in malediction between her and her once-dear friend Beth, because they’d provided the evidence that had damned him.

“I’ll be back!” he’d yelled across the courtroom, her heart breaking at the way he’d struggled with the restraining officer. The hurt racked through her now and then; Gio had protested his innocence to the last and never admitted his guilt. “I swear to God you’ll all know when I’ve hit town!”

Ashen faced, Tina stepped up her pace, driving her wobbling legs toward the café a few hundred yards down the street. She wished it wasn’t Saturday, because only a handful of people were stirring—mainly students and those like herself who’d become accustomed to getting up for school at seven-thirty. She wanted crowds. The safety of numbers and friendly faces because that day in court was one she wanted to forget forever. And suddenly it was here and now, and she couldn’t bear it.

The whistle sounded again, louder, more imperious, as though she’d turn and run to him like some obedient dog. Her heart tripped a beat. He’d called her a bitch of the first order, his eyes glittering with hatred, the promise of retribution in every inch of his powerful body.

Sicilian vengeance. Cold, calculated, final.

And now he was here. Giovanni, having been brought up a Sicilian half his life, would be nursing a grudge he would take to the grave if it wasn’t satisfied. The past swept relentlessly into the present: everything she’d seen and felt that day in court, Gio’s black malevolent eyes, staring, condemning, the nervous sips she’d taken of the water they’d given her when her voice had failed, the physical sickness….

The wave of nausea now made her stumble. Hot, sweating, she recovered, thrust her hand through her hair and plunged blindly on. She’d gotten to the bank. Nearly up to the bridge, the café, the haven that lay inside.

By the time she crested the old bridge she was out of breath and could feel his presence close behind her like an evil force. Suddenly her legs lost their ability to move and her feet just gave up. She hung on to the parapet wall and looked down at her legs in bewilderment, willing them to obey her. Failing.

“Ciao, Tina,” Giovanni murmured, so softly, so slowly it could break a woman’s heart. “Ciao.”

Small flurries of nerves rippled right down to her bare and wriggling toes. The punch of pure delight had knocked her brain away and left space for her sensuality to flow unheeded. Her small hands screwed into tight hurting balls, because the old magic was still there despite everything he’d done, and her whole emotional inner world had roared into life. Tina gritted her teeth against the long-forgotten ability of her brain and physical body to melt when his voice caressed her in that sexy indolent way. It was nothing but a memory quirk. A cruel reflex action.

“Arrivederci!” she flung behind her shakily.

“Turn around, Tina. Allora, turn to me.”

The warm, languid and silken voice slid over her shoulder, shivering up her sensitive neck and then crawling over every inch of her body. And the memories flooded back like the remorseless tide, washing away all her flimsy barriers and leaving her stranded, high and dry, with only one focus. Giovanni.

Weakly she lifted her face to the early-morning warmth of the sun, and she could almost feel his firm dreamy mouth on hers, teaching her how to kiss, how to enjoy her body without shame. Dark with anger, her eyes narrowed. Of course he’d taught her that! Look what he’d gotten in return!

“I don’t want to see you. Or speak to you,” she said huskily. “I’m on my way to the café.” She was afraid, unwilling to look him in the eye. This was the man she’d loved, ached for. Betrayed.

“You might as well face me,” he drawled. “You can’t run from your mistakes forever.”

Stunned, she whirled around, every inch of her quivering with the injustice of his remark, her Irish temper flaring as she tasted in her throat the bitterness of her error in giving her love to a sham.

“You were my mistake, Gio! You were a mistake!” she cried incoherently. “It was a mistake that you were ever born!” With that, her hand swept up and connected with his sardonic mocking face in a resounding crack that went right through her, shuddering down into her bones. She uttered one strangled broken cry of horrified remorse and turned, planning to run, her mind reeling from the terrible image of Giovanni’s savage mouth, his malefic eyes, her fingers tingling from the electric sensation when they’d connected with warm satin skin clothing the rock of his jaw.

A huge hand closed on her slender arm, stopping her with its crushing force before she’d taken one faltering step. “That slap, Tina,” he said with a dangerous softness, “was your mistake.”

“Take your hand off me!” she said jerkily. Being touched by him was a shock. They were joined again, the tension between them firing her with a sensation of uncontainable volcanic energy. Appalled, she tugged at his hand, but it only tightened, drawing her closer, and she knew with sinking heart that she’d have to look in his accusing eyes again and face the situation.

She could deal with this. She wasn’t a guileless teenager any longer. She had a track record of dealing with trouble. Anyone who could handle unwanted pregnancies, knife fights and anxious parents could pull herself together and show a bit of cool in a crisis.

This was nothing, she told herself, but knew she lied, because she was emotionally involved and it wasn’t the same at all.

“I won’t release you yet. First, I have something for you, Tina,” he muttered. And he twisted her around, impaling her with his black, black eyes.

The white imprint of her hand flared accusingly against the dark gold of his skin, and she stared at the mark of her contempt as if hypnotized by it.

“You have nothing for me,” she said in a low tone.

He had changed. Bigger, harder, with a hatred that lay cold as ice in the cruel eyes. Yet whatever the hardships he’d suffered, there was still that stomach-clenching impact of stunning good looks. Blond hair on a dark-skinned Sicilian had thrown a curve at women of all tastes and ages, and she’d never been immune. Her mouth trembled with a soft exhalation.

“I have,” he murmured. “More than you think.”

“Only memories, Giovanni,” she replied quietly.