The Vengeful Groom

The songs they’d sung on clambakes, the trips down the Sussex River in a flat-bottomed boat, the lazy days building sand castles on Neck Beck. The laughter. The affection. Licking each other’s sticky fingers—and then the doughnut sugar off Giovanni’s lips…

Tina drew in a quick breath, her expression guilty because she’d become aware that she was being watched by a pair of melting eyes that gleamed like deep shaded water—black, still and fathomless—and the mark on his face had grown into an angry red. His expression chilled her to the bone.

“Done all the checking you’re going to do?” he murmured sardonically. “Have I changed so much?”

She shrugged and pretended that was what she was still doing, quite surprised at his sophistication and casually elegant clothes. Yet in the rawness of his wicked eyes lay hints of that exciting rough edge of danger, which also touched his carnal mouth and made her think carnal thoughts.

“Little change,” she said huskily. “You still have the arrogance to imagine women will come whenever you call.” Her head lifted in defiance. “Let me go, or I’m going to scream.”

His eyes narrowed. The steady pull of his hand brought her close enough to feel his hot breath flaming her hot skin. His finger had delicately scooped up a bead of sweat from her forehead and transferred it to his tongue before she could blink. But the effect devastated her; all the sensual pleasures they’d enjoyed had turned her into a voluptuary, and that one small gesture filled her body with a terrible ache. He smiled with triumph when she remained mute, nursing her desolation.

“I need five minutes of your time,” he said, his black eyes unreadable. “Nothing more. Yet.”

Five minutes. She could survive that and wipe him from her life again. “What do you want?” she demanded shortly.

The extravagant mouth eased into a cynical smile. “You left these behind just now. They’re yours. Multiply them by ten,” he drawled, “and you get thirty pieces of silver.”

And before she knew what he intended, he’d reached out and pulled forward the neck of her thin T-shirt with a disdainful thumb and forefinger, audaciously dumping the three dimes into the gap. They lay stuck to her sweating breasts and stomach, dust and dirt and bits of clamshell and all.

“You brute!” she gasped in red-faced outrage as he calmly dusted off his hands and wiped them on an immaculate navy silk handkerchief. “You’ve made me feel dirty inside!”

The corners of his mouth swooped downward in scorn and he tucked the handkerchief back in his jacket pocket. “But, Tina,” he demurred, “I thought you were already dirty inside.”

She winced. “I’m clean scrubbed,” she said tightly, easing her top from the waistband of her shorts and letting the coins fall to the ground. Then she concentrated on trying to dislodge the bits from her stomach by rubbing vigorously—till she realized from the breathless silence, and then his frowning stare, what the movement was doing to her unsupported breasts.

“You look pretty pure,” he conceded laconically. “But there’s no honor or loyalty in there.” His scornful finger stabbed the air, pointing at her heart. “And when you drop the demure act, we get the truth. A woman driven by sex who’s only too ready to launch into a display of erotic originality.”

Tina was momentarily lost for words. Slowly her expressive eyes widened, their color first pale, then becoming almost navy as her emotions changed from shock to shame and then to outrage.

“Hypocrite!” she said bitterly. “I thought that we had a loving relationship and that our lovemaking was the natural consequence of our affection. I wasn’t ashamed of sharing my body with you—then. I am deeply shamed by it now!” she said shakily. “I trusted you with my most precious secrets…and you tricked me! All my life I’ll resent you for taking my innocence and betraying it when it had been so gladly, so devotedly given as a gift for the man I loved!”

“Do you hold me solely responsible for your seduction?” he drawled.

Tina lowered her head. She blamed herself for trusting him. “I—I was innocent and I didn’t know I was…”

“Getting me beyond the point of no return?” he suggested. “So was I to blame for finding you irresistible, or were you to blame for not realizing how naive and provocative your behavior was to a teenager with Sicilian blood?”

“We were both to blame,” she said quietly.

“Progress at last,” he mocked. “There’s always shared blame, Tina. Remember that. Hold it in your beautiful head and think about it. And remember we were in love,” he said softly, as though remembering with pleasure. ”Love.”

Heat scoured through her, head to toe, making her skin prickle. Shaken by the warmth in his voice, the lyrical indolence that cruelly brought back the soft nights beneath the stars and the moonlight gleaming on their naked skin, she let her thick black lashes hide the desolate expression in her eyes. If only she’d never let him arouse her to that fateful point of no return! It had been such a corny error to make after hearing the magic words, I love you. He loved himself. Sex. Her teeth snagged at her lip, stilling its tremble.

“Take the coins,” he said tightly. “They represent your betrayal,” he said, slivers of steel behind each carefully enunciated word.

She winced. “What did you want me to do in court? Stay silent? Perjure myself?” she asked, her voice husky with emotion, because she’d considered those options but obeyed her conscience.

“I wanted you to believe me,” he replied quietly.

“It wasn’t possible!” she cried irritably. “I know what I saw. Please, Gio. Don’t let’s go over it again. It was bad enough the first time. What benefit is there in raking up the past and accusing one another? Let it be!” she pleaded.

“I can’t.” He seemed unaware that his hands were lightly sweeping up and down her bare arms. His eyes impaled hers, blazing a message she didn’t understand. “I wish I could walk away right now,” he said huskily. “But the memories have drawn me back, and I can’t escape them any longer.”

Nor could she. All she could think of right now was what it would be like to be in his embrace again, clasped to the big curves of his muscular body. She felt a flash of fire deep within her slumbering core, and she tensed, her hands curling like claws to stop her maverick fingers from humiliating her by touching him. He had to go. Now, before she said or did something she’d regret for the rest of her life. She had regrets enough.

“You must leave town,” she said flatly. “Or…”

“Or what?” he murmured. “You’ll call the police and claim I harassed you?”

“I don’t want to, Gio. But push me and I might,” she muttered.

“I’d be arrested.”

Her head tipped high. “Not if you left,” she pointed out.

“You’d get me into trouble again just because you can’t cope with your own sexual response to me?” he asked in clipped tones. “Like the last time?”

He showed no shame, no guilt, no recognition that he’d been in the wrong. Tina felt the color in her face drain away, the beat of her pulse ticking like a time bomb.

“The evidence was overwhelming,” she rasped. “You drove your car on the night of the accident. You kept denying it and you’re still stubbornly denying it, but I saw you and so did dozens of others, and there is no doubt in my mind that you drove the car that…that…” She choked, but forced herself to say it, however much it hurt. “That killed my sister—and her baby!” she finished hoarsely.

And she felt her heart jerk in pain, remembering the last time she’d seen her sister, Sue, and her baby, Michael, alive—she and Sue splattered with apple-and-banana puree, laughing fondly at little Mikey’s determined attempts to feed himself. A sob rose in her throat, choking her, and she gritted her teeth to hold back the threatening tears.

Gio’s lips had whitened in anger. “How could you believe that? I’ll never understand….” he said, shaking his head.

“Beth said—” she began miserably.

“Didn’t it matter what I had to say?” he asked roughly. “Wasn’t I owed any loyalty? I was your lover. You were supposed to be in love with me and I deserved a hearing. You gave me none! How do you think I felt when you abandoned me?”

“I’m asking you for the last time. Leave me in peace!” she moaned.

“Peace? Il quieto vivere? I wish to God I had peace in my life! If only you had believed me, I could have survived anything!” he said bitterly. “But no, you blanked out everything we’d been to one another, all knowledge of my feelings about honor and life and women, and descended into behaving like a petulant bitch who’s been denied the dog she wants!”

She snatched breath from somewhere, her huge eyes dark with pain. Giovanni and Beth. Her lover and her best friend. That had been hard enough to take, seeing them together that night. Worse was seeing the two smashed cars and knowing that each contained someone she loved.

She put her hands over her ears, wishing she could shut out forever the sound of Beth screaming that awful night of the accident, hating the memory of the white-faced Giovanni shaking Beth violently and snarling at her to shut up before he reversed his car away from Sue’s.

He had changed. There was no gentleness in him at all now. And she shuddered, wondering what two years in prison could do to an eighteen-year-old who’d loved his family and life with a wonderful zest and optimism. Every Christmas, each New Year, each Thanksgiving that she’d celebrated with her grandfather and Adriana, she’d wondered how Giovanni was coping, because he was so alone and no one was visiting him. Tears welled up to wash the blue eyes and she turned her head away.

“Prison…prison has brutalized you….”

Her voice trailed away, choked by relentless emotions, and then his fingers were drawing her chin back, tilting it up so she was forced to meet his unreadable eyes. Emotions were taking their toll on him, too, perhaps the memories of the dark days in jail, and she winced in heartfelt sympathy. It was misplaced.

“You brutalized me,” he accused harshly. A thumb scooped the tears from her cheeks without tenderness. And the sickness threatened to overwhelm her. Hastily she brought her hand to her mouth and swallowed back the hard lump in her throat. Giovanni’s breath hissed in through his teeth, his merciless eyes flashing a spine-chilling warning that rooted her to the spot. “So you think you’re suffering!” he mocked. “You don’t even know you’re born! But you will soon.”

And she saw the raw anger in him, the sense of injustice he bore her as though he’d been brooding for all the intervening years and planning revenge. Nervously she looked around, hoping to catch the eye of a passerby and evade Giovanni, but the street was empty. In any case, she knew her only hope was to make him go. If he stayed for any length of time, even if there was a restraining order on him, he’d find out about Adriana.

Her heart lurched with sheer horror at the prospect. She had to shield Adriana from Giovanni, or he’d move heaven and earth to take her away. And the bewildered Adriana would scream and cry and he wouldn’t give a damn.