the way you look and not worry about bad-hair days.’
He might not be able to see her face or read her body language, but Sam recognised with a sense of dismay that she felt more exposed on every level when she was near him.
‘I could never relax in your company.’ She bit her quivering lips and added before he could read something revealing into her retort, ‘I tried to talk to you…Cesare, and all it got me was a headache. Look, I’m sorry. I know you were only trying to do the right thing by suggesting we get married…you’re Italian and the family thing is…’
She stopped as her shoulders began to shake with the effort of biting back the sobs that were locked in her throat. Her head sank to her chest as she began to sob in earnest.
Her muffled cries tore at Cesare’s heart the way no woman’s tears ever had.
He took a step forward and walked into an unseen obstacle. Stepping over it with a curse, he extended his hands and felt the silky top of her head. She lifted it and his hands slid to frame it. He moved a thumb across the wetness of her cheeks.
She sniffed and covered his hands with her own, but, instead of pulling them away, they stayed there holding his in place. ‘Sorry, this isn’t about you. I have to focus.’
Cesare told himself the same thing a hundred times a day—he had to focus and stay in control. When he spoke he did so from experience—he knew that ignoring feelings did not make them go away. ‘No, you need to let go.’ She had been there when he had let go and had taken the full brunt of his rage when he had.
The rest of his sentence remained unsaid as she suddenly walked into his arms, burrowed her wet face into his chest and said in a voice muffled by his sweater, ‘I need you to shut up and hold me.’
For a second Cesare didn’t react at all to the imperious command. Inner conflict was tearing him apart, which made no sense—there was only conflict when someone wasn’t sure they had done the right thing, and Cesare, not a man afflicted with self-doubt, was sure.
He had been able to view the situation with total objectivity. The ability to have a clear overview without getting bogged down with emotional irrelevancies combined with luck was a talent that had helped make him a very wealthy man. He was discovering that it wasn’t easy to retain a grip on that objectivity when his arms were filled with a soft, weeping woman. Her scent flooded his senses and his arms closed around her.
Feelings, strong and unfamiliar, stirred as he stroked her hair and felt her quivering body relax. He slid the bulky wet coat she wore off her shoulders and moved his hands in a soothing motion down her spine. Then he propped his chin against the top of her glossy head and tried to keep things in perspective.
There would be other jobs.
But that wasn’t the point and Cesare knew it. He had known it when he had rung the proprietor of the Chronicle and called in a favour, but he had rationalised his actions—that was harder now when he was seeing the consequences up close and personal.
Very close!
Her curves slotted into his angles as if they had been made to complement each other. He tried to think about why he was doing this, but thoughts of having her soft and warm underneath him kept intruding.
He had been angry and in shock; his pride had been hurt when she had called him second best. He was still assailed by a need to hear her retract that statement, an odd desire for a man who had never given a damn for anyone’s opinion of him.
What she thought of him was not relevant, though he would clearly be more comfortable married to someone who didn’t hate his guts.
They must be married.
His immediate move after she had left his offices had been to cancel his trip back to Italy the next morning. His next had been the call to Mark James to call in a favour. The man had not been entirely happy at the request to interfere with what was, he pointed out, a purely editorial decision, but he had obliged anyway.
Samantha would not be offered a contract.
It seemed reasonable to Cesare to assume that being without a job would make the fiercely independent Samantha appreciate the insecurity of her position. She would be in a more favourable frame of mind to consider his proposal, or at least not dismiss it out of hand.
The irony was not lost on Cesare. He had spent his entire adult life escaping the clutches of women with designs on him—or at least his money—and now he was being forced to employ deception and dirty tactics in order to sell himself as a good marriage bargain.
Cesare had pushed aside any disquiet he felt about employing such methods; he would do anything to ensure that, unlike himself, his child would not be brought up without a father. That his child would never feel as though he didn’t belong. Parents wanted for their children the things they had been deprived of and he was no exception.
While she gave vent to her pent-up emotions Sam was unaware of anything but the shelter and security Cesare’s arms offered. She ought to have pulled away the second she became aware of anything else, like the heat and hardness of his body and the male, clean, musky scent of his skin, but she didn’t. She stayed there, her eyes tight shut, wanting the moment to last.
Cesare was the cause of, not the solution to, her problems, which made the fact she felt safe for the first time in weeks in his arms all the more bizarre.
She was losing it, she told herself.
Hands flat against his chest, she pushed away.
There was an awkward silence.
‘S-sorry about that. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, I’m afraid.’
He arched a brow, the roughness in his deep voice masking the emotions he felt hearing the catch in her voice. ‘Things will look better in the morning—is that what they say?’
‘Not in this case. I lost my job today.’ Why was she telling him this?
Without waiting for him to respond, she walked into the sitting room and took up a cross-legged posture on an armchair. When she looked up she saw he had followed her and was feeling his way along the wall.
For a moment she was lost in admiration and awe for the way he had adapted. She could imagine nothing more terrifying than walking into somewhere strange and not having a clue of where she was. Yet he betrayed no hesitation. His dominating presence radiated confidence and immediately made the small room feel a lot smaller.
There was no doubt Cesare Brunelli was a very remarkable man—even if he was extremely aggravating.
‘There’s a chair just to your left.’
Cesare accepted the information with a nod and felt for the chair before he lowered himself into it.
‘Why did you lose your job?’
‘It turns out I’m not as good at what I was doing as I thought. Do you dislike bad journalists less than competent ones?’
He frowned. ‘Is that what they said? That you were…’
‘Hopeless.’ She shrugged and stared at her fingers clenched in her lap. ‘Not directly,’ she admitted with a twisted smile. ‘But it’s fairly obvious.’ A person had to accept facts even when they were unpalatable.
Cesare was annoyed by the flat acceptance in her voice. He had manipulated the situation, he had wanted her to feel vulnerable—just not this vulnerable. She was a fighter; she’d been fighting since the moment they had met!
Somehow it felt wrong to him to hear her sound so resigned and defeated.
‘So you’re going to give up.’
Sam lifted her head, the anger she had heard in his voice, the anger she assumed was aimed at her, etched in the taut lines of his face.
‘I didn’t have you down as a defeatist,’ he added.
His harsh contempt