Or wanted to believe it.
But worrying about that was for later, too. Later, when she could put herself together again. Later, when she could think about something other than the man who stretched over her and broke her heart, again and again and again. Because he could.
“Giancarlo,” she said again, with more force this time. “Stop talking.”
And he surrendered with a groan, thrusting deep and hard inside of her where there was nothing but the two of them—that shimmering truth that was only theirs, wild and dizzying and hotter every time—and that perfect, wondrous fire that swept them both away in its glory.
And Paige did her best to make them both forget.
* * *
Two more weeks passed, slow and sweet. The Tuscan summer started to edge toward the coming fall. The air began to feel crisp in the mornings, and the sky seemed bluer. And if she’d allowed herself to think about such things, Paige might have believed that the tension between her and Giancarlo was easing, too—all that heavy grief mellowing, turning blue like the sky, gold like the fields, lighter and softer with age.
Or perhaps she’d taught them both how to forget.
Whatever it was, it worked. No more did she spend her days trapped in her isolated cottage, available only to him and only when he wanted—and she told herself she didn’t miss it, all that forced proximity and breathlessness. Of course she didn’t miss it.
Paige’s days looked a great deal as they had back home. She met with Violet most mornings, and helped her plan out her leisure time. Violet was particularly fond of day trips to various Italian cities to soak in all the art and culture and fashion with a side helping of adulation from the locals, which she often expedited by taking Giancarlo’s helicopter that left from the roof of the castello and kicked up such a ruckus when it returned it could be heard for miles around.
“I’ve always preferred a big entrance,” Violet had murmured the first time, that famous smile of hers on her lips as the helicopter touched down.
But when Violet was in between her trips—which meant days of spa treatments and dedicated lounging beneath artfully placed umbrellas at the side of the castello’s private pool instead—Paige was left to her own devices, which usually meant she was left to Giancarlo’s.
One day he stopped the Jeep the moment it was out of sight of the castello’s stout tower and knelt down beside the passenger door, pulling her hips to his mouth and licking his way into Paige right there—making her sob out his name into the quiet morning, so loud it startled the birds from the nearby trees. Another time he drove them out to one of the private lakes that dotted the property and they swam beneath the hot sun, then brought each other to a shuddering release in the shallow end, Giancarlo holding her to him as she took advantage of the water’s buoyancy to make him groan.
Other times, they talked. He told her of his father’s dreams for this land, its long history and his own plans to monetize it while conserving it, that it might last for many more generations. He showed her around the Etruscan ruins that cropped up in the oddest spots and demonstrated, as much as possible, that a man who knew the ins and outs of three thousand acres in such extraordinary detail seemed something like magical when the landscape in question was a woman’s body. Her body.
Paige didn’t know which she treasured more. His words or his body. But she held them to her like gifts, and she tried not to think about what she deserved, what she knew she had coming to her. She tried to focus on what she had in her hands, instead.
One lazy afternoon they lay together in the warm sun, the sweet breeze playing over their heated skin. Paige propped her chin against his chest and looked into his eyes and it was dizzying, the way it was always dizzying. And then he smiled at her without a single stray shadow in his gorgeous eyes, and it was as if the world slammed to a stop and then started in the other direction.