The Ultimate Playboy(88)

                Her senses screamed yes. Jealousy meant that she mattered in some way to him. The way he’d come to matter to her. ‘Why did you come in here, Narciso?’

                He sucked in a breath. ‘I told you, to apologise.’

                ‘Because my feelings are hurt or because you hurt me?’

                He lifted a hand and trailed his fingers down her cheek. ‘Because I hurt you,’ he rasped deeply.

                The breath shuddered out of her. ‘Thank you for that.’

                ‘Don’t thank me, Ruby. What I’m feeling...what you make me feel, I don’t know what to do with it. It may well come back and bite us both.’

                ‘But at least you’re acknowledging it. So what happened in your study?’ she asked before she lost her nerve.

                His lips firmed. ‘That woman in the picture you saw. Her name is Maria.’

                She bit her lip to stem the questions flooding her.

                ‘She’s Paolina’s—my housekeeper’s—granddaughter. I met her that summer ten years ago. She came to visit from Palermo. Paolina brought her to the house and we hung out. By the second week I’d convinced her to stay for the whole summer. I believed myself...infatuated with her.’ His lips pinched until the skin showed white. ‘I was young and naïve and respected her see-but-don’t-touch edict. Until I found out she was giving it up to Giacomo.’

                Shock rocked through her. ‘She was sleeping with your father?’

                ‘Not only sleeping with him. He’d convinced her to make a sex tape, which he forced me to watch on the last day of my stay in Sicily.’ Something in the way he said it made her tense.

                ‘What do you mean forced?’

                His teeth bared in a parody of a smile. ‘He had two of his bodyguards hold me down in a chair while the video played on a super-wide screen, complete with surround sound. It was quite the cinematic experience.’

                Her mouth gaped. ‘Oh, my God. That’s vile!’

                ‘That’s Giacomo,’ he said simply.

                ‘So, what is he doing with her in New York now?’

                His jaw clenched. ‘I don’t know. The reason I opened the file in the first place was to tell my investigator to toss the case.’

                ‘But now you think he’s plotting something?’

                ‘She’s broke. Which means she’s the perfect pawn for Giacomo.’

                Ruby wanted to ask him how he knew that, but the forbidding look in his face, coupled with the anguish lurking in his eyes, changed her mind.

                With the evidence of the two people who’d betrayed him before him, he’d have to have been a saint to remain unaffected. Hell, the thought of the double blow of betrayal made her heart twist in pain for him.

                ‘I’m sorry I condemned you. I didn’t know.’

                Mingled fury and anguish battled in his eyes. ‘What about this, Ruby mio? Do you know this?’ he muttered roughly.

                He parted her dress and his fingers were drifting down the bare skin of her belly, headed straight for her panty line, before she could exhale. Warm, sure fingers slid between her thighs before Ruby knew what had hit her.