A Passionate Reunion In Fiji / Cinderella's Scandalous Secret

CHAPTER TWO

MASSIMO CLENCHED HIS teeth together and placed a protective hand on his laptop to prevent Livia from snatching hold of it and throwing it onto the floor. ‘What was that for?’

Diminutive though she was in height, in presence she was larger than life and right then, standing over him, she seemed magnified, the anger rippling from her in waves. ‘We’ve been in the air for an hour and you’ve spared me only ten words.’

‘Twenty-six,’ he corrected through gritted teeth. ‘I have spoken twenty-six words.’

‘And now you’re being pedantic as well as rude.’ She pulled her hair together in a fist then released it. ‘How are we supposed to convince your grandfather and the rest of your family that we’re still together if you won’t look at me or talk to me?’

‘I’m not being rude. This is a very important time for me. On Monday we are running the prototypes on…’

‘I don’t care,’ she interrupted with a cry. ‘Whatever you’re working on, I do not care. I’m here as a favour to you for your grandfather’s benefit. The least you can do is treat me with some respect.’

‘If I’m being disrespectful then I apologise,’ he answered stiffly, biting back the retort of what did you expect? Livia had been the one to walk out on their marriage, not him. She had been the one to laugh in his face when he suggested they have a child. How did she expect him to be around her?

Damned if he knew how to act around her. Focusing his attention on the screen before him was the only tool he had to drive out the tumultuous emotions ripping through him. That these emotions were still there defied belief but Livia had always been able to induce feelings in him that had no place in his world, feelings that went far deeper than mere lust and friendship. She took up too much head space. She distracted him. That would have been easy to deal with if she’d only distracted his head when he’d been at home.

‘I don’t want your apologies. You don’t mean it. You never do. Your apologies are meaningless.’

It was an accusation she had thrown at him many times and usually preceded an escalation of her temper, which only got wilder when he refused to engage. Massimo disliked meaningless confrontation, considered it a waste of energy, and would walk away when she refused to listen to reason.

Unfortunately, right now there was nowhere for him to walk away to. To escape to.

Keeping his own temper in check—keeping a cool head when all those around him lost theirs was something he took pride in—Massimo inhaled slowly through his nose and gazed at the angry face before him. ‘What I’m working on is important. I’ll be finished before we land in Los Angeles. We can spend the time between Los Angeles and Fiji talking if that’s what you want.’

She laughed without any humour then flopped onto the seat opposite his and glared at him. ‘Great. You’re going to do me the huge favour of talking to me if I want. Thank you. You’re too kind.’

She’d folded her arms across her chest, slightly raising her breasts. He knew she hadn’t done it deliberately—intimacy between them had died long before she’d called time on their marriage itself—but it distracted him enough for a sliver of awareness to pierce his armoury.

Livia had a body that could make a man weep. Even dressed as she was now, fully covered in tight faded jeans and a roll-neck black jumper, her feminine curves were undeniable. The first time he’d made love to her he’d thought he’d died and gone to heaven. Her virginity had surprised and delighted him. Surprised him because he would never have believed a twenty-four-year-old woman with such a dirty laugh and who carried herself with such confidence could be a virgin. Delighted him because it had marked her as his in a primal way he’d never experienced before.

Sex had never been a great need for him. When he’d shot up from a scrawny teenager into the frame he now inhabited, he’d suddenly found women throwing themselves at him, something that had only increased when he’d sold his web-based game after graduation and become worth a fortune. If he’d been in the mood he’d been happy to oblige, finding sex a satiating yet fleeting diversion from his work. Livia was the first woman he’d been truly intimate with. When they had first got together they’d been unable to keep their hands off each other. For the first time in his life Massimo had found himself consumed by lust.

The loss of that intimacy had not been his choice. Their marriage had disintegrated to such an extent that the nights he had made it home, they’d slept back to back. A man could take only so much rejection from his own wife before he stopped bothering.

Had she taken a lover? It was a thought that sent a stabbing motion plunging into his chest and for a moment he closed his eyes and breathed the pain away.

It was none of his business if she’d taken a lover and it would be unreasonable to expect her to have remained celibate during their separation. If not for his grandfather they would already be divorced.

‘When did you last see your grandfather?’ she asked suddenly, cutting through his attempts to concentrate on the screen in front of him rather than the bombshell opposite.

Livia felt only fleeting satisfaction to see the caramel eyes raise to meet hers.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because when I saw him the day before he set sail for Fiji he complained that you hadn’t been in touch. I emailed Lindy about it.’

Lindy was Massimo’s PA, a dragon of a woman who ran his business life. She was the only person in the world who knew their marriage was over in all but name. As far as their respective families were concerned, they were still together.

When they’d married, Livia had hoped Massimo’s new status would encourage him to see more of his family but it hadn’t worked that way. In their two years of shared life they had spent one Christmas with his family and that had been it. Livia had made numerous visits from their house in Los Angeles to Italy alone, visiting her youngest brother and dropping in on Massimo’s family, all of whom she adored.

Since they’d gone their separate ways, her frequent visits had continued. They were used to her visiting alone so Massimo’s absence had gone unremarked. Only Madeline, Massimo’s sister, had the perception to see that anything was wrong but as she had a newborn child to take care of, her perception skills were less honed than usual. The ache that formed in Livia’s heart as she held Madeline’s baby only added to the ache already there but she would have been helpless to resist cradling the tiny bundle in her arms even if she didn’t have a show to perform.

None of the Briatores or Espositos had any idea she was back on Italian soil permanently. Whenever she was asked about Massimo—who rarely bothered to message his family and had never met his niece—she would say he was busy with work, satisfied that she wasn’t telling a lie. Massimo was always busy with work. Always. She’d lived with his grandfather as his private nurse for nine months and in that time Massimo hadn’t made one trip home. She’d accepted the family line that Massimo was too busy to fly home from California regularly but had come to her own private conclusion during their marriage that it was nothing to do with his schedule preventing him from spending more time with his family. He simply didn’t want to.

She would be glad when these evasions of the truth could be done with and they could tell his family they had separated. She hated lying, even if only by omission.

‘Lindy mentioned it,’ he admitted stiffly.

‘Did you do anything about it?’

‘I called him on the ship. He sounded fine.’ His gaze dropped back to his laptop.

‘He isn’t fine.’ Livia’s heart had broken to see how frail Jimmy had become. The elderly yet vital man who’d waged such a strong battle against his first diagnosis of cancer was fading, too weak to fly both legs of the mammoth journey to Fiji. It had been decided that a cruise was the safest way to get him to the other side of the world. Jimmy wanted to spend his ninetieth birthday with all his family around him, see corners of the world he’d never visited before and tread the soil he’d been raised on one last time.

Everything for him was now one last time.

‘I know that.’

‘Will you spend some proper time with him this weekend?’ she asked. It was pointless adding that spending real time with Massimo was Jimmy’s greatest wish. It was his parents’ greatest wish too.

Massimo thought the gift of his money was enough. When he’d made his fortune, he’d bought his entire family new homes of their own and a car each. As his wealth had increased so had his generous gifts to them. It had been Massimo who’d paid for the private treatment during Jimmy’s first diagnosis and all the associated costs including the agency fees for Livia’s wages as his live-in nurse. It was Massimo who had bought the island his grandfather came from and spent a fortune building a complex for the entire family to stay on. It was Massimo footing the bill for the cruise the rest of the family were taking with Jimmy to reach the island. He’d chartered an ocean liner for their sole use.

Yet for all his generosity, he was spectacularly blind to the fact his family would much rather have his presence than his presents. He also seemed blind to the fact that time was running out for his grandfather.

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll leave your laptop and phone switched off?’

‘You know I can’t do that.’

‘I know you won’t do that.’

His jaw clenched. ‘We can talk about this later.’

She laughed mockingly. ‘Later. Of course. Everything is always later with you, isn’t it?’

Without any warning, Massimo slammed his fist against the panel beside his seat. ‘And everything still has to be now with you. I said we could talk once I have completed my work but, as always, you don’t listen. This is important and needs my attention. If you can’t wait patiently for me to finish then I suggest you take yourself to the bedroom and give your mouth a rest.’

Massimo refused to feel guilt for his outburst, even when Livia’s face paled before him.

True to form, she refused to let him get the last word, getting to her feet slowly and glowering at him. ‘If anyone has a problem with listening it’s you. If it doesn’t involve your precious work then it’s insignificant to you. It’s been four months since you last saw me and you haven’t even cared to ask how I’ve been. If I’d had any doubts that leaving you was the best thing I could do, an hour in your company has proven me right. You never cared for me. You’ve never cared for anyone.’

She walked away, not to the bedroom but to her original seat. There was dignity in the way she moved that, despite the acrimony that thickened the air between them, touched him. Livia was a strange mix of toughness and vulnerability, traits that had first moved him then infuriated him. Her toughness meant she did not know how to back down from an argument but the underlying vulnerability found her easily wounded. He’d never known the words to say to repair the wounds he’d unwittingly inflicted on her. Eventually he’d stopped trying.

Her partition rose and she disappeared from sight.

Massimo sighed his relief and rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours and was exhausted.

Ringing the bell, he ordered a fresh coffee when the stewardess appeared. Caffeine and sugar would keep him awake long enough to get his analysis done. Maybe then he’d be able to catch some sleep.

He tuned out Livia’s husky voice when the stewardess turned her attention to his wife.

But he couldn’t tune out her presence.

The data on the screen before him blurred. His head felt so heavy. All of him felt heavy, a weight compressing him from the top down and, even with the importance of the work that needed to be done, he found his thoughts drifting to the early days of their marriage, days when he’d believed nothing could come between them.

Nothing had come between them. Only themselves.

Livia tried to concentrate on the movie she’d selected from the thousands stored on the in-flight entertainment system—a system Massimo had had installed for her benefit—but the storyline passed her by in a haze. The first movie, a comedy, had passed her by too. This second one was a critically acclaimed thriller guaranteed to keep her tear ducts intact but, even with the sound on her headphones turned up high to drown out the incessant tapping of Massimo’s fingers on his keyboard, he was all she could think about.

How had it come to this? How could a marriage formed with such passion and joy disintegrate into such bitterness?

Movement caught her attention and she removed her headphones and straightened as the head stewardess approached to see if she would like anything.

‘A blanket would be nice, thanks,’ she replied. The air-conditioning on Massimo’s jet was always set to freezing.

The blanket delivered, Livia was suddenly struck by the cabin’s silence.

Lowering her partition, she looked across at Massimo.

He’d fallen asleep.

His laptop was still open but the man himself was fast asleep, upright in his seat, his mouth slightly open as he breathed in and out heavily.

A tightness formed in her chest as she watched until, without thinking, she got to her feet and padded over to him.

For a long time, hardly daring to breathe, she drank in the features of the man she had once loved so much. His Fijian ancestry was stronger in him than in his sister. His skin was a deep olive, his thick hair the most beautiful shade of ebony. She’d liked it when he forgot to cut it, and had spent many happy hours snuggled on the sofa with him, Massimo talking, his head on her lap, Livia content to simply listen to his wonderful rich, deep voice and run her fingers through his hair. It was the closest to peace she had ever felt in her life.

She’d tried so hard to hold onto what they had but he had slipped away from her with the same ease her fingers had run through his hair.

Her throat closed, Livia carefully draped the blanket she’d been about to use for herself on his lap. She wanted to press the button that would tilt the chair back and turn it into a bed but was afraid the motion would wake him. Struck again by the dark circles around his eyes, she wondered when he’d last had a decent night’s sleep. Or the last time he’d had a decent meal.

The compulsion to reach out her hand and stroke her fingers over his high cheekbones, to feel the texture of his skin on hers, to run her fingers through his hair…it all hit her so fast that her hand was inches from his face before she realised what she was about to do and stopped herself.

Her heart thumped wildly and for a moment she couldn’t breathe.

Putting her hand to her chest, she backed away, afraid to be this close to him.

Afraid of what it did to her.

Massimo’s eyes opened with a start.

He blinked rapidly, disorientated.

His laptop was still open but had put itself into sleep mode.

Had he fallen asleep?

Getting to his feet to stretch his legs, he felt a sudden chill on his thighs and gazed down in astonishment at the blanket that had fallen to the floor.

Where had that come from?

He stared over at Livia. Her partition was still up but, standing, he could see her clearly. She’d reclined her chair and was watching something on the television with her headphones in. A blanket covered her whole body up to her chin.

‘Did you put a blanket on me?’ He didn’t mean to sound so accusatory but the thought of her doing that…

Her face turned towards him and she pulled the headphones off. ‘Did you say something?’

Before he could answer one of the cabin crew entered. ‘We will be landing in twenty minutes.’

The moment they were alone again, Massimo turned back to Livia. ‘How long was I asleep?’

She shrugged.

He swore under his breath. He hadn’t finished his analysis. Damn it, he’d promised the project manager that he would have it in his inbox before he reached the office that morning.

He bit back the demand he wanted to throw at her as to why she hadn’t woken him and sat back down.

Livia had put the blanket on him. He knew that with a deep certainty and he didn’t know if it was that simple gesture or that he was now behind on where he needed to be workwise that made his guts feel as if acid had been poured in them.

He felt close to snapping. Virulent emotions were coursing through him and his wife, the cause of all his angst, was reclined in her seat as nonchalant as could be.

But knowing her as well as he did, he knew her nonchalance was a sham. Livia did not do nonchalance.

Why had she put a blanket on him?

His eyes were better able to focus after his short sleep but, with their landing imminent, he put his laptop away and folded his desk up and secured it, all the while hating that he was fully aware of Livia sorting her own seating area out, avoiding looking at him as much as he avoided looking at her.

Los Angeles couldn’t come soon enough.

Not another word was exchanged until the plane had landed safely.

Needing to escape the strange febrile atmosphere that seemed to have infected his flight crew as much as them, Massimo grabbed his laptop and got to his feet but the moment he left his seat, Livia was there facing him in the aisle, holding her bag tightly, clearly ready to make her own escape.

He stepped to one side to let her pass but she stepped to the same side too.

Their eyes met. Their gaze held, only momentarily, but long enough for him to see the pain she had become a master at hiding from him.

A sharp compression lanced his chest, as if his heart had become a rose in full bloom, its thorns spearing into him.

And then she blinked, cast her gaze to the floor, murmured, ‘Excuse me,’ and brushed past him.

Massimo swallowed away the lump in his throat and left his plane by the other exit.

CHAPTER THREE

TWO HOURS AFTER landing in Los Angeles, they were cleared to take off for the second leg of their mammoth journey to Fiji.

Livia had returned to the plane before Massimo. She guessed he’d gone to the private executive lounge in the airport to work. She’d taken herself for a walk, keeping her phone in her hand for the alert that the plane had refuelled and she could get back on, and tried to get hold of Gianluca, her youngest sibling. He hadn’t answered and hadn’t called her back either. She’d had no wish to go sightseeing or do any of the things most visitors with a short layover at LAX would do. Just breathing the air brought back the awful feelings that had lived in her the last dying months of their marriage.

She hated Los Angeles. She hated California. She’d loathed living there. For a place known as the Golden State, her life there had been devoid of sunshine.

At first, she’d enjoyed the novelty of it all. Compared to Naples and Rome it was huge. Everything was so much bigger. Even the sky and the sun that shone in it appeared greater and brighter. But then loneliness had seeped its way in. She had no friends there and no means to make them. Unlike Massimo, who spoke fluent English, her own English was barely passable. The glass home they’d shared was forty kilometres from downtown LA. An intensely private man, Massimo had deliberately chosen a home far from prying eyes. There were no neighbours. The household staff spoke only English and Spanish.

She’d become sick with longing for home.

Massimo hadn’t understood. He hadn’t even tried.

But there hadn’t been any sunshine since she’d left him and returned to her home in Italy either.

It was strange to experience taking off in her second sunset of the day. She should have slept during the first leg of the journey but sleep had been the last thing on her mind, the last thing she’d been capable of. The sun putting itself to sleep now in LA would soon be awakening in Rome.

She yawned and cast her eyes in Massimo’s direction. His partition was raised again but she could still hear the tapping of his fingers on the keypad. So much for talking. Silence for them truly had become golden.

A member of the cabin crew brought her pillows and a duvet and turned her seat into a bed while Livia used the bathroom to change into pyjamas, remove her make-up and brush her teeth.

She thought of the plane’s bedroom and its comfortable king-sized bed. An ache formed in the pit of her stomach to remember the glorious hours they had spent sharing it. Massimo would never begrudge her sleeping in it now but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t sleep in a bed they had shared knowing that when she woke the pillow beside her would be unused. That had been hard enough to deal with when they’d been together.

Massimo was on his feet stretching his aching back when Livia returned to the cabin clutching her washbag. It was the same washbag she’d used when they’d been married and his heart tugged to see it.

She looked younger with her face free from make-up and plain cream pyjamas on. More vulnerable too.

The threads tugging at his heart tightened.

‘I’m going to have a nightcap. Do you want one?’

Surprise lit her dark brown eyes before they fixed on his own freshly made-up bed. ‘You’re finished?’

He nodded. ‘My apologies for it taking so long. I didn’t factor in falling asleep.’

Her plump lips curved into the tiniest of smiles. ‘I would have woken you but you looked exhausted.’