A Sicilian Husband - Kate Walker [41]
Quite frankly, right now, she didn’t care! She no longer even felt like the same person who had opened the door to find Gio standing outside at the start of the morning. She just needed a little time…time to focus on the tiny practical matters that seemed like such a refuge from the storm of emotions that assailed her. Concentrating fiercely, as if what she was doing was a matter of life and death, she filled the kettle, switched it on, collected mugs…
She was reaching for the coffee from the cupboard when Gio spoke behind her unexpectedly.
‘I take it black.’
With an effort, Terrie managed not to drop the coffee jar as she nodded, grateful for the fact that he couldn’t see her face, or the shock of reaction that must be her expression, giving away far more than was truly safe.
‘OK. That’s probably just as well. To tell the truth, I’m not exactly sure about the milk situation. I haven’t bought any fresh for a couple of days.’
She was talking to fill the silence, she knew. Saying something, anything, that might distract her from the fact that he was there, just behind her, so close she could almost hear the soft sound of his breathing, feel the heat of his body reach out to enclose her.
‘Sugar?’
‘No, thanks.’
She had no choice but to turn now. No choice but to face him. Not unless she was going to stand here forever, looking like a total idiot, frozen in mid-action, unable to decide whether to move or not.
‘Good. I’m not sure whether I have any of that either.’
She’d whirled round as quickly as she could, taken the few steps across the room to the kettle, desperately trying to avoid looking at him, but it was no use. The kitchen was tiny enough on an ordinary day, and today, with Gio’s tall, dark, lethally sexy presence filling it, it seemed to have shrunk to mouse-hole proportions.
‘Why don’t you ask me, Teresa?’
‘Ask you what? I—I don’t have…’
His arrogantly impatient flick of his hand, the way his tongue clicked against his teeth dismissed her protest as the prevarication that it was.
‘You know perfectly well what I mean. The problem that’s been nagging at you ever since you opened the door to me. The question you’ve been dying to ask…’
‘I have?’
His dark head moved in a nod of agreement. And although deep inside she knew just what he meant, she also knew that she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Couldn’t just blurt it out in a rush, without hesitation, straight into his face. Her throat would close up against the words if she even tried.
‘You want to know why I’m here. What I want of you. So why don’t you just go ahead and ask me?’
CHAPTER NINE
‘I KNOW why you came.’
Terrie knew she was dodging the issue and she suspected that Gio realised it too. Once again there had been another of those subtle shifts in the atmosphere in the room; a tightening of the pressure up a couple of notches. And because of the confined space in the microscopic kitchen it felt as if the tension had permeated the actual air around them so that it was thick and heavy, making it difficult to breathe.
‘You came to apologise.’
Dumping coffee granules into a mug, she slopped on boiling water and stirred it with unnecessary ferocity.
‘At least that’s what you said.’
He had also said, ‘You want to know why I’m here. What I want of you.’ But she wasn’t going to go down that road. It was too dangerous, totally uncharted territory. She had no idea what threats, what risks lay hidden along it.
‘But you haven’t exactly apologised, have you?’
She couldn’t stir the coffee any longer without looking a complete fool. She must be close to scraping a hole in the bottom of the mug as it was.
Turning, she pushed the mug at Gio, heedless of the way that some of the hot liquid spilled over the side and onto the floor.
‘Have you?’
‘I said I regretted not having told you the whole truth.’
He took the mug she held out, his long fingers brushing against hers as he did so, making her want to flinch and start backwards as if she had brushed against an