How he’d just discovered that she was gone.
“Oh, John!” She slipped her hand into his. “She knew you loved her. I’m sure she did.”
“Yeah. I hope so.”
Impulsively, she turned to him, rose on her toes and kissed his cheek.
“You’re a good man, John Wilde.”
“The hell I am.”
“You are. Alden always talked about how great you were.”
“He did?”
“Darned right, he did. He was crazy about you.”
He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. She smiled; he smiled back.
“Hey,” he said, “how about we get something to eat?”
“Thank you, but I don’t want to go to your father’s party.”
John grinned. “That makes it unanimous.” He tucked her hand into the curve of his arm. “Let’s go to Annie’s. I haven’t had one of her giant if-you-can-finish-it-you-don’t-have-to pay-for-it steaks in years.”
Connie laughed. “Nobody can finish one of Annie’s steaks.”
“Says you.”
“Wanna bet?”
Her expression changed. “Bet what?” she whispered.
Then, she was in his arms.
He didn’t think. Neither did she. She snaked her hands under his shirt. He tore hers open. Yanked down her shorts as she fumbled at his fly.
A second later, he was inside her, holding her up in his arms, her hands clasping his shoulders, her mouth locked to his.
He came hard and fast; she cried out as he did.
Still deep inside her, he took her down to the grass with him, knelt between her thighs and drove into her again.
Her nails clawed his back; she arched against him and as her orgasm tore through her, he came again.
Spent, he collapsed against her.
They lay holding each other for long minutes.
Then he helped her to her feet.
She crossed her arms over her breasts.
“Don’t,” he said softly.
She shook her head. “I’m so embarrassed…”
He took her hands and kissed them. Then he dressed her, zipped his fly and put his arm around her waist.
“Come on.”
“No. It’s OK. I’ll walk back to my car myself.”
John clasped her chin, leaned in and kissed her again.
“We’re going to
my
car,” he said firmly, “and then to the Magnolia Inn.” He put his arms around her. “And we’re going to do this the right way.”
“John…”
“Or do you really want the mosquitoes to make a meal out of our butts?”
She smiled, as he’d hoped she would. Then she giggled and, finally, she laughed.
Half an hour later, after a quick stop at a drugstore for condoms, she was in his arms again, this time in a queen-size bed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
C
ould you fall
in love with a country?
Yes, Johnny decided, yes, you could.
Italy was spectacular. He loved everything about it. The cities, the towns, the ruins, the food, the wine, the people.
The women.
Man
,
the women!
Bellissima
!
Johnny’s boss, Brigadier General Pete Halvorson, thought so, too.
Halvorson had translators on his staff, but he made it clear that he saw himself as part of the “new” army. That turned out to mean that Halvorson, a short, overweight bachelor, saw the benefits of having a tall, good-looking, charming military aide beside him, rather than a run-of-the-mill translator, at the endless cocktail parties he attended as part of his job
Simply put, General Halvorson liked the ladies. The ladies liked catching the attention of a general, but they adored catching the interest of Second Lieutenant John Hamilton Wilde.
Not a problem.
There were more than enough beautiful women to go around.
Not that it was all fun and games.
Halvorson had a job to do, and he was good at it.
Days were filled with meetings; John was responsible for making sure his boss had whatever facts he needed at his fingertips.
To that end, he read the seemingly endless reports and documents that came in over Halvorson’s fax machine and by diplomatic pouch, researched whatever had to be researched, and turned it all into comprehensive and comprehensible notes.
He studied Halvorson closely, absorbed the intricacies of behavior that went with being part soldier and part diplomat.
Best of all, he made contacts that would prove to be invaluable.
By the end of his first year as Halvorson’s side, John was a first lieutenant.
By the end of his second, he was a captain.
He could count several high-ranking officers as friends. He had excellent relationships with various embassy policy wonks, diplomats, even with secretaries and clerks.
You never knew who would be useful and when.
He knew that sounded cynical, but he also knew that the world wasn’t run by do-gooders and optimists.
If it were, why was he alive and Alden dead?
He tried not to think about Alden too much, but what was “too much?” Once a month? Once a week? Once a day? Truth was, his brother popped into his head at the damnedest times. John could be laughing at a joke, and Alden was there. Working at his desk and bam, Alden was with him.
The worst times were when he was with a woman and all at once, he’d realized that Alden would never experience her whispers, her sighs.
Talk about quick turnoffs.
The more fulfilling his own life became, the more he realized what Alden would never have.
Sometimes, in the dark of the darkest nights, he also faced the realization that this existence, full as it was, was not truly what he would have chosen as his own.
But if a man didn’t choose the life he led, he could surely live it the best he could. Get the things he wanted, and he knew what those things were.
Success. Power. He wanted what Halvorson had, and more. And he knew that he could get it. After a few years of being more and more valuable to the general, doors were opening to him.
Part of it because he was more and more visible. He’d become an indispensible part of the team.
Part was that he was a West Pointer and therefore a member of an elite and exclusive group.
And part, to his surprise, was that even now, out of the Point, there were high-ranking army officers who wanted to toss back a shot of Scotch with the Johnny Wilde who’d scored that fantastic win over Navy.
Five years in, a major’s gold leaf insignia was only a heartbeat away.
And he had a mistress.
Her name was Angelica. Angelica Bellini, and she was everything a man could want. Fiery. Bright. Beautiful, so beautiful that just looking at her made his heartbeat quicken.
She was tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed, with the temperament of a tigress. Her body was lush, and she was insatiable in bed.
Their relationship was stormy and passionate, and completely off the books. Angelica might be all a man could want, but she was not what the army would want for a young captain who was on the fast track to the top.
She was smart, but not formally educated.
She spoke her mind; she didn’t believe in subtlety.
She was charming when she wished to be charming, hell on wheels when she didn’t
In other words, she was the product of a small, unsophisticated Sicilian village.
John had taken a week’s vacation in Sicily. He returned the following month and bought a very old, very handsome house that stood tucked against a jagged mountain in splendid isolation.
It was a wild and beautiful place; he loved that about it. It was a far cry from the world he normally inhabited.
Moving among important people, powerful people, was exciting, but there was just enough in him of the Johnny Wilde he’d once been that he needed to break free every once in a while.
Sicily was the place to do it.
After he bought the house, he bought a motorcycle, a used 350-cc Mark 3 Desmo Ducati that could outrun and outpower anything on the treacherous curving roads. He rode at all hours, but especially very early in the morning, just at dawn, and again late at night, when the moonlight kissed the sea. He loved the bike’s speed, the predatory growl of its engine, the very real danger of riding full throttle along roads that clung like vines to the ancient cliffs.
Nobody in the village knew him as John Hamilton Wilde.
Nobody knew him as an officer and a gentleman.
He was simply Johnny Wilde—Gianni, he was called by the few people who knew him well enough to address him by name.
He was a man living his own life and not one born of something that had happened a lifetime ago.
On those weekends, those occasional weeks he could get away, he flew to Sicily, lived quietly, drinking inexpensive
vino
, dining at the little village
trattoria
on pasta, freshly caught fish, and grapes or figs.
No women.
He had plenty of them wherever he was currently posted. Not that he wouldn’t have enjoyed having a woman here, but women asked too many questions and he had no wish to either explain his life or lie about it.
And then he met Angelica.
It was summer.
He’d been riding for a couple of hours, the sun was hardly up and yet the air was already hot, fragrant with the scent of the sea and of the wildflowers that grow in the rocky crevices of the cliff walls.
He refused to wear motorcycle leathers in the heat, so when he spotted a deserted beach, all he had to do to undress was pull his T-shirt over his head, toss it on the sand next to his bike, kick off his boots, strip off his jeans and Jockeys and walk into the sea.
He swam out until the island was far behind him. Then he turned and headed for shore. Halfway there, he saw a figure walking slowly alongside the beach as the surf beat against the shore.
When he got closer, he realized it was a woman.
A girl, really. Eighteen. Nineteen. And, God, incredibly beautiful.
Her hair hung down her back like a scarf of midnight sky. Her dress, an old-fashioned flowered, gauzy thing, hinted at the contours of her body. She was barefoot. Her face was tilted up to the sun.
Unexpected desire shot through him with an urgency he hadn’t experienced since boyhood, and lodged in his dick.
Dammit.
He was naked. Was he supposed to walk out of the water with a hard-on?
She must have seen his bike, the little pile of men’s clothes next to it. She’d figure out the rider was in the water.
Sicilian women were modest to a fault. Surely she wasn’t going to hang around.
He treaded water for a couple of minutes.
She was still there.
He thought about floating on his back and grinned. A man floating in the sea, with a periscope sticking out of the water.
How would that look?
How deep was the water here? Deep enough. He hoped so, anyway, and he let down his feet.
The water was up to his chest.
“Hey!”
She didn’t react. Hell. Now what?
He took a couple of steps.
The water was at his belly button.
“Hey,
signorina
!”
She turned and looked at him.
Beautiful didn’t even come close. She was spectacular. And he recognized her. She was a waitress in the trattoria; maybe she worked part time because he hadn’t seen her that often. What was her name? Angel. Angelica. Something like that.
She put her hand to her forehead, shielding her eyes from the bright-burning sun.
He smiled.
“Buon giorno.”
No answer,. Her dark eyes fixed on his.
“Sono Johnny
—”
“
Tu sei
Gianni Wilde.”
She pronounced it the Italian way. Gee-ah-nee Wheelldeh. He liked the way it sounded.
“Si,”
he said, smiling again.
He told her that he had been swimming. That he wasn’t wearing a swimsuit. She didn’t answer. Didn’t she understand him? Sicilians spoke a dialect rougher and more elemental than what was spoken in the rest of Italy, but by now he’d spent enough time here to know that people understood his classic Italian easily enough.
He put his hands on his hips. So did she. He arched an eyebrow.
So did she.
Was that a faint smile at the corners of her lips?
His jaw tightened.
So did the rest of him.
Dammit!
He wasn’t in the mood to be embarrassed by anybody, especially by a good-looking woman determined to make a fool of him.
“I’m naked,” he said bluntly. “And I want to get out of the water.
Yes, definitely that was a smile. She was teasing him. Didn’t she realize that this could turn into a dangerous game?
Time passed. Seconds, fraught with meaning, felt like hours.
Johnny narrowed his eyes. Enough, he decided. And he started walking. Unless she was a fool, surely she’d give way.
The water level began dropping. Below his hips. Lower…
Christ, what was she doing?
His breath caught.
She was unbuttoning her dress.
Slowly. God, so slowly. One tiny button at a time until the dress slid from her shoulders, from her arms, from her hips and became a bouquet of flowers at her feet.
She was naked.
There were no words that would have done justice to her beauty.
Her skin was sun-kissed, the color of honey. Her breasts were round and tip-tilted, the nipples a soft, delicate rose. Her waist was slender, her hips generously curved; her legs were long, her toenails unpolished and the color of the tiny pale pink seashells that were strewn over the sand.
His penis stood up from the water and damn near saluted.
She looked at him, at it, and laughed.
Her laugh was low and husky and wonderful, and for a heartbeat he wondered if maybe he was home in bed, dreaming…
He took a quick step back.
“Go home,” he said sharply. “Go away!
Basta! Va via
!”
Another soft, sexy laugh and then she started toward him.
“Gianni,”
she whispered, and he cursed and stepped forward and suddenly, she was in his arms, she was standing on her toes, she was raising her arms and winding them around his neck, and as he bent to her and captured her lips with his, she said, in Sicilian, that if he didn’t fuck her right then, she was going to die.
* * * *
He carried her from the water.
They dropped to the sand together.
She was panting, reaching out for him. He wanted to take her fast, no preliminaries, and he fought to hang onto his control, but she rose up on one elbow, kissed his mouth, nipped it, and wrapped the fingers of her free hand around his erection.
Johnny growled, caught hold of her wrists, pinned her arms over her head and thrust into her, hard and fast and deep…
Sweet Jesus!
She was a virgin.
He froze. Pulled back. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
“No,” he said. “I can’t. You’re a virgin.
Sei vergine!
”
She arched against him.
“I am yours,” she whispered. “Only yours.”
One lift of her hips and she impaled herself on him.
He groaned, captured her mouth was his, and thrust through that sweet, tender barrier.