“It takes two to cheat, Giselle.”
His dark eyes narrowed and I flinched away from the truth of his words.
“I’m not the one with the partner!” I bit out between my gritted teeth.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said in that damn slippery smooth voice. “You knew there was a woman, you just didn’t know who it was.”
Guilt surged through me, tripling my anger. I stalked towards him, my eyes glinting as I caged him in the corner of the kitchen.
“Are you saying this is some kind of lesson in karma?”
He cocked his head slightly, a piece of burnished hair falling into his eyes. “Yes.”
“How can you be so fucking philosophical and calm right now?” I hissed.
I had never been so full of poison in my life. My thoughts were gathering speed hurling into my conscience, sending straight shots of shame directly into my heart. I reached out to grab him and noticed my hand shaking.
He stared at it too before dragging his eyes across the rest of my body. My face flamed as each pass of his gaze evoked a memory of his skin against mine and when his eyes finally met mine, they were bright with something other than hatred or horror.
The murmur of voices grew louder and I heard Mama heralding people into the kitchen to search for me. Sinclair looked to the door, his jaw hardening again. He took a bold step towards me so that my breasts just brushed his lower chest. Despite myself, desire furled deep in my belly.
He stared at me for only a second, but to my sluggishly beating heart, it felt li
ke a lot longer. I sucked in a quick breath when he lifted his hand and brought it with astonishing tenderness to my overheated check, dragging his knuckles down the slope of it in a gesture I had come to yearn for.
“I never stood a chance.” He smiled thinly and brushed his lips against my forehead so lightly I couldn’t be sure he actually touched me.
When he stepped away, I was trembling with a heady combination of longing, regret and anger but before I had a chance to voice it, Sinclair was striding from the room. He collected his coat in the main hall and I heard him run into Cosima. They spoke too swiftly to hear, in a voice too low for me to understand. I was still standing there when the front door closed behind him and Sebastian strolled into the room with Mama on his arm.
They both took one look at me and frowned. Mama rushed to my side and settled me against her soft body, cooing softly in familiar Napoli dialect while Sebastian immediately refilled the empty wine glass beside me on the counter. It was Elena’s but I didn’t protest when he pressed it into my hand. My gut clenched when I realized how much more we had unintentionally shared. Now that Sinclair was gone, I felt hollow and rotten like an old house creaking in a tunneled wind.
Cosima swept into the room with a large smile that immediately dropped into a scowl when she took in the temperature in the room. She glided over to my side and took my face between her warm, dry palms.
“She said something to you, didn’t she?”
Oh God, I almost moaned. Of course, they would think Elena had said something to upset me. It was usually the case. But now, after what I had done, it hit me like Thor’s hammer in the stomach.
“No.” I tilted my face into her left hand and tried to smile. “Jet lag.”
There was silence in the kitchen as my family debated whether or not to press me. They knew better than to believe my deception but I was hoping that they would accept it anyway.
Cosima pursed her lips and shared a look with Sebastian but it was Mama who turned me in her arms and hugged me tight again.
“You go home with Cosima now, bambina, unless you want to stay here with me?” She pulled back to look down at me. Her beauty settled the turmoil currently twisting my stomach into knots.
“No,” I murmured, because even though I wanted to be alone, I knew Cosima would be upset if I spent my first night home without her. “I’ll go.”
Mama nodded and pressed a kiss to each cheek. “You will feel better in the morning. Come by the restaurant when you have a minute, si?”
My acceptance turned into a squeak as Sebastian lifted me easily in his arms and squeezed me tight.
“I’m glad you are finally home, Gigi.”
Tears pricked the back of my eyes so I buried my face in his neck and clung to him hard before he let me down. He smiled down at me with those large amber eyes but I could tell it was just a mask so that I wouldn’t pull away from his searching gaze. He wanted to know what was wrong and it went against his nature not to question me further. The only reason he was letting me go at all was because he believed Cosima would press me for answers.
I said goodbye to the rest of the party, claiming jet lag as the cause for my early departure, and left with my sister. We were quiet in the cab and Cosima’s uncharacteristic silence made my distress all the more acute. Apart of me wanted her to hit me so hard with questions that I cracked open and spilled all my secrets. It would feel so good to come clean, confess about the mess my life had become, but I knew that it would be selfish to indulge myself. Elena was our sister and expecting Cosima to keep my secret was asking her to pick sides.
Besides, I was more than a little afraid she wouldn’t be on mine.