VITTORIO'S WOMAN (The Vittorio Series) (6 page)

And that time
would
come, there was no doubt in her mind about that, because men like Simon didn’t fall in love, at least not with women like her.  She was merely a distraction for him right now, a means of escaping the misfortunes that had fallen on him.  But once he regained his vision and was able to walk again, he’d be back on the prowl for someone more suitable to his tastes.  Lilly swallowed back the pain and pressed a soft kiss to Simon’s lips, determined not to destroy the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to her.  He was hers for a little while and she would be grateful for that.

“I’m sorry,” she mustered up a soft laugh, “I don’t know what’s come over me.”

“I hurt you,” he said with self-contempt.  “I knew when your body did not yield to mine that you had not taken a lover for quite some time. 
Perdonarmi, mio bello
.  Forgive me for not being able to control myself.”

“No, Simon, no!
  It’s not that at all,” she said passionately.  “It was amazing. 
You
were amazing, and I promise I only felt the smallest amount of discomfort at the beginning.”

Simon’s fingers gently caressed her face.
  “You were…satisfied with my performance?”

A soft blush colored her cheeks.
  “How can you even ask that after the way I…responded?”  Lilly eased herself off of him and curled up by his side, deliriously happy when he pulled her closer.  “I never knew it could be like that, so intense, so…hot.”  When Simon chuckled she slapped his chest playfully.  “Don’t make fun.  This is all new to me.  I was mortified by the sounds coming out of my mouth, but I couldn’t seem to make them stop.”

He smiled at the not too distant memory of those sexy, throaty moans and what they’d done to him.
  He stroked the silken strands of her hair, recalling how the feel of it raking across his chest as she made love to him had been almost as arousing as the sounds she had been making.  Then there was the softness of her skin and the sweet, feminine scent that was so uniquely Lilly, and of course he couldn’t leave out the heady taste of her mouth.  Simon groaned inwardly.  Already he could feel the stirrings of desire beginning to revive parts of him that had no business springing back to life so soon.

“Why the tears?”
 he asked in a desperate attempt to get his mind off his disobedient appendage and focus on the more immediate concern.    

“I’m not sure I can explain it.”
  Lilly tipped her head back, once again riddled with guilt for what she’d done.  “Why don’t we eat breakfast first, then we can talk.”

“Lilly…”

She pulled away from him and climbed out of bed.  “What will Milana or Luisa think if they see the trays still sitting in the hallway?”

“You are right,” he nodded thoughtfully.

“I’ll only be a minute,” she promised.  “I’d like use the bathroom first.”

“Of course,
cara
.” 

It had been thoughtless of him not to consider how this might affect her.
  For the sake of Lilly’s reputation, both professional and personal, it was imperative no one find out about them.  It seemed strange that only a few days ago he intended to use her attraction for him as a means to shame her into leaving.  And now…now, he would destroy any one who even suggested she had done something wrong by sleeping with him. 

If only he could keep her with him forever, Simon thought wistfully, but he was a realist.
  He didn’t believe in luck or miracles and that’s exactly what would have to happen if he was ever to see and walk again.  As much as he loved Lilly and as fervently as he wished they could build a life together, he would never straddle her with a husband who couldn’t take care of her properly.

“I’ve got breakfast set out,” Lilly attempted to sound cheerful.
  “Just let me help you into your robe first and then we can…”

“Talk,” Simon inserted firmly.

“Eat,” she amended with the same firmness to her tone.

“
Testardo donna
,” he muttered as he shoved his arms into the sleeves of his robe.  “You are the most stubborn woman I have ever met, Lillian Barclay.”

Lilly just smiled as she helped him into his chair and pushed him onto the balcony.
  “I’d have to be stubborn to put up with you, wouldn’t I?”

Simon laughed.
  After all, how could he argue with that?  “Does having sex always make you so sassy,
cara
?”

She sat down slowly, her stomach fluttering nervously as she grappled for the right words.
  “Simon, I…I thought you knew.  Not that there was any reason for you to have guessed.  Well, I
did
worry that you might figure it out once we…you know.” 

Lilly took a quick breath and continued to babble.
  “I realize I should have told you, but I didn’t want you to be disappointed, and I don’t think I could have handled it if you had changed your mind.  At any rate, I don’t want you to feel bad because it was my decision and I…”

“
Per l’amor del Dio
, what in the world are talking about, Lilly?”

Stop being such a coward and tell him
, she chastised herself.  Honestly, how hard could it be?  True, some men would be upset to know they’d unwittingly taken a woman’s virginity, but Simon had probably been sexually active since his early teens; surely she wasn’t the first virgin he’d taken to bed.  She cleared her throat and toyed with her food for a minute before speaking.

“I’m talking about the number of men I’ve slept with.
  You see, the thing is…”

Simon’s hand came down hard on the table.
  “Stop! 
Mio Dio
, do you think I want to hear how many lovers you have had before me?”  Jealousy stabbed at his gut, twisting and turning until he felt physically ill from it.  “Would you like it if I discussed all the lovers I have taken?”

“No, of course not!
  What I was trying to…”

“Perhaps you did not understand me,” he growled, “I have no desire to know about the men you have been with.
  Or is it that you are trying to tell me I should be concerned about catching something from you?  It was irresponsible and stupid to have unprotected sex, something I have never done before,” he said angrily, “and now I will also suffer the indignity of asking my physician to examine me.”

Lilly flinched at his vile insinuation
, but if there was a misunderstanding between them, it was of his own making and she wasn’t about to let his insult go unchallenged.  Shoving her plate aside she stood up, ignoring the dull ache in her chest.  How stupid she’d been to believe it was anything more than casual sex for Simon, and naturally casual sex meant taking certain risks.  In spite of her efforts to sound cool and unaffected, she couldn’t keep her voice from wobbling.

“If you’re asking if you need to be worried about catching a social disease, the answer is no.”

“You have proof of this?”

Lilly thought about the cloth she’d used to clean herself up with and the traces of blood she hadn’t been able to rinse out.
  She’d left it in the bathroom sink, intending to dispose of it later, but it would serve the wretch right to find it this evening when he came home with his eyesight fully intact and could see for himself. 

“Yeah, I have proof," she
 said caustically.  "I’ll be sure to leave it where you can find it when you get home.”

Simon’s expression darkened.
  “Is it so common to be asked that you carry it with you?”

Oh
, how she would have loved to slap his face for that last nasty remark, but Lilly refused to even dignify it with an answer.  Besides, she didn’t trust her voice not to crack and give Simon the satisfaction of knowing he’d hurt her.  Without a word, she left him there to stew and escaped to her own room to shower and get dressed.  Thirty minutes and a bucket full of tears later, she returned to find him sitting just as she’d left him.

“Would you like me to warm your food?”
 she asked, as if their previous conversation had never taken place.

Simon’s shoulders visibly stiffened.
  “I have lost my appetite.”

Lilly had neither the will nor the strength to argue with him.
  “I imagine you’ll be eating lunch on the mainland with Milana in a few hours anyway.  You have enough time for a quick bath if you’d like.”

“Just help me get dressed,” he snapped.

Good God, how pathetic
was
he, Simon wondered.  Bathing would mean washing Lilly’s scent from his skin, and somehow he just couldn’t bear to let her go yet, despite all the harsh words that had passed between them.  He was a hypocrite for harboring resentment over the number of lovers she’d had, he knew this, hated himself for it, but the feelings were still there regardless.

So maybe it was better this way.
  She couldn’t possibly want to stick around now, and once she was gone he could lock himself away in his room and go back to wallowing in self-pity.  Simon set his jaw determinedly and remained staunchly quiet while she helped him dress, but his resolve shattered into a million pieces when she told him she would go find Gaetano to help him get downstairs.

“I hope…no, I
know
everything will turn out well for you,” she told him then turned and headed for the door.

“Lilly wait!”
  Simon grimaced at the desperation in his voice, but damn it all he
was
desperate.  “Will you be here when I come back?”

Lilly paused with her hand on the door knob but she didn’t turn around.
  “Do you want me to be?”

“Yes, yes I do.
  We need to talk,
cara
.”

A greater sorrow than she’d ever known reached out and crushed the life from her heart. “No
, Simon.  We won’t talk about what happened this morning, not ever.  If I stay it will be in the capacity of your physical therapist and nothing more.”

It wasn’t what he wanted
, but it was more than he’d hoped for and Simon grabbed at it.  “If that is how it must be,” he said in a subdued tone.

Lilly glanced back at him, not quite sure what to make of his surprisingly passive demeanor
, but nothing in his expression gave her the slightest clue as to what he was thinking.  She slipped out the door, taking a few minutes to compose herself before wandering downstairs to find Gaetano.  Lilly told herself she’d done the right thing and that she would stick to her decision not to tell Simon the truth.  Let him think the worst of her, all it had done was kill a relationship that was doomed to die a painful death anyway.

Simon had been so prepared for the worst that when it didn’t happen he simply sat there, his mind as vacant as the look he was giving the doctor.  He could hear the man talking to him, could even hear Milana’s inane babble about miracles, but he wasn’t seeing either one of them.  What he saw was Lilly and the sexy smile she’d given him that night at the club, and for a few glorious minutes he imagined that was the smile she would be wearing when he got home and told her the good news.  Only she wouldn’t be smiling, because Simon had single handedly stolen it from her when he accused her of carrying some sort of social disease.

He only said it because he’d still been stinging from her comment about the number of men she’d slept with, and yes he meant to hurt her as she’d hurt him.
  But afterwards, when he heard the despair in her voice and then later the utter lifelessness of it, he wished with all his heart that he could take the words back.  Maybe she’d had her share of lovers, but it was evident she hadn’t been with anyone for months before making love to him.  Even worse than having unprotected sex, was that he hadn’t even asked Lilly if she was on the pill.  But of course she must be, otherwise wouldn’t she have insisted on using a condom?

Simon blinked.
  What if she wasn’t on the pill?  What if he had gotten her pregnant?  A strange tingling excitement began to build deep inside of him at the thought of Lilly carrying his child.  Why not dare to dream of it?  He’d already experienced one miracle today when the doctor announced there were no residual side effects from the injury to his eyes, so it wasn’t entirely unreasonable to believe a second one could occur.  Of course it was too early to know, but she’d promised not to leave him.  All he had to do was keep her there until there was proof.  And if she wasn’t pregnant? 

Simon considered that possibility for a moment before coming to the conclusion there was really only one thing he could do if it turned out he hadn’t given her a baby.
  He would simply have to get Lilly back into his bed and work diligently at planting his seed inside of her until a little Vittorio began to grow.  Oh, yes, he liked that idea, he liked it a lot. 

So what if there were a few flaws in his plan, like the fact Lilly had decided there would be no more intimacy between them
, as well as his own vow not to burden her with a man who couldn’t walk.  Hadn’t he heard somewhere that miracles happen in threes?  And if that was so, regaining his eyesight was miracle number one and Lilly being pregnant was number two.  It only stood to reason then that the third miracle would be getting the use of his legs back, right?  For the first time in weeks, Simon began to feel real hope.

Having admitted
 that he needed Lilly in his life, Simon realized he would also have to reconcile himself to the fact there had been numerous lovers before him.  It was unreasonable to expect such a desirable woman to have remained untouched and he had been wrong to judge her for it.  Simon had just come to the conclusion he had no choice but to conquer this insane jealousy if he didn't want to drive her away when Gaetano rolled his chair into the bedroom and stopped a short distance from the unmade bed. 

Normally Luisa did the cleaning in his room
, but since she’d gone with them, there hadn’t been time this morning.  It took him a moment to figure out that the patches of dark crimson on his white sheets was blood. 
Lilly’s blood
. 

I
t wasn’t blatantly obvious, just a small stain here and there, but it was enough to tell him she was a virgin when he’d taken her.  Shame and guilt battled for dominance, not because he had made love to her, but because he’d done it with all the finesse of a hormonal teenager and then callously hurled insults at her afterwards.  He stared at it for a minute, aware that Louisa and Milana were telling Gaetano the good news, but he wasn’t really listening to them.  After the feelings of remorse had done their job to bring him down about as low as he could go, a rush of new emotions thundered in and stole the show.

They all converged at the same time; elation, triumph, and a surge of love so powerful he could hardly catch his breath.
  Lilly had given herself to him, given to him what she had denied all other men.  Simon was her first, her
only
lover, and there was only one reason a woman would willingly give up her virtue after clinging to it as long as Lilly had.  She was in love with him.  For a few brief, shining moments his heart soared.  And then Milana stepped between him and the bed, pausing just long enough to draw the comforter over the sheets before plopping down on the edge and eyeing him speculatively.

“So you’ve gone and done it,” she said with an accusatory glare.

Simon’s head swiveled around to see where Gaetano and Luisa were but they’d gone and shut the door behind them.  He looked back at Milana, wondering if he should try to deny it, but it was obvious by the angry flash in her eyes that she wouldn’t tolerate even the slightest fib.  Okay, so she’d seen the evidence and knew he and Lilly had made love, but they were both consenting adults and he saw no reason why his sister would be upset with him.  It wasn’t as if Milana didn’t know he’d had a string of lovers ever since that first affair with Annalisa.  Keeping his voice low and even, he met her challenging stare with indifference. 

“What is the problem?
  Surely you have not become such a snob that you believe Lilly is beneath me because she is in my employ.”

Milana let out an indignant snort.
  “On the contrary, big brother, I think it’s
you
who isn’t good enough for her.”  She crossed her arms and waited for him to defend himself but when he remained quiet, she gave a nod of reluctant approval.  “At least you’re smart enough to know I’m right.  Simon, what are you doing?  Lilly isn’t like the other women you’ve been with.  She’s a good person, she has
heart
; a heart that you’re going to end up breaking if you continue leading her on.”

“So you like Lilly?”

“Of course I do, why else would I be so furious with you for seducing her?”

Simon hit her with a dazzling smile.
  “Good, then you will not mind when I persuade Lilly to become my wife.”

Milana studied his face for a moment, her eyes lighting up with excitement when she realized he wasn’t just trying to placate her.

“My God, you’re serious!  Simon, the eternal bachelor has finally met his match.”

“That I have,” he said thickly.
  “I love her, Milana, and I intend to make her my wife.”

“When are you going to ask her?”

“As soon I am sure she feels the same way and…when I can walk again.”

“Oh
, Simon,” Milana said tearfully, “you don’t know how happy it makes me to hear you say you’ll walk again.  And I’m thrilled about you and Lilly.”  She stood up and ruffled his hair, even knowing how much it irritated him.  “Of course, you have me to thank for bringing her here, though I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t coincidentally been a physical therapist.”

Simon looked up at her curiously.
  “What do you mean?”

“Well, I can’t take all the credit,” she said with a sheepish grin, “and to be honest, at first I thought she was just another one of your female companions.”
  She laughed when he gave an impatient growl.  “Okay, okay, the truth is you kept calling her name when you were in the hospital.  It took some doing to find out who she was since all I had to go by was her first name, but as luck would have it, one of your business associates knew who she was.”

“But I searched for Lilly for months and could not find her,” he said in astonishment.

Milana shot him a look of superiority.  “For a man who prides himself about his ruthlessness and cunning in obtaining something he wants, I’m surprised you failed to locate her.  It’s a good thing little sister was watching out for you,” she tossed him a smug smile as she waltzed out of his room.

There were at least half a dozen questions he wanted to ask
, but she was gone before he’d even opened his mouth to pose the first one.  Simon had no doubt he had called out Lilly’s name while he was lying battered and broken in the hospital because he had dreamed of her often.  Poor Milana must have been driven to find Lilly out of pure desperation because the good Lord knew she’d done just about everything she could to snap him out of the miserable state he’d been in.

With
 a renewed sense of determination to make Lilly his woman permanently, Simon called her into his room.  

 
                                                             ***

Lilly angled a sidelong glance at the suitcase sitting just inside her closet.
  Three times she’d dug it out and carried it to the bed and three times she’d hauled it back again.  There were some good solid reasons why she should leave, all of them personal.  But there were also some very good arguments for staying; professional and personal reasons that outweighed those for leaving by just enough of a margin she was left dangling in a nerve wracking limbo of indecision.

With a heavy sigh
, she moved out onto the balcony, mostly to get that stupid suitcase out of her line of vision but also because she found the sight and sounds of the ocean soothing.  It usually helped clear her mind, but with all the thoughts and emotions that had been ping ponging around inside of her ever since Simon left this morning, it did little more than dull the headache she’d been sporting for the past few hours. 

It didn’t help that she hadn’t heard from Milana yet, especially since Lilly knew the doctor’s appointment had been hours ago.
  There were only two scenarios she could think of; they were out celebrating the good news and had simply forgotten to call her, or Simon hadn’t regained his sight and Milana was now trying to console him.

Regardless of the outcome of Simon’s visit, it still left her with the burning question as to whether she should stay or go.
  He needed her; that was the biggest factor.  He wouldn’t admit it of course, because Simon Vittorio would never admit to needing anyone.  He wouldn’t accept another physical therapist in her place if she left, Lilly honestly believed that, and she also believed Simon would fall back into that dark world he’d been in before she arrived.  He would allow himself to waste away until he was only a shell of the man he once was, and it was that thought more than anything that made her want to stay. 

Oh, she wasn’t some great miracle worker and she certainly didn’t have any mystical healing powers, but in her heart Lilly had faith Simon would walk again.
  But the process would be much more difficult and take considerably more time if he didn’t maintain his physical health.  And right now, she was the only one who hadn’t been bullied into leaving.  So she had to stay.

Except…except she’d been stupid enough to fall in love with him
.  And because she hadn’t made Simon listen this morning, he’d gotten it in his head that she was some sort of nymphomaniac who hopped from bed to bed without any regard as to the risks she was taking.  How was she supposed to be around him every day for the unforeseeable future knowing it probably turned his stomach just to be in the same room with her?

Lilly went back inside and stretched out on her bed.
  Okay, so Simon’s opinion of her had dropped to the level of pond scum, what could she do about it?  Nothing, she thought despondently, because she’d already sneaked the blood stained wash cloth down to the laundry room and soaked it in a sink full of diluted bleach.  Her first indignant reaction to leave it for Simon to find had quickly given way to the fear that Milana or Luisa would come across it first. 

She hadn’t known until just a few hours ago that both women had accompanied him to the mainland
, but she was glad she’d done it anyway.  It really was a rather crude way of letting him know she had been a virgin before this morning.  Besides, what little pride she had left would be lost if she told the truth after the things he’d said to her.

It was hopeless.
  At best, Simon would regain the use of his legs soon and she would be free to leave to nurse her broken heart in private.  Worst case scenario, he’d be paralyzed for life and would have to employ the services of an organization that could send someone two or three times a week to work with him.  If he would allow it, that is.  Either way, he would no longer have any need for her in his life.  A pretty grim future no matter how she looked at it.

She was young
.  Her family and friends would try to console her by telling her she would get over him in time.  She would fall in love with someone else, get married and have babies, the whole nine yards.  Lilly would smile and say she was sure they were right, and maybe she really would get married and have a baby or two, but she would never love any man the way she loved Simon.  He didn’t just have a part of her heart, he
was
her heart, and when she moved on there would be nothing left of it to give to anyone else because it would remain behind with Simon.  Her only consolation was that he would never know. 

Lilly rubbed her eyes wearily.
  What a mess she’d made of her life!  She turned onto her side, hoping she’d be able to sleep for awhile and give her jumbled mind a rest, but she’d no sooner closed her eyes when she heard the distinctive whir of helicopter blades.  She sprang off the bed and raced out of her room, knowing she’d be able to see the chopper’s descent from the window at the end of the hallway.