Rising Fire. William W. Johnstone
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head a little to the side. “Although, from what I saw while engaged in my own combat, you gave a good account of yourself. I never would have dreamed you would leap into the fray like that.”
“I’ve always been a fighter. You can ask my brother.”
Giovanni gave her a dubious smile. “Eh, I am not sure I will mention this affair to Louis. It is over, no harm was done, and there is no reason to worry him.”
Denny just about had the blood cleaned off his face. She pressed the cloth to the cut to stop any further bleeding and said, “No harm done?”
“Not to you, and this . . . this is nothing. It will be a scar well earned.”
“You never even hesitated when those men jumped us. You went right after them, even though the odds were five to one.”
“They gave me no choice,” he said quietly. “And I never paused to think about my own safety.”
“No,” Denny said, “I don’t believe you did.”
“All I thought about, cara mia . . . was you.”
She took the cloth away from the cut and said softly, “I think it’s stopped bleeding now. And I don’t believe . . .” She was getting a little breathless and found it difficult to talk. “I don’t believe you’ll need any stitches . . .”
He took her wrist in his left hand, gently plucked the cloth from her fingers with his right, and tossed it onto the tray.
“Let us have no more talk of blood and stitches, of robbers and danger. Fate had brought us here, Denny, and there . . . there are the roses I promised you.”
He nodded toward a vase containing a dozen beautiful roses. It was on a table next to an open door, and through that door Denny could see part of an elegant old four-poster bed. The light from the lamp didn’t reach very far into the room, and most of the bed was in shadow—but she knew it was there.
“Giovanni,” she whispered, “I . . . I never . . .”
“Shhh,” he told her. “All is well. Follow your heart, and you will know happiness unlike any you have ever known.” His fingers moved over the bare skin of her forearm, strayed up to her shoulder and then behind her neck as he leaned in and kissed her. She felt the heat from his body, bare from the waist up, and couldn’t resist the temptation to reach out and touch it. A tingle like the shock of electricity went through her as she rested her fingers on his chest. She opened her lips to his.
He had risked his life to save her. If she’d ever had any doubt about the genuineness of his feelings for her, it had vanished now. And her own feelings were calling out to her stronger than she had ever experienced. All of that together, combined with the nearness of that bed, was more temptation than Denny could stand.
So she stopped fighting it and whispered, “Yes.”
To Giovanni, and to herself...
CHAPTER 7
Without opening her eyes, Denny stretched and yawned, luxuriating in the sensation of bare skin against smooth silken sheets. A warm breeze blew through the room, moving a curling strand of blond hair against her cheek. That touch tickled. She lifted a hand to push the hair away. The movement made the sheet fall away from her, and that finally alerted her consciousness to her state of undress.
Her eyes popped open and widened in alarm as she realized she was lying in Count Giovanni Malatesta’s bed.
She grabbed the sheet and pulled it over her again as she sat up and hurriedly looked around. The lamp still burned in the other room. Enough light spilled into the bedroom for her to see that she was alone. She swung her legs off the soft mattress and stood up, taking the sheet with her. She wrapped it around her as she stepped to the door between rooms and called softly, “Giovanni?”
When there was no response, she called his name twice more before deciding she was alone in the apartment. She leaned against the doorjamb, closed her eyes, and tried to gather her scattered thoughts.
The knowledge that her life had changed and would never be the same again clamored in the back of her mind. She wasn’t upset about that fact, necessarily; she had known that sooner or later she would meet the right man and take the step she had taken tonight.
She had never expected that man to be an Italian count, however. She had figured that she would be married, or at the very least, her first experience would be with a man she intended to marry.
Try as she might, she just couldn’t imagine Giovanni living on a ranch in Colorado, and she had decided several years earlier that she intended to return to the Sugarloaf and make her permanent home there, probably in the fairly near future.
The medical advances to be had in Europe may well have saved Louis’s life, but during the past year, more than one doctor had told him that they had done all they could for him. Their best advice, in fact, had been for Louis to spend more time in the open air and try to make himself more robust that way. There was no better place to do that than the Colorado valley where the vast Jensen ranch was located.
When Louis went home to stay, Denny intended to, as well. She and her brother had both spent too much time away from their parents. It was time for the Jensen family to be together again.
If she came home with a husband, Smoke and Sally would welcome him and do their best to make him feel right at home at Sugarloaf. Denny had no doubt of that. But would Giovanni ever consider such a thing? Venice had become home to him, after he’d come here from Sicily.
“Oh, Denny, you’re such an impulsive fool,” she whispered to herself. Passion had welled up so strongly and unexpectedly inside her that she hadn’t been able to withstand it. She had allowed Giovanni to ruin her.
“Stop that,” she told herself, louder and more firmly this time. She wasn’t ruined. This was the twentieth century, after all. Morality wasn’t as strict and stringent as it had been in the past. Anyway, she knew good and well that a lot of the so-called rules regarding proper behavior were more honored in theory than they were in practice. Plenty of western brides had walked down the aisle already in the family way.
Her eyes widened again at that thought. What if she was . . . That wasn’t possible, was it? A girl didn’t get like that on the very first time, did she? That wouldn’t be fair at all!
A practical streak a mile wide ran through Denny, always had. What was done was done. Her jaw firmed and her chin lifted. Whatever results the future held, she would face them head-on, without flinching.
Right now, she had to think about getting back to the Hotel Metropole. She could tell by a glance out the window at the darkness that the hour was late. Louis was bound to be worried about her, and probably he would be upset when she got back. But at least she could ease his mind about her safety.
The sound of an angry voice made her frown and look around. She was convinced that she was alone in the apartment and had no idea where Giovanni had gone. After a moment, she realized that the voice came through the open window in the bedroom. Curious, she moved over to it and looked out.
The apartment was on the second floor of the old palazzo, on the side overlooking a narrow street instead of the canal. Streetlamps were few and far between, but enough glow filtered along the cobblestones from one about fifty yards away for Denny to make out the shapes of three men standing and talking in front of the house.
Denny frowned. One of the men was the right size and shape to be Giovanni, but she couldn’t be sure it was him. The other two were in the shadows and were even more obscure. She made out a blob of white where one man’s head ought to be. A mask of some sort?
She caught only a few of the heated words being spoken. They were in Italian and rattled along too fast for her to comprehend them. Then the man she thought might be Giovanni turned on his heel and stalked toward the palazzo’s entrance. Watching the way he moved, Denny was convinced that he was indeed Giovanni.
And no doubt