Forbidden by Elisabeth Naughton

Author:Elisabeth Naughton [Naughton, Elisabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Elisabeth Naughton Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

NATALIE

Luc was silent in the car on the way back to the hotel. Silent and oddly calm for a man who’d looked rattled and on the edge of control ever since that right-wing fanatic had grabbed me earlier in the day.

I wasn’t sure how to interpret that. I’d hoped kissing him would force him to face this thing between us, but it hadn’t. Oh, that kiss had been hotter than hell on my end—so hot I could still feel it smoldering in my toes hours later—but for him, all it had seemed to do was make him dig his heels in even further. Slipping off my panties at the party and tucking them in his pocket had been a last-ditch effort to coax some kind of reaction from him, but even that had failed. Failed miserably by the look of his cool demeanor as he sat beside me in the car.

Maybe I’d been reading him wrong all this time. I stared out the window as we neared the lights of Vatican City. Maybe he wasn’t attracted to me the way I was attracted to him. And maybe what I was seeing now was relief that I’d finally agreed to go home without a fight so he could get me out of his life for good.

That thought left a pit in the bottom of my stomach, one I didn’t like. As we pulled away from the Vatican and wound up the hill toward our hotel, I knew I’d made a mistake by not leaving earlier in the day when he’d asked me to go. By staying, by taking these crazy chances, I’d pretty much humiliated myself. But still… If I hadn’t tried, I would always have wondered. At least now I knew for sure, right?

The car pulled to a stop in front of the hotel. Vincenzo climbed out and opened my door. Next to me, Luc lifted my clutch from the seat where I’d set it between us and handed it to me.

“Thank you.” My fingers grazed his as I took the clutch, and tingles immediately shot up my arm at the contact. I looked to him to see if he’d felt them, but his expression was as unreadable as ever, and when his eyes met mine before quickly darting away, I saw nothing—no reaction, no emotion, not even a spark of what I felt. That pit in my belly opened even wider.

Okay, so… I drew a deep breath as I climbed out. I needed to think about something else. Finding Laney’s killer. That was what I should have been thinking about all this time anyway. I had to figure out how I was going to track Gio down now that he was my lead suspect. But I couldn’t make my brain focus on that yet. It was too daunting. So instead, I thought about packing.

I didn’t have that much to pack—I’d only been here a few days—but I needed to package this dress up and send it back to Bianca.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.