Her Last Night of Innocence by India Grey Read Free Book Online Page B

She didn’t slow down until she had reached the door of the Hotel de Paris opposite.
    It was only then that she remembered the letter in her evening bag.
    Silvio’s speech was mercifully short. As the crowd clapped and cheered, Cristiano made his way round the back of the platform to where Suki stood.
    ‘I slept with her, didn’t I?’
    ‘Who?’
    Suki looked up at him with deliberately blank eyes. Cristiano had to grit his teeth, steadying himself against the feeling of panic that was closing in on him. The whole evening had taken on a kind of nightmarish quality, so that he wasn’t sure what was real any more.
    ‘Kate Edwards,’ he rasped. ‘From Clearspring Water. I slept with her the night before the crash. Why didn’t you tell me?’
    Suki’s blank gaze slid away again and she shrugged. ‘What does it matter? You slept with everyone.’
    Cristiano jerked backwards, raising his hand so that fora moment Suki thought he was going to hit her. He thrust it into his hair and swore, and then swung round and began to push his way through the crowd.
    Except me , she wanted to scream after him, watching his massive shoulders as he walked away, and the way people moved aside to let him through. Everyone except me .
    Adrenaline burned through Cristiano’s veins as he ran down the Casino steps. The cool air, with its whisper of pine and the sea, felt good—tasted better than the champagne he’d been avoiding all evening—and out in the street-lit darkness the pounding inside his head was less intense. He knew that Silvio would be looking for him now, wanting him to stand in front of the two cars on the platform while the flashbulbs of hundreds of press photographers exploded all around, but he didn’t care.
    He didn’t care about anything except finding Kate Edwards.
    She had gone into the Hotel a Paris when she’d run out of here. Standing in the middle of the marble floor, still reeling from the realisation of who she was, he had watched her crossing the square, dodging in front of a car in her haste to get away.
    He nodded curtly at the doorman, who leapt forward to open the door for him as Suki’s words came back to him. She wasn’t your type at all…seriously plain and boring…
    She was right about the first bit at least—Kate Edwards was different entirely from the women he usually bedded, and yet there was something about her that tugged like a fish hook in his brain and left him in no doubt that he’d slept with her that night.
    And that the experience had been worth remembering.
    Worth repeating—especially if it helped him to remember.
    The receptionist glanced up from her computer screen as he approached the desk and, seeing who he was, started visibly.
    ‘Can you tell me which room Kate Edwards is in?’
    Her pink-painted mouth had fallen open, and she was looking at him in undisguised awe, so it was a second before she answered. ‘ Pardon , Signor Maresca…b-but really I shouldn’t…’
    ‘I hope Miss Edwards would disagree with that.’ He dropped his voice and, looking her straight in the eye, smiled. ‘Please?’
    Colour flooded into her cheeks as she tapped the keyboard, and Cristiano felt a grim moment of satisfaction. It had been a long time since he’d actively flirted with anyone, but that at least was something he could still do. He just hoped that Kate Edwards would fall for it as easily.
    Because she was his best hope of recovering those lost hours. He’d slept with her then—would sleeping with her again bring them back?
    So that was it.
    After four years of waiting, hoping, dreaming and wishing, it was finally over.
    With a shaking hand Kate swept up all the brand-new expensive cosmetics so carefully picked out by Lizzie and shoved them back into her make-up bag. Most of them hadn’t even been opened. What a waste of money, she thought, stifling a sob.
    But what was money compared to four years of her life?
    She pulled her cheap suitcase down from the rack by the door and