Page 264 of Alessio

Corrado didn’t know what in the hell he expected from Ginevra Calabrese. He hadn’t given her a lot of thought—why should he?

He was looking at her now, though.

She was filling his thoughts now.

This felt like trouble.

A lot of it.

He just didn’t know why.

“Drive,” she snapped.

Angry.

Terrified.

So why did she sound musical?

“Drive!”

Corrado said nothing, simply checked his mirrors, and then let off the brake as he hit the gas hard. Time for the second part of this damn road trip.

How long had they been driving now?

An hour?

She checked the clock on the dashboard of the Porsche, still kind of stunned she was ina Porsche at all. About an hour and a half of driving, it seemed.

The man in the driver’s seat continued his stretch of silence—he’d not said one word to her from the moment she got in his car. Or … she suspected this was his car. Who else would it belong to?

Glancing over at him, again, Ginevra took in his profile. With the sun still high in the sky, she didn’t have to imagine anything about the way he looked when it was all there for her to see. From his strong jaw dusted with a bit of dark facial hair, to the dusky olive skin tone with just a touch of tan. His fingers—long, and deft, she thought—flexed around the steering wheel in a rhythmic fashion, as though he was thinking about something, and his hands told the story of his thoughts.

She wondered if he had been stressed about something before she got in the car—maybe about picking her up—if only because where his high-fade hairstyle melted into the longer bits of hair at the top of his head was messy. Like he’d been running those fingers through it, and the strands fell out of place.

Not that it looked bad.

Nothing about the man looked bad.

What was his name again?

Andino said it when he brought her a gift for their wedding day to her private suite. Her get out of jail free card, she thought, sadly. A way out, he’d told her.

But what was his name again?

“Corrado,” she said softly, remembering it all at once.

Just as fast, the man in the driver’s seat reacted, his head swinging in her direction for the first time since she had entered his vehicle. His profile did no justice to his rugged features when he looked at her head-on.

Strong lines.

Brown eyes, flecked with gold.

Intense all over.

“What?”

His tone, as sharp as the edge of a blade, shocked her. He seemed angry, his jaw tensing as his gaze flicked over her, but she didn’t know why. Maybe he didn’t want to be here, or to help her. She understood that—who would want to help someone they didn’t know?