Breathing Room Read Online Free PDF

so you can feel whole – you'll only make what's broken inside you hurt that much worse..."
    But Dr. Favor was a bankrupt failure, and the blonde in the Florentine café didn't have to listen to her. Isabel rose and took his hand.
    Her knees felt wobbly from the wine as he led her out of the piazza into the narrow streets. She wondered how much a gigolo charged, and hoped she had enough. If not, she'd use her overextended credit card. They walked in the direction of the river. Once again she experienced that nagging sense of familiarity. Which of the Old Masters had captured his face? But her brain was too fuzzy to remember.
    He pointed to a Medici shield on the side of a building, then gestured toward a tiny courtyard where white flowers grew around a fountain. Tour guide and gigolo in one erotic package. The universe provided. And tonight it had provided the missing link in her plan to create a new life.
    She didn't like men towering over her, and he was a head taller than she, but he'd be horizontal soon, so that wouldn't be a problem. She suppressed a flicker of panic. He could be married, but he barely seemed civilized, let alone domesticated. He could be a mass murderer, but despite the Mafia, Italian criminals tended to prefer theft to slaughter.
    He smelled expensive – clean, exotic, and enticing – but the scent seemed to come from his pores instead of a bottle. She had a vision of him pressing her against one of the ancient stone buildings, lifting her skirt, and pushing into her, except that would get it over with too quickly, and getting it over with wasn't the point. The point was being able to silence Michael's voice so she could move forward with her life.
    The wine had made her clumsy, and she tripped on nothing. Oh, she was a smoothie, all right. He steadied her, then gestured toward the door of a small, expensive hotel.
    "Vuol venire con me in albergo."
    She didn't understand the words, but the invitation was clear.
    "I want passion!"Michael had said.
    Well, guess what, Michael Sheridan? So do I.
    She pushed past Dante and marched into the tiny lobby. Its exquisite appointments were reassuring – velvet drapes, gilded chairs, terrazzo floor. At least she'd behaving her sordid sex on clean sheets. And this wasn't the kind of place a lunatic would choose to murder a naïve, undersexed female tourist.
    The desk clerk handed him a key, so he was already registered. A high-class gigolo. Their shoulders brushed in the tiny elevator, and she knew that the heat in the pit of her stomach came from more than wine and unhappiness.
    They stepped out into a dimly lit hallway. As she gazed at him, a bizarre image flashed through her mind of a black-garbed man firing an assault weapon.
    Where had that come from? Although she didn't feel entirely safe with him, neither did she feel as though she were in physical danger. If he'd planned to murder her, he'd have done it in one of the alleys they'd passed, not with an assault weapon in a five-star hotel.
    He led her to the end of the corridor. His hand on her arm was firm, a silent signal, perhaps, that he was now in charge.
    Oh, God... What was she doing?
    "Good sex, great sex, needs to be just as much about our brains as it is about bodies."
    Dr. Isabel was right. But this wasn't about great sex. This was about raunchy, forbidden, dangerous sex in a strange city with a man she'd never see again. Sex to clear her mind and wash away her fear. Sex to reassure her that she was still a woman. Sex to mend the broken places so she could move ahead.
    He opened the door and flipped on a light switch. His women paid him well. This was no simple hotel room but an elegant suite, although a bit untidy, with his clothes tumbling from an open suitcase and his shoes lying in the middle of the floor.
    "Vuoi un pó di vino?"
    She recognized the word "vino" and meant to say yes, but she got confused and shook her head instead. The motion was too fast, and she nearly lost her balance.
    "Va