The Italian's Innocent Bride

by Clare Connelly

  “Constables Warren and Stuart, sir,” Constable Warren corrected, extending her hand.

  Jane, despite the pain and desire that were flooding her system, couldn’t help but smile at the woman’s confidence. Carlo Santini was a man who inspired awe and fear wherever he went. Yet this short British officer apparently had no such feeling.

  “Constables?” His eyes were black stones in his face. “Your initial inquiry is appreciated, but please have your superior come to my wife immediately.”

  Constable Stuart seemed to feel the awe that Warren did not. “Sir, we… that is… we…”

  “Yes?” Carlo demanded impatiently, his eyes visibly eviscerating the man opposite.

  “What Constable Stuart is trying to say is that our Sergeant doesn’t get involved with simple attacks like this.”

  “Simple attacks?” Carlo roared, pulling himself up to his full height. “Believe me when I tell you, there is nothing simple about an attack on my wife. I want the full force of your team on this.”

  Now, Constable Warren was beginning to catch on. Jane could see that his manner was making her doubt her actions. “Sir,” she began again, but Carlo was intractable.

  “Tell me what your initial assessment is, Constable Warren, while Constable Stuart goes and arranges for your Sergeant to step in.”

  Both officers stood there uncertainly for a moment, before Warren gave Stuart a small nod. “Your wife,” Constable Warren continued once Stuart had left, “cannot remember much about what happened.”

  Carlo threw Jane a look of impatience that made her heart ache. As a wife, she’d been a failure, unable to hold his interest beyond the first few weeks of their marriage. And now, as a victim, she was apparently a failure. She looked away from him, staring resolutely at the waffle print blanket.

  “We believe it’s a single blow to the side of her head. Miss Lang lost consciousness and a neighbour called the police.”

  “Neighbour?” Jane asked, ignoring the look Carlo threw her at the use of her maiden name. “Was it Liz?” She hated to think of how worried she would have been.

  “Liz is the name listed on the report,” Warren said with a curt nod, as she scanned her notes.

  “Is this all you know?” Carlo demanded, his tone dripping with displeasure.

  “For the moment,” the Constable said quietly.

  “Then you have some work ahead of you. I look forward to your report once you’ve investigated further.” He slipped one of the fine embossed business cards from his breast pocket. “My direct number is there. Do not hesitate to use it.”

  Constable Warren stood, somewhat perplexed, staring at this monolith of a man. She’d heard of him, of course. Who hadn’t? The self-made billionaire was always in the papers, if not for his looks, for his dating exploits.

  How he’d managed to con someone as lovely and gentle as Jane Lang into marriage was a perplexing notion.

  “Thank you, sir,” Warren said, her own voice icy and unimpressed. She left the room with a disapproving squeak of her sensible black shoes.

  Leaving just Carlo and Jane. As he turned, slowly, to face her, Jane forced herself to meet his gaze.

  Four years ago, when they’d married, Jane had been young and naïve, and she’d let herself fall under his spell. But she was not that girl anymore. She’d grown decades in the three years since she’d left him, and she had Carlo to thank for that. His education in the cruel ways of the world had been thorough and successful.

  “What are you doing here, Carlo?” She asked, her words difficult to discern through her raspy tone.

  He didn’t answer. Not at first. He turned the full force of his attention on her, his dark grey eyes making a slow inspection of her body. He took in every detail, his frown deepening as he went.

  “You are too thin,” he muttered, taking a step towards the bed. She had always been on the slight side, but her breasts had filled his palms; her arse had been an object of obsession for him. Now? She was skin and bone. It might have been fashionable, but he’d never had much time for supermodel thin waifs.

  “My weight is not your concern,” she responded pointedly.

  He nodded. “But your safety is. What did you think, cara? That I would not come?”

  “I didn’t think about you at all,” she corrected quietly. “It’s been three years since I’ve felt any need to involve you in my life.”

  He bit back the retort that was forming in his mind. “And yet you listed me as your emergency contact.”

  Jane couldn’t contradict him there. At least, not without hinting at an earlier admission to the hospital; and worse, the reason why. “I was hardly in a position to think anything through.” She reached for her water, annoyed that her fingers were shaking visibly.

  Carlo sighed. “It’s adrenalin,” he said, misunderstanding the reason her hand was unsteady. “You’re in shock.” And for the first time since entering her hospital room, his expression softened. In fact, he looked so much like the version of Carlo she’d fallen in love with that Jane had to smother a gasp. “Are you in pain?”

  The idea of finding him less intimidating set her on edge. She only managed to survive each day because she remembered that his heart was cold. “What do you think?” She said, rather more snappishly than she’d intended.

  His lips lifted in a small smile. “I don’t think you want to know what I’m thinking right now.”

  Her fair skin colored with a hint of pink. “And I’m sure you don’t want to hear how much I don’t care.”

  He laughed. It was so unexpected that her pale blue eyes flew to his face in shock. The sound was glorious. Rich and musical, his laugh made her hospital room glow for a moment. It made her heart turn over, and her pulse burn.

  “Why are you here?” She groaned, the past rushing towards her like a train at high speed. “Couldn’t you just have sent flowers like a normal person?”

  He was saved from the necessity of answering by the interruption of the doctor.

  “Mr Santini?” The doctor asked, as he summed up the well-dressed Italian man at the foot of his patient’s bed.

  “Si.”

  “I’m Doctor Klein; call me Rod. I’m looking after your wife.

  “Ex-wife,” Jane inserted testily, earning a look of frustration from Carlo.

  Rod smiled at her, and moved towards the bed. “I see you’ve lost that tube. The medics in the field are uber cautious when there’s a head injury; you probably could have done without that.”

  “Better to be safe than sorry,” Jane defended them quietly.

  “That’s certainly their logic.” He slipped a blood pressure cuff onto her upper arm and inflated it until her upper arm was pinched tight. He turned his attention to the dials, and neither Jane nor Carlo spoke. “Blood pressure’s a bit elevated,” he noted with a flicker of a frown.

  “No surprise there,” Jane replied with saccharine sweetness. “My ex-husband seems to have that effect on me.”

  Rod hid a smile as he lifted the protective lid off his thermometer. He placed it in her ear and read the number. “Good. Temperature’s fine.” He turned to Carlo. “I’m going to get Jane in for a few scans now. They’ll probably take a while. Would you like someone to call you when we’re finished?”

  Jane glared at both of them. “Let’s get one thing straight. My ex-husband is not staying. And he has nothing to do with me now. So kindly stop speaking to him as though he has any say in my life.”

  * * *

  The relief she felt at seeing Liz was extreme. “Come in,” she said to her best friend. “He’s just leaving.” She waved a hand dismissively in Carlo’s direction, earning an appraising look from Liz.

  Her friend’s eyes skated over Carlo and then quickly returned to Jane. Jane thought Liz seemed a little uneasy, but that was hardly surprising. Carlo had that reaction on all women, even the tough ones like Liz. To her chagrin, Carlo did not move.

  “I’m so glad to see you looking so well. I will never forget
the sight of you laid out on your steps like that.” She shuddered.

  “Aren’t you her neighbour? Where were you when it happened?” Carlo asked rudely, earning a sharp looking from Jane.

  Liz’s eyes flicked across at him, and then back to Jane.

  “Don’t answer him. This is my ex-husband. I divorced him for his lack of charm and manners, amongst other reasons.” She turned ice-blue eyes onto Carlo. “Where Liz was is none of your, or my, business,” she intoned warningly. “She’s my neighbour, not my bodyguard.”

  Carlo sent one last sharp look at Liz and then nodded curtly. “I’ll wait outside.”

  Jane waited for him to walk out of the hospital room and then made a face of frustration. “Truly, Liz, he’s the most insufferably arrogant man. I wish he’d never come.”

  Liz nodded sympathetically. “He seems very worried about you.”

  “Yeah. God knows why. Hardly seemed to care about me at all when we were married.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jane listened to the doctor’s explanation as best she could. But with Carlo staring broodingly across at her, it was difficult to concentrate on anything. Despite her brave declaration before the battery of tests she’d been subjected to, Carlo was standing intractably in the hospital room, looking to all the world as though he belonged at her side.

  “Bottom line?” Her ex-husband cut across Doctor Klein’s thorough explanation.

  Rod nodded. “No permanent damage. You will have to take it easy for a few days, Jane. No marathons. No mountain climbing. Certainly no other head injuries, if you can manage that. We’ll keep you here for another night or so just to be sure.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she promised croakily. She felt so banged up, now that the heavy duty painkillers had worn off, that she didn’t see much in her future beyond the sofa, and whatever the BBC decided to dish out.

  “I intend to make sure of it.” Carlo’s darkly muttered promise sounded more like a threat to Jane’s ears. But she waited until the doctor had excused himself before she took issue with his statement.

  “Carlo, I didn’t ask you to come.” In the year they’d been married, she had barely disagreed with him. Taking up a position of staunch opposition to him now filled her with a deep sense of discomfort and pain, but she continued nonetheless. “And I don’t want you here.” She swallowed, and lifted a hand to the column of her neck. Her pulse was beating frantically and she put her fingertips on it. “I’d actually be a lot happier if you were anywhere but here.”

  He shrugged, and kicked one ankle over his knee, reclining indolently and inspecting her with arrogant ease. “And yet you are stuck with me.”

  Her heart pinched inside of her chest. With great effort, she held onto the cool exterior she’d spent the last three years perfecting. “No, I’m not.”

  His black eyes showed a sense of surprise, but nothing else in his demeanour altered. “I’m not offering. Nor am I asking. I’m telling you that I will be overseeing your recovery and safety for the foreseeable future.”

  Jane pulled her lower lip between her teeth and gnawed at it. “And I’m telling you that I’ll call the police if you don’t leave me alone.”

  She knew him so well. She had become a world expert in the ways of Carlo Santini, so that even the most minuscule gesture spoke volumes to her. The way his knuckles were white, for example, as he gripped his hands in his lap, showed her that he was only managing to hold onto his temper with an extreme effort.

  She smiled at him tersely. “You heard the doctor. I need to avoid stress while I’m recovering. And you stress me. Thinking about our failure of a marriage is not something I like to do. So if you care about me at all, you’ll leave. And let me be.”

  He dipped his head forward so that she wouldn’t see the way her words had struck a cord in him. Wasn’t that the very reason he’d allowed her to leave him? To let their divorce go unchallenged? He had been bad for her. He’d known it at the time, and he’d wanted to avoid hurting her, so he’d let her go.

  And now?

  Now, there was a threat far greater than the firestorm they unleashed on one another. Now. There was someone else out there looking to hurt Jane. And he knew, in his heart of hearts, that it was because of him. Because she’d been married to him, and he’d had the misfortune of being born to one of Italy’s most notorious organised crime bosses.

  He clenched his jaw and firmed his resolve. “You are in danger, cara mia. My protection is not optional. But you do not need to worry your pretty little head. Once that threat has passed, I will leave you alone again, and get back to my own life.”

  His own life. She angled her face, tilting it away from his intense gaze. His life, since their divorce, had apparently involved a string of glamorous women. He had evidently not had the problem licking his wounds that she had hers.

  “Divorcing you made me wealthy. I can afford security.” She’d been aiming for confident independence, but suspected she’d sounded as though she were bragging. In truth, she’d never wanted the money he’d insisted on giving her. What did a twenty year old need millions of pounds for? She’d bought herself a reasonably modest townhouse, and maintained a nice enough lifestyle to help her forget about the man she’d once loved. But other than that, she had a huge chunk of money sitting dormant in a bank account. “I can get a bodyguard.”

  “Fine. You may do that too.”

  “Carlo…”

  “Damn it, Jane.” He stood up as he exclaimed loudly, and crossed to the bed. The sight of her bandaged head and pale face helped him to calm down, but his annoyance at her newly-developed stubborn streak was still simmering inside of him. He sat down beside her, and put a hand on her thigh. “You were my wife.”

  His voice cracked, and the note of anguish was almost her undoing. Almost, but not quite. This man had shown her the most exquisite pleasure, but God, he’d hurt her beyond bearing.

  She closed her eyes, and forced herself to remember the stunning Alessandra. The bitter advice she’d enjoyed heaping on Jane at every opportunity. Advice which, it turned out, held more than a kernel of truth. Carlo had never loved Jane. Not really. He’d married her, and then he’d spent the next twelve months ignoring her in every way but one. Sexually.

  The parties he’d gone to, and been fawned over by myriad beautiful women, had been one of the many proofs she had of his lack of true affection. Alessandra had made sure Jane had known about those parties. And about the women. But it was not strictly Alessandra’s fault. If Carlo hadn’t been such a philandering bastard, then Jane wouldn’t have had anything to fear. Alessandra wouldn’t have had anything to jubilantly throw in her young face.

  And yet still he’d come to her. Night after night, he’d returned to their bed and taken her in his arms, his body seeking hers like a magnet, demanding and offering the ultimate fulfilment. And every night, she’d given in. Because she was weak, and she had needed him. She’d cried afterwards. After they’d made love, and her body’s needs had been met, but her soul was languishing. She’d cried silently into the pillow and wished on the stars outside their window that she would be stronger the next day. That she would talk to him. That she would beg him to love her better.

  But she had not. She’d taken what crumbs of affection he’d had to offer, and told herself it would be enough. Only it hadn’t been. Eventually, it had become too painful. The coldness with which he could leave her in the mornings had shown her all too clearly how little he cared for her.

  No. Great sex was not, in the end, enough. Loving someone, with the entirety of one’s heart, was an agony when that love remained unreturned. And her love had been isolated. A beacon in their relationship, she’d loved him, and he’d pushed her away whenever he could.

  She blinked her bright blue eyes, refusing to give tears the dignity of falling down her cheeks.

  “I was not your wife,” she intoned flatly. She blinked, and stared out of the window at the yellow street lights visible through the foggy evening air.


  Carlo sat very still. She was so young. Older now, than when they married, but still just a child. His gut tightened with emotion as he took in her pain-filled expression. “I remember the wedding. You wore a big white dress. I wore a tux.”

  She rolled her eyes but refused to look at him. “A wedding does not a marriage make. I was just a toy to you.” She sniffed, and cursed her lack of strength when a hot tear slid fatly down her pale cheek. “A stupid, ignorant teenager, too hopelessly attracted to you to realise that sex isn’t love.”

  He stared at her, willing her to turn to face him, but he did not move. “You were in love with me.”

  She tried to swallow past her dry, razor-sharp throat. “Our marriage was a mistake. We both went into it wanting something from one another that just wasn’t possible.”

  “Is that so?” He leaned forward, so that a hint of his masculine aftershave teased her nostrils. “What did you want from me, cara?”

  She fumbled her fingers along the edge of the blanket. Her voice was a husk when she spoke. “I wanted a family.” Her thick dark lashes fanned along her soft cheeks as she squeezed her eyes shut. “I wanted a happy ending. But those don’t really exist, do they?”

  He was longing to touch her, but he knew she’d reject the contact. “And what did I want from you?”

  Slowly, she tipped her head, so that her eyes could meet his. “It took me a long time to work that out.” She scanned his face, and wished she could simply switch off her feelings for him. “You wanted to become the man I believed you to be.” Her smile was loaded with bittersweet recollection. “I looked at you as though you were the original messiah; capable only of goodness and strength. I think your ego enjoyed that, and you thought that marrying me would make my vision of you more truthful.”

  Out of nowhere, he felt as though he’d been sucker punched. “That is deeply analytical,” he drawled after a few moments.