by Lynne Graham
And then the car turned down a leaf-lined lane and way at the top of that lane lay the most beautiful house she had ever seen. Not as big as she had expected, not extravagant either. It was a sprawling two-storey farmhouse built in glorious ochre-coloured stone that was colouring into a deeper shade below the spectacular setting sun above. It was surrounded, not by a conventional garden, but by what looked very like a wild-flower meadow and the odd copse of leafy trees.
‘It’s gorgeous,’ she said, speaking for almost the first time since she had left the plane about something other than an apologetic reference to the reality that she felt ill again.
Vitale sprang out of the car and opened the passenger door with a flashing smile that disconcerted her, his lean, darkly handsome features appreciative. ‘I thought you mightn’t like it,’ he admitted. ‘It’s not luxurious like the town house or the palace. It’s more of a getaway house.’
‘It’ll probably still be fancier than I’m used to,’ Jazz pointed out, simply relieved that he was acting human again instead of frozen.
A light hand resting at her spine, Vitale walked her down the path and into a hall with a polished terracotta tiled floor. Jazz shifted away from him again to peer through open doors, registering that the furnishings were simple and plain, not a swag nor any gilding in sight, and she relaxed even more, smiling when Vitale called her back to introduce her to the little woman he called Agnella, who looked after the house. Jazz froze to the floor when Agnella curtsied to her as if she were royalty.
‘Why did she do that?’ she asked Vitale as they followed their driver and their luggage up the oak staircase.
‘Because you’re my wife and a princess even though I don’t think you quite feel like one yet,’ Vitale suggested. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to curtsy to my mother every time you see her because she’s a stickler for formal court etiquette. When I’m King, which is a very long way away in my future,’ he admitted wryly, ‘I will modernise and there will be a lot less bowing and scraping. Unfortunately, the Queen enjoys it too much.’
‘Is that so?’ Jazz encouraged, stunned by his sudden chattiness.
‘Yes, the monarchy in Lerovia would never be described as one of the more casual bicycling royal families,’ Vitale admitted with regret. ‘Life at the palace is pretty much the same as it must have been a couple of hundred years ago.’
Jazz pulled a face. ‘Can’t say I’m looking forward to that. How on earth is your mother going to react to me?’ she prompted anxiously.
‘Very badly,’ Vitale told her bluntly. ‘I intend to break that news by degrees for your benefit. You’ll be attending the ball as my fiancée.’
‘Fiancée?’ Jazz repeated in surprise. ‘How... For my benefit?’
‘My mother is likely to go off in an hysterical rant and she can be very abusive. I don’t want to risk her throwing a major scene at the ball and I’m determined to protect you from embarrassment. I’ll tell her after the ball that we are already married but not with you present. Be assured that, whatever happens, I will deal with the Queen.’
Merely inclining her head at that unsettling information about the kind of welcome she could expect from his royal mother, Jazz walked into a beautiful big bedroom with rafters high above, a stripped wooden floor and an ancient fireplace at the far end. In the centre a bed festooned in fresh white linen sat up against an exposed stone wall while a windowsill sported a glorious arrangement of white lilac blossoms. ‘I really love this house. Can’t you just imagine that fire lit in winter? You could add a couple of easy chairs there and use that chest by the wall as a coffee table.’
Vitale blinked in bewilderment, stealing a startled glance at her newly animated face. ‘What a great idea,’ he intoned, although he had never in all his life before thought about interior décor or furniture. ‘We could go shopping for chairs.’
‘Could we?’ A little of her animation dwindling, Jazz wondered why she was rabbiting on as if he were truly her husband and the farmhouse their home and her colour heightened with embarrassment. ‘I was just being silly and imaginative,’ she completed, kicking off her shoes and settling down on the side of the low bed because she was tired, worn down by her stress and her worries.
‘We’ll look for chairs. I hired a designer to do the basics here and never added anything else,’ Vitale repeated a shade desperately, keen to keep the conversation afloat even if he had to talk about furniture to do it. He could not stand to see Jazz look so sad and her interest in the farmhouse had noticeably lifted her mood for the first time that day. Considering that it had been their wedding day, Vitale felt very much to blame. ‘I didn’t really have the time to think about finishing touches but I’m grateful for any advice.’
‘I’m sure you could hire another interior designer,’ Jazz told him quellingly, recalling the wealth of the male she was addressing and feeling even more foolish.
‘I’d prefer you to do it,’ Vitale asserted in growing frustration, having watched her face dim again as though a light had been switched out. ‘You won’t make it too grand.’
‘Well, no,’ Jazz agreed dulcetly. ‘I have no experience of grand, so I could hardly make it that way.’
He watched her slight shoulders slump again and strode forward. ‘Would you like to wear your engagement ring?’ he asked with staggering abruptness.
‘My...what?’
Eager to employ any distraction available to him, Vitale dug a ring box out of his pocket and flipped it open, it being his experience that women loved jewellery. Although, as he extended the opulent emerald and diamond ring, he was belatedly recalling that Jazz had been annoyingly reluctant even to accept the basics like a gold watch and plain gold stud earrings from him.
‘Lovely,’ Jazz said woodenly, making no move to claim the ring.
Vitale’s strong jawline squared with stubborn determination. He lifted her limp hand and threaded the diamond ring onto her finger until it rested up against her wedding ring. ‘What do you think?’ he was forced to prompt when the silence stretched on even after she had snatched her hand back.
‘Stunning,’ Jazz said obediently since she could see it was expected of her.
‘It is yours. I’m not going to ask for it back!’ Vitale launched down at her with sudden impatience, wondering if that was the problem. ‘When we split up, everything I have given you is yours!’
Instead of being reassured, Jazz flinched and rose upright in a sudden movement, colour sparking over her cheekbones. ‘And isn’t that a lovely thing to say to me on our wedding day?’ she condemned sharply. ‘Of course, it wasn’t a real wedding day, was it?’
Thoroughly taken aback by her angry, aggressive stance, Vitale stared at her with bemused dark eyes. ‘It felt real enough to me.’
‘But it wasn’t real! Did you think I was in any danger of forgetting that for a moment? Well, don’t worry yourself! I wasn’t in danger of forgetting for a single moment. I had no wedding dress. You haven’t touched me since I told you I was pregnant, not even to kiss the bride! I know it’s all fake, like the stupid wedding ring and the ceremony and now an even stupider engagement ring. You don’t want to be engaged or married to me. Did you think that little piece of reality could possibly have escaped my notice?’ she demanded wrathfully at the top of her voice, which echoed loudly up into the rafters.
‘I didn’t want to be engaged or married to anyone,’ Vitale confessed in a driven undertone while he tried to work out what they were arguing about. ‘But if I have to be, you would definitely be my first choice.’
‘Oh, that makes me feel so much better!’ Jazz flung so sarcastically that even Vitale picked up on it.
Instantly Vitale regretted admitting that he hadn’t wanted to be engaged or married to anyone. Was that quite true though? He had looked at Jazz throughout the day and had felt amazingly relaxed about their new relationship. But obviously, not kissing his bride had gone down as a big fail, but then Vitale had never liked doing anything of that nature in fron
t of other people.
‘I was trying to compliment you.’
‘News flash...it didn’t work!’ Grabbing up a case from her collection of brand-new matching designer luggage, Jazz plonked it down on the bed.
‘You’re pregnant and you’re not supposed to lift heavy things!’ Vitale raked censoriously at her.
Jazz ignored him, ripping into the case, carelessly tossing out half the contents and finally extracting a robe. ‘There’d better be a bath in there for me to soak in,’ she muttered, stalking across the floor to the ajar door of the en suite, checking that there was and then recalling that she didn’t have her toiletries.
In a furious temper she went back to check the luggage and, still finding the all-important bag missing, left the bedroom to go back downstairs and see if it had been left in the car.
Vitale released his breath in an explosive surge, genuinely at a loss. Somehow everything was going wrong. He had been too honest with her. He should never have mentioned splitting up or her keeping the jewellery. Angel had said women were sentimental and sensitive and all of a sudden that prenuptial agreement he had settled in front of her loomed like a major misjudgement. He had to turn things around but he hadn’t a clue how and he sprang up again, concentrating on the overwhelming challenge of needing to please a woman for the first time in his life.
The bath, he thought, and then he had it, the awareness of her love of baths prompting him. He grabbed the flowers on the window sill up and strode into the bathroom like a man on a mission.
Hot, perspiring and cross as tacks after having to locate their driver and interrupt him at his evening meal to gain access to the bag that had been left in the car, Jazz made it back into the bedroom, which was comfortingly empty because she had had enough of Vitale for one day. She got to keep the jewellery, yippee, big wow there if she was a gold-digger but, sadly, she wasn’t. She had wanted to keep him, not the jewellery, which was the sort of thought that tore Jazz apart inside and made her feel humiliated because Vitale had made it very clear that he did not want to keep her. She undressed and slid on the robe.
Entering the bathroom, Jazz was sharply disconcerted to find it transformed. The bath had already been run for her and candles had been lit round the bath, turning it into a soothing space while the lilac blossoms exuded a pale luminous glow in one corner. Rose petals floated on the surface of the water and she blinked in disconcertion at the inviting vision. Vitale? No, she decided. He wasn’t capable of making that kind of romantic effort. She tested the water, found it warm and, with a shrug, she dropped the robe and climbed in.
Vitale pushed open the door, relieved she hadn’t locked it, and extended a wine glass to her.
At the intrusion, Jazz jerked in surprise, water sloshing noisily around her slight body as she raised her knees automatically to conceal herself in a defensive pose. ‘What are you doing?’ she exclaimed, her voice sharp, accusing.
‘Trying,’ Vitale retorted curtly. ‘Maybe I’m not very good at this.’
‘You ran my bath, lit the candles?’ Jazz gasped, wide-eyed with astonishment.
Vitale crouched down by the side of the bath, far too close for comfort, dark golden eyes enhanced by curling gold-tipped lashes stunningly intent on her flushed face. ‘You’re my wife. This is our wedding day. You’re sick and you’re unhappy. Isn’t it believable that I would try to turn that around?’
Her soft pink mouth opened uncertainly and then closed again, her lashes fluttering up on disconcerted green eyes. ‘You don’t usually make any effort,’ she pointed out somewhat ungraciously.
‘Situations change,’ Vitale reasoned, speaking as though every word he spoke might have a punitive tax imposed on it and he were being forced to keep speech to the absolute minimum.
‘I suppose they do,’ Jazz muttered, accepting the glass. ‘You know I can’t drink this?’
‘It’s non-alcoholic,’ he informed her.
Jazz sipped the delicious ice-cool drink and suddenly laughed with real amusement, startling herself almost as much as him. ‘It’s homemade lemonade!’
‘My cousins visit me here occasionally. They have children and Agnella always likes to be prepared. She was my nurse when I was a child,’ he confided. ‘My mother sacked her when she reached a certain age because she prefers a youthful staff but Agnella wasn’t ready to be put out to grass. She and her husband look after this place for me.’
‘You’re making your mother sound more and more like an evil villain,’ Jazz whispered, for the bathroom with little flames sending shadows flickering on the stone walls was as disturbingly intimate as Vitale’s proximity.
Vitale lifted and dropped a wide shoulder in silent dismissal. His jacket and tie had vanished but he hadn’t unbuttoned his collar and, without even thinking about it, Jazz stretched out her hand and loosened the button, spreading the edges apart to show off his strong brown throat. ‘There, now you look more relaxed,’ she proclaimed, colouring a little at what she had done. ‘Everything’s changed, Vitale.’
‘Sì...but we’re in this together,’ Vitale reminded her with gruff emphasis.
‘Obviously,’ she conceded. ‘But I don’t know where we go from here.’
‘We don’t have to change,’ he argued with a sudden vehemence that disconcerted her. ‘We can go on exactly the way we were in London.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Jazz declared, her heart quickening its beat with a kind of panic at how vulnerable that would make her, to continue as though she didn’t know her happiness was on a strict timeline with a definite ending. She had to protect herself, be sensible and look to the future. Continuing what they had shared before now looked far too dangerous. ‘I mean, since the moment I announced that I was pregnant, you backed off like I’d developed the bubonic plague.’
‘Giulio warned to be careful with you.’
‘Giulio? Mr Verratti?’ she queried. ‘He told you not to touch me? That we couldn’t have sex?’
Vitale frowned. ‘No, only to be careful and you were so obviously tired and unwell I respected the warning. Naturally, I left you alone,’ he confided grittily. ‘I didn’t want to be selfish and I am naturally selfish and thoughtless. I was raised to always put myself first in relationships, so I have to look out more than most to avoid that kind of behaviour.’
He was so serious in the way in which he told her that that it touched Jazz. He knew his flaws, strove to keep them under control, didn’t trust in his senses to read situations, never thought of explaining himself, simply strove to avoid the consequences of doing something wrong. It was a very rudimentary approach to a relationship and almost certain to result in misunderstandings. Jazz studied the disturbingly grave set of his lean, darkly handsome features and stroked her fingers down the side of his sombre face, fingertips brushing through a dark shadow of prickly black stubble.
‘If you’re coming to bed with me, you need a shave,’ she told him softly, knowing she couldn’t fight the way she felt at that moment, the yearning that was welling up from deep inside her to be with him again.
Right at this moment, Vitale was hers, and maybe she would never have more than a few fleeting moments feeling like that but did that mean she shouldn’t have him at all? Yes, it would hurt when it ended but why shouldn’t she be happy while she still could be? Wasn’t trying to prepare for the end of their relationship now simply borrowing trouble?
Stark disconcertion had widened Vitale’s dark gaze, letting her know that sex had not actually been his goal for once and Jazz smiled sunnily, replete with the feminine power of having surprised him.
‘OK, bellezza mia...’ His dark deep masculine drawl was slightly fractured and he vaulted back upright, sending her a flashing brilliant smile that made her tummy perform a somersault. ‘I’ll shave.’
And away he went to do it, where she had no idea, as she lay back in her candlelit bath, full of warm fuzzy feelings powered only by lemonade and candlelight. He had surprised her too and she was genuinely amazed by
that reality. Vitale could be so very conservative and polite that it was often hard to catch a glimpse of what lay beneath. A man who was worried and concerned enough about their troubled relationship to run her a bath and put candles and flowers around it. Only a little thing though, much like her snow globe but it showed her the other side of Vitale, the side he worked so hard to hide and suppress, the sensitive, caring side. That could be enough for her, she told herself firmly, that could be enough to make the risk of loving him worthwhile even if it couldn’t last for ever. Not everyone got a happy-ever-after.
He had said he was ‘trying’. Well, she could try too, no shame in that, she told herself urgently, blowing out the candles and drying her overheated skin with a fleecy towel before walking naked into the empty bedroom to climb into the bed and rejoice in the cool linen embrace of the sheets.
Vitale reappeared, closed the door and surveyed her where she lay, Titian ringlets spilling across the white pillows like a vibrant banner. Hunger leapt through him with a ferocity that still disturbed him. His motto was moderation in all things but there was nothing moderate or practical about his desire for Jazz. It was a need that took hold of him at odd times of the day even when she wasn’t in front of him, a kind of craving that had creeped him out when he’d first learned that she was pregnant because what had been going on inside his head should, in his estimation, have killed all desire for her, not fuelled it. But now he didn’t even have to think about that anomaly, he told himself with fierce satisfaction. They had reached an accord, he didn’t know how and he didn’t need to know, did he? How wasn’t important; that the accord existed was enough for him.
