‘I appreciate your theory about the reason for my supposed emotional retardation,’ he said sardonically, ‘but the truth is that I preferred my life without the addition of a wife and I’m ending our marriage deal.’
* * *
Snow lay thick on the ground, and the roofs of the houses around Lake Como looked as though they were covered in a layer of white icing. People said it was the harshest winter they could remember, and Luca knew he had never felt such bitter, biting cold. It had turned his heart into a lump of ice in his chest.
Even the roaring fire in his study at Villa De Rossi that Geomar so assiduously tended failed to warm him. He felt dead inside, and brutally alone—as if Athena had ripped his soul from him when she had left that same evening he had told her he intended to end their marriage. And as the days slipped into weeks, and the ache inside became unbearable, Luca faced the truth: without Athena he would never be whole again.
Reminding himself that he had acted in her best interests when he had sent her away did not help. Being noble was highly overrated, he’d discovered. Missing her felt as agonising as if one of his limbs had been severed, and now, two weeks before Christmas, as he trudged through the crowded streets in Milan past brightly lit shop windows and the huge Christmas tree in front of the Duomo, he realised that he had to do something to try to ease the pain that overwhelmed him.
But what could he do? As much as he might wish it, Luca could not change the man he was—and he could not give Athena the family he was sure she wanted.
He remembered Athena’s accusation that he shied away from commitment because he was afraid of rejection after his mother and his grandmother and Jodie had rejected him, and he admitted there was some truth in her words. He was scared of being happy with Athena in case he lost her and his happiness ended.
He was a coward, Luca told himself disgustedly, but that was something he could and would change—if he hadn’t left it too late.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE STREETS IN the centre of Jaipur, capital city of Rajasthan, were a chaotic mix of buses and bikes, rickshaws and camels—who often added to the mayhem by lying down in the road and refusing to budge.
Luca observed the confusion of traffic and people from the back seat of a taxi. Ordinarily the sights and sounds of a new city would have enchanted him: the colourful silks in the bazaar and the astounding architecture of the majestic City Palace. But he stared unseeingly out of the window as the car joined the highway and headed out to the suburbs, where the houses became progressively more dilapidated and the sides of the road were filled with fruit stalls and bread stalls, with children running, dogs barking and the occasional cow ambling.
After what seemed like an eternity of driving along roads with potholes as big as craters, and nothing on the horizon but dry-as-dust land and a few sparse trees, the taxi driver spoke over his shoulder to Luca.
‘The House of Happy Smiles is over there.’
For the first time in days, in weeks, Luca felt interest. He felt alive instead of feeling the dull nothingness that had plagued him day and night. And he felt a lurch of fear in his gut, so that he actually had to stop himself from retching when he remembered how he had dismissed Athena’s love and sent her away from Villa De Rossi.
He looked at the square modern building. Half of it was apparently an orphanage and the other half was a school—or it would be when it was finished. Next to the new house was a ramshackle old building, with crumbling walls and a tin roof.
‘What is that place?’ he asked the taxi driver.
‘That’s the old orphanage—before the American and the English memsahibs came together with some Indian businessmen and raised the money to build the new one.’
Two contrasting images flashed into Luca’s mind: his Christmas fashion show, attended by the wealthiest women of Milan’s high society, and the waste tip the taxi had driven past further back along the road, where he had seen children crawling over the rubbish—searching, as he had been informed by the driver, for anything of minuscule value to sell so that they could buy food.
In his mind he heard Athena telling him she was going to build a house with the million pounds he had paid her to be his wife. He had assumed she meant a house for her to live in, but no.
As the taxi drove up to the House of Happy Smiles, a swarm of children ran into the compound, laughing and chattering, their big eyes wide with curiosity when they saw their visitor.
Athena was somewhere here—in this house she had built for the orphaned children of Jaipur.
‘I love you, Luca.’
Dio! Luca ran his hand across his eyes. What had he done?
* * *
Athena finished feeding the two youngest residents of the orphanage and settled them next to each other in a cot. The twins, a girl and a boy, had been discovered abandoned in a cardboard box in the city. It was thought that Jaya and Vijay were about six weeks old, and caring for them had helped a little to ease the ache in Athena’s heart, which had splintered when Luca had announced he was ending their marriage.
She had left the villa and Italy immediately, and flown to India. Working at the orphanage gave her some solace, and a reason to get up every morning, but at night she could not hold back her tears. She had to accept that Luca did not love her, but she wondered if her broken heart would ever mend.
Cara Tanner put her head round the nursery door. ‘Athena, you’ve got a visitor in your office.’
A visitor? No one apart from her sister and brother-in-law even knew she was in India.
The door to her office had fallen off its hinges a long time ago. Now that the new building was finished, Athena was looking forward to moving in to her own private flat at the orphanage. Her thoughts scattered as she pushed past the old sheet pinned across the doorway—and her stomach bottomed out as she stared in disbelief at Luca.
‘What...?’ Her voice was a thread of sound. She swallowed and kept on staring at him, sure he could not be real.
He looked even more gorgeous than her memories of him, his body leaner, harder beneath a white silk shirt and beige chinos. But when she looked closely at his face she saw fine lines around his eyes, as if his nights were as sleepless as hers, and his hair was longer, so that he had to rake it back from his brow with a hand that she noticed shook slightly.
‘How did you find me?’
‘I went to Zenhab and pleaded with Lexi until she gave in and told me about this place.’ His eyes moved to the window and its view of the crisp white new building. ‘I like the house you’ve built,’ he said huskily. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about your involvement with the orphanage?’
She bit her lip. ‘I thought you might not approve of how I had spent your money.’
‘It was your money to spend as you liked. But, for what it’s worth, I think what you have done here is amazing.’
His smile caused a shaft of pain to slice through Athena. ‘Why are you here?’ she said abruptly. She froze as a thought struck her. ‘Rosalie...?’
‘She’s okay. Her condition will never get better, but thankfully she is no worse.’ He hesitated. ‘She can’t say the words, but I know she misses you.’
‘I miss her, too.’ This was agonising. ‘Luca...’
He strode towards her, but then stopped. There was no sign now of his usual effortless grace. His amber eyes sought hers, and seeing his emotions unguarded for once made Athena catch her breath.
‘I came to ask you to come back to Villa De Rossi and be my wife again,’ he said tautly.
Athena swiftly quashed her leap of hope. ‘Is your great-uncle making problems again? Do you need to convince him that our marriage is not a sham?’
He shook his head. ‘Emilio is out of the picture. The other board members refused to vote him in as chairman of De Rossi Enterprises and instead unanimously voted f
or me. My great-uncle has retired to his vineyards in Sicily.’
She frowned. ‘Then why...?’
‘I miss you.’
Luca saw shock in her eyes and knew he only had himself to blame. Because—as he could see she was about to remind him—he had sent her away. He had done it for the best of reasons. He would always feel guilty that he had unwittingly been the cause of his daughter’s illness, and he could not live with yet more guilt knowing that he could not give Athena children. But he did not know if she would understand or if he had hurt her too much.
‘I miss you,’ he repeated, his voice rasping as if he had swallowed metal filings. ‘I’m asking you to come back to me.’ He swallowed. ‘Not for ever...’ He did not have the right to ask her to sacrifice her dreams of having a child. ‘But for a little while...until you decide you want to move on and meet a man who can give you...give you what you want. A family...children,’ he qualified roughly when she looked mystified.
Athena ignored the violent pounding of her heart. Every night after she had cried herself to sleep she dreamed of Luca coming back to her, but now it actually seemed to be happening she felt angry—and scared that she was misreading the message in his eyes.
‘Why do you miss me?’
The whirr of the ceiling fan above the desk suddenly seemed to fill the room. Whump-whump. Luca’s mouth felt dry and the palms of his hands were wet. Man up, demanded a voice inside his head. But for moment he was eight years old, sitting on his mother’s bed, holding a silk scarf that smelled of her perfume, wondering why she had left him.
His grandmother had told him his mother hadn’t loved him, that no one ever would—a dirty bastardo. His grandmother had been right. Jodie hadn’t loved him, and she had left him alone to bring up their poor, damaged little girl.
But Athena wasn’t like Jodie. He had to keep telling himself that.
‘I love you.’ The words felt unfamiliar on his tongue.
Something hot and fierce poured through Athena’s veins. It was temper, she realised with surprise. All her life she had been meek and mild, but right at this moment she felt furious.
She marched over to Luca and pulled off her wide-brimmed hat so that she could see his face clearly. The gleam in his eyes as he watched her hair unravel and slide down her back evoked an ache in her belly—but sex was easy. She wanted so much more.
‘Let me get this straight. You want me to be your wife again—but not for ever. Just until I meet another man who presumably will have a medical certificate to prove that his genes are perfect.’
She saw Luca’s gaze drop to the jerky rise and fall of her breasts beneath her thin cotton dress and folded her arms over her chest.
‘How am I supposed to meet this man? Will I live with you during the week and go on dates with other guys at weekends?’
He raked an unsteady hand through his hair. ‘I haven’t thought out the details. If you want the truth, I can’t bear the idea of you with some other guy,’ he said grimly. ‘But I have to think what is best for you. I’m trying to do the right thing. I won’t allow you to sacrifice your desire for children.’
Athena shook her head. ‘I don’t want a half-hearted relationship—or your half-hearted love.’ Tears stung her eyes. ‘If you really love me, say it like you mean it, Luca. I want everything...or nothing.’
He caught hold of her arms to prevent her from turning away.
‘I can’t give you everything,’ he said hoarsely. ‘You know I can’t give you babies. I love you with all my heart—more than I knew it was possible to love someone—and because I love you I want you to be happy. That’s why I sent you away from Villa De Rossi, away from me. I felt like my heart had been ripped out when I watched you drive away, but I wanted you to have the chance to fall in love—to be wooed, to have a fairytale wedding and plan the colour scheme of your nursery. I know how much you love children.’
‘I love you more.’
She could not see him properly through her tears, so she stood on tiptoe and reached up to cradle his face between her hands, feeling the rough stubble on his jaw scrape her skin.
‘You are everything, Luca. You are my one love, and there can never be anyone else for me because you are all I want and I will love you until I die.’
She stared into his eyes.
‘If we had fallen in love and married in the conventional way, and then discovered that for some reason I couldn’t have children, would you have ended our marriage and looked for another wife?’
‘No, of course not. I want to spend the rest of my life with you and only you.’ Luca felt as if iron bands were squeezing his lungs. ‘I love you, Athena—more than I can say in words. I didn’t expect to, or want to, if I’m honest,’ he said rawly, ‘but it crept up on me bit by bit. I wanted to hurt anyone who hurt you, to keep you safe and see your beautiful smile every day.’
He kissed her damp eyelashes.
‘Don’t cry, piccola,’ he whispered.
But his own tears mingled with hers as he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her face, her lips, in a silent avowal of his love that would last a lifetime.
He reached into his pocket. ‘I bought this the day after I’d lied and told you I didn’t love you. But for weeks I was afraid to come and find you because I was sure you’d tell me to get lost.’
Athena smiled when she saw the gold heart-shaped locket inscribed with tiny flowers on the front. ‘You said you wouldn’t give me hearts and flowers,’ she remembered.
Luca’s amber eyes blazed with emotion. ‘I said a lot of things I didn’t mean, but I couldn’t say the words that come from the bottom of my heart. Ti amo. I love you, piccola. Will you be my wife and the love of my life for ever?’
‘I will,’ she promised. ‘Let me show you.’
She led him by the hand into the bedroom behind her office—which luckily did have a door.
Luca glanced around the sparsely furnished room and thought that Athena asked for so little and gave so much.
‘It looks like a nun’s cell,’ he murmured as he sat down on the narrow bed and pulled her onto his lap.
‘But you know I’m not an innocent virgin.’
Her eyes darkened with anticipation as he removed her dress and bra and cupped her breasts in his hands, bending his dark head to anoint each rosy pink nipple with tender kisses until she moaned with pleasure. She helped him strip out of his clothes and gave a contented sigh when he covered her naked body with his and she felt the hardness of his arousal push between her thighs.
‘I wish there were mirrors on the ceiling... You’ve corrupted my body and captured my heart, and now I am yours for ever.’
‘As I am yours,’ Luca vowed. ‘For ever.’
EPILOGUE
THE WEEPING WILLOW tree provided shade from the Italian summer sun, and the lavender bushes in full bloom hummed with the sound of industrious bees. Luca pushed his daughter’s wheelchair along the wide paths, pausing often so that Rosalie could smell the mingled scents from the herb garden.
Following him toddled a sturdy little boy with a mop of black hair and a determined chin. Faisal Al Sulaimar, heir to the desert kingdom of Zenhab, showed no sign of the slight heart problem he had been born with, and Kadir had told Luca that Faisal had recently been given the all-clear by his specialist.
‘My nephew is as daring as his mother,’ Athena said as she ran along the path and stopped Faisal from trying to climb into the raised garden bed. ‘I think Lexi is hoping the new baby doesn’t turn out as adventurous as his or her older brother.’
She glanced at her heavily pregnant sister, and back to Luca, and her smile lifted his heart as it always did.
‘We’re going to have our work cut out when Jaya and Vijay learn to walk. The drawback with twins is that they do everything at roughly the same time. They’r
e double trouble.’
Luca knelt down on the rug spread on the grass and scooped his adopted baby son and daughter into his arms. ‘Double the joy,’ he said softly. ‘Double the fun and laughter and love.’
‘Oh, yes, we’re doubly lucky,’ Athena agreed.
A few weeks after she and Luca had had their marriage blessed in a beautiful ceremony in the local village church in Jaipur they had become the proud adoptive parents of Jaya and Vijay. They were determined to bring their children up with an understanding of their Indian culture, and planned to spend as much time as possible at the orphanage in Jaipur, helping to care for the abandoned children who called the House of Happy Smiles home.
She knelt down beside Luca and her heart missed a beat when she saw his love for her blazing in his eyes. ‘Most of all we are lucky to have each other,’ she whispered. ‘I couldn’t ask for more.’
His eyes took on a wicked glint. ‘Actually, there was one thing missing from our lives—but a mirrored ceiling above our bed is being fitted today. I think we should have a very early night, mia bella...’
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from VOWS OF REVENGE by Dani Collins.
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