The Italian's Virgin Bride

by Morey, Trish

  ‘Who was it?’ Opal asked when he’d replaced the receiver at last.

  ‘The police have arrested Frank Scott for arson. Apparently he’s also admitted to lighting the fire at the block of units where Jenny was staying previously. Sounds as if he’ll be locked away for quite some time. The good news is that it sounds as though Brittany is going to make a full recovery.’

  ‘So Jenny and Brittany can move home,’ Opal mused.

  ‘And be safe, by the sounds,’ added Pearl, patting herself on the knees before rising. ‘Now, I know you two need to get cleaned up properly and rest after yesterday’s excitement. I’ll leave you to it.’

  They agreed to meet again for dinner that night. Meanwhile Domenic led Opal by the hand to their suite, the suite she’d fled from on New Year’s Day, so certain that her husband was having an affair and that their marriage was over.

  What else had she been wrong about?

  No sooner had he followed her into the room than he spun her around, forcing her back against the door and trapping her with his arms. Before she had a second to protest, his mouth fell on hers, pressing her lips apart, forcing his way inside. It was a harsh, punishing kiss that made no allowances, taking no prisoners as he ravaged her mouth with untempered passion.

  It wasn’t a kiss that required anything of her. It was a kiss that took, a kiss that spoke to her of anger and frustration and near loss.

  At length he raised his head, his breathing ragged and his chest heaving. He put one hand in her hair, screwing a handful into a fist.

  ‘What made you run away?’

  She winced a little as her hair pulled taut and touched a tongue to her upper lip. It felt swollen and plump, still tingling from the demanding pressure of his mouth. He relaxed his grip, working his fingers through her hair.

  ‘Why did you leave?’

  Why did she leave? There were so many reasons. Where would she start?

  ‘I thought…New Year’s Eve—’

  ‘It was you who phoned?’

  She frowned. Nodded. ‘Someone answered. I thought it was Emma. I thought…’ She squeezed her eyes shut shaking her head.

  ‘You thought I was having an affair.’

  ‘Yes. But instead you’d found my mother. That’s why you went to England—to find her?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice husky and low. ‘I couldn’t tell you before I went. I wasn’t sure if it was her, or if she’d want to come back.’

  ‘What made you think she was alive?’

  He shrugged and drew the pad of his thumb around the line of her jaw, making her breath hitch with the sudden change in his touch, from angry to tender. ‘I wasn’t sure, not at first. But something you said on the island, that you thought your mother should have survived, only to be told she’d died, had me wondering. I sought a death certificate, thinking that it might at least give you some sense of closure. There was none. Then I knew that things were not as you’d been told.’

  ‘But how did you find her?’

  ‘I had investigators scour the records. They found evidence she’d left the country but the trail was cold—your mother had changed her name. That’s when I paid a visit to your father’s solicitor. Eventually I convinced him that he was better off telling me the truth, before I buried him with it. Then he was most helpful.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘though those words don’t come near to expressing how it feels to have my mother again. Although…’ She hesitated. ‘I still don’t understand why you did this.’

  He breathed deep. ‘On the island, that same day you spoke of your parents, for the first time I got some idea of just what I had done by forcing you into this marriage.’ His fingers moulded themselves to the contours of her neck. ‘And I thought that maybe I could find a way to ease some of your pain, to discover what really happened.’

  She swallowed, thinking back to that day on the beach, his sudden mood swing finally making sense. He’d set out to find her mother and she’d rewarded him by thinking the worst.

  ‘I’m sorry I thought you were with Emma,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry I doubted you, but after what happened on our wedding night—’

  ‘Hold on,’ he said, pulling back. ‘Emma was there, for five minutes, but I didn’t invite her. When your mother came to the door Emma answered the phone, no doubt hoping it was you. But what did you mean about our wedding night?’

  She stared up at him, perplexed. As if he didn’t know.

  ‘Our wedding night, when you left. Someone saw you getting into a taxi with Emma.’

  ‘Merdi.’ He spun around, striding halfway across the room. ‘And you think I would spend my wedding night, when I had just married you, with another woman?’

  ‘Well, didn’t you? You certainly didn’t spend it with me.’ She peeled herself away from the door and headed for the opposite side of the room.

  ‘I didn’t spend it with you because you made it quite clear you didn’t want me anywhere near you that night.’

  ‘So you spent it with Emma instead. You were seen getting into a taxi together after all.’

  ‘And was I also seen returning in another taxi, alone, ten minutes later?’ He looked sideways at her. ‘No?’

  She looked at him. Was he telling the truth? ‘But you took off to America the very next day. You expect me to believe that had nothing to do with Emma?’

  He threw his hands into the air. ‘What is this preoccupation of yours with Emma? She is nothing to me.’

  ‘You didn’t spend our wedding night with her?’

  ‘I came back and went to the office,’ he hissed. ‘I spent my night tangling with spreadsheets, not lying between them.’ He moved closer. ‘What kind of man do you think I am?’

  She dropped her eyes quickly. Too quickly. He closed the distance between them and took her by the shoulders, giving her a solid shake.

  ‘You actually believe I could do that?’

  ‘No! Well—it’s just—your reputation…’

  ‘My…reputation?’ he said, his mouth curving.

  ‘You had lots of girlfriends before I came along. And you just wanted a family, a baby from me. I wanted to believe I was special to you, but once I was pregnant, I thought…’

  He lifted her chin, stroked her bottom lip with the pad of his thumb. ‘You feared I was going to treat you like your own mother had been treated. Abandoned while I had my pick of women. Is that it?’

  Her eyes misted and she let her head drop, a silent affirmation.

  He pulled her in tight to his chest, so tight she could feel the strong beat of his heart, feel the warmth from his body leaching into hers.

  ‘Haven’t you learned anything about me these past few months?’ He kissed the top of her head.

  ‘I have. I think maybe I underestimated you. Big time. You weren’t even supposed to know about Pearl’s Place. When did you find out?’

  ‘You think I would go into any business deal without knowing everything?’

  She looked up at him, realising how naïve she’d been, having known what a superb businessman he was and yet still thinking she could keep anything secret from him.

  ‘And I liked what I found,’ he continued. ‘Someone who had all the money that she needed but who chose to share it with those in trouble. Someone who, when her whole business and life were threatened with financial disaster, found a way, indeed, sought out her own way, to continue her business and also her good works.’

  His lips met hers, ever so briefly. ‘When are you going to understand? I married you. I sleep with you. For some strange reason I even think I love you.’

  ‘No,’ she said, her head bolting away, disbelieving. ‘You don’t love me. You can’t.’ She pulled out of his embrace and hugged her arms to her chest.

  ‘How do you know what I’m capable of?’

  ‘But you didn’t marry me because of love. You married me because you wanted one hundred per cent of Clemengers and I wouldn’t give it to you. There was no other reason.’
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br />   ‘Well,’ he shrugged, his head to one side, ‘maybe just one.’

  She looked at him, eyes narrowed, curious but wary. ‘What?’

  ‘You intrigued me, you were beautiful, so confident at times and yet so innocent with it. I wanted you from the very first time you burst into my office. When you insisted my share of Clemengers could not be a controlling interest, I had to find a sweetener for the deal. You were that sweetener.’

  He moved closer. ‘I didn’t realise just how sweet until I got you alone, on the island.’ He took hold of her arms and unwrapped them from her chest, feeling her doubt and wanting to banish it for ever.

  ‘Do you realise how sexy it is to discover your wife is a virgin? Do you realise how sexy it is to learn no man has had your wife, has felt her curves or dipped his tongue to all her secret places?’

  He lowered his head, tracing the tip of his tongue into the curve above her shoulder blade. She gasped, her swift intake of air matched by the expansion of her chest, pushing her breasts out towards him. He cupped one in his hand, feeling the firm peak pressing against his palm, even through the cotton of her T-shirt, the lace of her bra.

  ‘And yet she responds to your every move like a tigress unleashed. How could I not fall in love with such a woman when she is everything that a man could ask for?’

  She swayed in his arms, losing all sense of space and time.

  He loved her. Truly loved her. Never had she imagined such a thing was possible from a marriage orchestrated entirely by contract. It had been enough to wish that they might possibly survive the years in civility.

  ‘And that’s why I would never be unfaithful to you. Never. You need to understand that.’

  ‘I think I do,’ she said, her head buzzing, her heart beating madly. ‘I wanted to believe that all along. I wanted to but I was too scared to believe it could be true.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it’s true.’

  ‘Do I still need to tell you why I ran away?’

  His beautiful dark eyes narrowed, his mouth turning up on one side, making a crease in his cheek she moved to run her finger along. ‘Because you thought I was with Emma?’

  ‘But did it occur to you why that would matter?’

  It was her turn to smile, her turn to wait for his response.

  His brow knitted. ‘You expected to hate me. I gave you just cause by forcing you into this marriage. And then you suspect I am making love with another. I know I can’t expect you to like me, but I can ask that you forgive me for treating you so badly in the first place.’

  ‘But that’s not why I ran away.’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘Because the one thing I was most scared of had happened to me. The one thing I had protected myself against my whole life.’

  She reached for his hands, feeling the blood beating within his, echoing her own rapid pulse. ‘I fell in love with you, Domenic, and I fell hard. I didn’t want to. I put all sorts of barriers and walls up, but you broke through them all.

  ‘Even when I told myself that you would never commit to any one woman, I wanted to believe you might one day commit to me.

  ‘That’s why I ran away. Because I love you and because I was afraid that you would never love me back, and I could never, ever live with that.’

  He reached his arms around her, pulling her curves in tight against him, so she could feel every muscle and ridge in his body pressed hard against hers and know that he was hers, for now and for always.

  ‘Mrs Silvagni,’ he said, his lips closing upon hers. ‘As long as I’m around, you’ll never have to.’ He paused.

  ‘I love you, Opal. There will never be a question of me not loving you back. I will always love you.’

  ‘As I will always love you.’

  He kissed her then and she kissed him back, hearts and souls intertwined, knowing that their lives had changed irrevocably this day, that nothing would ever be the same for them and that life in each other’s arms would be nothing short of for ever.

  ‘Now,’ he said, releasing his hold on her a fraction, ‘how about that shower?’

  She beamed up at him. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’