Untouched Until Marriage

by Chantelle Shaw

  The raw emotion in her voice caused a curious ache in Raul’s chest, but he hardened his heart against her. She had proved that he could not trust her, and he reminded himself that her motives for pretending to be Gino’s mother were questionable.

  ‘What about you, Libby? Are you also a caring person?’ he queried sardonically. ‘Is that really the only reason you kept up the charade that Gino was your child?’

  ‘Of course it is.’ She stared at him in confusion. ‘What other reason could there have been?’

  Raul shrugged. His face looked as though it had been carved from marble: so beautiful, but so cold and hard. She wondered what had happened to the man who had smiled at her with such warmth when they had made their wedding vows, and whether he had been a figment of her imagination.

  ‘I think you decided to fool me into believing you were Gino’s mother because you knew you would be able to live a life of luxury at the Villa Giulietta. You used Gino as your meal-ticket.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head fiercely, horrified by his accusation.

  ‘Yes, he insisted grimly. ‘But you knew you only had the right to live here while Gino was growing up. No wonder you jumped at my suggestion that we should marry. As my wife you would be financially secure for life.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Libby denied urgently. ‘I didn’t have any ulterior motive for accepting your proposal—any more than you did for marrying me. We both did it for Gino’s sake, so that he would grow up with two parents.’

  Raul speared her with a look of savage contempt. ‘Do you really expect me to believe that the lure of money had nothing to do with your decision? You were presented with the opportunity to marry a billionaire and you seized it.’

  He ignored the look of hurt in her eyes and pushed past her, unable to bear breathing the same air as her. History had a funny way of repeating itself, he thought bitterly. It was a pity he didn’t feel like laughing. He had a reputation as a ruthless adversary in the boardroom, so how had he allowed himself to be taken in by a gold-digger—not once, but twice? Dana and Libby were two of a kind, and he was the biggest fool on the planet.

  He pulled on his shirt and turned to find Libby watching him, her eyes huge in her white face. ‘I thought my first marriage was short when it ended after a year, but twelve hours must be a record,’ he said brutally.

  Libby hugged her arms around herself, shivering despite the warmth of the night, and stared at Raul’s hard face. ‘Wh…what do you mean? And where are you going?’ she asked shakily when he strode over to the door and pulled it open.

  ‘I mean that I will see you in court when I divorce you, cara.’ The sarcasm in the endearment made her shrivel. ‘As to where I am going—hell seems pretty inviting at the moment, compared to being in the same room as you.’

  Panic swept through Libby and she shook her head desperately. ‘No, you can’t mean that—you can’t want a divorce. What about Gino? We married for him, remember? To give him a stable childhood…’

  ‘And that is exactly what I intend to give him. It will be better for him if I bring him up on my own than with a callous liar like you as his mother. There’s not a court in the land that would award you custody of him after the stunt you’ve pulled,’ Raul told her savagely.

  Libby gasped and closed her eyes for a few seconds, willing the room to stop swaying. He couldn’t mean it. Her mind whispered the reassurance over and over, but the cold fury in his eyes warned her that he would never forgive her for deceiving him. She needed to make him understand how much she loved Gino, and that everything she had done had been for the baby’s sake. But he was walking out of the door. She took a jerky step forward and stretched out her hand. He couldn’t leave her.

  ‘Raul…please…’

  He gave her one last bitter look that ripped her heart in two, and slammed the door before she could reach him. She stood trembling, willing him to walk back in, but the sound of his footsteps along the corridor told her he had gone. Suddenly the dam burst and she crumpled to her knees, tears coursing down her face. This was her wedding night, but thanks to her stupidity the honeymoon was over before their marriage had even begun.

  Raul walked swiftly through the silent house and out of the front door, his feet automatically taking him to the place he always went when he needed to be alone. The lake gleamed silver in the moonlight, reflecting the dark shadows of the trees that lined the shore. An owl hooted somewhere, and his footfall thudded on the wooden jetty. It took him mere seconds to untie the mooring rope that secured his sailing boat and he leapt on board and cast off.

  A breeze rippled the surface of the water and sent the boat scudding across the little waves. He focused on adjusting the rigging and headed far out onto the lake, the gentle flap of the sail and the lap of the water against the hull soothing his ragged emotions.

  Libby was not Gino’s mother. She had deceived him and made a fool of him. His nostrils flared as he sought to control his anger, and he sailed on through the velvet darkness, his way lit by the moon and the myriad stars that studded the heavens.

  She had done it for money, of course. She had lied to him just as Dana had lied when she had assured him that she wanted children. Dana had been an avaricious bitch who had married him to get her hands on the Carducci fortune, and Libby was no better.

  But that was not quite true, he brooded. Libby had shown none of his ex-wife’s tendencies to max out his credit card or fill her days shopping for more clothes to cram into her overcrowded wardrobes. Nor had she shown any enthusiasm to visit nightclubs when he had suggested it on the two occasions before their wedding when they had stayed at his apartment in Rome. She would prefer to be at the villa with Gino, she had assured him.

  Her dedication to the baby was indisputable; her love for him was absolutely genuine—Raul was convinced of that. He frowned as he recalled the grim, damp flat in Cornwall where he had found her. She must have made huge sacrifices—both materially and personally—for her little half-brother. He was under no illusions about the difficulties she must have faced as a single mother, trying to work and keep a roof over their heads while she cared for the baby. She was a beautiful young woman who should have been able to enjoy all the things that her peers took for granted: fashionable clothes, parties, socialising with friends—dating. But she had given all that up for Gino.

  Could any woman love a child who was not her own with such generosity of spirit? he wondered sceptically. Dana would certainly not have done. But he knew of one woman who had. His adoptive mother had taken a feral, emotionally damaged seven-year-old boy into her home, and into her heart. Eleanora Carducci had loved him unconditionally, and he had adored her. But after his acrimonious divorce from Dana he had cynically assumed that all women had a hidden agenda. When he had discovered how Libby had tricked him his first reaction had been utter fury, but now his anger was cooling and he wondered if he had judged her too harshly.

  ‘I didn’t have any ulterior motive for accepting your proposal—any more than you did for marrying me. We both did it for Gino’s sake.’

  Her words hammered in Raul’s brain, and guilt reared its ugly head—because he had had an ulterior motive, he acknowledged uncomfortably. He had married her to gain control of Carducci Cosmetics, and in truth had been just as guilty of deceit because he had not made her aware of that clause in Pietro’s will.

  Another thought slipped insidiously into his head. Libby had not been Pietro’s mistress. She and his father had never slept together—in fact he had irrefutable proof that she had never given herself to any other man but him. For some inexplicable reason that fact filled him with a heady sense of triumph. He had always thought of himself as a modern guy, and he had absolutely no problem with a woman’s right to enjoy a varied sex life with a number of partners—but Libby was his, and he was shocked by the primitive feeling of possessiveness that swept through him, the feeling that he wanted to keep her locked up in the high tower of the villa, away from the gaze of any other man.