Buying His Bride of Convenience

by Michelle Smart

  Daniele had kept all his promises. He hadn’t broken a single one.

  Another huge pang hit her as she recalled his promise to never love her and she squeezed her eyes even tighter as the pang hit her heart and set it into a pounding boom.

  She’d sworn to him she would never fall in love with him. It had been a promise made in the heat of anger when she had looked at him and wanted nothing more than to punch his arrogant, supercilious face. She’d hated him then. Everything about him. But she’d feared her sensory awareness of him, and she had been right to fear it. Making love to him had opened a whole new part of her that had been hidden away from her all her life, an earthy, pleasure-seeking side that was entirely centred round him.

  She had to remind herself that overwhelming tenderness for the man she had amazing sex with did not mean she was falling in love. Daniele had chosen her specifically for her level head and her ability to contain her emotions and now she needed to use that level head and see things from a logical point of view rather than from an aching romantic viewpoint he would laugh at scornfully if he were to know of it.

  * * *

  The record Daniele was listening to came to a stop. He got up from his office chair and stood at the old-fashioned record player he had on display on a low cabinet, lifted the stylus and carefully placed the record that had been playing in its sleeve, then flipped through the dozens of twelve-inch vinyl albums stacked beside it. Eva had got it all for him. It had been his main Christmas present from her.

  On a monetary level it was a drop in the ocean but the thought that had gone into it, and the time and effort she had taken getting it all together made his heart hurt to think about it. He remembered one very brief conversation where he’d told her how much better music sounded on vinyl records and she hadn’t just committed it to memory but hunted one down for him and all his favourite albums to play on it. It had made his gift of a sports car that was all her own seem trifling in comparison.

  Strange, he thought, how the simplest things could make a man feel so damned awful.

  Christmas had come and gone with the joyousness of a wake. All the planning and preparation Eva had done for it had come to nothing. Daniele wished she had complained but, in her usual calm way, she had displayed only compassion and understanding, which made him feel even worse.

  His mother had confined herself to her bedroom. Losing her beloved husband and favourite beloved son in a year of each other had knocked her badly but she’d forced herself to carry on in the way the Pellegrinis always carried on. Learning her favourite son had been a closet homosexual who had kept the love of his life a secret from her had knocked the last of her stuffing out. She couldn’t stop crying.

  Eva had said to him privately, gently, that she thought it was the grief of Pieta’s death finally hitting her that had her acting like this because this was the first time his mother—all of them—had desperately needed to talk to him and confront him since his death but he wasn’t there to either defend himself or ask for their forgiveness. He was dead.

  Daniele had given a noncommittal grunt in answer and bitten back from shouting at her that she didn’t know what she was talking about. He’d been on edge around her since he’d woken on Christmas Eve with a thumping hangover and a throat as dry as the Gobi Desert. The glass of water on his bedside table had glimmered at him like a mirage, but it had been no illusion. Eva had thought to put it there for him. Of course she had.

  At first memories of his drunken rampage had been hazy, little flickers that had taken their time to come together to create a whole scene. The drink had loosened his tongue. He’d revealed things to Eva that he’d never even admitted to himself and now there was a crater in his guts and a tightness in his chest that wouldn’t ease. He’d revealed too much. That’s if his memories could be relied upon. He could swear he remembered her addressing him as, ‘my love’.

  Neither of them had mentioned their talk. She’d enquired about his head and offered to get more painkillers for him but had said nothing about his confession.

  His office door opened and the woman he’d been thinking of stepped hesitantly inside.

  ‘Can I speak to you?’ she asked, a hint of caution in her musical voice.

  The easy closeness that had developed between them in the first three weeks of their marriage had gone. They were unfailingly polite to each other but now it was like they walked on invisible eggshells. He didn’t know if this was Eva feeding off his own distance or if she too had realised at the same time as he that they had become too intimate too quickly and that it was time to take a step back and put their marriage on the footing that had originally been intended.

  Or maybe his drunken rampage and cruel words about his brother had been the reminder she’d needed that despite the great sex between them and for all her words that he was worth a thousand of his brother, she saw much to dislike in him.

  Whatever it was, the distance between them was good.

  ‘Sure. Come in.’ He went back to his desk and sat down.

  She closed the door then stood with her back to it.

  Tucking her hair behind her ear, she looked at him as if weighing up his mood—which she probably was—and said, ‘Your sister just called me.’

  He shrugged. Francesca and Eva had developed a close friendship. As far as he knew, they spoke every few days.

  ‘She said you’re refusing to go to the hospital opening next week.’

  Eva saw his jaw clench and her heart sank.

  ‘My sister knows my feelings about it.’

  And so did she, although he hadn’t said anything about it to her. Daniele no longer spoke to her, not about anything important.

  Since he’d woken on Christmas Eve, he’d been a changed man. A distant man. The easy, sexy smile was gone. The witty quips and innuendoes were a thing of the past. Now he just got on with his work and spent hours with his lawyers, trying to get the transferral of the castello into his name speeded up. He’d mentioned over dinner the other night that it should be done within days. That had been right before he’d informed her he was going out. He hadn’t said where he was going or asked her to join him.

  Her pride had refused to let her question him and her pride had made her feign sleep when he’d got into bed hours past midnight.

  The only thing they still did together was have sex and even that had taken a different hue. Only when they woke in the middle of the night already in each other’s arms did the barriers they’d silently erected between themselves come down and they could make love with the emotional abandon she’d become dangerously used to.

  It was as well Daniele had distanced himself from her, she thought, although it made her lungs cramp and her brain burn to think it. It made it easier for her to put her level head on and remind herself of what their marriage agreement was all about, which absolutely was not about emotions or feelings.

  Instinct told her Daniele hadn’t found another lover yet but she knew it wouldn’t be long. A man like him thrilled in the chase. She’d been his prey, he’d caught her, and sooner or later he’d seek his next target.

  And when he did...?

  The cramp in her lungs extended to her stomach, twisting it with such violence it felt as if someone had put a vice in it.

  ‘I understand why you don’t want to go,’ she said, choosing her words carefully. ‘But you have to.’

  This was something she couldn’t keep her distance from any longer, not after Francesca had begged her to help. She seemed to be under the impression that Daniele listened to her and had been as cloth-eared as her brother when Eva had tried to correct this impression.

  But she wasn’t having this conversation for Francesca’s sake. She was having it for Daniele’s. If he didn’t go to the opening he would regret it for the rest of his life. She knew better than to phrase it like that, though. These were waters she’d have to navigate cautiously.

  His eyes narrowed dangerously. ‘I don’t have to do anything.’

&nbs
p; ‘In this case you do. Do you want the world to think you’re ashamed of your brother’s sexuality?’

  ‘That is not what this is about,’ he said, a snarl forming on his lips and his hands curling into tight fists.

  ‘I know that.’ She refused to drop her stare from his. These were words he needed to hear. ‘But that is how it will look.’

  ‘I. Don’t. Care. How. It. Looks.’

  ‘This isn’t about you.’ Although it was to her. ‘This is about your family. They need you—your mother needs you. If she’s going to put on a brave face to the world’s media, she needs your support.’

  ‘She has never needed my support before,’ he dismissed tightly.

  ‘How do you know? Have you ever asked her?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Have you ever asked her if she needs your support, or have you always assumed that because she had your brother and sister to hold her up that she didn’t need you too? Because if that was what you thought, you were wrong.’

  He half hovered off his chair and leaned forward, speaking as if she were an impertinent child. ‘You don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘I know she loves you and I know she needs you. Did you know Matteo and Natasha are going?’

  ‘They wouldn’t dare.’

  Eva breathed in deeply. ‘They love each other. They never went behind Pieta’s back, although in light of what’s come out about your brother, I think they could have been forgiven for it. Your mother is desperate to make amends with them. She’s desperate to bring her family back together. She loves you all. She wants to honour Pieta by attending the hospital opening but she needs you at her side.’

  ‘If my mother wants all this then why hasn’t she spoken to me about it?’

  ‘Because you refuse to talk about it. Daniele... Your brother deserves this memorial. Whatever he did wrong it doesn’t take away the good he did. If his own wife can forgive him and show that forgiveness publicly, then you can too.’

  It was as if all the fight went out of him.

  He closed his eyes and sank back down on his seat, then bowed his head and dug his fingers into his hair.

  Unable to witness his pain—and she knew in her heart that Daniele was in terrible torment—Eva stepped over to him and placed a hand lightly on his shoulder. Swallowing to get moisture into her dry throat, she said, ‘I told you when you were drunk that you’re worth a thousand of your brother. Prove me right. Be the man I think you are, not the man I thought you were when I first met you.’

  Silence filled the room before he answered with a coldness that chilled her. ‘I haven’t changed, Eva. Whatever you thought or think you know about me, I will never change.’ Then he covered her hand resting on his shoulder and pushed it gently away. ‘Please excuse me. I have work to do.’

  Fighting with all her might to hide her hurt, she managed the smallest of smiles. ‘Will you at least think about coming to the opening?’

  He jerked a nod and opened a desk drawer. ‘I will think about it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  As she walked out of his office, she couldn’t help but note that he’d only addressed her by her given name since the day the truth about his brother had come out.

  * * *

  Daniele was as good as his word. Two days later he told her over breakfast that he’d thought about it and would attend the opening of the hospital in Caballeros, which would be the permanent memorial to his brother.

  And now here they were, five days after that decision, in a convoy of cars with the tightest of security driving over the potholed narrow Caballeron roads to the hospital itself.

  It felt like a lifetime ago since Eva had been in this country but it had hardly been two months. She didn’t see any material changes, not until their driver slowed for a security cordon and showed their pass, and they were directed to the hospital car park where she saw what Daniele and his family had created.

  In the middle of a city where the electricity failed on a daily basis stood a huge gleaming white building that was obviously a hospital but which had been constructed with a sympathy to the country’s Spanish-Caribbean heritage. Hundreds of people stood inside the cordon, the vast majority of them from the press. A little apart from them, heavily guarded by Felipe’s men, were Daniele’s mother, sister, aunt, cousin and sister-in-law, along with dozens of other faces she didn’t recognise but guessed were friends or colleagues of Pieta Pellegrini. She saw the Governor of the city and his entourage too. They were all keeping a wary eye on Felipe, who hadn’t let go of his fiancée’s hand since their arrival.

  On the other side of the cordon stood, literally, thousands of Caballerons, there to witness the opening of a hospital in their desolate country, a place they could give birth in, take their injured children to and be treated for all manner of diseases and ailments.

  Daniele held her hand tightly as they joined his family. He embraced his mother and sister then looked at Matteo.

  Eva held her breath. She thought she heard everyone else hold theirs too.

  Matteo held his hand out to him.

  The last time Daniele and Matteo had seen each other had been the fight that had brought Daniele to her refugee camp so she could patch him up.

  Then, the flashlight of cameras going off all around them, Daniele ignored his cousin’s hand and pulled him into a bear hug that made Eva’s belly turn to mush. After this wonderful display of Italian affection, Daniele then stood before his sister-in-law and kissed and embraced her too.

  With the Pellegrinis all back together, they stood by the main hospital entrance, beneath the plaque that bore Pieta’s name.

  A small podium with a microphone had been set up for the speeches that would follow.

  To Eva’s shock, Daniele stepped onto it first.

  Silence fell.

  He cleared his throat and darted a glance at her. Her hand at her throat, she gave the briefest of nods.

  He spoke in English. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you all for coming here today for the opening of the hospital my brother, Pieta, had planned to build before he was so cruelly taken away from us. My brother was a good, inspirational man who always used the privilege he was born with to help others.’

  A murmur rippled through the crowd. Eva didn’t need to guess what it was for.

  ‘I’m sure many of you have read the stories about him in recent weeks. They are all true.’

  Now the murmurs turned into muffled gasps. No one had expected him to tackle the issue head on.

  ‘He made mistakes. He was human. He lied and he cheated and like every one of us here his blood ran red.’

  Now hushed silence fell again.

  ‘I wish—we, his family, we all wish—that he’d had the courage to be open with us about his sexuality. Nothing would have changed. We would have still loved him. We do still love him and we want nothing to detract from the good work my brother did or detract from the immense courage he showed in the rest of his life. Without him, without his vision, without his refusal to simply accept that some things could never be done, none of us would be here today and this ground we stand on would be the wasteland it once was. This hospital was Pieta’s response to the hurricane that devastated this country and I know that if there’s a heaven he’ll be the happiest soul in it to see what’s been accomplished in his memory.’

  Then he nodded his thanks to his captive audience and stepped off the podium and went straight back to Eva’s side, taking her hand and holding it tightly.

  ‘That was amazing,’ she whispered, so full of pride she struggled to get the words out.

  He squeezed a response and then they both watched as the self-important corrupt Governor took his place on the podium.

  Her heart was beating too loudly to hear anything else that was said.

  It wasn’t just Daniele’s acceptance of his brother and the past that had her so choked, it was the way he held her hand.

  Other than in the bedroom, there had been no affection betwe
en them since Christmas and only now that he was showing it again did she realise how badly his withdrawal had hurt her. She’d carried on as best she could, pretending to herself that it didn’t matter, that this was the marriage she’d signed up to, but now, his fingers locked through hers, her pride for him as real and as filling as anything she’d ever known, the truth hit her like a cold slap.

  She didn’t want the marriage she’d signed up for. She wanted the real thing. She wanted to have a dozen of his babies and raise them with him. She wanted to watch his hair turn from dark to grey. She wanted to see the lines that had begun to etch his face deepen into grooves. She wanted to hold his hand for ever.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  She blinked out of the trance she’d fallen into.

  The speeches were over and Daniele was staring at her with the creased brow that would one day turn into the groove she wanted to be there to see.

  She needed to smile some reassurance at him but the muscles in her face didn’t want to work.

  ‘I’m fine. Just a little overwhelmed.’ No, not a little overwhelmed. Completely overwhelmed, by her feelings and by the sheer terror making her skin chill and her blood feel like ice.

  She’d been frightened before, many times, but never had she felt fear like this.

  She’d done the worst thing she could have possibly done and fallen in love with him.

  How could she be so stupid and make herself so vulnerable as to love someone who could never love her back?

  And then she looked at the worry in his eyes. Even if he didn’t love her, he did feel something for her. Didn’t he...?

  He cupped her cheek. ‘Do you still want to go to the camp?’

  She’d mentioned that she’d like to visit the children there and see how everyone was getting on. He’d suggested she go after the memorial as they’d be flying back to Italy in the morning. He’d then surprised her by asking if she wanted him to go with her. Thinking he should spend the time with his family, she’d reluctantly said no. The Pelligrinis would fly to the neighbouring island of Aguadilla and she would join them in a few hours. It was all arranged. Felipe had arranged for three of his men to go with her. She’d laughed at the idea of having bodyguards until Daniele had reminded her, with more force than he usually spoke with, that she would only go to the camp with armed protection at her side, that she needed to remember she was a wealthy woman married into a famous family and so would have a price on her head.