Equally warm, Enrico had echoed his wife’s sentiments, which ought to have reassured Cassandra. And perhaps it would have, had Benedict not grown correspondingly more remote, more preoccupied. But immediately upon arrival at the Manzini residence, he’d disappeared without a word into Enrico’s home office, and left his wife to fend for herself.
“Family business,” Bianca had explained apologetically, noticing Cassie’s dismay at being so soon abandoned among strangers. “Always with this family, the business must be attended to first, and then we play. So, cara, while our men pore over legal documents and international import regulations, come and meet my children. They’re so eager to greet their new aunt, and you’re here for such a short spell this time, that I kept my son home from school today so that he could make the most of your visit.”
As she spoke, she’d led the way to a large sunny room at the rear of the house, where a boy worked on a model aircraft at a table, and a girl played on the floor with a doll house. Both of them dark and beautiful like their mother, they stopped what they were doing and stood politely during the formal introductions.
“Hello,” the boy had murmured shyly, shaking Cassie’s hand. “You are welcoming to Italia.”
“Stefano’s been practicing saying that in English ever since Benedict phoned to let us know he was bringing you to meet us,” Bianca told her in an amused aside. “I’m afraid, though, that he still doesn’t have it quite right.”
“Never mind,” Cassie had replied, completely won over by the boy’s smile. “His English is a whole lot better than my Italian. He puts me to shame.”
The girl, Pia, unwilling to remain in her brother’s shade, rattled off a stream of Italian of which only Ciao! meant anything to Cassie. But she understood what was expected of her when the child tugged at her hand and pulled her over to admire the doll’s house which, with its elaborate facade and rooms full of exquisite furniture, was truly a work of art.
“A gift from Benedict,” Bianca said. “He’s a very indulgent uncle and will be, I’m sure, an equally indulgent husband.”
Perhaps not, if his recent attitude was anything to go by, Cassie thought now, letting the drapes fall back into place as Benedict and Bianca disappeared from view, although his apparent devotion to his niece and nephew boded well for his own child. But then, she already knew that because, as he was so fond of saying, “The baby comes first.”
Down below, a door thudded closed and voices, one deeply resonant as only a man’s could be, the other feminine and full of laughter, drifted up from the entrance hall in a vivacious burst of rapid-fire Italian. Opening the bedroom door a crack, Cassie caught the occasional word—domani…bambini, and her own name, Cassandra.
Beyond that, she hadn’t the first clue what her husband and sister-in-law were talking about, and promised herself that, tomorrow, she’d buy an Italian phrase book at the airport, and study it during the short flight to Calabria. Hopefully, if she memorized a few common expressions—I’m very pleased to meet you. How are you? You have a lovely home—it might persuade her new mother-in-law to look upon her more favorably.
And Benedict? Would her effort to absorb something of his culture and background move him to treat her with the kind of warmth he’d initially shown when he sought her out again in San Francisco? Or was his present courteous reserve all she had to look forward to, now that he’d achieved his ambition and made her his wife?
Oh, he was kind enough, in an abstract sort of way, but somewhere between his asking her to marry him, and her saying “I do,” the sexual electricity which had charged their every encounter had flickered and died. Beyond a sedate kiss on the cheek, an impersonal hand at her elbow to help her cross the street or climb out of a car, he made no attempt to touch her anymore.
At first, she’d put down the change in him to his having too many other matters occupying his attention, too many demands on his time. She’d told herself that, once they’d left all the rush behind, and it was just the two of them in Italy, he’d be his former self again and the old attraction would resurface.
But it hadn’t happened. If anything, with each passing hour, he became more…absent mindedly paternalistic. And she hated it!
The moon, now fully risen above the trees, cast a pale and melancholy light over the room, and reduced the warm wood of the elegant furniture to a chill, tomblike gray. And she, on her supposed honeymoon, sat propped up by pillows, alone in the wide, wrought-iron bed.
Too drained to flick on the reading lamp and lose herself in the paperback novel lying in her lap, too homesick for the familiar comfort of her own house and friends, and too at odds with her tangled emotions to take refuge in sleep, she stared into the semi-darkness.
How long she remained like that, utterly motionless, utterly miserable, she neither knew nor cared. At some level, she was aware of the house gradually sinking into peaceful silence, but it could have been hours or only minutes before she heard the well-oiled snick of the door opening, and saw Benedict’s tall figure on the threshold, silhouetted by the soft glow of a night-light in the upper hall.
Quietly, he closed the door, and picked his way across the floor, clearly intending to shut himself in the adjoining dressing room so as not to disturb her. But she, anticipating just such a move, announced coldly, “It’s quite all right to turn on the light, Benedict. Contrary to your express command, I am not sleeping.”
Startled into dropping the shoes he’d been carrying, he let out a smothered exclamation, and groped for the switch on the bedside lamp. “Then why the devil are you sitting here in the dark?”
She blinked in the sudden bright glare. “What does it look like?” she said. “I’m waiting for my husband to come to bed, the way all brides do on their honeymoon. Or isn’t that the custom in Italy?”
CHAPTER SIX
HE MADE a big production of removing his jacket and tie, and hanging them in the wardrobe. “If I’d known you were still wide-awake—”
“You’d have done what?” she snapped, glaring at his back. “Stayed here to keep me company, instead of going for an evening stroll with your sister?”
He spun back to face her, a frown creasing his brow. “I wasn’t aware you knew we’d gone out. Were you watching us?”
“I saw you, which isn’t quite the same thing. And I wondered if there was a reason you sent me off to bed, instead of asking me to join you.”
“Cassandra,” he said, standing at the foot of the bed, and adopting that reasonable I-know-what’s-best-for-you tone she was beginning to loathe, “you were fading so noticeably over dinner that it simply didn’t occur to me to ask you to come with us.”
“I’m pregnant, Benedict, not terminally ill. And I’m old enough to decide for myself when I need to retire for the night.”
“Fine!” He shrugged, removed his cuff links, and took his time rolling his shirtsleeves midway up his forearms. “Forgive me for caring enough about your welfare to give a damn! In future, do as you please.”
“I intend to,” she informed him. “And right now, it pleases me to discover why you’re more interested in acting like my guardian than my husband. A week ago, you couldn’t get enough of my company. Now, you’re so busy keeping your distance, I’m beginning to feel like Typhoid Mary.”
His mouth fell open and for a long, silent moment, he simply stared at her. Then he leaned against the dresser and let fly with a great, rich burst of merriment unlike anything she’d heard from him before. “I don’t recall ever having met such a person,” he finally managed to splutter. “Do I take it she’s not particularly nice to be near?”
“Stop being trying to be cute, Benedict! It doesn’t suit you. And while you’re at it, you can stop guffawing, as well, and just give me a straight answer.”
He stroked his chin and made a pitiful effort to keep a straight face, but when he spoke, his voice still quivered with suppressed laughter. “I’m trying, but if only you could see yourself, cara, perched there among your mountain of pi
llows, looking for all the world like a queen reprimanding a wayward subject.”
To her horror and chagrin, tears overflowed her eyes and leaked down her face. “I’m glad one of us finds this amusing.”
“Ah, Cassandra…!” In one swift stride, he came to her and perched on the edge of the mattress. “Where is all this nonsense coming from? If you wanted to come with Bianca and me this evening, all you had to do was say so.”
“I didn’t, not really,” she sniffed, knowing she was being absurd and hating the fact that she had so little control of her emotions these days. “I’d probably have been in the way.”
“Not so. Bianca was telling me how much she likes you.” He cupped her jaw, his touch warm and tender. “Has someone else made you feel unwelcome here?”
“No. Bianca and Enrico couldn’t be kinder, their children are a delight, and their house staff very helpful. But let’s face it, Benedict, for all that they’re trying not to let it show, your sister and brother-in-law are reeling with shock at your showing up with a wife, and hardly know what to make of our marriage. And frankly, in light of your growing indifference toward me, nor do I.”
He reared back, shock evident in every feature. “You believe I’m indifferent to you?”
“Maybe not,” she said, on a miserable sigh. “Maybe it’s just me, overreacting again. All I know is that I’m a stranger in a strange land, miles away from anyone who really cares about me.”
“I care, Cassandra.”
“Only because I’m pregnant.”
“Not only because of that,” he said, leaning forward to capture her hands. “And if you think the reason I’m keeping my distance is that I don’t want to be near you, then you’re not just pregnant, you’re hopelessly naive as well.”
“In that case, come to bed,” she begged, hanging on to him for dear life. “Don’t let this be a repeat of two nights ago.”
He grew very still. “I’m not sure I understand you.”
“I might be naive, Benedict, but I’m not delusional. I went to bed alone on our wedding night, awoke after midnight to find myself still alone, and had the same thing happen again, the next morning.”
“I didn’t want to disturb you,” he said. “You’d had a very long day, and before that, a very busy week. When I came to the bedroom, you were sleeping so deeply that I thought it best if I stayed on the sofa in my study.”
“Well, I’m not sleeping now.”
“But you should be. Your doctor wouldn’t be pleased to know you’re defying his instructions.”
“He wouldn’t be pleased to know I’m stressed out because my husband’s ignoring me, either!”
His gaze burned into hers. He was not a man given to indecision, yet at that moment she saw torment in his eyes and she quaked inside at what it might signify. Did he find her repugnant, with her heavy breasts and subtle thickening at the waist, and endless bouts of nausea? Or had the rashness of their decision to marry finally hit home, and he was horrified at the commitment he’d made?
Whatever the cause, eventually he lifted his shoulders in mute surrender and disappeared into the dressing room. Shortly after, she heard the door to the en suite bathroom close, and the sound of water running in the shower. When he returned to the bedroom some fifteen minutes later, she’d turned off the reading lamp and lay beneath the lightweight duvet, taut with a mixture of anticipation and dread.
The moon, peeping through the window, illuminated his path to the bed. Without a word, he climbed in beside her and lay on his back, motionless, with his hands clasped behind his head. On the nightstand, a small gilt clock marked the passing time…tick…tick…tick…
Only a few inches of mattress separated his body from hers, yet it might as well have been an abyss, and she couldn’t bear it. Whispering his name, she turned to him and laid her hand on his bare chest. His skin was cool and smooth beneath a dusting of hair. Dark against the ghostly white of the bed linen. Sculpted by underlying muscle.
But except for the steady beat of his heart and the slow rise and fall of his breathing, he might as well have been dead, so unmoved was her by her touch.
Her voice awash with tearful pleading, she said again, “Benedict, I feel so alone!”
“You’re not alone, Cassandra. I’m here.”
“Then hold me. Let me feel your warmth.”
He unclasped his hands and slipped a wary, avuncular arm around her shoulders. Starving for his touch, she burrowed against him and pressed her mouth to the side of his neck, savoring the scent of soap and man.
Immediately, he pulled away. “Stop that!” he muttered, his voice strangled.
“Why?” she said. “Don’t you want me?”
“So badly I can taste it,” he replied. “But I can’t have you. Not now. Not yet. You can do your worst to tempt me, Cassandra, but I will do nothing to endanger your pregnancy.”
“But we can touch, can’t we?” She splayed her fingers over his chest again, circled the raised point of his nipples. “We can caress. We can kiss.”
“I kiss you,” he said. “I kissed you good night before you came upstairs.”
“Not the way you did before. Not as if you can’t get enough of me.” She raised herself up on one elbow and leaned over him. “Not like this,” she said, lowering her mouth to his and sweeping her tongue over his lower lip.
Roughly, he turned his head aside and swore—at least, she supposed he did, given the stifled violence in his tone, even though she didn’t understand the words he used. “You go too far, Cassandra!” he said hoarsely. “Let it be enough that we’re married!”
“I can’t,” she said, encouraged by the betraying, savage rasp of his breathing. “What if you grow tired of being a husband in name only?”
“Do you think me an animal, that I can’t control my carnal appetite?”
She stroked her hand over his stomach, pushed down the briefs he wore, and with the tip of her finger traced the curve of skin where the top of his thigh met his hip. “No,” she said, smiling a little at his dignified usage of English because it bore no relation whatsoever to the highly indecorous response of his body. “I think you are a man who deserves better than to be lying in bed with a wife who can’t pleasure you.”
“Cassandra, I’m begging you…!”
He was big and hard and heavy. Pulsing and alive. Alive for her…!
“Be quiet, Benedict,” she said gently, and lowering her head, closed her lips around his penis.
He tasted divine, and she wanted all of him—everything he had to give. And so she took, repeatedly drawing him deep into her mouth.
He knotted his fingers in her hair.
Groaned and shuddered.
Arched up to meet her.
Cursed her. Forbade her. Threatened her.
Fought as only a man of iron will could fight—until his soul lay shredded within him, and his strength gave out.
Only then, when nothing he invoked deterred her, did he concede defeat and, with a wrenching involuntary spasm that shook his entire body, spilled into her mouth.
“So much for taking a long, cold, unpleasant shower before joining you in bed,” he said grimly, when his heart rate diminished enough that he could speak again. “I hope you’re satisfied with what you accomplished.”
She raised her head and looked at him. His eyes glittered in the moonlight and sweat gleamed on his skin. “Oh, yes, Benedict,” she said, dutifully, the way a compliant wife should. “Are you?”
He swore again, the same thing he’d said before, but uttered mellifluously this time. Like music; like a love song.
He stretched out his hand. “Come here,” he said, and drew her up to lie close beside him. “And listen to me. This is not how it should be between a man and a woman, that the pleasure is all his while she receives nothing.”
“Whoever made up that rule didn’t know what he was talking about.”
“Nevertheless, it is the Italian way.”
A warm and lovely lassitude
crept over her, leaving her limbs heavy and her spirit more peaceful than it had felt in days. “Then stop being so Italian,” she purred. “Just say ‘thank you’ and accept the fact that, sometimes, giving pleasure to her man is all the reward a woman needs.”
She sensed his smile. Heard it in his murmured, “Mi scusi, cara. Grazie, e buona notte!”
Cassie thought herself well-prepared to meet her mother-in-law. Throughout the one and a half hour flight from Milan to Calabria, she’d memorized Buono giorno, Signora Constantino. Lieto di conoscerla—which, according to her phrase book, amounted pretty much to, “Hello, Mrs. Constantino. Lovely to meet you.”
By the time the plane touched down at Lamezia Terme, she was confident that, when the moment presented itself, she could recite her greeting with reasonable fluency.
She might as well have studied Swahili, for all the good it did her!
First of all, the forty kilometer drive from the airport to Benedict’s family home, though passing through exquisite countryside, meant taking a narrow, twisting coastal road which at times seemed to hang by a thread from the steep cliffs hugging the shore. As if that alone wasn’t enough to sweep her mind clear of everything but white-knuckled terror, his car was no conservative family sedan but a low-slung red Lamborghini Diablo designed for speed. And that, she quickly surmised, clinging to the edge of her seat and praying they’d arrive alive, was clearly the chief reason he’d chosen it, because he drove with the death-defying disregard of a man competing in the Indy 500.
However, apart from a short stop to buy bottled water in one of the villages they passed through, they completed the journey without incident, and with little in the way of conversation. Although his manner toward Cassie was warmer, he appeared preoccupied and when they arrived at his family home, Cassie could well see why.
Unlike Bianca’s light and airy residence, the Palazzo Constantino was a great gothic heap of a place, with high walls and narrow windows. Accessed by an electronic gate, it sat within a vast, rather unkempt garden overlooking the sea, its facade so forbidding that Cassie’s first thought was that it looked more like a medieval prison than a home.
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