by Amy Andrews
Nat took another step back, moving her arm out of the way as he reached for it. He stopped and looked at her, his frown deepening.
Nat released the frame she was holding and turned it around. ‘When were you going to tell me about this?’
Alessandro’s gaze flicked down to the object he hadn’t even noticed she’d been holding in his haste to touch her. Camilla’s face stared back at him, her Mona Lisa smile taunting him. So like the woman in front of him. And yet so not.
He shuttered his gaze as the painful memories assaulted him. Their loveless marriage, the argument, the knock on the door. He stuffed his hands into his pockets. ‘Ah.’
Nat felt the casual comment right down to her toes. Ah? He knew. No what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about? frown. No immediate this-isn’t-what-it-looks-like explanation. He knew.
Oh, God—it all made so much sense now. The way Juliano had looked at her that first day like he’d seen a ghost. Followed by Alessandro’s own, more subtle but definitely, looking back at it now, stunned reaction later that same day. And more recently, Valentino’s double-take.
She shoved the frame at him, pushing it hard into his abdominal muscles and releasing it as his fingers closed around it. ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ she demanded. His face was the grim mask of old. She couldn’t tell whether he was desperately searching for an explanation to give her or whether he just didn’t give a damn.
She scrubbed at her face. ‘You know, Alessandro I knew you had an ulterior motive when you asked me to stay. I knew you wanted me to be some kind of substitute mother. But I had no idea what you really wanted was a substitute wife!’
‘No!’ His denial was swift and certain. Yes, the evidence was damning but how could he explain to her that the physical resemblance was where the similarity between her and Camilla ended? Without going into all the sordid details? Without exposing his guilt and shame? He didn’t talk about that. Not with anyone. ‘You are nothing like her.’
Nat couldn’t tell whether it was an affirmation or an insult. She stabbed her finger at Camilla’s frozen face. ‘That’s not what I see.’
‘Trust me,’ Alessandro intoned. ‘The resemblance is only skin deep.’
Nat snorted. ‘Trust you?’ She stared at him incredulously. ‘Why should I do that? When you haven’t trusted me? Hell, Alessandro, you had the perfect opportunity to tell me the night Val visited. I asked you why Val had looked at me so strangely. And you dismissed it.’
Nat shook her head, feeling an edge of hysteria building. ‘No wonder you weren’t keen for me to find these pictures. Why weren’t you just up front with me from the beginning? Why didn’t you say, “Gee, Nat, you look freakily like my beloved dead wife”?’
Beloved. She thought he was still in love with his wife. Well, of course, he castigated himself, why wouldn’t she? Marriage did imply love and it hadn’t even been a year yet.
Alessandro watched as tears splashed down her cheeks. He took a step towards her, the urge to pull her into his arms, to comfort her, overwhelming. But she took another step back from him and it was like a blow to his solar plexus.
He opened his mouth to deny it, her tears clawing at his gut. But how could he say the words aloud? I didn’t love her. I didn’t love my wife. What kind of a man did that make him?
Alessandro shook his head helplessly, wanting to wipe away her despair but shying from the words he knew he’d have to use. ‘It’s not like that.’
His generic reply cut deep. ‘God,’ she wailed. ‘This is just like Rob all over again. Like my father. Playing second fiddle to another woman.’
She’d bounced back from her father. She’d had the love, understanding and support of her mother and other family. And her sunny personality. And she’d come through the Rob nightmare too—a little more bloodied and battered but still with belief in herself and in others.
But she knew without requiring any deep thought or analysis that her love for Alessandro far outweighed anything she’d ever felt for Rob. The slow gentle realisation of her feelings that she’d experienced with Rob was chicken feed compared to this all-encompassing, bubbling cauldron of desire and emotion Alessandro had hurled her into and been marinating her in for these last magical weeks.
She looked at Alessandro’s emotionless face. The only sign that any of this was affecting him was the clench of his jaw. ‘Did you ever just want me for me?’
It was a startling thing to admit to herself. But she knew she was right. While she’d been falling in love he’d just been using her body to try and erase the memory of his wife.
Loving the one he was with.
It certainly explained his insatiability. The almost desperate way he reached for her every night. Pounding away deeper, faster, harder, like he was afraid she’d evaporate in his arms if he wasn’t constantly touching her.
Alessandro flinched at her accusation. ‘I think I’ve more than adequately shown you how much I desire you.’
She looked at him like he’d just grown a second head. Desire? He might as well have reached into her chest and ripped out her haemorrhaging heart. When you loved someone, desire was just an empty vessel. It meant nothing without love.
‘Really, Alessandro? Can you honestly stand here and tell me that every night with me, every insatiable moment, it was about me and not some kind of sick reconnection with Camilla?’
Alessandro felt a rage building inside. He knew she’d been played by men but he’d never use a woman in the way she was accusing. Surely she could see that his desire for her was one hundred percent genuine? ‘That I can guarantee,’ he ground out. ‘When I’ve been in bed with you there’s been no one else. I’d have thought you’d know me well enough by now to know that deep in here.’ He tapped her chest.
Nat’s heart beat frantically beneath his fingers as if it was trying to touch them. Traitorous organ! She knocked his hand away. ‘This isn’t about sex, Alessandro. It’s about love.’
Alessandro blanched. What the hell did love have to do with it? ‘Love?’
Nat flushed. Her chest had swollen with a mix of emotions that threatened to crush her and the truth had tumbled out. She hadn’t meant to blurt it like that but she was damned if she was going to back away from it now.
‘Yes, Alessandro, love,’ she threw at him. ‘I’m sorry, I know that this wasn’t about love but it happened anyway. I guess I’m not quite as callous as you.’
Alessandro raked his hand through his hair, feeling more and more out of his depth. ‘Nathalie…’
Nat shut her eyes and shook her head vigorously. ‘No. Don’t say anything.’ She couldn’t bear to hear any platitudes. ‘I’ll be out of your hair before you know it.’
Alessandro reeled a little more. She was leaving? The thought was shocking. ‘But…your place won’t be ready for weeks yet. What about Juliano? You can’t just up and leave with no notice. He adores you.’
Nat felt a sob rise in her throat. His son did. But he didn’t. Not quite the impassioned plea she’d hoped for, even though somewhere inside she felt a surge of pride that he was at last thinking like a father. Thinking about his child even before himself.
And he was right—leaving Juliano would be heart wrenching too. She loved the boy as much as the father. But at least she knew they now had each other.
She shrugged. ‘I’ll tell him something has come up and a friend needs me.’
‘Where are you going to go?’
Nat didn’t have a clue. All she knew was she couldn’t stay here another minute. She felt like she was bleeding and it was sure as hell going to make a mess on Alessandro’s perfect white carpet.
‘I don’t know. Paige’s maybe. A hotel.’ She shook her head. ‘Frankly, I don’t care. Just away.’ She backed up as she spoke. ‘Far away from here.’
Alessandro reached out and snagged her arm before she could run away. He couldn’t bear the idea of her gone. ‘Please don’t go. We need you.’
Once it would have been enough. But she was tired
of men needing her too much and not loving her enough. Now she knew the true depths of love—its power, its breadth—she knew she couldn’t settle for anything less.
Nat shook her head. ‘No, you don’t. Not any more. You two are going to be just fine.’ She pulled out of his grasp, her heart breaking, her soul aching.
The phone rang and they both looked at it, suddenly becoming aware of the surroundings outside their immediate circle of misery.
‘You’d better get that,’ she murmured, backing away.
Alessandro ignored it. ‘Nathalie,’ he called after her.
Nat turned away, the desire to run from him crippled by overwhelming misery and the weight of her heart in her chest. The stairs before her suddenly seemed like Mt Everest, her room way beyond at the summit.
Alessandro watched her go. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so impotent. But she was asking too much. Love? Didn’t she know that he wasn’t worthy of her love?
The phone’s insistent peeling nagged at him and four angry strides brought him level with the infernal contraption. He snatched it off its cradle.
‘Yes?’ he snapped.
Nat had almost packed her bag when Alessandro strode into her room. She was crying, tears blinding her progress. Her hands were shaking and her breath occasionally caught on a sob.
‘Stop packing.’
Nat gave a harsh laugh. ‘Go to hell.’
‘That was the ID director from St Auburn’s. The baby yesterday we screened for the swamp flu tested positive. As of now we’re both on seven days’ home quarantine. I’m afraid you’re going nowhere.’
CHAPTER TEN
THE only person remotely pleased about their enforced confinement was Juliano. Having never had his father’s absolute attention for an extended period, he thought all his Christmases had come at once. He even suffered the daily nasal swabs that were couriered to and from the house with a cheerful disposition.
He was completely ignorant to the suddenly stilted atmosphere between Alessandro and Nat. He didn’t notice the strained politeness or the wary avoidance of any kind of physical contact. Not even the absence of laughter or easy conversation penetrated his happy little bubble.
But Nat was excruciatingly aware of it. It was a double loss. Not just the loss of what could have been but what they’d already had. It had been a surprise for her to realise the feelings for Alessandro that had stealthily invaded her every cell were love and a particularly cruel blow to discover it at the very second it was ripped out of reach. It had become crystal clear to her in that moment they’d never be able to return to what they’d had before.
Alessandro had tried to broach the subject again that next morning but she’d cut him off at the pass with a frosty ‘Don’t’.
She didn’t want to hear any platitudes. She didn’t want to watch him tie himself into a verbal pretzel with pretty euphemisms. She didn’t want to know his justifications. The truth was he had hurt her way more than Rob’s or her father’s rejections ever had. At least they’d declared their outside interests from the beginning.
Alessandro had been utterly disingenuous.
After three days in home quarantine, or house arrest as Nat had come to think of it, she was at screaming point. If she hadn’t been young fit and healthy she might have begun to worry about the constant pain in her chest and the heaviness in her limbs. Her jaw ached from the continuous fake smile she wore and her eyes felt gritty from three nights of crying herself to sleep.
She despised the nightly ritual more than anything. But no amount of internal dialogue castigating Alessandro and his deception derailed the tears. Her mother would say they were healthy, that she was grieving and they were a painful and necessary part of the healing process, but Nat would have done anything to stop them.
She wished she could be more like Paige whose opinion of men since her husband’s desertion had always made her wince. Paige wouldn’t have fallen for Alessandro. Paige’s heart was guarded by barbed wire and thorny bushes a mile thick. Why hadn’t she done that to hers? After her father? After Rob? Wrapped it up, protected it? Why had she been lumbered with this damn eternal optimism?
Because even now, despite everything, she wanted him. Every time he looked at her with his black eyes, she felt her pelvic floor muscles shift. Every time he walked by, her nipples pebbled as if he’d brushed his hand across them. Every time he opened his mouth, she wanted to kiss it.
Despite his soul-ravaging betrayal. Despite knowing he didn’t feel the same way about her. Despite knowing that every time he looked at her all he saw was his dear, darling Camilla.
She was helpless against his pull. Oh, she hated herself for it but that didn’t seem to matter either. Why? Why did love have no pride?
But mostly she was worried. About her willpower. If her belly lurched just at his nearness, how was she ever going to steal herself against him? How was she going to walk out the door? How strong would her resistance be by the end of seven days? Lord knew, it had been three days now since they’d shared a bed and despite how mad she was, she wanted him on top of her and inside her with an almost crazy desperation.
What if he asked her to stay again? Would she sacrifice her integrity and stay? Like she’d stayed with Rob, hoping it would be different? Like she’d held out hope that her father would, one day, remember that he also had a daughter?
No, seven days couldn’t come around soon enough. Putting on an act for Juliano was a bigger strain than she’d ever thought it would be. And it felt wrong to lie to him. She knew how it felt to find out you’d been lied to. Only too well.
On the evening of the third day she excused herself after tea. She had a headache and was feeling weary. The sleepless, teary nights were catching up with her.
‘You haven’t eaten much,’ Alessandro commented as he inspected her almost full plate.
She stared at him, absently rubbing her bare arms that had suddenly become covered in goose-bumps. ‘I’m not very hungry these days.’ It was said pleasantly enough for Juliano’s ears but her gaze left him in no doubt as to the cause of her poor appetite. She couldn’t afford to soften her stand or let her guard down. ‘Excuse me.’
Alessandro watched her go, his hands fisting in his lap. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to shake her or kiss her. It had certainly been a long time since he’d tasted her lips and her flushed cheeks and red mouth had drawn his gaze tonight like a moth to flame.
He knew he deserved her contempt. Looking at it from her perspective, his actions must have seemed extraordinarily callous. But he wasn’t sure he could stand four more days of the cold shoulder.
It was like his marriage all over again. Constantly pretending everything was all right for Juliano’s sake and for those outside their marriage. The stress of projecting the illusion of marital bliss had been a constant drain when it had all been a sham.
‘What’s wrong with Nat?’
Juliano’s question broke into his reverie. He smiled down at his son. ‘She’s fine.’ He smiled. ‘Why?’
Juliano shrugged. ‘She’s really quiet. And she looks sad.’
Alessandro was surprised by his son’s insight. They’d both been trying to carry on as normal, to protect Juliano, but he was obviously a lot shrewder than they’d given him credit for. This wouldn’t do at all. Surely for four more days they could make more of an effort?
By the time Nat was halfway up the stairs waves of goose-bumps were marching across her skin and every footfall jarred through aching hips and knees. She shivered and rubbed her arms, her shoulders protesting the movement. Great! Marvellous. Just what she needed—swamp flu.
Her chagrin with Alessandro vanished as fantasies of a steaming-hot shower took over. If only her room didn’t seem so far away. She held onto the rail and gritted her teeth as she hauled herself closer. After a shower she was going to bed. With a little luck she’d sleep for three days and then this whole quarantine thing would be over and she could get as far away from Alessandro Lombardi as wa
s possible.
She entered her room, walking straight past her bed, and started pulling at her clothes, tearing them off, uncaring where they fell. Her teeth chattered as more and more of her body was exposed to the air. She stepped into the shower cubicle and flicked on the taps, shivering as she waited for it to heat up and then gratefully stepping into its fiery embrace.
But still she felt cold, so cold, beneath the spray and she reached for the taps, reducing the amount of cold water till it was practically scalding. She sighed when it finally seemed hot enough, leaning her forehead against the tiles as it seeped into her tissues, her bones, her marrow.
It had been years since she’d had flu and Nat had forgotten how truly horrible it could be. She felt dreadful. Her head ached, her joints felt like they were on fire, her throat was scratchy and she didn’t need a thermometer to know she had a high fever.
As if a broken heart hadn’t been enough to contend with.
Alessandro left Juliano sitting on the lounge with Flo, watching a DVD, ten minutes later. He needed to talk to Nat, whether she wanted to or not, and he didn’t want little ears listening in. He heard the shower as he entered her room and his gaze tracked her path to it from her discarded clothes.
He hesitated for a moment but, hell, he had seen her naked before. They’d showered together numerous times. Had even had hot, wet, soapy sex on more than one occasion. He was damned if he was going to tiptoe around in his own house!
He strode into her en suite, stopping in the doorway to lean his shoulder casually against the jamb. The bathroom was full of steam and even if he’d wanted to catch a glimpse of her wet naked body, the fogged glass made it impossible. ‘Maybe I should have installed a sauna in here for you,’ he said dryly.
Nat’s head shot up and she winced as her neck objected to the sudden movement. ‘Get the hell out of here, Alessandro.’ She was hoping for assertive but her voice had developed a croak and it sounded more desperate than definite.
