She got to her feet and reached for her wine. Taking a sip of it, she turned to face him.
He took her in slowly, studying every inch.
That his wife had never been one for spending hours on her appearance was somewhat of an understatement. Considering she spent—or had spent—most of her natural state splattered with paint, she always used to joke it was pointless. However, she had adored dressing up for nights out, could transform her fresh-faced beauty into gorgeous, quirky sophistication with nothing more than a tiny make-up bag of tricks.
Tonight, in fifteen short minutes, she had outdone herself.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he said hoarsely, unable to take his eyes off her. The sunny colours were perfect on her, the buttercup bodice enhancing her small cleavage and the litheness of her stature. The front of the dress rested above her knees, displaying her long, slender legs to perfection, the back of it mere inches from the floor. Her hair, which had grown into a very short bob, had been spiked in all directions, her make-up bold, her eyes painted a smoky brown that darkened the hazel of her eyes. A splash of orange lipstick, that on any other woman would look crass, completed the look to perfection.
He watched as she swallowed and moved towards him, the peacock skirt swaying as she walked.
‘Could you do the zip up for me, please?’ Her voice was terse, her features hard.
‘Of course.’
In her room, for all of a minute, he’d thought he had found his old Grace, the woman whose mocking was never malicious, intended only to amuse, never to sting.
This woman before him was not that Grace.
He wanted to find his old Grace again. She was in there, somewhere. He wanted to reach in and pull her out permanently.
She turned her back to him. She’d managed to zip it three quarters of the way up. He imagined her fighting it, contorting herself into all different positions in an attempt to zip it fully, anything rather than have to ask him for help.
Standing closer than was necessary, close enough to hear the shallowness of her breaths, he placed a hand on her shoulder, bare except for the thin strap of her dress. Her skin held none of the ruddiness her compatriots were famed for. Grace’s skin was a light honey tone and satin to the touch.
He pulled the zip up to where it ended just below her shoulder blades. Instead of stopping and stepping back, he trailed his fingers along that soft skin to the base of her neck.
She stood rigid, like the very mannequin that had worn this same dress, no longer breathing. He brushed his hands down her long, supple arms then snaked them around her waist and pressed against her. She would have to be a corpse not to feel the length of his hardness.
‘What are you doing?’ she rasped, stepping out of his hold.
‘Enjoying my wife.’
‘You buy me a dress you know I like and think you can enjoy me?’
‘Stop twisting things.’ He raked his fingers through his freshly styled hair, uncaring that he mussed it. Every time he took a step forward she jumped a mile back.
‘Then why did you buy it? What happened to me wearing the punishment dress? Did you buy this as a way of softening me up so I’d fall into bed with you? Or was it an attack of the guilts?’
‘I do not need to soften you up to get you back into my bed.’ Ignoring her mention of guilt, he took in her heightened colour, the anger in her eyes that fought with the desire also residing there. ‘All I would have to do is kiss you and you would be begging for me to take you.’
‘Bull—’
‘Would you like to put it to the test?’ he interrupted. ‘One kiss and see where it leads, see whether it leads to you begging for more?’
She fixed her hazel eyes on him, her throat working frantically. ‘It’ll be a cold day in hell before I kiss you or go anywhere near a bed with you in it.’
‘If being in hell means sharing a bed with you, I’ll take that over heaven.’
Her mouth formed a perfect ‘O’ before she snapped it shut and grabbed her clutch bag from the bureau. ‘Shouldn’t we be making a move?’
‘Yes, my good Sicilian wife,’ he agreed, fighting to keep his tone amiable. Tonight would likely be awkward enough for them both—he wanted her to at least relax enough to enjoy some of it, but, by God, she was making it hard.
He extended his arm to her. ‘It is time for us to be sociable and party with Florence’s finest.’
‘If they’re friends of yours, I expect the party will be full of gangsters with guns.’
The good humour he had been clinging on to by the skin of his teeth vanished, her testiness clearly contagious. ‘You push my tolerance too far. I might want you back in my bed, bella, but do not think it means I am disregarding our agreement. If you want to stay in Lily’s life you had damn well better behave yourself tonight.’
* * *
As they were in Florence, in Grace’s eyes the art capital of the world, she expected the party to be a refined affair with soft background music and plenty of canapés. And a few machine guns discreetly tucked away in full view.
Francesco Calvetti’s party was located in his new hotel, which was as opulent and plush as the hotel she and Luca were staying in, and seeped with as much architectural history. Yet she could give it only cursory appreciation, her exchange with Luca leaving her feeling all wrung out. It was so hard having to keep up the fight of her responses towards him. When it came to Luca, her head and her body were poles apart. It was a fight she feared her body was winning.
The drive to the hotel had been a game in ignoring each other: Grace looking out of her window, Luca emailing and conducting whatever cyber business was necessary on a Saturday evening.
However hard she ignored him, her body remained painfully aware.
They entered the lobby flanked by four bodyguards. Luca hooked a muscular arm around her waist. ‘Smile and act happy,’ he said into her ear, the menacing undertow audible.
She responded with a smile of such saccharine goodness she hoped the sweetness made him puke. Anything had to be better than him knowing her whole body vibrated with excitement at his closeness.
It was somewhat of a shock when they entered the ballroom and found it transformed into a nightclub. Or that was what she assumed it had been turned into with the heavy velvet drapes that covered the walls and the dark mood lighting. Loud music pumped, not the quaint string group she had envisaged but a DJ in a booth high up on a stage, already surrounded by a throng of beautiful women. She recognised him as the house DJ employed at Luca and Francesco’s nightclub in Palermo. She had visited it twice and loathed it. Luca had holed himself up in the offices, leaving her bored out of her skull. At least when she accompanied him to one of the casinos there was always something to do that didn’t involve gyrating into strangers’ groins.
She could feel the vibrations through her fantastic gold sandals. Next to the DJ’s booth were two caged podiums in which semi-naked lap dancers writhed. Much as it made her feminist hackles rise, even she could see the professional pride they took in their performances.
For the second time that evening she wished she had her sketchbook with her.
The ballroom was packed, not with shady men in black—although there were a fair number of them around—but men and women from the height of Sicilian and Italian society, minor British royalty and American film and rock stars. She even recognised a few patrons of the arts. Dotted around the enormous room were enough armed guards—unobtrusive but to her trained eye obvious—to overthrow a government.
It seemed as if Luca knew all the guests. Forced to stick to his side, she was introduced to dozens of both new and familiar faces, all of whom studied her with great interest. It was the familiar faces she found the hardest to endure, the curiosity in their eyes at the return of the prodigal wife.
She’d had no idea anyone wou
ld be interested about the state of their marriage, not at a birthday party in Florence.
Luca must have picked up on the curiosity too, for he kept her hand tightly clasped in his. Or was he simply marking his territory?
Glasses of champagne were thrust into her free hand, which she took cautious sips of, careful not to drink too much. Alcohol had a terrible habit of loosening her inhibitions and she needed to keep them tightly squashed away.
Her hackles rose again when a tall, lithe man approached them, two women walking to heel as if especially trained.
Francesco Calvetti. The party boy. Luca’s main business associate.
CHAPTER TEN
DRESSED IN A dapper silver suit and open-necked black shirt, and looking as if he had just stepped off a catwalk, Francesco was sinisterly handsome. Grace would have bet every penny she owned he winked at his own reflection whenever he looked in a mirror. She had met him half a dozen times and he never failed to make her skin crawl. If she were to paint him she would cast him as a vulture.
‘Luca!’ He opened his arms wide and pulled him into an embrace that involved lots of back-slapping.
Grace watched Luca carefully, certain she had felt him tense at Francesco’s approach. He responded with the same masculine enthusiasm, but as they conversed she could hear the tension in his voice, even if she couldn’t understand the words.
Finally, Luca switched to English. ‘Do you remember my wife, Grace?’
‘But of course.’ Francesco’s English was faultless. He took her hand and pressed a kiss to it. There was nothing seedy in his manner but, for reasons she could not even begin to quantify, she wanted to snatch her hand away and disinfect it.
‘I trust you have fully recovered from the ailment that kept you away for so long?’ From the tone of his voice, he seemed to be speaking in code. Unfortunately she did not have the faintest idea what the code stood for.
‘Yes, she is fully recovered,’ Luca interjected smoothly.
‘Excellent news. Please, both of you, accept my congratulations on the birth of your first child together. I hope your family is blessed with many more bambini.’
‘That’s what we hope for too,’ said Luca.
The conversation ended with the men exchanging another back-breaking embrace before Francesco disappeared into a melee of beautiful women.
‘What the hell was that about?’ Grace demanded. ‘What am I supposed to have recovered from?’
‘Pre-natal depression.’
‘What?’
‘I told him you’d been in England.’ Here he shrugged. ‘His own mother suffered from severe pre-natal depression. He assumed you had suffered from it too and had gone to England to be cared for by your mother.’
‘Why didn’t you set him straight?’ she seethed. ‘Why couldn’t you say I left you but that we had decided to try again for Lily’s sake?’
He quelled her with a stare. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘Of course not,’ she said sarcastically. She could feel her skin heating, his implacability heightening her anger. ‘It would never do for people to think there was something wrong with you that made me leave, would there?’
‘There is nothing wrong with me.’ His eyes bored into her. If Grace’s temperature had risen, his had lifted in conjunction. ‘All that’s wrong is how you interpreted matters to suit your own notions of how a businessman is supposed to conduct his affairs.’
If only she had been born with Medusa-like powers she could turn him into stone to match his heart.
‘Where are you going?’ he snapped as she stepped away.
‘To the ladies’, before I give in to temptation and cause a scene. Why? Are you going to follow me to make sure I don’t escape?’
A pulse in his jaw throbbed as he leaned into her, his breath hot against her ear. ‘If you want to leave, then I promise you one thing: I will not stop you and I will not look for you.’
‘I think you’ll find that was two things.’
Leaving him to stew in a pit of his own self-righteous anger, Grace proceeded to the ladies’ cloakroom, concentrating only on putting one foot in front of another.
In the sanctuary of the opulent bathroom, she took stock of her appearance. As she retouched her eyeliner and reapplied her lipstick all she could think was her own husband had let Francesco think she suffered from depression.
The worst of it was, she could actually understand why a man with Luca’s ferocious pride would allow such a thing. In a mad kind of way, it made a heck of a lot of sense. His wife had vanished from the face of the earth. She hadn’t just left him, she’d disappeared without a trace. When eventually he found her and discovered she’d had his child, what was he supposed to tell people? That his own wife thought him so evil she would hide his flesh and blood from him? Honour and pride were everything, and she had wounded both.
By letting people believe she had left out of something beyond either of their control he could save face. For both of them.
Jeez, she was actually making excuses for him.
Only when she was satisfied her emotions were sufficiently masked did she leave the bathroom.
The ballroom had become so crowded she had trouble finding him. Snaking her way through the mass of bodies, she finally spotted him on a stool at the bar, nursing a glass of champagne.
As she neared him a warm hand grabbed her wrist. ‘There you are. I thought you’d run away again.’
Twisting round, she met the contempt that was in her brother-in-law’s eyes. ‘Pepe! I didn’t know you were here.’
‘Well, I am.’
She attempted a smile. She had always adored Pepe, a man who gave the air that life was just one big party. Apart from when arguing with his brother, of course. Not tonight though. Tonight he looked darkly serious.
‘Your mother said you would be home a few days ago. Have you been avoiding me?’
He sighed, checked over his shoulder to where Luca was sitting and tugged her into an alcove, away from the throng of people moving like a river around them. ‘I thought it best to keep my distance until I could be certain I wouldn’t throttle you for what you put my brother through. I didn’t think he would appreciate that.’
‘He would have cheered you on.’
His eyes became mocking. ‘Why would that be?’
‘He hates me.’ Whatever Luca might say to strangers to explain her absence, his brother would get the truth. However divergent their lives and personalities, however ferocious their arguments, they were close.
‘You stole his baby from him.’ He made it sound so simple.
She sighed. ‘I wish it were as straightforward as that.’
‘It is. You ran away and stole his baby, ergo he hated you.’
It was Grace’s turn to look over her shoulder, barely registering the past tense Pepe had just used. A woman had joined Luca at the bar. Whatever he’d said to her must have been the funniest thing in the world, for she threw her head back and laughed.
Pepe followed her line of sight. ‘Worried he’s searching for your replacement?’
She rolled her eyes, masking the stabbing pain piercing her heart. ‘I have no control over what Luca does.’
‘You have no idea.’ He shook his head with a scowl of incredulity. ‘Do you have any idea why I’m here at this scumbag’s party?’
Her brow furrowed. ‘Do you mean Francesco?’
‘Who else? I’m here because I don’t trust the bastard. Now that Luca is cutting all ties with him—’
Certain she had misheard, she cut him off. ‘He’s what?’
‘Luca is ending their association. He told him at their meeting earlier.’ His eyes narrowed as he took in her shock. ‘I assumed he’d told you.’
She shook her head, hundreds of thoughts fighting for
space in her head. ‘Luca stopped discussing business with me a long time ago. Were you never part of their business dealings?’
His face contorted into something ugly. ‘Francesco Calvetti is scum. I would sooner have made a deal with the devil. The terms would have been friendlier.’
‘So you’re only here to watch Luca’s back?’
‘Why else?’
Luca had cut his ties with Francesco...?
She remembered the look on Francesco’s face at the casino, when he and Luca had been interrogating that poor man. What she remembered from that brief moment she had been in the office, before Luca had frogmarched her out, had been the cold cruelty she’d observed in Francesco’s eyes. It had been in marked contrast to the thoughtfulness she had seen in her husband’s.
Francesco enjoyed using threats and violence, whereas Luca used them only because he felt it necessary. There was a big difference.
It shouldn’t make any difference to how she felt about him, but it did.
‘I need to get back to Luca,’ she murmured, her eyes fixed on her husband and the buxom woman jabbering away in his ear.
As she made to walk off, Pepe called after her, ‘Have you seen your friend since you returned?’
‘Who? Cara?’
He nodded. His position and the angle of the light above him highlighted the silvery scar that ran across his left cheek.
‘Not yet.’ Cara’s continued elusiveness concerned her. It was unlike her tender-hearted friend to be so evasive...
A thought occurred to her.
‘Was it you who stole the data from her phone?’
He cast his eyes about, looking anywhere but at her.
Jaw clenched, she shook her head. It was inconceivable Cara would have let Luca within ten miles of her, but Pepe...
‘Cara is the sweetest, nicest person in the world. If you’ve hurt her, I swear I’ll make you live to regret it.’
With a parting ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Pepe disappeared into the crowd of revellers.
Grace took a deep breath to clear her head. Right now, she would have to put her friend to the back of her mind. As selfish as she knew it to be, she had more pressing worries to deal with.
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