‘You could have told me yourself instead of getting the housekeeper to do so,’ Emma said. ‘I felt such a fool. We’re supposed to be acting like a married couple, remember?’
‘I am sorry you were embarrassed but—’
Emma cut across him in frustration. ‘Married couples are supposed to talk to each other. It’s called communication.’
There was a tense little pause.
‘Emma, I would have told you personally but you were lying down in your room. I did not wish to disturb you.’
‘How do you know I was lying down?’ she asked.
‘I knocked on your door and when you didn’t answer I opened it,’ he said. ‘You were sound asleep.’
Emma felt a faint shiver pass over her at the thought of him observing her without her knowing. ‘You should have woken me up.’
‘You looked exhausted, that is why I didn’t,’ he said. ‘I was in a rush, in any case.’
‘You could have phoned me once you were on your way in the car or even at the airport,’ she said, not quite ready to relinquish her sense of pique. ‘Why didn’t you?’
He let out an impatient sound. ‘Must we have this conversation?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t realise you expected me to clock in and clock out.’
‘I’m sure that’s what you expect me to do,’ she threw back resentfully. ‘I bet if I left some vague message with the housekeeper or one of the groundsmen that I was going away for the best part of a week you would have something to say about it.’
‘I would indeed,’ he said, ‘but that is because you are my wife and I will not have my reputation damaged by inappropriate behaviour on your part.’
Emma felt her anger towards him escalate. ‘I’m hardly the one in this marriage to act inappropriately, now, am I?’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ He bit each word out like small hard pebbles hitting against a glass surface.
‘I’m n-not the one with a lover in every city throughout Europe,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice steady as her emotions started to bubble over. ‘That’s you.’
‘Emma, you are overwrought,’ he said in a gentler tone. ‘It is understandable given what happened this morning. That is one of the reasons I came away when I did. I think we both need some space to regroup.’
Emma bit down on her lip to stop herself from crying.
‘Emma?’ he said. ‘Cara, listen to me…please.’
She gave a tell-tale little sniff. ‘S-sorry…it’s just I don’t know what you want from me…’
Rafaele closed his eyes and with his free hand used his finger and thumb to pinch the bridge of his nose until he winced at the pressure.
What did he want from her? Something he had no right to ask of her. She was after security and safety and he was not the one to give it to her. He didn’t trust himself. He had never been good at relationships. He got restless and bored within weeks of sleeping with a new partner. It happened every single time. It would not be fair to have an affair with her, only to walk away when the curtain came down on the year required to fulfil the terms of his father’s will.
He had misjudged her so badly he couldn’t bear to add insult to injury by offering her a convenient affair. She deserved so much better. She deserved to have someone who could love her and protect her, to nurture her and meet all her needs. It would pull her down to have someone like him in her life. He couldn’t give her the children she wanted. How could he? What sort of father would he be? He didn’t feel comfortable around children. The nightmares never went away. He would wake up in his bed, soaked in sweat, his heart thumping, and his mind filled with images of his brother lying lifeless on the ground.
‘Emma…’ He took a deep breath and continued, ‘It was not my intention to confuse you. But everything is different now. It has to be.’
‘But what about what I want?’ she asked.
Rafaele’s fingers tensed around his phone. ‘I cannot give you what you want.’
‘How do you know that?’
He blew out another tight breath. ‘I just know it. I am not the settling down type. You told me you wanted a proper love-match marriage and children eventually. That is just not going to happen with me.’
‘Because you’re still punishing yourself,’ she said. ‘You’re robbing yourself of one of the richest experiences in life.’
‘My father clearly did not find it so,’ he reminded her bitterly.
‘Your father was as stubborn and proud as you,’ she said. ‘But have you ever thought what it was like for him losing your mother so young? He was probably devastated, left with two little boys to rear. One of the guests at the wedding told me he had loved your mother since childhood. Can’t you imagine how lost he must have felt when she died so unexpectedly?’
Rafaele frowned and changed his phone to his other hand, flexing his fingers to ease the tension, but it crawled up from his hand to stiffen his neck instead. ‘He did not talk about my mother,’ he said. ‘Not once in all the years after her death. He was the same with Giovanni. The day of my brother’s funeral was the last time I heard Giovanni’s name mentioned by him.’
‘And yet he kept Giovanni’s room as he had left it for all these years,’ she said softly. ‘And your mother’s wedding dress was as perfect as the day she had worn it and the room she had decorated all by herself untouched. Can’t you see how deeply he must have still been grieving? Perhaps he was just unable to express it the way you expected him to.’
Rafaele felt a growing ache in the region of his heart, like a very large hand reaching inside his chest and slowly squeezing. He couldn’t speak for a moment as his throat was so tight. How would he ever know now what his father had thought and felt? Emma was right about him being as stubborn as his father. Over the past decade he could easily have made an effort to make contact, but he had been too pigheaded to do so. He had told himself he didn’t want to see that look of loathing on his father’s face ever again. The months and years had rolled by and now it was too late.
‘Rafaele?’
He gave himself a mental shake as Emma’s soft voice pierced his painful thoughts. ‘This is not a good time for me, Emma,’ he said. ‘I have hours of work ahead of me. I will call you in a day or two.’
There was a stiff little silence.
‘Are you seeing her?’
He frowned. ‘Seeing who?’
‘Your mistress.’
Rafaele waited for a two-beat pause. ‘I no longer have a mistress. I told you I ended that relationship before we got married.’
‘But we’re not really married, are we, Rafaele?’ she said. ‘You don’t want it to be real because you would rather have the freedom to see other women whenever you want.’
‘I am not seeing anyone at present,’ he said. ‘Now, please stop this nonsense before I lose all patience with you.’
She couldn’t stop. She was so frustrated she had to keep going. ‘If you’re going to have a lover on the side I think I should be allowed to do the same.’
Jealousy rose like a red-hot lava flow inside Rafaele at her defiant statement. He had never felt anything quite like the force of it before. The thought of her young and tender, un-tutored body being taken by someone else made him sick to his stomach. What if they were too rough with her as—God forgive him—he had been? She needed to be gently and patiently initiated into the rhythm of lovemaking, not rushed or pressured.
Rafaele suddenly realised he wanted to be the one to show her the pleasure her body could give and receive. His body was still humming with the sensations her touch had evoked that morning. He could still taste her sweetness in his mouth, he could still feel the softness of her lips and he could still feel the satin and silk of her naked breasts against his hands.
‘No,’ he stated implacably. ‘I will not allow you to take a lover.’
‘I’m not asking for your permission, Rafaele,’ she said in an arch tone.
Rafaele ground his teeth as he pulled his anger back into line.
‘The only lover you will be taking during our marriage will be me, do you understand, Emma? No one else. Just me.’
‘But you said—’
‘I know what I said but I have changed my mind,’ he interrupted her curtly. ‘When I return to Como our marriage will be a real one in every sense of the word. Get the housekeeper to help you move your things into my room. I want you in my bed when I get home.’
Emma felt a frisson run up her spine at his toe-curling command. Her body came alive, every place he had touched or caressed that morning started to quake with longing, the nerves beneath her skin leaping and bouncing in anticipation. Her breasts felt tight and full and her inner muscles gave a couple of tiny contraction-like pulses as if already preparing for the invasion of his aroused length. Desire flowed thickly through her veins, making her almost giddy with it. Her heart picked up its pace, her skin peppering with fine beads of perspiration as she tried to control the in-and-out of her choppy breathing.
‘Did you hear me, Emma?’ he asked in that same commanding tone.
‘Y-yes…I heard you…’
‘Non aver paura, mio piccolo,’ he said in a deep but gentle voice. ‘Do not be frightened, my little one. I will not hurt you the next time.’
Emma’s belly did a little freefall of excitement. ‘When are you coming home?’ she asked.
‘I would come on the next flight if I could, cara, but I am afraid that is impossible,’ he said. ‘I really do have urgent business to see to. There is a rather large share portfolio I am interested in. I am meeting with the chief executive of the company in a few hours. If all goes well I will be home on Saturday evening. Can you wait for me until then?’
Emma suddenly felt wretchedly ashamed at how she had practically begged him to come home to her. She had come across as a wanton, desperate for sex, blackmailing him with the threat of another lover to bed her. What full-blooded man wouldn’t take her up on her offer? It wasn’t about feelings on his part, or at least not emotional ones. It was about sex. A purely physical need that could be met with any number of women, but she in her naivety had put her hand up the highest.
Emma mentally cringed at her clumsy attempt at seduction. She was such a novice. Had she forgotten why he had married her in the first place? He wanted The Villa Fiorenza, not her. She was the annoying caveat his father had attached to his will. All she had to do to confirm it was to ask him how long he wanted their marriage to continue.
Go on, the sensible part of her brain urged, ask him. Ask him if he wants to stay married beyond the year set down in the will.
Emma couldn’t do it. She didn’t want to know. Why torture herself with a timeline? What good would it do to spend each day ticking off the calendar, another piece of her heart breaking beyond repair as the inevitable end approached?
‘Emma?’
His deep velvet-toned voice jerked her back into the moment. ‘Um…you don’t have to hurry back if you’re busy.’ She faltered. ‘I understand you have a business to run and…and people to see.’
‘I would much prefer to see you than an overweight CEO, but that is just the way it is for now, mio piccolo.’
Emma wished that niggling voice in her head would go away. She desperately wanted to believe him, but her doubts kept sneaking up and tapping her on the shoulder long after she had put the phone down after saying goodbye.
The next few days passed so slowly Emma felt as if lead weights had been strapped to the hands of the clock. Each minute seemed to limp past, making her feel uncharacteristically restless and edgy.
Emma had not yet moved her things into Rafaele’s suite. It seemed such a huge step to take, to occupy his bed while he wasn’t there as if they had a normal relationship. Nothing about their marriage was normal. She had a ring on her finger and a certificate that declared them legally married, but Rafaele still had a chip on his shoulder about his father and until that was resolved she didn’t think he would ever move on enough to allow her a space in his heart. Her love for him had gradually crept up on her. She hadn’t realised how intense her feelings were until she had finally been brave enough to pull back the screen of denial.
Of course she was in love with him.
She hadn’t stood a chance under the blowtorch of his bad-boy charm. She had melted like butter, her body recognising from the first moment when they had locked gazes he was the one for her. He was the one man who had sent her senses spinning, turned her world upside down, her bones to liquid and her heart to mush. One look had started it, one smile had encouraged it and one kiss had confirmed it. What would making love to completion with him do to her already out of control emotions?
The housekeeper came in with the papers on the Saturday morning, her expression giving nothing away for free, but Emma sensed a pitying attitude in the way Carla retreated without once meeting her eyes.
Emma soon found the reason why on the gossip pages of one of the British scandal sheets. There was a photograph of Rafaele leaning in close to a gorgeous blonde woman wearing an evening dress slit to the navel, her full-lipped mouth pouting to receive his kiss. Emma closed her eyes and tried to get the image out of her brain, but when she opened them again it was still there, taunting her, reminding her of how stupid she had been to think she had even stood a chance.
The woman’s name was Miranda Bellingstoke, a rich heiress to a fortune in stocks and shares, just the type of socialite wife Rafaele Fiorenza would have chosen if his father hadn’t interfered. A woman who knew how to carry herself, a woman with a pedigree longer than her perfect, cellulite-free legs, a woman who didn’t have a single drug-addicted skeleton in her closet, a woman who knew how to meet his needs and who had no doubt been meeting them the whole time he was in London. The article hinted as much. It speculated how Ms Bellingstoke’s involvement with the high-flying Italian stock trader seemed to be on again in spite of his recent marriage to an Australian woman.
Nausea lifted Emma’s stomach contents to her throat and she swallowed against it, fighting against the imminent collapse of her spirit. At least the journalist hadn’t mentioned Emma by name, but still the shame of being identified as the poor, ignorant wife, the last to know of her husband’s affair, clung to her like filthy mud.
It was more than obvious the ‘urgent’ business he had to see to was five feet ten and weighed less than Emma did at five feet five. How could she compete against that? Rafaele was used to sophisticated women of the world. He had probably been laughing about her inexperience to his worldly mistress, no doubt relating to her how Emma had prostrated herself, pleading to be shown what it meant to be a woman in passionate command of a man who had so much experience he deserved a doctorate.
Emma felt herself shrinking in shame. How could she have been so dumb? It was obvious now how this was going to pan out. He would travel back and forth to London ‘on business’ leaving her back at the villa to twiddle her thumbs waiting with bated breath for his return. What better revenge for how she had supposedly insinuated her way into his father’s affections? He would get exactly what he wanted with a little bonus thrown in.
Her.
But it wasn’t going to go all his way, not if she could help it.
She would be more than ready for him when he returned; she would have her resolve hardened, her chin at a combative angle, her heart under lock and key.
Emma heard the low growl of his car a few hours later and straightened her spine as she waited for him to come in. She heard the firm tread of his footsteps on the marbled floors and his voice echoing throughout the large foyer as he called her. ‘Cara, I am home. Where are you, la mio bella moglie?’
She walked stiffly out of the salon, her chin held high, her eyes glittering with wrath. ‘Here I am,’ she said.
His gaze ran over her, a quizzical light in their dark depths. ‘Emma, has something happened? You look…tense.’
‘How was your business in London?’ she asked. ‘Satisfying?’
A frown brought his brows together. ‘I a
chieved what I set out to achieve, if that is what you are asking, but somehow I get the feeling it is not. What is going on? Why are you looking at me like that?’
Emma gave him a hard little glare. ‘You lied to me. You said your affair with your mistress was over but it’s not, is it? I saw you with Miranda Bellingstoke in the paper.’
A flicker of irritation passed over his features. ‘I did not lie to you, Emma. I am no longer involved with Miranda.’
Emma clenched her hands into fists. ‘But you saw her while you were there, didn’t you? There’s no point denying it as I saw the photo of you with her in the London paper.’
He sucked in a breath and dragged a hand through his hair. ‘All right,’ he said with a hint of weariness. ‘I did see her, but not intentionally. The CEO I was dealing with suggested we have a drink once we had sorted out the business end of things. Miranda happened to be at the same bar.’
Emma rolled her eyes. ‘How very convenient.’
His jaw went tight. ‘I did not plan to see her, Emma. She came over to where we were standing at the bar and, if the truth be known, made rather a nuisance of herself.’
‘Would you like to see the press’s version of Miranda making a nuisance of herself?’ Emma asked with a little curl of her lip.
He set his mouth. ‘I do not see the need to defend myself to you, Emma,’ he said. ‘After all, you have experienced the bias of the press first hand, have you not? I would have thought you would be the first person to give me the benefit of the doubt.’
Emma could see his point, but still those little finger-prod doubts kept nudging her. She felt so confused. He was a playboy. He was used to his freedom. He had only married her because he’d had no choice. Would she ever feel secure enough to trust him?
He stepped closer and gently lifted her chin so she had to meet his gaze. ‘Have you changed your mind about making our marriage a real one?’ he asked.
Emma looked into his bottomless black-brown eyes and melted. How could she say no to him when she loved him so much? Even if she could only have him for the rest of the year wouldn’t that be better than not at all? ‘No…’ Her voice came out whisper-soft. ‘No, I haven’t changed my mind.’
The Fiorenza Forced Marriage Page 12
