‘There’s no need to be cynical, Dio. Don’t you have any dreams you’ve ever wanted to follow?’
‘Right now my imagination is working full-time on getting the honeymoon you failed to deliver...’ And that was precisely how he intended to harness his roaming mind. He had fallen hard for what he had thought was her disingenuous innocence. If she thought that he was mug enough to repeat his mistake, by buying into the concept of the poor little rich wife whose only dream was to help the poor and the needy, then she was in for a surprise.
‘You’re not even interested in hearing about this place, are you?’ she asked in a disappointed voice. ‘When I told you that I wanted a divorce, you weren’t even interested in asking me why.’
‘Would you like me to ask you now?’ Dio looked at her with raised eyebrows and Lucy drew in a couple of steadying breaths because he could be just so unbearable when he put his mind to it. He believed the worst of her and there was no way that he was going to revise his opinions, whatever she told him.
It didn’t matter that he had married her for all the wrong reasons! He played by his own rules.
‘Is all of this going to pay enough to keep the wolf from the door?’ He spread his arms wide to encompass the little room but he kept his eyes fixed on her face. She looked as though she wanted to cry.
‘It doesn’t pay anything at all. It’s all purely voluntary work.’
‘Ah... And what’s your relationship with the man who scarpered when I threatened to beat him up?’
‘He didn’t scarper.’
‘Not the answer I want.’
‘You’re so arrogant, Dio!’
‘I’m interested in finding out whether my wife has a crush on some man she met on the Internet!’
His voice was calm and only mildly curious but Lucy could sense the undercurrent of steel running through it. She shivered because, just for the briefest of seconds, she wondered what it would be like for that possessiveness in his voice to indicate jealousy.
She wondered what it would feel like to have this sinfully good-looking, charismatic and utterly arrogant man...jealous.
She shakily dismissed that insane curiosity before it even had time to take root.
‘I don’t have a crush on Mark,’ she told him quietly. ‘Although, he’s just the sort of guy I might have a crush on.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ Dio was outraged that they were sitting here having this conversation.
‘I mean he’s a really nice guy. He’s kind, he’s considerate, he’s thoughtful and the kids adore him.’
‘Sounds like a barrel of laughs.’
‘He can be,’ Lucy retorted sharply. ‘He can actually be very funny. He makes me laugh,’ she added wistfully and Dio took a deep, steadying breath.
‘And I don’t?’
‘We haven’t laughed together since...’
Suddenly restless, he stood up and began pacing the room and, this time, he actually took in what he was seeing, all the evidence of classes in progress. He flicked through one of the exercise books lying on a desk and recognised his wife’s handwriting. Ticks, corrections, encouraging smiley faces...
‘So, no crush on the hapless teacher,’ Dio eventually drawled. ‘And is that reciprocated?’
For a moment, Lucy considered throwing caution to the winds and telling him that the hapless teacher was crazy about her. Something dark inside her wanted to see if she could make him jealous, even though she already knew that answer to that one.
‘Mark isn’t interested in women,’ she said baldly. ‘Not in that way. He’s very happy with his partner who works for a legal firm in Kent. We’re just good friends.’
Dio felt a bolt of pure satisfaction and he allowed himself to relax. It had been inconceivable that she had been fooling around behind his back. It was also inconceivable that he would allow her to walk away from him without him first sampling the body that had preyed on his mind ever since he had first laid eyes on her.
Whether she knew it or not, she was his weakness, and he was determined finally to put paid to that. The momentary threat of another man had shown him what he had casually assumed. He had allowed his pride to call the shots, to subdue a more primal instinct to assert himself under a civilised, remote veneer that just wasn’t his style. No more. She was his and he wanted her, never more so than now, when she was stripped of the make-up and the designer clothes, when her raw beauty was on show. Her teacher friend might be gay but it still bothered Dio that the man had even seen her like this, in all her natural glory.
Her talk about some mythical man who was kind and caring, waiting out there for her, had also got on his nerves.
His eyes slid lazily to her face and he watched her for a few seconds in silence until he could see the tide of pink creep into her cheeks. When she began to fidget, he allowed his eyes to drift a little lower, slowly taking in the jeans, the tee-shirt and the jut of her pert little breasts underneath.
‘So...’ he murmured, finding a slightly more comfortable position. ‘At least my woman hasn’t been screwing around behind my back...’
‘Since when am I your woman?’
‘I like you like this.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Unadorned. It’s sexy.’
Lucy went redder. She felt tell-tale moisture seep through her panties, felt an ache down there that throbbed and spread under the unhurried intensity of his gaze.
‘I told you, I’m not interested...’ But she could hear a wobble in her voice and the shadow of a smile that tugged his lips was telling. She straightened and gave herself a stern mental talking to. ‘I’m going to build a life for myself, Dio. A real life—no pretending, no having to talk to people I don’t want to talk to, no dressing up in clothes I don’t like wearing!’
‘Laudable.’ He cocked his head to one side. ‘So your plan is to continue your voluntary work here?’
‘Like I said, it isn’t all about money!’
‘But you never qualified as a teacher, did you?’
‘I will as soon as I can and the work I do here will be invaluable experience.’
‘The place is falling down,’ Dio pointed out. ‘You might want to devote your talent for teaching here but, frankly, I doubt this building will stay the course. You may not have noticed, but there’s a bad case of rising damp going on and I’d bet that the plumbing goes back to the Dark Ages.’
‘Mark is doing an excellent job of trying to raise funds.’
‘Really?’
Lucy didn’t say anything for a while and Dio nodded slowly, reading what she was reluctant to tell him.
In hard times, it was always difficult to get well-meaning individuals to part with their cash and certainly, if they were providing a service to the needy, then the parents of those needy children would just not have the cash to give anyway.
The building was collapsing around them and neither of them would be able to stall the inevitable.
‘I never knew you were so...engaged in wanting to do good for the community,’ he murmured truthfully. ‘And I’m willing to lend a hand here.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Lucy dragged her mind away from a brief picture of how her father would have reacted to what she was doing. With horror. He had always been an inveterate snob of the very worst kind. Women were not cut out for careers and certainly not careers that involved them dealing with people lower down the pecking order! A nice job working for a posh auction house might have met with his approval but teaching maths to school kids from a deprived background? Never in a month of Sundays.
To think of the kids not having this facility was heart breaking. She hadn’t been there long, but she knew that Mark had poured his life and soul into trying to make something of the place. And the kids, a trickle which was steadily growing
, would be the ones who fared worst.
‘You want to walk away from our marriage with nothing rather than face getting into bed with me.’ Dio didn’t bother to gift wrap what he had to say and he didn’t bother to point out that that kiss they had shared was proof positive that she wasn’t immune to what he had to offer. ‘I can’t help that—but you want this building bought...? Repaired...? Turned into a functioning high-spec space...? No expense spared...? How does that sound to you, Lucy? You see...’ He relaxed, met her bemused gaze coolly and steadily. ‘I want you and I’m not above using any trick in the book to get what I want...’
CHAPTER FOUR
LUCY WAS APPALLED.
‘What kind of thing is that for you to say?’ she demanded shakily. ‘You’d stoop so low?’
Dio inclined his beautiful head to one side and shrugged elegantly. ‘I don’t look at it that way.’
‘No? And what way do you look at it?’
‘I look at it as a form of persuasion.’
‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’
‘You’re my wife,’ he said in the sort of voice that implied he was stating the glaringly obvious and irrefutable. ‘When you started concocting your little plan to walk out of my life, you must surely have known that I wouldn’t lie down on the ground waving a white flag and wishing you every success. Since when did I turn into that kind of person?’
Lucy shifted uncomfortably and then began fiddling with a pile of exercise books on the desk at which she had sat. Teacher in the front with wayward pupil facing her. Except Dio was far too intimidating to be any old wayward pupil.
‘Well?’ he prodded coolly.
‘I just think it’s out of order for you to jeopardise the welfare of lots of deprived children who happen to be benefitting from what is on offer here!’
‘I’m not jeopardising anyone’s welfare. You are.’ He glanced at his watch. He had been optimistic about getting back to the office at some point during the day and had thus dressed in his suit but, the way things were going, the office felt out of reach at the moment and, strangely enough, that didn’t bother him.
He was far too invigorated by what was taking place.
‘Is this taking longer than you expected?’ Lucy asked with saccharin sweetness that wouldn’t have fooled an idiot and he grinned.
Her stomach seemed to swoop and swirl inside her, as though she had been suddenly dropped from a great height without the aid of a parachute. That grin; it transformed the harsh, forbidding contours of his lean face. It reminded her of her youthful folly in letting it get under her skin until she had been walking on clouds, hanging onto his every word, waiting for the next meeting with barely bated breath.
And just like that it dawned on her why the thought of making love to him was so terrifying.
Yes, she hated him for the way he had manipulated her into marrying him for all the wrong reasons. Yes, she hated the way he had showcased her, like a business asset to be produced at will and then dispatched when no longer needed.
But what really scared her was the fact that he could still do things to her, make her feel things that were only appropriate in the domain of a real, functioning marriage.
When she thought of having him touch her, make love to her, she knew that somehow she would end up being vulnerable. He still got to her and she was scared stiff that, the closer he approached, the more ensnared she would become.
Like it or not, she was not nearly as detached as she had presented herself over time.
And that lazy grin was enough to remind her of that unwelcome reality.
‘For my dear wife, I would be willing to put business on hold indefinitely.’
Lucy shot him a glance of scathing disbelief and Dio laughed, a rich, sexy, velvety sound that shot right past her defences.
‘Or at least for a couple of hours, while we try to work out our little differences. Show me around.’ He stood up and flexed his muscles. ‘I can’t carry on sitting in this chair for much longer. It’s far too small. My joints are beginning to seize up. I need to stretch my legs, so give me the guided tour. If I’m going to revive this dump, I might as well start assessing what needs to be done.’
Lucy’s full mouth compressed. Was he deliberately trying to goad a response out of her? Or was he just supremely confident of getting his own way, whatever she said to the contrary?
‘You’re not going to revive this dump and you’re not interested in what I do here, anyway!’
Dio looked at her long and hard, hands thrust into his trouser pockets.
‘I’m going to disagree on both counts,’ he told her softly.
Lucy’s eyes fluttered and she looked away hurriedly. The dark, naked intent in his gaze was unsettling. She decided that showing him around the school, what little there was of it, was a better option than standing here and having to brave the full frontal force of his personality.
She gave a jerky shrug and directed him to the exercise books on her desk. This was the main classroom, where she and Mark did their best to accommodate the children, whose abilities varied wildly, as did their ages.
She warmed to her subject.
Dio saw what had been missing all these months. She had presented a beautiful, well-educated, cultured mask to the outside world but the animation had gone. It was here now as she talked about all the wonderful things the school was capable of providing; how much the considerate, funny and thoughtful Mark had managed to do with minimum help and almost no funding. Her eyes glowed and her cheeks pinked. She gestured and he found himself riveted by the fluid grace of her hands as she spoke.
There were several rooms on the ground floor. The building was like the Tardis, much bigger inside than it appeared from the outside.
‘Volunteer teachers come whenever they can,’ she told him, leading the way into another small room. ‘Mark has managed to get a rota going and several subjects are now covered by experts.’ She looked at Dio and her voice softened. ‘You wouldn’t believe the conditions some of the kids who come to us live in,’ she explained. ‘The fact that they’re brought to us in the first place shows a great deal of parental support but there are stories of almost no food, noise pollution from neighbours, overcrowding in small flats...the list goes on.’
Dio nodded and let his eyes drift over that full mouth, the slim column of her neck, her narrow shoulders. Vanilla-blonde strands of hair were escaping the confines of the ponytail and the way they wisped around her face made her look incredibly young, barely a teenager.
‘How safe is it?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Huh?’
‘What are the safety procedures around here? Is there just the pair of you working here? And have you been working at night?’
‘Are you telling me that you’re concerned for my welfare?’ Lucy’s voice was mocking.
‘Always.’
She felt the steady thud of her heart banging against her rib cage. His face was so serious that she was momentarily deprived of the power of speech and, when she did rediscover her vocal cords, she could hear a thread of jumpiness in her voice as she explained that neither of them worked nights and the place was always busy with people coming and going during the handful of hours in which they did work.
‘Be that as it may,’ Dio continued, ‘now that I know where you spend your time, and what you get up to when I’m not around, you’re going to have two of my guards close at hand whenever you come here—and, Lucy, that’s not negotiable.’
‘You used to say that you didn’t agree with men who felt that they had to surround their wives with bodyguards!’
‘You wouldn’t require a bodyguard if you spent your time doing your nails and shopping...which was what I thought you got up to in your spare time.’
‘What sort of impression is that going to give?’ Lucy cried,
feeling the wings of her freedom being clipped and resenting it even as she warmed with forbidden pleasure at the thought of him wanting to protect her.
To protect his investment. She brought herself back down to earth with a sobering bump. An investment he was keen to look after now that he wanted to take full advantage of it before he consigned it to the rubbish bin.
‘I’ve never cared about what other people think. So, how many classrooms are there in this place and what’s upstairs...?’
‘I can’t have great big, bulky men lurking around. They’ll scare off the kids.’
‘I doubt that in this neighbourhood.’
‘Stop being provocative, Dio!’
‘If you think I’m being provocative, then how would you describe yourself?’ He strolled towards her and she found herself nailed to the spot, mesmerised by the casual grace of his movements.
‘I’m just...just trying to tell you that I don’t want to...to...stand out when I come here.’ Perspiration beaded her upper lips as he curled a strand of wayward hair around his finger. ‘What are you doing, Dio?’
‘I’m talking to you. You can’t object if your soon-to-be ex-husband takes a little interest in the safety and wellbeing of his wife, can you?’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘No?’ He looked perplexed. ‘Then what did you mean?’
‘You... I...’ Her sluggish brain could not complete the remainder of her thoughts. Her body felt heavy and lethargic. Right now, she yearned for him to touch her in other places; she absolutely yearned for him to take her to all those places he frequently took her to in her dreams.
She had to exert every ounce of willpower to drag herself physically out of his mesmerising radius, stepping back and sucking in a lungful of restorative air.
‘It won’t work having great big guys standing on either side of me. Plus, when I come here, no one knows who I am.’
‘You’re not recognised?’ Dio frowned and she allowed herself a little smile.
‘Why would anyone recognise me? I dress like this, in jeans, tee-shirts and jumpers, and I scrape my hair back and I don’t wear tons of make-up and expensive jewellery.’
The Wedding Night Debt: Christmas at the Castello (bonus novella) Page 6
