He didn’t, of course. The minutes ticked by with excruciating slowness until an hour had passed, and then another. Through the open shutters she could hear the faint drift of music and laughter. And the irony didn’t escape her that downstairs people were still celebrating their wedding, while upstairs the bride lay alone in the honeymoon bed.
She glanced at the ornate clock hanging on the far wall to see that it was well past midnight. Where was he? It dawned on her that he could be in any one of a hundred places she didn’t know about. Because she knew so little of his life here. And in that moment, Lily realised how alone she was. Alone in a strange city, having married one of its major players—and then been abandoned by him in the most bitter of rows.
What the hell was she going to do?
For a moment her fingers twisted at the sheet, her mind spinning with possibilities until she came to a sudden decision, motivated by something which had defined her life so far. Something called survival.
Was she going to lie there feeling sorry for herself because Ciro D’Angelo had judged her so negatively? No way. Just because she’d let all his harsh accusations wash over her, didn’t mean she had to continue being a mindless victim. She picked up her phone and punched out his number, but wasn’t surprised when it went straight through to voicemail. She left a message in a surprisingly calm voice—saying that she didn’t think it was a good idea to go driving in the middle of the night when he was clearly in such a volatile mood. And could he please just let her know he was safe.
Half an hour later, a stark two-word text came winging back.
I’m safe.
And that was that. Lily was left in the vast suite without a clue where he was, or when he’d be coming back. It promised to be a long night. She had nowhere to go, she realised as she slithered into the warmth of an oversized bathrobe—and no one she could talk to. All the people closest to her were here at the hotel—but she could hardly go knocking on Danielle’s door in the middle of the night to tell her that she’d been deserted by her new husband. Apart from the shame of admitting something like that, wasn’t there still part of her which was hoping that once Ciro had calmed down they could talk about this like adults and maybe get round it?
Yes, she’d been wrong not to tell him about her past—but surely he could understand why she had allowed herself to be swept along by the romance and security he’d been offering her? He’d said he wanted to help her, and he had gone all out to get her to agree with him. Did that count for nothing—and was he now going to deny the existence of the lightning flash of attraction which had hit them both? Surely their future didn’t have to be governed by something as unimportant as her virginity.
But it was important to him, she realised. It was important in a primitive way which most men wouldn’t admit to. In the same way he’d admitted to all that stuff about wanting a wife who would always be waiting for him.
She must have fallen asleep because when she awoke, the suite was filled with the pale apricot light of dawn. Slowly she sat up in bed, her heart almost leaping out of her chest when she saw the dark figure who was seated at the other side of the room, silently watching her. He had removed his jacket and wore his white shirt and dark wedding trousers. But his feet were bare, his eyes were blank and his mouth was tight and unsmiling.
Suppressing a shiver, Lily ran her hand through the mussed tangle of her hair. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Out.’
She didn’t react. So was this how it was going to be from now on? She wanted to hurl herself at him, to demand to know whether he had sought refuge in the arms of another woman. Someone who would soothe him and be indignant that he’d been short-changed by his bride. But Lily knew that misplaced emotion and unfounded fears weren’t going to help her at a time like this. That if there was any hope of salvaging this whole mess, then she needed to be calm. To show him that she could still be strong. More importantly, that she cared about him. ‘I was worried about you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you drove off in such a rage—for all I knew, you could have had some kind of accident.’
‘And wouldn’t that have made it easier for you?’ he asked, in a flat, deadly voice.
‘E-easier for me? What are you talking about?’
‘Billionaire groom’s car plummets off coastal road,’ he intoned, still in that same flat tone—like a radio commentator making a sombre announcement. ‘Leaving his bride of less than twenty-four hours a widow.’
‘Ciro! That’s a terrible thing—’
‘The operative word being billionaire, of course,’ he mused. ‘The widow takes it all—the money, the houses, the share portfolio. Wouldn’t that be the perfect solution, Lily? After all, you were prepared to pretend to be something you weren’t in order to secure a marriage to a rich man. Maybe you’ve been praying to get my money sooner rather than later?’
‘Stop it,’ she breathed.
He shook his head with an air of disbelief, like a man who had just emerged unscratched from the wreckage of a plane. ‘But I guess I have nobody to blame but myself for what’s happened. For once in my life, I was completely blinkered. So blinkered that I walked straight into your honeyed trap—though if I’d stopped to think about it, it was glaringly obvious what you were trying to do. You were so desperate to secure your house and your future—’
‘And you were so desperate to be the first man to lay claim to my body,’ she flared back, reeling at all the emotional ammunition he was firing at her.
‘Yes. Yes, I was.’ He stared at her, as if trying to make sense of it. ‘I am an experienced man of the world and usually I can see right through any form of deception. But I have to say that you really got me, Lily. You were so … wondering. So unbelievably sweet. Like it was the first time for you.’
‘Because that’s what it felt like!’ she protested, her voice trembling now. ‘It really was like that.’
He leapt on her words, like a hungry dog on a bone. ‘So you didn’t feel anything for the other man you were engaged to?’
She bit her lip. It would have been so easy to say no. That she’d felt nothing at all for Tom—but that would have been a lie. And there weren’t going to be any more lies. No matter how awful the consequences, she could no longer shy away from the truth. ‘Yes, of course I did,’ she whispered.
Ciro stood up as if he’d been struck—the pain nearly as bad as it had been last night when he’d discovered that another man had been the first to give her pleasure. He walked over to the double doors which were open to the spacious terrace, beyond which the dawn-washed bay glittered beneath the rising sun. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. They should have been making love now. And when the sun was a little higher they should have been taking breakfast out there on the terrace, against the backdrop of the most beautiful view in the world. Afterwards, he’d been planning to surprise his new bride with a boat-trip for two along the Amalfi coast, where a sleek yacht lay bobbing in the water—ready to take them to any number of paradise destinations.
And now?
Now it all felt so empty.
He turned back to face her, thinking how beautiful she looked, her sapphire eyes glittering wildly in her pale face. He should tell her to get the hell out of his life. To walk out and leave him alone and he would pay her off with a no-fuss divorce.
But the beat of his heart and the heat in his groin were clouding his judgement. Her body was sending out a siren call he’d denied for too long to be strong enough to resist, when it was sitting right there in front of him, on a plate. He began to walk towards the bed and saw her eyes darken as he stood over her, seeing the way that her fingers clutched at the all-enveloping bathrobe.
‘What are you doing?’ she whispered.
‘Nothing, at the moment. Why, what do you want me to do?’
She wanted him to stop looking at her like that—as if she were a piece of meat and he were some hungry predator who was about to make a big meal of it. ‘I want you
to leave me alone.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘I do, I… oh!’ Lily fell back against the pillows as he sank down on the bed, his mouth finding hers and prising her lips open with the expert play of his tongue. And she was letting him. Letting his fingers splay over her breast as the robe fell open—and the instinctive cry of pleasure she gave in response to his touch felt like a betrayal. There was still time to struggle. Still time to push him away, even as his hand was reaching for his belt. So why was she helping him? Why was she tugging at his trousers and then at the silken boxes which hugged the hard curve of his buttocks? Why the hell didn’t she do something as he reached for a condom, which he was now sliding on with a daunting efficiency?
And then he was ripping the shirt from his shoulders and somehow the robe had been pulled from her body. He was prising open her thighs and she was letting him—wanting him—so on fire and so wet for him that she sucked in a gasped cry of pleasure as he entered her. For a moment he stilled and then he bent his head to whisper in her ear.
‘So why don’t you show me what you can do, baby?’
It was an unforgivingly contemptuous remark to make in the circumstances and Lily closed her eyes as she prayed for strength to tell him to stop, knowing that he would comply in an instant. Because hadn’t he already demonstrated his steely self-control where sex was concerned? But the truth was that she didn’t want him to stop. She couldn’t bear him to stop. When he was deep inside her like this, wasn’t there the sense that they were at one—only if it was in a purely physical sense?
She placed the flat of her hand on his chest and pushed, until he was lying on his back with her on top, still intimately joined. Her hair fell forward as she began to move, tentatively at first and then, as he gave a shuddered moan, with more confidence. Her soft thighs gripped the hard bone and sinew of his hips. She revelled in the erotic contrast of his taut masculinity against her pliant femininity. She felt the hardness of him deep inside her as she rode him with a hunger and an anger she’d never felt before. And when she saw control begin to slip away from him, she lowered her head and began to kiss him—even though at first he tried to turn his head away. But not for long. With a little moan of capitulation he let her deepen the kiss and he caught his hands to her waist as he came to a shuddering orgasm deep inside her.
She felt the ragged warmth of his breath against her neck as the spasms died away into a soft stillness. For a while, they lay there in silence until he carefully withdrew from her and she felt a great pang of disappointment—hating herself for missing the intimate feel of his body so much.
He turned onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow and leaning over her—his lips very close to hers. ‘That was a little one-sided,’ he mused.
Lily swallowed. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Oh, but it does.’ Slipping his hand down between her thighs, he began to move his fingers against her heated flesh. ‘It matters a lot.’
‘Ciro—’
‘Shh.’
It was quick and it was perfunctory and Lily was much too turned on to be able to stop him from bringing her to another gasping orgasm, which he didn’t even bother to silence with a kiss.
Afterwards she felt like turning her face into the pillow and weeping with shame, but she vowed that Ciro would see no tears from her. She had to face the truth—no matter how unpalatable that might be. She couldn’t just shrug off all the responsibility and place all the burden on him. If this was a blame-game then there were two players, not one. She had helped to create this situation. She’d known the kind of man he was, with his old-fashioned ideals—and she had allowed herself to play along with it. Yes, it had felt real to her, but Ciro didn’t care about that. He cared about her deception. About the smashing of what he’d believed in—and there was no going back. They needed to confront the future and they needed to do it with dignity.
‘So where do we go from here?’ she asked slowly.
Ciro looked down at her flushed face and saw the pulse which was beating frantically amid the dampened hair at her temple. Where indeed? He felt the bitter taste of regret, knowing he shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have had sex with her again—nor brought her to such a cold-blooded orgasm afterwards. He despised himself for his actions—even while his body still shivered with remembered pleasure of how good she’d felt.
For a long moment he was silent as he weighed up all the possibilities which lay open to them. ‘If we hadn’t consummated the marriage, then we could have had it annulled,’ he said. ‘As it is, I think we should put an end to it as soon as possible, don’t you?’
Lily thought about a pet dog she’d once had—her beloved Harley, who had lived to a ripe old age. When he had become sick the vet had talked about ‘putting him out of his misery’. Well, that was exactly what this felt like. Only without the long and happy life in between.
Well, she was damned if she was going to ask him if they couldn’t try to work it out—not when he’d clearly made up his mind that it was over.
‘I can go back to England,’ she said quietly.
Ciro shook his head, his mind working quickly, the way it always did when he saw a problem which needed a solution. ‘No, Lily. That’s where you’re wrong. I don’t want any more drama—and you flouncing out with a haunted face and accusing eyes is the last thing I need. My marriage ending within days will either make me look like a fool—or a bad judge of character. And I will countenance neither.’
‘So this is all about your reputation, is it, Ciro?’
‘What do you think?’ he questioned roughly. ‘I have worked hard to build it and I will not have it wrecked by you.’ He paused, his heart beating heavily as he looked at her. ‘If you agree to my plan, then you’ll get what you wanted all along. The Grange will still be yours and I will ensure a generous settlement in return for your cooperation.’
Lily heard the steely note of negotiation which had entered his voice and stared at him. He looked like a stranger, she thought. A dark-faced and grim stranger. ‘What do you mean by cooperation?’
He shrugged. ‘It isn’t complicated. You play the part of my beloved wife for six months—after which time we will tell the world that you are homesick. That you miss England too much to make the marriage work and that we are parting amicably.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘I don’t think you will.’ His black eyes hardened and so did his lips. ‘You see, you aren’t really in any position to refuse, Lily.’
She opened her mouth to contradict him, to tell him that she could refuse anything she pleased. But the truth was that she was filled with a weariness which seemed to have seeped deep into her bones. And that, right now, she couldn’t face going back to the tatters of the life she’d left behind in England.
CHAPTER TEN
‘YOU were very quiet tonight.’
Ciro’s words broke into the silence of Lily’s thoughts and a whisper of awareness shivered over her skin as he joined her on the balcony. Suddenly the terrace of their apartment seemed the size of a matchbox as he dominated the space around him, just as he always did. The glitter of the starry sky, the dark lick of the waves in the bay—all these seemed to fade into nothingness as he came to stand beside her. She could sense the warmth of his body and smell the raw tang of his aftershave. And it didn’t seem to matter how much she tried to fight her attraction towards him, or how often she told herself that it was dangerous to still feel this way about him—nothing ever changed. She continued to want her husband with a fierce hunger which had shown no signs of abating.
They had arrived home a short while ago and she’d gone outside into the warm night air to drink in the view she had grown to love. The magic of the southern city which had captured her heart these last few months—a heart for which her husband had no use.
‘You didn’t enjoy the evening?’ he questioned.
Lily felt the faint whisper of the sea breeze on her bare shoulders and swallowed down a
painful sigh. Did he really have no idea why she was so preoccupied? Didn’t he realise that no matter how wonderful the opera or after-show party, or whatever other glitzy event they happened to be attending, it didn’t make up for the tense reality of their married life. That every second spent beneath his unforgiving gaze was like having a knife twisted in her stomach.
It isn’t complicated, Ciro had said on their wedding night—when he had proposed the idea of a six-month marriage for the sake of propriety.
Like hell it wasn’t.
It was about as complicated as it could get.
She stared at the diamond sparkle of the sea and the brooding silhouette of Mount Vesuvius in the distance. Did he really find it uncomplicated to maintain the illusion that they were a pair of blissful newlyweds, when nothing could be further from the truth?
That was the trouble. Yes, he did. Ciro had a skill which seemed sadly lacking in her. It seemed that he could compartmentalise everything with an ease which would have been almost admirable if it hadn’t been so breathtakingly cold. And he could do it so well that at times she’d almost been sucked into believing it herself. Like when he introduced her to people she hadn’t met before and his hand would stray to rest protectively at the small of her back—as if he were finding it difficult to refrain from touching her. And Lily’s heart would crash like crazy as his fingers massaged the knotted tension in her spine, wondering if he’d forgiven her. But then she would look up into his dark eyes and see nothing but coldness there.
Which either meant that her husband was a brilliant actor who could successfully hide his feelings from the world—or just that he didn’t have any feelings for her any more. That the supposed ‘lightning flash’ he’d once felt had been extinguished by her deception.
The morning after their wedding, he had cancelled their honeymoon yacht trip along the Amalfi coastline and Lily had tried telling herself that was a good thing. Because could there be anything worse than being stuck on a boat with a man who was simmeringly angry with you? Yet inside she had been heartbroken—like a child whose birthday party had been called off at the last minute.
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