The Temporary Mrs. Marchetti (Mills & Boon Modern)

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  Her lashes came down to half-mast over her eyes. After a long moment she released a serrated-sounding breath. ‘The last time I had sex I came home and showered for an hour.’

  Cristiano’s gut clenched as if a steel-studded fist had grabbed his intestines. ‘You weren’t...?’ He couldn’t even say the ugly word.

  Her lips twisted in a rueful motion. ‘No, it was completely consensual, it’s just I hated every minute of it. Not that there were too many minutes of it, mind you. Three or four at the most.’

  Cristiano brushed back some strands of her tousled hair from her forehead. He hated the thought of her making love with someone else. Hated, hated, hated it. For years he’d refused to think about it. He wouldn’t allow his mind to torture him with the thought of another man touching her body the way he had touched her, holding her the way he held her. He knew it was arrogant, but he wanted to believe he was the only one who brought that passionate response out of her. His body. His touch. His need of her triggered the fire in her blood in the same way she triggered his.

  ‘If the chemistry isn’t there then the sex will always suffer.’

  Her fingertip traced a slow line around his mouth. ‘That’s something we were never short of, isn’t it?’ Her words had a faint wistfulness about them.

  He captured her finger and kissed the end of it. ‘No, that’s one thing we had in spades.’ In spades and buckets and truck and trailer loads. Still had. He could feel it thrumming between them, the way their bodies meshed as if unable to keep their distance.

  Alice linked her arms around his head, her fingers lifting and tugging and releasing the strands of his hair in a way that made every inch of his scalp tingle. ‘I’ve never enjoyed sex with anyone else like I do with you.’ Her lips gave a little sideways quirk. ‘I should hate you for that. You’ve ruined my sex life.’

  Cristiano gave her a look of mock reproach. ‘You haven’t done mine any favours, either, young lady.’

  Her eyes studied his for a long moment. ‘Are you saying it’s...better with me?’

  He pressed a soft kiss on her forehead. ‘It’s different.’

  Two fine pleats appeared between her eyes. ‘How?’

  He smoothed away her frown with the pad of his index finger. ‘We should get a move on. It will take an hour or so to get to Stresa.’

  Her frown snapped back. ‘Don’t change the subject. Talk to me, Cristiano. Tell me what was different—’

  ‘Look, it just was, okay?’ Cristiano rolled away and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. What did she want him to say? That he’d missed her every goddam day since? That every time in the last seven years when he’d touched another woman he’d thought of her? And how much he wished it were her? That sex was just sex with anyone else but with her it was making love?

  No way was he going to say that.

  Even if it was regrettably true.

  He heard her sit up on the bed, and then felt her silky hand travel the length of his rigid spine, from his neck to his tailbone, in a soothing caress that made every knob of his vertebrae quiver. She leant her head against his back, her arms going around his waist, the little rush of air from her sigh tickling the skin behind his shoulder blades like the wings of a moth.

  ‘Don’t be mad at me,’ she said.

  Cristiano let out his own sigh and swivelled round to gather her against his side. He dropped a kiss to the top of her head. ‘I’m not mad at you, tesoro.’

  I’m mad at myself.

  For still wanting her when he should have been well and truly over her. He wasn’t some creepy stalker guy who couldn’t let go. There should be no reason he was stuck on her to the point where he couldn’t bear to contemplate a future with anyone else. He could have anyone he wanted. He didn’t have to fight for dates. If anything, he had to fight them off. But something about Alice had stayed with him. Like a tune he couldn’t get out of his head.

  Alice snaked a hand up around his neck, gazing into his eyes with such intensity he wondered if she could sense how much he had missed her. That in spite of all his denials and dissembling she knew—her body knew—he only felt this body-stunning magic with her. Her eyes went to his mouth, her tongue sneaking out to moisten the soft swell of her lips.

  ‘I don’t want us to bicker and fight any more. A relationship shouldn’t be a competition. It’s so...so exhausting.’

  Cristiano slid a hand under the curtain of her hair, his mouth coming down to within reach of hers. ‘Then we’d better put that energy to much better use, sì?’

  Her eyes shone with anticipation and she lifted her face for his kiss. ‘Now you’re talking.’

  After a quick breakfast, Cristiano drove Alice the ninety-kilometre distance to his grandmother’s villa in Stresa situated on the shores of Lake Maggiore. Alice hadn’t forgotten how beautiful the lake was with the historic Isola Bella and Isola Superiore a short boat trip from the shore. But seeing it again on a gorgeous autumn morning with the leaves just starting to turn was nothing less than breathtaking.

  Cristiano pulled into the driveway of the villa, which had remained empty since his grandmother’s death. He’d explained on the journey there that Volante had insisted on dying at home even though he had offered to have her with him in Milan. He had visited as often as he could and Alice was not surprised to hear he had been with Volante when she’d drawn her last breath. But it made her wonder if coming back now his grandmother was gone was far more painful than he was letting on.

  Cristiano opened the front door and led the way inside the quiet villa. It was built on a grand scale with dozens of rooms both formal and informal. It was so big it should not have felt like a family home and yet seven years ago it had.

  Not now, however.

  Now it was a place of ghosts. The furniture was draped in dustsheets and the long corridors and high windows with their curtains drawn were like eyelids closed over tired eyes. Silence crept from every corner. Achingly lonely silence.

  Alice slid her hand into Cristiano’s, her own eyes suddenly tearing up. ‘It must be so hard to come here now. Have you been back since...?’

  He squeezed her fingers and turned to look at her. ‘No.’ His brows came together and he blotted one of her tears with the pad of his thumb. ‘She would not want you to cry, cara.’

  Alice blinked a couple of times and forced a smile to her lips. Their newfound truce was doing strange things to her emotions. Emotions she normally had under the strictest control.

  ‘Sorry. I’m not normally so emotional. I hardly knew her...except I can’t help thinking how different this place is without her.’ She swiped at her face with the back of her hand. ‘I wish I’d written to her. How hard would it have been to send a Christmas card? I just wish I’d let her know I’d never forgotten her, you know?’

  He tucked her hand in under his arm. ‘You’re here now, which is what she wanted.’

  Alice still couldn’t understand why Volante had left her a joint share in this villa and with such strange conditions attached. Not only was the villa—even a half-share—worth millions, it was where Cristiano had spent his childhood and adolescence after his family were killed. Surely if anyone deserved the villa it was him? But he had given no indication of being upset about not inheriting it fully. His focus had always been on the shares he stood to lose control of if he didn’t fulfil the terms of the will. Even if it meant marrying the woman who had rejected him seven years ago.

  ‘If you’d inherited the villa completely what would you have done with it?’ she asked.

  He gave a one-shoulder shrug. ‘Made it into a hotel.’

  ‘Really? You wouldn’t have wanted it as a private retreat?’

  He gave her a wry look. ‘It’s a bit big for one person.’

  ‘Yes, but you might not always be on your own,’ Alice said, torturing herself with the thought of who he might spend the rest of his life with. ‘You might want to have a family one day. You can become a father at any age so—’

&nbs
p; ‘It’s a good location for a hotel,’ he said as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘The gardens too are perfect for weddings and other functions.’

  Alice kept her gaze trained on his. ‘But doesn’t this place mean more to you than that? Don’t you have memories you—?’

  ‘What is a house without the people you love inside it?’ he said, with a flash of irritation in his gaze. ‘It’s nothing, that’s what it is. It’s just bricks and mortar. An empty shell where every room reminds you of someone you’ve loved and lost.’

  Alice swallowed, watching in silence as he tore off a couple of dustsheets and dropped them to the floor in puddles of white like collapsed sails. She pictured him as a young boy going back to his family’s villa after the accident, her heart cramping at the thought of what it had been like for him to walk into that sad vacuum of a place that had once been full of love and laughter.

  ‘I’m so sorry...’ Her voice came out little more than a cracked whisper of sound.

  He raked a hand through his hair and let out a long rough sigh. ‘No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken so harshly to you. Forgive me.’

  Alice closed the distance between them and slipped her arms around his waist, looking up at his grimly set features. ‘It’s fine. This is really painful for you.’

  After a moment his expression softened a fraction as if her presence calmed him. He gave her a twist of a smile, his hand brushing an imaginary hair away from her face.

  ‘I should have been back here weeks ago. I just couldn’t seem to do it. I didn’t want to face this place without her in it. It reminded me too much of the trip home after my parents and brother were killed.’

  Alice moved her arms from around his waist and took his hands in hers, gently stroking their strong backs with her thumbs. ‘I can’t imagine how that must have been for you.’

  He looked down at their joined hands for a moment before returning his gaze to hers. ‘My grandparents tried to spare me the trauma of going back home but I insisted. It was weird...surreal, really. Everything at home looked the same but it was different. It was like the villa was holding its breath or something.’

  His gaze got a faraway look and shifted from hers.

  ‘It was like my life had been jammed on pause. I stood there thinking if only I could turn back the clock. Maybe if I hadn’t been sick they wouldn’t have had to make the detour to my grandparents’ place, then they wouldn’t have been on that road at that particular time.’

  Alice clutched at his hands. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself. You were a child. Kids get sick all the time. You can’t possibly blame yourself for someone else’s stupidity. It was that drunk driver’s fault, not yours, that your family were killed.’

  Cristiano’s fingers shifted against hers, his eyes still shadowed.

  ‘I was cautious about expressing my grief because it only made it harder on my grandparents. If I showed how devastated I was then they would have that to deal with along with everything else. They were so strong but it can’t have been easy bringing up a child at their stage of life. They’d stepped back from the hotel business to enjoy a quieter life, but of course all that changed. My grandfather had to run things until I was of an age to take over.’

  He slipped his hands out of hers and walked over to one of the windows that overlooked the lake.

  Alice wanted to follow him but sensed he was gathering himself. She couldn’t recall a time when he had spoken with such depth about his loss. He had never seemed to want to talk about it before. Why hadn’t she taken the time to encourage him to unburden himself? She had been so immature back then she hadn’t seen how the loss of his family was why he over-controlled everything. She had been mulish and opinionated instead of compassionate and understanding. If only she had been less focussed on her own opinions she might have realised how tragic his life had been and how it had coloured everything he did.

  Her background had its issues, certainly, but nothing compared to what he’d been through. She looked at his tall frame standing there and pictured the child he had once been. Trying to be strong for his grandparents. Containing his grief to protect them. Hadn’t she done the same with her mother? Tried to be strong, becoming the adult instead of the child in order to help her mother through every broken relationship. Ignoring her own needs until she could barely recognise them when they cropped up. ‘Oh, Cristiano...’

  He turned and looked at her with one of his smiles that wasn’t quite a smile. ‘You know what’s ironic? My brother was the one with his heart set on taking over the business. I had other plans.’

  Shock ran through Alice in an icy tide. Plans? What plans? How had she spent six weeks with this man and not once realised he’d had other plans for his life than the hotel business? He was so successful. He owned and operated some of the most luxurious boutique hotels in the Mediterranean. When you thought of boutique hotels you thought of Cristiano Marchetti. But what had he wanted to do with his life?

  ‘You mean you didn’t want to be in the hotel business? Not at all?’

  He picked up a photograph of his grandparents as a young couple that was on the walnut table near the window, his fingers moving over the carved frame as if he were reading Braille.

  ‘No. I wanted to be an architect. But it was impossible once my parents and brother died. I don’t think I even mentioned it to my grandparents after that. I knew my fate. The responsibility was ultimately mine otherwise everything my parents and grandparents had worked for would be lost. I had to shelve my plans and immerse myself in the business. But don’t feel too sorry for me, cara.’

  He put the photograph back down and glanced at her.

  ‘I have plenty of opportunity to express my creativity when I’m working on renovating an old building.’ His mouth twisted in a self-deprecating manner. ‘I make the architect’s life hell for a few months but that’s life.’

  Alice was in a turmoil of regret over not realising any of this until now. She had made so many assumptions about him. She had even playfully mocked him about his wealth on occasion. And not so playfully recently, when she’d made that crack about all the silver spoons hanging out of his mouth.

  All the clues were there now she stopped to reflect on their time together. He had been reluctant to talk about his past because he found it so painful. Not just because of the loss of his family but the loss of the life he had mapped out for himself. He had lost control of everything the day his parents and brother were killed.

  She thought of all the times she had talked to him about her plans to build her own beauty spa. She had told him how she had wanted to do it since she was a little girl when she went with her mother to a beauty salon when her mother got her nails done for her second wedding. Alice had been captivated by all the lotions and potions and the sense of luxury so unfamiliar in her life back then. She’d made a decision right then and there to own and operate her own beauty salon where women could escape the humdrum of life and spoil themselves with some pampering. She had fought for her dream and achieved it in spite of the disadvantages of her background.

  But Cristiano’s background—the one she had envied so much—had been the cause of him not being able to live his dream.

  Alice walked over to where he was standing and placed her hand on his forearm. ‘I’ve always felt jealous of your wealth, that you could buy anything you want, travel anywhere you like, do anything you like. But it’s been more of a burden than anything else, hasn’t it?’

  He placed his hand over hers, bringing it up to his chest. ‘It’s both a blessing and a burden but I would much rather have the security of wealth than not. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy my work. I didn’t for a long time, but I do now.’

  ‘But who will take over from you once you get to retirement age?’ Alice asked. ‘Your cousin?’

  ‘God no,’ he said with a roll of his eyes. ‘Rocco has no head for business. His idea of a hotel makeover would be to install slot machines in every room. My parents and grandparents
would spin in their graves.’ He sighed and released her hand. ‘No, I’ll probably sell the business outright when the time is right.’

  ‘But if you had a family, a son or daughter, they could take over and—’

  ‘You seem a little hung up on this issue, Alice.’ His tone was on the edge of being crisp. ‘Does this mean you’ve changed your mind about having children?’

  Alice forced herself to hold his gaze. ‘We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. You have so much to offer a child. You have a strong sense of family. You’ve had great modelling in both your parents and grandparents. Why wouldn’t you pass on that wonderful heritage to your own offspring?’

  ‘Let’s talk about you, then,’ he said, his gaze unwavering. ‘Who will you leave your goods and chattels to? A dog’s home?’

  Alice pursed her lips and then puffed out a sigh. If they were supposed to be working at a truce then why shouldn’t she be honest with him?

  She shook back her hair and raised her gaze back to his. ‘Okay, I’ll let you in on a secret. I have thought about having kids. I’ve thought about it a lot recently.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And it’s something I’d like to do one day. When I find the right man, of course.’

  His expression became shuttered. ‘What made you change your mind?’

  Alice picked up another photo next to the one of his grandparents. It was a family shot of Cristiano with his parents and older brother. She had seen it before without really seeing it. Cristiano was a happy child in that photo, smiling with an open and engaging expression. Nothing like the serious and closed-off man of today. She put the photo back down and looked at him again.

  ‘It was a gradual thing rather than an overnight change of heart,’ she said.

  Not unlike my feelings for you.

  ‘I realised what I’d be missing out on when I saw my friends and my clients with their babies. It’s such a special relationship—unique, really—the love between a mother and child.’ She gave him a flutter of a smile. ‘My mother drives me completely nuts but deep down I know she loves me more than anyone else on this planet. I want to feel that love. I want to experience that bond.’