by Lucy Gordon;Sarah Morgan;Robyn Donald;Lucy Monroe;Lee Wilkinson;Kate Walker
‘What else would I put?’ She tried bravado though her nerves were twisting into agonising knots, her legs trembling in terror. ‘That’s my name.’
‘Your name—your real name—is Amy Ravenelli.’
If she thought she had ever seen him angry before, it had been as nothing when compared to the black, savage fury that now blazed in his eyes.
‘That is your true name. The name you took when I married you. The name I gave you with my ring.’
If she’d spat on his father’s grave, he couldn’t have looked more offended. She’d truly trampled all over his pride in so many ways—over his male pride, the innate, essential pride that came from being an Italian, but most of all, the bone-deep, centuries-old pride of the Ravenelli family.
‘It’s not my name! It’s yours—yours and your family’s! It was never truly mine, not even on the day of our wedding. Because that wedding was a farce from start to finish. You never meant one of those vows even as you spoke them. It was all just to get your hands on that lousy ring!’
‘And the bet, carissima,’ Vincenzo reminded her, pure silken menace.
Dropping the passport back onto the bed in a gesture of absolute contempt he stood up slowly and elegantly.
‘Don’t forget the bet I made—that I could get you into my bed where my cousin’s much-practised charms had failed.’
Don’t forget.
The words seemed to form a knot in Amy’s throat, threatening to choke of the air she needed to breathe. Don’t forget? How could she ever forget the final humiliation, the ultimate cruelty of knowing that this man whom she had loved more than life itself, had only asked her to be his bride in a coldly selfish and most cynical manoeuvre aimed at seducing her where all else had failed?
‘I haven’t forgotten!’ Desperately she hid pain behind defiance. ‘But it seems that you have!’
A tiny, much-needed sense of triumph went a little way towards healing some of the agony the tore at her heart as she saw his faint frown of confusion, the questioning narrowing of his eyes.
Vincenzo Ravenelli looking unsure of himself. Now that was a new and very welcome experience!
‘My memory of that day is only too clear,’ Vincenzo stated coolly, every inch the Italian aristocrat looking down on some poor peasant well beneath his contempt.
‘Then I have to admit to wondering just why you want either of us to keep to any of the promises we made that day. Why go to so much trouble to keep a bride you didn’t even want in the first place, and must have been glad to get rid of as quickly and easily as you did?’
Something dangerous flared deep in the dark eyes, causing her to take a swift, nervous step backwards as if she had actually been subjected to a physical threat. And yet Vincenzo hadn’t moved so much as an inch, not even raising an eyebrow, let alone a hand.
‘I told you,’ he stated coldly. ‘No matter what you are, you are mine, and what is mine I keep. You are a Ravenelli by marriage, however that marriage came about, and it is my intention that you will stay a Ravenelli so long as it suits me.’
‘Oh, now I know what it feels like to stand in the dock and hear a sentence of life imprisonment handed out! Vincenzo, please…’
It wasn’t until those dark, implacable eyes dropped to stare at her hands that Amy realised the way she had lifted them unthinkingly, holding them out towards him in an age-old gesture pleading for understanding. As soon as she realised what she had done, and felt that cold gaze fix on her, she hastily let them fall at her sides again, forming them into tightly clenched fists instead in an effort to control herself.
‘If you give me my freedom, you can also have yours. Wouldn’t we both be much happier with a chance to find someone else, someone new—someone who loves us and who we can—’
Something short and obviously brutal was flung at her in swift, harsh Italian, pulling her up sharp because she didn’t understand a single word.
‘What? Vincenzo, that isn’t fair. You know I don’t speak Italian! What are you saying?’
But Vincenzo wouldn’t answer her. Instead he swung away from her, shoulders hunched, hands pushed deep into the pockets of his trousers, furious rejection of her stamped into every line of his long, straight back.
‘Vincenzo! You can’t do this! You have to tell me why you won’t give me a divorce.’
That brought him whirling round again, proud head flung back, sensual mouth thinned to a cold hard line, the anger he had largely controlled until now blazing wildly out of control in those jet black eyes, stamped onto every taut muscle in his stunning face.
‘Give you a divorce!’ he echoed in stark incredulity. ‘Give—why the hell should I give you anything? By rights, if one of us should be doing it, I should be the one divorcing you!’
‘What?’
Amy was definitely floundering now. A thick grey mist was swirling around her, threatening to close in and shut off her thoughts, suffocating her completely.
‘I don’t understand…’
Blindly she reached out for the carved wooden end of the bed and grasped it tightly, holding on hard for support.
‘What do you mean, you should be divorcing me?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Vincenzo flung the words into her white, shocked face as if even to speak them contaminated him. ‘After all, who is the injured party here—and who’s the one who broke her marriage vows?’
‘Broke her marriage vows?’
Amy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her fingers clenched even tighter over the bed end, clutching until the knuckles showed white. How, even in Vincenzo’s arrogant, self-centred brain, could their situation become so turned around that he was claiming that he was the victim and she the guilty party?
‘Vincenzo—just because I left you…’
‘No!’
She had never heard his accent sound so hard and strong as it was on that single, explosive syllable.
‘It is not just because you left me, though that is part of it. You say you want a divorce, but the truth is that I should be the one citing you—charging you with being unfaithful to me.’
‘What?’
It was too much to take in. The room seemed to be whirling crazily round her, making her head spin, her stomach clench nauseously. She had to sit down. Her legs had turned to cotton wool and wouldn’t support her any more. Nervelessly she sank down on to the bed, putting both hands flat on the blue quilt at her sides to support her.
She should be thankful that he had swallowed her story of a fictitious fiancé. Instead, she was horrified to hear he had taken it this far.
‘You—I…’
‘Oh, spare me the histrionics!’ Vincenzo sneered, totally unmoved by the distress. ‘Don’t claim it’s such a shock to you. You’re the one who has turned up with a brand-new fiancé in tow. Your darling David.’
‘But…’
Something exploded inside Amy’s brain and she welcomed the fierce, liberating rush of anger that rocked her out of her stammering bemusement. How dared he think that she would reject her marriage vows so easily? She had meant them for life when she had said them.
‘And I suppose you’re so damn innocent!’
That wasn’t possible. Not for a hot-blooded, highly sexually driven man like Vincenzo. A man who only had to click his fingers for willing, enthusiastic partners to fall at his feet, eager for his attentions. Hadn’t she proved herself tonight that that white-hot sexual attraction that had once had her in its thrall was still there, lying in wait for her if she let down her guard for a second?
‘You’re not trying to claim that you’ve been celibate for the past four years? That in all that time there hasn’t been anyone else?’
‘There has been no one…’
‘Oh, sure!’ Amy scorned. ‘No one that mattered! But plenty you could use and leave. Plenty of ships who passed in the night. Because, let’s face it, Vincenzo, no woman ever means that much to you, does she?’
‘Damn you, Amy!’
He moved then. Moved so swiftly that she barely saw him approach before he had caught hold of her arms and pulled her up from the bed, shaking her, not roughly, but in a fury of frustration.
‘Damn you to hell! You’re not listening. When I say no one, I mean no one!’
Amy knew that her shock must show in her face. That her features had frozen and her mouth dropped slightly open.
‘N-no one?’ she managed at last, forcing the words out through lips that seemed to have turned to wood, they had become so stiff and unfeeling.
‘No one,’ Vincenzo repeated, releasing her at last so that she dropped back onto the bed, limp as a marionette with all its strings cut. ‘I have not been to bed with another woman since I married you.’
So what did she do now?
Because she had to believe him. There was no room for any doubt in her mind, not when faced by that fiercely insistent declaration, the determination to convince her that was almost a physical force so that she imagined she could actually feel the heat of it on her face.
And she wanted to believe him. Foolishly, weakly, deep down inside there still lingered some tiny senseless, vulnerable little part of herself that wanted to be convinced that in this at least he was telling the truth. Because if he was, then…
No!
With a terrible effort she pulled herself up short, forced herself to face the truth. The real truth, no matter how much it hurt.
‘So what do you want, a medal?’
Every last ounce of pain that she had endured since she had first met this man went into the words, all the bitterness she had experienced, the four long years of loneliness that seemed to last a lifetime. She had hurt for every second of those years, and now she couldn’t hold back, wanting him to feel something of the same.
‘So you’ve been “faithful” to me because of what—lack of opportunity? Big deal! There’s more to a marriage than sex. There’s caring and consideration. There’s loving the other person so much that you put their needs before your own. And there’s honesty…’
‘Amy.’ Her name was a sound of warning. One she was past heeding.
‘You’ve told me there’s no other woman who turns you on the way I do,’ she rushed on headlong, staring at the wall past his shoulder, unable to meet his eyes. ‘But that isn’t enough. I want—I need more than that…’
‘And you have found this with David?’
The honest answer to that was no. What she truly wanted was for Vincenzo to have loved her as she had once loved him. For him to have given her his heart as completely and unrestrainedly as she had given him hers.
But she could never have that.
‘Amy!’ Vincenzo was harshly insistent. ‘Are you telling me that this David gives you what you want?’
‘Yes!’
At last she forced herself to meet his eyes, recoiling from the pain of impacting with an onyx hardness, closed and shuttered as if steel blinds had come down behind them, cutting him off from her completely.
‘Yes, yes, yes! David’s what I want!’ she said, desperate to convince him, seeing it as her only way out. ‘The only man I want!’
Her words fell into a silence so profound that she thought even the sound of her drawing a raw, uneven breath into her aching lungs would splinter it around her, shattering the atmosphere like plate-glass when a stone was thrown into it. Then Vincenzo gave vent to one short, violent, and obviously obscene outburst of Italian before turning on his heel and marching towards the door.
Numbly Amy watched him go, unable to fully understand what she saw. Was that it? Was it all over?
Had Vincenzo finally given in?
She couldn’t believe it if he had. And she was incapable of judging whether she had won or if the victory was actually his. Or perhaps both of them had lost, in their own way.
‘Is that it?’ she managed. ‘You’re leaving?’
‘I think you have said everything I could possibly want to hear,’ Vincenzo tossed over his shoulder at her.
She still couldn’t breathe properly, and it was as she dragged in some much-needed air that she saw Vincenzo pause in the doorway and slowly turn back to face her. The darkness of the landing threw shadows onto his face, hollowing the lean planes of his cheeks, and making his eyes look like bottomless pits of black ice.
‘You can choose to be with this David, say that he’s the man you want,’ he said slowly, his words and his tone combining to chill Amy’s blood until it froze in her veins. ‘But we both know that you are just deceiving yourself.’
Slowly those obsidian eyes raked over her trembling body, scorching it from top to toe in a ruthless, cold-hearted, unfeeling appraisal that made Amy feel physically violated all along the path his gaze had followed.
‘No matter what happens, you are still my wife, and always will be. Even if you hold out for this divorce, it will change nothing, not deep down. I stamped my brand on you when I married you, and for the rest of your life you will carry it with you. However hard you try, I promise you will never be able to forget that you were once a Ravenelli bride.’
And the really appalling thing, Amy realised as she stood paralysed, watching him walk away from her, listening to his footsteps descending the stairs, was that she was very much afraid that he was right. Deep down inside, she knew that neither time nor space or the most concentrated effort on her part would ever manage to erase all memory of Vincenzo Ravenelli from her mind.
Chapter Eight
‘I STAMPED my brand on you when I married you…’
The words Vincenzo had flung at her before he walked out the door seemed to have formed a sort of audio loop inside her head where they played over and over and over again, night and day, sleeping and waking, and there was no way at all that she could shut them up. The ‘off’ switch was broken, and it was impossible to wipe the tape, erase the ominous, terrifying declaration, escape its threatening implications.
‘No!’
Amy tossed and turned restlessly, her sleep in the present broken by the memories of the past. With a cry of distress, she woke with a jolt, her eyes flying open to focus, blinking, on the window and the shaft of sunlight which was streaming through a crack in the curtain.
It was already morning, and yet she felt as if she had only just fallen asleep, barely managing any more than an hour or so’s rest so that she was weary and jaded, far from ready to face Vincenzo again.
She would have to do so at some point. There was no avoiding the inevitable confrontation much as she would wish it. But even when she was up and dressed, ignoring the clothes in the wardrobe and opting instead for a simple blue T-shirt and cotton skirt that she had brought with her, her nerve failed her. Cravenly she stayed where she was, finding things to do with her hair, her make-up—anything other than emerge from her room and go downstairs.
She knew Vincenzo wouldn’t wait for ever. Patience was not his greatest virtue, and what little he had would inevitably wear out fast. But the loud, imperious knock at the door still came much sooner than she had anticipated, and well before she was emotionally ready.
For a moment she considered ignoring it and pretending she wasn’t there. A moment too long because even as she reconsidered the knock came again, louder this time, reverberating round the room.
‘Are you going to stay sulking in your room all day?’
Sulking?
Incensed, Amy marched to the door and yanked it open.
‘If you must know, I was doing my hair! I…’
‘Looks fine to me,’ Vincenzo spared her hair, lying loose and softly waving over her shoulder, a brief, critical glance. ‘Though I’m forced to wonder if dear David will approve.’
‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’
‘Well it seems to me that if the way you were dressed when you first arrived, and with your hair dragged back into that unflattering style, is the sort of woman that being with David has turned you into then he really doesn’t understand you at all.’
‘And you do?�
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Vincenzo’s smile was dangerous, the gleam of triumph deep in the black eyes warning her that she had walked right into his trap.
‘I know you, cara. I know the woman you become in my arms. The woman who comes alive in my bed. You can hide your real self under your so-English restrained tailoring, fasten that glorious hair back, conceal your sexuality in a hundred different ways, but you can’t hide it from me. I know the real Amy—the woman who is Amy Ravenelli…’
‘No, you don’t!’
This was a path Amy didn’t want to follow. It came too close to the subject of her dreams and the memories of that one, gloriously passionate night she had spent in Vincenzo’s arms. Those memories, heated, erotic, yearning, had haunted her all night so that she had woken with her heart racing, drenched in sweat, her body aching and hungry.
And Vincenzo, tall and dark and lethally attractive in a black polo shirt and black jeans as he leaned against the doorframe, was the embodiment of the fantasies that had had her in their grip. With his hair crisp and damp from a shower, the scent of lemons and bergamot mixing in his cologne, and the sunlight gilding the bronzed skin, he was an assault on her senses just by existing.
‘You know nothing about me! You only knew me for a few short days, less than a month from start to finish…’
‘And I’d be willing to bet that in those “few short days” I came closer to the real woman than your precious David has in all the time you’ve been together.’
‘Willing to bet?’
He couldn’t have chosen to use any more incendiary words than those. With the image of the devastation of the first day of her marriage still lingering at the back of her thoughts, Amy was hypersensitive to them; just the use of the phrase set light to the touchpaper in her mind, with explosive effects.
‘Willing to bet?’ she repeated bitterly. ‘And what, precisely, would you be prepared to wager on this one? Would that be worth—say—a stake as valuable as the Ravenelli ruby this time, or would that be selling your precious heirloom too cheaply? Do you only stake that on the conquest of a woman? On the taking of her virginity, the—’
