by Lynne Graham
Shimmering dark golden eyes seared her strained face.
‘A week after you walked out, I was given the details of this place. Prior to that, I’d rejected the offer of several properties,’ Lucca confided coldly. ‘I knew the minute I saw the photos that Il Palazzetto was your fantasy house and fantasies don’t come on the market every week. I bought it because I sincerely believed that you would soon come to your senses and be living with me as my wife again.’
A hard lump had formed in Vivien’s throat, for she had been totally unprepared for an explanation that knocked her sideways. As he gazed back at her in hard male challenge, the warm colour in her cheeks ebbed. ‘If that’s true—’
His gorgeous golden eyes hardened. ‘Don’t doubt my word. You did that once with devastating consequences,’ he reminded her drily. ‘I would think you would have learned a lesson on that score.’
In the uneasy silence, an unsteady laugh fell from Vivien’s lips. ‘Yes, I have learned a lesson or two. I misjudged you but I would have been very willing to be persuaded into crediting the truth of your fidelity, had you ever given me the chance. You didn’t care enough about me to come after me and fight to get me back!’
His wide, sensual mouth firmed. ‘That’s a lie.’
‘You were too proud. I hurt your ego by not believing in you and you decided to punish me,’ Vivien told him with bitter pain in her voice.
‘That’s a very fanciful view of events.’
‘No, it’s very much you,’ Vivien contradicted tightly. ‘You were playing Russian roulette with our marriage. Now I know the whole story because you’ve told me it. You bought this house only because you were expecting me to come back and grovel.’
‘Your imagination is taking flight again,’ Lucca derided, assuming a maddeningly cool attitude of relaxation.
‘You were cruel to both of us. You were so angry with me for not grovelling that you let me go. But you can just stop right now blaming me for the breakdown of our marriage. I may not have been a perfect wife but you were an even worse husband. You made me miserable long before Jasmine Bailey got her poison pen out!’
A slight rise of dark blood demarcated Lucca’s hard angular cheekbones and his dark golden eyes flashed. ‘On what facts do you base that accusation?’
‘Our marriage fell apart because I never saw you. You put business first and, every excuse you got, you made me feel just how unimportant I was in your scheme of things. You didn’t really want to be married. You acted like you were still single—’
‘Per meraviglia! Is it my fault you were a doormat and took everything I dished out? What’s the point of complaining about how I treated you two years too late?’ Lucca suddenly raked across the room at her, full volume. ‘I was twenty-seven years old when we got married and not as mature as I thought I was. I didn’t really know how to be married.’
‘I didn’t realise you needed a rule book!’
His strong jaw line squared. ‘Maybe you didn’t, but I would have found one helpful. My own parents lived separate lives. My father had continual affairs and my mother had a long-term lover. They loathed each other,’ he admitted curtly. ‘It was quite astonishing that they died in the same plane crash because they rarely went anywhere together.’
Vivien was silenced, absolutely silenced by that explanation. His parents had died before she’d even met him and it had never once occurred to her that his family background might have been unhappy. ‘Serafina never even hinted…’
‘Serafina was still a child when they died and I saw no reason to disillusion her.’
‘But you should have told me.’
His arrogant dark head lifted high, beautiful dark golden eyes gleaming with stubborn disagreement. ‘Why? It has no bearing on what happened between us. I only pointed out that my parents’ marriage didn’t give me a constructive blueprint for the kind of cosy blanket domesticity you wanted.’
Big words from a guy who had been revelling in cosy blanket domesticity all week long! But thanks to what he had finally got angry enough to reveal, she was now able to view the extent of his wary cynicism and reserve when they were first married in a very different light. With his history, she marvelled that he had ever proposed to her. She lifted her chin. ‘Did you really buy this house for me?’
Lucca slung her a stony glance.
All of a sudden, Vivien was starting to feel very much more confident. ‘Yeah, you really did buy it for me,’ she answered for herself, relishing that ego-boosting truth. ‘Rustic is not exactly you, is it?’
A flare of gold highlighted the long-lashed brilliance of his eyes. ‘There are some rural pleasures I can appreciate, bella mia.’
Vivien had a startlingly vivid recollection of being tumbled down in long grass and possessed with a sexual fervour she still remembered three years after the event. Lucca strolled lazily forward with soundless grace. His gorgeous eyes never left hers once. He let her see his hunger.
Desire leapt into the atmosphere and she felt hot and tight and needy. She trembled, a wicked frisson of instant excitement quivering through her. Her mouth running dry, she kicked off her shoes. He looked surprised and then he backed to the door to force it shut. He strode back. ‘I used to imagine you here in this room.’
Satisfaction assailed her in a heady burst. She felt irresistible. Unfastening the zip on her dress, she hauled it off in one feverish motion.
‘Keep going…’ Lucca instructed thickly.
She unhooked her bra. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She arched her spine and let the scrap of lace fall.
‘Don’t stop there…’ Lucca urged huskily.
She stepped out of her last garment. Her face was hot with self-consciousness and a nervous giggle escaped her as she arranged herself on the big wide bed. ‘So come here,’ she told him, half under her breath.
Lucca ripped off his shirt and sent a couple of buttons flying. Slim and pale and a magnet for his mesmerised attention, she stretched, enjoying the shafts of sunlight warming her skin and revelling in his interest.
He was fascinated. ‘When did you get to be so shameless?’
‘After a week of you,’ she whispered daringly, and she felt wild and brazen and she loved the sensation.
‘I’ve never brought another woman here,’ Lucca confessed, shedding his jeans. ‘I came here for peace and solitude.’
It was her place. She should have known it in her bones, she thought happily. He scored an appreciative hand over the silken swell of her small, full breasts and lowered his head to taste a lush rosy crest. A short, sharp gasp parted her lips and her fingers speared into his black hair as her tender flesh peaked into rigid response. He put his mouth there and she was lost.
Every nerve ending she possessed tingled and she trembled, wildly aware of the moist, tight sensitivity between her thighs. She shifted beneath him, squirmed, hauled him down to her, craving what only he could give and too hungry to hide it. He looked down into her passion-glazed eyes. ‘I want you so much I ache…’ he told her raggedly.
‘What are you waiting for?’ she whispered back, staring up at him, adoring every sleek, hard, masculine line of his bronzed features and most of all the stunning golden eyes welded to her. ‘I’m yours.’
‘You weren’t when you walked away—’
‘If I can forgive you…you can forgive me,’ she breathed, holding his intense gaze with her own. ‘I’m back and I’m staying.’
He seized on that encouragement with a passion and a level of fierce hunger that blew her away. Afterwards he sprawled back against the tumbled pillows, all-conquering hero and momentarily replete. Shell-shocked by the amount of pleasure he had given her and just a little mortified by the intensity of her own response, she let him rearrange her limp and satiated body on top of him.
‘How was I?’ he said wickedly.
She breathed in the intoxicating scent of his damp skin and smiled to herself before mumbling, ‘You need lots and lots of practice.’
; Lean fingers tipped up her chin and she went off into helpless giggles. He rolled her under him and held her fast. ‘Was that a complaint, bella mia?’
‘Marco will think we’ve got lost,’ she said guiltily. ‘We’d better get up before he misses us.’
Lucca headed into the shower. Her body deliciously relaxed and heavy, she could easily have fallen asleep. When the phone by the bed began ringing, she groaned and reached out and answered it.
For a moment silence buzzed on the line.
‘Vivien? Is that you? Is that really you?’ a familiar female voice exclaimed on an excited high. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard you speak!’
It was Lucca’s sister, Serafina, and Vivien sat up with a start, suddenly fully awake and aware.
‘Oh, my gosh…oh, my gosh, you’re with Lucca at Il Palazzetto! You and my brother are back together again. That means you’ll be at my wedding on Saturday. This is the best gift I could ever have!’ the bubbly brunette proclaimed chokily. ‘Were the two of you just going to turn up together without telling me?’
‘Let me get Lucca…’ Vivien dropped the receiver as though it had burned her. She really did not know what to say to Serafina, to whom she had grown very close during her marriage. But when Vivien had left Lucca, Serafina had spoken up with spirit in her brother’s defence. Looking back, Vivien could have wept for her own refusal to listen. It had seemed easiest back then to let her contact with the younger woman die.
Vivien called Lucca to the phone and tried not to feel hurt about the fact that he had not even told her that his sister was engaged and about to get married. Had he been planning to take her to Serafina’s wedding? It would be difficult for him to do otherwise now.
A towel knotted round his lean hips and crystalline drops of water still beading his hair-roughened chest, Lucca swept up the phone and Vivien left him to freshen up and get dressed as fast as she could.
‘Serafina is planning a night out on the town with her friends tomorrow evening and she wants you to join them,’ Lucca volunteered with a grimace when she reappeared in the bedroom. He was still on the phone. ‘I’m trying to tell her that that kind of thing just isn’t your style.’
The rebel inside Vivien rose up. She assumed that he preferred to keep his sister and her apart and she saw no reason why she should play along. ‘You’re wrong…I’d love to go, and thank her for asking me.’
Lucca looked startled and disapproving.
Vivien felt like a ninety-two-year-old who had confessed to a desire to go clubbing with teenagers. But Serafina was only four years her junior. He passed the phone back to her. His sister chattered on at an incredible rate of knots, confided that she couldn’t wait to see Vivien again and finally rang off.
‘To whom is she getting married?’ Vivien enquired rather stiltedly then.
His lean, strong face was taut. ‘Umberto, he’s an architect…and he’s besotted with her.’
Vivien dropped her head. ‘I’m happy for her. Did you tell her how things were with us?’ she asked, fishing and shockingly grateful for the excuse to do so. ‘She was really jumping to conclusions.’
‘That’s my sister. Let her think what she likes until after the wedding,’ Lucca advised without any expression at all.
‘Are you planning on taking me to her wedding?’
‘I don’t think we have much choice now that she knows you’re here in Italy.’
It was not the most generous reply and it made Vivien suspect that, but for Serafina’s intervention, Lucca would not have dreamt of taking her to a family wedding. After all, Vivien was well aware that her appearance at such an event would cause a sensation amongst his friends and relatives. At the same time, in answering Vivien in such an evasive way, Lucca had resisted the opportunity to define what they were sharing. She felt rather cut off and very much regretted having answered that phone call. Although, perhaps, she reasoned, she was being oversensitive. Perhaps it was too soon for Lucca to feel up to talking about their new relationship.
A hundred years from now, he wouldn’t feel up to talking about it, Vivien acknowledged ruefully. Expecting him to start talking about relationships was wishing for the moon. He was never stuck for a ready word when it came to any other subject. But a question that related to emotions was capable of clearing him from the room. A question that related to both emotions and commitment might well be capable of chasing him from the house. Lucca was, after all, the guy who had set up the romantic proposal scene at Longchamp complete with champagne, strawberries and diamond ring and then just said, ‘Well…will you?’
‘Will I what?’ she asked, surveying the diamonds sparkling in the sunlight with prayer and heady hope in her heart.
Seething with obvious frustration, he dealt her a look of fierce reproach. Lifting her hand, he slotted the engagement ring onto her finger. ‘So…you and I?’
‘Is this marriage we’re not talking about?’ Vivien whispered.
‘The engagement comes first,’ Lucca hastened to assert.
‘But marriage is the target?’
Without any warning at all, a wicked grin chased the tension from his beautiful mouth. ‘Sì, amata mia. Marriage is the target.’
He had called her ‘my love’ and that had been the closest he had ever come to a declaration of love. She had loved him too much to put pressure on him. She had thought that his inability to talk about really important feelings was a sign of just how deep his feelings ran and she had been touched and she had felt ridiculously protective towards him. But, with hindsight, she could see that she should have put a contract down in front of him and the negotiations would have resulted in agreed conditions. That way, there would have been no misunderstandings. That way they would both have known what they’d been getting into and he would have enjoyed fighting to get the best deal he could.
The following morning, Lucca had a meeting with his farm manager. Their nanny, Rosa Peroli, was due to arrive and Vivien took Marco out onto the shaded terrace beyond the salon and sat down to enjoy a cup of coffee and her favourite seed catalogue. It was only when she removed the plastic redirection bag from the catalogue that she realised that what she had assumed to be the envelope included for a potential order was actually a separate letter. And a communication from her solicitor, no less. A chilled sensation locked her tummy muscles tight.
The letter was short and to the point. Having tried and failed to contact her at home by phone during the earlier part of the week, her solicitor was writing to inform her that her divorce was now final. The coffee in her mouth turned to acid. She raised stricken eyes as Marco squealed with delight over the noisy plastic-shape-sorter toy that he was playing with.
Her thoughts flailed around in a cruel circle of jagged reaction. She was divorced. She was no longer married to Lucca. She was not Lucca’s wife any more and he was not her husband any more either. She felt sick with shock and then sick and angry at her own inadequacy. Why hadn’t she called her solicitor to find out exactly where their divorce was on the time line? Where had that avoidance got her now? What sort of madness had it been to bury her head in the sand and hope that there would still be time for a last-ditch miracle?
Lucca had warned her, though, hadn’t he? Our marriage is over, he had said, and predictably he had been right. He had to know that they were now divorced. With a trembling hand she snatched up the letter she had allowed to fall at her feet and scrutinised the date. According to her estimate, Lucca had to have known for a few days at least.
He hadn’t said a word either. Not a single word. Of course, what else would she have expected? Lucca Saracino was far too clever to be the guy who broke bad news of that nature. Of course, it was possible that he thought she already knew and was taking his lead from her in not mentioning it. No, she was being too generous, she decided in an agony of pain and regret. Lucca knew. He knew very well when to keep quiet too.
A burning gush of tears hit her eyes and she blinked rapidly and snatched in a quivering breath.
Well, her fairy-tale happy ending had been ripped apart, squashed flat and then dumped. Who liked facing hurtful things? That she was divorced surely gave her the answers she had sought over the past ten days. He might be willing to sleep with her, but he had let their divorce go through. He had made no attempt to save their marriage because he had not valued what remained of it as she did. It was obvious that what she had naively thought they had recaptured was a figment of her own stupid imagination.
Her thoughts leapt to the immediate future and the necessity of giving Lucca the widest possible berth until she had got herself back under control and decided what to do next. As soon as Rosa arrived, they were leaving for Rome to enable Vivien to go out with Serafina and her friends that evening. When they got to Rome, she would insist that she needed to go and buy something to wear. A shopping trip would grant her the space she needed. What was she planning on doing? Was she going to weather this storm and stay? Or claim defeat and leave?
Marco laughed out loud. With an effort, Vivien recalled her son and peered round the chair to check on him. He had trailed out the contents of her handbag and he was drawing on his face with a lipstick. She got up on legs that felt like jelly and took it off him before he started eating it. Deprived of the bag as well, her son loosed a plaintive howl of complaint.
‘Dio mio…’ Lucca’s honeyed drawl interposed as he strolled along the terrace and picked up the little boy. ‘What a racket, Marco.’
Vivien dug the solicitor’s letter into her bag. She just wanted to run away but knew she could not. She was fiercely glad that she had not let the tears take hold. The only thing she had left was her pride and could she even claim that? Why had he brought her out to Italy?
Maybe he had thought he had to sleep with her to gain better access to Marco, she thought feverishly as she pretended to be looking for something in her bag. Maybe he was on a revenge trip and hooked on the buzz of punishing her for daring to leave him in the first place. Maybe he truly did like sex with her so much that he was quite content to let that be the extent of their relationship. And she had agreed? If he’d suggested a mission to Mars with sex thrown in, she would have agreed, wouldn’t she? Was it fair to blame him for the fact that she had been so easy?
