She frowned. Across the room, she could hear her phone ringing. Slipping out of bed, she picked it up, her heart fluttering with joy. It was Claudia. But of course it was—they had always had the ability to communicate almost telepathically.
She tiptoed out of the bedroom, closing the door softly behind her. ‘Hey, you! I was just—’
‘Oh, Immie, something terrible has happened.’ Claudia’s voice was high and trembling.
Imma’s breath scrabbled inside her chest. ‘Don’t cry, mia cara. What is it? Tell me.’
‘It’s all a lie, Immie. He doesn’t love me.’
Her heart pounded fiercely. ‘Of course he does—’
‘He doesn’t. He didn’t know I was there and I heard him talking on the phone—’
‘That can’t be right...’ The phone felt slippery in Imma’s hand and she clutched it more tightly. ‘Ciro loves you.’
‘No, he doesn’t, Immie. He doesn’t. He just married me to get revenge on Papà. And Vicenzu is planning to do the same to you.’
The room swayed. For a moment she couldn’t breathe. Her lungs felt as though they were full of sand.
It couldn’t be true. Claudia must have made a mistake. Vicè wouldn’t do that—
But as her sister began to cry she knew that he had.
CHAPTER FOUR
ROLLING OVER ONTO his side, Vicè shifted against the pillow, his hand reaching across the bed for—
His eyes snapped open.
For Imma.
But the bed was empty.
He raised himself up on his elbow, his pulse accelerating as he heard the sound of running water from the bathroom. He glanced at the clock by the bed, realising how late in the day it was. She must be showering.
Only it wasn’t the thought of a naked Imma with water streaming over the soft curves of her body that was making his pulse beat faster. It was the sharp, shocking realisation that he had been reaching out for her—for the daughter of his enemy.
Except she hadn’t felt like his enemy—not when she’d been moving on top of him with her hair tumbling over her shoulders and a dazed look in those incredible olive green eyes.
When she’d walked out of the bathroom last night, naked except for that tiny wisp of underwear, he’d forgotten all those weeks of anger and doubt. In that moment he had simply been a man swept away by lust.
He gritted his teeth. But now his feelings were less simple—they were downright confused, in fact, and for one very obvious reason.
He hadn’t signed up for taking her virginity.
In fact, he’d never slept with a virgin before, and if he’d been going to start it wouldn’t have been with this woman.
Taking Imma’s virginity felt like a bond—a connection between them that didn’t fit well with the task in hand. And yet...
He might have made a joke of it earlier, but almost against his will—flying in the face of everything he knew to be logical—he liked being her first lover.
His skin felt suddenly hot and taut. Even to admit that privately to himself blew his mind. When had he turned into such a caveman?
But there was no point in pretending. Satisfaction that he had been her first still resonated inside him.
And affected him on the outside too, apparently.
Gritting his teeth, he lifted the sheet away from his erection. He didn’t understand what was happening to him. Imma was very beautiful, and she felt even better than she looked. But he was remembering how she’d fallen asleep, with her body curled around his. He let go of a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding.
No matter how attractive the woman, or how intense his desire, he had never felt even the slightest impulse to hold any of his lovers in his arms while he slept.
It must have been finding out she was a virgin. There was no other explanation.
Rolling onto his back, he frowned up at the ceiling. He was irritated at having to feel anything but his usual sense of repletion. He certainly hadn’t planned on dealing with all this complicated stuff.
But was it really that complicated? So she’d been a virgin? So what?
She was an adult, and she had wanted sex as much as he had. Getting fixated on being her first lover was making him lose sight of what mattered—the fact that for once he’d done what he’d set out to do.
It had been a playbook seduction. He’d used his hands, his mouth, his body expertly to turn her on, touching her and tormenting her until she had melted into him, her moans of ecstasy filling the silent room.
Agreed, her virginity had added a layer of confusion—but surely it would make the likelihood of her marrying him and therefore getting back the business a shoo-in.
He was going to push for the soonest date possible for their wedding. After that, all that would remain would be for him to persuade her to sign the paperwork.
Then it would be done.
Revenge would be theirs.
But he was jumping ahead of himself. His moment of triumph would need to be savoured properly with Ciro, over a cigar, and probably some of that bourbon his brother loved so much. Right now there were other things to savour.
His pulse twitched and he felt hunger course through his veins like a caffeine rush.
So why not simply enjoy the ride?
He glanced over at the bathroom door. Maybe he would join her in that shower, after all...
But just as he was about to throw back the sheet, the door to the bathroom opened. Remembering her entrance last night, he felt his gaze narrow—but this time Imma wasn’t naked. In fact—disappointingly—she was fully clothed.
His eyes drifted lazily over the simple white cotton dress she was wearing and he felt a pulse of heat bumping over his skin. He wasn’t averse to watching her take it off.
Sprawling back against the pillows, he lifted his eyes to hers and smiled. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ she said quietly.
She didn’t move, just stood in the doorway.
‘Did you sleep well?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Are you okay? I mean—’
She nodded again. ‘Everything’s fine.’
He felt relief slide over his skin. He’d been a little worried that, having had time to think, she might want to do some kind of post-mortem. Clearly, though, she had other things on her mind.
She took a deep breath. ‘Vicè, last night you asked me to marry you. I wondered if you meant it? Or if you just got carried away in the heat of the moment?’
‘Of course I meant it.’ Throwing back the sheet, he got up and walked swiftly around the bed to where she stood in the doorway. ‘I want to marry you. I want to do it as soon as possible. Only...’
He hesitated, a rush of triumph sweeping over his skin as her eyes searched his face. He had done it. She was hooked. His father’s business was as good as his.
‘Only what?’
‘Only I don’t remember you actually saying yes.’
‘Oh!’ she gasped in a rush. ‘Then, yes... I will marry you. But first there’s something I want to do.’
There was only a sliver of space between them. Her gaze dropped to his naked body and he felt his groin harden again in time with his accelerating heartbeat. Really? She was going to...?
She slapped him across the face.
He swore. ‘What the hell—’
‘You are a monster.’
The softness in her voice was gone, and it was gone from her eyes too. She looked and sounded coldly furious.
‘You and that despicable brother of yours.’
She slapped his other cheek, equally hard.
‘How could he do that to her? How could you both be so cruel?’
Stunned, his face stinging, he caught her hand as she lifted it to strike him again. A flush of panic and confusion swirled i
n his chest.
‘I don’t know what—’
She struggled against his grip. ‘Basta! Enough!’ She tugged her hand free. ‘I’ve had enough of your lies. I know none of this is real, Vicenzu. I know because I’ve read the texts you sent your brother. And I’ve heard his voicemail.’
She pulled his phone from her pocket and he stared at it in silence. A cold, dull ache was spreading over his skin, turning his blood to ice.
‘You didn’t bother locking it—but then I suppose you didn’t think you needed to. I mean, why would you be worried about me? A woman who was stupid enough to gift-wrap her virginity for you.’
‘That’s not fair!’ he snarled. ‘If you’d told me, I would have—’
‘You would have what?’ She folded her arms across her chest, her green eyes wide with contempt. ‘Given up? Gone home? Yeah, right,’ she jeered. ‘And forgotten all about taking back your precious olive oil company. I think not. You might be careless about most things—like the truth...’ She paused, her expression not just hardening, but ossifying. ‘But clearly you care about that.’
He flinched inwardly, the truth of her words slicing through him to the bone.
But this conversation was always going to happen, he told himself quickly. It wasn’t as if he and Imma had ever been going to celebrate their ruby wedding in forty years, like his parents had.
The memory of the last time he’d visited his parents’ home made his spine tense painfully. At the time he’d vaguely registered that his father looked a little tired and seemed a little quieter than usual, but it had been easy—shamefully easy—to just tell himself that his dad was getting old.
Except now Alessandro would never get old. That was on him, even more than on his brother, but the person really responsible for this mess was this woman’s father: Cesare Buscetta.
She held up his phone. ‘Perhaps you’ve forgotten what you wrote? Perhaps you’d like me to read your text to you? Just to remind you.’
‘I know what I wrote, Imma,’ he said coldly. He met her gaze and then, reaching down, picked up his clothes from last night, pulling them on with deliberate unconcern.
Her eyes were sharp, like shards of broken glass. ‘You know what makes all this so much worse? I already knew about your reputation with women. I knew you couldn’t be trusted. But then we talked, and you made me believe that people had been wrong about you. That you weren’t some spoilt playboy with nothing in his head except living la dolce vita.’
She shook her head, and even though he was angry he couldn’t stop his brain from focusing on the way her still damp hair was turning her white dress transparent.
‘And I was right.’ She stared at him, contempt mingling with loathing in her green eyes. ‘You’re not just a spoilt playboy—you’re also a vicious, unprincipled liar.’
‘Says the woman who didn’t bother telling me she was a virgin,’ he snarled, feeling the dam inside him breaking.
A part of him knew that he was only angry with her because he was in the wrong. He had seduced her. Methodically, cold-bloodedly pursuing her at the wedding, gaining her trust, then using all his charm to woo her into bed.
And all the while he’d told himself that she deserved it. He’d thought he had her all figured out. Thought she was a silent witness to her father’s behaviour.
Only then she’d told him she was a virgin, and for some reason that had changed everything. It had made him feel responsible, guilty, and that wasn’t fair.
‘You should have told me,’ he said.
‘About my virginity?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Why? What difference would it have made?’
He was in a blind fury now. ‘It would have made a difference to me!’
She was either incredibly naive or disingenuous if she thought that any man wouldn’t want to know whether a woman had ever had sex before.
‘Oh, and this is all about you. You and your stupid vendetta.’ Her lip curled. ‘You were lying to me, Vicè. And you would still be lying to me now if I hadn’t confronted you. Tossing a few rose petals on the bed and lighting some candles wouldn’t have changed anything.’
Porca miseria! Vicè stared at her, hearing her words pinballing around inside his brain. He wasn’t talking about rose petals and candles. He was talking about the rules of interaction between couples.
‘So what if I lied?’ he asked. ‘You lie all the time. To me. To other people. To yourself—’
‘Excuse me?’ Her voice was a whisper of loathing.
‘All that garbage about your father wishing he could have “helped” mine sooner.’ Helped! The word curdled in his mouth. ‘Turning a blind eye to his arm-twisting doesn’t absolve you. It was your monstrous father hounding him, breaking him down month after month, that sent my father to an early grave—as you very well know.’
‘That’s not true.’ She spat the words at him. ‘Papà told me what happened. How your father had overstretched himself. How he came and asked to be bought out. Maybe he didn’t want you and Ciro to know the truth.’ She gave him a withering glance. ‘I mean, why would he? He clearly knew neither of his sons had what was needed to save his life’s work.’
Vicè flinched inwardly. One son certainly hadn’t.
A stiletto of pain stabbed him beneath the ribs. Pain followed by rage. With her, for seeing what he was so desperate to hide, and with himself for not having been the son his father had needed.
Instead he had been an additional burden in Alessandro’s time of need. For in trying to protect him, his son, his father had been left with nobody to turn to.
‘Your father is a thief and a thug,’ he said slowly. ‘He stole the business my great-grandfather founded and the house where my parents lived their whole married life. Thanks to him, my mother lost her husband and her home all in one day.’
Her face turned pale, but then she rallied, lifting her chin so that her gaze was level with his. ‘And is your mother in on this too?’
The tightness in his chest was unbearable. ‘What? No. My mother is a saint. She’s the sweetest person on earth.’
‘I thought so.’
Her eyes hadn’t left his face, and now there was something unsettling in her steady, stinging gaze.
‘That’s why we’re going to get married,’ she said.
He stared at her in confusion. Get married? She still wanted to marry him? Surely she was joking?
As though she could read his mind, she gave a humourless laugh. ‘What’s the matter, Vicè? Have you had a change of heart?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Oh, sorry, I forgot—you don’t have a heart.’
* * *
Imma swallowed past the lump in her throat. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to speak. It hurt to look into his eyes and see nothing but hatred and hostility where only hours earlier she had thought she’d seen love.
She was such a fool. Had she really believed that this beautiful angry man could see past her defensiveness and gauche manner to what was inside? To value and desire what he saw there?
Their night together had been perfect, unrepeatable, miraculous—so that even when he had pulled her closer, or she had reached out for him, it had felt illusory...like an all too vivid dream.
And now she was living in a nightmare of her own making, and no amount of daylight was ever going to wake her up.
If only she could go back in time—back to before Claudia had called her, back to that moment when she had been held in the muscular warmth of his arms. When her heart, her pride, had still been intact.
But it was too late for regrets. All that mattered now was making him pay. And she was going to keep telling herself that until it felt true.
His face darkened. ‘And you, like the rest of your rotten, corrupted family, have no soul.’
Her eyes blazed into his. ‘You are nothing to me now—just as I was nothing to you.’
She’d f
elt something—something real—but for him it had all been a trick, a con, a hoax.
The pain made her want to throw up.
He took a step forward. ‘Great reason to get married.’
‘It’s about on a par with yours.’ Pushing past the pain, she filled her voice with contempt. ‘You slept with me under false pretences, Vicè. You faked your way into my bed. At least now we both know what’s real and what isn’t.’
He shook his head. ‘What happened last night in your bed was real. You wanted me as much as I wanted you.’
Oh, he was good. He was so convincing—so plausible. Even now, when they both knew the truth, he made it sound as if he really believed what he was saying.
She shook her head. ‘Actually, you wanted my father’s business.’
Breathing out raggedly, she watched his face darken.
‘No, I wanted my father’s business.’
‘Then you should have approached me with an offer.’
‘I’m not going to pay for what was stolen from me.’
The hardness in his voice pressed against the bruise on her heart. The pain of trying to pretend spread out inside her like a rain cloud. Tears pricked behind her eyes and she blinked them away furiously, determined not to show any weakness in front of him.
‘No, I paid. With my virginity.’
She felt a rush of shame and misery, remembering how her body had softened and melted from the heat of him.
His flinch was small, fleeting, but she saw it.
‘Is that the going price for an olive oil company these days?’ she taunted.
A flush of colour crept over his cheeks, but his eyes were cold. When he spoke his voice was colder still. ‘For the last time, I didn’t know you were a virgin.’
‘Don’t try and pretend you have a conscience, Vicenzu.’ Her simmering pain gave way to an even hotter anger. ‘You wanted to marry me and you will. Only it will be on my terms. Not yours. And if you refuse then I will find your mother and tell her exactly how you and your brother have behaved,’ she said, her voice shaking slightly. ‘I will tell her what kind of men the boys she raised have become.’
The Terms of the Sicilian's Marriage Page 6
