by Lynne Graham
And then, just like a very vivid dream that you never wanted to wake up from, that refuge, that sense of peace had been snatched away from him.
No, she had snatched it away. At the first sign of trouble, she’d run. Very possibly straight into her ex’s arms.
His heart thudded in his chest as he took her in, his blood rushing through his veins with a ferocious hunger along with a burning resentment for how easily she evoked his desire. But something was different about her.
This Alessandra looked nothing like the woman who’d worn her hurt in her eyes when she’d learned who he was, nothing like the advocate who’d argued passionately about the children she championed all over the world, or like the beautiful princess he’d taken to his bed for a night and decided to make his wife the next morning.
One night and he’d been lost. Enslaved as simply as if she’d woven a spell around him.
This woman looked as if she was barely held together at the edges.
Her clothes had seen better days. At first glance, she could be mistaken for a poor grad student with no time or energy for anything beyond academics.
Her hair was a glorious mess, a light brown halo around her face, the edges falling to those high breasts. Her skin had always been golden, but now she was tanned, as though she’d spent the whole of the last nine weeks outdoors.
Frolicking under the sun with her ex, perhaps, the insanely jealous part of him piped up.
But it was her eyes that transformed the panorama of her perfectly symmetrical face. They held a fire Vincenzo had never seen before.
Instead of guilt or shame or any of the other emotions he’d imagined he might see when she returned, pure challenge shone in her eyes. Her mouth, lauded for its pillowy pout, was set into a firm line. Now that he was over his shock, he recognized the energy, the determination pouring out of her very stance.
She didn’t want to be here. But she was resolved to a particular action.
“Welcome back, Princess,” he said, pushing his chair back, but without making a move to get up. He wasn’t entirely sure his legs would hold him. His throat felt hoarse, his heart pounding away at a rate that threatened to send it bursting out of his chest. She’d been gone for weeks without a word, leaving him in a special kind of hellish limbo.
“Had enough of traipsing around the world with your ex?” he said, baring his teeth in a mockery of a smile.
She startled but recovered fast. Pushing away from the door, she ventured a few steps in. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I was nowhere near Javier.”
The hotter the anger that flared inside him, the more Vincenzo forced himself into stillness. He’d be damned if he showed his fragmented self-control in front of a woman who’d run out on him at the first sign of trouble. “No? Both he and you conveniently disappeared at the same time for over two months. It’s a logical conclusion.”
She snorted, her nose scrunching with distaste. “You think I’d run away from one deceitful, dishonest man to another?”
Beneath the resentment still burning within, Vincenzo heard the truth in her indignation. He ran a hand through his hair, wondering at how far his jealousy had taken his thoughts. How much Alessandra’s abandonment of their marriage had affected him.
How much he wanted the loyalty she gave so freely to the Brunettis.
“And yet, when I finally tracked him down on the phone, your ex wouldn’t deny that you weren’t with him.”
She sighed. “That’s because Javier, just like you, is a devious bastard. If he thought it would torment you, he’d say anything. He isn’t particularly happy with me at the moment, like the rest of the world.”
Vincenzo heard the weariness in her tone but it did nothing to assuage his own jagged emotions. Nothing to tell him that he was any different from that damned ex of hers. Nothing that would remove Massimo’s taunting claim that Vincenzo had only been a rebound fling for her. “But he knew where you were, si?”
“Yes,” she admitted, her gaze searching his face. “He got me in touch with a friend of his, a stud farm owner in Brazil.” Something shifted in her expression. “But he wasn’t with me at any point.”
“And while you were having this extended temper tantrum on a stud farm in Brazil, did you wonder about what it might look like to me? Nine weeks, Alessandra, you were gone for nine weeks with no word. Not even a bloody text.”
“You knew I was safe within a week of me leaving. I told Massimo to inform you.”
Vincenzo caught up to her in two long strides, frustration mounting. Almost as tall as him, Alessandra looked straight at him, chin lifting, shoulders squaring. Readying herself for a battle. Dio mio, where was that seductively sweet, uncomplicated woman that had beguiled him in Bali? “I’m your husband. Being informed secondhand, especially by that taunting creep Massimo, that you’re quite safe in some hole that you’ve crawled into is not acceptable.”
The slender set of her shoulders tightened. “What did you want from me, V? A call telling you that I was questioning everything you said and did with me, that I couldn’t even bear to look at myself in the mirror because I’d made such a fool of myself, or that the thought of being near you while you happily destroyed Massimo and Leo made me physically nauseous?
“I needed to get away. From you. From Greta. From all of it.”
“And?”
“And what? What’s with the interrogation? How can you not see that all the promises we made to each other mean nothing when the foundation itself is cracked?”
The last bit of his temper frayed and his voice pitched dangerously low. “And if it’s broken, you simply walk away, instead of fixing it?”
Still, she didn’t back down. “Not if it’s completely shattered, like my trust in you.”
Tears and hurt were preferable to this version of Alessandra that looked at him with stony defiance and distrust. “I guess Massimo is right.
“The Alessandra that’s lauded in the papers, that captures millions of hearts with her take-charge attitude is a sham. The Alessandra that said she’d always dreamed of having a big family is a lie.
“The woman I married is in fact an impulsive brat who runs when things don’t go her way.
“Whose promises means nothing.
“Who clearly thinks marriage is only fun and sex and romantic escapades. Who’s so immature that she can’t even stand and communicate with the man she’d promised to spend the rest of her life with.”
CHAPTER FOUR
IMPULSIVE. IMMATURE.
Words she’d heard before. Words she’d buried deep. Her mother, Alyssa, had used them far too many times in the conversations they’d had over the years. When Alex refused to take any kind of step toward healing their relationship.
From Vincenzo, the accusations rang true and stung deep. But it was the flash of disappointment in his eyes before he buried it under a thick veil of resentment that she couldn’t ignore. It didn’t help that she was already feeling fragile after attending her mother’s and stepfather’s funerals.
She’d expected Vincenzo’s anger, had been warned by Massimo of the cold burn of it getting worse with each passing day. She’d chalked it up to an arrogant, ruthless man not getting his own way, probably for the first time in his life.
Away from his commanding presence, awash in her own hurt, it had been easy to forget that he had certain expectations of her, that her learning of his true identity and actions toward the Brunettis made no difference to him, to how he felt about their marriage.
“Running away from problems only makes them worse, piccola.” Her biological father’s wise words when she’d begged to come and live with him after yet another fight with her mother. But in the end, Carlos had indulged her wish, and as a result, the ocean of distance between her and Alyssa had become permanent.
Had she done the same this time too? What did sh
e owe a man who had trapped her in a web of lies?
And yet, he’d gained nothing so far by marrying her.
“I married you because for the first time in my life I saw something I wanted outside of revenge.”
Heat flamed her cheeks, but she refused to look away as if she was in the wrong. “If I apologize for my actions, it won’t be truthful,” she finally offered. “You left me feeling like I had no other choice than to go.”
“And now, bella?” He leaned against his massive desk, throwing those long legs out in front of him. Pulling her starved senses to the sheer masculinity of him. As though she were a magnet and he was her true north. “Have you found one? Is that why you’ve deigned to return?”
With him standing no more than two feet from her, Alex weakened and let herself drink him in.
Take in the magnificent presence of the man she’d allowed into her heart.
Power and arrogance shimmered around him, a second skin. An armor he was using to keep her out now. But he hadn’t done it in Bali. He had let her in. He had been a different man. Or was that just her naive belief in a fairy tale that didn’t exist?
And how had she not seen the similarities between him and Leo and Massimo? The cut of his features, the very way he held himself slightly separate from the crowd, the affection she’d heard in his voice when he’d spoken of his mother—he was so much like his half brothers. So much a Brunetti through and through.
But she knew instinctively he would hate that comparison. The confidence in his speech, the commanding power of his look—it had been hard-won for Vincenzo and would be so much harder to shed too.
Deep smudges darkened his electric gray eyes, gilded by long lashes that should have made him look almost feminine. But the aquiline nose, with no fewer than two dents marring its aristocratic lineage, and the strong chin saved him from that. While his thinly sculpted upper lip hinted at the contempt she’d foolishly never seen before today, the lush lower lip spoke of the sensuality he hid beneath that ruthless mask.
She shivered slightly, even though his office was set to a comfortable ambient temperature.
The gray shirt revealed a teasing V of olive skin, skin Alex had kissed and petted to her heart’s content. Her palm tingled in desperation for that contact again—to be able to slide her hand over his warm skin stretched taut over sculpted muscles. She’d thought it so romantic that she, with her always cold toes and fingers, had found a man who could warm her up just by holding her.
But even that reminder of her naive dreams couldn’t stop her mind from imagining the slide of her hand moving farther down his defined chest to the thick slabs of his abdominal muscles, down to the solid strength of his thighs and then back up…
“Alessandra!”
Lost in the splendor that was the man she’d thought she had fallen headlong in love with, Alex said huskily, “Have I found what?”
He closed and opened his eyes, his patience apparently paper-thin. “What prompted you to come back? Did Greta promise to save you from the big, bad wolf? Did Leo and Massimo tell you they would protect you from the devious man you’d entangled yourself with?”
“I don’t need anyone to fight my battles,” Alex snapped, a fresh thread of anger thankfully drowning out the lust that was useless right now, that would only distract her from what she needed to do. “I have found myself in a situation where I… I—”
“You what?”
“I need you,” she said, going for defiance but it ended up being an entreaty.
As if she’d woven a magic spell into the air, the very chemistry of the room changed. Like that first moment on Bali when their eyes had met, a real connection arced between them.
A pure electric charge that had nothing to do with revenge and all its twisted consequences. The luminous gray of his eyes flared into something dangerously feral and her pulse spiked.
God, was she really getting a thrill because she could still provoke this reaction from him? When would her stupid heart and her foolish body learn that he wasn’t hers? That for all the pleasure he’d woven with his skillful caresses, he’d had an ultimate goal all the while?
“You need me for what, bella? I made the mistake of trusting you blindly once. I will not do it again.”
The sheer arrogance of the words broke their connection. Alex laughed. “It’s like you stole the very words from my script.” She shook her head. If his gaze wasn’t already drilling holes in her skin, she’d have smacked herself on the head. God, she needed him, yes, but for a good reason.
Not to dissolve into an overheated puddle at his feet.
“I need the appearance of this marriage,” she announced clearly this time, tilting her chin up, holding his gaze. “That’s why I returned.”
His gaze irate, his jaw tight, he just stared at her.
“My mother and stepfather—” she swallowed the lump in her throat “—died in an accident two weeks ago.” She didn’t wait for him to offer a sentiment. If he showed any sympathy or touched her, her grief would come bursting out and she’d lose control of herself. And this situation. Never again was she going to depend on him. “I flew here straight from the funeral in San Francisco.
“My stepfather left a huge fortune to my half brother, Charlie. He’s only seven and already his paternal uncles are fighting over who gets to take control of him. Just so they can control his fortune.”
She blinked and turned away for a moment, trying to hold back the threat of tears.
“I’m sorry you’ve been dealing with such horrific news,” he said, his voice coming close behind her. The scent of him was a tempting invitation, offering the illusion of an escape from her worries. “You didn’t have to take it on alone, Alessandra.”
The tenderness in his voice beckoned her, and it took all her strength to not fall into his embrace. To not let herself drown in grief. To not let his strong arms hold her through this pain.
She turned back to face him. “I kinda had to,” she said vehemently, rejecting whatever comfort he was offering. “I’ve always dealt with life alone.”
His mouth opened and closed, frustration etched onto his features. Long fingers pushed through his hair, sudden energy brimming from his demeanor. “Alessandra, I miscalculated how much what I—”
“I want to take custody of him,” she said, cutting off his words. It was too late for apologies anyway. “I want to raise Charlie. I want to give him the kind of loving family life he deserves, the security I always yearned for as a child.
“Knowing how my stepfather’s brothers are already fighting over him, as if he were a piece of meat, I can’t give him up to them. I refuse to.”
She looked up at him to realize she had his full attention. Thankful that he hadn’t interrupted her again, she went on. “I’ve spoken to a firm of family lawyers that comes highly recommended. I’ve been informed in no uncertain terms that it’s extremely unlikely I’d get custody of him with my current ‘lifestyle.’
“I’m single, as far as anyone else knows. I travel around the world with no stability or roots. I’ve been in the media spotlight a lot of late, creating controversy, and my breakup with Javier was messy and all over the news. In short, Charlie’s uncles plan to use every morsel ever printed against me, even the smallest things I did ten years ago, to prove me an unfit guardian for him.
“So that’s where you come in,” she finished.
“Where?” His voice was whip sharp, his gaze cutting to her with a withering contempt that should’ve reduced her to a heap of smoking ash. “All I’ve heard so far is that you came back to me only because you were forced to do so. That something terribly tragic had to happen to make you show up here today. That your wedding vows still mean less than nothing to you.
“So where exactly do I come into this situation, bella. Spell it out for me.”
Her behavior, so neatly summarized in
his stinging words, made shame burn in her chest. But she buried it deep. She was never again going to project what she wanted to see in his eyes, what she wanted him to feel for her onto him. Never again.
“I’d already made a decision to quit modeling even before this happened. I plan to prove that I can be a steady, secure presence in Charlie’s life, however long it takes. I plan to take the battle for custody to the courts and win it.
“It’s just a matter of finishing up existing contracts, setting up a permanent residence somewhere and settling down to a less chaotic lifestyle. With my husband, so that I can prove to the courts that there’s a stable, two-parent home waiting for Charlie.”
“Is that all?” he said dryly.
“Yes, that is all,” she snapped, fatigue finally taking over. “And since I already have a husband handy, I thought I should just use him to help my case.”
“As opposed to?”
“As opposed to getting rid of the current one and shopping for a new one. What else?” she retorted, rolling her eyes. Her head was beginning to pound from all the lack of sleep, her body in a state of near exhaustion. “This is not a joke.”
“Should I truly take you at your word this time, bella? Is that what I should have demanded—an extra clarification that it was not a joke when you made your vows to me?”
Alex refused to indulge the guilt that burrowed into the most private recesses of her heart. Or the hope that it had somehow hurt him when she’d left. God, the last thing she needed was to look for any supposed feelings for her. “You owe me this, V.”
He raised a brow, arrogance dripping from the gesture. “Owe you, Princess?”
“Yes. You married me without telling me the whole truth. You appear to have conveniently forgotten all the mistakes you’ve made and blame me for the disturbing farce that is our marriage. You misrepresented yourself to me and I want reparation. This has to be it.”