Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  ‘How many times do I have to say it? I think your body is perfect.’

  ‘P-perfect for producing an heir,’ she stammered, feeling the anger rise inside her. ‘That’s different to finding me attractive.’

  ‘If I didn’t find you attractive,’ he drawled, ‘I wouldn’t have made love to you four times a night for the past few weeks.’

  Five times a night, she thought to herself, but she was too stunned to correct him. ‘And it didn’t occur to you to discus it with me?’

  ‘What is there to discuss?’ He frowned. ‘Pregnancy is a natural conclusion of marital sex.’

  Marital sex? ‘In the Middle Ages, maybe,’ she said, hearing her voice rise and not bothering to do anything about it. ‘But not now. Women have jobs, Nowadays women plan their families with their partners. They both decide when to have children and how many to have.’

  ‘And so have we.’ He gave a casual shrug. ‘Given that you don’t have a job, and we have no financial constraints, I’d say loads and straight away.’

  ‘Oh, would you?’ The shine in her eyes betrayed her growing outrage. ‘And do I get any say at all in this?’

  His glance was impatient. ‘There are absolutely no reasons why we shouldn’t have as many children as possible as soon as possible. You’re young and healthy and you were born to be a mother. Why wait?’

  Still coming to terms with the fact that his obsession with her body had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with his desire for a child, Chessie swallowed and tried to force her voice past the lump in her throat. ‘Have you any idea how I feel right now? Any idea at all?’

  ‘Blessed?’ Obviously sensing that he was facing a problem that as yet remained beyond his grasp, Rocco was suddenly watchful. ‘There are millions of women who would kill to be in your position.’

  ‘There are also millions of women who would kill you for placing them in my position,’ Chessie muttered through gritted teeth, her nails digging into her palms as she struggled to control her emotions. ‘If I was the violent type, I think you’d be dead on the floor by now.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s just your hormones,’ Rocco offered helpfully, and Chessie rose to her feet, so incensed that she was ready to thump him and take the consequences.

  ‘You don’t have a clue, do you? You just don’t know what’s going on in my head.’

  ‘No man would ever be optimistic enough to pretend that he understands what’s going on in a woman’s head—especially when that woman happens to be pregnant,’ Rocco assured her in his characteristically lazy drawl. ‘And I don’t believe in investing time in losing situations. We don’t have to understand each other to be married.’

  ‘But it would be a start, don’t you think?’ Chessie stared at him in helpless frustration. Not only did he know nothing about her, he didn’t seem remotely interested in finding out. It was obvious that he believed that she was here to produce children. Nothing more. That was her job description.

  ‘Did it ever occur to you that I might have plans that don’t include children?’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Such as what, precisely?’

  ‘I want to travel, I want to live my life—I want a job, Rocco.’ There. She’d said it, and suddenly her heart was beating so fast that she wondered whether she might faint. ‘I want to work.’

  His eyes were suddenly cold. ‘Why would you possibly want to work when you have access to more money than you could ever need?’

  ‘It isn’t about the money. It’s about self-esteem and enjoyment—about being like other people and—’ And she wanted to do something with art. She broke off, her outburst quashed by the hardness of his eyes. ‘I’m trying to make you understand.’

  ‘Understand what? That my wife doesn’t want children?’

  ‘I’m not saying that I don’t want them,’ she said quickly. ‘Just that I don’t want them quite yet. I suppose I assumed it was something we’d talk about. Didn’t it occur to you that there are other things I want to do first?’

  ‘Why would it? I haven’t been using any contraception and you haven’t once protested,’ he drawled, his eyes intent on her face. ‘You’re very pale, and obviously upset. You need more sleep than you’ve been getting. You’re tired. I’ll have a doctor flown in this afternoon to check you out, and I’ll stop disturbing your nights.’

  He wasn’t listening to her. ‘You mean, having managed to sow your seed, you no longer have to expend all your energy trying to make me pregnant?’ Chessie said stiffly, still recovering from her sudden realization that they had used no contraception. ‘Well, I hate to disappoint you, but there’s no need to waste the doctor’s time. I’m not pregnant. And I’m not hormonal, Rocco. I’m just really, really angry.’

  He stilled. ‘You’re not pregnant?’

  ‘Not pregnant.’ She repeated the words slowly, so that there could be no misunderstanding. ‘I’m not having your baby, so if that’s really your aim then you still have some serious work to do. Perhaps you’d better make it six times a night, just to be sure?’

  His eyes were suddenly cold. ‘You disturbed my working day in order to tell me that you’re not pregnant?’

  ‘No, I didn’t interrupt your working day to tell you that I’m not pregnant! The subject of pregnancy hadn’t even crossed my mind until you brought it up! I didn’t come here to tell you anything. I just wanted to—’ She broke off, anger and frustration giving way to helpless misery. How could she possibly confess that she wanted to spend more time with him when he clearly didn’t share the same emotion? She wanted to leap on him and hurt him for being so incredibly insensitive.

  It was obvious that he didn’t care for her at all, and the fact that for a while she’d really believed that he did made her want to sink through the floor with humiliation and self-loathing.

  She’d done it again.

  Been taken in by Rocco’s fatal charm; made a fool of herself over him in the same way that dozens of other women had before her.

  She’d believed that he was something he wasn’t. She’d believed that he’d cared. The moment he’d taken her in his arms she’d started thinking love and romance, and he’d been thinking sex and babies.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Determined to leave the room before she embarrassed herself in front of him, Chessie scrambled to her feet. ‘This is a pointless conversation. I need to go,’ she muttered. ‘No doubt I’ll see you later, for another determined baby-making session.’

  ‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.’ His hand closed over her shoulder and he turned her back to face him. ‘You’re not leaving until we reach a satisfactory conclusion.’

  ‘This isn’t a business deal, Rocco! And a “satisfactory conclusion” to you is just getting your own way. You railroad everyone who stands in your way, but you’re not doing it with me!’ Her heart thumping, she lifted her chin. ‘I’m your wife, and we’re supposed to be a team. I will not allow you to bully me.’ She’d made that promise to herself, and she intended to keep it.

  Rocco stared at her with mounting disbelief. ‘I am not bullying you,’ he ground out with raw emphasis. ‘And we are a team.’

  ‘How can we be a team when we never talk?’ Oh, what the heck? She might as well tell him the truth. Tears smarting in her eyes, she lifted her chin and stared him in the eye. ‘That was why I came here. To try to introduce something into our relationship apart from the physical. Do you realise that in the past two weeks we’ve hardly exchanged a single word? I wanted us to spend time together, which is something we never do—and I’ve just discovered why. You’re not interested in talking. In fact you’re obviously not interested in me at all. You say that you want a wife, but when have you spent a single minute with me?’ She gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘My role is simply to provide you with a son. You just want to make me pregnant—which explains why I never see you during the day and why you spend the entire night competing for the title of super-stud.’

  Looking like a man trying to sta
nd on shifting ground, Rocco ran a hand over the back of his neck. ‘There’s an element of truth in what you’re saying, but you’re twisting it to make it seem bad. I can see that you’re upset—’

  ‘Really? You can tell that just by looking?’ Chessie tossed her head angrily and her dark hair spilled down her back. ‘Then you’re more sensitive than appearances would suggest.’ She went to stalk out of his office, but he caught her by the arm again, and swung her round so that she was forced to face him.

  ‘I see you as the perfect mother for my children,’ he growled, incredulity and frustration lighting his dark eyes. ‘What bigger compliment is there for a woman?’

  ‘Oh, let me see …’ She blinked back the tears that threatened. ‘Finding a woman irresistible, interesting, stimulating company—those would all be bigger compliments.’

  ‘Not from where I’m standing.’

  ‘Let me ask you something, Rocco—and I want you to give me an honest answer. Do you ever look at me and want to rip my clothes off and take me there and then just because you can’t help yourself?’

  ‘What sort of a question is that?’

  ‘A perfectly reasonable one. Answer me, Rocco.’ Her voice was hoarse and she stepped closer to him. ‘Do you find me sexy?’

  ‘This is not the sort of conversation I expect to have with my wife.’ The chill was back in his eyes and she turned away, helpless with exasperation and so miserable she just wanted to lie down and sob.

  ‘Forget it, Rocco.’ Her voice was choked. ‘It’s a shame we didn’t have this conversation earlier—because it’s perfectly clear to me now that we both expect entirely different things from marriage. I’ll leave you to get on with your work. It’s clearly all you care about.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SHE didn’t mean anything to him at all.

  Nothing.

  Chessie stuffed clothes into her bag, crying so hard that her head throbbed and her face was blotched.

  It was just as well Rocco didn’t want a sexy wife, she thought to herself as she fumbled for yet another tissue and blew her nose, because at the moment she was as far from sexy as it was possible to be.

  And the worst thing was that it didn’t even matter. Clearly she could have had the physical attributes of an oil tanker and he wouldn’t have cared, providing she gave him a son.

  She’d been flattering herself that he found her irresistible, and now she had discovered that when he’d said her body was perfect what he really meant was that it was perfect for having babies! Not perfect for sin and seduction! He just had a burning desire for children, and for some reason she was the one chosen to help him fulfil his ambition. He saw her as a wife and a mother rather than as a voluptuous sex siren.

  She felt totally and utterly deflated.

  On impulse she abandoned her packing, stripped off her shapeless dress and stood in front of the mirror in her underwear. What did he see when he looked at her?

  Full breasts. Child-bearing hips.

  Brushing the tears from her cheeks, she turned sideways and stared at her outline. He’d chosen her as a wife capable of breeding a family, not as a life partner he could love, cherish and have fun with. Share with.

  And yet why should his attitude surprise her. Why?

  He was Sicilian and she’d always known that.

  Wasn’t that the whole reason she’d run in the first place?

  How could she have forgotten?

  Tears still soaking her cheeks, she slid back into her dress and sank onto the edge of the bed, forcing herself to face the painful truth.

  He didn’t love her and he’d never love her.

  For him, their relationship was all about having babies. Creating a big, noisy Sicilian family full of big, fat sons groomed to carry on the macho tradition.

  She blew her nose hard, and then looked up as the door crashed open and Rocco strode into the room. Strands of glossy dark hair fell over his bronzed forehead and his dark eyes glimmered with volcanic fury.

  ‘Go away—’ She scrunched the tissue into a ball and turned her head to hide her blotched cheeks. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her crying. ‘I don’t have anything to say to you.’

  ‘And yet you came to my offices so that we could talk, did you not?’ He pushed the door shut, and suddenly the enormous bedroom seemed impossibly claustrophobic.

  ‘Just leave me alone,’ she muttered, sliding back onto the bed and drawing her knees up against her chest. ‘I don’t like you. I wish I’d never come back to Sicily.’

  ‘I would have tracked you down.’ She felt the bed move as he sat down next to her. ‘If this marriage of ours is ever going to work, you have to stop running away.’

  ‘I’ll stop running away when you stop giving me cause!’ She lifted her head and glared at him, suddenly indifferent to her blotched cheeks. ‘Do you want to know why I left the night of our wedding? Because I suddenly discovered that you are exactly like my father.’

  The anger in his eyes was replaced by wary incomprehension. ‘Francesca—’

  ‘They were all talking about you—did you know that?’ She blew her nose again, and then wiped her eyes on the heel of her hand. ‘I was standing there, in my stupid frothy wedding dress, thinking I was the luckiest girl in the world, and I heard them talking. A whole group of them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You should know! You’ve obviously slept with all of them,’ she muttered, covering her face with her hands as she recalled the conversation. ‘They were talking about me. They said that you’d married me because I was meek and compliant and that was what you wanted in a wife. I think the exact quote was, “No modern woman in her right mind would marry a man like Rocco, rich and gorgeous though he is.”’

  ‘They were clearly jealous because they hadn’t been offered the opportunity,’ Rocco said smoothly, prising her hands away from her face with determination. ‘Look at me, Chessie!’

  ‘They said that Lorna had nothing to worry about because you’d carry on seeing her after we were married.’

  ‘They were trying to hurt you,’ Rocco breathed, but Chessie shook her head.

  ‘They didn’t know I was there.’ She abandoned the crumpled tissue and yanked another from the box. ‘But I decided that I’d find you and talk to you about it.’

  Rocco tensed and released her hands. ‘So why didn’t you?’

  ‘I did! And you were on the terrace, laughing with Lorna and kissing her.’

  ‘I’ve known her a long time.’

  Chessie covered her ears. ‘I don’t want to know. I really, really don’t want to know. I just want you to agree to a divorce.’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous. Lorna and I were not together in the way you mean. And those women were just being spiteful.’

  She dropped her hands and looked at him. ‘I watched the same thing happen to my mother,’ she whispered, and his mouth tightened.

  ‘ What did you watch happening to your mother?’

  ‘I watched my father slowly break her heart and then her spirit. My mother was his wife, and yet she shared nothing with him. There were no romantic gestures, no caring. Nothing.’

  ‘It was your mother who encouraged you to run away that night, wasn’t it?’

  Chessie nodded. What was the point in lying? ‘She wanted me to do what she’d never had the courage to do. Have a life of my own. She gave me the money I needed to make a fresh start, away from my father.’

  ‘And Carlo? I know that you didn’t sleep with him, but were you close?’

  Chessie hesitated. ‘He was my father’s gardener,’ she admitted finally. ‘I barely knew him, but he was leaving to take a job in Rome and my mother had enough money saved up to persuade him to give me a lift as far as the ferry.’

  ‘He dropped you at the ferry? That’s all?’

  ‘That’s right. After we docked he drove off. I didn’t see him again.’

  There was a long silence while Rocco digested this piece of information
. Then he rose to his feet in a fluid movement, his broad shoulders tense as he paced the length of the room. ‘I thought you had a relationship with him.’

  ‘No. Before that night we had exchanged fewer than ten words.’ Why was he still dwelling on her relationship with Carlo? Chessie gave a humourless laugh as she studied the tension in his frame. Because he saw her as a possession and all he cared about was keeping his possessions exclusive. How could she have believed that Rocco genuinely liked her? He might be a different generation from her father, but in terms of attitude, no progress had been made. ‘Your problem is that you’re living in the wrong era. You’d be entirely comfortable in the Stone Age, living in a cave with a willing woman waiting by the fire to greet you after you’ve cleaned your weapon after a day’s hunting.’

  He turned, one dark brow raised in question. ‘And what’s wrong with that?’

  She glanced at him in disbelief. ‘Haven’t you ever heard of evolution? Man has moved on, Rocco.’

  ‘Which is why you’re now living in a villa and not a cave.’ He waved a hand as if to prove his point. ‘You have a beautiful home.’

  He just didn’t get it. Tears threatened again, and she covered her face with her hands. ‘Just get out, Rocco.’ She felt the bed move slightly as he sat down next to her once again.

  ‘Whatever you may think about me, I do not like seeing you this upset,’ he breathed, pulling her hands away from her face and forcing her to look at him. ‘I can see we’ve had a major misunderstanding here, but we can fix it.’

  ‘We have different personalities,’ Chessie said thickly, reaching for yet another tissue and blowing her nose hard. ‘I don’t see how we can ever fix that.’

  ‘Different personalities is good,’ Rocco assured her, a faint smile touching his hard mouth as he scrubbed away her tears with the pad of his thumb. ‘If we were the same then we’d clash all the time.’

  Chessie sniffed. ‘We are clashing.’

  ‘No, we’re not. We’ve just had a slight difference of opinion.’ He dismissed it with a careless wave of his hand. ‘Whatever you may think, I want our marriage to work.’