‘Did you want to be a doctor?’
‘Not really. I didn’t enjoy science, and I was useless at Latin—even though my parents paid for me to have extra lessons.’
Athena’s stomach tied itself into a knot as she visualised her Latin tutor: Peter Fitch. He had been the same age as her father, and grey haired. He had worn grey flannel trousers and had had the air of respectability you might expect from a learned university professor.
Years after he had assaulted her she could still remember her absolute shock when he had commented on her breasts. She had felt uncomfortable rather than scared at first—until he had pushed her up against the door and grabbed at her blouse.
‘You’ve gone very quiet.’ Luca wondered why she had turned pale. Maybe it was the damned oysters. ‘What are you thinking about?’
‘I was thinking what a disappointment I’ve always been to my parents.’ It wasn’t far from the truth. She did not want to imagine how her parents would feel when they saw in the newspapers that she was married to Luca.
‘What subjects were you interested in at school?’
‘I loved art—particularly drawing. I would have liked to study fine art at university.’
‘So why didn’t you?’
‘Oh, I wasn’t good enough.’
‘Did you apply to universities and get turned down?’
‘Well, no, but my father said I was wasting my time doing silly drawings.’
She had buried her dream of becoming an illustrator and had revised like mad for her chemistry and biology exams—but she had still failed to get the grades required for medical school.
‘How about you?’ Athena asked Luca, keen to turn the spotlight away from her mediocre achievements. ‘What made you decide to be a fashion designer?’
‘Designing is in my blood. My great-grandfather founded De Rossi Enterprises when he began to design shoes for his wife after she complained that she could never find stylish shoes to wear with her evening gowns. Raimondo expanded to design handbags and accessories. To me it seemed a natural step to create clothes which reflected the De Rossi brand of cutting-edge style and exceptional quality.’
Unfortunately his grandparents had not shared his belief that the company needed to move into fashion design, including off-the-peg clothes to be sold on the high street, Luca brooded. He had fought constant battles with Aberto in his bid to expand the company into new global markets. But his instincts had proved right and De Rossi Enterprises, together with DRD, the fashion label he had created, were now in the top ten of Italy’s most successful companies.
‘Your parents must be proud of your success,’ Athena said.
‘My mother died when I was fifteen.’
‘I’m sorry.’
It was not a throwaway remark. The compassion in her voice and in her eyes was genuine, Luca realised when he looked across the table and saw a gentle expression in her sapphire-blue gaze.
He shrugged. ‘I didn’t really know her. She had a wild lifestyle and was constantly flitting between her homes in Monaco and New York. Obviously I needed to be in one place to go to school, so she dumped me on my grandparents at Villa De Rossi.’
‘I can’t imagine your grandparents minded looking after you,’ Athena murmured, thinking of the happy visits she had made to her grandparents’ home when they had been alive. Unlike her parents, they had accepted her for who she was and had not put pressure on her to be cleverer or more studious.
‘My grandparents bitterly resented me,’ Luca said flatly.
The bastardo had been a shameful reminder of their daughter’s often outrageous lifestyle. He hesitated, wondering why he found it easy to talk to Athena. The only time he really spoke to women was when he made small talk before taking them to bed, but something about the way she quietly listened, as if she was actually interested in what he had to say, made him relax his guard.
‘In fact it was because of my mother that I wanted to be a fashion designer. I lived with her when I was younger, although I was mainly cared for by nannies, and I used to watch her getting ready to go out in the evenings. She would allow me to choose what dress she was going to wear, and her shoes and accessories. Even as a small boy I had a good eye for colour, and Mamma trusted my opinion.’ He recalled the happiest moments of his childhood, when he had felt close to his mother. ‘I felt proud that I had chosen what she wore when she went to grand parties. She was very beautiful.’
In the eyes of a young boy his mother had been like a fairytale princess, Luca mused. But one day she had disappeared out of his life and had gone to live with a lover who had not wanted a small child around. He had been sent to live with his grandparents, who had made it clear that they did not want him either.
His mother’s desertion had hit him hard. It had been an early lesson not to trust his heart—a lesson that had been reinforced years later when he had fallen in love with Jodie. She’d been a backpacker from New Zealand, who had been travelling around Europe and had taken a summer job in a village near to the Villa De Rossi. He had thought that Jodie would stay for ever—that their love would last for ever. But one day she’d disappeared from his life without warning, just as his mother had done, and Luca had realised that only a fool put his faith in love and the promises people made.
But there was another kind of love that he did believe in—the unconditional love of a father for his daughter. Jodie had not only deserted him, she had walked away from their daughter when medical tests had revealed the devastating news that Rosalie was suffering from a genetic brain disorder which would affect her development.
Luca’s jaw clenched as he thought of his daughter who, since she was two years old, had been denied a normal life, and he felt the familiar, agonising sense of guilt that he was to blame for Rosalie’s illness. Even though doctors had insisted that he must not feel responsible, he always would.
Despite her severe disabilities, Rosalie’s smile lit up Luca’s heart. His daughter was the reason why he had married a woman he barely knew, he brooded as he glanced at Athena and wondered how she was planning to spend a million pounds. They both had something to gain from their marriage and everything to lose unless they gave a convincing performance that they had married because they were in love.
CHAPTER SIX
‘IF I HAVE to keep smiling I think my jaw will snap,’ Athena muttered to Luca. ‘How much longer are we going to stay in the casino? I want to go to bed.’
‘Can you repeat that last statement in a louder voice, so that the paparazzi who have been stalking us all evening can hear you?’ His eyes gleamed. ‘Your eagerness for our wedding night is just the sort of thing to convince people our marriage is real.’
She was furious with herself for blushing, and with Luca for...well, for being Luca. For being drop-dead handsome and sexy and so charming that she was finding it impossible to resist his charisma.
‘I’m sure we must have done enough to convince the press, seeing as you haven’t left my side all evening and you keep kissing me,’ she said tartly. ‘You’re like an octopus wrapping its tentacles around me, or in your case your arms, so that I can’t escape.’
It was the first time in his nearly thirty-five years that he had been likened to an octopus, and it was not the most flattering comparison, Luca thought with a mixture of amusement and pique.
‘I haven’t seen much evidence that you’ve wanted to escape, mia bella,’ he murmured. ‘I have been impressed by your enthusiastic response when I’ve kissed you.’
He watched a rosy flush spread along her cheekbones and suddenly felt as tired as Athena clearly was of keeping up the pretence that they were blissfully happy newlyweds in front of the paparazzi. Tomorrow’s papers would undoubtedly publish photos of him and his bride staring adoringly into each other’s eyes as they played craps and blackjack. The hotel’s casino was ja
m-packed with tourists, which was why he had chosen it as a public arena in which to demonstrate that his marriage was the real deal.
Not that he had a problem with kissing Athena. He had found it surprisingly addictive to angle his mouth over hers and feel her soft, moist lips part, allowing his tongue to probe between them. He had spent the entire evening feeling so turned on that he hurt, and worse still was the knowledge that the only option ahead of him to alleviate the ache in his groin was to take a cold shower once he had escorted his bride up to the honeymoon suite.
‘If you’re tired we’ll call it a night,’ he said abruptly. ‘You might as well play all your chips on one last spin of the roulette wheel. What are you going to bet on?’ he asked as the croupier called for everyone to place their bets.
Athena put her stack of coloured chips on the board. ‘I’ll put everything on black, thirty-five. It seems to be a significant number, seeing that the reason we married is because you needed a wife by your thirty-fifth birthday.’
‘Why don’t you shout it out so that everyone in the entire room can hear you?’ Luca growled.
‘I’m sorry—I didn’t think.’ She cast a quick glance around and gave a sigh of relief when it appeared that her careless comment had gone unnoticed by the other people crowded around the roulette table.
The croupier spun the wheel and released the ball. Athena watched it half-interestedly. She had never gambled before, and after spending several hours in the casino still couldn’t understand the attraction. Luca had teased her that with a million pounds behind her she could afford to place a few bets, but she did not want to risk losing a penny of the money that would pay for the new orphanage and school in Jaipur.
The white ball continued to rattle around the wheel and eventually came to rest—on black, thirty-five.
‘You’ve won,’ Luca told her when she stared in surprise at the roulette wheel. ‘Thirty-five must be your lucky number.’
At least her winnings meant that she could buy some new clothes, Athena thought as she walked with Luca across the hotel lobby and was conscious of the curious looks her wedding dress still attracted from the other guests.
The honeymoon suite was on the thirty-fifth floor—although she did not believe in lucky numbers, she told herself. It was breathtakingly opulent, and she slipped off her shoes and walked barefoot across the thick velvet carpet as she explored the rooms—and discovered that one vital thing was missing.
‘There is only one bedroom,’ she told Luca when she went back into the sitting room and found him pouring himself a drink from the bar.
‘I imagine there isn’t much call for two bedrooms in the honeymoon suite,’ he said drily.
‘We can’t stay here. We’ll have to ask at Reception for a different suite, with two bedrooms.’
‘And risk one of the hotel staff rushing to sell an exposé about our sleeping arrangements to the press? I think not.’
Luca noted Athena’s anxious expression and felt a twinge of guilt for mocking her. She had played the part of his loving wife all evening, and it was not her fault that he had looked at the huge bed and visualised her naked, voluptuous, creamy-skinned body spread on the black silk sheets.
‘I’ll sleep on the sofa,’ he reassured her. ‘The suite does have his and hers bathrooms. I suggest you go and get ready for bed. You look...’ The word fragile slid into his mind, and perhaps it was unsurprising considering the events of the past forty-eight hours since he had helped her to escape from her wedding to Charles Fairfax. ‘You look tired,’ he said flatly.
She did not feel tired, Athena thought twenty minutes later as she stepped into the pink marble sunken bath that was the size of a small swimming pool. She had used nearly the whole bottle of bubble bath provided by the hotel, and she sank into the foaming, scented water with a sigh of pleasure. The clock said it was one a.m. in Las Vegas, which meant it was morning in England, but she had slept for a few hours on the plane and her body felt strangely energised.
There was no mystery about why she felt more alive than she had ever done in her life, she mocked herself. She had spent all evening with Luca’s arm wrapped firmly around her waist and his thigh pressed against hers, so that she had been aware of the muscled hardness of his athletic body. She knew that every time he had kissed her it had been a show for the watching paparazzi—so why had she trembled when he had brushed his lips over hers before deepening the kiss and stirring a passionate response that had shocked her?
She hadn’t felt the knot of fear in the pit of her stomach that she’d felt in the past, when other men had kissed her. Charlie’s chaste kisses had never made her feel apprehensive, she reminded herself. But since she had found him in bed with his best man she understood why there had been a complete lack of sexual chemistry between them. Her awareness of Luca did at least prove that the sexual assault years ago had not destroyed her sensuality. But she had buried normal feelings of passion and desire until Luca had kissed her outside the wedding chapel and awoken a yearning to satisfy the ache of need that throbbed deep in her pelvis.
The overnight bag that she had brought with her when she had escaped from Woodley Lodge contained her toothbrush and other personal toiletries—as well as the black negligee she had planned to wear on her wedding night with Charlie. The sheer black lace baby-doll nightgown barely covered any of her body, but it was all she had to sleep in.
Top of her shopping list tomorrow would be a pair of sensible pyjamas, Athena decided as she walked out of the en-suite bathroom into the bedroom—just as Luca entered the room through another door from the sitting room.
He must have showered, because his hair was damp, and he was wearing a black towelling robe loosely belted at his waist and gaping open over his upper body, so that she could see the whorls of black hairs that covered his chest. The skin visible beneath the mat of hair was dark bronze—the same as the bare legs revealed below the hem of his robe. The idea that he was naked beneath the robe made Athena feel quivery inside, and she could not stop staring at him.
‘I came to get a pillow. I knocked but you didn’t answer, so I assumed you were still in the bathroom.’
His voice was curiously husky, his accent more pronounced than usual and incredibly sexy, causing the tiny hairs on Athena’s body to stand on end. Her heart lurched as he walked towards her and she saw the predatory gleam in his eyes. Her brain told her that he shouldn’t be looking at her as he was doing—with a dark intensity, as if he was mentally undressing her.
It would not take him long, she thought ruefully, glancing down at her skimpy negligee and discovering that the darker skin of her nipples showed through the semi-transparent material.
‘Luca...’
Did that breathless voice belong to her? She licked her dry lips with the tip of her tongue and watched him swallow convulsively. He was still coming closer, and she backed up until she bumped into the bed and couldn’t go any further.
‘What do you want?’
She remembered he had said he wanted a pillow, but he did not glance at the head of the bed, just kept his glittering gaze focused on her.
What did he want? Luca almost laughed at Athena’s innocent question. As if she did not know, he brooded, noting how her pupils had dilated so that her eyes were almost completely black. The sexual tension shimmering between them was so acute he could almost taste it.
He knew he should not feel like this—as if his body was a tightly coiled spring, thrumming with frustration. It wasn’t part of his game plan. When he had asked Athena to be his wife in name only he’d had no idea that he would be more turned on than he could ever remember by her petite but delightfully curvaceous figure, now inadequately covered by a wisp of black lace.
Everything had changed when he had kissed her on the steps of the wedding chapel, he acknowledged. Until that moment he had viewed her only as a means to claim
his rightful ownership of the Villa De Rossi, which was so important to his daughter’s happiness. But when he had taken Athena in his arms and her soft, voluptuous body had fitted so snugly to his, he had suddenly been aware of her as a desirable woman.
Their evening spent in the casino had been an exquisite form of torture as she had responded to his kisses with a sweet ardency that had driven him crazy—because he had known she was only acting for the benefit of the paparazzi.
But now they were alone in the honeymoon suite, and with no members of the press to impress there was no reason for Athena to catch her breath as he halted in front of her and ran his finger lightly down her cheek. He felt the tremor that ran through her and his body tightened in response as anticipation licked hot and hungry through his veins. There was nothing to stop him changing the rules of his game plan and making Athena his wife in every sense.
‘I want you, mia bella,’ he said softly.
If he had been able to think clearly he would have wondered about the flicker of wariness in her eyes, but Luca’s thoughts were distracted by the betraying quiver of her lower lip.
‘I want to kiss you,’ he murmured as he cradled her cheek in his hand and brought his mouth down on hers.
Luca only wanted to kiss her. The knot of apprehension in Athena’s stomach unravelled. That was all right. She did not mind him kissing her—didn’t mind at all, in fact, she admitted as his lips gently teased hers apart and he explored their shape with his tongue.
He smelled of soap and spicy cologne, mixed with that subtle scent of maleness that so intoxicated her senses that without being aware of moving she swayed towards him and curled her arms around his neck. It seemed quite natural for him to lift her up and place her on the bed. Even when he knelt above her, his chiselled features accentuated in the golden glow of the bedside lamp, she was so absorbed by the feelings he was stirring in her, so entranced by the sharp, sweet throb of desire between her thighs, that the shadows from her past did not trouble her.
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