A half-mile further on Luiz stopped the car where the road was a little wider and turned them back the way they had come. As they passed by the BMW again, she noticed that another car had pulled up behind it and that Felipe was on his own two feet, leaning weakly against it with his head in his hands, while the rest of the men were wrestling the BMW out of harm’s way.
‘They won’t hurt him, will they?’ she asked Luiz anxiously.
‘No,’ was all he said.
It was reassuring, short though it was. On a small sigh she began to shiver. Luiz instantly flicked the car heater on, but the shivering continued. She knew it was shock, not cold—Luiz probably knew it too.
‘Tell me what happened after that fool of a waiter let Felipe convince him he was me so he could lure you out to my car.’
‘When you start shouting and swearing, I might tell you,’ Caroline countered dully. ‘But not before.’
‘All right.’ His fingers tensed around the steering wheel. ‘Let’s just deal with your problem with my self-control first,’ he clipped. ‘You want to see the man dead?’ he gritted. ‘You want to see his head hanging from the castle wall? You want to see me drive you up this mountain the same way he brought you down it?’
‘No.’ She answered all of his questions at the same time.
‘Then tell me what happened after he got you into my car,’ he repeated flatly.
So, quietly and as flatly as him, she told him everything, even the way it had been her fault that the car had ended up where it had. The only bit she missed out was the hellish row she and Felipe had had about Luiz’s father.
By then they were driving through the village and everyone was out. It was like a replay of the first time they had come through here. Only then it had been daylight and the expressions had been curious. Now they looked pale and worried and anxious. So she waved and smiled and hoped to goodness they couldn’t tell that she was just about ready to cry her eyes out.
It was the same when they got back to the castle. Everyone was huddled around Neptune, waiting with anxious eyes as Luiz brought the car to a stop then grimly told her to stay exactly where she was.
He got out, ignored everyone, and came around the car to lift her out of her seat. Some gasped when they saw the state of her lovely dress and her pale face.
Her father stepped up and took hold of her hand. He looked dreadful. ‘I’m fine,’ she told him, and another one of those reassuring smiles appeared.
‘You don’t look it,’ he rasped.
‘Well, I am—I am,’ she repeated firmly.
‘Nevertheless, I will come with you…’
It was Luiz’s uncle Fidel. He fell into step beside Luiz as they walked into the great hall with her father still clinging to one of her hands. The first person she saw inside was Consuela. She was just standing there by the huge banqueting table, her face so white it could have been marble.
‘Put me down, Luiz,’ Caroline insisted.
He paused in his step but didn’t immediately comply.
‘Please,’ she pleaded.
Without a word, and with his dark face still that tightly closed book, he set her feet onto the cool stone floor and made sure she was steady before letting go of her. Caroline walked up to Consuela and simply—sadly—just put her arms around the older woman.
Instantly Consuela stiffened so violently that Caroline thought it was with rejection. Then she realised, as that stiff body began to tremble, that Consuela just wasn’t used to being held in any way. For all she had deserved punishment for what she had done to her own sister, she had paid for it—with thirty-five years of a barren marriage living in a barren atmosphere where love and affection had been non-existent.
‘It’s all right,’ she whispered, for the other woman’s ears only. ‘He’s fine. Luiz’s men are looking after him.’
‘He should not have done it,’ Consuela said, but some of the tension eased out of her.
‘He’s bitter,’ Caroline explained. ‘And he has a right to be bitter, Tía Consuela,’ she added gently.
The older woman looked into Caroline’s face and sighed knowingly. ‘The padre gave you the diaries,’ she said.
At Caroline’s nod, she nodded also. That was all. They understood each other. If Caroline had read the diaries then she knew that if Luiz thought his life had been hard, growing up in the slums of New York, then Felipe’s life had been no easier, living here with a father who had despised him and a mother who had locked herself away in an emotional prison of her own making.
Then Consuela said. ‘We will leave here tonight.’ It was a decision that made Caroline glance at her anxiously.
‘You don’t have to do that, Consuela,’ she told her. ‘This is your home. It’s Felipe’s home. Can’t we at least try to live here together?’
‘No.’ Consuela shook her head. ‘In truth, I will be glad to go. It is time. Perhaps…’ She heaved out a heavy sigh. ‘Perhaps more than time that we began making a life for ourselves.’
In a lot of ways Caroline could only agree with her. Felipe, at least, needed to get away from here. It was the only way he would learn to put aside his bitterness.
The sound of another car arriving alerted Caroline to the return of the others, and her immediate concern turned to getting Luiz away from the hall before his men brought Felipe into it.
Releasing Consuela, she turned back to Luiz. He looked so big and grim that she felt the threat of tears tighten her chest muscles as she walked back to him. She turned impulsively to Luiz’s uncle. ‘Felipe will need you more than I do, Tío,’ she told him.
There was a moment when he looked as if he might argue with her, then with a glance at Luiz he changed his mind and nodded. To her father she gave a hug and a kiss. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said quietly.
He too understood. He was being dismissed. Standing back, he watched her slip her hand into Luiz’s hand, saw the larger fingers tighten possessively around her more slender ones, and together the two of them moved up the stairs.
Behind them, not a single word was spoken.
Instead of to her old room Luiz took her directly to his. It was the master suite of the castle. Huge. Grand. All heavy baroque furniture and ancient artefacts. The moment the door shut behind them Caroline felt reaction begin to set in.
Her legs felt suddenly weak, sending her over to the nearest chair to drop shakily down into it. Still without a word, Luiz walked across the room and into his bathroom. Ten seconds later she could hear the sound of running water.
Coming back into the room, Luiz found her sitting there, with her face hidden in her hands. A muscle along his jaw clenched, but that was the only reaction he showed as he came to stand over her, then bent to gently remove the tiara and veil from her hair before scooping her into his arms again.
‘Oh, very macho,’ she said, trying to lighten the leaden atmosphere.
He didn’t respond to it. Grim-eyed, tight-lipped, he carried her into the bathroom, then set her down on her feet and turned her back to him so he could begin untying the silk lacing that was holding the bodice of her wedding dress together.
‘If you don’t start talking to me, I’ll throw a tantrum,’ she informed him quite casually. The lacing gave, the bodice slipped, sending her hand up to catch it before it revealed her breasts.
‘Luiz!’ she snapped, spinning round to face him.
His eyes caught fire. The fury he had been keeping severely banked down now came bursting out through those hot, bright, burning black eyes to completely envelop her at the very moment his arms did the same. And he was lifting her off her feet, so he could bring her startled mouth on a level with his own mouth.
It was a kiss like no other. It didn’t just burn, it consumed. Her arms went up, slender forearms using his wide shoulders as a brace to keep that fierce mouth-to-mouth contact. She didn’t care now that the dress was slipping, that her breasts were bursting free to press against him. She didn’t care that the knock on her head hurt or
that her bare feet were stinging or that he was holding her so tightly that he was in danger of crushing her ribs.
But she cared that she could feel him trembling, that even his mouth, where it fused with hers, was struggling to maintain some control over what was finally pouring out of him.
‘I love you,’ she murmured through a fevered grab at air. ‘I love you so much, and I hate it when you hide away from me!’
‘It’s either hide or devour you,’ he muttered. And he meant it, fantastic though the statement might seem. He meant every harsh, rasping word of it.
He claimed her mouth again, putting a stop to any more talking, because at this moment doing was more important. Caroline wound her thighs around his hips, long skirts rustling as she locked her bare feet together at his back. Her fingers were in his hair, her thumbs urgently caressing the tension along his rigid jaw.
On a driven groan he turned back to the bedroom.
‘The bath,’ she reminded him.
He issued a hoarse curse against her lips and changed direction without breaking the heated contact of their mouths until he absolutely had to. But he refused to let go of her as he bent to turn off the taps. And when he straightened again she was waiting for him, flushed-cheeked, misty-eyed, the two creamy slopes of her breasts heaving against the boned bodice now resting beneath them.
His dark lashes floated downward as he looked her over. She looked delectably pagan, uninhibitedly wanton. A bride ready for the taking by her passionate Spanish husband.
Looking upwards again, he studied her soft, full, inviting mouth, pressed another claiming kiss to it, then let his eyes clash with hers. He was moving again. Back into the bedroom, across the priceless Indian carpet covering its solid oak floor, to the bed, which looked like an island you could quite easily live upon without needing to leave for a long, long time.
Caroline certainly didn’t want to leave it. She wanted to take off her clothes and crawl beneath its snowy white linen topped by the really decadent blood-red and dark gold brocade coverlet, to survive on hot kisses and rich dark flesh and the passions of a man who was incomparable.
Allowing her feet to slide to the floor, Luiz took a step back, then began undressing. She didn’t move, didn’t attempt to take her own dress off. That was for him to do. It was his duty to unwrap his bride himself.
But her breasts pouted provocatively at him all the while he was undressing, and the moist pink tip of her tongue kept snaking slowly around her kiss-swollen lips in needy anticipation.
‘You,’ he murmured when he eventually reached for her, ‘ought to be locked up.’
She just smiled a very wicked smile and lifted up her arms to receive him. The dress slipped lower. On a growl, Luiz helped it the rest of the way, and had seen off everything else she was wearing before he straightened up again.
Outside, beyond the four-foot thick walls, the party went on without them. Somewhere else, in another wing of the castle, two people were packing.
‘Luiz…’ Caroline murmured tentatively a long time later, when they lay curled up against each other. ‘Can we talk?’ she begged. ‘About Felipe?’
It ruined the moment. His body went taut, his jawline clenched. ‘Only if we have to do,’ he said tightly—which didn’t offer much encouragement.
Caroline pushed on anyway. ‘I know you have every right to hate him and his mother,’ she allowed. ‘And I know he behaved appallingly tonight. But…’ Leaning up a little, she looked anxiously into his ice-cold eyes. ‘It isn’t his fault his mother told wicked lies about your mother, or that she tricked and deceived your father! Just as it isn’t Felipe’s fault that you had the childhood you did. He is your cousin—and it’s been tough for him too, you know!’ she insisted at Luiz’s lowering frown. ‘Growing up in your shadow, with a mother who could barely live with herself for what she’d done to her own sister and a so-called father who rejected him at birth and hated his mother for putting him in your place. It’s all so very tragic and sad,’ she said. ‘And I know your father had a right to feel bitter as he wrote it. He broke his own heart by believing your aunt instead of your mother, and spent the rest of his life punishing himself for it. But Felipe should not have been made to pay. It—’
‘What do you mean—how my father wrote it?’ Luiz put in.
‘Oh!’ she gasped in horror when she realised what she’d said. Then a long sigh whispered from her, and with a twisted smile that acknowledged it was probably for the best she lifted sombre eyes to his darkly glowering ones. ‘How he wrote it in his diaries,’ she said gently.
Softly and quietly she began telling him everything she had learned.
When eventually Luiz asked her where the diaries were, she told him, and without another word he got out of bed, pulled on a robe and went to get them.
A long time later, on his way back from Caroline’s bedroom, he saw Felipe and his mother just about to leave the castle. Standing there on the upper gallery, he viewed their sober features and felt something pick at the stone it was reputed he had for a heart.
‘Felipe,’ he said. The other man’s dark head came up and he spun on his heel to glance upwards. ‘We need to talk,’ he murmured quietly.
Instantly Luiz could see the battle taking place behind the defensive aggression pasted onto his handsome features. Then, on a sigh, Felipe gave a curt nod of his head. ‘One day,’ he replied. Maybe he, like Luiz, had had enough of the lies and bitterness and betrayal. ‘One day…’ he repeated, and turned away again.
Luiz watched gravely as his aunt lifted her pale face up to him. ‘I’m sorry,’ was all she said, but Luiz understood. After all, what else could she add that could take away what had gone before?
When he went back into his bedroom, he found his bride no longer there. Tossing the diaries onto the tumbled bed, he went looking for her and found her soaking in a bath of steaming bubbles. It took him ten seconds to join her, uncaringly sloshing water over the rim onto the tiled floor as he climbed in behind her then sat down and drew her back against him.
‘I’ve just seen Felipe and my aunt leaving,’ he told her levelly.
Caroline nodded. ‘She told me they would leave tonight.’
‘I didn’t want them to do that.’ He sighed. ‘I never meant to actually throw them out of here. Family is family…’
‘Warts and all?’ She nodded, ‘I know,’ she said referring to her own feckless father. Picking up one of his hands, she began kissing his fingers. ‘Did you read the diaries?’ she asked.
‘Mmm.’ His other hand slid up her slippery flesh until it found and closed around one of her breasts. ‘I knew some of it,’ he confessed. ‘First from my mother and then from my father, when we did eventually attempt to communicate.’
‘Seven years ago,’ Catherine sighed out bleakly, thinking of all those years they’d lost.
‘Seven years ago,’ he agreed. ‘When I made the trip to Spain to arrogantly lay claim to my roots and met the woman who claimed me instead.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, thinking about how ruthlessly her father had used one of them against the other.
‘I told your father that I was in love with you and wanted to marry you,’ he informed her heavily. ‘He politely informed me where I could go. I wasn’t good enough for his daughter, he said. At the time I agreed with him.’ He grimaced. ‘Still do, actually.’
‘But you’ll have me anyway,’ Caroline added smilingly. ‘There really isn’t much to pick between you, my father and poor Felipe,’ she said. ‘You’re all too self-motivated to be true.’
‘Felipe was right when he compared my father’s life with the life of the ancestor who built this castle,’ Luiz remarked gruffly. ‘It was history repeating itself.’
Twisting in the water until she was facing him, Caroline murmured softly, ‘Not this time, though. This time the Conde got his woman. That makes for a happy ending.’
Eyes like dark chasms filled with satisfaction. ‘A very happy ending,’ Luiz agreed hus
kily, and began to kiss her…
The Bellini Bride
Michelle Reid
CHAPTER ONE
THE BED was a sea of rumpled white linen. Tangled amongst it Marco Bellini could see a long golden leg bent at the knee and the smooth silken-curve of a hip and thigh. The rest was covered by fine white sheeting but for a slender arm and the rippling swathe of strawberry-blonde hair flowing away from the kind of profile that would have launched ships in times gone by.
Only her name was not Helen, it was Antonia, and, although her beauty might have launched many metaphorical ships in her time, there was no disputing to whom she now belonged.
Leaning back against the balcony rail, Marco allowed himself a smile as he brought his coffee cup to his lips. It was still very early, but the sun was already hot against his naked back. He had come out onto the terrace directly from his shower, and the white towel draped low around his narrow hips was his only concession to modesty, here, in his summer villa perched high on the hill above Portofino, where the only eyes to see him belonged to the seagulls soaring on the early morning currents of air.
And Antonia, of course, if she bothered to wake up. But, unlike him, she didn’t have to be back in Milan by nine o’clock, so she had no reason to rise this early. Although… he then added ruefully to that, if she did happen to awaken now, it would be the simplest thing in the world for him to linger long enough to drop the towel and join her back in the bed.
But not yet, Marco told himself as he took another sip from his cup. The coffee was hot, black and strong and was just another pleasure he enjoyed lingering over while he leant here watching his woman sleep.
In the year they had been together he had never seen Antonia look anything but beautiful. Dressed to slay or stripped bare to the exquisite skin nature had given her, she exuded a beauty that by far outclassed any other woman he had known. He was proud to be her lover, proud that only he held the right to place a possessive hand upon any part of her anatomy. Proud that she only had eyes for him.
Exotic Affairs: The Mistress BrideThe Spanish HusbandThe Bellini Bride Page 34