His lips twitched and he settled back and folded his arms across his chest. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Where we are going for a start!’
Right on cue, his driver took them over the border into the hip, arty city of Santa Cruz.
‘We’re going to our beach house,’ he confirmed. ‘We bought it a few months ago. This is the city we got married in.’
Slightly mollified, she said, ‘Why did we marry here?’
‘California allows quick marriages. I told you to name your city. You chose Santa Cruz.’
‘I chose? You didn’t frogmarch me to a register office?’
‘Marriage was your idea.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s the truth. You flew to San Francisco with me as my guest for the awards ceremony. At the end of the evening I got my driver to drop you at your hotel first.’ He spread his arms. ‘We had our first kiss in this car. Things got a little...hot but you wouldn’t let me come to your room. I asked what it would take to get you into my bed and you said marriage.’
‘I must have been joking.’ She must have been. Anna had never even thought of marriage, had assumed she would grow into a grey-haired spinster surrounded by dogs—not cats—and had been comfortable with that. Singledom was safe. It wasn’t men specifically that she didn’t trust, it was people. People were selfish. People put their own needs and wants first. They broke hearts and left others to pick up the shattered pieces.
‘You said you were.’ He shrugged again and in the movement she thought she glimpsed a darkening of his features that passed so quickly she guessed she’d imagined it. ‘But the idea took hold with both of us. I came back to your hotel in the morning knowing I was going to marry you that day. It was what we both wanted.’
‘But why?’
‘We wanted each other and we’d both reached our limit of you keeping me at arm’s length. Think about it, bellissima—what couple was better suited to marry? We’d worked closely together for eighteen months. We’d seen the worst of each other. We’d fought. We spent more time together than with anyone else but we never quit. If a man and a woman could truly be friends then that’s what we were.’
‘You’re my boss. I’m paid to be nice to you.’ But even as she made the jest she was wondering where love had come into it. That was why people married, wasn’t it? Because they trusted someone enough to give them their heart as well as their body? It was why she’d never thought she would marry.
He snorted with laughter. ‘When did that ever stop you saying what you think of me? We married knowing exactly what we were getting into. It made perfect sense.’
And as Stefano finally explained how he’d worn her defences down, a warm feeling spread through her.
For all their sniping at each other in the workplace, they’d forged a strong camaraderie. A bond. She would attend meetings with him, sit in on interviews for both staff and acquisitions, travel the world with him... She’d got to know him so well she would know his opinion on a person or situation before he’d opened his mouth to vocalise it.
She’d learned that though he was an exacting taskmaster, his word was his bond. She might even have learned to trust him.
Suddenly she could see exactly why she’d married him.
Not only was he the sexiest man to walk the planet, but by marrying her Stefano had proven he wanted her as more than just another notch on his endless bedpost.
Love must have been a gradual progression between them. It appeared Stefano was wisely avoiding talk of it knowing it was pointless to talk of love with someone who had no memory of it. His pride must be so hurt with it all, she thought, feeling a twinge of compassion for him, having to be the one to hold her steady until her memories of the life they’d forged together returned; having to trust that they would return and that she would remember all they’d meant to each other.
‘I can see how it happened,’ she said quietly, nodding slowly as she processed it all. ‘But I must have asked for some kind of reassurance that you would be faithful. Your track record with women hardly inspires confidence.’
If he hadn’t been such an unashamed womaniser she might have given in to her desire for him sooner. There had been nights when she would lay awake aching for him, filled with pent-up frustration that working so closely with him brought. Day after day of breathing in his scent, watching his throat move while he ate and drank, catching a glimpse of exposed torso when he’d rip his constricting tie off or a glimpse of his forearms when he’d roll up his sleeves... She had become obsessed with those arms. She would dream about them. She would dream about him.
‘Your only request was that I tell you if I met another woman I wanted to bed so you could walk away with your dignity intact. It was a promise I was happy to make.’
‘It’s good to know I didn’t completely lose my marbles.’
‘You did,’ he assured her solemnly but with a glint in his eye. ‘I told you I would wear you down eventually and I was right.’
‘You’re always right.’
‘Sì.’
‘In your own head.’
Catching his eye again, Anna suddenly, inexplicably, found herself unable to stop laughing.
‘What’s so funny?’ he demanded to know.
‘Everything.’ She covered her mouth with her hand, trying hopelessly to regain some composure. ‘You must be an amazing kisser if one kiss in the back of a car was enough to make me marry you.’
The wolfish gleam in his eyes and the way he leaned closer made her suddenly certain that he was going to show her exactly what it had been like, right here and now.
She waited in breathless anticipation for his mouth to press on hers.
But then he grinned and the moment was lost. ‘We’re here.’
CHAPTER FIVE
ANNA SNAPPED HERSELF back to the present. They’d entered a private enclave lined with clean wide roads fringed with palm trees.
As they got out of the car, the salty air of the Pacific and its accompanying breeze filled her senses, along with a tremendous sense of déjà vu. She knew this place.
The house they’d stopped outside was stunning, a modern Spanish-style beach home that, from the outside and despite its grandness, looked surprisingly cosy.
Cosy was a word she’d never used in association with Stefano before.
She followed Stefano through the front entrance and into a home that made his London apartment seem like a shoebox.
‘Take a look around. I’ll get us a drink.’ He disappeared through an arch and into the kitchen.
Intrigued by her surroundings, she trod her way through the ground floor, over marble floors, under high ceilings, soft furnishings and elegant decor. The only room accessed by a door was a cinema with a dozen plush leather seats.
Carrying on with her tour, she found an indoor swimming pool, a gym, a majestic dining room... She finally came to a stop at the rear of the house. The glass walls overlooked a palm-tree-lined patio area and another swimming pool, which in turn overlooked a glorious sandy beach and the deep blue Pacific. On the left of the room was the most enormous rounded sofa she’d ever seen, almost bed-like in its proportions.
‘You said this is ours?’ she asked in amazement when he joined her a short while later holding two tall glasses of fruit juice.
‘Sì.’ He handed a glass to her. ‘I would have poured us champagne but it’s not a good idea for you to drink alcohol until you’re fully recovered from your concussion.’
She raised a brow. ‘How do you know I’m not?’
‘Because I know you, bellissima. I don’t want to rush you. When you’re fully better we can celebrate.’
‘Celebrate what?’
‘You being here.’
She couldn’t know what a truth that was. Stefano wasn’t about to tell her that they hadn’t spent a night together under this roof, that the purchase had been finalised three days before she’d left him. Especially as part of the settlement she’d in
structed her lawyer to hit him with had been a demand for this house. Now he would taint the memories of it for her as much as she had tainted them for him. Here, in this house that was supposed to have been their first real home, the one they’d chosen together, he would seduce her so thoroughly that all the pleasure they shared would haunt her for ever. Her humiliation would be twofold: public and private. Just as his had been.
Her cheeks coloured. She cleared her throat and took a sip of her juice, then looked around again and said conversationally, ‘You like your glass walls, don’t you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your apartment in London has external glass walls. Is there a theme?’
‘I don’t like to be...what’s the word when things are too near to you?’
‘Hemmed in? Cramped?’
He shrugged. ‘Both could be it. I like space and light. I had enough of being cramped when I was a child.’
‘You weren’t put in a cupboard under the stairs, were you?’ she asked teasingly.
‘I spent a year living in a cellar.’
Anna eyed him warily, unsure if he was joking. Everyone knew of Stefano’s torrid childhood—he wore it as a badge of honour: the teenage drug-addicted mother who died when he was a toddler, the teenage drug-addicted father who’d disappeared before he’d been born, the grandfather who’d raised him until his own death when Stefano had been only seven at which point he’d been sent to live with a succession of aunts and uncles. He’d always been fighting and causing trouble and being kicked out to live with the next family member until there had been no family members left willing to take him in. From that point on he’d been alone. At the age of fifteen.
He’d spent years begging and fighting to make a living, finding work wherever he could in the seedy underbelly of Lazio’s streets. At the age of nineteen, to no one’s surprise including his own, he’d been sent to prison but, within a year of his release, the adolescent who had been expected to spend his life as a career criminal had formed the technology company known to the world as Moretti’s and the rest was history.
This was all public information. Stefano was happy to talk about his formative years with the media, proud of being the bad boy who’d made a success of himself.
As a PR strategy it had worked fantastically well, capturing the public’s imagination and adding an edgy aura to the Moretti brand. It had the added advantage of actually being true, or so Anna had always assumed. Stefano’s past crossed the divide from professional to personal so she’d never asked him anything about it other than in the most generic terms. Well, not in her memories in any case.
‘Really? A cellar?’
‘That was when I lived with my Uncle Vicente. My cousins there wouldn’t let me share their rooms.’
‘They made you sleep in a cellar because they didn’t want to share?’
‘They were scared of me—and for good reason. You do not keep kicking a dog and not expect it to bite. I was an angry teenager who liked to fight.’
Fighting was the only answer Stefano had had. A patchy education had left him severely behind at school, which, coupled with always wearing threadbare clothes either too big or too small, had made him a target for bullies. Once he’d realised he could silence the taunts from cousins and school friends alike by using his fists he’d never looked back. A volatile temper and a rapidly growing body had quickly turned him into the boy everyone crossed the road to avoid.
‘Were all your family afraid of you?’
‘They were when I hit puberty and became bigger than all of them. I wasn’t the skinny kid they could bully any more.’
‘Why did they bully you?’
‘My mother was the bad girl of the Moretti family and brought shame on them. I was guilty of being her son. They only took me in because it was my nonno—my grandfather—his dying wish. They hated me and made sure I knew it.’
‘That’s horrible,’ she said with obvious outrage. ‘How can anyone treat a child like that? It’s inhuman.’
‘It makes you angry?’ he asked with interest.
‘Of course it makes me angry! If Melissa had a child and anything should happen...’ Her voice faltered and she blanched at the weight of her own dark thoughts. ‘I would love that child as if it were my own.’
Yes, she probably would. If his wife was capable of loving anyone it was her sister.
She shook her dark hair and took a drink of her juice. ‘Do you ever see them now?’
‘You know I don’t...’ But then he remembered she knew nothing of the last year and how all their time not working had been spent in bed. When they’d been only boss and employee she had determinedly made a point of asking him little about his free time. ‘The last time I spoke to any of them was when my Uncle Luigi turned up when I was still living in Italy asking for money. My answer would make a nun blush.’
Her face broke into a grin and she laughed. ‘I can well imagine.’
‘Do you know, I walked out of my Uncle Vicente’s house—was kicked out for breaking my cousin David’s arm in a fight—thinking of only one thing. Revenge. I would make such a success of myself that my family would have to see pictures of my face everywhere they went and read details of my wealth and know they would never get any of it. Whatever they did with their lives, I would do better. I would earn more money, eat better food, live in a better home, drive a better car. My success would be my revenge and it was. Everything I gained only drove me to get more.’
His revenge had fuelled him. The cousins who had begrudged him the clothes they’d outgrown, the aunts who’d begrudged feeding him, the uncles who’d treated their pets with more respect than they had their orphaned nephew... None of them would see any of his hard-earned gains.
‘If the success you’ve had is any measure, your thirst for revenge must have been huge.’
Almost as great as his thirst for revenge on his wife.
He kept his voice steady as he replied, ‘I am not a man to forgive. I forget nothing.’
Anna sat on the sofa, tucking her feet under her bottom and wishing she could put a finger on the danger she felt herself in. She kept her gaze on Stefano and was met with a sparkling gaze and the curve of his lips, yet there were undercurrents to this conversation that she was missing. She could feel it. A darkness, like a shadow that only showed itself intermittently.
‘How did you do it?’
‘I told people I was eighteen and found jobs on building sites and in clubs... Work was easy to find and working in the clubs meant it was easy to find a woman and a bed for the night.’
‘When you were fifteen?’
‘I didn’t look fifteen. Women like a bad boy. I saved as much as I could earn. I’d saved ten thousand euros when I was sent to prison and lost it all in legal fees.’
‘What did you go to prison for? Fighting, wasn’t it?’
‘I saw a man in one of the clubs I worked at hitting a woman.’ He raised his shoulders. ‘I stopped him.’
‘You beat him up?’
‘He deserved it. He was two times her size. She couldn’t defend herself. It was one of many fights I had in those years.’ His smile was wry. ‘The man I beat up that time was a policeman’s son who made sure I went down for it.’
‘Was prison really awful?’ she asked tentatively.
He pulled a face. ‘The worst thing was probably the food. Then the boredom. I had quite an easy time compared to many people but when I left I knew I would never go back. It gave me the focus to change. No more fighting.’
‘What about the bedding of beautiful women?’ she tried to say in a joking voice.
He pulled another face that quite clearly said she was pushing her luck.
If the thought of him bedding others didn’t make her chest contract she would laugh.
‘I had a little money left. I took it to a casino.’
‘You gambled your savings?’
‘A hundred euros. That’s all I had left. If I lost it, I would have earned i
t back the next day and started again but I had a feeling... Like... Like...’ His face scrunched as he tried to think of the word, and Anna was reminded that his English was entirely self-taught.
‘Do you mean you had a gut instinct?’
‘Sì. That’s it. I played it on the roulette table and I won. I won big. I went outside for a cigarette...’
‘Since when do you smoke?’
‘I haven’t for years but I did then. There was another guy out there. He told me about this app he’d designed to track mobile telephone devices. Apps were babies then. Smartphones were babies compared to now. I didn’t understand it but I understood that he did. It was a risk but I’d won that money and decided on one last gamble. I put one hundred euros in my pocket and handed the rest to him. We wrote an agreement on a napkin. Two months later he found me and gave me back my investment plus the interest we’d agreed on. For me, it was the start of everything. Smart technology was my future. I didn’t know how to develop it for myself but I’d proved I could spot a winner. I backed the brains and reaped the rewards.’
‘You’ve always seemed so confident and knowledgeable about the technologies you invest in,’ she said with bemusement.
‘That first deal made me one of the first people to see their full potential. I would say I got lucky but luck had nothing to do with it. Instinct and hard work were what got me where I am.’ He grinned. ‘The best deal I ever made was investing forty per cent in developing that social media site. I made seven billion dollars when it floated on the stock exchange.’
‘I remember that.’ It had happened before he’d bought Levon Brothers and she’d begun working for him. ‘Have you gambled again since that night? In a casino?’
‘Gambling is for morons.’
She laughed and drained her glass. ‘Your revenge must taste very sweet.’
‘It does. Like strawberries and cream at Wimbledon.’
Another burst of laughter escaped her but there was anger underlying it. ‘I’m glad. Your family don’t deserve anything after the way they treated you.’
‘If they had treated me better, do you think they would have deserved something then?’ he asked.
Once a Moretti Wife Page 6