He gave a sound like a laugh and lifted his head. A smile played on his lips. ‘Always.’
* * *
The next morning Anna woke up in her second strange bed of the week—the third if one counted the hospital bed—and stretched before turning her head to the sleeping figure beside her.
The early morning light illuminated him perfectly and for the first time she allowed herself the pleasure of gazing at Stefano without interruption from the doubts in her own head.
Making love to him had been beyond anything her imagination could have conjured up.
She covered her mouth to stifle the laugh that wanted to explode from her. If she’d ever imagined it to be even half as good as it had been she would have resigned on the spot. There was no way she could have dealt with working by his side day by day with those rampant thoughts.
The second time had been even better. And by their third time the last of her inhibitions had been vanquished.
Having got so little sleep she should be shattered but she wasn’t. She had never felt anything like this, as if there were a beehive in her chest, all the worker bees buzzing to make honey inside her.
Climbing out of the bed carefully so as not to wake him—although, as she’d already learned, an earthquake would have trouble disrupting Stefano’s sleep—she tiptoed naked out of the bedroom and walked to the bathroom at the other end of the landing.
She shut the door behind her and headed straight to the window to look out at the cerulean sky.
It was going to be a glorious day, she could feel it in her bones.
She ran the bath and added liberal amounts of bubble bath to it, then climbed in.
Doing nothing more than lying there in the steamy suds, she gazed out at the beach. In the distance she could see someone walking a small dog, the first signs of life in Santa Cruz. She wondered if she and Stefano had ever spoken of getting a dog. She’d had one as a child, a soppy cocker spaniel that had been as daft as a brush and as useful a guard dog as a packet of pasta.
An image came into her mind, so vivid that she bolted upright.
Making love to Stefano in their London apartment.
She hugged her knees, the image forming, becoming more than just a picture in her head. This was a memory, pure bona fide remembrance of them being together.
Anna had no idea how long she sat in that bath, her attention wrenched away from the view, thinking as hard as she had ever done, so hard her brain hurt. It wasn’t until there was a tap on the bathroom door that she realised the bathwater had turned cold and the bubbles gone.
‘Come in,’ she called, startled out of her reverie.
Stefano strode in wearing nothing but a pair of white cotton boxers slung low on his hips and a sexy lopsided grin. His sleep-tousled hair swayed as he walked to her and crouched down to rest his arms on the side of the bath.
‘You should be in bed.’
She raised a brow at him, her senses jumping in so many directions just to see him so that it took a moment to find her tongue. ‘I’m remembering things.’
Stefano’s stomach lurched.
He’d woken to an empty bed and with only one thought in his mind, namely finding his wife and dragging her back to it. In the middle world of sleep and waking, and distracted by the ache in his groin, this time he’d been the one to forget everything.
He searched her face carefully. There didn’t seem to be anything dark or suspicious lurking in her clear gaze, only animation.
He allowed himself a small breath of relief. ‘What are you remembering?’
‘Us. Patches of us. Our wedding.’ Her cheeks flushed with colour and she lowered her voice. ‘Making love for the first time.’
‘What are your memories of that?’
She palmed his face with her hand, a look of bliss spreading across her beautiful face. ‘It was wonderful. You were wonderful.’
His chest filled with emotion. ‘What else?’
‘Business meetings. Did you promote me?’
He nodded. ‘Nick retired. I gave the job to you.’
Her eyes widened. ‘You put me on the board of directors?’
‘Who else would I trust to keep the place running when I had to travel? You’re an exceptional businesswoman—the whole board was behind your appointment. And not just because they’re scared of me,’ he added, before she could quip that they would back anything he said out of fear.
In hindsight he recognised that promoting Anna had been when their troubles had begun. As his PA she had travelled everywhere with him. As Vice President of Moretti’s UK, second only to the US in his burgeoning technology empire, she had needed to be on hand in the UK when he travelled to America. They’d gone from seeing each other all day every day and sleeping together every night to spending up to a week apart at a time. That was when those insecurities had set in.
But she’d been—acted—insecure from the beginning, he reminded himself. Her accelerated promotion had only given her the tools to up her campaign.
Yet the wonderment ringing out from her eyes at this moment put more doubts in his head.
Anna was clever and stubborn. She could by turn be sweet then sour. She was good cop to his bad cop but people were always aware that her being good cop did not make her a pushover. If she thought someone was being an idiot she had no qualms about telling them so, just as she had no qualms about telling him. Until she’d hit him with that ludicrous demand for a hundred million pounds of his fortune she would have been the last person he’d suspect of being a gold-digger. The last person he would have suspected of having an agenda. He’d trusted her as he hadn’t trusted anyone since his nonno had died and to discover it had all been a lie had shattered him in ways he couldn’t explain even to himself.
Her fingers gently massaged his cheek. It was such a simple sign of affection but one that made his heart expand.
‘I don’t remember everything,’ she whispered, bringing her face to his so the sweetness of her breath sighed against his skin. ‘All that I remember of us as a married couple is spending long days in the office and long nights making love. I don’t remember falling in love with you but I know that I did. I know I did. I can feel it as clearly as I can feel the bristles on your jaw where you need to shave.’
And then her eyes closed and her lips pressed against his, not moving, just breathing him in.
Stefano gripped the back of her head and held her tightly to him to deepen the kiss, his mind and heart racing.
She spoke of love? Love? That was a word neither of them had ever said before.
That was not what their marriage was about.
Then what was it about?
It had been about desire. The primal need for a mate. A partner. Someone to have bambinos with.
He had long wanted children. To have a child would be to ice the delicious cake that was his life. His hated cousins had an abundance of them, and he’d beaten them in everything except in the bambino stakes. But to have children he needed to find a woman to have them with and he hadn’t trusted any of the women in his life with a vase, never mind a child. Still, he’d looked forward to seeing miniature versions of himself running around and causing havoc one day; a bloodline to pass his wealth on to.
He’d be damned if he’d leave anything to the other members of his family.
When he’d started making waves in the world of technology, and journalists had learned of his rags-to-riches background, the shady acquaintances of his early years, the prison sentence...suddenly they had wanted to interview him and hear his story from his own lips. He’d been happy to oblige, especially if it involved having his photo taken in front of his yacht or his private plane. Stefano had become a poster boy for the kids of Lazio, an icon to look up to, the local bad boy who’d turned out good. He didn’t doubt for a minute that his family, who all still lived in the same homes in the same close-knit area he’d been dragged up in, knew everything about him. And he didn’t doubt that his success made them sick.
See? he
would say to them through the lens of the camera. This is what you threw away. If you’d treated me like the orphan boy of your blood that I was and not like some kind of wild animal, these riches would have been yours. He was Italian after all! Life and its riches were for sharing with family. But he’d decided when he was fifteen that he had no family. Everything he earned, every penny of it, was his and his alone.
When Anna had so flippantly—but trembling after that first passionate kiss they’d shared—declared that if he wanted to bed her he’d have to marry her, he’d known by the next morning that she would be the mother of his children. There was no one better suited. They worked fantastically well together, shared a chemistry that was off the charts and they already knew each other’s faults. Marriage and babies together? Well, why not? If not her then who? At least life with Anna would be fun, he’d thought. And she was straight down the line. As sexy as a nymph. He’d trusted her. But love? Love was for romantic fools who needed to put a name to their desire rather than just accepting it for what it was: chemistry.
The only person who had ever shown him love or affection was his nonno. When he’d died, Stefano had quickly learned he was not a person to inspire affection. As he’d grown older and started catching the eye of beautiful women, he’d discovered lust but had known their desire for him was based solely on his physical attributes. If they could see him without the outer shell, they would be repelled.
Anna was the only person since his nonno to see beneath that shell and still want him. He had never repelled her. He’d infuriated her—yes, he could admit to that—but seeing the real man hadn’t made her run. She was level-headed enough not to want to try to change him.
In her own way, she was a misfit like him. They’d understood each other as no one else could.
But then she’d so spectacularly accused, humiliated and dumped him and he’d realised that it had all been an act. What Anna had seen beneath his shell had repelled her but she had bided her time until she’d been in a position to go for the kill and take him for everything she could get.
Had she planned her scheme right from the beginning as he’d thought since that torrid black moment in his boardroom? Or had it formed over time...?
Things were getting confused in his head. He had to focus. He mustn’t let what was happening between them now and her words of love cloud his judgement any further.
The feelings she was now mistaking for love were its opposite: hate. Only the utmost loathing of him could have made Anna do what she had done. If she’d felt even a flicker of love for him she would never have gone through with her grand plan.
And now he loathed her. His grand plan was coming together better than he could have hoped.
Stefano pushed the disquiet in his guts aside with force and concentrated on the desire blazing in his loins. He lifted her out of the bath and carried her wrapped in an enormous towel to their bed.
They spent the day making love but, during the spent times when they dozed, he couldn’t shake the voice in his head telling him that his plan was in danger of unravelling.
* * *
Anna’s dressing room in their Santa Cruz beach house was even larger than the one she had in Stefano’s London penthouse. It took for ever to rifle through the racks of clothes, all of which still had their tags on. She guessed they hadn’t spent much time here since they’d bought the house.
After much internal debate she selected a pear-green silk sleeveless wraparound dress that was cinched at the waist and fell like soft leaves to the knees, held together by a thin belt studded with dainty diamonds. She also earmarked a gorgeous red dress to wear to tomorrow night’s awards ceremony.
Delving further into the shelves uncovered a shoe-lover’s paradise and, after much consideration that involved trying on half a dozen pairs, she settled on sky-high beige diamond-encrusted mesh heels that she suspected she would never have been able to afford even if she’d set aside a whole month of her generous salary.
Stefano had never stinted on displaying his wealth. It seemed that same generosity extended to his wife, a thought that sent a pang through her chest. Four whole days in Santa Cruz, just the two of them, had revealed a side to her husband she had only suspected before. Not only was Stefano an amazingly considerate lover but he was considerate of her. It was the little things, like holding her hand to keep her steady when she got out of the swimming pool; taking her beach towel a long distance from her to shake the sand from it...all the little things that made her heart swell and made her rethink her original assumption that she’d lost her marbles by marrying him.
Marrying Stefano had clearly been the sanest thing she’d ever done. Their first anniversary was only days away, proof that they must have been happy together and that Stefano had kept his promise of fidelity. She just wished she remembered more than snapshots of it.
She must find an anniversary present for him. They were going to San Francisco tomorrow morning ahead of the awards ceremony. She’d see if she could sneak out and get him something there.
She checked her reflection one last time and left her dressing room.
She found Stefano hunched over the end of the bed reading something on his phone. He looked up as she entered.
His eyes gleamed and a slow smile spread over his handsome face. ‘Bellissima, you look beautiful.’ Then his eyes drifted down to her feet. ‘Should you be wearing shoes that high in your condition?’
‘What condition?’
‘You’ve had severe concussion,’ he reminded her.
She waved his concern away. ‘I feel fine...’ But as she said the words something tapped at her, another of those sensations of déjà vu she kept experiencing.
Condition...
The image of an oblong stick with a small window flashed through her mind. ‘Have I been pregnant?’
His brows drew together. ‘No. What makes you think that?’
‘I don’t know.’ She blinked and shook her head in an attempt to clear the image.
He got to his feet and stepped over to her. He put a hand on her shoulder, peering at her intently. ‘Anna? Are you feeling okay?’
She nodded then shook her head again. This was awful. There was something in her memories screaming to escape but she was helpless to find it. All she knew with any certainty was that this memory was bad and the only thing soothing her heightening fears was the sensation of Stefano’s hand against her bare skin.
She took a shaky breath. ‘Are you sure I’ve not been pregnant?’ She didn’t see how she could have been if she had used the injectable contraceptive.
‘Very sure. I told you we said we would try for a baby one day in the future. Are you getting memories of that?’
‘I don’t know what I’m getting memories of.’ She sighed, loosening the panic that had been trying to crawl up her throat. ‘Nothing’s clear.’
‘It will come. Give it time.’
‘You keep saying that. What if they never come back?’
‘They will.’ His fingers slipped lightly over the shoulders of her dress and rested in the arch of her neck. His gaze didn’t leave hers.
Her chest filled with a feeling that was tight yet also fluid, moving through her veins and into her limbs; she was intensely aware of his closeness and the sensations shimmering through her at his touch.
One touch and she was a slave for more.
She looped her arms around his neck. ‘What time have you booked the table for?’
The best way to shake off the dark uncertainty that kept trying to cloud her was by making love. Stefano’s touch drove all her fears away.
He laughed huskily into her ear. ‘We’re already late.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE RESTAURANT STEFANO had booked them into was a short walk from their home in the Westside of Santa Cruz. Anna adored the clean, affluent neighbourhood. This was a district to soak up culture, enjoy the amusements and raise children.
Why did she keep thinking of children? And why did it f
eel like a blade in the chest whenever she did?
She pushed the thoughts aside. This was their last night in Santa Cruz and she wanted to enjoy every last minute of it, not have her unreliable mind take her in directions she couldn’t understand.
The Thai Emerald was, as the name suggested, a Thai restaurant, located on the bustling beachfront.
She glimpsed a small room with a handful of tables before they were whisked up narrow stairs to a bright, spacious room with an open front overlooking the beach.
They were shown to a small square table near the front and menus were laid before them. Their drink order was taken and then they were alone.
Anna read her menu with a contentment in her heart she couldn’t remember feeling since childhood.
‘You look happy,’ Stefano observed with a smile.
She beamed at him. ‘Thai food is another favourite.’
‘I know.’
‘Do we ever cook?’
‘No.’
He answered so firmly that she laughed. ‘Melissa always did the cooking and I did the cleaning...’ Her voice tailed off as she thought of her sister.
‘You are most particular about tidiness,’ he said with a grin.
‘Melissa says I’m a control freak.’
‘You like order. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m the same.’
The waiter came to their table with their wine and poured them each a glass.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Anna said once their food order had been taken. ‘I’m going to get in touch with Melissa when we get back to London.’
‘I thought you were going to wait until she got home?’
‘I’ll drive myself crazy if I wait that long.’ She sighed. ‘I miss her. I can’t wait another three weeks to speak to her. I’ll borrow your phone if that’s okay and call her.’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘If you’re sure.’
‘I am. I just feel...’ She shook her head. ‘Betrayed. I know it’s selfish of me but I want to know why. After everything Mum did to us, to up and leave to celebrate a birthday with her? I mean, she left us. She left me in Melissa’s care when I was fourteen years old and scarpered to the other side of the world to live with a man she’d known for only a few months. What kind of woman does that? What kind of mother does that?’
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