The Italian's Wife

by Lynne Graham

  'Then-er-what was it?'

  'The truth of what we're going to do. I can't say that I feel flattered

  that you should assume that I would lie about something that important,'

  Rio continued with a level cool that only made her own astonishment feel

  all that more intense. 'We'll be married just as soon as I can get a

  special licence arranged.'

  Her knees felt as if they were fashioned out of cotton wool and wobbled

  under her. She was finally looking at him for the first time that day

  and only because she was reeling with shock. Blue eyes very wide, she

  whispered unsteadily, 'You're not having me on?'

  'I may have made you pregnant. I took advantage of you last night,' Rio

  breathed, aggressive jawline clenched hard. 'You were very vulnerable

  and I should have kept my distance. I took you to bed because I wanted-'

  'That's OK. That's not taking advantage!' Holly protested with feverish

  relief at what she assumed he was about to tell her.

  'Sex. I wanted sex. It was as primitive as that.' His superb

  bone-structure fiercely taut, Rio made an admission that slaughtered

  Holly where she stood, for she had believed when she interrupted him

  that he had been telling her that it was her, personally, that he had

  wanted. Only that was not the case, was it? The truth was much more

  painful. When a bloke said he had just wanted sex, it was

  like saying that she had only been a convenient body, Holly reflected in

  agony.

  Deeply hurt by that confession, wishing he had thought enough of her

  feelings not to have voiced it, Holly dropped heavily down onto the

  nearest sofa, no longer trusting her weak legs to hold her upright. 'I

  wanted you...just you,' she heard herself mumble like a foolish child,

  digging herself into an even more embarrassing hole.

  'I know...' That confirmation just splintered through her shrinking,

  shaking body like the cruellest of knives, tearing tender flesh wherever

  it touched. 'I must be honest with you, cara-'

  'Don't call me that...whatever it means. You use it like it means

  something and it doesn't.' Holly squeezed out that condemnation in a

  voice that was far from level. 'So why are you talking about marrying

  me...feeling like you do?'

  'I like you, Holly. I like Timothy too. I believe I could become fond of

  you.'

  Holly wanted to die where she sat. Fond? She curved her arms round

  herself, appalled at the emotional hurt he was inflicting on her in the

  name of honesty. Even Jeff with his abuse had not wounded her as much as

  Rio wounded her at that moment. Rio was ripping apart everything, every

  naive and harmless belief, every tiny inner hope. He liked her, well,

  whoopy-do! So she felt even more pathetic to be sitting there thinking

  that she loved him while he hammered the self-esteem he had rescued for

  her back into the ground again.

  'Until relatively recently, I was engaged to another woman.'

  That startling admission hung there like another giant in the face just

  waiting for her to lift her cheek to receive it. But something stronger

  than she was, the most powerful curiosity, forced Holly to lift her head

  again. The

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  brilliant flare of anger lightening his gaze in the aftermath of that

  acknowledgement did not match her expectations. There was none of the

  regret or emotion that she had feared that she would see. In fact, his

  darkly handsome features were set hard in stone.

  'Engaged?' she prompted uneasily.

  'I finished it. That's over and done with and in the past.' Beautifully

  shaped mouth curling, glittering golden eyes resting on her, Rio

  murmured, 'I only mentioned it because while I was engaged I got used to

  the idea of being married, and I do still need a wife.'

  'What for?' It sounded inane but Holly couldn't help it. But then, she

  was weak with relief at the finality with which he had pronounced that

  his engagement was over. It must have ended quite some time back, Holly

  assumed, or he would hardly have been saying that it was in the past.

  Rio spread his lean brown hands in a fluid expressive movement. 'Some

  day I want a family of my own.'

  'Oh...'

  'I also need a wife to oversee my domestic arrangements and entertain

  friends and family. A wife who will try to be a daughter to my mother,

  who suffers a lot of ill-health,' Rio enumerated, very much more relaxed

  now that he was getting to talk practicalities. 'A wife to make me more

  comfortable, for I have got beyond the stage where I enjoy spending my

  time, indeed, often wasting my time with a variety of different women.'

  And he wanted superwoman as a wife. He had huge expectations, Holly

  thought heavily, knowing she could never, ever measure up to such

  requirements, and marvelling that he had not immediately realised that fact.

  'You could learn to be the wife that I want,' Rio informed her confidently.

  But it sounded as if lifelong training would be necessary.

  She had been stymied by one trip to a fancy restaurant, A

  near-hysterical giggle bubbled in her aching throat but she had never

  been further from laughter.

  'You need to know that I've good reason other than the risk that you may

  already be pregnant to talk of marriage,' he continued in his dark, deep

  drawl that flowed like honey even now down her sensitive spine.

  'But we're probably worrying about nothing-'

  'Are we? You're young and fertile and I would prefer not to wait for

  proof one way or the other.' Rio expelled his breath in a measured hiss.

  'If we wait and a child is eventually born there will be those who

  believe that I was forced to marry you. That would be humiliating for you.'

  He really did expect the worst. He really did believe that there was a

  very strong chance that he might have impregnated her. His certainty

  scared her. But how could she marry a man who felt nothing for her? Did

  that mean that she was considering his offer? Of course she was.

  Dredging her attention from his lean, strong face, she knew she did not

  even have to take her own feelings for him into account to make that

  decision. She had nothing to offer Timmie, who would no doubt thrive as

  Timothy. If she married Rio her baby would want for nothing. He would

  have a home, love and security and a bloke who was willing to be his

  adoptive father. Rio liked kids. He Liked her son already. In fact she

  had pretty much hit the equivalent of the jackpot falling in front of

  his limo, she acknowledged guiltily, feeling that she would very much be

  taking advantage of him.

  She linked her trembling hands together, hugely worked up but trying so

  hard to emulate his calm and logical approach. 'When did you start

  thinking of all this?'

  'Ten minutes after you fled from my room last night,' Rio admitted,

  bringing her bright head up again. I have never felt so guilty in my

  whole life.'

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  'Thanks...' Her voice wobbled again and she pushed her lips together

  hard, striving to will back the tears threatening behind her eyes.

  'I'll look after you and your son. You need me. I like to be
needed. I'm

  used to being needed,' Rio completed with a shrug of Latin acceptance.

  He was so volatile. So very, very volatile and until now she had not

  even recognised that reality. He had seemed so controlled and reserved

  at their first proper meeting at the hospital, only to overturn that

  impression with his angry, intimidating reaction when he had found her

  trying to sneak away from the Lombardi hospital. Ever since then he had

  alternated between fiery heat and indolent cool. He could switch from

  one mood to the other within seconds. He fascinated her.

  'You might go and fall madly in love with someone else...' she heard

  herself say, although it was an effort to make herself say that.

  'You must be joking,' Rio said in a tone of icy derision.

  He was so sure of himself, so sure he knew everything there was to know.

  Recalling all the awful anxiety she had suffered just struggling to

  survive, she felt reassured by that infinite confidence of his. So how

  could she hold his patent belief that she would snatch at his offer of

  marriage against him?

  After all, here she was, dead keen on him and incapable of hiding it,

  not to mention homeless and broke. Had he pretended a little uncertainty

  as to his reception it wouldn't really have been convincing, she told

  herself. He was incredibly good-looking and sexy and a huge catch for

  someone like her. But he was also feeling guilty as hell over taking her

  to bed, she reminded herself reluctantly. She really ought to be turning

  him down flat. Wasn't it wrong to let him make such a massive mistake?

  He didn't love

  her, he hardly knew her, and in time he might even come to despise her

  for the mistakes she would make trying to fit into his world. But he was

  right, she could learn, and a part of her that she wasn't very proud of

  desperately wanted that chance.

  'I shouldn't say yes to this,' Holly breathed unevenly.

  'But you will.' Rio leant down and closed his hands round hers to pull

  her up to him. His sudden flashing smile as her cheeks blossomed with

  self-conscious colour made her tummy somersault with excitement. The

  warm, intrinsically familiar scent of him made her ache. The mere fact

  that he was only inches away reduced her to quivering, melting

  compliancy and, guilty as hell aside, she could see that he liked that,

  he liked that very much. That she did not mistake.

  He gave her the kind of brief kiss that he excelled at, provocative,

  intimate, intensely erotic. Then he set her free again when she was

  desperate to cling and every nerve-ending craved the heat of his passion.

  "We'll be very uncool and wait for our wedding night,' Rio decreed, soft

  and husky and boundlessly sure, it seemed, of his welcome.

  And for the very first time Holly realised that she could crave him like

  an addict and still want to scream at him.

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  Three days later Holly climbed into the limousine that would ferry her

  to the wedding that had been arranged and the ceremony that would make

  her Rio Lombardi's wife.

  Ezio Farretti beamed at her in flattering admiration of her bridal

  regalia but it felt so very strange to be alone, with neither friends

  nor family for support, indeed none of the more personal trappings Holly

  had once naively assumed would be part and parcel of such an event.

  She had thought of phoning her parents and telling them that she was

  getting married but had given up on the idea when it occurred to her

  that naturally her parents would want to know all about her relationship

  with Rio. How on earth could she admit that she was marrying a man she

  had known for less than a week? She would have to wait until her

  marriage was already an established fact before meeting up with her

  parents again.

  For three solid days she had done little but shop, first for her gown

  and then for clothes for both her and Timothy that would suit a warmer

  climate. That last instruction from Rio had actually caused a panic when

  it had emerged that he was planning to take them abroad after the

  wedding and she had confided that neither she nor her son had a

  passport. Fortunately it had proved possible to redress that oversight,

  but Rio's incredulity that anybody should be without a passport had

  reminded her all over again of how different her world was from his, for

  her parents had never been abroad in their entire lives.

  Emerging from that recollection, Holly rearranged the skirt of her

  dress, fearful of creasing the delicate folds before she arrived at the

  church, desperately wanting to look the very best she could for Rio. She

  had fallen in love with her ivory and gold wedding gown at first sight,

  but Rio had told her to pick something traditional and a dress strongly

  reminiscent of a medieval bride might not fit the bill, she reflected

  anxiously.

  Long pointed sleeves ornamented the boned V-shaped silk bodice which was

  decorated with exquisite gold embroidery and laced tight at her tiny

  waist, and the skirt was long and elegant. A fabulous sapphire and

  diamond tiara was lodged in her bronze curls and she wore a matching and

  equally impressive necklace and drop earrings. The set was Lombardi

  family jewellery sent from Tuscany by special courier and Rio had

  requested that she wear the items. She had had to tie on the earrings

  with thread because her ears were not pierced and, terrified of losing

  the earrings, she checked that they were still in place every few minutes.

  In fact, nerves were eating Holly alive, for Rio had been abroad and she

  had only spoken to him on the phone in recent days. Indeed, at one stage

  she had honestly believed that the wedding might have to be cancelled.

  The same day that she had agreed to marry him Rio had flown out to

  Stockholm on business before travelling on to Florence to call on his

  mother. Rio had hoped to bring the older woman back to London with him

  to attend their wedding but Alice Lombardi had felt too weak to make the

  trip.

  'I was going to fly you out for the day so that you could meet,' Rio had

  informed Holly on the phone twenty-four hours earlier before he

  explained why he could not return that evening as he had hoped. 'But she

  had palpitations and I had to call her doctor in. He prescribed complete

  bedrest.'

  Holly had repressed the troubled suspicion that her future mother-in-law

  might have been felled by sheer horror that

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  her only son was about to wed a stranger who was not only an unmarried

  mother but also a young woman from a background that in no way matched

  their own. Since that possibility did not appear to have occurred to

  Rio, she had not liked to mention it.

  'What's Mrs Lombardi like?' she had asked Ezio.

  'A fine woman,' he had responded. 'But a martyr to ill-health.'

  'Maybe the wedding will have to be put off.' Holly had felt horribly

  guilty at the dismay which had filled her at that prospect.

  'Mrs Lombardi has a remarkable ability to pull back from death's door,'

  Ezio had asserted bracingly. 'In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the

&nb
sp; lady outlives all of us.'

  As the limousine turned off the road Holly was amazed to see that the

  church appeared to be buried in a sea of parked cars and that there were

  a lot of people standing outside the iron railings bounding the car

  park. Had there been a wedding booked before their own and had it run on

  late? Or was she arriving too early?

  Leaning forward, she lifted the car phone to ask Ezio.

  'They're all here for your wedding,' the older man informed her, his

  astonishment at her question audible.

  All those cars? Holly was aghast. She had assumed that there would be no

  guests, had believed that their wedding would be a very quiet and

  private affair. True, Rio had not said that, but he had told her to

  leave Timothy at home with Sarah, and in the time frame concerned and

  with him out of the country who on earth could have made arrangements

  for so many people to attend?

  As she emerged shakily from the car a seething crowd seemed to come out

  of nowhere at her. Security guards held back the crush while aggressive

  men with cameras shouted and urged her to look up. In the midst of that

  fracas, she

  was seized by a shock and fear so profound that had Ezio not seized her

  elbow and hurried her on into the church she would have shot back into

  the limousine and screamed at the chauffeur to drive off again.

  In the church porch, she shivered and stared at Ezio in incomprehension.