The Italian's Wife

by Lynne Graham

  'This is sensational,' he breathed appreciatively. 'What is it called?'

  'Somerset apple cake.'

  'You're an incredible cook.'

  'I started learning when I was four. Baking skills are a matter of pride

  in a farming community,' Holly told him with a rueful grin, light

  playing on her animated face as she sat cross-legged on the bed, clad in

  a colourful silk sarong. 'But to tell you the truth, Mum was really

  grooming me for the neighbour's son. She thought Robert was wonderful

  but I just didn't fancy him-'

  'Did he fancy you?' His beautiful mouth slanted with vibrant amusement

  at the term.

  'Well, just then I think he fancied anything female,' Holly confided,

  heart lurching predictably in receipt of that glorious smile of his. 'He

  was dating one of my mates when I left home and his parents didn't

  approve because she was a real townie.'

  The phone by the bed buzzed and Rio answered it. She listened to him

  talk in Italian and just watched him while she melted into a hopeless

  puddle of love and longing. They had been married for exactly twenty-one

  days and already she could not imagine existing without him, could not

  even accept that she could have lived for twenty years on the same

  planet without being aware that the love of her life was breathing the

  same air. For that was what he was:

  ojo, this male who had become so impossibly precious and important to

  her every waking hour.

  He was just...perfect. Entertaining, clever, caring. He spoilt her like

  mad. He was always buying her loads of stuff she didn't need,

  introducing her to fantastic new experiences and somehow making every

  single day seem special. She had learned to water-ski, snorkel and sail.

  He was also fantastic with kids. Timothy was enslaved, and adoring Rio

  seemed to be good for Timothy because her son was much more confident.

  And a restaurant menu would never terrify her again because they ate out

  most evenings and she was familiar with most of the terms now and quite

  happy to ask if she came across anything she didn't understand. She had

  also finally had her ears pierced, but her nerve had almost failed her

  at the last minute and only a fear of embarrassing Rio had got her

  through it.

  Nobody was perfect, her more sane self cautioned, so she worked hard at

  coming up with a flaw or two. Rio didn't need much sleep. He was

  incredibly active, but good diet and lots of exercise had increased her

  own energy. He was naturally dominant, but when he had been teaching her

  to water-ski that had been welcome because the first time she sank below

  the waves she would have given up if he hadn't bullied her into repeated

  efforts. She had ended up having a fabulous time, she reflected forgivingly.

  Indeed, every morning she woke up in Rio's arms she felt as if she had

  won the jackpot. All her insecurity had evaporated. No man had ever

  treated her so well and no man had ever wanted her to the degree that

  Rio appeared to want her. Face warming, she scanned his bold, bronzed

  profile and the long, sexy, indolent slump of his lean, hard, muscular

  frame. There was something very reassuring about a bloke who could not

  keep his hands off her for longer than a couple of hours, she thought

  with a secretive

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  smile. Obviously, he was pretty highly sexed, but he made her feel as

  though she was irresistible. The strong attraction between them was

  anything but one-sided. Was it any wonder that she was blissfully happy

  and more madly in love than ever?

  So what if he didn't love her? There was time enough for that to come.

  He did do romantic stuff. He gave her surprise presents and held her

  hand and seemed truly fascinated by every mundane aspect of her previous

  existence. And in three long weeks they had not had a single argument.

  She didn't count screaming at him when he told her to get back on the

  water-skis and not act like a baby. Or that time he had dragged her out

  of bed before dawn to go fishing and cheerfully told her that she ought

  to stand up for herself more often. And when she had done so five

  minutes later he hadn't liked it at all.

  'You're coming with me,' he had delivered in full command mode.

  And much later, when she had been even more bored out of her mind than

  she had expected to be on that stupid boat, she had asked him why it had

  been so important that she join him.

  'I just like you around,' Rio had murmured in some surprise that she

  should need to ask.

  Only then had it occurred to her that a bloke who had been twenty-four

  hours a day in her company but who could still demand the twenty-fifth

  hour, figuratively speaking, was paying her quite a compliment.

  Rio slung the phone aside with an impatient sigh. 'Business is intruding

  even before we fly home tomorrow. My mother's at the Priory and

  expecting to meet you but I'm afraid that I have to head for New York

  more or less immediately.'

  'Oh...' Her heart sank at the prospect of the parting

  ahead, and then she scolded herself for being too possessive.

  'I know it's far from ideal but I really don't think another

  raincheck would be acceptable. Do you think you could handle meeting her

  on your own?' Rio reached for her with the unquestioning self-assurance

  of a male aware that his attentions were always welcome, his question

  clearly rhetorical.

  Seated on the edge of the bed, he set Holly down on her feet between his

  long, hair-roughened thighs while he proceeded to ease loose the knot on

  her sarong. At that moment, with her heart racing, he could have asked

  her to walk into a fire and she would have gone in blind faith. She

  trembled, reacting to the tiny flame already igniting deep in her

  pelvis, the delicious wave of anticipation already currenting through

  her. No matter how often he made love to her, it was always the same.

  'I ache just looking at you...' Rio confided thickly as the sarong

  dropped to the floor and his appreciative appraisal settled on pouting

  breasts crowned by straining pink nipples.

  'Me too...' She felt wanton, breathless, entirely in the grip of

  quivering excitement.

  He touched her, toyed with her aching flesh and stripped off her bikini

  briefs to run a seeking hand down to the damp welcome already awaiting

  him. By the time he tipped her back on the bed she was a willing

  sacrifice. Straightening, he peeled off his T-shirt and shed his chinos,

  revealing the awesome thrust of his virile shaft. Liquid longing filled

  her and she pushed away an instinctive shame at her own powerful

  response to his bold masculinity. He laced long, indolent fingers into

  her hair, drawing her up, encouraging her to caress him with her mouth,

  an exercise that she had

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  been stunned to discover raised her own level of arousal to an almost

  embarrassing degree.

  'You're so incredibly sensual...' Rio breathed in a roughened growl of

  male satisfaction. 'I'll have to drag myself away from you tomorrow.

  You're turning me into a sex addict, cara.'

  Ce
rtainly it wasn't very long before he tumbled her back on the bed with

  a groan of raw impatience and sank into her hard and fast and without

  ceremony, sending her excitement racing to such a peak that a strangled

  cry of joy was wrenched from her. And then there was nothing for her but

  the relentless rhythm of his lean, hard body over and inside hers and

  the intense pleasure that sent her rocketing to an ecstatic height with

  his name on her lips.

  'Sex with you is...' Rio mused reflectively in the aftermath, making her

  tense a little, for she would have much preferred him to use a less

  earthy term and she was unsettled by the rather disconcerted light in

  his dark-as-midnight eyes, '...absolutely sensational, bella mia.'

  'Good,' Holly mumbled, both arms wrapped round him tight as she revelled

  in the lean finger stroking her cheekbone and the kiss he dropped on her

  brow. She was far too sensitive, she told herself. So Rio didn't talk

  about his emotions, but could she consider that unusual? Even the day

  her own father had cried over her being pregnant the older man had

  uttered few words. Her male schoolmates had been more given to

  off-colour jokes and clumsy flirtation, and Jeff had never really talked

  about anything but himself.

  'Go to sleep...' Rio urged lazily. 'We have a very early start in the

  morning.'

  During the flight the next day, Rio was fully occupied with his laptop.

  Bored with watching the films on offer, Holly went to check on Timothy,

  but he was sound asleep and their nanny was catnapping too. With a smile

  at the

  picture they made, Holly returned to the main cabin and decided to

  entertain herself with the pile of glossy magazines which she had seen

  Sarah absorbed in earlier.

  She leafed through the pages, pausing to admire the fabulous fashion,

  only to be bemused by the belated acknowledgement that she could now

  probably afford to buy anything she liked, courtesy of her incredibly

  generous husband. Shooting his darkly handsome profile at the other end

  of the cabin a tender lingering scrutiny, she settled down to read.

  A full-page shot of a vaguely familiar beautiful blonde wearing the

  ultimate in country casuals caught her attention and she scanned the

  name below. Of course, she had known that face! It was Chrissie Kent,

  the model who had become a household name after doing an entertaining

  series of luxury car advertisements on television a couple of years

  earlier. Holly admired the handsome pair of springer spaniels seated at

  Chrissie's feet and thought that the model must be a genuinely nice

  person if she made time for pets in her jet-set existence. She then

  turned to the opposite page, only to be confronted by a far more

  familiar face.

  Billionaire Italian tycoon, Saverio Lombardi, escorting his fiancée at

  the Cannes Film Festival.

  A fevered pulse beginning to thump like mad at what felt like the foot

  of her convulsing throat, Holly read and re-read that single line and

  then fixedly studied the picture of Rio and Chrissie Kent together.

  Perspiration beaded Holly's short upper lip. She was in shock, so much

  shock that she just sat there for a long time. Rio had been engaged to

  Chrissie Kent?

  Christabel...of course, Christabel. The woman was incredibly beautiful,

  pale blonde hair falling waterfall-straight

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  either side of her stunning face. Her fantastic figure was sheathed in a

  daring cerise-pin satin gown slit to the thigh and so tight that only

  one in a million women could have got away with it. She even had legs

  that went on and on and on to the most abnormal but flattering length.

  Tummy unsettled by the revelation that had burst like a bombshell upon

  her, Holly began to read the article and turned the page, only to see

  Christabel seated on a silk-upholstered sofa in the town house where she

  herself had once dared to sit. Without warning, Holly also remembered

  how she had posed and clowned for Rio while she paraded designer fashion

  and pretended to be a model. Instantly she wanted to jump out of his jet

  without a parachute. Instantly she felt humiliated beyond belief.

  But what shook her most of all was that the magazine was not that old an

  issue. Only six weeks ago Rio had still been engaged and had still been

  committed to a summer wedding with another woman. Like a bloodhound on

  the scent, Holly began to leaf frantically through the remaining

  magazines in search of further information. But when she found the facts

  that she had believed she wanted in a weekly magazine of much more

  humble origin, she wished that she had missed seeing it.

  The issue which announced the sudden 'shock' break-up of Rio and

  Christabel had come on sale only a week after Holly had first met Rio,

  and indeed also featured a small grainy photo of her own wedding and

  much speculation about her identity. There she was, posed on the church

  steps with huge scared eyes, hanging on to Rio with an extreme lack of

  cool. Wild curly hair was blowing round her in a messy tangle. She

  looked a total fright. She looked like the bride of Frankenstein...

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  'You've been very quiet,' Rio told Holly in the limo that collected them

  from the airport to ferry them home to the town house. 'Are you feeling

  all right?'

  'I'm fine.' Even to Holly's own ears, her voice sounded strained, but a

  more expansive response was impossible with Sarah and Timothy seated

  beside them.

  In any case, Holly still had no idea what she planned to say to Rio when

  she did finally get him alone. She was still mentally reeling, her mind

  awash with a crazy cascade of ever more confused thoughts. The anger

  surging higher and higher inside her was no help to her concentration.

  Behind the anger lurked pain and fear and a terrifying sense of

  betrayal. Without the smallest warning, her confidence in what she had

  believed to be a happy marriage had been smashed to pieces. It seemed

  that their relationship was built on the proverbial shifting sands

  rather than on firm foundations.

  Faced with such unpalatable and humiliating facts, what else was she to

  think? Rio had bedded her within days of breaking up with one of the

  most beautiful women in the world. Christabel Kent was an icon, every

  male fantasy combined, but, worst of all, she was ten times closer to

  being Rio's equal in looks, sophistication and importance than Holly

  could ever hope to be. Indeed, Christabel was exactly the kind of female

  that men like Rio Lombardi did marry: a trophy wife, famous in her own

  right.

  Common sense told Holly that Rio had married her on the rebound, and

  that was very bad news, she thought

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  wretchedly. Rio could not have been thinking straight when he swept her

  off to bed on a passionate impulse. Nor could he have seriously

  considered what he was doing when he then insisted that he wanted her to

  marry him.

  Only now was Holly recalling Ezio Farretti's prophetic warnings. 'He's

  just not himself right now and you don't want to get your feelin
gs

  hurt.' Older and wiser, and knowing the situation as Holly had not, Ezio

  had recognised the high risk factors at play. Holly's vulnerability,

  Rio's volatile temperament and simple proximity had been a dangerous

  combination.

  After all, Rio must have been with Christabel for quite some time and

  breaking up with her must have been traumatic, Holly reasoned painfully.

  Hence Rio's short temper, his need for a distraction, his sudden

  startling susceptibility to a youthful redhead incapable of concealing

  her starry-eyed admiration. In the normal way of things, Holly reckoned

  that Rio would barely have noticed that she was alive.

  'I'll be heading back to the airport in a couple of hours,' Rio reminded

  her as they entered the town house. 'I'm going for a shower.'

  Before she could follow him she was held back by their nanny, who needed

  to discuss arrangements for the weekend off she was about to take.

  Agreeing that Sarah could depart that afternoon, Holly then hurried off

  in Rio's wake.

  He was in their bedroom, already half-undressed, his shirt hanging

  loose, a bronzed, energising slice of muscular, hair-roughened chest on

  view, his potent and entirely natural sex appeal pronounced. Holly came

  to a halt just inside the door, her heartbeat accelerating, her mouth

  running dry, no matter how hard she tried not to react to him. He was so

  gorgeous, from the crown of his proud, dark head to the soles of his

  bare brown feet, and she loved him as she had

  never known she could love anybody. But what she had learnt from those