The Marriage He Must Keep

by Dani Collins

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “YOU’RE LEAVING?” SHE SNAPPED out of her sleepy state, forgetting about crawling back into their warm bed and rekindling that close feeling from last night, so angry, so betrayed, she could only stand there hugging her arms across this stupid, flimsy nightgown she’d let him lift last night.

  “If you hold off reacting until—”

  “Don’t tell me not to react! Failing to tell you how I felt left me stuck in London with the wrong baby! No, Sandro. Not fair,” she railed. “You’re treating me like a woman you picked up for the night, tearing out of here without even a promise to call.”

  “I’m going downstairs,” he said through his teeth. “For breakfast. You don’t trust me at all, do you?” He was affronted, glaring as though he really expected better of her.

  So maybe she was going zero to sixty and should slow down. “You’re not going into the city?”

  His gaze shuttered and he tugged the cuff of his suit coat. “Not until later.”

  She moved to pick up the silky wrap that matched her nightgown, pulling it on in a swirl and tying it off. “I’m not a bitch to be left in the kennel, you know.” Oh, it felt good to say what she thought. “What was that?” She pointed with accusation at the twisted sheets. “Was it just something to sweeten me up so I wouldn’t be upset this morning?”

  “You started that,” he shot back. “And I am more than happy to stage a do-over if it will sweeten you up.”

  She glared daggers into him, letting him see every last ounce of her fury.

  The tails of his suit jacket bunched over his wrists as he pushed his hands in his pockets, but he wasn’t as unperturbed as he was trying to pretend. His hands had formed fists in those pockets and his jaw was like iron. He was just as mad and refusing to show it.

  “I wasn’t going to leave this room until I’d spoken to you,” he said, tone pithy, then firm. “I’d like you to come down, too, as soon as you can be ready.”

  “Why?” She glanced at the clock. “It’s not even seven.”

  “I know, but Nonno is making an announcement once everyone else comes down. I want us there when he does. We’re not going back to the town house, cara. We’re living here from now on.”

  “What?” Of all the things he might have said... “Are you serious?” She moved to the bed and sank onto the edge, drawing the blankets over her legs, feeling cold. Stunned. “Really? What about...?” She couldn’t even compute how many people this would affect. “This is not going to halt a mutiny,” she told him.

  “I was shocked when he suggested it last night, too. I only asked him whether he thought he’d set up false expectations, letting Giacomo move in when he was campaigning for election. He hadn’t expected them to stay on, he said, or that my cousins would inveigle their way into moving in, but...they’re family. He sees now that his generosity has created a gray area.”

  She supposed it was better for Ermanno to announce his wishes now than for Alessandro to inherit sometime in the future and then what? Turn everyone out at that point? That really would be a mess.

  “Where will they go?”

  “They have homes. Some are rented out.” He shrugged, not saying aloud that they were collecting income while living off Ermanno’s good graces. “I’ll be offering the town house to Giacomo until they are able to move back into their own. That’s one of the reasons I’m going into the city, to set up the movers, along with finalizing the restructuring at the office. I’m not leaving you in a kennel, Octavia,” he added with disdain. “Kindly don’t insult me like that again. I’m asking you to stay here as a statement that this is our home now. This is where I live with my wife and son.”

  She could only stare at him, hands squeezing her knees while she took in that running his town house was nothing compared to overseeing the running of a house this size on a huge estate with a working winery among other things. The task intimidated her down to the bottoms of her bare feet.

  “Will your grandfather stay here with us? To run the estate?” Please say yes.

  “I’ve asked him to, but he wants to move into his grandmother’s rooms attached to the old stable house. We’ll have to take a hard look at its condition. My sisters used it as a playroom when we were young. It may be three or four months before he actually makes the move, but he seemed determined.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” She really didn’t.

  “You could say that you understand and agree.” He ambled the few steps to bring himself to stand in front of her, then he caught her wrist and drew her to stand. He hooked his arm around her and pulled her tight against his tailored clothes. “You could say that you’ll come downstairs and stand beside me. If you wanted to add that last night was as good for you as it was for me, I’d like to hear that, too.”

  She blushed, but he kissed her, not letting her talk as he made her remember exactly why she hadn’t been able to keep her hands off him. With a moan, she softened under his hard kiss, smoothing her hands up the stiff fabric of his jacket to curl around his neck.

  He smelled good and molded her against him with that confident way of his, making the silk she wore grow warm and slide against her skin, turning her on even more.

  But he wasn’t trying to manage her. With his own swift loss of control last night, he’d made it clear he was as reactive to her as she was to him. He wasn’t trying to persuade a pawn right now. They were equals in bed, and he was asking her to be his partner out of it.

  Her heart swelled and she encouraged him to play out their long, passionate kiss, rubbing against him invitingly as she felt his arousal.

  He pressed her away with a warning flashing in his gaze. “I’ll need another cold shower at this rate. Will you dress and come down?”

  “They’re going to hate me,” she sighed, but lowered to flat feet and moved into the walk-in closet. Of course she would accompany him. It wasn’t just for Lorenzo, either. It was for Sandro. For this marriage they were trying to save.

  She wanted to save it, she admitted tentatively to herself.

  “I sent an email to Michaela to come and fit you with a new wardrobe,” he said, following to lean in the doorway as she started to remove the overwrap for her nightdress. “You’ll need something for Nonno’s birthday anyway.”

  “Thank you.” She paused with the open ties in her hands, glancing at him.

  He made no move to leave, looking very comfortable leaning there.

  “Is that all?” she asked.

  “Unless you have something.”

  “No, I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes or so.”

  “Good.” Still he didn’t move.

  She folded her arms. “Are you planning to stand there and watch me change?”

  “Yes.”

  “No,” she assured him, moving forward to press him out of the closet. “You’re not.”

  “We have been married too long for shyness,” he argued, refusing to be budged, hands finding her hips and straying freely.

  She caught them and pushed them off her. “Go have a baby and come back and talk to me about shyness.” She applied her full weight to his shoulder, pushing until he made a tsk noise and backed out of the doorway.

  “You’re being silly. You’re beautiful,” he told her.

  She pulled the door closed to lock him out.

  His blurry silhouette remained on the far side of the frosted glass. She stayed where she was, watching him.

  He stepped closer, one hand pressing so his fingertips were a half circle of dots, as if he was trying to touch her through the barrier. “Octavia.” That was his sex voice and sent the best kind of shivers down her spine. “I wish we’d had the lights on last night. I liked everything I felt.”

  A giddy happiness broke open inside her, making her smile wobble as she admitted breathlessly
, “I did, too.”

  He stood there a moment, as if he might be willing her to come out again. She was tempted, but then he finally said, “You’ll meet me downstairs?”

  “Fifteen minutes,” she promised.

  “Grazie.” He left.

  While she stood at the door much as he had, as though she was waiting for this translucent barrier to dissipate so she could be with him and finally see him clearly.

  * * *

  Alessandro meant to spend the week in town, but he felt a lingering unease where his wife was concerned. Despite the delicious physical connection they’d enjoyed the other night, her leap to suspicions in the morning told him she still didn’t trust him. As he spoke to her through the week, she reminded him of the woman she was in London, offering facts with very little editorial.

  It made him dwell on the conversation with his grandfather that had kept him up late their first night here.

  “Your father taught me to let my son make his own choices, so I will support all the decisions you’ve made, Sandro,” Ermanno had said.

  “You were furious at some of the choices Papa made,” Sandro had scoffed. “Eloping with my mother...”

  His grandfather had swept his hand through the air. “Her family was...well, you know we’ve had to carry some of them at different times. And her capricious ways...” He shook his head. “Such a wild little bird.” But there was fondness in his papery voice.

  “She’s bringing her new fiancé to your party. She wants your blessing. I couldn’t talk her out of it,” Sandro warned. “If you want me to—”

  “No, no. I would like to see her,” Ermanno insisted. “She’ll have my blessing. She loved my son.” His grandfather’s eyes had gone watery and sincere. “And she gave you to me, even left you here when she went off to marry her Englishman. I have come to love her like my own daughter. I was angry with your father for marrying her, but now I’m grateful. And I worry for you, because Octavia doesn’t love you.”

  Sandro’s heart had derailed in his chest.

  “Yet,” his grandfather had added, voice distant and muffled in the rush that filled Sandro’s ears. “Your wife can come to love you, Sandro. Mine did.” His grandfather sobered with the grief he still felt nearly ten years after Nonna had passed away. “If you let her.”

  The anguish in his grandfather’s face hadn’t been an advertisement for the joys of love. More like a cautionary tale.

  Sandro didn’t want the sort of vulnerability that came with loving, but he had never disregarded his grandfather’s wisdom in his life. It wasn’t as though Octavia had asked him for love, though. She’d made a point of telling him it wasn’t required. If she wasn’t prepared to risk her heart, that was good, because neither was he.

  He wanted her trust, though, and told himself it would come with time. Today he had news that he hoped would put the worst of their conflict behind them.

  “You came home for a swim?” she asked as he found her new swimsuit and dug out his own. “It’s a nice day, but not that nice. Have they even readied the pool yet?”

  He shook his head. “Not here. Is he done?” He grinned at the drunken look on his son’s face as he finished nursing. Sandro tossed the suits on the bed, then scooped up Lorenzo to burp him. “Scusi, figlio, you’ll have to stay home,” he said, patting the baby’s back. “Too hot for you. I looked it up.”

  “What is?” Octavia asked, holding up her swimsuit and wrinkling her nose at the thought of wearing it.

  Sandro wanted it to be a surprise. Thirty minutes later, they were in a private water taxi, puttering through the towering cliffs of a narrow gorge to the baths carved by ancient Romans into the rock walls. By then she had figured out where they were going and the hot springs were a lovely treat, but—

  “You should have told me before we left the house. I wouldn’t have worn my new ring,” Octavia said as she came out of her changing room, a towel wrapped over her modest two-piece.

  The humid air was warm and the blue water inside the cave misty and inviting. Only a handful of people were here, all tucked in private corners, but she hadn’t wanted to leave the ring in her changing room.

  She tilted the blue sapphire that had arrived hours after Alessandro had gone into the city the other morning. It sat where her wedding rings still didn’t quite fit.

  “I’ll be terrified the whole time that it will slip off and I’ll lose it,” she said.

  “I noticed it before we left, but I didn’t want you to take it off. I don’t like seeing you without my ring.” He brought the knuckle of her finger to his lips. “I’m possessive.”

  Octavia made a noise. She knew that much about him, she thought wryly, but curled her fingers inside his loose grasp, thinking about what had happened when the ring had arrived at the house.

  Her troubled thoughts must have shown in her face because Sandro asked stiffly, “You don’t like it?”

  “What? No, I love it. I told you I did when it arrived,” she reminded, pulling her hand from his to ensure the stone was perfectly centered. “It was just that when Viviana saw it...” She couldn’t hide her distaste at how Primo’s family was treating her. “She asked if it was a push present.”

  “A push—?”

  “A gift from a husband to his wife for pushing out a baby. She said I didn’t deserve one because the surgeons did all the work.”

  She stepped into the pool and silky heat washed over her calves, soothing her prickly mood.

  Alessandro halted beside her. “Your coolness the last few days begins to make sense. She’ll apologize,” he said tightly.

  “Is that why you brought me here? You thought I needed warming up?” she asked. Twisting her mouth to the side, she scrunched her nose at him. “I wasn’t trying to avoid you, but I didn’t want to tell you. I was pretty rude. But I had had it with the way they’re all acting toward me, Sandro! She sounded just like Primo. I knew that was the source of it and I just snapped.”

  His brows went up. “What did you do?”

  “Stooped to her level.” She swept her towel off and tossed it to the edge, then sank quickly into the blissfully hot water, turning so she still faced him, but was hidden to her shoulders. “I told her that she might want to consider who I sleep with, since she’s asked you to underwrite that tanning salon of hers.”

  Sandro slowly came down the steps after her, not sinking into the water, not taking his gaze off hers. He was wearing his disapproving look, but she didn’t know if it was for her or his cousin.

  “She told me not to expect you to fight my battles and I said fine. She was right. That I have no right to interfere in your business decisions, but that she can’t expect to enjoy the hospitality of someone she is insulting. I said that if she needed help packing, she should let me know since I’d be more than happy to arrange assistance from my staff.”

  She ended with a press of her lips and a sheepish look up at him.

  He folded his arms, looking so much sexier than she felt. His chest was gorgeous, his shoulders a sculptor’s curved line that begged to be traced with fingertips and lips. He dropped his hands to his hips, framing his perfect torso with his neatly muscled arms.

  “No, I didn’t bring you here to warm you up, but I did wonder if something was bothering you. I also wanted to take us out of the house for a few hours. Primo has been in touch with Nonno. He’s trying to go over my head and my grandfather has told him he can’t. Nonno is drawing up a settlement that will help Primo pay his legal bills, but he will forfeit any claim to the estate. Primo has accepted and that puts an end to any aspirations his side of the clan has. I expect they’ll be gone by the time we get home today. It’s the final nail in the coffin, if you will.”

  He scowled into the middle distance and she could almost hear his thoughts. He’d caused the death of his own father and hadn’t be
en disinherited, but Primo was losing virtually everything over what he’d done.

  But Sandro’s mistake had been a youthful accident, Primo’s a deliberate act with intent to harm.

  She stood without thinking and moved to wrap her arms around her husband’s waist. He closed his arms across her back, hand smoothing over her bare skin, fingers going under the wide band of her shoulder strap.

  A second later, she felt a stirring of his flesh just below the line of the water. He set her back a step, expression wry. “Swimming was a bad idea. I was only thinking about the view...” He roamed his gaze down her bare upper chest and arms. The wet swimsuit plastered against her breasts revealed a lot more than it hid. “I didn’t consider the effect it would have on me.”

  She fell back, sending her hands forward to splash water into his face.

  * * *

  The rest of the week was less stressful and by the end of it, Alessandro hung back in the city just long enough for a fresh haircut and a barber’s shave before he put on his tuxedo and left the town house for good. And without regret. As difficult as these recent weeks had been, as much as he was still ironing out wrinkles across the organization, he had never felt as sure in his role. Any lingering misgivings he’d had about controlling the Ferrante fortune were gone.

  He was its caretaker for the future and held the entire organization in a firm, unapologetic grasp.

  Now he was entering the home that was his. His grandfather would live with them until late spring. Octavia had encouraged Ermanno to stay in the main house as long as possible, to help her learn the running of things. Ermanno was in his element as a mentor so Alessandro expected great things to come from their budding relationship.

  Tonight marked the launch of their new life together.

  He entered their suite in high spirits and two things happened. First, he was knocked breathless by the sight of her.

  He’d told her stylist, Michaela, to bring jewel tones. He always preferred stronger colors on his wife than the pastels she gravitated toward. The gown she’d chosen was black velvet with a skirt of sapphire blue. The top clung lovingly to her ample breasts and tied behind her neck, leaving her back and shoulders covered only by the loose curls of her long, dark hair. The fall of blue draped in flattering lines over her round hips. Tall heels gave her the ultrafeminine sexiness that every man enjoyed. He wanted to tumble her to the bed and forget the guests arriving downstairs.