A Shocking Proposal In Sicily (HQR Presents)

by Rachael Thomas

  His fingers were clasped around hers firmly, the warmth on her skin a reminder of the heat of the passion they’d shared. But was that passion enough? Again, doubts surfaced, threatening to manifest themselves into something bigger. Something she wouldn’t be able to ignore.

  She had to remember their deal. Remember the real reason she’d come to Rafe, a man she’d shared just one night of passion with. It was because she couldn’t face life as Nassif’s wife—married to a man as cruel and cold as Alif had been gentle and warm.

  That is why you are here now. She forced those words into her mind, looking up at Rafe as romantic music began to filter through the warm evening air, refusing to give more thought to her increasing worry.

  Rafe smiled at her, his eyes alive with amusement. Had he sensed her turmoil? Somehow heard her inner reasoning? ‘We will be expected to start the dancing, cara.’

  His voice was warm. Deep and sexy. It helped her to remember why she’d asked him to marry her. Why she’d thought she could spend the rest of her life as this man’s wife.

  Passion. Hot, sultry passion.

  ‘Then we had better dance.’ She glanced at her father as the array of emotions rushing through her for this man, and this situation they were in, made her voice husky, almost a whisper.

  Rafe looked at her, his expression questioning. Did he see her doubts? Sense her fears? She looked away at the gathered guests, all expectantly watching them.

  He took her hand and led her onto the terrace, now a dance floor, lit by a multitude of twinkling fairy lights. It was far too romantic for the kind of deal they’d struck. Something more suited to a fairy tale romance.

  He stopped in the middle of the dance floor, looking so handsome in his black tuxedo, freshly shaved and oozing sex appeal, that her heart stopped before thudding wildly.

  If only this was real. If only the complete romantic aura of this moment was real. She wanted to be able to allow herself to love this man. Be loved by him.

  He inhaled deeply as he gently held her, bringing her body against his. She closed her eyes, unable to resist melting against him. Unable to resist falling in love with him further.

  ‘You smell so good,’ he whispered against her ear. She squeezed her eyes tight shut, a ripple of pleasure slipping over her, like the gentlest wave on a summer day. ‘Too good. I don’t know if I can hold you close and not kiss you.’

  She opened her eyes, a smile coming readily to her lips as she leant back a little, looking up at him. She wanted him to kiss her. Wanted to lose herself in the illusion of love.

  ‘I want you to kiss me,’ she whispered as she moved towards him, bringing her lips so close to his.

  ‘Then how can I say no?’

  His lips met hers. Gentle and coaxing. Everything she was struggling to hide rushed forward as she kissed him back.

  His palm against the small of her back pressed her against him, but she didn’t need that encouragement as her body melted into his. Like wax around a flickering flame, she lost herself to him. To the romance of the moment. To the love for him intensifying with every smile, every caress and kiss.

  His tongue invited hers to dance and she sighed with pleasure, accepting that invitation, kissing him deeper, harder. The rush of love hurtling through her made it impossible to remember they were in the middle of a dance floor, being watched by friends and family.

  He broke the kiss, tenderly brushing her face with his fingers. ‘Very convincing,’ he whispered, his eyes as black as the velvety sky at midnight. ‘Almost too real.’

  ‘Would real be so bad?’ she asked tentatively, her mind, her resolve softened by the moment.

  ‘It’s not what we agreed, Kaliana.’ His voice became sterner, although still a whisper, even though his fingers continued to caress her face. ‘It’s not what either of us wanted—or needed.’

  ‘Things can change.’ She smiled up at him, then quickly looked down, a blush spreading over her face. She was lost in the romance, still warmed by the love flowing through her. Love for this man. A man who’d actively banished love from his life. His heart. More than anything she wanted to tell him she’d fallen in love with him.

  His hold on her slipped. His hand dropped from her face and when she looked back up at him his gaze, his attention, wasn’t on her.

  Kaliana turned in his loosened hold to look in the direction his attention had been taken. He was watching a woman who’d just walked in and was now mingling with the crowd. Her pale blonde hair stood out amongst the other guests, making her appear lost. Alone.

  ‘Emma...’ Rafe breathed the name of the woman he’d once loved and as she looked up at Rafe, then to the blonde, Kaliana knew anything she felt for him was futile. The way he’d said her name told its own story. He still loved Emma. And she was here. To see him?

  As all she’d just witnessed, all she’d just realised, sank in, Rafe let her go, moving away from her far more than just physically. Stretching her emotions so taut that at any moment they’d snap with a painful sting.

  ‘Excuse me.’ He moved away, leaving her adrift on a sea of emotions she’d never wanted to sail again. Emotions which held pain as much as pleasure.

  ‘Of course.’ She stepped away from him. Hating the sensation of total abandonment. She blinked back the threat of tears, annoyed with herself. Annoyed she’d allowed emotion to influence her, to make her want more than she should have.

  She turned her back on the image of Rafe striding towards the pretty blonde—the woman who’d held his heart all this time. Had she come to reclaim Rafe? To tell him she’d made a mistake? That she loved him?

  Unable to help herself, she watched Rafe as he reached Emma. She didn’t need to hear his voice to know his concern for the other woman.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Claire’s voice dragged her from her self-pity, the conclusions she couldn’t help but jump to.

  She watched as Rafe touched Emma’s arm in that same caring gesture he’d used on her. ‘She is the woman Rafe loves. The woman who broke his heart...’ She didn’t care who overheard. Hurt and rejection cascaded through her like water over the highest falls.

  ‘What?’ Claire asked and Kaliana sensed the protective anger in her friend’s voice. ‘He can’t back out now. You’ll have to...’

  ‘Marry Nassif,’ Kaliana finished for her, then frowned as Enzo joined Rafe and Emma. Kaliana wished she could hear what was being said. She could see Enzo’s annoyance in the square set of his shoulders. Emma looked from one to the other, appeal in her expression. Then Rafe hugged Emma. A hug that held so much emotion it broke Kaliana’s heart. The heart which had only just accepted it was full of love for the man she was to marry. The man who loved another woman.

  ‘It looks like Enzo and Emma are getting back together.’ Franco’s accented tones made Kaliana blink. She turned to Rafe’s friend as questions fired through her, followed by the tiniest glimmer of hope.

  ‘Back together? Enzo and Emma?’

  Franco frowned. ‘They are married—separated, but...’ He paused as if searching for the right word. Kaliana’s mind raced wildly as she watched him. Waiting. ‘Circumstances pushed them apart. Rafe has been working hard to engineer this meeting over the last few weeks, sure he can help mend their marriage.’

  ‘Rafe has?’ She could feel herself stuttering. Hated herself for it. No wonder there was so much tension between the two brothers. She looked at Franco again. But Rafe had engineered this meeting. What did that mean?

  She turned her attention back to Rafe as he moved away from Emma, still looking lovingly down at her. Their gazes were locked, then he turned to Enzo, clasping him in a manly hug before turning and walking away from them both.

  ‘You have to go to him,’ Claire said, touching Kaliana’s shoulder, pulling her from her stunned and frozen state of shock.

  ‘I can’t.’ How could she go to him when she�
�d just seen the truth of the love he still had for Emma? His brother’s wife. How could her newly fledged love ever mean more than that?

  ‘Go to him,’ Claire urged softly, compassion in her voice. ‘Go to him, Kaliana. Tell him.’

  Kaliana turned to her friend. ‘Tell him what?’ She couldn’t say anything about the possibility that she might be pregnant. Not now. How could Claire expect her to?

  ‘That you love him.’

  Kaliana gasped.

  ‘I know you don’t want to admit it, but you have to, Kal. You have to grasp this chance of happiness. Forget your stupid deal. Forget everything else. Even what you told me earlier. Tell him how you feel.’

  Claire’s impassioned plea made Kaliana’s head spin. Were her feelings, the love she’d only just recognised herself, so obvious to others?

  ‘She’s right,’ Franco said firmly, confirming her suspicion. ‘You and Rafe have something. You both need to let go of the past. Embrace it.’

  Kaliana looked at Rafe’s retreating back as he left the party—their engagement party—heading for the sanctuary and privacy of the villa. Could she do this? Put her heart on the line? Admit she loved him when he clearly still loved another woman?

  As the questions whirled in her mind, making her shiver with cold dread, she turned to see Emma and Enzo embrace. And then Enzo kissed her tenderly on the forehead. He loved his wife. Emma, the woman Rafe also loved.

  ‘No,’ Kaliana said, not caring what Franco knew. ‘No, I don’t love Rafe. We don’t have anything. There is nothing between us other than a mutually beneficial marriage deal.’

  * * *

  Rafe stood in the darkness of his office. He’d wanted time. Space. He needed to think. His emotions were running riot inside him. As he’d held Kaliana, as he’d kissed her, he’d felt the overwhelming burn of love. The one thing he didn’t want to feel.

  Whenever he’d allowed that emotion into his life, his heart, it had always let him down. Always left him in pain.

  First his mother. Then Emma. Even his father and brother, damn it. He’d loved them all. And each one of them had caused him pain. It was a story that had repeated itself too many times. Made him question who he was.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me how much Emma still means to you?’ Kaliana’s gentle question roused him from his self-pity. He turned to see her standing in the doorway, illuminated by the light from the party beyond the darkness of the office he’d retreated to.

  The halo of light gave her an unearthly appeal, but he ignored it, focusing instead on her question. ‘Even you’ve got to agree that it’s a messy love triangle.’ He laughed, realising for the first time just how silly he’d been to try and hang onto Emma, to hang onto the hope that she still loved him.

  What kind of fool was he?

  ‘About as messy as the marriage triangle I’m hoping to avoid if I marry you.’ Kaliana’s voice was harder now. Full of power. Determination. The voice of a princess.

  ‘If?’ He remained in the shadow of darkness, while she stood in the glow of light. If he dared to open up to her, dared to tell her that what he’d begun to feel for her far surpassed anything he’d ever felt for Emma, then he could move into that warm light. Step out of the shadows of a life without love. But he couldn’t. ‘We have a deal.’

  ‘Exactly,’ she said seriously. ‘We have a deal. A deal the Casella family needs. A deal my country needs. And our feelings are irrelevant.’

  He pressed his lips together, inhaling deeply. ‘Yes, we have a deal and, whatever happens, I won’t back out, Kaliana. I’m a man of honour. A man of my word. A man who will do his duty.’

  And that duty was to marry the woman who’d turned his life upside down that first night in London, opening his heart even then.

  ‘Then we should go back out there and undo any damage your moment with Enzo’s wife, followed by your disappearing act, has done to our act of a whirlwind romance.’ Her sharp words cut him, forcing anything he felt for her into hiding. The Kaliana he’d met, the Kaliana he’d made love to with such passion had already left him.

  ‘That is precisely what we should do, but...’ He paused, on the verge of asking her what she really wanted out of the marriage. From him.

  ‘But what, Rafe?’ The slap of her question was as stinging as her palm would be across his face.

  The way he felt about Emma had never come close to what he felt for this woman. Kaliana made him hopeful for impossible emotions, but the Princess before him was so cold. So distant. Why the hell did he think a woman who’d agreed to have his children in order to save her country from financial ruin could ever have any kind of feelings for him? What kind of fool had he been?

  Could he really go through with it? Could he marry simply for convenience when he knew all his mother had wanted was for him to find love and be happy?

  ‘Do you want this deal? This marriage?’ The question snapped from him. ‘Because I can find a way out.’

  ‘You know I do,’ she implored as she moved forward a step. Forward into the darkness. His darkness.

  ‘Why?’ He had to hear her say it. Had to hear her cold words.

  ‘Because I can’t...’ She walked closer, stumbling over her words, darkness enveloping them both. ‘I can’t marry Nassif. Not because he is older than me. Or cruel. But because I loved Alif, his nephew, the man I should have married.’

  Did she still love Alif?

  He still loved Emma.

  Not in the way he’d once done. Not with passion and desire. He loved her as a friend. Nothing more. And he wanted Emma to be happy; that was why he’d set up the meeting with her and Enzo. He needed to let go of Emma and heal the long-standing coldness between him and his twin.

  He looked at Kaliana, at the shadows hiding the expressions on her face. She still mourned and loved her fiancé. Could he ever compete with that? Was he worthy of trying to claim her love? Could he ever forget the past and love her?

  He shook his head in answer to that last question. ‘If that is what you want, we should get back out there and continue this show of romance.’ He held his hand out to her. She looked at it and for a moment he thought she wasn’t going to take it.

  ‘It won’t be for much longer,’ she said as her hand fitted loosely into his. ‘Once we are married, we can live separate lives.’

  ‘We can indeed.’ Why was he saying that? He didn’t want a life separate from Kaliana. She was his life. A life he couldn’t have. Her icy-cold words had already made that clear.

  ‘I am returning to Ardu Safra in the morning with my parents.’ Her words were so casual, so light and free of any painful emotion that Rafe stopped to look at her, bringing her to a stop too. She looked into his eyes, the gold flecks of hers almost dimming to nothing. He’d done that to her.

  ‘That isn’t what we planned, and I have meetings tomorrow. I can’t go with you.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, her chin lifting defiantly. ‘You can follow me there once you are finished—if marriage to me is what you want.’

  She was leaving him. The moment his heart had opened up, the moment he’d begun to think he could love again, and she was leaving him. ‘Marriage is what I need, Kaliana. What my family needs. I am the only male heir able to create the next generation. I have to marry and have children. If there was any other way, I’d take it.’

  She sighed softly. ‘You just said you want a way out, so I only want you to come to Ardu Safra if you want me.’ She looked down. ‘If you want me to be your wife. The mother of your children.’

  ‘What about your duty? Your country?’ He couldn’t believe she was doing this. It was almost as if she was saying goodbye.

  ‘I will get married on my twenty-sixth birthday. My father has already seen to that.’

  ‘You’ll marry Nassif?’

  She nodded, swallowing hard, as if unable to bring herself to agree
to that. She pulled her hand free of his, stepping back away from him. ‘An arranged marriage is bad enough, but to a man who is in love with another woman? I can’t.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Rafe, I have to go.’

  Before he could answer. Before he could process everything she’d said, Kaliana turned and walked away. He watched the red silk of her dress as she disappeared upstairs. He should go to her. Tell her he wanted her. Needed her. So why the hell couldn’t he?

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE HEAT OF Ardu Safra was suffocating. Kaliana stood by the open window, breathing in the warm air coming in off the golden dunes of the desert she loved so much, in a futile attempt to ease her discomfort.

  For five days she’d relived that last conversation with Rafe. Her heart ached and her body was numb. She felt sick and each day Rafe’s silence intensified those feelings. He’d allowed her to walk away the night of their engagement. He hadn’t even tried to stop her She’d changed from her red gown, leaving it and the Casella jewels in her room, her heart breaking into so many pieces as she’d prepared to leave.

  She hadn’t said a word to her father or mother about breaking off the engagement, hoping that Rafe would come, that he’d honour their deal. They’d believed her claim that she wanted time to prepare for the wedding, but each day she’d woken with that heavy dread in her stomach. Deep down, she knew it was more than just dread. Knew it was because she carried Rafe’s baby.

  Claire’s arrival earlier today had at least offered her some comfort, someone to talk to and confide in. She now faced the prospect of admitting to her father not only that the man she’d agreed to marry no longer wanted her, but that because of the baby she couldn’t now marry Nassif. Or anyone.

  An admission she couldn’t make. Didn’t want to make. Just as she couldn’t yet face finding out for sure if she was pregnant.

  Kaliana sighed, turning from the window. For the last hour she’d stood there, barely seeing the golden landscape of her homeland. Once the ability to do just that would have given her so much pleasure. She’d always loved the way the dunes changed as shadow or sunlight fell over them, making them seem alive. Leaving her birthplace to make a new life in London had been hard. Just as hard as finding her dreams shattered after Alif’s death. But Rafe’s silence was even harder to endure.