by Sara Craven
He wasn’t sure on which visit to Italy she and Lisa Brendon had begun planning the match between their children. He knew only that, to his adolescent disgust, it seemed to have become all too quickly absorbed into family folklore as an actual possibility.
He’d even derisively christened Marisa ‘la cicogna’—the stork—a mocking reference to her long legs and the little beak of a nose that dominated her small, thin face, until his mother had called him to order with unwonted sternness.
But the fact that Marisa was being seriously considered as his future bride had been brought home to him six years ago, when her parents had been killed in a motorway pile-up.
Because, in a devastating aftermath of the accident, it had been discovered that the Brendons had always lived up to and exceeded their income, and that through some fairly typical oversight Alec had failed to renew his life insurance, leaving his only daughter penniless.
At first Maria had begged for the fourteen-year-old girl to be brought to Italy and raised as a member of their family, but for once the ever-indulgent Guillermo had vetoed her plan. If her scheme to turn Marisa into the next Santangeli bride was to succeed—and there was, of course, no guarantee that this would happen—it would be far better, he’d said, for the girl to continue her education and upbringing in England, at their expense, than for Renzo to become so accustomed to her presence in the household that he might begin to regard her simply as an irritating younger sister.
It was a proposition to which his wife had reluctantly acquiesced. And while Marisa had remained in England Renzo had been able to put the whole ridiculous idea of her as his future wife out of his mind.
In any case, he’d had to concentrate on his career, completing his business degree with honours before joining the renowned and internationally respected Santangeli Bank, where he would ultimately succeed his father as chairman. By a mixture of flair and hard work he had made sure he deserved the top job, and that no one would mutter sourly ‘boss’s son’ when he took over.
He was aware that the junior ranks of staff referred to him as ‘Il Magnifico’, after his namesake Lorenzo de Medici, but shrugged it off with amusement.
Life had been good. He’d had a testing job which provided exhilaration and interest, also allowing him to travel widely. And with his dynastic obligations remaining no more than a small cloud on his horizon he had enjoyed women, his physical needs deliciously catered to by a series of thoroughly enjoyable affairs which, the ladies involved knew perfectly well, would never end in marriage.
But while he’d learned early in his sexual career to return with infinite skill and generosity the pleasure he received, he’d never committed the fatal error of telling any of his innamoratas that he loved her—not even in the wilder realms of passion.
Then, three years ago, he had been shocked out of his complacency by his mother’s sudden illness. She’d been found to be suffering from an aggressive and inoperable cancer and had died only six weeks later.
‘Renzo, carissimo mio.’ Her paper-thin hand had rested on his, light as a leaf. ‘Promise me that my little Marisa will be your wife.’
And torn by sorrow and disbelief at the first real blow life had struck him, he had given her his word, thereby sealing his fate.
Now, as he walked into his apartment, he heard the phone ringing. He ignored it, knowing only too well who was calling, because the clinic would have used the private mobile number he’d left with them—which Doria Venucci did not have.
He recognised that, if he was to stand any chance of retrieving his marriage, she was a luxury he could no longer afford. However, courtesy demanded that he tell her in person that their relationship was over.
Not that she would protest too much. A secret amour was one thing. A vulgar scandal which jeopardised her own marriage would be something else entirely, he told himself cynically.
As he walked across his vast bedroom to the bathroom beyond, shedding his clothes as he went, he allowed himself a brief moment of regret for the lush, golden, insatiable body he’d left in bed only a few hours before and would never enjoy again.
But everything had changed now. And at the same time he knew how totally wrong he’d been to become involved with her in the first place. Especially when he’d had no real excuse for his behaviour apart from another infuriating encounter with Marisa’s damnable answering machine.
So she still didn’t want to speak to him, he’d thought furiously, slamming down his receiver as a bland, anonymous voice had informed him yet again that she was ‘not available’. She was still refusing to give him even the slightest chance to make amends to her.
Well, so be it, he had told himself. He was sick of the self-imposed celibacy he’d been enduring since she left, and if she didn’t want him he’d go out and find a woman who did.
It had not been a difficult task because, at a party that same evening, he’d met Doria and invited her to a very proper and public lunch with him the following day. Which had been followed, without delay, by a series of private and exceedingly improper assignations in a suite at a discreet and accordingly expensive hotel.
And if he’d embarked on the affair in a mood of defiance, he could not pretend that the damage to his male pride had not been soothed by the Contessa Venucci’s openly expressed hunger for him, he thought wryly.
He stepped into the shower cubicle, switching the water to its fullest extent, letting it pound down on his weary body, needing it to eradicate the edginess and confusion of emotions that were assailing him.
It could not be denied that latterly, outside working hours, he had not enjoyed the easiest of relationships with his father. He had always attributed this to his disapproval of Guillermo’s year-long liaison with Ottavia Alesconi, having made it coldly clear from the beginning that he felt it was too soon after his mother’s death for the older man to embark on such a connection.
And yet did he really have any right to object to his father’s wish to find new happiness? The signora was a charming and cultivated woman, a childless widow, still running the successful PR company she had begun with her late husband. Someone, moreover, who was quite content to share Guillermo’s leisure, but had no ambitions to become his Marchesa.
His father had always seemed so alive and full of vigour, with never a hint of ill health, so tonight’s attack must have been a particularly unpleasant shock to her, he thought sombrely, resolving to call on her in person to thank her for her prompt and potentially life-saving efforts on Guillermo’s behalf. By doing so he might also make it clear that any initial resentment of her role in his father’s life had long since dissipated.
Besides, he thought ruefully, his own personal life was hardly such a blazing success that he could afford to be critical of anyone else’s. And maybe it was really his bitter sense of grievance over being cornered into marriage that had brought about the coldness that had grown up between his father and himself.
But he could not allow any lingering animosity, he told himself as he stepped out of the shower and began to dry himself. He had to put the past behind him, where it belonged. Tonight had indeed been a warning—in a number of ways. It was indeed more than time he abandoned his bachelor lifestyle and applied himself to becoming a husband and, in due course, a father.
If, of course, he could obtain the co-operation of his bride—something he’d signally failed to do so far, he thought, staring broodingly in the mirror as he raked his damp hair back from his face with his fingers.
If he was honest, he could admit that he was a man who’d never had to try too hard with women. It wasn’t something he was proud of, but, nevertheless, it remained an indisputable fact. And it remained a terrible irony that his wife was the only one who’d greeted his attempts to woo her with indifference at best and hostility at worst.
He’d become aware that he might have a fight on his hands when he’d paid his first visit to her cousin’s house in London, ostensibly to invite Marisa to Tuscany for a party his father was p
lanning to celebrate her nineteenth birthday.
Julia Gratton had received him alone, her hard eyes travelling over him in an assessment that had managed to be critical and salacious at the same time, he’d thought with distaste.
‘So, you’ve come courting at last, signore.’ Her laugh was like the yap of a small, unfriendly dog. ‘I’d begun to think it would never happen. I sent Marisa up to change,’ she added abruptly. ‘She’ll be down presently. In the meantime, let me offer you some coffee.’
He was glad that she’d told him what was being served in those wide, shallow porcelain cups, because there was no other clue in the thin, tasteless fluid that he forced himself to swallow.
So when the drawing room door opened he was glad to put it aside and get to his feet. Where he paused, motionless, the formal smile freezing on his lips as he saw her.
He could tell by the look of displeasure that flitted across Mrs Gratton’s thin face that Marisa had not changed her clothes, as instructed, but he was not, he thought, repining.
She was still shy, looking down at the carpet rather than at him, her long curling lashes brushing her cheeks, but everything else about her was different. Gloriously so. And he allowed the connoisseur in him to enjoy the moment. She was slim now, he realised, instead of gawky, and her face was fuller so that her features no longer seemed too large for its pallor.
Her breasts were not large but, outlined by her thin tee shirt, they were exquisitely shaped. Her waist was a handspan, her hips a gentle curve. And those endless legs—Santa Madonna—even encased as they were in tight denim jeans he could imagine how they would feel clasped around him, naked, as she explored under his tuition the pleasures of sex.
Hurriedly he dragged his mind back to the social niceties. Took a step forward, attempting a friendly smile. ‘Buongiorno, Maria Lisa.’ He deliberately used the version of her name he’d teased her with in childhood. ‘Come stai?’
She looked back at him then, and for the briefest instant he seemed to see in those long-lashed grey-green eyes such a glint of withering scorn that it stopped him dead. Then, next moment, she was responding quietly and politely to his greeting, even allowing him to take her hand, and he told himself that it must have been his imagination.
Because that was what his ego wanted him to think, he told himself bitterly. That it was an honour for this girl to have been chosen as a Santangeli bride, and if he had no objections, especially now that he had seen her again, it must follow that she could have none either.
Prompted sharply by her cousin, she accepted the party invitation, and agreed expressionlessly to his suggestion that he should return the next day to discuss the arrangements.
And although she knew—had obviously been told—that the real reason for his visit was to request her formally to become his wife, she gave no sign of either pleasure or dismay at the prospect.
And that in itself should have warned him, he thought in self-condemnation. Instead he’d attributed her lack of reaction to nervousness at the prospect of marriage.
In the past, his sexual partners had certainly not been chosen for their inexperience, but innocence was an essential quality for the girl who would one day bear the Santangeli heir. He had told himself the least he could do was offer her some reassurance about how their relationship would be conducted in its early days—and nights.
Therefore, he’d resolved to promise her that their honeymoon would be an opportunity for them to become properly reacquainted, even be friends, and that he would be prepared to wait patiently until she felt ready to take him as her husband in any true sense.
And he’d meant every word of it, he thought, remembering how she’d listened in silence, her head half-turned from him, her creamy skin tinged with colour as he spoke.
All the same, he knew he’d been hoping for some reaction—some slight encouragement for him to take her in his arms and kiss her gently to mark their engagement.
But there’d been nothing, then or later. She’d never signalled in any way that she wanted him to touch her, and by offering forbearance he’d fallen, he realised, annoyed, into a trap of his own making.
Because as time had passed, and their wedding day had approached, he’d found himself as awkward as a boy in her cool, unrevealing company, unable to make even the slightest approach to her—something which had never happened to him before.
But what he had not bargained for was losing his temper. And it was the guilt of that which still haunted him.
He sighed abruptly as he knotted a dry towel round his hips. Well, there was no point in torturing himself afresh over that. He ought to go to bed, he thought, and try to catch some sleep for what little remained of the night. But he knew he was far too restless to relax, and that the time could be used to better effect in planning the coming campaign.
He walked purposefully out of the bathroom, ignoring the invitation of the turned-down bed in the room beyond, and proceeded instead down the hallway to the salotto.
It was an impressive room, its size accentuated by the pale walls and a signal lack of clutter. He’d furnished it in light colours too, with deep, lavishly cushioned sofas in cream leather, and occasional tables in muted, ashy shades.
The only apparently discordant note in all this pastel restraint was the massive desk, which he loved because it had once belonged to his grandfather, and which now occupied a whole corner of the room in all its mahogany magnificence.
In banking circles he knew that he was viewed as a moderniser, a man with his sights firmly set on the future, alert to any changes in the market. But anyone seeing that desk, he’d always thought dryly, would have guessed immediately that underlying this was a strong respect for tradition and an awareness of what he owed to the past.
He went straight to the desk, extracted a file from one of its brass-handled drawers and, after pouring himself a generous Scotch, stretched out on one of the sofas and began to glance through the folder’s contents. An update had been received the previous day, but he’d not had a chance to read it before, and now seemed an appropriate time.
He took a contemplative mouthful of whisky as his eyes scanned swiftly down the printed sheet, then sat up abruptly with a gasp, nearly choking as his drink went down the wrong way and he found himself in imminent danger of spilling the rest everywhere.
He recovered instantly, eyes watering, then set down the crystal tumbler carefully out of harm’s way before, his face thunderous, he re-read the unwelcome information that the private surveillance company engaged for the protection of his absentee wife had provided.
‘We must advise you,’ it stated, ‘that since our last report Signora Santangeli, using her maiden name, has obtained paid employment as a receptionist in a private art gallery in Carstairs Place, apparently taking the place of a young woman on maternity leave. In the past fortnight she has lunched twice in the company of the gallery’s owner, Mr Corin Langford. She no longer wears her wedding ring. Photographic evidence can be provided if required.’
Renzo screwed the report into a ball and threw it across the room, cursing long and fluently.
He flung himself off the sofa and began to pace restlessly up and down. He did not need any photographs, he thought savagely. Too many of his own affairs had begun over leisurely lunches, so he knew all about satisfying one appetite while creating another—was totally familiar with the sharing of food and wine, eyes meeting across the table, fingers touching, then entwining.
What he did not—could not—recognise was the mental image of the girl on the other side of the table. Marisa smiling back, talking and laughing, the initial shyness in her eyes dancing into confidence and maybe even into desire.
The way she had never once behaved with him. Nor looked at him—or smiled.
Not, of course, that he was jealous, he hastened to remind himself.
Just—angrier than he’d ever been before. Everything that had happened between them in the past paled into insignificance under this—this insult to his
manhood. To his status as her husband.
Well, if his reluctant bride thought she could place the horns on him, she was much mistaken, he vowed in grim silence. Tomorrow he would go to fetch her home, and once he had her back she would not get away from him again. Because he would make very sure that from then on she would think of no one—want no one—but him. That she would be his completely.
And, he told himself harshly, he would enjoy every minute of it.
CHAPTER TWO
‘MARISA? My God, it is you. I can hardly believe it.’
The slender girl who’d been gazing abstractedly into a shop window swung round, her lips parting in astonishment as she recognised the tall, fair-haired young man standing behind her.
She said uncertainly, ‘Alan—what are you doing here?’
‘That should be my question. Why aren’t you sipping cappuccino on the Via Veneto?’
The million-dollar question…
‘Well, that can pall after a while,’ she said lightly. ‘And I began to fancy a cup of English tea instead.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘And what does Lorenzo the Magnificent have to say about that?’
The note of bitterness in his voice was not lost on her. She said quickly, ‘Alan—don’t…’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ He looked past her to the display of upmarket baby clothes she’d been contemplating and his mouth tightened. ‘I gather congratulations must be in order?’
‘God, no.’ Marisa spoke more forcefully than she’d intended, and flushed when she saw his surprise. ‘I—I mean not for me. A girl I was at school with, Dinah Newman, is expecting her first, and I want to buy her something special.’
‘Well, you seem to have come to the right place,’ Alan said, inspecting a couple of the price tickets with raised brows. ‘You need to be the wife of a millionaire banker to shop here.’ He smiled at her. ‘She must be quite a friend.’
‘Let’s just say that I owe her,’ Marisa said quietly.