The Wedding Night Debt: Christmas at the Castello (bonus novella)

by Cathy Williams

  CHAPTER FIVE

  PREY TO WARRING EMOTIONS, Lucy was left to consider her options for three days while Dio disappeared to Paris for an emergency meeting with the directors of one of his companies over there.

  By her calculation, that left eleven days of honeymoon time before he vanished across the Atlantic to Hong Kong.

  She knew that she had been cleverly but subtly outmanoeuvred.

  For a start, the story of the brand new school spread like a raging wild fire. He had played the ‘hot shot investor’ to perfection. Now, as far as everyone in the neighbourhood was concerned, ordering computers, stationery and getting the builders in was just a little formality because everything was signed, sealed and delivered bar the shouting.

  If the whole pipe dream collapsed, Lucy knew that she would have to dig deep to find an excuse that would work. The blame would fall squarely on her shoulders.

  The day after she and Dio had lunched in the café, Mark had arrived at work clutching brochures for computers and printers. He had made noises about getting the national press involved to cover a ‘feel good’ story because ‘the world was a dark place and it was just so damn heart-warming to find that there were still one or two heroes left in it’...

  Lucy had nearly died on the spot. In what world could Dio Ruiz be classed as a hero?

  No one had actually asked what the mysterious conditions were that had been imposed on her, for which she was very grateful, because she had no idea what she would have said.

  They had been dependent on various money-raising ventures and government help to cover the scant lease on the building; now two members of the local council descended, beaming, to tell her that there were plans afoot to buy the place outright. They delivered a rousing speech on how much it would benefit the community to have the place brought up to scratch and in permanent active use.

  They dangled the carrot of helping to subsidise three full-time members of staff who could perhaps assist in teaching non-English-speaking students, of which there were countless in the borough.

  And, twice daily, Dio had called her on her mobile, ostensibly to find out how she was—given their new relationship, which involved conversation—but really, she knew, to apply pressure.

  Two weeks...

  And then, after that, freedom was hers for the taking.

  Was he right? Would sleeping with him be such a hardship? They were married and, when she had married him, she had been hot for him, had counted the hours, the minutes and the seconds till they could climb into bed together. Her virginity was something precious to be handed over to him and she hadn’t been able to wait to do it.

  She was still a virgin but she was now considerably more cynical than she had once been. And how precious was it, really? So once upon a time she had had a dream of only marrying for love and losing her virginity to a guy she wanted to spend her life with. She had woken up. Big deal.

  And she was still hot for him. It pained her to admit it, especially since he had gloatingly pointed it out to her and, worse, had proved it by kissing her, feeling her melt under his hands.

  What was the point in denying reality? She’d been damned good at facing reality so far; she had not once shied away from the fact that she was trapped in a marriage and forced to play the part of the socialite she probably should have but never had been.

  On day three she picked up her mobile to hear his dark, velvety voice down the line and, as usual, she felt the slow, thick stir of her heightened senses.

  Once more or less able to withstand the drugging effect of his personality, Lucy had now discovered that her defences had been penetrated on all fronts. Even when he was on the opposite side of the world, she just had to hear his voice and every nerve inside her body quivered in response.

  Overnight it seemed as though all the walls she had painstakingly built between them had been knocked down in a single stroke.

  ‘What are you up to?’

  Lucy sat down. Was she really interested in launching into a conversation about the porridge she had just eaten?

  ‘Marie has handed in her notice. I knew she was going to at some point. She’s far too ambitious to be cleaning. She’s got a placement at a college. So I’m afraid you’re going to have to find someone else to do the cleaning in the Paris apartment.’

  ‘I’m going to have to find someone else?’

  ‘Well, I won’t be around, will I?’ Lucy pointed out bluntly. She projected to when she would shut the door of their grand, three-storey mansion in London for good and she felt her heart squeeze inside her.

  Sitting in the first class lounge at JFK airport, Dio frowned. By the time he returned to London, he wanted an answer from her, and the only answer he was prepared to accept was the one he wanted to hear.

  That was what he wanted to chat about now. He certainly didn’t want to have a tedious conversation about their apartment in Paris and finding a cleaner to replace the one who had quit. He didn’t want her to start the process of withdrawing from the marriage. No way. Nor had he contemplated the prospect of not getting what he wanted from her.

  It occurred to him that there really was only one topic of conversation he was willing to hear.

  ‘I’ll cross the bridge of hiring a new cleaner when the time comes.’

  ‘Well, it’ll come in the space of two weeks, which is when Marie will be leaving.’

  ‘What are you wearing? It’s early over there...are you still in your pyjamas? Does it strike you as a little bizarre that we’ve never seen each other in the confines of a bedroom, wearing pyjamas?’

  Lucy went bright red and cleared her throat. ‘I don’t know what my clothes have to do with anything...’ She automatically pulled her dressing gown tighter around her slender body and was suddenly conscious of her bra-less breasts and the skimpiness of her underwear.

  ‘I’m making small talk. If we’re to spend the next two weeks together—’

  ‘Eleven days,’ Lucy interrupted.

  Dio relaxed and half-smiled to himself. He had made sure to phone her regularly while he had been away. Over the marriage, they had managed to establish a relationship in which she had been allowed to retreat. That retreat was not going to continue.

  And now, without her having to say it, he could hear the capitulation in her voice. It generated the kick of an intense, slow burn of excitement.

  ‘If we’re to spend the next eleven days together, then we need to be able to converse.’

  ‘We know how to converse, Dio. We’ve done a great deal of that over the course of our marriage.’

  ‘Superficial conversation,’ Dio inserted smoothly. ‘No longer appropriate, given the fact that our relationship has changed.’

  ‘Our relationship hasn’t changed.’

  ‘No? I could swear you just told me how long we’re going to be spending on our long-overdue honeymoon...’

  Lucy licked her lips nervously. The dressing gown had slipped open and, looking down, she could see the smooth lines of her stomach and her pert, pointed breasts.

  She had made her mind up about his ultimatum and she hadn’t even really been aware of doing so.

  Soon that flat stomach and those breasts would be laid bare for him to see and touch.

  A little shiver raced through her. She slipped her finger beneath her lacy briefs and felt her own wetness. It shocked her. It was as if her body was already reacting to the knowledge that someone else would be touching it—that Dio would be touching it.

  ‘Okay,’ she said as loftily as she could manage. ‘So, you win, Dio. I hope it makes you feel proud.’

  ‘Right now, pride is the very least of the things I’m feeling.’ His voice lowered, sending a ripple of forbidden excitement through her.

  Out of all the reasons she had privately given herself for yielding to
his demands, she now acknowledged the only reason that really truly counted for anything.

  It had nothing to do with the school, duty towards her students or, least of all, money.

  She had yielded because she fancied him and because she knew, as he did, that to walk away from a dry marriage would be to wonder for ever what it might have been like to sleep with him.

  Her head might not want to get into bed with Dio but her body certainly did and this was her window.

  The fact that there were a lot of up sides and bonuses attached to her decision was just an added incentive.

  ‘I’d tell you what I’m feeling,’ he said roughly, ‘but I’m sitting in the lounge at JFK and I wouldn’t want anyone to start noticing the hefty bulge in my trousers...’

  ‘Dio! That’s...that’s...’

  ‘I know. Unfortunate, considering I’m going to have to wait a few more hours before I can be satisfied.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant!’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No,’ Lucy told him firmly. To add emphasis to her denial, she very firmly tightened the dressing gown so that she could cover up her treacherously over-heated, semi-naked body. ‘I... I’m happy to discuss the details of...er...our arrangement.’

  ‘Speak English,’ Dio said drily.

  ‘I’ll do this honeymoon business with you but only because I don’t have a choice.’

  ‘That’s not very enthusiastic,’ Dio admonished, hanging onto his temper. If he could put his feelings to one side, if he could forget her duplicitous take on their marriage, then he was damned if he was going to let her get away with dragging her feet and somehow blaming him for the fact that she wanted to sleep with him.

  ‘Everyone expects you to descend and start flinging money at the school.’

  ‘I find it doesn’t do to mould your life according to other people’s expectations.’

  ‘How do I know that once this so-called honeymoon of ours is over you’ll do what you say...?’

  ‘You don’t.’ Dio was affronted. He had always been a man of his word, which was saying something, in a world where very few men were. He might not have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth but he knew one thing for sure: in his business practices, and in fact in his whole approach to life, he was a damned sight more ethical than a lot of his counterparts whose climb up the ladder had been a great deal less precarious than his had been!

  ‘You’ll have to rely on that little thing called trust.’

  Lucy didn’t say anything and Dio felt the significance of her silence like a disapproving slap on the face.

  Rich, coming from the ice-maiden who had strung him along.

  ‘I’m not a man who breaks his word,’ he said coolly. ‘I know many who do.’

  Lucy thought of her father, who had cheated so many people out of their pensions, and she flushed guiltily. Were Dio’s thoughts running along the same lines? He might have married her for all the wrong reasons but then he had never claimed to love her, had he? Even when they had been dating, he had never talked about love.

  And something deep inside her knew that, if he had given his word, then he wasn’t going to break it.

  ‘Shall I book somewhere?’ she asked stiffly. ‘I expect you want to use one of the houses...’

  ‘I think you can climb out of “personal assistant” mode on this occasion,’ Dio said softly. ‘It somehow ruins the...sizzle.’

  His husky voice was doing all sorts of peculiar things to her body and she squirmed on the chair, idly glancing round at all the top-notch, expensive equipment in the very expensive kitchen.

  ‘I surely need to book flights for us?’ Lucy intended to do her very best not to let either of them forget that their weird honeymoon was built on stuff that was very prosaic.

  This wasn’t going to be one of those romantic affairs where they would spend their time whispering sweet nothings and staring longingly at one another over candlelit dinners before racing to their room so that they could rip the clothes off one another.

  This was more getting something elemental out of their systems.

  ‘Don’t give it a thought,’ Dio said briskly. ‘I’ll get my secretary to do the necessary.’

  ‘But where will we be going? And when, exactly?’

  ‘I’m at JFK now. When I return to London, I’ll have a quick turnaround. Be prepared to be out of the country this time tomorrow.’

  ‘What? I can’t just leave here at a moment’s notice.’

  ‘Of course you can. My secretary will take care of everything. You just need to get ready for me...’

  ‘Get ready for you?’

  Dio laughed at the outrage in her voice. He was so hard for her right now, he was finding it difficult to move.

  Small, high breasts... He had glimpsed the shadow of her cleavage in some of the more daring dresses she had worn to social events over the course of the marriage. He wondered what colour her nipples were. She was a natural blonde and he imagined that they were rosy pink, kissable nipples. He wondered what she would taste like when he buried himself between her thighs.

  He wondered who else she had shared her body with before she had met him.

  It was a grimly unappealing thought and he ditched it before it had time to take root.

  ‘Use your imagination,’ he drawled. ‘Get into the head set...’

  ‘Yes, sir...’ Lucy muttered under her breath and she heard his soft laughter down the end of the line. Sexy laughter. The laughter of a man who’d got exactly what he wanted. She fidgeted a little more and forced herself to focus. ‘And what should I pack?’

  ‘Don’t. I’ll make sure that there are clothes waiting for you at the other end.’

  ‘I don’t want to be dressed up like a Barbie doll,’ she told him quickly. ‘That’s not part of this arrangement.’

  ‘I shall see you very soon, Lucy...’

  ‘But you still haven’t told me where we’ll be going!’

  ‘I know. Isn’t it exciting? I, for one, can’t wait.’

  And he disconnected. Lucy was left holding a dead phone and feeling panicked because now there was no going back.

  She tried to think of life after the next ten days but she found her mind getting stuck with images of Dio in bed with her. After she had discovered the truth behind their sham of a marriage, she had told herself that that was why he had not tried to get her into bed before they had tied the knot.

  She had thought that he was being a gentleman, respecting her wish to wait until they were married before having sex. She had been too embarrassed to tell him that she was still a virgin, and anyway the subject had not arisen.

  Instead, he had been stringing her along. She had stopped day dreaming about him but the day dreams were rearing their heads once again and she couldn’t stop them.

  How was she supposed to travel to some unknown destination? They could be going to the Arctic, the Caribbean or a city somewhere. Had he even decided or was he going to let his assistant choose where they went?

  And what was it going to be like when he returned to the house?

  The knowledge that they would be cooped up together for the better part of a fortnight would lie between them like a lead weight...

  Wouldn’t it?

  She was a bundle of nerves as evening drew round. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she didn’t dress up for his arrival. Usually, she never dropped the role unless she was on her own. Usually he saw her formally attired, even when she was in casual clothing.

  But things were different and she had defiantly chosen to wear a pair of jeans and a faded old tee-shirt from her university days. Nor was she plastered with make-up and she hadn’t curled her hair. Instead, she was a make-up-free zone and her hair hung heavily just past her shoulders, neatly tucke
d behind her ears.

  She was in the same place as she had been when she had confronted him with talk of divorce, standing in the drawing room. And she was just as jumpy.

  And yet, staring through the window into the, for London, relatively large garden with its row of perfectly shaped and manicured shrubs, she didn’t hear him until he spoke.

  ‘I wondered if you would wait up for me.’ Dio strolled into the drawing room, dumping his jacket, which he had hooked over his shoulder. It had been a tiresome flight, even in first class, but he felt bright eyed and bushy-tailed now as he flicked his eyes over her.

  He’d half-expected her to go into a self-righteous meltdown between speaking to her on the phone and showing up at the house. She was very good at adopting the role of blameless victim. He guessed that the lure of money was irresistible, however. She might play at her volunteer work and make big plans to teach but teaching didn’t pay nearly enough for her to afford the sort of lifestyle to which she had always been accustomed.

  Cynicism curled his lips when he thought that.

  ‘Drink?’

  A feeling of déjà vu swept over Lucy as she helplessly followed him into the kitchen, although this time she had eaten, and she expected he would have as well, so there would be no pretend domesticity preparing a meal.

  ‘I thought we could chat about plans for tomorrow,’ she began valiantly. ‘I need to know what time we will be leaving. I... I’ve packed a couple of things...’ He looked drop-dead gorgeous and she could feel the electricity in the air between them, sparking like a live, exposed wire. It made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

  And the way he was looking at her, his pale eyes skewering her, brought her out in a nervous wash of perspiration.

  She wanted crisply to remind him that their arrangement was for the honeymoon period, which technically would only start when they reached wherever they were heading, and so for tonight they would retreat to their separate quarters as per normal. However, her tongue seemed to have become glued to the roof of her mouth.