by Lucy Gordon;Sarah Morgan;Robyn Donald;Lucy Monroe;Lee Wilkinson;Kate Walker
Too late, Amy realised that the driver’s second outburst had been directed out of the window and not towards her. And his wildly waving gestures had been designed to draw her attention to the man who, attracted by the altercation outside, had come to the door to find out what was going on.
Panic struck hard and sharp. For the space of perhaps a dozen frantic, uneven heartbeats, she was severely tempted to tell the driver to turn, to put his foot down and move away—fast, but almost immediately she reconsidered.
To show her fear, to show any sort of reaction at all, would be playing straight into Vincenzo’s hands. If she bolted like a panic-stricken deer at just the sound of his voice, then she would never again be able claim that he no longer meant anything to her.
And so she forced her hypersensitive nerves back under ruthless control, stilled the frantic breathing that betrayed her with the way her breasts rose and fell under the tailored grey linen of her dress, and managed to turn to face him, switching on a smile that was blatantly false and insincere.
‘Hello, Vincenzo.’
It was all she could manage so she had to be grateful for the fact that she sounded cool and distant, the impression she was aiming for, and not as she actually felt. That was a far more complicated matter, made up of opposite conflicting emotions, some of which her mind and heart rejected violently while other, less rational senses responded in a flurry of primitive excitement.
‘You haven’t changed.’
Understatement of the year. If only he had changed. Or if the distance of the years since she had last seen him had added some perspective to her view of him so that she was able to regard him calmly and with a degree of objectivity lent by the passage of time.
But would any amount of time blunt the impact of a lithe, muscular physique, a powerful chest, narrow waist, and long, long legs? What force could leave her immune to jet-black hair that gleamed like polished onyx in the afternoon sun, equally coal-dark eyes set above sharply carved cheekbones, and fringed with the sort of thickly luxuriant lashes that somehow only intensified rather than softened their fierce brilliance?
No woman she knew could focus her eyes on the smooth olive skin, the stunning features, just once and not come back, greedily, for a second look. And in spite of everything she knew about him, in spite of the pain, the humiliation he had doled out to her with careless cruelty, neither could she.
‘Y-you’re looking well,’ she managed inanely. What little composure she had left had been wrenched from her by the realisation that he had come right out of the house and was standing, tall and proud, beside the boat so that she had to tilt her head up at an awkward angle to see him.
‘I wish I could say the same for you,’ was the sardonically drawled response. ‘But I’m afraid that you have me at a disadvantage, lurking in there like some small rodent in its hole. So tell me, moglie mia, do you intend to get out of the boat, or are you planning on staying there all afternoon?’
‘If you’ll just let me p-pay the driver…’ Amy spluttered indignantly, grabbing for her handbag and hunting through it.
‘Allow me.’
Before she even had time to open her purse, Vincenzo had pulled out the requisite money and in an imperious gesture proffered it to the driver, whose eyes lit up at the sight of what was obviously an inordinately extravagant tip.
‘Thank you.’
It came through gritted teeth. Only the belated realisation that the driver had been a silently fascinated audience to their earlier exchanges, his eyes practically out on stalks at the sound of that casual claiming of her as ‘moglie mia’—my wife—forced Amy into accepting Vincenzo’s autocratic interference and swallowing down her instinctive protests.
Time enough for those later, she told herself, determined not to be dragged into an embarrassing scene out here in public. She could pay back Vincenzo, both financially and emotionally, once they were inside and away from prying eyes.
The driver’s reaction had reminded her that, even in the sophisticated and cosmopolitan society of Venice, the Ravenelli name was famous, and not just for the production of exquisite and outrageously expensive glass which had formed the backbone of the family fortune for more than three centuries. No doubt the actions of the eldest son of that rich and powerful family would provide plenty of scope for the gossip columns of the more popular newspapers, and she would do well to try and avoid any further attention.
Vincenzo, however obviously had no such compunction.
‘Anything for you, carissima,’ he returned, deliberately laying it on thick. He didn’t quite produce a courtly bow as he bent to offer her his hand to help her out of the bobbing boat, but his actions had something of the same elegant courtesy that successfully hid the way he must be feeling, she thought on a shiver of reaction.
‘My bag…’ Amy managed as she struggled to clamber out with a matching elegance, all the while ignoring the hand he held out to her in spite of the awkwardness of manoeuvring. To touch him, feel those strong, bronzed fingers close around her own, as they had done so often in the past, would be more than she could bear.
‘Guido will see to it.’
Another of those lordly gestures indicated the short, stocky man who, summoned by some silent sign Amy had been unable to catch, had emerged from the house and was already taking her suitcase from the driver.
‘Is that all?’ Vincenzo questioned, frowning at the sight of the small, slightly battered canvas case.
‘All I wanted to bring with me!’
She hadn’t been planning on a long stay. But it was more than that. Amy felt absurdly indignant on behalf of her luggage. The scathing look Vincenzo had turned in its direction seemed to hold all the contempt and scorn he had once displayed for her feelings.
‘After all, I left almost all of my clothes behind.’
‘So you did. But what makes you think that I kept them? Did you not assure me that you were out of my life for good; that you never planned on coming back—ever?’
‘Circumstances change!’
‘So they do.’
His smile in response to her tartness was a mere flicker, there and then gone again in a second. It left no impression of warmth, but rather the opposite, a sensation like the cold slither of something slimy worming its way down Amy’s spine.
‘However, cara, I seem to recall that when I predicted that this might happen, your only response was to shut your door firmly in my face. But perhaps we should continue this conversation inside. You must be tired after your journey, and would like to freshen up.’
‘A drink would be welcome.’ Amy matched his cool politeness tone for tone. ‘And I’d be glad to get out of the sun.’
And perhaps after a short time to recover, to ease the unnatural dryness in her throat, restore some degree of balance to thoughts badly shaken by Vincenzo’s unexpected appearance, she might find the nerve to explain to him exactly why she had come. But not now. Not when her courage seemed to have deserted her completely, driven away by the sort of response that was the exact opposite of the one she had anticipated.
When she had considered how Vincenzo Ravenelli might react to her unexpected appearance back in his life, she had not expected this sanguine indifference. If the truth was told, she had imagined him behaving in much the same way as she had responded to him almost four years before, when he had followed her to England and insisted on seeing her.
Terrified by the ease with which he had tracked her down, and in agony over the cruel betrayal he had just subjected her to, she had been unable to control the whirling panic in her brain and had resorted to the only form of action she could think of. The slam of the door to her mother’s house, literally right in that sneering aristocratic face, still reverberated through her dreams, plagued by unwanted memories.
‘Then come indoors.’
With another of those courtly gestures, he stood back to let her precede him over the threshold.
‘Welcome to my home.’
Will you w
alk into my parlour? said the spider to the fly… Unwanted, the words to the old rhyme resounded inside her head, making her steps unsteady and hesitant. Just what did Vincenzo have in mind, once he had her in his domain? Suddenly she regretted leaving even the dubious protection of the fascinated taxi driver.
Two steps inside the house Amy froze, staring in transfixed amazement at the sheer size and splendour of her surroundings, the breath leaving her lungs in a gasp of shock and admiration.
Below her feet a polished marble floor glowed like soft coral. The high cream walls were bare except for a huge, ornate, gold-framed mirror that stood above an equally ornamental gold-painted table, framed in their turn by the enormous windows with heavy, dark wooden shutters. Shafts of sunlight slanted through the glass, pooling softly on the floor, and beyond the window the waters of one of Venice’s famous canals lapped slowly and lazily in the afternoon warmth.
‘It’s beautiful!’ The words sprang from her lips in spontaneous delight. ‘And so big! I almost feel as if I’m in a—a cathedral instead of a house. But when did you come to live here?’
When she had known him before he had had an apartment in another part of the city. A large, elegant, luxurious apartment, true, but nothing to compare to this splendour.
‘This is the family home.’
Something in Vincenzo’s voice tightened on her nerves, twisting the knots of tension up several degrees so that she swung round sharply, catching the shadow of something in his aristocratic face before he could mask it carefully.
‘My father died last year.’ It was cold and clipped and utterly rejecting of any expression of sympathy before it even had time to form. ‘I inherited the house in his will. The house and the vineyards, and the whole of the Ravenelli business empire.’
Amy’s eyes widened, their already deep blue darkening to almost navy in shock.
‘All of it?’
He had been wealthy in his own right before, but if he now owned and ran his father’s businesses as well, then his wealth was probably in the multi-millionaire class.
‘All of it,’ Vincenzo assured her with another of those swift, dismissive movements of his head. ‘So you see, mia cara, you are now the wife of a very wealthy man indeed.’
In spite of her determination to hang onto her control, his careless words pressed buttons that were dangerously close to the surface.
‘I was never really your wife, not in any true sense of the word!’ It was impossible to hide the way that made her feel. ‘Our marriage, such as it was, was a lie from start to finish. Tell me, Vincenzo, is that how you usually work?’
‘Amy!’
Her name was a sound of warning. A warning the twist of anguish deep inside drove her to ignore.
‘Do you usually have to entice women into your bed with deceit and lies? Isn’t it possible—’
‘Per Dio, Amy, enough!’
He hadn’t raised his voice, but the words slashed at her in a tone of such suppressed violence that they killed the rest of her comments in her throat, leaving her floundering. Seeing the dark cast of anger on his handsome features, the cold blaze of it in his eyes, she was fearfully aware of the risks she had taken in overstepping the mark so far, so fast.
Careful! she warned herself reprovingly. You want his co-operation, not his hostility. It wouldn’t do to be so antagonistic from the first that Vincenzo would refuse to have anything to do with what she had come here to ask. But the memories had hurt so much that it had been impossible to hold back.
‘I…’ she began, but Vincenzo had already directed his attention elsewhere.
‘Guido.’
Whirling round, Amy belatedly became aware of the manservant’s hovering presence at the base of a wide, curving flight of marble stairs and her insides clenched nervously at the realisation that Vincenzo had been so blackly furious because her unthinking words had been flung at him in the other man’s presence.
‘Take the signora’s case upstairs. The blue room.’
‘Oh, but…’ This was not what she had planned at all. ‘I won’t be staying here.’
A look of such fierce scorn raked over her that she was surprised she was still standing and hadn’t been shrivelled to ashes where she stood.
‘And where else would you stay?’ he enquired in a tone so cold it seemed to freeze the blood in her veins.
‘Well, I—I would have thought—in an hotel.’
An imperious gesture with one long-fingered hand dismissed her stumbling suggestion with arrogant contempt.
‘Impossibile. You are my wife, and as such, naturally you will stay here. Guido…’
But the manservant was already on his way up the stairs. Clearly he had too much respect for his employer’s volatile temper to risk having it turned on his unfortunate head if he seemed to question or hesitate to obey the autocratic command.
Seconds later Amy was to wish she had taken the same prudent course as Vincenzo rounded on her, black eyes blazing, ruthlessly reined-in anger etching white marks around his nose and mouth. She had no time to protest, instead finding her wrist caught in a punishing grip as she was bundled unceremoniously out of the hall and through one of the high doorways into an elegant sitting room beyond.
Kicking the door to behind him, Vincenzo came to a halt in the middle of the room and turned to face her, holding her captive hand up between their two bodies as his breath hissed savagely between his teeth.
‘I realise, bella mia, that we have a great deal to talk about, that there is a lot of unfinished business between the two of us—but I will thank you to keep such matters where they belong in private. I do not want the world knowing the messy details of my marriage, and the reasons why you have not lived with me for the past four years.’
‘N-neither do I,’ Amy admitted shakily.
After all, wasn’t that why, ever since the moment she had fled from Venice four years before, she had never admitted to anyone that she actually was married? Even her own mother was blissfully unaware of the appalling consequences of the apparently innocent Italian holiday she had given her daughter as a present for her twentieth birthday.
Like everyone back in England, Sarah Redman knew nothing of the foolish naivety, the blind, deluded emotion that had rushed Amy into the marriage that she had come to see as the worst and most bitterly regretted mistake she had ever made in all of her twenty-four years.
‘So we are agreed, then? In public you are my wife and you will keep a civil tongue in your head.’
She’d really stung his fierce male pride, the pride that made it impossible for Vincenzo Ravenelli to be seen as anything other than the brightest and the best. The most successful; the most powerful. The man who had the world at his feet, whose life was perfection in everything.
Except in his marriage.
Now was the time to tell him the truth. To tell him exactly why she was here, in Venice, in his house. To let him know that she wanted their farce of a marriage to end; that she wanted a divorce.
But even as she opened her mouth to frame the words she looked into the darkness of his eyes, saw the barely suppressed fury still smouldering there, and her courage deserted her in a rush.
‘And—in private?’ was all she managed to croak.
‘In private?’ Vincenzo echoed, his voice dropping an octave, taking on a disturbingly husky note.
His dark eyes were suddenly caressing as they moved slowly and intently over her face, lingering on her wide, almond-shaped eyes, the soft fullness of her lips. What she saw in their darkness made her swallow hard, but with a very different reaction to the tension of a moment before.
‘In private, cara mia, we will see. I have waited four long years for you to see sense and return to me, I reckon I can wait a little while longer.’
Long brown fingers trailed a soft path down the side of her cheek and the pad of his thumb smoothed over the fullness of her mouth with a delicate sensuality that had her lips parting on a faint gasp of shock.
‘Yo
u see…’
Vincenzo’s sensuously triumphant smile told her that, infuriatingly, he had interpreted her reaction as one of pleasurable response to his caress and not the indignation she had really felt.
‘Already it begins, moglie mia. Already we have moved from the cold distance of miles to something better. Something that tells me you will soon forget the foolish pride that has kept you away from me for so long, and remember how it used to be.’
He really believed what he was saying, Amy told herself, her head spinning at the thought. He was truly convinced that all he had had to do was to wait, to sit here in all his lordly arrogance, and eventually she would come crawling back to him. That she would kneel at his feet begging him to forgive her for walking out on him, and pleading to be taken back!
Well, he had another think coming! She would rather die than let him delude himself any longer! It was time he learned the real reason for her being in Venice. Temper or not, she was going to tell him right now!
But even as she opened her mouth to fling the truth straight into his smiling face, Vincenzo bent his dark head and took her lips in a kiss so soft, so gentle that it seemed to reach down deep inside her and draw out her soul from the very depths of her being. And when he took his mouth away again all she could manage was a long drawn-out sigh that might equally have been a sound of delight or of rejection, even she could not say.
‘You do remember, don’t you?’ Vincenzo’s breath was warm against her cheek, his voice a tiger’s purr, as rich with confidence as his smile. ‘How it once was. How it can be again.’
‘How it was?’ Amy repeated tartly jerking her head away from his imprisoning fingers, blue eyes flashing defiance into the onyx gleam of his. ‘You mean the mindless physical attraction I had for you that conned me into believing I felt something more? I was itching for an affair, and you came along at the right moment, that’s all. If you thought it was anything more than my hormones going into overdrive, then I’m afraid you’re very much mistaken!’
If she had expected to shake him, she was desperately disappointed. If anything, he looked even more confident, that arrogant smile growing wider until she had to clench her fingers hard against the temptation to lash out and wipe it from his handsome face.