by Lucy Gordon;Sarah Morgan;Robyn Donald;Lucy Monroe;Lee Wilkinson;Kate Walker
‘There’s something I have to tell you—’
‘What Amy’s trying to say,’ Vincenzo broke in with a cool determination that silenced her simply by sheer ruthlessness, ‘is that we came back early because we were having such a terrible time. It was cold, wet, boring…’
‘Boring?’ It was wrenched from her by shock so great that she didn’t care what she said. ‘Boring? Vincenzo surely you’re not gong to describe some of the greatest lovemaking I’ve ever had in my life as boring?’
She had David’s full attention now, all right. He was goggling at her, his eyes wide and stunned. But Amy’s gaze was directed straight at Vincenzo, seeing the sudden flare of something in the darkness of his eyes. Something brief and raw that flashed on and off for a second and then was gone, covered once more by his normal self-control.
‘Is this true?’ David could hardly get the words out.
‘Amy, don’t tease!’
Vincenzo’s amused reproof sounded so genuine that just for a moment Amy almost believed it, blinking hard in amazement and actually taking a step backwards in dazed reaction.
‘No, of course it isn’t true, David. Amy’s just winding you up. As I said, we cut the holiday short because…’
But Amy couldn’t focus on the rest of the explanation he was giving David. All she could think about was the first few sentences she had heard.
No, of course it isn’t true. For the first time ever, certainly in all the time she had known him, Vincenzo had told a lie. Vincenzo, who swore that he would always speak the truth, had come out with a falsehood so blatant, so calculated that it rocked her sense of reality. He wasn’t a man who stretched the truth as a matter of habit, so his reasons for doing so had to be something special.
But what were they?
‘Look, I don’t know just what’s going on here,’ David was definitely uneasy now. ‘But don’t involve me. You’ve got it all wrong, mate, if you think that I’ve got any sort of claim on Amy. There was never anything between us.’
Even as David was still speaking, Amy saw the effect his words had on Vincenzo. She saw his proud head go back as if he’d been slapped in the face, the way his dark eyes swung round to her pale face. But she didn’t dare look at him, didn’t dare meet that probing, searching gaze.
‘I might have thought I had a chance once, but she made it plain that wasn’t what she wanted. She told me that last week, before you set out for the Lake District.’
He didn’t sound at all cut up about it. But then he hadn’t been too bothered when she had nerved herself to break the news to him, Amy reflected. If she had needed any indication of the lukewarm quality of his feelings for her, that had been it.
‘Naturally, I thought it was because of you, Vincenzo.’
‘No!’
‘Yes, it was…’
Once again their voice chimed together, Vincenzo’s stark negative dying away before Amy’s words of agreement so that ‘it was’ seemed to hang in the air for several nerve-stretching seconds.
‘Amy,’ David turned to her curiously. ‘Just what is this man to you?’
‘Amy…’ Vincenzo began warningly, but she was determined not to listen.
Two lies in as many minutes. The only possible reason she could see for Vincenzo having used them was from some misguided belief that by doing so he was protecting her. And if he wanted to protect her, then surely that meant…
She knew what she wanted, longed for it to mean. But she didn’t dare let that hope even slide into her mind. Not yet. Not until she was more sure of her ground.
‘He’s my husband,’ she declared proudly and heard Vincenzo’s muttered curse in furious Italian.
‘Husband?’ David had clearly decided he was out of his depth here. ‘No, don’t try and explain…I think it’s time I took myself off and left you two to sort it out.’
With every appearance of being relieved to escape, he almost fled out the door. Amy barely saw him go; her attention was focused on Vincenzo, seeing with trepidation the dark frown her turned in her direction.
‘Why the hell did you do that?’ he demanded furiously.
‘What?’ Amy was determined to brazen it out, not to let that scowl disconcert her. ‘Tell him that you were my husband? Why not? It’s the truth, after all.’
‘But not a truth that we want people to know about. I told you—where are those damn divorce papers?’
‘You don’t want—’
‘Don’t tell me what I want or don’t want, Amy! You might be very badly shocked at just how wrong you can be. The papers!’ he insisted vehemently when she still hesitated.
Jumping like a scalded cat, Amy moved hastily to the dresser where she kept the documents. He couldn’t mean it, she told herself. Please let him not mean it.
He was fighting not to show what he felt, she was sure of that. He would take it as far as he could, right down to the wire if necessary, and then…
Hands shaking, she held out the papers to Vincenzo, then watched in horror as he snatched them from her and scrawled his name swiftly in the appropriate places.
‘There.’ He pushed them back at her, heedless of the way they crumpled in her hand. ‘You’re free. Happy now?’
How could she answer that? In the seconds that she had watched him sign his name it felt as if something had died deep inside her, something weak and fragile and very, very vulnerable had had the life crushed out of it by this final gesture.
And yet…And yet…In spite of herself, that tiny flame just would not die. She couldn’t force herself to accept that this was truly it. That this was the end of her ill-fated marriage.
Vincenzo was heading for the door but he suddenly paused, swung back again.
‘I’ll give you your divorce, Amy, but only if you promise me one thing. You have to give me your word that you will never, ever think of marrying anyone like David Brooke again.’
‘Didn’t you hear what David said? We were never engaged—never even went out together! It was all pure fiction—not a word of the truth!’
She had thought to reassure him. Instead, it seemed that she had somehow reinforced whatever terrible thoughts were in his mind.
‘Was it so bad, Amy?’ he asked unevenly, his voice raw and husky.
‘Was what so bad?’
‘Our marriage? Was it so hateful to you that you would sooner lie and claim a relationship you didn’t have in order to—’
She couldn’t let him finish.
‘No! It was precisely because it wasn’t like that that I had to do it! When I came to you in Venice, I told myself that I wanted a divorce, that it was the only thing that was important to me. But right from the start I very nearly gave up on the idea. You only had to touch me and I was lost—I invented the idea of another man as much to protect me from myself as to shield me from you. You were right all along, you see.’
‘Right?’ Vincenzo’s tone was flat, lifeless. His eyes looked like dark bruises above his strong cheekbones.
‘About David. Vincenzo, why do you want me to promise…?’
He was moving away from her again and she had to follow him up the stairs and into his bedroom before she could ask the question once more.
‘Vincenzo, I said why…?’
When he whirled round to face her, his expression made her heart clench on a wave of distress.
‘Because he and his type would never make you happy. You shouldn’t be with someone like that. You should be…’
‘I should be…?’ Amy prompted gently when he let the sentence trail off. ‘With someone like you? Is that what you were going to say, Cenzo? Is it?’
The answer was in his eyes, in the pain he couldn’t quite disguise, in the struggle he had to try and speak. Because she knew that no matter who else he could lie to, he couldn’t lie to her.
‘Is it?’
‘Si! Yes, damn you! Yes!’
She couldn’t let him go now. No matter how difficult it was, she had to push him, make him tell the truth.
‘If that’s the case, then why sign the papers? Why give me a divorce?’
Her heart melted as she watched him fight against the truth, and she knew the moment that he lost the battle.
‘Because I can’t make you happy, either. And I do so want you to be happy. But I messed up every inch of the way and it’s too late now to put it right.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m damn well sure! If I hadn’t known it before, I knew it last night when you wept in my arms after our lovemaking wept!’
He repeated the word like a curse, emphasising his feelings with a violent gesture of one hand.
‘Do you know how that made me feel? To know that I had driven the woman I love to such desperation that she cried…’
‘Cenzo, no!’
She couldn’t let him go on. Didn’t he know what he had said? Had those wonderful, precious words, ‘the woman I love’ slipped out so instinctively that he wasn’t even aware of having spoken them?
‘It wasn’t like that, truly it wasn’t! I was overwhelmed with joy—with the delight of it all! My tears were tears of joy. And when I said I could never marry anyone after that—what I meant was that I could never marry anyone but you!’
Vincenzo’s face was white, his eyes huge dark pools over the carved cheekbones. She’d made him listen, but she hadn’t managed to convince him yet. There was only one thing for it.
She drew in a deep, calming breath, nerving herself to take the biggest chance of all, take the risk of saying the words that one of them had to say if they were ever to redeem this appalling situation. But even as she did so, Vincenzo was turning away again, turning back to the suitcase he had been packing.
‘Oh, Cenzo, no!’
But then she realised that he wasn’t putting anything in, he was taking something out. A small, tissue-wrapped package that he held out to her in a hand that wasn’t quite steady.
‘What’s this?’
She couldn’t look at it as he dropped it into her palm, couldn’t drag her gaze away from the burning darkness of his, the white marks etched around his nose and mouth revealing the inner strain he had fought not to show.
‘Open it.’
Her hands shook so badly that the package ripped, spilling open. Pouring out of the ragged hole, sparkling in the afternoon sunlight, the brilliant jewels tumbled down and onto the dressing-table beside her.
‘What?’ With nerveless fingers, she touched the beautiful diamonds, but couldn’t bring herself to pick one up. ‘Cenzo?’
He was there beside her and in his hand was the chain he had given her on their wedding day. Setting it down in the middle of glittering stones, he took both her hands in his and looked deep into her shadowed eyes.
‘I promised you a diamond for each year of our marriage. These are the four I owe you—and another fifty for all the years I dreamed of being with you in the future. I want you to take them…’
‘No!’ Violently she shook her head, needing to stop him there. ‘I can’t take them, not without the marriage that goes with them.’
‘You want…’
This time he didn’t attempt to try and hide his feelings but let them show openly in his face. Amy saw confusion, hope, doubt, uncertainty chase one another across his stunning features. But it was hope that returned, and held, lifting her own spirits just to see it.
‘Why don’t you tell me about that bet?’ she said softly and saw him close his eyes just once in rejection of the past.
Still with his hands in hers, he led her gently to the bed and drew her down beside him on it.
‘I told you it was never meant to involve you, not specifically. And when I met you, I rejected the whole idea out of hand. I knew you were something very special right from the start, but it was all happening too quickly, and I wasn’t sure of your feelings. I wanted to take things slowly.’
The hand that held hers tightened convulsively, and Amy gently stroked the cramped fingers until they eased slightly.
‘I tried to break off the bet with Sal—told him he could keep the ruby, I didn’t want it. But he took that as meaning I wasn’t interested in you and said he’d make a play for you himself. I’ve seen how my cousin works, Amy! He doesn’t take no for an answer. And you were so young, I didn’t think you could handle him.’
‘You could have been right,’ Amy admitted. ‘I’d told him I wasn’t interested, but he kept pestering me. So are you telling me you married me for my own protection?’
‘No, for mine! When I saw Sal flirting with you, I was insanely jealous. I knew that if he hurt you I wouldn’t be answerable for my reactions—and that told me how I felt about you. I couldn’t let you go, not even to go back to England, not even for a second. And that was why I asked you to marry me.’
‘And then Sal turned up like the serpent in the Garden of Eden?’
Vincenzo nodded his dark head slowly, his eyes fixed on her face.
‘You asked if it was true that I had had a bet with Sal.’
‘And you, with your obstinate insistence on always telling the absolute truth had said yes, even though it now no longer strictly applied. And I didn’t give you a chance to explain. Instead, I made matters worse by my foolish declaration that I was only after you for your money. I suppose that was what was in your mind the time you came to England—when I shut the door in your face?’
‘A few weeks ago you asked me which I wanted most, you or the ruby. The answer was easy—as easy as it had been four years ago—but telling you wasn’t. How could I tell a woman who only wanted my wealth that she meant everything in the world to me and that I would willingly lose a thousand Ravenelli rubies if she would only come back to me?’
‘But you’ve told me that so many times since, only I’ve been too blind to see. But now I know the truth, I wonder how I could ever have doubted you. Cenzo…’
Reaching up a hand to his face, she smoothed away the lines of doubt and strain, tracing the path of her fingers with her lips until her mouth met his. His response was immediate and passionate, his kiss everything she could have dreamed of. It heated her blood, set her pulse racing, woke the familiar, hungry ache deep inside. But before she could surrender to the firestorm that threatened to overwhelm them, there was one thing she had to do.
Easing herself away from Vincenzo’s forceful embrace, she laid soft fingers over his mouth to silence his instinctive protest.
‘I love you, marito mio,’ she assured him softly. ‘And to prove it…’
Bending down, she took the divorce papers from the floor where she had dropped them
‘Why did you sign these?’
Vincenzo’s sigh was deep, but he met her interrogative look without hesitation.
‘The same reason as I tried to drive you away from me on our journey back from the cottage. I wanted to set you free, give you your chance to be yourself, do exactly what you wanted to do.’
‘Oh, Vincenzo, don’t you know that I am myself when I’m with you? That being your wife is being what I want to be? And this is what I think of these…’
With firm, decisive movements she ripped them in half and then in half again, repeating the action until the documents were just shreds of confetti littered over the carpet at their feet.
‘There!’ She surveyed the destruction with intense satisfaction. ‘That’s the end of that! And the real beginning of our marriage—a proper marriage this time, one built on the strongest possible foundation of love.’
The glow in Vincenzo’s eyes told its own story, and his voice was husky with emotion as he said, ‘I can’t wait to make our private marriage a very public one. I want to tell the world that you’re my wife and that I love you more than life itself.’
‘I’d like that too, but right now I can think of something I’d like more…’
A mischievous smile curled Amy’s lips as her wandering hands told their own story, caressing his face, tracing the outline of his lips, moving lower, lower, until a groan of
response that he couldn’t hold back betrayed the effect she was having on him.
‘Amy…’
‘Seeing as we find ourselves in a bedroom, and as we are actually man and wife, it seems a pity to waste the opportunity…Couldn’t we forget about making our marriage public for just a little while? I’m sure the world can wait so we can have our own very private celebration.’
Her pulse rate quickened as he took her lips, his kiss promising a lifetime of happiness, a future that was so much brighter because they were together. And when Vincenzo lowered her to the bed, she went with him in a dream, but a dream from which she knew she’d never waken.
‘Of course we can have a private celebration,’ he whispered against her ear, his hands already busy with the buttons of her blouse, slipping them from their fastenings with a practised ease. ‘I can think of nothing I want more. And for you, innamorata, the world will always have to wait.’
And then he bent his head and pressed his lips to her yearning body and she forgot all about the world and everything in it except for this man, her husband and her love.
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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