by Lynne Graham
‘Roel?’ Hilary squawked, utterly taken aback by his behaviour. ‘What on earth are you doing?’
Striding across the elegant landing, Roel vented a husky, sexy laugh and deftly shouldered open the door of the master bedroom suite. ‘Ensuring that last-minute instructions to Umberto concerning dinner or whatever…won’t interrupt us again!’
‘Please put me down…’ Hilary pressed in an enervated rush. ‘You’re supposed to be resting, Roel.’
Roel lowered her down onto a massive bed with exaggerated care. ‘I have every intention of doing so…but only if I have company to do it with, cara.’
Hilary rolled over and off the other side of the bed. Her face was pink with embarrassment. ‘That wouldn’t be restful—’
Lean fingers jerked loose his silk tie, pulled it free and discarded it. Glinting golden eyes flared back at her in blatant challenge. ‘I don’t need to recall the last five years to know that I’m not a restful individual or given to lazing about doing nothing. If I’m not working, I require occupation—’
‘But not this,’ Hilary slotted in breathlessly. ‘You only think that you want to sleep with me but you don’t…not really, you don’t. You just want to make me feel more familiar—’
‘I can’t believe I married a woman who makes a three-act major production out of sex,’ Roel incised with biting derision.
‘I’m trying to think of you, that’s all.’ Hilary twisted her hands together in an unwittingly revealing gesture of stress. ‘This isn’t what you need right now—’
‘Allow me to decide that.’ But Roel had fallen still and his brilliant eyes no longer appeared to be focused on her. His wide sensual mouth twisted and then set into a grim line.
‘What is it?’ Hilary asked worriedly.
Roel glanced back at her, his stunning dark gaze bleak and bitter, hard cheekbones prominent below his olive skin. ‘Clemente, my grandfather, is dead…that’s why the Matisse painting is here in our home instead of at the castello. Am I right?’
As he spoke Hilary lost colour.
‘On this score, you don’t withhold information,’ Roel warned her icily.
Eyes stinging with tears of sympathy, Hilary nodded confirmation with pained reluctance. ‘Yes, I’m sorry. Your grandfather died four years ago—’
‘How did he die?’ Roel demanded.
‘A heart attack. I believe it was very sudden,’ Hilary proffered, grateful that she at least knew that much and praying that he would ask for no other details.
Roel swung away from her and strode over to the tall windows. His powerful shoulders were rigid with tension below the expensive cloth of his jacket. He was closing her out and she knew it. He had mentally dismissed her from his presence as surely as if he had slammed a door in her face.
‘Roel…’ she murmured, aching with a compassion she was afraid to show for fear of offending.
‘Go check the dinner menu,’ he advised very drily.
Hilary’s troubled gaze sparked and she stood taller. ‘I couldn’t care less about stuff like that. Don’t push me away. I was very close to my gran and I was devastated when she passed away—’
‘Some of us choose not to parade private emotions,’ Roel whipped back.
‘OK…OK!’ Hilary threw up both hands in a peacemaking gesture, expressive brows raised at his vehemence.
Face pale and tight with discomfiture, for he could not have rejected her attempt to offer comfort more clearly, she spun round and walked out of the room.
So what do you do for an encore? a snide little voice asked inside Roel’s head. Kick puppies? Do a Scrooge for the festive season?
Umberto was in the corridor. With him was another man, who was carrying her case. Hilary came to an abrupt halt.
‘Signora.’ With a smooth inclination of his head, the manservant thrust open the door of the next room and stood back so that she could enter it first.
His and hers bedrooms, Hilary registered, blinking at the magnificence of the furniture and the awesome amount of space. Just as well it didn’t seem to be the thing for wealthy husbands and wives to share the same room. My goodness, that could have got really embarrassing, she told herself. But that attempt to give her thoughts a different direction didn’t work. Nor did pursing her lips so hard they went numb. When she got an unwelcome glimpse of her reflection in a fancy dressing mirror, she could see that her eyes were still overbright with the threat of stupid, weak, impressionable tears! How could one hard word from Roel turn her to weepy mush?
Why did she have to recall that Roel had once acted more relaxed around her? Yeah, much as if she were the equivalent of hair-trimming wallpaper, she jeered inwardly. But it was true. One day when she had confided how much she still missed her gran he had started telling her about how his grandfather, Clemente, had gone to Nepal to ‘find himself’ when he was sixty-five years old. Better late than never, she had teased and Roel had groaned.
Snatching in a stark breath, Hilary made herself concentrate and she followed Umberto from the room. ‘I’d appreciate a quick tour of the house,’ she told him with a friendly smile, knowing that the request was a necessity. She could hardly pretend that she had been living below Roel’s roof if she didn’t even know her way round it.
Even so the amount of deception involved in the pretence she had taken on with such little forethought was beginning to unnerve Hilary. In just a couple of days, she reflected, Roel would surely regain his memory and he would have no further need for her then. Would he appreciate that she had been trying to help him out? That in fact she had only acted like a good mate?
Umberto was very precise. He would have been happy to show her the interior of every cupboard. Hilary speeded him up by darting from one room to the next, amazed at the sheer size of the house, daunted by the extreme formality of the furniture and all the staff but enchanted by the many paintings. In the basement kitchen she made the acquaintance of the chef but demonstrated dismay rather than approbation when she learned that the exact same menus were rotated on a seasonal basis every year. Scenting the likelihood of greater gastronomic freedom, the French chef kissed her hand, rushed out to the back garden, plucked a vibrant yellow rosebud and raced after her to bestow it on her. Laughing, she slid the bloom into her hair and went back upstairs to freshen up before dinner.
The slender contents of her suitcase had already been tidied away into the dressing room. She had to open every drawer and wardrobe door to find a change of clothes. The shower in the en suite was a multi-jet delight. Smiling at such unfamiliar luxury and wrapped in a giant fleecy towel, she padded barefoot out of the bathroom again.
Roel was in the bedroom waiting for her. She jerked to a halt, her bemused gaze taking in the open door that evidently connected with his room.
‘Dio mio…I like the rose,’ Roel murmured softly.
Hilary semi-raised a self-conscious hand to the bud that she had threaded back into her hair again. ‘Your chef gave it to me…’
Roel had shed his business suit for black designer chinos of faultless cut and a blue casual shirt. He looked so downright gorgeous that she couldn’t stop staring. His smouldering dark sexual attraction hit her like a tidal wave and swept her straight out of her depth and under.
Her admission made Roel quirk an ebony brow. He was not amused by his chef’s impertinence. Yet he could see what had inspired the gesture. His wife had flawless skin, grey eyes as deep as a northern glacier lake and a mouth as provocatively ripe as a cherry. He felt his body harden with almost scientific interest. Every time he saw her, did he always want to have her again? Was he always this hungry to sink into that slim, shapely body of hers?
The awareness of her own naked skin below the towel gripped Hilary with painful shyness. She was mortified by the generous swell of her full breasts above the fleecy fabric but when she collided with Roel’s burning golden gaze her embarrassment was blotted out by the strength of her own response to his overwhelming masculinity. The tingle in her pelvis e
xpanded into a burst of shameless heat and her legs shook. She couldn’t move, couldn’t even think of anything to say.
The atmosphere was electric.
‘I want you, cara,’ Roel breathed.
That confession sent pleasure and pain rushing through Hilary in equal parts. Once she had nurtured secret fantasies of such a magical moment. The moment when Roel would miraculously cast aside all formality and see her as a desirable woman. What had once been her most fervent dream was actually happening. Roel was saying he wanted her and in every one of her dreams she had always thrown herself at him in joyful reward. Only in the present circumstance that was not an indulgence that she could allow herself.
Roel didn’t really want her, Hilary reminded herself with pained reluctance. He was expressing a natural desire for a woman who was in fact an illusion: his wife, the woman he believed he had a normal marriage with and whom he understandably believed he could trust. But she was not that mythical wife. She was just someone he had once paid to go through a wedding ceremony with him, someone whom he cared nothing about on a personal basis. And as if all that were not enough, she was also way beneath his touch in terms of status and success.
Interpreting the forlorn air of desperation that her expressive face wore, Roel was frowning with incomprehension when he reached for her. ‘Hilary—?’
‘We don’t have this sort of relationship,’ Hilary protested half under her breath.
Ignoring her evasive step back from him, Roel closed long fingers round her wrist to halt her steady retreat. ‘I don’t understand—’
Tears clogged her throat, for doing what she accepted was right was the hardest thing she had ever had to do in her life. ‘Look, it’s not important and certainly nothing for you to worry about. But just take it from me, I’m really not a big deal in your life and when you get your memory back you’ll remember that and be glad I put you on your guard—’
Roel had stilled. Brilliant eyes shimmering down at her, his questioning gaze narrowed with suspicion. ‘What have you done that I should treat you in such a way?’
Taken aback by his reaction, Hilary paled in consternation. ‘I haven’t done anything!’
Roel appeared to have forgotten his own strength, for his fierce grip was threatening to crush the narrow bones of her wrist and she was provoked into a gasp of discomfort. ‘You’re hurting me…’
Instantly he released her and his concern and his apology were immediate but his next words made it clear that the issue under discussion was not to be so easily set aside. ‘Explain what you meant by describing yourself as not being a big deal in my life.’
‘All I meant was that you’re so busy working you hardly notice I’m around,’ Hilary mumbled weakly.
‘If you’ve been unfaithful don’t make a mystery of it,’ Roel drawled with stinging softness. ‘Just pack and get out of my life again.’
Hilary realised that she had stirred up a hornet’s nest. Instead of prompting Roel to exercise greater reserve around her she had made the mistake of rousing more stressful concerns. Dismayed, she spluttered, ‘Don’t be ridiculous…of course I haven’t been unfaithful to you!’
‘Sabatino men have a habit of marrying flighty women,’ Roel derided with a brooding roughness of pitch that was entirely new to her, but which carried an impressive note of foreboding. ‘But we waste no time in divorcing them.’
‘I’ll consider myself warned,’ Hilary told him, striving in vain to come up with a light-hearted smile before she vanished back into the bathroom.
In bewilderment, Roel fell back a step. His keen mind was seething with fast and furious questions.
We don’t have this sort of relationship.
I’m not a big deal in your life.
You’re so busy working you hardly notice I’m around.
What kind of a marriage was it where, young though they both were, they were already occupying separate bedrooms? Had that been his choice? She had implied that their relationship was as he wanted it to be. He was angry at the conclusions he was being forced to draw. Failure was anathema to him. Instinct had always made him strive for perfection in every facet of his life. Yet it seemed his marriage was in trouble. Without any apparent desire to rebuke or challenge him, his wife had given him a picture of himself as a workaholic husband indifferent to her needs. He could barely bring himself to credit that he rarely slept with her either. But what else was he to think? Now he could look back and recognise that her initial response to being kissed in the limo had been shock and surprise. Shock and surprise followed by an undeniably eager and encouraging response, he reminded himself. So what was wrong could be fixed…easily!
Hilary got dressed. She put on a stretchy black skirt that ended four inches above the knee and teamed it with a fitted green top that had ribbon ties. Having checked the time, she called her sister’s mobile phone.
‘I’ve been thinking about you all day…how’s Roel doing?’ Emma demanded anxiously.
‘Basically he’s all right but that head injury is still causing him some problems. He’s not quite himself yet.’
‘Meaning?’ her sister probed.
‘That, right now, I can make myself useful over here…purely as a friend,’ Hilary hastened to add.
Almost four years ago, she had not told her sister the truth about her marriage of convenience. She had been afraid that if she did Emma would lose respect both for her and for the institution of marriage. What had then seemed to be a harmless fib couched for the sensitive ears of a girl of thirteen, however, now seemed rather more dishonest and less forgivable. When the emergency with Roel was over, Hilary knew that it would only be fair if she told Emma the whole story. She wasn’t looking forward to the challenge but she knew she could not allow the younger woman to go on believing that she herself might have contributed in some way to the demise of her big sister’s marriage.
‘Exactly what is wrong with him?’
Hilary took a deep breath and explained in a few words.
‘You know what all this means?’ Emma exclaimed. ‘This is going to give you and Roel the chance to make a completely fresh start!’
‘There’s no question of anything like that.’ Hilary sighed, her face clouding with unease. ‘I just want to help him out…that’s all.’
When she went downstairs, Umberto ushered her into the candle-lit dining room where the table glittered with crystal, gleaming china and heavy silver cutlery. Fresh lilies with petals as pale and perfect as snow ornamented the polished wood.
‘This is just so beautiful,’ Hilary was telling the older man when Roel entered.
Roel almost groaned out loud when he saw the embellished table arrangements. Inferno! What was the special occasion? Was it her birthday or their anniversary?
‘Are we celebrating something?’ he enquired.
Hilary went pink and picked up her glass of wine with a nervous hand. ‘Your release from hospital, I expect.’
‘I’ve come up with a safe conversational topic,’ Roel informed her. ‘Tell me about your family.’
Truth to tell, Hilary could not see a problem with discussing her own background with him. ‘There’s not much in the way of family to talk about—’
‘Your parents?’ Having repeated that demand for information, Roel lounged back in his chair with a daunting air of expectancy.
‘They’re dead…in a car crash in France when I was sixteen,’ Hilary explained heavily. ‘My sister, Emma, was eleven.’
Roel frowned. ‘Who took charge of you?’
‘We lived with my father’s cousin.’ Hilary saw no reason to burden him with the reality of what an unhappy and short-lived arrangement that had turned out to be. ‘Emma’s at boarding-school now.’
‘Here in Switzerland?’
Hilary stiffened. ‘No. In England.’
‘No other relatives?’
‘None. My gran mostly raised me,’ she volunteered. ‘She was Italian and when I was a child she lived with us and that was how
I communicated with her.’
‘Yet you don’t speak Italian now with me?’ Roel censured in the same language but his incisive dark eyes were forgiving because she had established a link between their backgrounds that he respected.
She winced. ‘No way. I understand much more than I can speak—’
‘Time that that changed,’ Roel decreed without hesitation.
‘No.’ Hilary continued to answer him in English, her chin at a stubborn angle, remembered humiliation in her gaze. ‘You once laughed yourself sick at my Italian!’ she condemned. ‘You said I sounded like a hill-billy because some of the words I used were out of date.’
‘I was teasing you, cara.’ Amusement and satisfaction combined in Roel’s response for she had forgotten her embargo on talking about the past.
Her face shadowed. No, he had not been teasing her; he had been annoyed with her for having sufficient grasp of Italian to follow what he had arrogantly deemed to be a confidential conversation. ‘We had a bit of an argument,’ she admitted stiffly, ‘but I don’t want to discuss it.’
It was better to stay silent than risk giving him the wrong impression, Hilary decided uneasily. She concentrated on eating instead and the food was delicious. Umberto refreshed her wineglass on at least three occasions. She refused coffee and announced that she was going to bed early because she was tired.
‘It is barely eight o’clock,’ Roel pointed out gently.
‘I never stay up late,’ Hilary told him woodenly and stood up.
Roel thrust back his chair and rose. As she passed by he closed a hand over hers. ‘One question you must answer—’
‘No…don’t say that to me,’ Hilary muttered in alarm.
Diamond-hard dark eyes sought hers and brooked no denial. ‘Whose idea was it that we use separate bedrooms?’
Her mouth ran dry. ‘Yours…’ she told him, recognising that that was the only sensible reply that she could give.
A scorching smile slashed Roel’s handsome mouth. Her heart hammered in response like a bird trapped inside a cage. He released his hold and she stepped back from him on knees that felt wobbly.