by Lynne Graham
A little voice in her head whispered that he would not be feeling so generous by the end of the day, and even before she silenced that warning voice a shiver of premonition ran down her taut spine like a trickle of icy water. Valente might want her in a way that Matthew had not, but his desire would destroy their marriage before it even got off the ground.
The service was short and sweet. Valente held her hand firmly, slotting a wedding ring smoothly on to her finger. When they were pronounced man and wife, and he turned her round to kiss her, she was startled by the sudden intimacy, the crashing reminder that her body was no longer inviolable.
‘Your skin has turned to ice,’ Valente remarked half under his breath. ‘You must be cold, belleza mia.’
But she had only frozen when his mouth had come down hungrily on hers and the fear of how they would fare later that day had exploded back into her with double strength, making her skin clammy. She would not be his ‘beauty’ then, would she?
‘You look amazing, though. Who chose the dress?’
‘I did,’ she admitted with quiet pride. ‘Mum’s much too fond of frills and bows.’
Valente bent his handsome dark head lower and murmured huskily, ‘I’m especially fond of lace.’
Her pale skin washed tomato-red as that could only be a reminder of the distinctly intimate gift he had had delivered to her the day before. A set of ivory lingerie in silk and lace such as she had never seen before and certainly never worn: a cobweb-fine bra and knickers, teamed with a suspender belt and lace stockings and the all-essential bridal garter. She had felt quite sick looking at the set, even more intimidated when she’d forced herself to put the items on to wear below her dress. After all, no gift could have told her more candidly exactly what her bridegroom expected from her.
He wanted a fantasy woman who would parade half-naked for his enjoyment and be bold and adventurous in his bed. He had built her up in his mind into more than she felt she could ever be. A woman confident of her perfect body and her sexuality would enjoy wearing such lingerie to excite her man. But Caroline was afraid of male excitement, and all too well aware of her physical flaws, of her small breasts and slim hips that carried not a hint of the voluptuous femininity that so many men preferred.
‘You look like an ice queen… Smile,’ Valente instructed on the steps of the church, while his security men kept a bunch of photographers behind barriers. A crowd of journalists were shouting questions in a foreign language.
‘Why are all these reporters so interested in us?’ Caroline whispered. ‘Are they foreign?’
‘Italian. I’m very well known at home,’ he returned casually. ‘And my bride is naturally a source of interest as well.’
The reception was to be held at the same hotel where Valente had stayed. His physical reserve with her was fading fast by the time they got there, and the change in him sent her nervous tension rocketing. Her brain told her that he was now quite naturally treating her like a wife as he put an arm round her and drew her close, or when he covered her hand with his, or took her on to the dance floor and welded her so close to him it was a challenge for her to breathe. Sealed by the slow pace of the music to his lean, powerful frame, she became inordinately aware of his masculine response to their proximity.
‘I’m counting the hours until we’re alone together, cara mia,’ he imparted in a roughened whisper that sent her heart hammering into an all-out sprint. ‘All day we’ve been surrounded by people.’
‘Yes,’ she responded dry-mouthed, dreading the instant when she could no longer hide behind the presence of others.
He covered her champagne flute with his hand when a waiter attempted to top it up. ‘I want my bride wide awake,’ he teased, and she tried to produce a laugh and failed abysmally.
‘I don’t have a problem with alcohol,’ she whispered.
‘But you certainly do have a problem with food,’ Valente countered, taking her aback with that incisive comment. ‘You play with it but you never seem to eat it.’
‘I lose my appetite when I’m nervous…that’s all.’
‘What do you have to be so nervous about?’
‘Well, your guest-list for a start. There are some very important people here,’ Caroline pointed out, desperate to provide a credible excuse for her nerves.
Valente’s impressive guests ranged from Italian politicians and powerful international businessmen to a surprising bunch of very toffee-nosed cousins, who were behaving like aristocrats being forced to socialise with the lower classes. When she had asked him who they were and where they appeared on what he had once assured her was a very humble family tree, he had shrugged and given her no definitive explanation.
‘Don’t let anyone make you feel uncomfortable, tesora mia. This is your day. You are the most important person here,’ Valente had responded instead.
But Caroline felt more like a fake and a cheat, and her frame of mind was not improved by her mother’s comments while she was changing out of her dress into the sapphire-blue shift and beaded jacket that comprised her going-away outfit.
‘Just think,’ Isabel Hales urged. ‘You turned Valente down five years ago and inspired him into making a fortune so that he could come back and claim you!’
Caroline winced. ‘It wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t turn up at the church then and I let him down badly.’
‘But that wasn’t your fault-‘
Five years ago Valente loved me, she wanted to scream. But now she meant nothing more to him than a long-awaited sexual experience. And in that context she certainly would be new and different, she conceded painfully.
Shortly after his private jet took off Valente rested questioning ebony eyes on her and breathed, ‘What’s the matter with you?’
Taken by surprise, Caroline blinked in confusion. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s like someone has sucked all the life out of you,’ he imparted with frowning force, releasing his belt to stand up. ‘You’ve turned into the original walking, talking doll since we came out of that church this morning.’
Intimidated by his attitude, Caroline shrank back into her opulent leather seat. ‘It’s been a stressful couple of weeks…’
‘Per meraviglia! It was your wedding day!’ Valente retorted in a crushing tone of exasperation. ‘Isn’t this what you wanted? Marriage and all the frills?’
Caroline was so tense that she was almost hyperventilating, and her heart was thundering in her ears. She got his point-she really did! She had insisted on marriage when he hadn’t wanted it, but he had still laid on all the bridal trimmings and acted the part of gracious bridegroom. A walking, talking doll. She recognised that it was a cruelly apt label for her stiff reserve so far today. Although in some ways he did not know her at all, he nonetheless knew her well enough to know that something was badly wrong. But there was no easy way of telling her new husband it was fear of the wedding night he was looking forward to that was at the base of her strained behaviour. For an instant she toyed with the idea of telling him the truth, but then, just at that moment, one of the cabin crew entered with a trolley and she lost her nerve.
‘I think I’m a bit tired,’ she muttered apologetically, and it was not a lie for she had barely slept for several nights.
That plausible explanation made Valente’s brow clear and his tension evaporated. He smiled down at her before reaching down to unclip her seat belt and scoop her up easily into his arms. ‘You should try to get some sleep during the flight.’
He set her down in the sleeping compartment and helped her out of her jacket. Everything he did simply unnerved her and, pausing only to kick off her shoes, she lay down still in her dress, her lashes screening her anxious eyes.
‘Wouldn’t you be more comfortable without your dress?’ Valente asked in surprise.
‘I’m fine like this,’ she told him, only breathing again once the door had closed firmly on his exit. Then she lay sleepless, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what on earth she was goi
ng to do…
CHAPTER SEVEN
UNTIL they landed in Tuscany Caroline had assumed their destination was Venice. Now they were driving through rolling woodland with glimpses of hilltop villages and serried ranks of grapevines illuminated by the setting sun. It was a gorgeous landscape. Finally she surrendered to her curiosity.
‘Where are we going?’
‘The Villa Barbieri, left to me by my grandfather, Ettore.’
‘When did he die?’
‘Three years ago.’
‘You must have been close?’ she assumed.
‘No, not in the cosy sense that you mean. But although we had very little in common aside from the blood in our veins, we understood each other very well,’ Valente pronounced coolly.
Caroline was wholly unprepared for the long gravelled drive lined with tall cypresses that led up to the most huge and magnificent house, fronted by a massive portico that would not have shamed a palace. ‘My word,’ she mumbled, wide-eyed. ‘Who was your grandfather?’
‘He was a count, with a dozen other lesser titles and a pedigree that stretched back to the Middle Ages. A man of great pride and intelligence who only chose to acknowledge my existence after the rest of his family had bled him dry.’
‘That sounds like a fascinating story.’
‘But not one I want to share, piccola mia. Content yourself with the knowledge that your mother will be ecstatic when you send her a photo and mention my connection to the aristocracy.’
Caroline reddened as though she had been slapped, but she could not argue with his forecast. Her mother’s great reverence for social status and wealth was as well known as it was embarrassing.
Valente led her into the enormous house, past alcoves adorned with marble statues and a parade of huge oil paintings. They were greeted in a great circular hall by a bowing rotund older man and a long line of staff.
‘The head of the household-the irreplaceable Umberto,’ Valente quipped with a smile as the older man stepped forward.
Caroline was so shocked by what she was discovering about Valente’s life in Italy that even though Umberto addressed her in English she could barely manage to string two words together. Five years earlier Valente had described the tiny Venetian apartment where he lived-the lack of modern facilities, the regular flooding and damp. Yet now it seemed that Valente was living like royalty. Her one-time frog had become a prince, only she doubted that a fairytale ending was in store for him or her.
Her tension broke when a familiar, dainty, furry figure came bounding out of a room nearby. ‘Koko…’ Caroline exclaimed in unconcealed delight, the familiar sight of her pet never more welcome.
Giving the distinctive cries with which she communicated, the Siamese cat wound her slender graceful body affectionately round Caroline’s ankles before condescending to be lifted and stroked, Valente came close to inspect the little animal. Koko’s round blue eyes blazed, the hair on her little head puffing up in an aggressive display as she spat and hissed at him, baring her teeth.
‘No, Koko,’ Caroline scolded, adding without thought, ‘She never took to Matthew either.’
The hardening of Valente’s jawline warned her that that had been a tactless reference.
An evening meal awaited them in a dining room as large and imposing as might have been expected in a building where the hall was big enough to function as a soldiers’ parade ground. While they were served exquisitely cooked and presented food Koko sat at her feet, releasing plaintive cries until Caroline let her pet curl up on her lap.
‘That is a spoilt cat,’ Valente commented.
‘Probably, but I’m very attached to her,’ Caroline admitted, thinking of how often the little animal had mirrored her mood and provided her with company and affection when she was feeling low.
Now, conscious that Valente noticed when she didn’t eat, Caroline made a real effort to rescue her appetite and consume a reasonable amount of what was put in front of her. It troubled her, though, that she was already trying to please Valente, just as she had once tried and failed to please Matthew. Would there ever come a time when she could simply please herself? When dinner was over, Valente addressed Umberto in Italian and swept her up the superb marble cantilevered staircase.
‘This is your room,’ he announced, closing the door in Koko’s face before the cat could cross the threshold, making it clear that there were boundaries to his tolerance. The large bedroom was furnished with polished antiques and ornamented with splendid flower arrangements. He pressed open doors, showing her the en-suite bathroom and then a dressing room before opening a third and final door. ‘This is my room. I like my own space, piccola mia.’
Frozen in the middle of the room, Caroline felt more rejected than comforted by that information. It reminded her that he had not wanted to marry her, that she had forced that issue, and that presumably he carried a certain amount of resentment over that fact. It was a suspicion that could only made her shiver. She did not want to go to bed with a man in a bad mood.
A knock sounded on the door and Valente opened it. Umberto entered with champagne and deftly poured the golden liquid into a pair of flutes, while the funereal silence rubbed Caroline’s nerves even rawer than they already were.
‘Not for me,’ she breathed when Valente extended her glass, for she was afraid that in the over-hyped state she was in the alcohol might make her sick.
Valente took only a sip from his own flute before drawing her to him with slow, steady hands and a dark glow of warmth in his gaze that made her tummy flip. ‘Now, show me how to enjoy being married,’ he urged.
It was an invitation that not unnaturally deprived her of speech-and then the force of her feverish tension blew a hole in her armour. ‘I’m going to disappoint you,’ she told him abruptly.
‘That would be impossible,’ Valente contradicted instantly in his dark accented drawl, sliding her jacket off her shoulders so smoothly that she didn’t know it was gone until he set it aside. He turned her round as though she was indeed that doll he had compared her to earlier, and ran down the zip on her dress. He pressed his lips to a slight smooth shoulder and the dress fell.
Caroline stepped out of it, terrifyingly aware of how sexually inviting she had to look in the scanty lingerie he had given her. She heard him expel his breath on a slow hiss of appreciation. ‘You look fantastic.’
‘Just like a fantasy?’ she pressed unevenly.
One lean hand closing over her limp fingers, he spun her round, smouldering black-lashed golden eyes wandering from the pert tilt of her breasts encased in ivory satin to the lace stockings that encased her long slender legs. ‘Si… I can hardly believe that I finally have you here with me, belezza mia.’
He brought his wide, sensual mouth hungrily down on hers. He played with her pouting lower lip and let his tongue dart skilfully beyond. He tasted her with slow deep hunger and she quivered, afraid of his passion and his strength but fighting the fear with all her might. He caught her up unexpectedly in his arms and carried her over to the big bed. Her imagination immediately leapt ahead to the mortification of nakedness awaiting her, the pain and the resentment.
Valente settled shrewd dark eyes on her. Her rigid position on the bed made him think of a doe looking down a double-barrelled shotgun, and he frowned at that illogical image. But there was no denying that Caroline’s behaviour never quite added up in the way he expected. ESP was still sending him messages he could not interpret. She had wanted this marriage, had fought for it. Yet, for a gold-digger, she had put up a very poor fight before she signed the pre-nuptial agreement without protesting a single clause. His lawyers had been ecstatic, and had assured him that his wealth was ring-fenced for eternity as far as she was concerned. Money evidently wasn’t what turned her on most. But if it was social status he now had plenty of that as well, so what was wrong with her?
She was shy, she had always been shy, and she was a little nervous, he reasoned while he shed his jacket, tie and shoes. A woman who had
been married for almost four years shouldn’t be that nervous, though, should she?
Caroline fought to keep her breathing even. She was so worked up she wanted to gasp. But she was going to lie back and think of England, as no doubt countless women had over the centuries. Enjoyment wasn’t even on the cards. But it was going to work with him, it was going to work, she told herself over and over again. She took off her shoes and scrambled below the linen sheet while wondering what he would say if she asked him to turn the lights out. Then she finally looked at him as he was ditching his silk boxers and gulped, shocked by the awesome size of his erection, thinking that no, no way would she be able to give him what he wanted.
She was as pale as marble and as still, Valente reflected, dark brows pleated in bewilderment. Willing? Unwilling? Odd how it had never occurred to him that she might genuinely not want him. Was he so vain that he had refused even to acknowledge that possibility? But he had felt the buzz between them again, just as he had five years earlier, the unmistakable reciprocal pulse of sexual desire. Reassured by that conviction, Valente lowered himself down on the bed beside her, six foot plus of daunting masculinity and potency. He let his lean sun-bronzed body lightly connect with hers while he kissed her. And she liked the kiss, in fact she loved the kiss, and a little sound of pleasure escaped her. But then she felt the pulse of his arousal against her thigh, and the loosening of her bra as he released the fastening. It was too much too soon, and panic threatened to take her over.
Matthew’s taunts flooded her mind, and she cringed as a lean hand closed over one tiny mound and a thumb massaged the delicate bud of her nipple. A sort of tingling sensation ran through her, like a sting, and she froze, instinct taking over as she steeled herself for at best discomfort and at worst pain.
‘Your breasts are so beautiful, belezza mia,’ Valente breathed huskily, admiring the porcelain-fine skin of the pouting flesh and the nipple as delicate as a pale pink flower. He lowered his arrogant dark head to explore that sweet flesh with his mouth.