Guilt tugged on Leandro’s conscience as he remembered how she had wept when he had accused her of being a thief. What if he had been wrong? Dio, he hoped she didn’t regain her memory, because he did not look good, he acknowledged uncomfortably.
* * *
The weather continued to be fine as late summer slipped into early autumn and the leaves on the trees started to turn to gold. It was warm enough to eat dinner out on the terrace most evenings, and there was no breeze to stir the flames on the candles that formed a pretty centrepiece on the table.
‘How did you become interested in astronomy?’ Leandro asked one night. He was admiring the way Marnie’s hair gleamed like pure gold in the glow of the candles. She seemed to grow more beautiful with every day, he mused. Her pregnancy gave her body a lush softness that was utterly sensual and he frankly could not have enough of her.
Marnie tipped her head back and looked up at the night sky, where the silver disc of the moon was suspended against a backdrop of black velvet and a hundred, thousand, million diamond-bright stars studded the firmament.
‘When I was a kid my dad used to take me and my brothers camping in the summer, and at night when it was dark we would try and count all the stars.’ She smiled. ‘Sometimes when I look at the night sky I think about Dad. He has another family in Bulgaria now, and I wonder if he takes his children camping and tells them about the stars.’
Leandro ordered himself to resist the tug on his heart. ‘I’m sorry your father left you.’
‘I missed him a lot, and I think I studied obsessively as a way of forgetting about all the problems at home. The universe is so vast, and it kind of puts all the things that human beings worry about into perspective.’
Marnie walked further down the garden, away from the light spilling onto the terrace from the house.
‘Mind you don’t fall into the pool,’ Leandro warned as he strode after her. ‘Even with a bright moon, the garden is almost pitch-black. I’ll switch on the outside lights.’
‘No—don’t. You can see the stars more clearly without any light pollution.’ Marnie tilted her face up and spotted many of the constellations that were like familiar friends to her. ‘I always hoped to work as a scientist for the European Space Agency one day, but I guess I’ll have to delay those plans while the baby is young.’
She felt a pang of regret for the dreams she’d once had. Although she was excited about the baby, the prospect of motherhood was daunting—not least because neither of her parents had been great role models.
‘Are you close to your father?’ It was odd that Leandro rarely mentioned his father. ‘You said you were brought up by him after your mother left.’
‘I was brought up by a series of nannies and childcare experts with specialist knowledge of whatever behaviour traits I demonstrated at various stages of my youth and my father wanted removed from the Vialli heir.’
Leandro’s tone was ironic, but Marnie visualised the boy in the photo that she glanced at every time she walked along the landing in the villa, and she remembered the loneliness in his eyes. ‘It doesn’t sound as though your father was very loving,’ she commented.
‘Silvestro loves two things—money and power. He did not seek to have custody of me so that we could bond as father and son...he wanted to control me. We fought many battles, and, no, there wasn’t—and isn’t—a lot of love between us.’
Love had also been lacking in his first marriage, Leandro brooded. After he had discovered how Nicole had betrayed him by letting him believe that Henry was his son he had sealed up his emotions and locked his heart away where no one would find it.
Not even a woman with hair the colour of golden honey and tawny brown eyes that darkened with desire. Especially not her, he thought grimly.
He breathed in the scent of jasmine and told himself it was from the plants that grew in profusion over the pergola. But he could not resist stepping closer to Marnie and he felt his gut twist when he inhaled the sweet jasmine fragrance of her skin.
She came into his arms with a willingness that would have stirred his conscience if he’d had one. But he had set out to charm her when he had brought her to Florence and he knew, in the way he always knew with women, that he had succeeded.
She told him so in the softness of her lips beneath his when he kissed her, and in her sighs of delight when he pleasured her with his fingers and pressed his mouth to the hot, tight core of her femininity. He knew she loved him because she breathed the words against his throat as she bucked and writhed while he thrust into her molten fire, holding back from his own orgasm until she had climaxed once, twice, and her keening cries told him he had charmed her utterly.
In truth he had found it easy to make her happy. She asked for nothing except the enjoyment of his company when he took her sightseeing in Florence. Because he loved the city he had enjoyed taking her to the Duomo and the Uffizi Gallery, to admire incredible works of art by Michelangelo and da Vinci, and they had strolled across the iconic Ponte Vecchio hand in hand just like all the other pairs of lovers.
Leandro had found himself being charmed by her good humour and her surprisingly dry wit, and without realising it he had relaxed his iron guard on his emotions as together they’d explored the city and the surrounding countryside. And the places that he had known from the holidays he had spent in Florence as a boy seemed bright and new because Marnie was with him.
The moonlight glimmered on the swimming pool and cast a gentle gleam on a sun lounger as he lowered her carefully down onto it, before kneeling over her and seeking her mouth with his. He kissed her deep and slow beneath the canopy of stars, and when he undressed her in the moon shadow and ran his hands over the bountiful curves of her breasts and stomach he felt a curious ache inside him that he assured himself must be desire—because he did not feel anything else for her.
He had taught her well, and when she stroked her soft hands over his naked body, drew his hard shaft into her mouth to tease and torment him, he shuddered and tangled his fingers into her silky hair to tug her head up.
‘Witch.’ He groaned as she gracefully lifted herself over him and slowly absorbed his powerful erection inside her velvet heat.
Lying on his back, with Marnie straddling him, her long hair falling forward onto his chest, Leandro stared up at the bejewelled heavens. ‘It’s likely it was on another starlit night that you conceived our child, when we made love on the deck of my yacht in France.’
The moment he had spoken he regretted making a comment that would direct Marnie’s mind to the past, but the damage was done.
Marnie was so focused on the exquisite sensation of being stretched and filled by Leandro’s awesome arousal that for once she did not try to force her mind to remember. But his words evoked a wisp of memory, as fleeting and fragile as the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings: a boat, moonlight, the smell of the sea carried on a gentle breeze... The images disappeared but left her with hope.
‘I think I remembered—just for a few seconds. But that’s a good sign that my memory will return.’
Afterwards she wondered if she had imagined that Leandro’s smile had seemed to become strained. But he gave her no time to think as he rolled her beneath him and urged her to wrap her legs around his back, allowing him to deepen penetration.
‘It doesn’t matter, cara. Nothing matters but this.’
He thrust hard, and she gasped as her body welcomed his mastery.
‘The past isn’t important. While we’ve been in Florence we have made new memories, and we must look to the future...when our child will be born.’
He began to move with a devastating rhythm that drove everything from Marnie’s mind but her need to reach the highest peak, and she sobbed his name as he held her there, teetering on the brink, before he let her fall into the intense pleasure of an orgasm that made her body tremble and her heart
sing.
Her only regret was that Leandro still had not told her he loved her, and she had held back from saying the words to him. But she was sure he cared for her. He had been so attentive and charming—so loving since he had brought her to Florence.
She told herself it wasn’t surprising that he found it hard to express his feelings. He had felt unloved by his father and had been abandoned by his mother when he was a boy. Perhaps he would say the words she longed to hear after they were married. She wasn’t going to let a tiny shadow spoil her happiness and excitement for the wedding that was now only a week away.
Everything was perfect, she reiterated to herself later, when they went back to the villa and Leandro insisted on carrying her upstairs to their bedroom as if she was as delicate as spun glass rather than a woman who was visibly five and a half months pregnant.
She fell asleep in his arms, but during the night she was disturbed by unsettling dreams—or were they memories buried deep in her subconscious? And the next morning she woke to a curious feeling of foreboding that the happy times she had shared with Leandro while they had been staying at the villa had all been a dream, and reality was an ominous cloud on the horizon.
* * *
A week later they flew back to London on Leandro’s private jet, and the reality of her forthcoming life as the wife of a multi-millionaire was brought home to Marnie in a number of ways.
The plane was out-of-this-world luxurious, and the two stewardesses in attendance during the flight were incredibly elegant. Marnie felt horribly aware of her expanded figure and wished she had worn something less eye-catching than the brightly coloured sundress which had been fine to wear around the villa, but fell short in the sophistication stakes.
Leandro had tried to persuade her to buy new clothes for her pregnancy, but she felt uncomfortable using his credit card and the couple of dresses she had bought she’d paid for with her own money.
At least her wedding dress was stunning. She felt a ripple of excitement as she pictured the ivory silk gown which was cleverly cut to skim over her baby bump and decorated with tiny crystals that sparkled like stars on the bodice and the lace overlay of the skirt.
She turned her head towards Leandro, who was sitting beside her, and her stomach dipped as she studied his hard-boned profile. He was clean-shaven today, and his strong jaw and sharply defined cheekbones were as beautifully sculpted as the marble statues in the Uffizi Gallery. For the first time in a month he was formally dressed, in a dark grey suit and a crisp white shirt, and he looked heart-stoppingly handsome and rather formidable.
‘Stop staring at me.’ He laughed when she blushed. ‘If you keep looking at me like you want to eat me I’ll wish the flight was longer and there was time for me to show you the plane’s bedroom.’
Marnie wished she wasn’t so obvious. Leandro knew he had her wrapped around his little finger, but she was unable to stop herself from falling more in love with him every day.
‘I need you to sign some paperwork before the wedding.’ He slid a sheaf of printed papers across the marble-topped table. ‘I’m sorry there are so many pages. My lawyers are meticulous about every detail.’
‘Details of what?’ A lead weight dropped into Marnie’s stomach as she read the document’s heading. ‘Do we really need a prenuptial agreement?’
‘It makes sense. I am a wealthy man in my own right, and I am my father’s only heir. It is my duty to protect Vialli Holdings’ billion-dollar assets.’
Beneath Leandro’s casual tone was a harder note that reminded Marnie of his reputation as a ruthless businessman.
‘I would never want money from your father or from you if we broke up,’ she said curtly, struggling to hide her deep hurt. ‘It doesn’t seem very optimistic to discuss our divorce before we are even married.’
‘It’s just a formality. Once you have signed the prenup we can put it away and forget about it,’ he murmured, in the soothing voice that Marnie was beginning to recognise he used when he was determined to get his own way. ‘Read through it later, when you are at the hotel, and you will see that it is simply to protect both our interests.’
A stewardess came to offer coffee and some irresistible little pastries. As Marnie bit into a sugary treat she brooded on how convenient it was that the stewardess had arrived with a distraction just when Leandro had needed it.
The pilot’s voice sounded over the intercom, asking them to fasten their seat belts as the jet prepared to land in London. Her heart lifted as she looked forward to seeing her aunt and uncle.
‘It was a lovely idea of yours to arrange for me and Aunt Susan to have a day of spa treatments at the hotel before you and Uncle Brian join us for a pre-wedding dinner tonight.’
‘I’m afraid I’ve had to change my plans and I won’t be having dinner with you. When we land, in a few minutes, my chauffeur will drive you to the hotel to meet your relatives while I fly to Paris. I will be back tomorrow morning.’
Marnie could not hide her disappointment. ‘Why do you have to rush off to Paris the day before our wedding?’
‘Business,’ Leandro said briefly. His thoughts turned to Henry, and the latest bombshell that his ex-wife had dropped when she had phoned him the previous evening.
‘Dominic and I plan to make a fresh start in Australia, now that his divorce has been finalised. Obviously Dominic is keen that our son will come and live in Perth with us, and it will be a chance for Henry to get to know his father,’ Nicole had said.
Leandro had resisted commenting on the fact that Dominic Chilton’s desire to be a father to his son had been far from obvious for the first ten years of Henry’s life. And if Chilton was committed to building a relationship with his son, Leandro accepted that it would be best for the boy. He was going to Paris to say goodbye to Henry before he emigrated.
We will still be best buddies, he had assured Henry in a text. But in reality Leandro knew he must encourage Henry to settle quickly into his new life in Australia with his real father.
* * *
The wedding was to take place at an exclusive hotel overlooking Hyde Park, but Marnie’s excitement was dimmed when she arrived in the limousine without Leandro. His chauffeur escorted her into the elegant lobby.
She felt more cheerful when she spotted her aunt, stepping out of the lift.
‘You look wonderful. Pregnancy suits you,’ Aunt Susan greeted her.
Marnie invited her up to the honeymoon suite, and both women’s jaws dropped as they admired the opulent white and gold décor, the velvet carpets, and the magnificent chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.
‘What a shame that Leandro has had to dash off to Paris,’ Aunt Susan said. ‘I remember he couldn’t come to Gemma’s wedding because he went to Paris to visit a friend who had been hurt in an accident.’
‘I don’t remember Gemma’s wedding...’
Marnie felt her usual sense of frustration about her memory loss. But her aunt’s comment had evoked something in her mind. Like a flashbulb going off inside her head, she visualised a train and a newspaper lying on the seat. What an odd thing to remember, she thought. Why would a newspaper be significant?
‘Are you feeling all right? You’ve turned very pale.’ Aunt Susan looked anxious.
‘I’m fine. I’ve just got a bit of a headache. I think we might have a storm later.’ Marnie glanced out of the window at the sullen grey clouds scudding across the sky. Autumn had turned the leaves on the trees in Hyde Park to shades of red, orange and gold, and they fluttered from the branches like colourful confetti in the wind. ‘I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow for the wedding.’
‘It will be perfect, whatever the weather,’ her aunt reassured her. ‘I must admit that your uncle and I were surprised when Leandro phoned only a couple of weeks ago and told us you were getting married. Everything has happened so quickly. But I suppose
you couldn’t delay the wedding...’ She looked pointedly at Marnie’s rounded stomach. ‘I hope you aren’t rushing into things, dear.’ Aunt Susan was suddenly serious. ‘You don’t have to marry Leandro because you are pregnant.’
‘I’m not. I love Leandro and he...he loves me.’
‘Well, that’s all right, then.’ Aunt Susan smiled.
Marnie tried to dismiss her doubts, but they and her headache lingered all day, and even a massage and pampering session in the hotel spa did not help her to relax.
That night, alone in the huge bed in the honeymoon suite, she assured herself that she was doing the right thing by marrying Leandro, and that of course he must love her. But he had never actually told her he did, whispered a little voice in her head.
She wished he was with her now, but he had told her he would spend the night before their wedding at his Belgravia house. When she had said she would rather stay with him, and perhaps going back to the house might trigger her memory to return, he had quipped that it was supposedly bad luck for the bride and groom to see each other just before the wedding.
It was odd, but Marnie had almost believed that he did not want her to visit the house where she had lived with him for a year, most of which had been obliterated from her mind.
But he wasn’t staying at the house in Eaton Square tonight because he had gone to Paris. For business, he’d said. And Aunt Susan had reminded her that Leandro had missed her cousin Gemma’s wedding because he’d been in Paris.
In the distance came the low rumble of thunder. Marnie shivered as something stirred in her mind. There had been a thunderstorm—when? She screwed up her face as she tried to remember. Why did she have a vague recollection of a storm and torrential rain? Why could she see herself in Leandro’s study in the house in Eaton Square? Most oddly of all, why did she feel a sense of dread when she imagined marrying him tomorrow—today, she amended when she glanced at the clock and saw that it was three a.m. and she was still awake.
Trapped by Vialli's Vows Page 11