by Lynne Graham
Vivien flung her head back, rumpled golden hair tumbling round her flushed cheekbones. ‘Is Bliss Masterson just a rumour?’ she flung at him, knowing even as she spoke that she should not say it but still saying it regardless.
‘I do not owe you an explanation for anything I’ve done since you walked out on our marriage!’ Lucca raked back at her, enraged at the rank injustice of that gibe.
Vivien folded her arms in a defensive movement, upped her chin another aggressive notch and scanned him with furious green eyes that concealed her hurt. ‘Well, actually, I think you do because, like it or not, you’ve still been married to me for the past two years!’
’Sì…’ Lucca sent her a slashing look of angry derision. ‘One of the greatest ironies is that you ended our marriage over an act of infidelity that never happened and in that clever way ensured that I’ve been unfaithful ever since!’
Vivien unfroze from the energising rage that had momentarily blocked out all but the disturbing highly charged surge of her own confused emotions. She went from rage to pain in the blink of an eyelid. She felt like someone snatched from a sauna and plunged into icy snow. Shockwaves coursed through her because she was finally being forced to face a reality she had consistently refused to acknowledge: Lucca’s on-going sexual infidelity and the other women in his life. For the two years of their separation, she had been careful never to open a newspaper that might carry stories about her estranged husband’s social life. After all, why should she have tormented herself with information that could only upset her? Living with the wounding conviction that Lucca had made love to the voluptuous Jasmine Bailey had surely been punishment enough.
His lean, strong face was clenched hard. ‘I’m sorry…that crack was out of order and unproductive.’
But it was too late. The comforting cocoon of ignorance that Vivien had inhabited for two years had been blown wide open to the unkind elements. Now the howling wind and the battering rain were ripping a giant hole in her self-possession. How could she have been so blind that she refused to face how much had changed between them? Yet on the day that Jasmine Bailey’s revelations had been published, she had rushed to London in an effort to save their marriage. She had behaved as if the intervening two years had not happened. Two years during which Lucca, shorn of the inhibiting factor of a loyal and loving wife, had contrived to be as unfaithful with other women as he had not been with Jasmine Bailey. He was quite correct, she reflected heavily: there was an excruciating irony to that horrible truth.
‘Vivi…?’ Lucca breathed in a driven undertone, for she was as pale and distant from him as a victim of shock.
No wonder he had told her that day at his office to stop behaving like the Sleeping Beauty who had been stood up by her Prince. He had moved on from their broken marriage and returned to the life of a single male. He had enjoyed other relationships, slept with other women. But she had not had a single relationship since she had left Lucca. Her platonic friendship with Fabian looked quite pitiful when set next to Lucca’s likely track record.
‘I’ve never slept with anyone but you,’ Vivien muttered with a dulled laugh empty of amusement. ‘My goodness, what a boring person I must be!’
‘I don’t think that’s boring…I think that kind of moral restraint is praiseworthy, cara,’ Lucca hastened to assert, shifting instantly closer to reach for her clenched fingers.
‘Even if you don’t embrace it yourself?’ Vivien prompted in a thin, tight tone, snatching her hand out of reach before he could touch it and widening the distance between them.
Lucca sidestepped that awkward question. ‘I think you should be proud of your values. I am…very much.’
‘I expect it’s suited you. An estranged wife running round having affairs with all and sundry might have been rather embarrassing for a guy like you. Those values of mine have worked against my own interests most, haven’t they?’ At the back of her mind Vivien knew she was still avoiding the real issue of his infidelity because she did not want him to see her pain. Or even worse, tell her one more time that what he did with other women was none of her affair, for what could more clearly demonstrate that their marriage was as dead as he had said it was?
His level dark brows pleated. ‘I don’t see how.’
‘I’d have got over you a lot quicker if I’d got involved with someone else. Obviously the fact that I didn’t find someone else—’
‘What about Fabian?’ Lucca slotted in, getting tenser by the second as the atmosphere escalated in response to the powerful emotional vibrations she was emanating.
‘I haven’t slept with him…yet,’ she adjusted, wondering if she even wanted to share a bed with Fabian. She registered with a sinking heart that she did not have the slightest desire to sleep with Fabian and that therefore she could probably look forward to at least another sixty years of being alone. Bitterness assailing her at the longevity of her emotional attachment to Lucca, she finally attacked the subject she had been evading and she did so head-on and right in at the deep end. ‘So, tell me…how many women have you slept with since we broke up?’
Something perilously akin to panic flashed through Lucca. It took a split second for him to appreciate what the sensation was because that dark sense of dread laced with fear was entirely new to his experience. Her conversational tone made the question hit all the harder. He knew he didn’t want to answer the question. He knew that even one woman had been too many. He snatched in a slow, deep breath like a guy battening down the hatches in a storm and expecting the very worst nature could throw at him.
Vivien watched his gorgeous dark golden eyes veiling as if the shutters were being slammed. Colour accentuated his spectacular cheekbones. In a twisted way she rejoiced in his discomfiture. It went a very little way towards compensating for the agonising jealousy and despair that she was struggling to conceal from him. ‘Aren’t you going to answer me, Lucca?’
‘No,’ Lucca breathed tautly. ‘I don’t want you to get upset about this.’
Vivien stretched to her full, not very impressive height much as if a poker had been welded to her backbone. Her green eyes took on a glassy brightness. ‘My goodness, do I look upset?’ she asked, a tad shrilly. ‘I’m not that sensitive. You said you’d moved on and I’m just trying to move on too—’
‘Too fast. Speed junkies crash.’
‘Trying to frighten me off the subject? Do you think I care how many women you’ve slept with?’ Vivien launched at him, a whole octave higher.
A thunderous silence spread. Lucca was very still and studiously quiet. Torture would not have dredged a look or a sound from him at that instant.
‘I’m understanding a whole lot more about myself all of a sudden,’ Vivien asserted, her hands coiling into tight fists by her sides. ‘The biggest mistake I made was to go on thinking of myself as married when we were no longer living together. That’s probably why I ended up in bed with you again as well.’
His strong jaw line squared. ‘I don’t think so, gioia mia. I think that resulted from something more than habit—’
‘Well, I blasted well don’t and it’s a habit I’m going to outgrow faster than the speed of light!’ Vivien swore vehemently. ‘So, it would be of great assistance to me if you were to be honest now about how many women you have had in your life since I left you. It’s called aversion therapy.’
’Santo Cielo!’ Lean, extravagantly handsome features taut with disquiet, Lucca strode forward and reached for both her hands. ‘Let’s stop this in its tracks. It’s pointless and destructive…you’re tearing yourself apart—’
‘I’m not half so sensitive as you seem to think!’ Vivien dragged her fingers free in a fierce physical repudiation of his offer of support, for his approach had wounded her pride even more.
‘OK…you’re tearing me apart,’ Lucca conceded in a raw undertone. ‘Nothing I have done is worthy of one moment of your distress—’
‘My life has overflowed with distress since I met you,’ Vivien told him
with a venom created by the awful hollow opening up inside her like a chasm. ‘I’ve spent two years with my head buried in the sand. I wouldn’t let myself think about what you were getting up to. Tell me…how long did you wait before you found someone else to fill that vacant space in our bed?’
‘Vivi…please!’ Lucca spread his arms wide in a gesture of violent frustration and strode over to the window, savage tension etched in every angular line of his big, powerful frame.
‘No, I’m entitled to ask. I’ve decided that I’m not going to deal with feelings any more, but with cold, hard facts,’ she declared wildly.
‘But you’re not a cold, hard person and I don’t want you to be hurting.’
Her pointed face froze, her pallor pronounced. ‘I’m not hurting…where did you get the idea that you still had the power to hurt me? You’re everything I loathe in a man. I’ll bet you’ve had a string of women and affairs but you still have the nerve to tell me that my old-fashioned values are praiseworthy!’
Lucca was unusually pale beneath his bronzed skin. ‘Vivien—’
‘I want you out of here right now!’ Vivien gasped, because her throat was raw with tears and she was terrified of breaking down in front of him. ‘You’re welcome any time you choose to see Marco but I want you to give me that key you used to let yourself in tonight. When I start entertaining my male friends to cosy nights in, I won’t want you walking in and embarrassing me!’
‘What male friends…cosy nights in?’ Lucca growled in a wrathful drawl utterly shorn of cool sophistication. ‘Have you gone out of your mind?’
‘No, I’ve finally come to my senses. Instead of looking back to our marriage like you are the only man in the world, I’m about to start living again!’
‘You have this idea that I’ve been sleeping around—’
Vivien surged past him with prickling eyes and hauled open the front door in invitation. ‘As far as I’m concerned, the day you climbed into a bed that did not contain me you died as a husband.’ She stuck out a small hand. ‘Key, please.’
Incensed and incredulous golden eyes locked into hers. ‘Where’s the woman who said she wanted me back at any cost?’
‘How dare you throw that in my face?’ Vivien practically sobbed at him, so desperate was she to get him to leave before she lost what little control remained to her.
‘OK?’ Lucca set the key down with measured precision on the window sill of the porch. ‘Will you please calm down?’
‘I don’t need to calm down—’
‘I don’t want to leave when you’re feeling like this—’
‘What’s wrong with the way I’m feeling?’ Vivien demanded, with a choky indistinctness to her usually quiet voice. ‘I’m feeling fabulous…free and ready to grab my new life as a divorced woman the first chance I get!’
‘Will you phone me later?’ Lucca pressed tautly.
‘I’ll be far too busy, and how would I call you anyway? Only your lovers have your mobile phone number!’ Vivien gibed in a fevered burst of bitterness.
Lucca printed the number on the pad by the hall phone.
‘Please get out,’ she urged between clenched teeth.
The door flipped shut on his departure, sealing her into the silent house. She let Jock out of the kitchen and clutched him so tight he yelped in complaint. Apologising, she set him down again. In shock at the force of her own emotions, she finally crept back upstairs and looked in on the nursery. Marco was asleep, the twin ebony crescents of his lashes smooth on his olive cheeks, one arm flung out with his little hand open in complete relaxation. A great sob started building up inside her and she hurtled into the bathroom where a trio of discarded nappies let her know how much trouble Lucca had had dealing with that necessity. Choking back sobs, she told herself that she should have guessed that Lucca’s much-vaunted fondness for the company of young children would have entailed little experience at the sharper end of child-care.
She stared into space. Tears were running down her face in rivulets. She sniffed and gulped. Funny how she had not been able to wait to get him out of the house but the instant he had gone she was tormented by her aloneness. Yet she had Marco and she reminded herself that many people had a lot less. Yes, she had Marco to love. Don’t think about Lucca and beds and fantastically beautiful women like Bliss Masterson…
All the feelings that she had been too craven to deal with were crowding in on her now. When she fondly imagined that she could put their marriage back together, she had been living her own little fairy tale and fighting to have a happy ending. Lucca had made love to her again and she had reasoned that that had to mean something. But hadn’t she once read somewhere that couples on the brink of divorce often did end up back in bed together at least once? It hadn’t meant anything to Lucca: he had even said so. Just sex. Just a meaningless, mindless thing…
The phone was ringing. She stumbled into the bedroom to answer it.
‘May I come back in?’ Lucca enquired flatly.
She squeezed her sore eyes tight shut. ‘No…’
‘I feel like hell…you’re upset. I should be with you.’
‘No…no, you shouldn’t be,’ Vivien framed jaggedly and she put the phone down again.
The walls of the room felt as if they were closing in on her. She opened the door out onto the small balcony that overlooked the back garden and dragged in a great gulp of the cool evening air. When the phone began ringing again, she walked out of the bedroom and closed the door on it. But phones were ringing downstairs as well. She sank down on a step halfway down the handsome staircase. What foolish threats she had flung at Lucca! He wasn’t in love with her. How would it upset him if she slept with other men?
A tempest of emotion was storming her. He was the guy she loved but she couldn’t have him. She didn’t want to see him, knew she shouldn’t let herself see him. How was she supposed to get over him when he wouldn’t leave her alone to grieve? She had to be braver, stronger. Surrendering to a spiteful desire to make him feel bad would do her no good at all.
The bell on the front door shrilled an unmistakable call and when she ignored it, the knocker went instead. Irritated beyond bearing, she leapt up, raced down the stairs and shouted through the door, ‘I hate you!’
Her voice snapped in the middle like a bendy twig and she wondered if he too had heard that all too audible sound of weakness through the thickness of the wood door separating them. Biting back another tempestuous sob, she retreated hurriedly into the hall again. She did not want him to realise that she was crying.
On the other side of the solid door, Lucca swore long and low and fiercely. He should never have given that key back! Somehow he had to get back into the house even if it meant breaking in. Light was pouring down from the balcony at the side of the house. Lucca groaned when he saw the door left open up there like a mocking invitation. All his life he had fought his fear of heights. It was his biggest, darkest secret.
He got into his McLaren F1 and reversed it to below the balcony. He got up on the roof of the car. It was an old house with high ceilings and he still had a good way to climb. Edging across the slippery car roof, he grasped a hold of the sturdy ivy trunk growing up the wall. He snatched in a shuddering breath. He knew his fear was irrational. He was barely six feet off the ground but it felt like twenty. In a cold sweat, he hauled himself up. Jock hurtled out of the house, literally bouncing on his three legs with every frantic, explosive bark.
‘Shut it!’ Lucca warned him.
Jock growled, a long, deep, threatening growl that would not have shamed a Rottweiler about to attack.
Lucca reached for the stone parapet and dragged himself over it. Clumsy with eagerness, he misjudged his step and landed hard enough on the tiled floor to jar every bone in his powerful body. Jock jumped on top of him like a Victorian big-game hunter posing for a triumphant photograph.
Vivien was curled up in a ball on the bottom step of the stairs, still and silent and small. ‘Vivi…’ he breathed tautl
y to lessen the shock of his appearance.
In disbelief, she twisted round and vaulted upright. ‘Lucca…?’
‘I was worried about you. I came in by the balcony. ‘Lucca strode down the stairs, intense golden eyes locking to her pale tear-streaked face and lingering.
She could think of nothing to say. She trembled, tried to shrug and, without any warning whatsoever, he just hauled her into his arms and brought his mouth crashing down on her full, soft lips, demanding and receiving a response that was equally fierce.
He crushed her to him, spread long fingers either side of her face and let his sensual mouth rove from her unmarked brow to her delicate eyelids and the petal softness of her cheeks before closing with hungry, passionate fervour to her parted lips again.
‘We mustn’t…’ she mumbled in a daze.
Shimmering dark golden eyes ensnared hers with unashamed purpose. ‘We must…’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘BLISS…?’ Vivien whispered uncertainly, anxious green eyes pinned to Lucca’s lean, strong face.
Lucca vented a harsh laugh. ‘It was over with her the first time I held you in my arms again. I had a fever only you could quench, gioia mia.’
Vivien breathed again. ‘I’m glad…’ How glad, she was too choked up to tell him. It was an effort to think when she simply wanted to glory in him. He was holding her so tightly that she could barely feed air into her lungs. Even though he was crushing her, she made no complaint, for she craved that intensity with every fibre of her being.
With a husky sound of all-male satisfaction, Lucca bent down and swept her slight body up into his powerful arms. ‘While I’m with you, there will be nobody else in my life,’ he delivered with hard clarity. ‘That is how it always was and I don’t change.’
There was an unspoken rebuke in that declaration. That was the moment that she knew she had to say goodbye to the past if it was not to destroy the present. He was an all-or-nothing guy and, two years ago, she had let him down. She had walked out on their marriage instead of staying to fight for it and the truth. She had to accept that in leaving she had given Lucca his freedom back. He had not put his life on ice, he had gone on living, and what right did she have to complain about that? She had judged him unfairly, denied him any right of appeal and her lack of trust had outraged his sense of justice. Her thoughtless limitations on the time he got to spend with Marco had only increased his bitterness, adding to the barriers he had put up against her. But one by one those barriers were falling and that was all, absolutely all that really mattered, she told herself feverishly. The second chance she had prayed for had been granted and she was not going to be ungrateful for it.