Her Wedding Night Negotiation

by Chantelle Shaw

  Nicky nodded.

  ‘He doesn’t speak much,’ Marco told Leah gruffly.

  ‘I know.’ She remained crouching beside Nicky and kept her gaze on his face. ‘It’s okay,’ she said softly. ‘I’m your friend. We’ve had lots of fun together while your papà has been away, haven’t we?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Nicky’s response was quiet but clear. Marco was surprised that his son had even spoken. Usually the little boy was withdrawn and silent with strangers, but Leah seemed to have established some kind of a rapport with Nicky in a way no one else had been able to.

  She stood up and gave Marco a withering look that irritated him. ‘I’ve spent quite a bit of time with Nicky while you were away. Your girlfriend often says she feels unwell, so I offered to look after him. I’m used to young children.’ A small frown furrowed her brow. ‘James had gone off to play golf every day. I didn’t realise he was so keen on the game... But Nicky and I kept each other company.’

  ‘Stacey is not my girlfriend. She is my son’s nanny.’

  Marco had heard the disapproval in Leah’s voice and it increased his sense of guilt. She made him feel like a terrible parent, but he was already painfully aware of his failings. He did not know how to bond with his son, and he envied Leah because she had evidently won Nicky’s trust.

  He felt a punch in his chest when Nicky moved closer to her and gave one of his shy smiles.

  Marco acknowledged that although he had come to hate his ex-wife, Karin had been his son’s mother. Not a very good mother, from what he’d heard, but Nicky must miss her. The little boy needed someone in his life he could form a bond with. Marco had hoped that person would be him, but so far his attempts to build a relationship with the little boy had been unsuccessful.

  He noticed that Nicky was shivering. Although it was a warm evening the lake would have been cold. Marco slipped off his jacket, intending to wrap it around his son, but Nicky shied away from him, so he thrust the jacket at Leah, who draped it around the little boy.

  ‘Nicky shows many of the classic signs of post-traumatic stress. I know he lost his mother a year ago,’ she said softly, ‘have you sought any kind of help for him? It’s much better to deal with psychological issues quickly, rather than hope the problem will simply go away.’

  ‘I hardly think you are qualified to comment on my son’s psychological state or offer advice about his upbringing,’ Marco grated. He had a vague idea that Leah worked in an art gallery and it was there that she’d met his half-brother.

  He felt defensive, because in truth he did not know how to help Nicky. The doctor at the hospital in Mexico, where Nicky had been treated after the accident, and the psychotherapist he’d found in Italy had both advised that Nicky needed time to process everything that had happened. But it had been a year and he was still suffering.

  ‘As a matter of fact I have a degree in special educational needs and a post-graduate qualification in early years primary education. I teach children in the three-to-seven age group who have special needs.’

  Leah’s tone was frosty, but then she turned back to Nicky and smiled warmly at him.

  ‘Let’s get you back to the house and into the bath. Do you want your daddy to carry you or would you like to hold my hand?’

  Nicky’s eyes darted to Marco but he slipped his hand into Leah’s. The rejection felt like another punch to Marco’s chest and he shoved his hands into his pockets, avoiding Leah’s gaze as they walked back along the jetty.

  He’d tried everything he could think of to try to win his little boy’s trust. But Nicky had been just a baby when Karin had disappeared with him. When Marco had finally been reunited with his son a year ago Nicky hadn’t remembered his father.

  * * *

  Wet chiffon flapped around Leah’s legs as she walked back across the lawn. Some of the party guests had come outside to see what was happening and she felt self-conscious as she climbed the steps up to the terrace and caught sight of her bedraggled reflection in the windows of the orangery.

  She looked around for James but couldn’t see him. When she walked into the house the horrified expression on James’s mother’s face when she caught sight of Leah was almost comical.

  ‘Do try not to drip on the carpets,’ Olivia said in a pained voice. ‘Your dress must be ruined.’

  ‘I’m sure it will be fine after a wash. Anyway, I’d rather have a ruined dress than for Nicky to have drowned,’ Leah said pointedly.

  She had expected Olivia to comfort her grandson after his ordeal of falling in the lake. Poor child. His grandmother seemed uninterested in him and his father was utterly heartless. She frowned as she remembered how Marco had snapped at the little boy.

  Leah glanced over to where Marco was now talking to his son’s very attractive nanny. Stacey was practically falling out of her low-cut dress. It was obvious that Marco had chosen the nanny for her physical attributes rather than her ability to care for a child, Leah though disgustedly.

  He turned his head in her direction and she quickly averted her eyes from his hard stare. Nicky was led away by the housekeeper, a cheerful Cornishwoman named Derwa, and Stacey and Marco continued their conversation for a few minutes before the nanny walked off.

  Leah was desperate to go upstairs and change out of her wet dress. From the way that it was sticking to her body she knew it was very obvious that she wasn’t wearing a bra, she realised, glancing down and seeing the outline of her nipples jutting beneath the wet silk.

  Then she saw Marco walking towards her, and her feet seemed to be welded to the floor. He looked breathtaking in a black dinner suit and her stomach swooped when she noticed the shadow of dark chest hair beneath his white silk shirt.

  It was unfair that he was so gorgeous, and very wrong for her to find him so attractive when she was about to marry his brother. Ashamed of her traitorous thoughts, and dismayed by her fierce awareness of Marco, she could not bring herself to meet his gaze when he halted in front of her.

  ‘I apologise if my face repulses you,’ he said in a grim voice.

  Her eyes flew to his face and she shook her head when he ran his hand over the scar on his cheek. ‘It doesn’t repulse me.’

  ‘Then why are you so reluctant to look at me?’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Prove it. Look at me, Leah.’

  His voice was like warm honey sliding over her. Surely she hadn’t heard a hint of self-doubt in his tone? Marco De Valle was the most self-assured man she had ever met.

  Leah huffed out a breath. ‘You must know that with or without your scar you are very good-looking.’

  Something flickered in his eyes. ‘And you, bella, look as beautiful in your soaking wet dress as you did before your impromptu swim in the lake. Which leads me to say what I should have already said, and that is thank you for rescuing my son. If it hadn’t been for your quick response Nicky could have drowned.’

  ‘You would have saved him. I just happened to be closer to the lake when he fell in.’

  Did that breathless voice belong to her? Hearing Marco say she was beautiful had clearly affected her vocal cords.

  He smiled, and the tight band around Leah’s lungs contracted even more. His scar made his smile a little lopsided, but no less sexy.

  ‘And now I must go and run Nicky a bath,’ he murmured.

  ‘I thought the nanny had gone to do that.’

  Marco’s face hardened. ‘I gave Stacey the option of terminating her contract voluntarily or being fired. She decided to leave Nancarrow Hall immediately. My son’s welfare is paramount,’ he insisted as Leah’s eyes widened. ‘I regret that circumstances meant I had to rely on an agency to appoint a temporary nanny for him instead of vetting someone properly myself. And, by the way, I feel the need to tell you he has regular consultations with a child psychologist who is trying to help him.’

  �
��Don’t blame yourself for Nicky’s problems,’ Leah said softly. ‘Your wife’s death must have been devastating. You need—’

  ‘You have no idea what I need.’

  Marco cut her off, his voice as cold as the arctic, and Leah told herself she must have imagined that his inflexible mouth had ever curved into the briefest of smiles.

  She couldn’t explain why tears welled in her eyes as he strode away. Maybe it was the haunted look on Marco’s face at the mention of his wife—as if he hurt deep in his bones, in his soul.

  Leah understood the pain of loss. Not so much for her father, whom she remembered only vaguely, but because his death had been the beginning of her mother’s self-destruction. And then there had been Sammy, her sweet, funny little half-brother, with his cherubic smile. She had adored him for the few precious years of his life.

  She pictured the other little boy with big brown eyes, who reminded her of Sammy. Marco’s son.

  In her job, Leah had met many children who’d suffered emotional trauma following bereavement or the loss of a close family member. She knew from experience that Nicky was desperate for reassurance after losing his mother, and that the best person to give him the love and support he needed was his father.

  But Nicky seemed wary of Marco, and it wasn’t hard to understand why. Marco was an iceman. Leah grimaced as she remembered how he had been so cold towards Nicky when he’d pulled him out of the lake, instead of cuddling him and showing him the affection that the little boy clearly craved.

  She wished she could help Nicky, but there was no time. Tomorrow evening she and her new husband would be on a plane, flying to the Seychelles for their honeymoon at a luxury spa hotel.

  Thinking of James, she went in search of him and found him playing billiards in the games room. His face was flushed, and she guessed he’d had too much to drink.

  ‘Whass happened to you?’ he slurred when he saw her.

  ‘Your nephew fell in the lake and I jumped in and pulled him out.’

  ‘I hope the lord of the manor was impressed that you saved his kid.’

  James picked up his glass and swallowed its contents. Leah wrinkled her nose at the smell of whisky and felt a familiar cramp of tension in the pit of her stomach—a throwback to her childhood, when her mum had started drinking heavily.

  ‘Why did you call Marco the lord of the manor?’

  ‘He owns this place.’

  James laughed at Leah’s obvious surprise.

  ‘Marco inherited Nancarrow Hall from his father—my mother’s first husband. Vincenzo De Valle bought the house when they married, but he died suddenly, leaving all his assets—including the coffee business in Italy and the Nancarrow estate here in Cornwall—to Marco, his son and heir. Marco was just a kid, so the house was held in trust and run by my mother. A couple of years later she married my father and I was born. Nancarrow Hall was our home. When Marco was eighteen he became the legal owner. He allows us to continue to live here, but he never lets me forget that I am reliant on his charity. Marco is the one with the money,’ James said sulkily. ‘You’re marrying the wrong brother, sweetheart.’

  ‘You are the man I want to marry,’ Leah assured him softly.

  She felt relieved that she had an explanation for why James had seemed so moody since they had come to Cornwall. He resented his older half-brother. Perhaps he also suspected that she found Marco attractive, she thought, with a mixture of guilt and shame. No other man unsettled her the way Marco De Valle did. Luckily he lived in Italy and she was unlikely to meet him very often, she reassured herself.

  ‘Tomorrow is the start of our life together,’ she murmured as she moved closer to James and pressed herself up against him. She tilted her face and parted her lips for his kiss, but he turned away from her.

  ‘You’re all wet,’ he muttered. ‘You had better go and get changed.’

  ‘Why don’t you come upstairs and help me take my dress off?’ she asked. Tomorrow she would become James’s wife, and it suddenly seemed ridiculous that he had never seen her naked.

  He looked awkward. ‘There’ll be plenty of time for that sort of thing when we’re on our honeymoon.’

  Leah felt a flicker of foreboding at James’s lack of enthusiasm. Asking him to come to her bedroom and undress her had been a big step in their relationship for her, and she was confused that he had rejected her. In less than twenty-four hours they would make a vow to honour each other with their bodies, but James seemed reluctant even to kiss her.

  She looked over at the bar in the games room, where James’s best man Philip had lined up several bottles of spirits.

  ‘I want to have a few drinks on my last night of being single,’ James told her.

  It was only natural that he wanted to celebrate his last night as a bachelor. He wasn’t having second thoughts about the wedding and neither was she, Leah told herself firmly. Marriage was all about compromise.

  She smiled at him. ‘Don’t get too drunk. I’ll see you in the church tomorrow.’

  Her bedroom was in the newest wing of the house. Derwa had explained to her that the extension had been added in the eighteen-hundreds, but the original house, where the family’s bedrooms were, dated back to the fourteenth century.

  Leah headed straight into the en suite bathroom, peeled off her sodden dress and dropped it into the bath. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if the dress was ruined, although she wished she hadn’t spent so much money on it.

  Amy had persuaded her to buy the striking apricot-coloured dress instead of the navy blue evening gown which, in Leah’s opinion, would have been far more suitable. Her red hair meant that she tended to play safe with colours, and the apricot cocktail dress was strapless and showed off a daring amount of her cleavage—a far cry from her usual style. Leah was not daring, and she preferred clothes that allowed her to blend into the background.

  She stepped into the shower cubicle, and as she shampooed her hair to wash away the smell of lake water she couldn’t help feeling unsettled by James’s response—or lack of it.

  When they had started dating she had been grieving for her grandmother, who had died a few months earlier, and she hadn’t felt ready for a sexual relationship. The truth about why she was still a virgin in her mid-twenties was rather more complicated than that, though, Leah acknowledged with a sigh. She’d dated a few guys at university, but when they had wanted to take things further than a kiss at the end of the evening she’d always broken up with them. It wasn’t that she disliked the idea of sex, but finding someone she trusted enough to want to share that level of intimacy with was another matter. To her, passion suggested a loss of control.

  In her mind, she heard her mother’s voice. ‘One day you’ll know how it feels to fall wildly and crazily in love.’ But Leah had seen the way her mother’s affairs had inevitably ended after just a few weeks or months, and the tears and drinking binges that had followed.

  Leah did not want ‘wild and crazy’ in a relationship. She wanted steadiness and reliability and gentle affection. She’d been grateful that James hadn’t tried to rush things. He had been sweet and patient, and it had been his suggestion to wait until their wedding night to consummate their relationship.

  Perhaps that was the problem, she brooded. James seemed so on edge since they had been at Nancarrow Hall because he was frustrated, but he was clearly determined to honour his promise to wait until they were married before they had sex.

  After her shower, Leah wrapped herself in a robe and returned to the bedroom. The rehearsal dinner would be finished by now, and there was no point in her going back downstairs. She left her hair to dry naturally rather than make any inexpert attempts to blow-dry it. Anyway, the hairdresser who had been booked to come to the Hall early in the morning planned to style her unruly curls in an elegant ‘up-do’

  She flicked through the TV channels but gave up when nothing cau
ght her attention. There was a bottle of wine chilling in an ice bucket in her room. She sent Amy a text, asking if she wanted to join her for a pre-wedding drink.

  Moments later, her bridesmaid texted back.

  I’m with Philip in the boathouse!

  She followed it with a thumbs-up emoji.

  Amy had set her sights on the best man, and it was no surprise that the couple had got together. Leah envied her friend’s uncomplicated attitude to relationships.

  ‘Have you really never had casual sex?’ Amy had once asked her.

  Leah hadn’t admitted that she’d never had any kind of sex.

  She sighed. If Amy was with Philip it seemed likely that James had finished drinking. Perhaps he had gone to bed. Common sense suggested it would be a good idea for her to get an early night before the wedding too.

  She opened a drawer and took out one of the oversized T-shirts she usually slept in. Folded next to it was the daring black chemise that Amy had persuaded her to buy for her honeymoon. On impulse, Leah slipped the chemise over her head and stared at her reflection in the mirror.

  It was amazing how a wisp of silk and lace made her look different. Sexier. Her red hair was the bane of her life and she kept it tied up most of the time. But now it tumbled around her shoulders and spilled over her breasts, which were inadequately covered by the flimsy nightwear. The silky chemise felt sensual against her skin and she noticed that her dark areolae were visible through the sheer lace cups.

  She imagined olive-tanned hands cupping her breasts, strong fingers sliding the straps of the chemise down her arms, baring her to the gaze of grey eyes, which would be gleaming as he bent his head and closed his mouth around one taut nipple...

  No! Wrong man. Wrong fantasy.

  Leah pressed her hands against her hot face, but she could not banish the erotic images of Marco touching her body. She had wanted him to kiss her in the church, she admitted shamefully. It was as though he had awoken a desire that had lain dormant for all her adult life—until now.