Loving the Enemy
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Loving the Enemy
Clare Connelly
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
NOTHING LASTS FOREVER excerpt
The Sheikh’s Baby Bargain
All the characters in this book are fictitious and have no existence outside the author’s very-vivid, non-stop imagination. They have no relation to anyone bearing the same name or names and are pure invention (mwah-ha-ha).
All rights reserved. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reprinted by any means without permission of the Author.
The illustration on the cover of this book features smokin’ hot model/s and, as gorgeous as they are, bears no relation to the characters described within.
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First published 2020
(c) Clare Connelly
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Contact Clare:
http://www.clareconnelly.com
Blog: http://clarewriteslove.wordpress.com/
Email: clare@clareconnelly.co.uk
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Prologue
Six months ago, Villa Fortune.
MASSIMO WANTED TO CRUSH something in the palm of his hands. Fury he had no right to feel buzzed his skin.
His ex-wife was getting married.
Could he even call her his ex-wife given what a sham their marriage had been? One year, no sex, no love, just a front to help an old man save his business.
Massimo ground his teeth together, staring out at the vista he’d always adored – the moonlight shimmering over the terrace and pool. Someone was swimming – one of his brothers – cutting long, lean tracks through the water. Massimo turned away with a soft growling noise.
Alessia was a grown woman. She could do what she wanted.
So why did every bone in his body want him to intervene? To stop the wedding, to go back in time and change their marriage, to call her up and make sure she was happy?
Because their marriage was the one regret he had in his life. Everything about it had been a disaster.
He owed it to her to make sure she wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice…
Chapter One
London, Summer.
“Christo, Alessia. What the hell are you doing here?”
Great question. She stared at her ex-husband, anger making her want to push his chest, desire running rampant in her body even now, five years after their divorce.
“Are you busy?”
Massimo issued a tight frown, looking over his shoulder for a second before opening the door wider. “No.” He waved a hand into the apartment and Alessia hesitated for the briefest moment before stepping through the door. She’d only come here once during their marriage – the penthouse in London – but still it evoked memories of a time she would prefer to forget.
“How are you?”
Oh, great. He was using the same damned tone everyone had been using all week. How are you? Walking on eggshells like she was about to crumple into a heap just because she’d been dumped. Again.
This time wasn’t a divorce. It wasn’t like her breakup with Massimo.
It was both better and worse. Worse because Sam had left her two weeks before their wedding. Better because she’d been smarter this time around, selecting her second husband carefully, choosing someone she liked but didn’t care about so deeply that he had the power to truly wound her.
Massimo had taught her a lesson she never intended to forget.
“Fine. You?” The terse question flicked from her lips on autopilot – it was the polite response, but she didn’t really care.
“Fine. Alessia, it’s two o’clock on a Friday morning. Why aren’t you asleep?”
Was it really so late? She’d been walking for hours then. Distractedly, she shrugged out of the lightweight denim jacket she wore, not noticing the way his eyes dropped to her shoulders and then lower to the generous curves of her breasts, highlighted by the soft cotton of her singlet top.
“Why aren’t you?”
“Did you come here to repeat questions back to me?”
He prompted, a cynical smile lifting his lips. Damn it! She hated him. She hated him, Sam, all damned men in that moment. “Do you have any gin?”
“You don’t drink gin.”
“I didn’t drink gin, when we were married. I do now. Is that okay?”
He lifted his hands placatingly. “Si, certo.”
His stride was long as he cut across the elegant entrance foyer, stepping into a thickly carpeted and sumptuous lounge area. The bar was in the corner. He pulled two glasses from the cabinet and half-filled them with ice.
“How do you take it?”
“Soda and lime.”
He dipped his head in silent acceptance of that, his long, lean fingers deftly mixing the drinks. Beyond him, floor to ceiling windows showed a stunning view of London, twinkling with lights despite the lateness of the hour.
“Maddie told me what happened,” he murmured, referring to his recently-acquired sister-in-law, a woman Alessia happened to think of as a good friend.
“As I said, you were bound to hear. If not from Maddie, from my father.”
Massimo’s smile was more of a grimace. “Your father and I don’t discuss you, Alessia. It’s…better for us both.”
A sense of failure and pain made her lose her breath for a second. The day she’d told her dad she was divorcing his golden boy Massimo had been like switching a light off for the older man. Alessia was an only child but if her father could have had a son, it would have been Massimo. It was something he’d never bothered to hide. Their marriage had made him elated, their failure to speedily conceive a grandchild something he brought up every time she saw him during their marriage. Alessia had often fantasised about telling her father that Massimo had no interest in touching his wife, much less sleeping with her.
Unconsciously she pulled herself up to her full height, looking at Massimo with cool derision. “Nor do we discuss you.”
Massimo’s eyes glittered, black like coal. Alessia held his gaze as long as she could and then stepped forward, wrapping her fingers around one of the glasses of gin.
“Why did you break up?”
“We didn’t break up. I was dumped. Again.”
The words were hollow. Pain vibrated through Alessia.
“Did he say why?” Massimo prompted, picking his own glass up but staying right where he was.
Unexpectedly, tears pricked Alessia’s eyes. She kept looking towards the skyline rather than risking a glance at Massimo and showing him how she felt. But of course he saw. He was Massimo Montebello – intelligent, observant, and perceptive to a fault.
Except when it came to her.
“Just that he didn’t love me anymore.”
The only response was a slightly louder breath sound from Massimo. Alessia braced for the words of sympathy – how tired she was of hearing sympathy from well-meaning friends and family.
“Did you love him?”
She shouldn’t have been surprised. Hadn’t she just been reflecting on how perceptive he was? Leave it to Massimo to pinpoint the most salient detail.
“Do you think that’s any of your business?”
She heard ice chink
against the sides of his glass as he took a sip. “You’ve come to my place at two in the morning after God knows how long since I last saw you. Don’t you think I get a bit of latitude with what I ask?”
“No.” She tilted her face to his, anger firming to resolution. She’d come here with one purpose in mind. She wasn’t going to be side-tracked. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Fine, we’ll change the subject.”
“I don’t mean about my broken engagement. I mean I don’t want to talk to you. Period.”
His brow furrowed. “Then why are you here?”
Her heart flipped. He was too handsome for his own good. Why was he still in suit pants and a shirt? “You’re wearing a suit.”
“I’m wearing half a suit.”
“Right. Why?”
“What else should I be wearing?”
“It’s late. Early.” She shook her head, sipping her own drink in an attempt to bring moisture back to a parched mouth.
“I had a thing tonight. I only got home an hour ago.”
Her heart began to beat faster. “Alone?”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk.”
Her lips twisted in a knowing smile. A hint of her own foolishness made acid burn inside her mouth. “Avoiding the question?”
“Simply holding you to your own rules.”
“If there’s some woman upstairs in your bed then I’ll leave.”
“Would that bother you?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me.”
He came to stand in front of her, breaking her gaze away from the skyline of London.
“It was a work dinner. I’m here alone.”
Her stomach swished. “I don’t care.” She frowned. That was a lie. She cared, but only because she wanted this one night with her ex-husband. The night they’d never had. For one whole year she’d been married to Massimo and not once had he made love to her.
Sam’s desertion had broken her, but not because she loved him. Because she’d thought he would make her happy for the rest of her life. And if she couldn’t be happy, she was at least going to be satisfied.
She’d thrown herself at Massimo enough times in her life – what was once more? The possibility that he’d turn her away again, just as he had during their marriage, was one she didn’t particularly want to consider.
“Then why did you ask?”
She cleared her throat, feeling as anxious as she had been on their wedding day. Except then there’d also been delirium, an overarching sense of happiness and anticipation. She’d loved Massimo back then – what a naïve fool she’d been.
“I just presumed you’d have company.” Her lips twisted into a smile that was laced with remembered pain. “You are ‘billionaire bachelor’ Massimo Montebello, after all.”
“If memory serves, it was you, and not me, who had difficulty with the idea of monogamy during our marriage.”
“Monogamy? How can a sexless marriage be considered anything approaching monogamous? Monastic, more like.” His eyes narrowed at her response, his expression assuming a mask of control that only a few people would have known to fear. Massimo didn’t let his emotions control him but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel, and feel deeply.
“Regardless of the state of our marriage, you were the one who broke our marriage vows.”
Her cheeks flamed pink. She’d wanted him to believe that. God, but she’d been so angry, so furious with him. She’d snapped, desperate to make him jealous. She’d chosen the most public it-spot in Rome and made sure the paparazzi lenses had a perfect view of her being kissed by a famous Italian race car driver.
What the cameras didn’t capture was how brief the kiss was, nor her reaction afterwards. All the news outlets had run a version of that kiss, each of them suggesting she was having an affair with the athlete.
“I’m sure you were no paragon of virtue,” she snapped, lifting a hand to her temple and pressing her fingertips there.
“On the contrary, I think I was beyond virtuous.”
She ground her teeth together. “By ignoring the woman you’d married?”
“At twenty, I have to say, I didn’t consider you to yet be a woman.”
She whipped her head back, her eyes like flint. “How dare you?”
He expelled a soft sigh, his features softening. “Alessia, did you come here to discuss this?”
“It’s not like we talked about it then,” she said quietly, remembering the awful day they’d signed the divorce papers. She’d been hoping to drive Massimo to some kind of emotional response, to inspire a rage of jealousy, a fit of possessive passion, but instead he’d quietly and calmly ended their marriage, dissolving it with all the ease of a man who cared very little for his wife.
“What would you have liked to say back then? What would you have liked to hear?”
“Anything,” she said quietly.
“That I could never stay married to a woman who spent her nights in other men’s beds? That my name was dragged through the papers for months all because you couldn’t stay faithful? You tell me you were a woman and yet you acted like a spoiled child.”
She sucked in a harsh breath, taking an involuntary step backwards. “First of all, I never slept with him – or anyone –while we were married. It was a kiss. A stupid drunk kiss. And even if I had, would that have been my fault? Truly?”
His eyes held an ominous edge.
“You ignored me!” She hadn’t come here to have this out but having started, she found it felt good – cathartic – to throw the words at his feet. “You treated me like a stranger, someone who lived in your house and whom you had to tolerate, but didn’t want anything to do with. I was a flesh and blood woman and you treated me like ice! Marble! Why?”
He was silent, but as if cast from stone. A ripple of fear ran the length of her spine. Not of him but of the strength of emotions she could feel pulsating from him.
It was the response she’d wanted back then, a response he’d carefully denied her.
“Why marry me, Max? You didn’t love me. You didn’t even seem to like me. You sure as hell didn’t want me. So why the hell marry me?”
“You think I didn’t want you?” He moved quickly, closing the distance between them so they stood toe to toe. “You think the reason I ignored your unsophisticated attempts at seduction was because you didn’t interest me?”
She flinched at his unnecessary cruelty.
“I think I was foisted on you to save my father’s company,” she muttered. “I think you knew, and my father knew, that our marriage was a farce – the only way he’d let you help him with his company. I think I was the only one who believed –,”
“What did you believe?” He goaded, not stepping backwards, so she was aware of every movement of his chest as he breathed in and out.
“You know how I felt. How I thought I felt,” she corrected, shaking her head. “I was so stupid then, so desperate to feel…” she shook her head, tears stinging the back of her throat, threatening to fall.
“You were full of love and had no one to give it to besides your father.” The gentle tone of his voice was the last thing she wanted. It made her feel dangerously close to tears.
“And you pushed me away again and again.”
“And if I’d known how you were going to console yourself, I would never have restrained myself, Alessia.” He lifted a finger to her cheek, brushing it over the skin there. “To think I spent a year abstaining from the pleasures of sex, from the temptation of you, all to protect you, when you were rolling in the hay with whomever looked twice at you.”
Her fingertips itched and before she knew it she was lifting her hand towards his cheek, ready to slap him. She half-expected herself to stop – she was a doctor, for goodness sake! Her life was about healing people, not hurting them, but anger was a tide surging through her and before she even realised what she was doing a deafening crack filled the room – the sound of her palm landing hard against his cheek. He must have seen
it coming and yet he stood impassive and strong, barely reacting to her violent outburst.
She gasped and went to take a step backwards but he mirrored her movement, keeping them close together, his eyes boring down on hers.
“Why did you come here tonight?”
Her teeth were chattering. She was shocked – shocked by herself, but the strength of feelings he’d aroused in her, and so easily.
“I don’t know.”
Except Massimo, perceptive, clever Massimo, did know. “Liar,” he teased, lifting his fingers to the hem of her dress, his eyes mocking hers as he lifted it slowly up her thighs, so the air-conditioned breeze in this apartment brushed her skin, lifting it in fine goose bumps.
Her soft moan was involuntary. She tried to marshal her thoughts but found it almost impossible.
He thought the worst of her that he possibly could. For five years he’d lived with the belief that she’d cheated. She alone had known the truth – she was as innocent today as the day she’d married him. And she was sick to death of that. Sick to death of not knowing the satisfaction of sex, the intimacy of a man’s touch. Sick to death of feeling unwanted, unlovable, unsexy, undesirable.
First Massimo, then Sam – though at least with Sam she’d been able to console herself that they’d been friends for so long it was natural for the chemistry not to be there straight away. But with Massimo she’d always felt as though her skin was being burned alive, just by his presence. How was it possible he hadn’t felt that too?
“Is it possible you came here looking for the kind of comfort you can find in a man’s arms?”
Her eyes were huge when they lifted to his.
“Your fiancé left you. Your feelings are hurt. You want me to make that all better?”