Her Wedding Night Negotiation (Mills & Boon Modern)

by Chantelle Shaw

  ‘I need to be sure I make the right decision—for you, me and Nicky.’

  Something flickered in his eyes, but he dropped his arm and did not try to stop her when she hurried out of the summerhouse.

  Leah walked through the gardens and sat on a bench in a secluded corner, but she did not notice the colourful flowers or hear the birdsong. Her heart was thumping as if she’d run a marathon and her breath came in short gasps.

  Since her argument with Marco four days ago she had longed for them to make up. But now she realised that they could never go back to their old relationship. Either she agreed to their marriage being permanent or she would have to leave. Both choices would break her heart.

  Torn by indecision, she eventually returned to the villa and found her feet drawn to Marco’s study. The faint tang of his aftershave hung in the air and her stomach muscles contracted. She stood by the window, which overlooked the pool, and watched him with Benedetta and the children. The sound of childish voices and laughter taunted her as she imagined having a family of her own—Nicky playing with his younger siblings, Marco cradling their newborn baby in his arms. The dream was hers to take, and she ached with longing.

  But what would happen if the chemistry fizzled out and he no longer desired her?

  Would she become bitter and resentful, knowing that he would never love her as she loved him?

  She had spent her life feeling second-best to her mum’s alcohol addiction. Her mum loved her, but she loved alcohol more.

  Choking back a sob, she turned away from the window. Her gaze fell on the photo of Marco’s first wife that he kept on his desk. Karin had been so beautiful. Her ghost was everywhere in the villa, and the many pictures of her were a constant reminder to Leah of everything she lacked.

  The designer dresses she wore to parties gave her a veneer of gloss and sophistication, but she was just an ordinary woman who had foolishly fallen in love with an extraordinarily handsome and attractive man. She had tried once or twice to ask Marco about Karin, but he had retreated behind barriers that Leah understood now she would never breach.

  She sagged against the desk, tears filling her eyes at the thought of saying goodbye to him and to Nicky. Marco had been right when he’d guessed that she had formed a strong bond with his son.

  Glancing out of the window again, she saw Nicky playing happily with his father. In a few months he would probably have forgotten her. The kindest thing to do was to leave now, with no emotional goodbyes and no risk of Marco persuading her to stay, Leah thought as she hurried up to her room.

  It did not take her long to shove a few clothes into her holdall and grab her passport. Writing a note to Marco took longer, but she kept it brief.

  When she went back downstairs, the maid was taking delivery of a huge bouquet of roses. Dozens of exquisite pink and white blooms tied with pink ribbon. Perhaps Marco had ordered them for his aunt’s birthday tomorrow.

  The florist’s van was parked outside, and Leah stepped out of the house and spoke to the driver.

  ‘Si, signora,’ he said, not hiding his curiosity. ‘I can take you to the ferry port.’

  Marco had left the children watching a film in the TV room. They were worn out after an afternoon in the pool. His heart had swelled as he’d watched Nicky playing and heard him chattering and laughing with his cousins. The change in his son was incredible, and it was mostly down to Leah.

  He strolled across the entrance hall and discovered the bouquet of flowers he’d ordered for her on the table. His mouth curved upwards as he imagined her pleasure when he presented her with the roses. Pleasing Leah and making her happy was surprisingly addictive.

  Picking up the bouquet, he ran upstairs and opened the door to her room, surprised to feel his heart thumping. She had asked for time to consider his suggestion that they tear up the contract which stated they would divorce after a year. He’d given her a couple of hours. Surely she would have an answer for him by now?

  In truth, he’d hoped for a more enthusiastic response from her when he’d told her his idea during lunch. He had known she wouldn’t be impressed if he mentioned the wealthy lifestyle that would be hers if she remained as his wife. Leah was the most unmaterialistic person he’d ever met. Instead he’d played his ace—her love for Nicky.

  Her room was empty. He had already checked the living rooms downstairs—the only place left to look for her was his bedroom. Was she waiting for him to make love to her there?

  Desire jack-knifed through him as he visualised her naked body reflected in the mirror above the bed. He pushed open the connecting door and his anticipation turned to disappointment when he saw she wasn’t there.

  The ominous sight of a folded piece of paper made his stomach swoop. Jaw tense, he strode across the room and snatched it up from the dressing table. Leah’s neat handwriting covered three lines on the paper.

  Three goddamned lines—that was all he was worth!

  His temper simmered, but in the pit of his stomach he felt sick with dread as he read the note.

  Marco,

  I appreciate your offer, but your reason for making our marriage permanent is not good enough for me to agree.

  It’s best if I go now, before Nicky becomes too attached to me.

  Be happy.

  Leah

  The words ‘be happy’ mocked him. How the hell was he supposed to be happy when the only person other than his son who made him happier than he’d been in his entire life had disappeared, leaving behind a pithy note that might as well have been a coded message for all that he understood it.

  Dio, he had asked Leah to be his wife for ever and he’d promised her his fidelity. What more did she want? If those things were not enough to persuade her to stay married to him...he would have to set her free.

  He sank down onto the edge of the bed, feeling the sickness in his gut intensifying to a raw agony that he’d felt only once before.

  He would never forget the day he’d gone to the house in Rome that he’d bought for Karin—on top of the multi-million-pound divorce settlement he’d agreed to give her. He hadn’t resented paying for it, so that Nicky would have comfort and security, but Karin had gone. She had disappeared with his baby.

  Initially Marco had been terrified that they’d been kidnapped. But the police had confirmed that Karin had emptied her bank account, and a neighbour had stated that she’d told him she was moving abroad.

  Losing contact with his son had felt like a bereavement, and there had been times when his grief had been overwhelming. His gutted feeling now, finding Leah had gone, was an inexplicable emotional response. He didn’t believe in romantic fantasy, and he had no idea why he felt as though his heart had been ripped out of his chest.

  A shattering idea pushed into Marco’s mind and crystallised into a certainty that stunned him. There was only one real reason why he wanted Leah to be his wife. But instead of being honest with her he’d asked her to stay in their marriage for Nicky.

  The truth was that he wanted so much more. He groaned and pressed his hand against his breastbone, where the pain was savage.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE MIST WAS a thick blanket over Bodmin Moor, and the rain which had been fairly light when Leah had left the village lashed her face, driven by a vicious wind that felt no pity for anyone unwise enough to walk out on the moors without a coat. She had not taken account of the autumn storms that blew in off the sea around the Cornish coast.

  When she had boarded a plane bound for the UK a week ago it had been warm and sunny in Naples. Now Leah doubted she would ever feel warm again. Or that the sun would ever shine.

  The sullen sky reflected her mood as she bowed her head against the relentless wind and huddled into the woollen wrap that the landlady at the Sailor’s Arms had lent her.

  ‘Be careful up on the moor,’ she’d warned. ‘It’s easy to lose your way.
’

  Nancarrow Hall rose out of the mist, grim and forbidding. Like its owner, Leah thought. At least that had been her first opinion of Marco. But that had been before she’d realised that he’d buried his heart with his first wife.

  Grief took a terrible toll. Look at her mum after Sammy had died.

  If anything good had come from her crazy decision to force Marco into marriage, it was the fact that Tori was stronger and more positive than Leah had ever known her to be. She did not suppose that her mother was completely free from her reliance on alcohol. There was no magic pill that would cure that kind of dependency. But ongoing therapy was helping Tori come to terms with the past.

  Leah now understood the desperation to escape the pain of a broken heart. For the first two days after she’d arrived in England she’d shut herself in her flat, crawled under the duvet and cried a river of tears. She understood the temptation to anaesthetise agony with drink or drugs. But she hadn’t. She’d discovered a steeliness in herself that would not allow her to wallow in self-pity or rush back to Capri and accept Marco’s flawed idea of marriage.

  She deserved to be loved. And she had to believe that one day she’d meet someone who would give her his heart.

  If only she could rescue her own bruised heart from a life sentence as Marco De Valle’s prisoner...

  She brushed her hand over her wet face and told herself it was rain, not tears, running down her cheeks. Pulling the wrap tighter around her, she began to walk back towards the village. The sound of footsteps behind her made her glance over her shoulder, and her heart stopped as a figure strode out of the mist.

  ‘Madre di Dio!’

  Marco’s expression was thunderous as he scowled at her, his eyes gleaming like tensile steel.

  ‘Why are you standing out in the rain looking like a waif and stray from a historical melodrama? Do you see yourself as Cathy and me as Heathcliff?’ he asked sardonically. ‘Perhaps you have come to haunt me?’ His mouth tugged into a crooked smile that did not warm his cold, cold eyes and he touched his scarred face. ‘God knows I’m an ugly enough brute to play Heathcliff.’

  ‘You are not a brute—and you are certainly not ugly,’ Leah snapped.

  She was still reeling from his materialising in front of her when she’d believed she would never see him again. His mockery had stirred her temper. She felt alive for the first time since she’d left Villa Rosa—but that was the effect Marco had on her, she thought bleakly.

  ‘It’s not me who haunts you,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  She shook her head. ‘What are you doing here? Is Nicky with you?’

  ‘He has stayed in Capri with my aunt. As to why I am here...’ Marco shrugged. ‘You are in Cornwall so of course I followed you.’ While Leah was still trying to assimilate this astounding statement, he murmured, ‘I have just come back to the house after visiting your mother at The Haven.’

  ‘What? How did you know...?’

  ‘I first looked for you at your flat in London. Obviously you were not there. But your neighbour—Gloria, I think she said her name was—told me that your mother was having treatment at a private clinic in Cornwall. You told me your mother has an alcohol dependency, and my housekeeper remembered that you had asked her for directions to The Haven earlier in the summer.’

  ‘Quite the sleuth, aren’t you?’ Leah muttered.

  ‘I was surprised that you hadn’t told your mother you are married to me. She offered us her congratulations, by the way.’

  She gasped. ‘You had no right to tell her. I didn’t want Mum to know that I’d had to marry a stranger so that I could claim my inheritance and pay for her treatment.’

  ‘I assured her that we had married for conventional reasons.’

  ‘Wanting me to be a mother to your son is not a conventional reason—nor a good enough reason for us to stay married.’ Leah couldn’t disguise the raw emotion in her voice.

  Marco stared at her. ‘Why did you rush away like that, without a word?’

  ‘Didn’t you see my note?’

  He swore and shoved his wet hair off his brow. It was only then that Leah realised how heavy the rain had become. Marco’s jacket was plastered to his body, and her curls were flattened against her head.

  ‘What is the only reason you would agree to stay married to me?’ he asked.

  ‘The fact that you don’t know says everything,’ she said thickly.

  ‘I think I do know. You have fallen in love with me—haven’t you, cara?’

  Heat scorched her face. ‘I don’t have to stand here and listen to you. It’s over between us.’ She swung away from him, and would have tripped on a grass tussock had his arm not shot out to steady her.

  ‘Like hell it is,’ he growled. ‘You are my wife and I want you back.’

  ‘Why?’ Leah tried to pull her arm free, but he tightened his grasp. ‘You don’t want me!’ she cried.

  ‘This is what I want, beauty.’

  He hauled her against him, one hand in her hair, the other caressing her jaw as he bent his head and covered her mouth with his own. He kissed her with a barely controlled passion that fired Leah’s blood and made her heart sing. If this was the last time that she was to be in his arms she wanted to leave her mark on him, so that every time he kissed another woman he would remember her mouth softening beneath his and would taste her on his lips.

  She tipped her head back to allow him better access to her mouth and wound her arms around his neck. He groaned and pulled her hard against him, so that her breasts were crushed against his chest and she could feel his powerful thigh muscles through the thin skirt that was clinging to her legs.

  His hand on her jaw gentled and he stroked his finger down her cheek, brushing away the raindrops and the tears.

  ‘This is what I want, Leah,’ he said roughly, when he lifted his head at last. He stared down at her, his eyes glittering beneath heavy lids. ‘Your fire, your beauty, your unique mix of innocence and sensuality that drives me crazy with wanting you. Always.’

  ‘But what you are offering is not enough for me.’ She stepped away from him and it was the hardest thing she had ever done. ‘You have my heart, Marco.’ She could no longer deny her love. ‘But I don’t have yours because it belongs to your first wife. I know you are still in love with Karin.’

  He jerked his head back as if she’d slapped him. ‘I didn’t love her. I hated her.’

  ‘Don’t lie.’ She dashed her hand over her eyes. ‘You keep pictures of her in every room at your house in Capri. She was so beautiful... I can’t compete, but I won’t be an afterthought in your life, always knowing I’m second-best. I can never replace Karin.’

  ‘No, you damn well can’t!’

  Marco was staring at her, and the dangerous look in his eyes made Leah shrink from him.

  He frowned and held out his hand. ‘Come,’ he said tersely. ‘Before we both drown.’

  She put her hand in his because she did not have the willpower to walk away from him. She was weak, she told herself as he led her through the gate on the boundary of Nancarrow Hall and across the garden.

  As they neared the house she hesitated. ‘I can’t see your mother and stepfather looking like this.’

  ‘They’re not here. They’re staying in Northumberland to be near James and Davina and the baby, when it arrives in a few months.’ He gave her a wry look. ‘My brother was always my mother’s favoured son. The house has been shut up since they left and the central heating has packed up,’ he explained when they entered the chilly sitting room.

  The embers of a fire were in the grate and he rebuilt it with logs and kindling. He struck a match, and soon yellow flames were dancing.

  Leah drew nearer to the fire while Marco disappeared. He returned minutes later, wearing dry clothes, and handed her a towel and one of his s
hirts.

  ‘Get out of your wet things and maybe you won’t look so goddamned fragile,’ he muttered, in a rough tone that curled around her foolish heart.

  Ignoring his sardonic look, she stepped behind a big winged armchair while she stripped off her sodden skirt and top and put on his shirt, fastening the buttons. When she returned to the fire he had brought a tray with steaming cups of coffee. She wrapped her cold hands around the warm mug and stared at the flames, conscious of the erratic thud of her heart.

  Marco did not join her on the sofa. Instead he leaned against the stone fireplace. He looked devastatingly handsome in faded jeans and a grey wool sweater, his damp hair curling at his nape. Leah stared at his bare feet and wondered how she was ever going to get over him.

  ‘I met Karin soon after my uncle died,’ he said sombrely. ‘Federico had been like father to me and I missed him badly. Karin was beautiful, and vivacious, and I was lonely.’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘It’s strange how you can have a full social life and plenty of friends but still feel alone.’

  Leah nodded but did not speak, afraid to interrupt Marco now that he was finally opening up.

  When it’s too late, she thought, biting her lip.

  ‘Soon after we started our affair Karin told me she was pregnant. I wanted my child so I married her. But cracks had already appeared in our relationship,’ he said.

  Leah gave him a startled look.

  ‘De Valle Caffè was going through a difficult period and I often worked eighteen-hour days. Karin was bored, and after Nicky was born she left him with the nanny much of the time while she went out with her friends.’

  He paused to stoke the fire until it blazed.

  ‘She had ambitions to be an actress, and when Nicky was a few months old she started sleeping with a film producer. We decided to divorce, and I agreed to her extortionate settlement in return for shared custody of our son. A week after I’d paid her the money she disappeared and took Nicky with her.’