by Jennie Lucas
“Amelia gave her dinner and tucked her into bed,” he said. “She’s in the nursery. Go see.”
Jumping out of bed, Lucy ran across the room. She opened the connecting door and held herself still until she heard her daughter’s steady, even breathing in the darkness. Quietly she closed the door.
Maximo had told the truth. Lucy looked at him in the firelit shadows.
“You stayed with me while I slept. All this time.”
“Sì.”
“Why?”
“You’re my wife.”
She shook her head. She’d already cried so much, she had no tears left.
“I’m not your wife. I’m your trust fund,” she said bitterly.
“Lucia, come back to bed.”
Bed?
She had taken that path once before. Desperate for love, desperate to belong to someone, she grabbed her first chance and held on with all her might. A handsome man. An enormous bed. Soft, tousled sheets. Whispered promises of pleasure and comfort. Luring her—tempting her to her own destruction.
She wouldn’t make that mistake again. Never again.
Maximo reached his hand out to her, palm up. She stared at his wide, powerful hand, so inviting in its pretense of vulnerability. “Lucia—”
“Stay away from me!” she shouted. “I don’t care how well you kiss, or how kind you can be!”
As she spoke the words, she discovered that she had some tears left after all. Folding her arms, she turned toward the fireplace, watching the dying, crackling flames as she willed the tears away.
She heard him get up. Heard him come close behind her. He reached for her chin, forcing her to look at him.
Maximo’s eyes were dark as a midnight sea. His chin was dark with stubble, but he still looked handsome and oh, so dangerous in his sharply cut black shirt and trousers. His sensual mouth curved in a smile as he stroked her tears away.
“I’m not a kind man, cara,” he said. “Do not believe that. But I have seen something in you I admire—the way you insist on the truth. So I will tell you this. Sooner or later, you are going to fall to me. You will come willingly to my bed.”
“I won’t—”
“You will feel great pleasure. But do not mistake that for love. Choose to love me, and I will break your heart. That is what happens to all foolish women who do not heed my warning. I do not wish it to happen to you.”
Her whole body trembled.
“But you are different from the others. You will listen. And obey.” He twined a finger around a dark tendril of hair that had escaped her chignon. “You are too intelligent to mistake pleasure for love. Too honest. You know your own soul, and mine.”
She felt his touch cascading electricity up and down her body. In the dark bedroom, lit only by the flickering embers of firelight, they were alone. And all her pounding emotions cried out for the physical release of his embrace.
Oh, this was dangerous. So dangerous.
His gaze traced her full, swollen lips. She wanted him to touch her all over. Her nipples were hard, her skin hot. She wanted him to toss her on the bed and make her feel, for just one moment, like she was truly loved. Even if it was a lie…
“Is it really possible to have sex without love?” she whispered.
He stared at her for a moment in the firelight.
“Let me show you.”
Turning, he picked up the silver hairbrush from the tray. He took her unresisting hand and led her back to the bed.
No, she tried to say, but her lips wouldn’t form the word.
He set her down on the edge of the enormous bed, sitting behind her. With his long, thick fingers, he pulled her dark hair out of the chignon. Slowly he used the brush, softly stroking her hair.
She shivered. Across the room, she could see their reflection in the vanity mirror. What would that mirror reveal if she followed her desire? If she pushed him back against the bed and kissed him hard on the mouth? What would their reflection show if she pressed the softness of her body against his strength, and told him what he somehow already knew—that she was his?
In the intimate portrait of the mirror, she could see the firelight glowing on her skin, on the silver brush, on the sharp lines of his cheekbone and jaw. They looked like any newly married couple on their honeymoon. Protected from the winter’s cold, their bedroom was a candle in the dark, bursting with warmth and light.
She clasped her hands together tightly, staring down at the white knuckles of her fingers. The gentle pleasure of the brush stroking her hair was intolerable. She wanted him so badly that she could hardly bear the sweet agony of remaining still.
She had to stop this. Now.
“Stop.”
Instantly the brush stilled.
She closed her eyes. Telling herself it would just be for a moment, she leaned back against his chest. Putting the brush aside, he wrapped his arms around her. For one exquisite moment, she allowed herself to feel safe and warm, encircled by his protective embrace.
Not protective, she realized.
Deadly. Poisonous.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered. “I can’t.”
He turned her against him on the bed. His face was darkly handsome, and when he spoke, his voice was as commanding and deep as a medieval king’s. “You deserve to feel alive again, cara.” He ran his hand down the valley between her breasts to rest on her belly. “To feel like the desirable woman you are.”
He lowered his head to kiss her cheek. The crook of her neck. Raising her chin, he lowered his lips to her own.
Lucy didn’t want to resist. She couldn’t fight both him and herself…
She had to!
Give herself to a playboy who was incapable of love?
Give herself to a vengeful brute who planned to divorce her before her grandfather was cold in his grave?
“No,” she cried, wrenching away. “I—can’t!”
He looked into her face. Flickers of firelight gleamed in his expressive eyes.
Slowly he gave her a single nod.
“Bene, cara. One night. I give it to you as a gift. One night to grieve what you’ve lost.” He turned to face the other side of the bed. “Tomorrow, we start anew. In Rome.”
“Rome?” Her teeth chattered with relief. “What’s in Rome?”
“Your revenge,” he said. “Against Alexander Wentworth.”
CHAPTER TEN
HEART in her throat, Lucy turned to Maximo as he slid in next to her in the backseat of the silver Maserati Quattroporte the next morning.
“I can’t make Alexander sign this.” She shook the legal documents that would terminate his parental rights forever, then stuffed them angrily into her sleek alligator satchel. “I’m telling you right now. Once I show him Chloe’s picture, he’ll come to his senses and demand to be her father.”
“I’m just glad you let me dissuade you from actually bringing the baby, so he won’t reject her to her face.”
“He won’t reject her!” Lucy leaned forward to wave goodbye one last time at Chloe, who was watching from Amelia’s arms in an upstairs window. The girl had eagerly volunteered to babysit for a few hours, and the whole household staff was available for any necessary help. Lucy still felt uneasy leaving her baby, but she’d realized it was for the best.
“You act like you still love him.”
Maximo’s abrupt tone made her sit up straight in her seat as their chauffeur drove the Maserati smoothly through the villa’s gate. “Of course I don’t love him!”
“Then why do you persist in believing he’d be a decent father?”
“He’s the only father she has.” She looked out unhappily through her window at the clear, bright morning. “I can’t send him away.”
Maximo’s cell phone rang. He answered it, speaking in rapid-fire Italian.
She sat next to him on the beige leather seat of the Quattroporte, feeling the hard heat of his leg pressing against hers. She’d spent the whole night quivering on the far side of their bed,
unable to sleep. Listening to him breathe next to her. Wanting to be closer. Wanting the comfort of his arms around her. But knowing that would be the most dangerous thing of all.
She hadn’t slept a wink. The bags beneath her eyes were roomy enough for international travel.
But obviously he hadn’t had the same problem sleeping next to her last night. In his gray wool coat, with his crisp pin-striped suit and clean-shaven jaw, he looked every inch the handsome playboy prince. The kind of man who could take women—and leave them.
Swallowing, Lucy looked away.
As they traveled through Aquillina, she again saw the ramshackle, ruined villa. While the rest of the snow-swept village sparkled like white diamonds in the sun, this solitary place seemed to hunker in shadow.
Then, from the shadows…something moved.
Her eyes went wide as she saw an aged, graying old man wearing only an old robe stumble through the doorway. Crying after them, shouting in Italian, he frantically waved his hands.
Lucy twisted her body to stare after him through the back window.
“Stop!” she cried out, reaching forward to grab the driver’s shoulder. “Please stop!”
The chauffeur glanced back at Maximo. Hardly pausing in his cell phone conversation, the prince shook his head in refusal.
“Mi scusi, principessa,” the driver said apologetically. The sedan continued rapidly down the road.
Lucy glanced through the back window. The old man stood in the middle of the street, staring after them. When they didn’t stop, he covered his face with his hands in a gesture of despair.
Furious, she whirled back around in the plush leather seat as Maximo snapped his phone shut.
“Didn’t you see that old man calling after you?” she demanded.
“He wasn’t calling after me,” he replied in a tone of utter boredom. He pulled his laptop computer out of a black leather briefcase. “It’s you he wants.”
“Me?” she gasped, and instinctively craned her head back around, but they’d already left him far behind. “Why?”
“That man, cara,” he drawled, “is your sainted grandfather.”
“My—grandfather?” she gasped. “And you left him like that in the street? Are you out of your mind?” She turned to the driver. “Stop!” she cried, but the driver kept going. Desperately she grabbed Maximo’s arm. “Make him stop! We have to go back! Didn’t you see how he needs help?”
Maximo looked at her.
“I would chop off my own hands,” he said evenly, “before I’d lift one finger to help that man.”
Shocked by the grim, deadly look in his face, she fell back into her seat.
“How can you be so cold?” she whispered. She thought of the old man sobbing in the street. “He’s sick and old—dying—”
“A pity he’s taking such a long time about it,” her husband said coolly.
She gasped. “Don’t you have any human feeling at all?”
“No,” he said. “Giuseppe Ferrazzi took that from me twenty years ago.”
She was frightened by the look in his eyes.
“What—what did he do?”
Maximo’s hands tightened. “He destroyed my family. He—”
“What?”
“It doesn’t matter. But for every hour he has left on this earth, he will feel the consequence of his actions. I’ve taken his beloved company. His family. Everything.”
She bit her lip. What could her grandfather have done? Surely that poor old man couldn’t have destroyed Maximo’s family. It all had to be some horrible misunderstanding…
A grandfather. She had a grandfather. A wave of protectiveness went through her. “You can’t expect me to just let him die!”
He ground his teeth. “I expect you to abide by the terms of our agreement. What part of ‘honor and obey’ don’t you understand?”
She muttered, “The same part of ‘love’ that you don’t.”
“This is nonnegotiable, Lucia. I have already made it clear to you. Disobey me in this—contact Giuseppe Ferrazzi in any way—and our marriage will end.”
She swallowed. She’d lose everything. Her daughter’s security—her future.
How could she risk her daughter’s well-being for the sake of a dying old man she’d never met?
And yet…how could she live in the same Italian village, knowing he was suffering in poverty, alone and unloved?
“He’s my grandfather,” she whispered, turning away to stare blindly out at the passing landscape.
There was a long pause.
“We’ll be in Rome shortly,” Maximo said. “You should think of that. And Wentworth. Do you know why he left you?”
She blinked hard, wiping the tears from her eyes. “His note said he was in love with someone else.”
He gave her a sardonic smile. “That’s one way to look at it, I suppose. He had a better offer. A former lover suddenly wanted him back, his boss, Violetta Andiemo.”
“The fashion designer?” she gasped.
“He wanted the wealth and luxury that she could offer. So when Violetta demanded to know if he’d had any other lovers during their yearlong break, he lied. He said no, that he’d spent the whole time pining for her.”
“He said he’d had no other lover?” she whispered. Alex had kept their daughter a secret—as if Chloe’s existence shamed him?
“Violetta Andiemo is forty-five, with all the insecurity and jealousy that comes with an artistic temperament. If she discovers that Wentworth lied—that he took a beautiful young girl as his lover and had a child with her—she’d not only end their engagement, she’d make sure he never got another job. I think that’s why he tried to make a secret deal with your grandfather.” He shrugged. “They’re not even married yet, but I think already he’s finding when you marry for money, you earn every cent.”
“Tell me about it,” she muttered. The car abruptly stopped, and she looked up. Following Maximo’s gaze, she saw a helicopter waiting on the tarmac of a small private airport. “What’s that?”
“A Sikorsky S-76C,” he said, climbing out of the car. Opening her door, he held out his hand. “Our ride.”
“A helicopter?” Her voice came out a nervous squeak. “Can’t we just drive to Rome?”
“Don’t be afraid.” His blue eyes smiled down at her. “I think you’ll like it.”
Like it? That was overstating the case.
As luxurious as the helicopter was, with its white leather seats, flat-screen television and minibar full of champagne, Lucy was relieved to finally descend through the rain clouds that hung thickly gray over Rome. As she and Maximo got into the limo waiting for them on the airport tarmac, her legs still shook from the helicopter’s vibrations. It took ten minutes for her ears to stop ringing.
“I got you something,” Maximo said as a chauffeur drove them into the center of the rainy, windswept city. He took out a small lavender box from his coat and handed it to her.
Frowning, she opened it.
And was nearly blinded.
Inside the lavender box, nestled in black velvet, was a necklace. She stared at it, only dimly hearing the heavy raindrops pounding the roof of the limo. Hundreds of enormous diamonds sparkled at her.
“Those—those can’t be real,” she stammered. She looked up at him with pleading eyes. “Tell me those aren’t real.”
Maximo smiled. “The necklace once belonged to a princess of Hanover. Now it is yours.”
All those carats, and it had an exotic history, too? This necklace had to be worth more money than she’d earned in her lifetime!
Was he trying to buy her?
She closed the box with a snap and put it down on the seat between them.
“If you think that this necklace will convince me to take Alex’s parental rights away, it won’t.”
His dark eyebrows lowered, as dark as the clouds outside.
“It is a gift,” he said evenly. “Something for you to wear to our wedding.”
“Our—
wedding?” she gasped. “I thought we were already married!”
“We are.” He took her hand in his own, looking at the plain gold band on her finger. “But our marriage must appear real in every way. And you deserve something better than this. You deserve a diamond ring fit for my princess—my bride.”
“Oh.” Her cheeks flamed red as she tugged on her hand, desperate to get away from his enclosing grasp, to be free of the rush of sensation and confusion it always caused her. “That’s all right. Really—”
“No. It is not.” Holding firmly to her hand, he brought it to his lips. Gently he kissed each knuckle of her hand. His tongue flicked briefly between her fingers. She froze, unable to move, unable to breathe as she watched him, shockingly imagining his tongue spreading more than her fingers…
“We will have our wedding, cara,” he murmured. “And afterward, a wedding night.”
A wedding night? So he wasn’t going to follow through with the threat to seduce her tonight?
She exhaled in relief.
“It will take weeks and weeks to plan a wedding,” she said hopefully.
He gave her a wicked grin, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Less than a week, actually. But do not fear.” He opened her palm, kissing the tender hollow of her hand. “I won’t make you wait that long. Tonight, cara. Tonight you will be mine.”
He leaned toward her, stroking her hair, and her lips involuntarily parted as she looked into his handsome, arrogant face. If he tried to kiss her now, in the backseat of this Rolls-Royce driving through the wet streets of Rome, could she stop him? Would she have the strength?
“I know it was never your dream to be married in a hotel,” he said. “My men found the book, Lucia. Your dream book. The white church. White dress. Flowers and cake.”
They’d found the little book of pictures she’d pulled out from bridal magazines, back when she thought she would be Mrs. Alex Wentworth? Feeling utterly humiliated, she stared blindly at the passing traffic. “That was a long time ago,” she said stonily. “Nothing but a girlish dream. Forget it. I have.”
“No.” Gently he forced her to look at him. “I do not want you to forget. I want you to have it. I want you to have everything you desire.”