The Bride's Awakening (6 page)

He smiled. Although he hadn’t moved—he was still leaning against the billiards table, his arms folded—he exuded a lethal grace and Ana could all too easily imagine him closing the distance between them, taking her into his arms and…For heaven’s sake, she’d read too many romance novels. Had too many desperate dreams.

That was just what she
wanted
him to do.

‘I think it’s a very good idea.’

‘You don’t want to kiss me,’ she said, meaning it as a blunt
statement of fact. Yet, even as she said the words she was conscious of how Vittorio looked
now
. There was no lip-curl of disdain, no dismissive flick of the eyes. His eyes were dark, dilated, his cheeks suffused with colour. She felt the answering colour rise up in her own cheeks, flood through her own body.

‘Oh, but I do,’ he murmured, and Ana realized just how much she wanted him to want to kiss her. And she wanted it too; she’d realized that a long time ago, but now she knew she was going to do it. It had become both a challenge and a craving.

‘All right, then,’ she said and, smiling a little, her heart thudding sickly, she stepped forward, straight into his arms. She’d been moving too fast and Vittorio’s hands came up to steady her, gripping her bare shoulders so she didn’t smack straight into his chest. Still, she felt the hard length of his body against hers, every nerve and sinew leaping to life in a way they never had before. This was so new, so intimate, so
wonderful
.

His lips were a millimetre from hers as he whispered, ‘I like that when you decide to do something, you do it completely, with your whole heart.’

‘Yes, I do,’ Ana answered, and kissed him. She wasn’t a good kisser. She knew that; she’d had too little experience. She was unschooled, clumsy, her lips hard against his, pressing, not knowing what to do. Feeling a fool.

Then Vittorio opened his mouth, somehow softening his lips—how did he do that? Ana wondered fuzzily—before she stopped thinking at all. His tongue slipped into the warmth of her own mouth, surprising her and causing a deep lightning shaft of pleasure to go right through her belly and down to her toes. Her hands came up of their own accord and bunched on his shirt, pulling him closer so their hips collided and she felt the full evidence of his desire; he hadn’t been lying. He
had
wanted to kiss her.

That knowledge thrilled her, consumed her with its wonderful truth. This was not a man who had been left cold by her kiss,
by her body. His body had betrayed
him
. Right now, at least, he wanted her. As a woman.

A sense of power and triumph surged through her, making her bold. Her hands slid down the slippery fabric of his shirt to the curve of his backside, pulling him towards her. She heard Vittorio’s little inhalation of shock and smiled against his lips. He moaned into her mouth.

His mouth remained on hers, exploring the contours of her tongue and teeth, nipping and sliding, the intimate invasion making Ana’s head spin and her breath shorten. She’d never known kissing could be like this. The few chaste pecks and stolen smacks at the end of a date didn’t compare, didn’t even count—

And then it was over. Vittorio released her and Ana took a stumbling step backwards, her fingers flying to her swollen lips.

‘Well…’ she managed. Her mind was still fuzzy, her senses still consumed by what had just occurred. Then she looked at Vittorio and saw how smug he seemed. He was smiling as if he’d just proved something, and Ana supposed he had.

‘I think that quite settles the matter, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Nothing’s settled,’ Ana retorted sharply. She wouldn’t have her future decided by a simple kiss—even if there hadn’t been anything simple about it at all. It had been amazing and affirming and even transforming, the evidence of Vittorio’s desire changing everything—or at least it
could
change everything. ‘You said I should have a few days to consider.’

‘At least you want to consider it now,’ Vittorio replied, and Ana knew nothing she said could take away his smug sense of superiority that he’d been able to kiss her senseless. He looked completely recovered, if he had been shaken by that kiss, which Ana suspected he had not. Not like she had. All right, he’d desired her—for a moment—but perhaps any man would react the same way when a woman threw herself at him, which was essentially what Ana had done.

Except Roberto hadn’t. When she’d thrown herself at
him
, desperate to prove herself desirable, he’d remained as still and cold as a statue, as unmoved and emotionless as a block of cold marble. And when she’d finished—pressing herself against him, kissing those slack lips, he’d actually stepped back and said in a voice filled with affront, ‘Ana, I never thought of you that way.’ A pause, horrible, endless, and then the most damning words of all: ‘How could I?’

Still, Ana thought, gazing at Vittorio with barely disguised hunger, was that brief stab of desire—that amazing kiss—enough to base a marriage on? Along with the respect and affection and everything else Vittorio had promised?

‘I’ll consider it,’ she said at last. ‘I didn’t say I would say yes.’

‘Of course.’

Ana touched her lips again, then dropped her hand, knowing how revealing that little gesture was. ‘I should go home.’

‘I’ll have my driver take you.’ Vittorio smiled wryly. ‘I’m afraid I’ve drunk a bit too much whisky to handle a car myself, and of course I would never jeopardise your safety.’

Ana nodded in acceptance, and Vittorio pressed the button by the door again. Within seconds a servant appeared. He issued some quick instructions, and then turned back to Ana. ‘I’ll see you to the door.’

They didn’t speak as he led her through several stone corridors back to the huge entryway of the castle. The doors were already open and a driver—in uniform, even at this hour—waited on the front step.

‘So this is goodbye,’ Ana said a bit unevenly.

Vittorio tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear, his fingers trailing her cheek. That smugness had left his eyes and he looked softer now, if only for a moment. ‘For now.’

Ana tried not to react to the touch of his hand. She felt incredibly unsettled, uncertain, unable to believe that the kiss they
had just shared was real, that it could possibly mean something. At least to her. She had a horrible sick feeling that Vittorio, inflamed by a bit of whisky, had been acting on his baser instincts, trying to prove that this marriage bargain could actually work.

And he’d almost convinced her that it could.

Too tired to think any more, Ana slipped into the interior of the limo—the Porsche, it seemed, was reserved for Vittorio’s exclusive use—and laid her head back against the seat as the driver sped away from Castle Cazlevara back to her home.

Vittorio watched the car disappear down the curving drive with a deep, primal sense of satisfaction. He’d as good as branded her with that kiss; she was his. In a matter of days, weeks at the most, she would be his bride. His wife. He felt sure of it.

He couldn’t keep the sense of victory from rushing through him, headier than any wine. He’d set out to acquire a wife and, in a matter of days—a week at the most—he would have one. Mission accomplished.

He imagined the look on his mother’s face when he told her he was getting married; he leaped ahead to the moment when he held his son, and saw Bernardo’s dreams of becoming Count, of taking control of Cazlevara Wines, crumble to nothing. He pictured his mother looking stunned, lost, and then the image suddenly changed of its own accord and instead he saw her smiling into the face of his child, her grandchild. A baby girl.

Vittorio banished the image almost instantly. It didn’t make sense. The only relationship he’d ever had with his mother had been one of, at worst, animosity and, at best, indifference. And he didn’t want a girl; he needed sons.

Yet still the image—the idea—needled him, annoyed him, because it made a strange longing rise up in a way he didn’t understand, a way that almost felt like sorrow.

Vittorio pushed it aside once more and considered the practicalities
instead. Of course, there were risks. With any business proposition, there were risks. Ana might not fall pregnant easily, or they might only have girls. Baby girls, all wrapped in pink—Vittorio dismissed these possibilities, too exultant to dwell on such concerns.

He supposed he should have married long ago and thus secured his position, yet he’d never even considered it. He’d been too intent on avoiding his home, on securing his own future. He’d never thought of his heirs.

He’d run away, Vittorio knew, the actions of a hurt child. Amazing how much power and pain those memories still held. His mother’s averted face, the way she’d pushed him down when he’d attempted to clamber on her lap. He’d stopped trying after a while. By the time he was four—when Bernardo had been born—he’d regarded his mother with a certain wariness, the way you would a sleeping tiger in a zoo. Fascinating, beautiful, but ultimately dangerous. And now he was a grown man, nearing forty and he still remembered. He still hurt.

Self-contempt poured through him, dousing his earlier sense of victory. He hated this feeling, as if he was captive to his own past, chained by memories. Surely no man should still lament his childhood? Besides, his hadn’t even been very deprived: his father had loved him, had given him every opportunity and privilege. To feel sorry for himself in even the smallest degree was not only absurd, it was abhorrent.

Vittorio straightened his shoulders and pushed the memories back down.

Now he would run away no more. He’d come back to Veneto to finally face his family, his past and make it right in the only way he knew how. By moving on. His first family had failed him, so he would create a second. His own. His wife, his child.
His.

His face hardening with determination, Vittorio turned back to the dark, empty castle and went inside.

V
ILLA
R
OSSO
was dark as the driver let her out at the front door. Ana tiptoed through the silent downstairs, wanting to avoid her father, even though she was fairly certain he was asleep. Enrico Viale didn’t stay up much past ten.

She fell into bed, and then thankfully was fast sleep within minutes. When she awoke, the sun was slanting through the curtains, sending its long golden rays along the floor of her bedroom. Last night filtered back to her through a haze of sleep: the so-called business proposition, the billiards, the whisky, the
kiss
. She had no head for hard liquor at all. If she hadn’t had that whisky, she wouldn’t have kissed him, wouldn’t have let him kiss her. Wouldn’t now be wondering about all the possibilities—all the hopes—that kiss had given her, her body awakened to its natural longings, her soul singing with sudden, fierce joy—

Quickly, Ana swung out of bed and dressed. She strode downstairs, determined to put the thoughts and, more importantly, the treacherous desires Vittorio Cazlevara created within her out of her mind completely, at least for a morning. They were too seductive, too dangerous, too
much
.

She stopped short when she saw her father in the dining room, eating toast and kippers. Her English mother, Emily, had insisted
on a full English breakfast every day and, sixteen years after her death, Enrico still continued the tradition.

‘Good morning!’ he called brightly. ‘You were out late last night. I waited up until eleven.’

‘You shouldn’t have.’ Almost reluctantly, Ana came into the dining room, dropping her usual kiss on her father’s head. She wasn’t ready to talk to her father, to ask him how much he knew. She remembered his lack of surprise at Vittorio’s return, or the fact that he’d asked her out to dinner. Had he known—could he possibly have imagined—just what the business proposition was? The thought sent something strange and alarming coursing through Ana’s blood. She didn’t know whether it was fear or joy, or something in between. Had Vittorio asked her father for his
blessing
? How long had he been planning this?

‘Come, have some breakfast. The kippers are especially good this morning.’

Ana made a face as she grabbed a roll from the sideboard and poured herself a coffee from the porcelain pot left on the table. ‘You know I can’t abide kippers.’

‘But they’re so delicious,’ Enrico said with a smile, and ate one.

Ana sat down opposite him, sipping her coffee even though it was too hot. ‘I can only stay a moment,’ she warned. ‘I need to go down to the offices.’

‘But Ana! It’s Saturday.’

Ana shrugged; she often worked on Saturdays, especially in the busy growing season. ‘The grapes don’t stop for anyone, Papà.’

‘How was your dinner with Vittorio?’

‘Interesting.’

‘He wanted to discuss business?’ Enrico asked in far too neutral a tone.

Ana looked at him directly, daring him to be dishonest. ‘Papà, did Vittorio speak to you about this—this business proposition of his?’

Enrico looked down, shredding a kipper onto his plate with the tines of his fork. ‘Perhaps,’ he said very quietly.

Ana didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved or, even, strangely flattered. She felt a confusing welter of emotions, so she could only shake her head and ask with genuine curiosity, ‘And what did you think of it?’

‘I was surprised, at first.’ He looked up, smiling wryly, although his eyes were serious. ‘As I imagine you were.’

‘Completely.’ The single word was heartfelt.

‘But then I thought about it—and Vittorio showed me the advantages—’

‘What advantages?’ What could Vittorio have said to convince her father that he should allow his daughter to marry him as a matter of convenience? For surely, Ana knew now, her father was convinced.

‘Many, Ana. Stability, security.’

‘I have those—’

‘Children. Companionship.’ He paused and then said softly, ‘Happiness.’

‘You think Vittorio Cazlevara could make me happy?’ Ana asked. She didn’t sound sceptical; she felt genuinely curious. She wanted to know. Could he make her happy? Why was she thinking this way? She’d been happy…Yet at that moment Ana couldn’t pretend she didn’t want more, that she didn’t want the things her father had mentioned. Children. A home of her own. To kiss Vittorio again, to taste him…

Some last bastion of common sense must have remained for she burst out suddenly, ‘We’re talking about
marriage
, Papà.’ Her voice broke on the word. ‘A life commitment. Not some…some sort of transaction.’ Even if Vittorio had presented it as such.

‘What is your objection?’ Enrico asked, his fingertips pressed together, his head cocked to one side. He’d always been a logical
man; some would call him unemotional. Even after the death of his beloved wife, his calm exterior had barely cracked.

Ana remembered the one time he’d truly shown his grief, rocking and keening on Emily’s bedroom floor; as a girl, the sudden, uncontrollable display of emotion had shocked her. He’d closed her off from it, slammed the door and then, with a far worse finality, shut himself off from her rather than let his daughter see him in such a state of emotional weakness. The separation at such a crucial time had devastated her.

It had been two years before they’d regained the relationship they’d once had.

Now she knew she couldn’t really be surprised that he was approaching the issue of her possible marriage with such a cool head.

Vittorio’s arguments would have appealed marvellously to his own sense of checks and balances. Indeed, she shared his sense of logic, prided herself on her lack of feminine fancy. After living with her father as her lone companion for most of her life, the sentimental theatrics of most women were cloying and abhorrent. She didn’t, Ana reflected with a wry sorrow, even know how to be a woman.

Yet Vittorio had treated her as one, when he’d kissed her…

Even so.
Marriage…

‘My objection,’ she said, ‘is the entire idea of marriage as a business proposition. It seems so cold.’

‘But surely it doesn’t have to be? Better to go into such an enterprise with a clear head, reasonable expectations—’

‘I still don’t even understand why Vittorio wants to marry me—’ Ana said, stopping suddenly, wishing she hadn’t betrayed herself. Just like her father, she hated to be vulnerable. She knew what it felt like to be so exposed, so raw, and then so rejected.

‘He needs a wife. He must be in his late thirties, you know, and a man starts to think of his future, his children—’

‘But why me?’ The words came, as unstoppable as the fears
and doubts that motivated them. ‘He could have anyone, anyone at all—’

‘Why not you, Ana?’ Enrico asked gently. ‘You would make any man a wonderful wife.’

Ana’s mouth twisted. Her father also called her
dolcezza
. Sweet little thing. He was her father, her
papà
; of course he believed such things. That didn’t mean
she
believed them, or him. ‘Still, there would be no love involved.’

Enrico gave a little shrug. ‘In time, it comes.’

She was shredding her roll onto her plate, just as her father had done with his poor little kipper. Her appetite—what little there had been of it—had completely vanished. She looked up at her father and shook her head. ‘With Vittorio, I don’t think so.’ Her throat went tight, and she cursed herself for a fool. She didn’t
need
love. She’d convinced herself of that long ago. She didn’t even want it, and she couldn’t fathom why she’d mentioned it to her father.

Her father remained unfazed. ‘Still, affection. Respect. These things count for much,
dolcezza
. More perhaps than you can even imagine now, when love seems so important.’

‘Yet you loved Mamma.’

Her father nodded, his face seeming to crumple just a little bit. Even sixteen years on, he still lived for her memory.

‘Don’t you think I want that kind of love too?’ Ana asked, her voice turning raw. Despite what she’d said—what she believed—she needed to know her father’s answer.

Enrico didn’t speak for a moment. He poured himself another cup of coffee and sipped it thoughtfully. ‘That kind of love,’ he finally said, ‘is not easy. It is not comfortable.’

‘I never said I wanted to be comfortable.’

‘Comfort,’ Enrico told her with a little smile, ‘is always underrated by those who have experienced nothing else.’

‘Are you saying you weren’t…comfortable…with Mamma?’
The idea was a novel one, and one Ana didn’t like to consider too closely. She’d always believed her parents to have had the grandest of love matches, adoring each other to the end. A fairy tale, and one she’d clung to in those first dark days of grief. Yet now her father seemed to be implying something else.

‘I loved her,’ Enrico replied. ‘And I was happy. But comfortable, always? No. Your mother was a wonderful woman, Ana, be assured of that. But she was emotional—and I’m the one who is Italian!’ He smiled, the curve of his mouth tinged with a little sadness. ‘It was not always easy to live with someone who felt things so deeply.’ Snatches of memory came to her, swirls of colour and sound. Her mother crying, the cloying scent of a sick room, the murmurs of a doctor as her father shook his head. And then her mother pulling her close, whispering fervently against her hair how she, Ana, would be the only one, the only child. Love, Ana thought, did not protect you from sorrow. Perhaps it only softened the blow.

Enrico put down his coffee cup and gave Ana a level look. ‘Be careful to realize what you would be giving up by not marrying Vittorio, Ana.’

Ana drew back, stung. ‘What are you saying? That I might as well take the best offer—the only offer—I can get?’

‘No, of course I am not saying that,’ Enrico said gently. ‘But it is a very good offer.’

Ana sipped her coffee, moodily acknowledging the truth of her father’s words. She’d only given voice to her own fears—that there would be no other offers. Would she rather live alone, childless, lonely—because, face it, she
was
—than attempt some kind of marriage with Vittorio? She didn’t know the answer. She could hardly believe she was actually asking herself the question.

‘Vittorio is a good man,’ Enrico said quietly.

‘How do you know?’ Ana challenged. ‘He’s been away for fifteen years.’

‘I knew his father. Vittorio was the apple of Arturo’s eye. Arturo was a good man too, but he was hard.’ Enrico frowned a little. ‘Without mercy.’

‘And what if Vittorio is the same?’ She remembered the steely glint in his eye and wondered just how well she knew him. Not well at all, was the obvious answer. Certainly not well enough to marry him.

And yet…he
was
a good man. She felt that in her bones, in a certain settling of her soul. She believed her father and, more importantly, she believed Vittorio.

It’s all right to be sad, rondinella.

‘Vittorio needs a wife to soften him,’ Enrico said with a smile.

‘I don’t want him to be my project,’ Ana protested. ‘Or for me to be his.’ She was so prickly, had been so ever since Vittorio had proposed—if you could call it proposing. The word conjured images of roses and diamond rings and declarations of undying love. Not a cold-blooded contract.

‘Of course not,’ Enrico agreed, ‘but you know, in marriage, you are each other’s projects. You don’t seek to change each other, but it is hoped that you will affect one another, shape and smooth each other’s rough edges.’

Ana made a face. ‘You make it sound like two rocks in a stream.’

‘But that’s exactly it,’ Enrico exclaimed. ‘Two rocks rubbing along together in the river of life.’

Ana let out a reluctant laugh. ‘Now, really, Papà, you are waxing far too philosophical for me. I must get to work.’ She rose from the table, kissing him again, and went to get her shoes and coat; a light spring drizzle was falling.

Once at the winery, she immersed herself in what she loved best. Business.
Just like Vittorio
, a sly little voice inside her mind whispered, but Ana pushed it away. She wasn’t going to think about Vittorio or marriage or any of it until noon, at least.

In fact, she barely lifted her head from the papers scattered
over her desk until Edoardo knocked on her door in the late afternoon. ‘A package, Signorina Viale.’

‘A package?’ Ana blinked him into focus. ‘You mean a delivery?’

‘Not for the winery,’ Edoardo said. ‘It is marked personal. For you. It was dropped off—by the Count of Cazlevara.’

Ana stilled, her heart suddenly pounding far too fiercely. Vittorio had been here, had sent her something? Anticipation raced through her, made her dizzy with longing. Somehow she managed to nod stiffly, with apparent unconcern, and raised one hand to beckon him. ‘Bring it in, please.’

The box was white, long and narrow and tied with a satin ribbon in pale lavender. Roses, Ana thought. It must be. She felt mingled disappointment and anticipation; roses were beautiful, but when it came to flowers they were expected and a bit, well, ordinary. It didn’t take much thought to send a woman roses.

Still, she hadn’t received roses or any other flowers in years, so she opened the box with some excitement, only to discover he hadn’t sent roses at all.

He’d sent grapes.

She stared at the freshly cut vines with their cluster of new, perfect, pearl-like grapes and then bent her head to breathe in their wonderful earthy scent. There was a stiff little card nestled among the leaves. Ana picked it up and read:

A new hybrid of Vinifera and Rotundifolia, from the Americas, that I thought you’d be interested in.—V.

She flicked the card against her fingers and then, betrayingly, pressed it against her lips. It smelled fresh and faintly pungent, like the grapes. She closed her eyes. This, she realized, was much better than roses, and she had a feeling Vittorio knew it.

Was this his way of romancing her? Or simply convincing her? Showing her the benefits of such business?

Did it even matter? He’d done it; he’d known what she’d like, and Ana found she was pleased.