The Proud Wife (12 page)

‘So…' she began, but broke off when he moved again suddenly, sharply.

Three long strides covered the space to the bathroom door. He flung it open and with a hard, angry gesture indicated that she should go into the tiny room beyond.

‘Get yourself dressed!' he commanded. ‘I will not talk to you like this. I cannot talk to you like this.'

Somehow Marina found the strength to sweep past him
with as much dignity as she could muster. But once inside the bathroom, with the door closed behind her, she struggled to comply with his command that she get dressed.

Get a grip! she told herself furiously as she pulled on her clothes with as much haste as she could manage when her hands were shaking disturbingly. Her eyes blurred so that she could barely see the buttons, the fastening of her trousers. Instead she saw Pietro's dark, intent face, the way that he had looked at her, the fierce concentration of his expression as he had undone those fastenings such a short time earlier. She had made a terrible mistake by giving in to her need for him. She might as well have ripped off her clothes and lain down on the floor, telling him to do just as he pleased, walk all over her if that was what he wanted.

She shivered suddenly at the memory of the icy bleakness of his eyes, the cruel bite of his response. Just for a moment she almost wished he had tried the seduction route all over again instead of that.

But wasn't it because he had once done that—almost laughed at her fears—that it had hurt so very badly the second time?

Furiously she whirled, heading for the door. At last she knew she had the courage to bring all this out into the open. She was going to have it out with Pietro, tell him once and for all exactly what had driven her away.

With her fingers on the handle, she froze, staring at the panel of wood that was all that separated her from Pietro. It was not terribly thick or strong, but firmly shut, with the key turned in the lock. It was a powerful barrier.

And all the more so because of what was waiting for her in the other room.

He had said something about that yesterday in the car—what was it?
Hotels have doors and keys. I have always
had a strong aversion to having doors slammed and locked right in my face.

The very understated way he had spoken made the words hit home in a new and shocking way so that a sensation like the slither of cold footsteps down her spine made her shudder in sudden reaction. Her legs started to shake, almost giving way beneath her so that she had to grab hold of the sink for support.

Was this how he had felt? How she had made him feel?

Had he actually wanted to come and comfort her, only to find the door firmly locked against him?

How many times had he tried? How many times had he been turned away? And, if his wife had rejected him so totally, then why would he even have wanted to come after her when she had walked out?

Instead wouldn't he stay right where he was and wait for her to come back to him?

With new resolve, she gripped the door handle and turned it. It was well past time that she and this soon-to-be ex-husband of hers sorted things out once and for all.

P
IETRO
was standing at the far side of the room close to the window. He had made a rough attempt to tidy up while she had been in the bathroom, straightening the bed and pulling the covers back up, replacing the pillows that had fallen on to the floor. He had also pulled on his white shirt, rather less immaculate now and slightly crumpled as it hung loose and open from his wide shoulders.

He hadn't even troubled to fasten his belt yet. In spite of his insistence that she get dressed, he obviously hadn't thought that exposing his bare chest like this was going to be any sort of a distraction for her.

Well, she wasn't going to let it be any such thing, Marina resolved. She had been caught out that way before—never again. It was very definitely a case of once bitten, more than twice shy. From now on she was going to be every bit as cold-blooded and rational as he was and meet him head-on. And if she had any sort of hesitation or doubts then all she had to do was remember just why she had left him in the first place, and that would harden her resolve, cool down any foolish sensual urges like the ones that had got her into trouble just a few hours ago.

‘So, you wanted to talk…' she said as soon as he turned to face her, putting herself on the attack straight away. ‘OK, then—let's go into the other room and sit down.'

She could resolve all she liked, but she'd still feel much more comfortable if they were out of the bedroom. Pietro might have swept away all the evidence of their passionate coupling earlier, but she knew it had happened and she couldn't stop her eyes from going to the big double bed and remembering…

The small sitting-room was still shadowed and dark, the coming of the dawn too slow yet to brighten it at all.

‘Can't see a thing,' she said in irritation, marching across the room to flick a switch, flooding the room with light.

Immediately she regretted the impulse. In the clear brightness, Pietro's powerful form seemed to spring into life, like a flat painting that had somehow become fully three-dimensional. He was just too much—disturbingly tall and broad, his black hair gleaming and glossy as a raven's wing, eyes clear and cool as the sea lapping against the shore. His tanned skin glowed with the sort of great health that made it feel as if a deeply sensual warmth should be radiating from it—aimed straight at her.

‘Would you like a drink?' he enquired now, very much under control, all unwanted emotions carefully reined in and tamped down. Obviously he had caught the rough edge to her voice, the result of a painfully dry throat.

‘No thanks—well, yes, perhaps some water.' Perhaps a cool drink would do something to ease that discomfort.

Pietro poured himself a drink too and walked across to the window again, leaning against the sill as he sipped slowly, clear, cold eyes probing her face.

There had to be an advantage in getting in first, she decided. If she could only think of something to say. The glint of the first weak rays of the sun on her wedding ring gave her a push.

‘If it wasn't my rings that you wanted back,' she managed, ‘then what, exactly, was it?'

‘My name.'

It was so unexpected that it caught her on the raw and made her blink. There was also something about the way he spoke that said he was only revealing the surface of things, not digging deep down. The glass she had half-raised to her lips stilled midway, then she lowered it to the coffee table and set it down carefully.

‘Your… Well, that's fine by me. I was always so much happier as Marina Emerson than I ever was as Marina D'Inzeo.'

The lie nearly choked her as she forced it out.

‘I must have read too many fairy stories as a child to have swallowed the idea that becoming a princess led to a happy-ever-after ending. But, yes, obviously once we are divorced I'll revert to my maiden name.'

‘That is not what I meant. What I want is my good name back.'

Puzzled, Marina tried to look him in the face, to read just what his expression might reveal. But he was silhouetted against the window, just a black, featureless shadow against the fading light.

‘I don't understand…'

Pietro took another swallow of his water then placed the glass on the window sill and prowled towards her. Immediately Marina wished she had never settled on the low sofa. He was far too big, too imposing,
too much
, towering above her like this. But scrambling to her feet defensively would only demonstrate her unease far too openly. So she forced herself to stay where she was, lifting her head to face him, schooling her own expression into what she hoped was cool indifference. From experience she knew she probably looked frozen stiff, but it was better than letting him see just how much he got to her.

‘The D'Inzeo family is an old and noble line with a
heritage that stretches back to the Middle Ages. We hold power and position in Sicily.'

‘I know that. You don't have to tell me—I know all about it.'

She would never ever forget how it had felt to approach the awe-inspiring seventeenth-century Castello D'Inzeo—built in elegant Venetian Gothic style but recently beautifully renovated—and know that it was Pietro's family home. And, for a short time, her home too. She had learned all about the family coat of arms that hung over the huge fireplace in the great hall, the motto that translated as ‘what is mine, I hold'. She had been left in no doubt about the arrogance and supreme sense of self-worth of the D'Inzeo family—the males in particular—down through the centuries.

‘I experienced it, for heaven's sake! I lived it.'

And she had almost stifled in the stuffy, etiquette-obsessed way of life that his widowed mother had expected from her.

‘And when you weren't there I hated it. It was positively mediaeval.'

‘My mother is old-fashioned,' Pietro conceded. ‘But she cares about the D'Inzeo name and all that goes with it. And one of the things she believes is that the D'Inzeo family do not do divorce.'

Pietro paused as if waiting for those words to sink in. As Marina absorbed them, the nerve-stretching silence together with his total stillness hit home like a blow to her head, making her thoughts swim nauseously.

‘But you said… We were supposed to sign the papers today.'

‘That was my plan originally.'

She didn't like the sound of that.

‘Things have changed.'

Pietro deliberately let his gaze slide over her still slightly dishevelled clothing, lingering on the gaping spots at the front of her shirt where two of the buttons should have been. A calculated glance in the direction of the partly open door to the bedroom emphasised his point without a word having to be said.

‘That—that was nothing!'

‘I can assure you that it was not
nothing
,' Pietro returned smoothly. ‘It was very definitely
something
. I felt it and so did you. It was as hot and fiery as Mount Etna itself—and it is not something I am willing to give up very easily.'

Now she really did have to stand up; she just couldn't cope with sitting down and having to look up at him. Scrambling to her feet, she focused her attention on Pietro, her molten green gaze burning with rejection, locking with the icy pools of his blue eyes.

‘You might not have a choice.'

‘I already do not have a choice,' he returned in a shockingly matter-of-fact tone. ‘You know what you do to me. What I do to you.'

‘Well, yes, there was always that—always sex.' No point in denying it. ‘But there has to be more to a marriage than sex.'

‘It's a good enough place to start. It was where we started before.'

The answer sounded flippant, but she looked into his eyes as he spoke and she knew that he was deadly serious. So serious that it frightened her.

‘Are you saying that you want to…to continue with our marriage—on purely sexual terms?'

Was it hope or fear or just plain appalled disbelief that made her voice zigzag up and down in that dreadful way? She couldn't judge, because right now she really didn't know what she was feeling—all of those, and many more
emotions all tangled up in her mind. And she had no idea at all which one was uppermost.

‘I'm saying that no one has ever made me feel the way that you do.'

‘Sexually.'

‘Sexually,' Pietro acknowledged with an inclination of his head.

She had always been able to scramble his brain that way, reduce him to thinking only with a more basic part of his anatomy instead of his mind. But there was much more to it than that. Since she had walked back into his life, coming into Matteo's office with that determined, set look on her face, it had been as if he had woken from a two-year sleep, one in which he had been barely existing, not truly living. He had been more alive, more vibrant, in the last twenty-four hours than he had been at any time since she had walked out on him. And he wanted things to stay that way.

But was he prepared to put his future into the hands of this woman who had already taken his hopes of a future, a family, and tossed them aside when she had decided that she had had enough of her marriage? A woman who had locked him out of her life, making it plain that if there was no baby there was no marriage? In the end he had been so sure she had married him for his money.

Yet she had thrown those divorce papers and the generous settlement he had been prepared to give her back in his face. And she had broken down and wept at her failure—her failure!—in losing the baby.

Just which one was the real Marina?

‘Well, that's not going to happen.'

Marina's voice was cool and distant and those brilliant eyes seemed like they were looking through him, not at him.

‘No? Then what
is
going to happen? Because as far as I can see last night changed things totally. For one thing, the fact that we just made—'

‘Don't even try to call it making love!'

Pietro shrugged off her anger with a lift of his shoulders.

‘Whatever you want to call it, the fact remains that it will ruin both our plans for a quick divorce. You hadn't thought of that?' he asked when she blinked hard in astonishment. ‘Some might see it as renewing our marriage vows.'

‘We didn't renew anything—we just had sex!'

‘And now we can no longer claim that we have been separated for two years.'

She hadn't thought about that; it was obvious from her face. As was the shock she felt at the thought that the divorce she wanted might not happen.

‘Yes, we had sex—and yes, that will delay our divorce. But we can take advantage of that.'

‘Just what sort of an advantage did you have in mind?'

‘Isn't it obvious? One of mutual pleasure—no?' he questioned when she shook her head sharply, copper hair flying wildly out around her pale face. ‘You said there was no one else. No one to be affected by this.'

It was the appearance of the new man, this Stuart, on the scene that meant he had to make a move to deal with the ragged remnants of their marriage. But she had declared that the other man was no one important in her life.

‘There isn't. But that doesn't mean I'll never…'

‘What is that saying?' Pietro cut in sharply. ‘Never say never? OK, as you said, sex doesn't make a marriage—but when the sex is as good as it is between us, who gives a damn? We would both go into this with our eyes wide open
this time. Neither of us is looking for love or happy-ever-after any more, so let's go with this while we have it.'

Sex. Marina felt her head swim, her thoughts refusing to focus except on that one single word—sex. That was all he was offering her.

‘I don't see why you should even think that I would want to have some sort of sexual affair with you when you know that I came here to agree to the divorce.'

‘And we both know that that isn't going to happen.'

‘Because we haven't been separated for two years?'

She felt as if she was fighting for her life. Risking going under again for the third and fatal time. And that was because she was fighting herself as well as him. She yearned to say yes, to accept anything from him—even this—if it meant they had a chance together. But she had been there before and it had almost destroyed her.

‘There are other ways. Quicker, easier ways.'

‘Name one.'

‘The one where I divorce you for unreasonable behaviour—
cruelty
.'

‘Like hell you will.'

It was a hiss of pure rage, terrifying in its pure savagery for all it was so very quietly spoken. Before her eyes she watched his whole face tighten, the skin drawn taut over the strong bones.

‘You have no evidence.'

‘Only the evidence of my own eyes. The things I heard.'

‘And you expect me to believe that?' Pietro scoffed, dismissing her words with an arrogant flick of his hand. ‘You saw only what you wanted to see.'

‘I saw what happened! You moved out of our room—away from me. You said the baby had been a mistake…'

‘How else would you describe it?' Pietro demanded.
‘You wouldn't have thought of marriage except for the fact that you were pregnant.'

‘Not marriage, no.'

‘So the baby trapped us both.'

Marina shook her head violently, sending the rich swathe of her hair flying out around her face again.

‘I didn't feel trapped! I wanted that baby.'

I wanted you.
But no, she didn't dare to say that. Not yet.

‘Then, when I lost it, I lost everything. You weren't even there.'

Those pale eyes flicked to her face. They locked with her own green stare, tightly fixed because of the fight against the tears pushing to be free.

‘I could not talk to you.'

‘Of course you could talk to me.'

She would have given the world to have him share her sorrow, help her through it. But Pietro was shaking his head.