Hot Nights with...the Italian
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Not that she knew his tastes—or wanted to—she amended quickly, but this diaphanous cobweb of a thing, with its narrow ribbon steps, would probably be considered to have general masculine appeal.
She climbed into the bed and sank back against the pillows, where the scent of lavender still lingered, aware of an odd sense of melancholy that she could neither dismiss or explain.
Sleep’s what I need, she told herself. Things will seem better in the morning. They always do.
She was just turning on her side when an unexpected sound caught her attention, and she shot upright again, staring towards the dressing room as its door opened and Renzo came in.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded huskily.
‘An odd question, mia bella, to put to your husband when he visits your bedroom on your wedding night.’
She sat rigidly against the pillows, watching him approach. He was wearing a black silk robe, but his bare chest, with its dark shadowing of hair, and his bare legs suggested that there was nothing beneath it.
She lifted her chin. ‘I—I said I was tired. I thought you accepted that.’
‘Also that you had a headache.’ He nodded. ‘And by now you have probably thought of a dozen other methods to keep me at a distance. I suggest you save them for the future. You will not, however, need them tonight,’ he added, seating himself on the edge of the bed.
It was a wide bed, and there was a more than respectable space between them, but in spite of that Marisa still felt that he was too close for comfort. She wanted to move away a little, but knew that he would notice and draw his own conclusions. And she did not wish him to think she was in any way nervous, she thought defensively.
As for what he was wearing—well, she’d seen him in far less in the past, when she’d been swimming or sunbathing in his company, but that, somehow, was a very different matter.
She marshalled her defences. ‘You still haven’t said why you’re here.’
He said, ‘I have come to bid you goodnight.’
‘You did that downstairs.’
‘But I believe that there are things that remain to be said between us.’
He paused. ‘We have not begun well, you and I, and these difficulties between us should be settled at once.’
‘What—what do you mean?’
He traced the gold thread on the coverlet with a fingertip. ‘Earlier today you implied that I had been less than ardent in my wooing of you. But if I stayed aloof it was only because I believed it was what you wanted.’
‘And so it was,’ she said. ‘I said so.’
‘Yet if that is true,’ he said softly, ‘why mention the matter at all?’
She said defiantly, ‘I was simply letting you know what a hypocritical farce I find this entire arrangement. And that I won’t play games in public just to satisfy some convention.’
‘How principled,’ he said, and shifted his position, moving deliberately closer to her. ‘But we are no longer in public now, mia cara. We are in total privacy. So there is no one else to see or care what I ask from you.’
She swallowed. ‘You—promised that you—wouldn’t ask.’ Her voice was thin. ‘So I’d really like you to go—please.’
‘In a moment,’ he said. ‘When I have what I came for.’
‘I—I don’t understand.’
‘It is quite simple,’ he said. ‘I wish to kiss you goodnight, Maria Lisa. To take from your lovely mouth what you denied me this morning—nothing more.’
She stared at him. ‘You said you’d wait …’
‘And I will.’ He leaned forward, brushing a strand of hair back from her face. ‘But I think—don’t you?—that when you come to me as my wife it will be easier for both of us if you have become even a little accustomed to my touch, and learned not to dread being in my arms.’
‘What are you saying, signore?’ Her voice sounded very young and breathless. ‘That I’m going to find your kisses so irresistible that I’ll want more and more of them? That eventually I’ll want you?’
She shook her head. ‘That’s not going to happen. Because you can dress up what you’ve done any way you like, but the fact is you bought me. Anything you do to me will be little more than legalised rape.’
There was a terrible silence, then Renzo said, too quietly, too evenly, ‘You will never use such a word to me again, Maria Lisa. Do you understand? I told you I would not force myself on you and I meant it. But you would be unwise to try my patience twice in twenty-four hours.’
She threw back her head. ‘Your loss of temper doesn’t seem much to set against the ruin of my life, Signor Santangeli. Whatever—I have no intention of kissing you. So please leave. Now.’
‘And I think not.’ Renzo took her by the shoulders, pulling her towards him, his purpose evident in his set face.
‘Let me go.’ She began to struggle against the strength of the hands that held her, scared now, but still determined. ‘I won’t do this—I won’t.’
She pushed against his chest, fists clenched, her face averted.
‘Mia cara, this is silly.’ He spoke more gently, but there was a note in his voice that was almost amusement. ‘Such a fuss about so little. One kiss and I’ll go, I swear it.’
‘You’ll go to hell.’ As she tried to wrench herself free one of the ribbon straps on her nightgown suddenly snapped, and the flimsy bodice slipped down, baring one rounded rose-tipped breast.
She froze in horror, and realised that Renzo too was very still, his dark face changing with a new and disturbing intensity as he looked at her. His hand slid slowly down from her shoulder to a more intimate objective, cupping her breast in lean fingers that shook a little. He brushed her nipple softly with the ball of his thumb, and as it hardened beneath his touch she felt sensation scorch through her like a naked flame against her flesh. Frightening her in a way she had never known before.
‘No.’ Her voice cracked wildly on the word. ‘Don’t touch me. Oh, God, you bastard.’
She flailed out wildly with her fists, and felt the jolt as one of them slammed into his face.
He gave a gasp of pain and reared back away from her, his hand going up to his eye. Then there was another silence.
She thought, the breath catching in her throat, Oh, God, what have I done? And, even worse, what is he going to do?
She tried to speak, to say his name—anything. To tell him she hadn’t meant to hit him—or at least not as hard.
Only she didn’t get the chance. Because he was lifting himself off the bed and striding away from her across the room without looking back. And as Marisa sank back, covering her own face with her hands, she heard first the slam of the dressing room door and then, like an echo, the bang of his own door closing.
And knew with total certainty that for tonight at least he would not be returning.
CHAPTER FIVE
EVEN after all this time Marisa found that the memory still had the power to crucify her.
I’d never behaved like that before in my entire life, she thought, shuddering. Because I’m really not the violent type—or I thought I wasn’t until that moment. Then—pow! Suddenly, the eagle landed. Only it wasn’t funny.
So completely not funny, in fact, that she’d immediately burst into a storm of tears, burying her face in the pillow to muffle the sobs that shook her entire body. Not that he could have heard her, of course. The dressing room and two intervening doors had made sure of that.
But why was I crying? she asked herself, moving restively across the mattress, trying to get comfortable. After all, it was an appalling thing to do, and I freely admit as much, but it got him out of my bedroom, which was exactly what I wanted to happen.
And he never came back. Not even after …
She swallowed, closing her eyes, wishing she could blank out all the inner visions that still tormented her. That remained there at the forefront of her mind, harsh and inescapable. Forcing her once again to recall everything that had happened that night—and, even more shamingly, on the day that had followed….
Once she was quite sure that he’d gone, her first priority was to wash the tearstains from her pale face and exchange her torn nightgown for a fresh one—although that, she soon discovered, did nothing to erase the remembered shock of his touch on her bare breast.
So much for his promise to leave her alone until she was ready, she thought, biting her lip savagely.
The way he’d looked at her, the delicate graze of his hand on her flesh, proved how little his word could be trusted.
Yet at the same time it had brought home to her with almost terrifying force how fatally easy it would be to allow her untutored senses to take control, and to forget the real reason—the only reason—they were together.
She’d agreed to this marriage only to repay a mountainous debt and to make life easier for a sick man who’d been good to her. Nothing else.
Lorenzo had accepted the arrangement solely out of duty to his family. And to keep a promise to a dying woman. That was all, too.
‘Oh, Godmother,’ she whispered under her breath. ‘How could you do this to me? To both of us?’
She’d assumed Renzo’s offer to postpone the consummation of their marriage was a sign of his basic indifference. Now she didn’t now what to think.
Because it seemed that Julia’s crude comments about his readiness to take full advantage of the situation might have some basis in truth, after all. That he might indeed find her innocence a novelty after the glamorous, experienced women he was used to, and would, therefore, be able to make the best of a bad job.
‘But I can’t do that,’ she whispered to herself. And as for learning gradually to accustom herself to the idea of intimacy with him, as he’d suggested—well, that would never happen in a million years.
A tiger in the sack, she recalled, wincing. Although she’d tried hard not to consider the implications in Julia’s crudity, the way Renzo had touched her had provided her with an unwanted inkling of the kind of demands he might make.
But then she’d known all along that spending her nights with her bridegroom would prove to be a hideous embarrassment at the very least. Or spending some of her nights, she amended hastily. Certainly not all of them. Maybe not very many, and hopefully never the entire night.
Because surely he would soon tire of her sexual naiveté?
In some ways she knew him too well, she thought. In others she didn’t know him at all. But on both counts the prospect of sleeping with him scared her half to death.
Not, of course, that sleeping would actually be the problem, she thought, setting her teeth.
She’d tried to play down her fears—telling herself that all he required was a child, a son to inherit the Santangeli name and the power and wealth it represented—and had spent time before the wedding steeling herself to accept that part of their bargain, to endure whatever it took to achieve it, assuring herself that his innate good breeding would ensure that the … the practicalities of the situation would be conducted in a civilised manner.
Only to blow her resolution to the four winds when he’d attempted to kiss her for the first time and she’d panicked. Badly.
She had reason, she told herself defensively. The night of her nineteenth birthday had made her wonder uneasily if Renzo might not want more from her than unwilling submission. And the last half-hour had only confirmed her worst fears—which was why she’d lashed out at him like that.
Her relationship with him had always been a tricky one, she thought unhappily. Leading his own life, he’d figured in her existence, when he chose to appear there, as eternally glamorous and usually aloof. Casually kind to her when it suited him, even occasionally coaching her at tennis and swimming, although never with any great enthusiasm, and almost certainly at his mother’s behest—as she’d realised later.
But all that had ended summarily when, longing for him just once to see her as a woman instead of a child, she’d made a disastrously misguided attempt to emulate one of the girls who’d stayed at the villa as his guest by ‘losing’ her bikini top when she was alone with him in the swimming pool—only to experience the full force of his icy displeasure.
‘If you think to impress me by behaving like a slut, you have misjudged the matter, Maria Lisa.’ His words and tone of voice had flayed the skin from her. ‘You are too young and too green to be a temptress, my little stork, and you dishonour not only yourself, but my parents’ roof with such ridiculous and juvenile antics.’ He’d contemptuously tossed the scrap of sodden fabric to her. ‘Now, cover yourself and go to your room.’
Overwhelmed by distress and humiliation, she had fled, despising herself for having revealed her fledgling emotions so openly, and agonising over the result.
She had felt only relief when her visits to Tuscany had gone into abeyance, and in time had even been able to reassure herself that any talk about her being Renzo’s future bride had been simply sentimental chat between two mothers, and could not, thankfully, be taken seriously.
And if I never see him again, she’d thought defiantly, it will be altogether too soon.
Now, when she looked back, she could candidly admit that she must have been embarrassment on a stick even before the swimming pool incident.
But that being the case, why hadn’t he fought tooth and nail not to have her foisted on him as a wife only a few years later?
Surely he must have recognised that there was no chance of their marriage working in any real sense?
On the other hand, perhaps he didn’t actually require it to work in that way. Because for him it was simply a means to an end. A business arrangement whereby her body became just another commodity for him to purchase.
Something for his temporary amusement that could be discreetly discarded when its usefulness was finished.
When she’d had his baby.
This was the viewpoint she’d chosen to adopt, and so, in spite of Julia’s insinuations, she hadn’t really expected him to behave as if—as if he—wanted her …
Or was that just a conditioned reflex? Girl equals bed equals sex? Identity unimportant.
That, she thought with a little sigh, was the likeliest explanation.
For a moment she stood staring at herself in the mirror, studying the shape of her body under the thin fabric of her nightdress. Noticing the length of her legs and the way the shadows in the room starkly reduced the contours of her face, making her features stand out more prominently. Especially her nose …
The stork, she thought painfully, was alive and well once more. And certainly not likely to be the object of anyone’s desire. Renzo’s least of all.
She turned away, smothering a sigh, and made her slow, reluctant way back to the bed, lying there shivering in its vastness in spite of the warmth of the night.
Still listening intently, she realised, for the sound of his return, no matter how many times she promised herself that it wasn’t going to happen. While at the same time, in her head, the events of the day kept unrolling before her in a seemingly endless loop of error and embarrassment.
It was several hours before she finally dropped into a troubled sleep. And for the first time in years there was no bedside alarm clock to summon her into a new morning, so she woke late to find Daniella at her bedside with a tray of coffee, her dark eyes sparking with ill-concealed interest and excitement as she studied Signor Lorenzo’s new bride.
Looking to see how I survived the night, Marisa realised, sitting up self-consciously, aware that her tossing and turning had rumpled the bed sufficiently to make it appear that she hadn’t slept alone.
My God, she thought, as she accepted the coffee with a stilted word of thanks. If she only knew …
And silently thanked heaven that she didn’t. That no one knew, apart from Renzo and herself, what a total shambles her first twenty-four hours of marriage had been.
Daniella’s grasp of English was limited, but Marisa managed to convince her gently but firmly that she could draw her own bath and choose her own clothing for the day without assistance, uttering a silent sigh of relief when the girl reluctantly withdrew, after informing her that breakfast would be served on the rear terrace.
Because she needed to be alone in order to think.
She’d made a few decisions before she’d eventually allowed herself to sleep, and rather to her surprise they still seemed good in daylight.
The first of them was that this time she must—must—apologise to Renzo without delay, and offer him some kind of explanation for her behaviour. She had no other choice.
But that would not be easy, she thought, cautiously sipping the dark, fragrant brew. Because if she simply told him that she’d been too scared to let him kiss her he would almost certainly want to know why.
And she could hardly admit that the angry words she’d hurled at him last night might in fact be only too true. That she’d feared she might indeed find the lure of his mouth on hers hard to resist.
No, she thought forcefully. And no again. That was a confession she dared not make. A painful return to adolescent fantasy land, as unwelcome as it was unexpected. Threatening to make her prey to the kind of dreams and desires she’d thought she’d banished for ever, and which she could not risk again. Not after they’d crashed in ruins the first time.
Oh, God, she thought, swallowing. I’m going to have to be so careful. I need to make him believe it was just a serious fit of bridal nerves.
From which I’ve now recovered …
Because that was important, she told herself, when considering the next huge obstacle she had to overcome. Which was, of course, the inevitable and unavoidable establishment of their marriage on as normal a footing as it was possible to achieve—given the circumstances.
She replaced her empty cup on the bedside table and drew up her knees, wrapping her arms around them. Frowning as she wondered how she could possibly tell him that she was now prepared to fulfil her side of their arrangement. While making it quite clear, at the same time, that she intended to regard any physical contact between them as solely part of a business deal and certainly not the beginning of any kind of—relationship.
He didn’t require her for that, anyway, she thought. According to Julia his needs in that respect were already well catered for by—what was her name? Ah, yes, Lucia, she recalled stonily. Lucia Gallo.
And throwing aside the covers, she got out of bed and prepared to face the day.
She hadn’t taken a great deal of interest in the purchase of her trousseau, except to veto her cousin’s more elaborate choice of evening dresses. But here she was, on the first morning of her marriage, with a tricky confrontation ahead of her, so choosing something to wear from the array that Daniella had unpacked and hung in one of the dressing room closets, suddenly seemed to acquire an additional importance.
She finally decided on one of her simplest outfits, a square-necked, full-skirted dress in pale yellow cotton. She brushed her light brown hair into its usual style, curving softly on to her shoulders, and added a coating of mascara to her lashes, a coral-based colour to her lips.
Then, slipping on low-heeled tan leather sandals, she left the bedroom and went in reluctant search of Lorenzo.
She’d assumed he would be at the breakfast table, but when she walked out into the sunshine she saw that only a single place was set in the vine-shaded pergola.
She turned to Massimo in faint surprise. ‘The signore has eaten already?’
‘Si, signora. Early. Very early. He say you are not to be disturbed.’ He paused, his face lugubrious. ‘And then he goes out in the car. Maybe to see a doctor—for his accident.’
‘Accident?’ Marisa repeated uneasily.
Evangelina came surging out to join them, bearing a fresh pot of coffee and a plate of sweet rolls to add to the platter of ham and cheese already on the table.
‘Si, signora,’ she said. ‘Last night, in the dark, Signor Lorenzo he walk into door.’ Her reproachful glance suggested that the signore should have been safely in bed, engrossed with his new bride, rather than wandering around bumping into the fixtures and fittings.
Marisa felt her colour rise. ‘Oh, that,’ she said, trying to sound nonchalant. ‘Surely it isn’t that bad?’
Pursed lips and shrugs invited her to think again, and her heart sank like a stone as it occurred to her that Renzo might not be feeling particularly receptive to any overtures this morning, and that her apology might have to be extremely humble indeed if it was to cut any ice with him.
Which was not altogether what she’d planned.
She hung around the terrace most of the morning, waiting with trepidation for his return. And waiting …
Until Massimo came, clearly bewildered, to relay the signore’s telephone message that he would be lunching elsewhere.
Marisa, managing to hide her relief, murmured ‘Che peccato,’ and set herself to the task of persuading Massimo that it was far too hot for the midday banquet Evangelina seemed to be planning and that, as she would be eating alone, clear soup and a vegetable risotto would be quite enough.
She still wasn’t very hungry, but starving herself would do no good, so she did her best with the food, guessing that any lack of appetite would be ascribed to the fact that she was pining for Lorenzo.
She was already aware that glances were being exchanged over her head in concern for this new wife left to her own devices so soon after her bridal night.
If Renzo continued his absence they might start putting two and two together and making all kinds of numbers, she thought without pleasure.
Her meal finished, she rested for a while in her room with the shutters drawn, but she soon accepted that she was far too jittery to relax, so she changed into a black bikini, topping it with a pretty black and white voile overshirt, and went back into the sunshine to find the swimming pool.
As Renzo had indicated, it was quite a descent through tier upon tier of blossom-filled terraces. It was like climbing down into a vast bowl of flowers, Marisa thought, with the oval pool, a living aquamarine, at its base. The sun terrace surrounding the water was tiled in a mosaic pattern of ivory and gold, and sunbeds had been placed in readiness, cushioned in turquoise, each with its matching parasol.
At one end of the pool there was a small hexagonal pavilion, painted white, containing towels, together with extra cushions and a shelf holding an extensive range of sun protection products. It also contained a refrigerator stocked with bottled water and soft drinks.
The air was very still, and filled with the scent of the encircling flowers. The only sounds were the soft drone of bees searching for pollen and, farther away, the whisper of the sea.
Marisa took a deep breath. If she’d simply been visiting on holiday, by herself, she’d have thought she was in paradise. As it was …
But she wouldn’t think about that now, she told herself firmly. For the present she was alone, and she would make the most of it. Even if it was only the calm before an almost inevitable storm.
She slipped off her shirt and walked to the side of the pool. She sat on the edge for a moment, testing the temperature of the water with a cautious foot, then slid in, gasping with pleasure as the exquisite coolness received her heated body.
She began to swim steadily and without haste, completing one length of the pool, then another, and a third, feeling relaxed for the first time in days.
Out of the water, and dried off, she was careful to apply a high-factor lotion to her exposed skin before stretching out to sunbathe.
Allowing herself to burn to a frazzle might be an effective way of postponing the inevitable, she thought ruefully, but it wouldn’t do much to advance the cause of marital harmony. And she couldn’t afford to let matters deteriorate any further—not now she’d made up her mind to yield herself to him.