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‘You mean children are permanent and wives are temporary.’
His irritation was written clear in his steely stare as he retorted coldly, ‘If you wish to put it that way.’
She hid her hurt behind aggression. ‘You put it that way.’
His careless shrug made her resentment spill over into an unwise—she knew it the moment it left her lips—reference to his dead first wife.
‘I don’t suppose you told Alberto’s mother it was not for ever when you proposed to her?’
His expression iced over, making him seem austere and distant. ‘My marriage to Sara is not relevant. I did not marry you to give Alberto a mother.’
‘I sometimes wonder why you married me at all,’ she slung back childishly.
The white-hot blaze in his eyes as he grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her up against his long, lean body made her knees fold as he gave his driven response to her question.
‘I married you because you wouldn’t be my mistress, because I couldn’t think straight without you in my bed and because I will not share you with another man.’
No mention of love, but he kissed her and she told herself she didn’t care. About three seconds later she stopped thinking entirely.
Dervla sighed. It was always that way the moment Gianfranco touched her: her principles and pride vaporised. Which was why she had ended up married to a man who never even pretended he loved her, though for one split second when he had proposed her mind had made that understandable assumption.
‘But you barely know me!’ she protested. ‘It takes time to fall in love, Gianfranco and—’ She stopped, the colour seeping from her face as the truth—as she saw it then—hit her.
Time had not the first thing to do with falling in love. And for some people it actually didn’t take long at all…in her case it had taken about a second, and now it seemed that amazingly it had been the same for Gianfranco…? Only he had had the sense to recognise it.
She lifted her dazed eyes to his lean, devastatingly handsome face and thought, I really do love you. A shuddering sigh left her parted lips; a smile of wondering joy spread across her face.
Gianfranco, she saw, was smiling too, only his smile twisted his mobile lips into a cynical grimace and left his incredible eyes unusually cold.
‘I am not looking for love.’
Her face remained frozen in the smile, but the light had gone out of her eyes as he expanded on the theme.
‘If such a thing actually exists…?’
‘You don’t think so, I take it.’
One dark brow moved in the direction of his hairline and he sketched a sardonic smile. ‘Outside fairy tales? Do you know how many marriages actually last more than a few years?’
‘So how long do you propose our—our hypothetical marriage will last?’
‘You cannot fix a specific time when there are so many unknown variables.’
God, and they say romance is dead! ‘So when you say for better or worse, what you actually mean is until the gloss wears off or something better comes along?’
‘You think it’s somehow more courageous and noble to stay in a marriage because of a sense of obligation?’ Lip curled, he shook his head. ‘That’s not nobility. At best it’s habit, at worst it’s laziness and fear. I’m being a realist. You might prefer me to trot out the clichés about us being fated to be together through eternity?’
‘People are. My parents had been married thirty-five years when they were killed.’
‘An accident?’
‘The coach they were travelling in went across the central reservation of the motorway and hit a lorry coming in the opposite direction. Ten people were killed, including my parents.’
‘You were how old?’
‘Eighteen, in my first year of nurse training.”
‘I am sorry, and I am glad your parents had a happy marriage, but I cannot see into the future. I have no idea what I will feel in five, ten years’ time, but I know what I feel now.
‘Now,’ he told her, in a voice that made every single nerve ending in her body sigh, ‘I want you.’
That had been a year ago and he still wanted her, and any future plans he spoke of included her.
What are you going to do when he doesn’t and they don’t?
Fear tightened and clenched inside her and with a small cry she turned and buried her head in Gianfranco’s chest. ‘I’m happy!’ she declared defiantly.
Startled by her abrupt action, Gianfranco stared down for a moment at the top of her head before lifting a hand to stroke a fiery curl, stretching it and then letting it spring back softly into shape.
‘Happy?’
Dervla felt his hands on her shoulders and burrowed deeper into him, her eyes closed, feeling the solid warmth of his lean, hard male body seep into her as his arms folded across her ribcage.
‘Yes, I’m happy.’
Everyone had a different recipe for happiness, but she knew that hers had one vital ingredient: Gianfranco.
So things might not be perfect, the alternative was no Gianfranco. It was an alternative she could not bring herself to contemplate; it was the reason she had said yes when he proposed.
Gianfranco prised her face from his shirt. One big hand framed the side of her face, the other sliding into the lush silky curls on her nape to cradle her skull as he scanned her face.
An image superimposed itself in his head of Dervla’s face when she had told him that she couldn’t marry him because she wasn’t able to have children.
Dio mio, I’m about as sensitive as that stone, he thought, kicking a wedged rock free with the toe of his shoe.
How, he asked himself, did you expect her to feel, when you have her spend the entire weekend with a heavily pregnant woman who babbles incessantly about babies? Of course she cared more than she pretended.
Dervla had been up front about it from the beginning.
He had not been so honest in his response.
He had seen the gratitude shining in her eyes when he had promised her that her inability to conceive made no difference to him; she clearly hadn’t believed a word he said, but he hadn’t made any real push to dissuade her from her clear belief in his nobility.
Contrary to what she thought, there was no sacrifice on his part; when she had told him of this tragedy in her life his reaction had been relief!
Relief he would never now need to have that awkward conversation—the one where he would have to dredge up his past mistakes.
‘Happy? So that,’ he teased lightly as he blotted with his thumb the sparkling tear that was sliding down her cheek, ‘is a tear of joy?’
Dervla didn’t respond to his comment. Instead she tilted her head and asked, ‘Are you happy, Gianfranco?’
‘What is happy?’
She saw the trace of irritation in his face at the question, and thought, If you were happy you wouldn’t need to ask.
‘I would be happier,’ he said, taking her hand, ‘if Carla decides to go home this evening.’
CHAPTER TWO
GIANFRANCO’S wish was not granted.
When they got back to the house Carla, wearing a swimsuit encrusted with sequins and quite obviously designed more for displaying her perfect body beside a pool than swimming in, asked Gianfranco if she could beg a seat in his helicopter the next morning.
‘I thought you had things to get back to.’
‘No, I’m all yours,’ the older woman responded, apparently oblivious to the strong hint. ‘And the staff are back so you won’t need to vanish into the kitchen. You’re both so eccentric,’ she murmured, shaking her head before pleading with a pretty smile for Gianfranco to apply some sunscreen to her back.
Dervla stiffened, her hands balling instinctively into fists as an image of Gianfranco’s hands on the other woman’s warm, smooth skin formed in her head.
‘I don’t think you’re in danger of burning, Carla. It’s six-thirty.’
With a quick smile at Carla, Dervla followed him indoors. ‘Will you not be so rude to Carla,’ she hissed.
He arched a brow. ‘You wish me to put cream on other women? I think not. I saw your face. You’d have pushed her into the pool if I’d tried.’ He did not sound displeased by the discovery.
The colour flew to Dervla’s cheeks. ‘No, I’d have pushed you into the pool, but this is Carla—she doesn’t mean anything by it.’ Be tolerant, Dervla, be tolerant. ‘She’s like that with all men.’
He gave a grimace of fastidious distaste. ‘You mean she comes on to all men.’
Dervla’s eyes flew wide. She pressed her hand to her stomach feeling suddenly nauseous. ‘She’s never…with you, has she?’
‘A gentleman does not speak of such things.’
‘So that leaves you free to spill the dirt.’
Gianfranco threw back his head and laughed. ‘She is really not my type, cara,’ he promised, lifting a hand to stroke her cheek. ‘And you need not worry about her feelings. She has the skin of a rhino. Short of showing her the door, we’re stuck with her until tomorrow. I suppose we’ll just have to grin and bear it.’
During dinner Gianfranco showed very little inclination to follow his own advice, so it was left to Dervla to supply the extra smiles.
By the time the Italian woman was midway through a lengthy description of the famous people she had rubbed shoulders with at a recent celebrity auction Dervla’s facial muscles were aching from the marathon.
‘What charity was the auction for?’ she asked when Carla paused for breath.
‘For…?’ The older woman looked at her blankly for a moment.
‘The charity it was raising money for?’
‘I really can’t recall.’
Dervla bit her lip, and didn’t dare look at Gianfranco, she knew he’d make her laugh.
‘Did I mention that I spoke to the prince? A charming man.’
Before Dervla had a chance to adopt an appropriate expression of polite enquiry Gianfranco cut in with a dry, ‘Yes, you did, Carla—several times.’
Dervla shot her husband a look of warning from beneath the sweep of her lashes and said brightly to fill the awkward silence, ‘Are you sure you won’t have some of this lemon tart, Carla?’
‘No, no pudding, I’m watching my weight.’ The glance she slid the second slice on Dervla’s plate suggested that she thought Dervla ought to be doing the same. ‘But, you could lend me your husband, just for a few minutes. Boring financial stuff…’ She angled a look of enquiry at Gianfranco. ‘If it wouldn’t be too much of a bother…?’
There was a pause and for one awful moment Dervla thought Gianfranco was going to say yes, it would be too much of a bother, when he got to his feet, his attitude more polite resignation than eagerness. ‘If it’s urgent?’
‘Well, you probably won’t think it is, but I have been worried.’
‘Would you like to come to the study?’ His enquiring glance slid towards Dervla.
‘I’ll wait here.’
Carla smoothed her creaseless skirt down over her slim hips and patted Dervla’s hand. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t keep him a minute.’
The minute Carla had spoken of stretched into an hour while Dervla sat alone at the dinner table drinking coffee. When the maid came in she refused the offer of another pot and told the girl with a smile she could clear away.
Another five minutes and she decided she might as well go to bed. As she passed the door of Gianfranco’s study she heard some very unfinancial-sounding laughter before she shouted her intention of retiring.
‘I’ll be up in a moment!’ Gianfranco called out.
It turned out his grasp of time was just as sketchy as Carla’s. It was actually midnight when Gianfranco finally did join her in their bedroom. Hearing his footsteps in the corridor outside, Dervla leapt into bed, picking up a magazine from the table on her way.
‘What did she want?’
Conscious that this was one of those situations where it would be very easy to sound like a jealous wife, Dervla was careful that nothing in her manner suggested her interest in Gianfranco’s response to her question was anything but tepid.
Actually she had spent the past hour pacing up and down, her eyes drawn continually to the hands on the clock. It wasn’t that she was jealous as such of Carla, and she was sure that Gianfranco did not think of the older woman in that way, but they had a history, a history she was excluded from, memories she did not share.
Carla had been a close friend of Alberto’s mother, Sara. Had the conversation in the library turned to Sara?
While every snippet of information she’d gleaned from Carla had only confirmed her suspicion that Sara had been the love of Gianfranco’s life, some hitherto unsuspected streak of masochism in her made Dervla hungry for the details even though she was tortured by every new proof of how special their love had been.
Gianfranco gave a disgruntled snort. ‘Some stuff about shares, hardly urgent.’
The same could not be said of his desire to join his wife in their bed. The light from the bedside lamp picked out the gold in her burnished hair and made the nightgown she wore almost transparent. His body hardened as he looked at her; her slim, supple curves never failed to arouse him.
‘Finally,’ he said, walking towards the bed where she sat hugging her knees, ‘I have you all to myself.’
She tilted her head and reminded him, ‘This weekend was your idea.’
‘It was a bad idea.’ Slipping the buttons on his shirt, he sat down beside her on the bed. He reached for the magazine in his way and Dervla, catching a glimpse of the cover, tried to snatch it away.
‘What are you reading that you don’t want me to see?’
‘Nothing, nothing, let me have it, Gianfranco.’
The anxiety in her voice made him frown. He leaned back, the magazine in his hand, and turned it over. His teasing smile faded. It was a medical journal.
Dervla sighed. ‘Oh, all right, I didn’t want to tell you this way, but the doctor suggested I read this article…’
‘Article?’ He glanced down. The front cover announced the contents included the latest research on a new drug for breast cancer.
It took his mind a microsecond to make the next sickening leap. He felt as if someone had just reached inside his chest and placed an icy hand around his heart.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, telling himself that his feelings were not important, this was about Dervla and he had to be strong and stay positive for her.
Her eyes slid from his, her lashes brushing her smooth cheeks as she turned her head. ‘Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.’
He cupped her chin in his hand, drawing her face up to him as he moved closer to her on the bed.
‘You are a terrible liar.’ Please, God, let this not be happening. ‘Look, whatever it is we can face it together…It is never hopeless—they are coming up with new cures for…’ He stopped and took a deep breath. He had to stay positive for her sake. ‘Cancer is just a word.’
She gave a small cry of denial, her eyes widening in horrified comprehension. ‘No…no, it’s nothing like that. I promise you, Gianfranco, I’m not ill.’
‘You’re not?’
When she shook her head positively he released a long sigh, his shoulders slumping as the most intense relief he had ever felt in his life washed over him.
There was, he realised, a degree of truth in the old adage that said you didn’t know how much you cared for something until you were faced with the prospect of losing it—or her!
‘You’re sure?’
She caught hold of both his hands and, drawing herself up to her knees, rubbed her nose against his. ‘Totally.’
He jerked her hard towards him and kissed her fiercely on her soft, parted lips. ‘If you ever do that to me again,’ he promised when he finally released her, ‘I will throttle you.’ His eyes went to the slim pale length of her throat. Desire thickened his voice as he added, ‘Do you understand?’
Dervla sank back onto her heels, looking flushed and deliciously tousled but not unduly concerned by the growled threat, and nodded.
‘I understand.’
‘So as we have established you are not dying on me—’ despite the flippancy in his voice he was forced to shove his hands in his pockets to hide the fact they were still shaking ‘—just what are you doing reading that?’
Dervla looked at him through her lashes, her green eyes sparkling with suppressed excitement. ‘You read it,’ she suggested, opening the magazine and stabbing the page with her finger before handing it to him.
It didn’t take him long to skim the relevant article. When he’d finished he closed the magazine and put it on the bed. The article discussed the success rate of a brand-new fertility treatment that would, it suggested, offer hope to women who previously had none.
‘Well?’ she asked excitedly. ‘What do you think? They’re looking for suitable women for the next clinical trial. I know there’s no guarantee, but—’
He cut across her. ‘This is what you have worked yourself into such a state about?’ Shaking his head, he reached for her and she came willingly warm and soft into his arms. He held her close, his fingers meshed in her shiny, sweet-smelling hair, her head pressed to his heart as he reminded her, ‘I told you, Dervla, before we married that I don’t want children.’
‘I know what you said and it was kind—’
‘It was not kind; it was true.’
She pulled away and tilted her face up to his, her smooth brow furrowed and her expression shocked as she impatiently blotted a solitary tear from her cheek with the back of her hand.
Far from swaying or softening his attitude, previously women’s tears had evoked irritation in Gianfranco, but Dervla had never used her tears as a weapon to manipulate him.
She felt things more deeply than anyone he had ever met. Her emotions were incredibly close to the surface, her face as easy for him to read as a neon sign. But despite her almost unnerving transparency she did her crying in private.
‘You really don’t want children.’ She shook her head, a frown pulling her arched brows into a bemused straight line as she added as if speaking to herself, ‘No, that can’t be right. I’ve seen you with Alberto and with the other children. You’re great and—’
‘A baby is a lot of work. Babies kill your social life, cara. Call me selfish—’ better get that in before she did ‘—but I don’t want to come home to a wife who is too exhausted to do more than crawl into bed.’
She looked at him as though he had grown a second head and it wasn’t a particularly attractive one.
‘You don’t mean that, Gianfranco.’
‘It is not me who has changed my mind,’ he reminded her harshly. ‘It is you.’
‘I thought that you’d be pleased that there was a chance,’ she choked in a voice thick with tears and disillusion. ‘Kate is giving Angelo a baby, I want to—’
‘We are not Kate and Angelo. The cases are not similar.’
He watched the pinpricks of bright blood appear on the quivering curve of her lower lip as she released it to say in a voice wiped clean of all expression, ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’
‘I already have a son.’ A son he would gladly have laid down his life to protect…just as his mother had.
It was this knowledge that gave him the strength to withstand the appeal in her eyes. Of course he knew that nobody blamed him for Sara’s death and rationally he recognised it had not been his fault, but the fact remained that had he not been irresponsible enough to get her pregnant, had he not cajoled her into marriage with promises of a luxurious lifestyle and persuaded her against a termination, she would be alive today.
Dervla’s full lower lip wobbled and there was a tremor in her voice as she said bleakly, ‘But we could have a baby together. I don’t have a son. I don’t have a baby. The doctor said there have been incredible advances in IVF over the last few years.’
‘And you went to see a doctor behind my back…’ Gianfranco blocked his growing feelings of guilt with anger.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Gianfranco.’
‘Like what?’ he asked her coldly.
She slung him an exasperated look. ‘I think you’d have been happier if I’d just told you I was having an affair!’ she accused.
Another man—that was funny…Her lips twitched and a burble of borderline hysteria escaped them, causing the fine lines of tension and anxiety around her mouth to briefly smooth out.
Gianfranco watched her, his face like stone. Dervla being touched by another man did not make him feel like laughing or even smiling. It ignited a rage deep inside him.
Dervla sighed and shook her head in a slow negative motion. She made a conscious effort to lower the escalating antagonism.
‘I wasn’t going behind your back—just wanted some facts before I discussed it with you. I didn’t see any reason to raise your hopes, and he said that—’
Gianfranco cut across her; he didn’t want to hear what any doctor had said. It had been a doctor who had told him that the diabetes that Sara had developed during pregnancy was no cause for concern. Gestational diabetes, he had explained, was common but rarely a problem after the birth.
And like a fool he had believed him.
Far from vanishing after the birth, Sara’s condition had progressed to full insulin-dependent diabetes requiring daily injections. And again he had been won over by the confident medical assertion that there was no reason that Sara could not live a full normal life.
It had been three months later that he had buried Sara, who had died of an accidental overdose of insulin.
‘I thought our marriage was based on transparency?’
‘No our marriage—’ She bit back, pushing herself off the bed…God, if she didn’t she’d have strangled him! ‘What about what I want, Gianfranco? What I need?’ Pushing her arms into a robe, she turned and threw him a look of challenge.
‘I thought I gave you what you want and need.’
‘I want this baby.’
‘There is no baby, Dervla.’
‘There could be, there could be!’ she wailed, frustrated by his refusal to even consider what she was saying.
‘I know people who have been down the IVF route. It took over their lives, put a lot of strain on their relationship, not to mention the emotional and physical strain being pumped full of chemicals has on the woman.’
‘Some people think it’s worth it…and if you never even try you’d always wonder.’
‘That is not a route I wish ever to go down. Besides, from what you told me the chances of you getting pregnant would be remote.’ If it took brutal to get his point across, so be it.
Dervla pressed her clenched fists tight against her stomach; she felt physically sick.
‘But there is a chance.’ She couldn’t believe that Gianfranco couldn’t see she had to take it. The icy hand inside her chest tightened as she watched him slowly shake his head.
‘There is no use begging, Dervla. I will not give you a baby.’
Anger flooded through her, releasing adrenaline into her bloodstream. Maybe it wasn’t a baby he didn’t want—it was her baby. ‘Then maybe I’ll find myself someone who will.’
If he had reacted angrily, if he had done almost anything but thrown back his head and laughed, she might have calmed down…but he did laugh.
‘You think I wouldn’t?’
He stopped laughing.
Dervla shivered as their eyes connected. She had never seen his eyes look so cold.
‘I know you wouldn’t.’ Because if he caught a man within sniffing distance of her he would make sure they never sniffed again!
Dervla’s eyes narrowed to icy green slits. ‘Is that a fact?’ she said in a conversational tone. ‘What do you know? Infallible Gianfranco Bruni turns out not to know everything after all.’
‘What are you doing?’ he asked as she began to rush around the room erratically flinging open doors and drawers and flinging the contents she extracted into a bag.
‘I’m packing.’
His patrician features tight, he gave a contemptuous sneer. ‘You’re being ridiculous.’ She wouldn’t go.
She went to the drawer and pulled out her passport. ‘No, I’m finally not being ridiculous. Marrying you, I must have been mad! You’re the most selfish man I have ever met,’ she choked. ‘I’ll take a car. I’ll leave it at the airport.’