Once A Moretti Wife

CHAPTER THREE

ANNA GAWKED AS the driver came to a stop along the Embankment. She’d always been curious about Stefano’s home, situated in a high-rise residential complex overlooking the Thames, which, at the time of building, had been the most expensive development in the world. So naturally, Stefano owned the most expensive apartment within it: the entire top floor.

The driver opened Stefano’s door. Before he could get out she touched his arm, only lightly but with an instinctive familiarity she’d never used before. ‘You could be telling me anything about our relationship. I can’t disprove any of it. How do I know I can trust you?’

‘In all the time you worked for me did you ever know me to lie?’ he answered steadily.

‘I never caught you out in a lie,’ she conceded. In the eighteen months she’d worked for him their relationship had been nothing less than honest, brutally so on occasion.

‘So trust me.’ He held her gaze with that same intense look that sent tendrils of something curling up her spine.

‘It doesn’t seem I have much choice.’

If she could remember her phone’s pin code she could reach Melissa and ask her but even if she could, she knew she wouldn’t make that call. Not yet. The thought of speaking to her sister made her feel sick. She wouldn’t call her until she could trust she wouldn’t scream down the line at her and say things she knew she would regret.

She must have known about Melissa’s trip. Melissa’s letter had said as much. She’d asked for her forgiveness.

How could she forgive that? After everything their mother had done and put them through? Their father had been six feet under for less than six months when their mother had started seeing an Australian man she met through a dating agency. Anna, who’d been desperately grieving the loss of the father she’d adored, had tried to understand her mother’s loneliness. She really had. She’d resisted the urge to spit in the usurper’s tea, had been as welcoming as she could be, believing Melissa’s private assertion that it was nothing but a rebound fling by a lonely, heartbroken woman and that it would fizzle out before it really started. If only.

Three months after meeting him, nine months after she’d buried her husband, Anna’s mother had announced she was emigrating to Australia with her new man.

Stefano pressed his thumb to her chin and gently stroked it. ‘When your memories come back you will know the truth. I will help you find them.’

Her heart thudding, her skin alive with the sensation of his touch, Anna swallowed the moisture that had filled her mouth.

When had she given in to the chemistry that had always been there between them, always pulling her to him? She’d fought against it right from the beginning, having no intention of joining the throng of women Stefano enjoyed such a legendary sex life with. To be fair, she didn’t have any evidence of what he actually got up to under the bed sheets; indeed it was something she’d been resolute in not thinking about, but the steady flow of glamorous, sexy women in and out of his life had been pretty damning.

One of her conditions for accepting the job as his PA was that he must never ask her to be a go-between between him and his lovers. No way would she be expected to leave her desk to buy a pretty trinket as a kiss-off to a dumped lover. When she’d told him this he had roared with laughter.

When had she gone from liking and hugely admiring him but with an absolute determination to never get into bed with him, to marrying him overnight? She’d heard of whirlwind marriages before but from employee to wife in twenty-four hours? Her head hurt just trying to wrap itself around it.

Had Stefano looked at her with the same glimmer in his green eyes then as he was now? Had he pressed his lips to hers or had she been the one...?

‘How will you help me remember us?’ she asked in a whisper.

His thumb moved to caress her cheek and his voice dropped to a murmur. ‘I will help you find again the pleasure you had in my bed. I will teach you to become a woman again.’

Mortification suffused her, every part of her anatomy turning red.

I will teach you to be a woman again?

His meaning was clear. He knew she was a virgin.

Anna’s virginity was not something she’d ever discussed with anyone. Why would she? Twenty-three-year-old virgins were rarer than the lesser-spotted unicorn. For Stefano to know that...

Dear God, it was true.

All the denial she’d been storing up fell away.

She really had married him.

And if she’d married him, she must have slept with him. Which meant all her self-control, not just around him but in her life itself, had been blown away.

She’d taken such pride in her self-control after her mum had left. Events might fall out of her power but her own behaviour was something she controlled with iron will. All those teenage parties she’d been to when alcohol, cigarettes and more illicit substances were passed around and couples found empty spaces in which to make out... She’d been the one sitting there sipping on nothing stronger than a cola and taking great pride in the fact that she was in control of all her faculties. Her self-control was the only thing she’d had control of in a life where she’d been powerless to stop her father dying or her mother moving to the other side of the world and leaving her behind.

A different heat from the mortification ravaging her now bloomed as her mind suddenly pictured Stefano lying on top of her...

His eyes still holding hers as if he would devour her in one gulp, Stefano trailed his fingers down her neck and squeezed her shoulder. ‘Let’s get you inside. You must rest. You’re exhausted.’

Anna blew out a long breath and nodded. For once she was completely incapable of speech.

She’d shared a bed with him.

She’d shared more than a bed with him.

Trying desperately to affect nonchalance, she had no choice but to allow him to assist her through the grand atrium of his apartment building to his private elevator. It was either that or have her unsteady legs collapse beneath her again.

She’d always been physically aware of him before but with his arm slung protectively around her shoulders that awareness flew off the scale.

The dividing line she’d erected between them and worked so hard to maintain... Noting Stefano’s easy familiarity with her; the way he was so comfortable touching her now along with the flirting she’d long been used to... Yes, that dividing line had been demolished.

She just wished her body didn’t sing its delight at his new proprietorial manner with her.

It was such a relief to be led to a sofa to collapse onto that it took her a moment, catching her breath, to take stock of Stefano’s home.

Her home.

It was like stepping into another world.

She was sitting in a living room so vast and wide she felt like a toddler who’d stumbled into a ballroom, the room complete with a gold-leafed crystal chandelier gleaming magnificently above her.

Floor-to-ceiling windows covered the entire perimeter and from one aspect gave the most amazing view of the Thames—was that Westminster Bridge she could see in the near distance?

Not a single memory was jogged by any of it. She’d lived here for almost a year but she was seeing it for the first time.

She looked around wondering where everyone was. ‘No staff?’

‘I don’t have staff. The concierge service runs my housekeeping for me and I pay them a fortune for it.’

When Stefano had first made his fortune in his home town of Lazio, he’d employed live-in staff but had soon learned to dislike having other people in his space. Housekeeper, cleaners, butler, chef, gardener...the list had been endless. Being waited on hand and foot sounded fantastic in theory but in practice it was a drag and he’d put the staff on day-only duties within weeks.

He was a fully grown man who’d been caring for himself since he was fifteen. He didn’t need someone to dress him or run his baths. He saw his peers with their homes full of enough staff to fill a cinema and thought them fools for allowing themselves to revert to infancy.

It was all the fawning he couldn’t abide. That was one of the reasons he’d been so keen to employ Anna as his PA. She’d been completely unaffected by meeting him, a reaction he hadn’t received in years. In a business setting he was used to fear being the primary reaction; in his personal life he received desire from women and enthusiasm from men, both sexes looking at him with dollar signs flashing in their eyes. Anna had looked at him with disdain.

He’d strolled into the Levon Brothers offices when they’d been in early discussion about him buying the business from them and she’d been behind the desk in the office guarding theirs. He’d handed her his coat as he walked past for her to hang for him and heard a sarcastic ‘You’re welcome,’ in his wake. He’d paused at the door he’d been about to open and looked at her, standing with his coat in her arms, challenge set in her eyes, jutting chin and pursed lips.

‘What did you say?’ he’d asked.

‘I said that you’re welcome. I meant to say it in my head just as I’m sure your thanks for me taking your coat off your hands was said in your head, but it slipped out.’

It had been a sharp salutary reminder of the importance of manners, something no one had dared to pull him up on for many years and it had taken a scrap of a woman to do just that.

He’d put a hand to his chest, made a mocking bow and said, ‘Thank you.’

She’d nodded primly and crossed the room to hang his coat on the stand. Shorter than the women who usually caught his eye, she had the most exquisite figure, perfectly proportioned. He remembered exactly what she’d been wearing that day, a billowing checked skirt that had fallen below her knees, long tan boots with spiked heels, a tight black vest and a fitted khaki-coloured jacket, all pulled together with a thick belt with studs that looked sharp enough to have someone’s eye out.

‘Do I dare ask if you make coffee?’ he’d asked, fascinated by her.

‘You can ask but beware—refusal often offends.’

Roaring with laughter, he’d gone into his meeting. Within an hour, when the beautiful, sarcastic secretary had been brought in six times to explain the report she’d compiled for him but which the idiots running the company didn’t understand, he’d known he was going to buy the company and poach her to be his PA. It turned out Anna was the real brains behind Levon Brothers. Without her by their side and covering their messes, it would never have taken off. With her by Stefano’s side, Moretti’s could only strengthen further.

It had been the best business decision he’d ever made. He’d learned to trust her judgement completely.

He’d believed her to be as straight as a line. He’d thought that with Anna what you saw was what you got, when all along she’d been nothing but a grasping gold-digger.

Now the bravado that always shone in her eyes was muted by alarm. ‘It’s just you and me here?’

‘We like our privacy,’ he said. ‘We can walk around naked without having to worry that we’ll frighten anyone.’

Her cheeks turned the most becoming crimson but she raised a tired brow and wanly retorted, ‘I can assure you I won’t be walking anywhere naked within a mile of you.’

Amused by her stubbornness even when she was so clearly ready to fall into a dead sleep, he whispered into her ear, ‘And I can assure you that when you’re feeling better you will never want to put your clothes on. Believe me, bellissima, we spend a lot of time together naked.’

‘If I don’t remember it then it didn’t happen.’

Studying the firm set of her lips, he remembered what it had been like between them when they’d first married. He’d had no idea she was a virgin until she’d blurted it out when they’d walked into the bridal suite hours after exchanging their vows. She’d stood as defiant as she did now but there had been something in her eyes he’d never seen in her before: fear. That had been a bigger shock than her declaration of virginity.

He’d made love to her so slowly and tenderly that night that when he’d felt her first climax he’d been as triumphant and elated as if he’d been the first man to conquer Mount Everest. That night had been special. Precious. And it had only been the start.

Once Anna had discovered the joy of sex she’d been a woman reborn and unleashed.

She had no memories of any of it. When he next saw her naked, for Anna it would be the first time, and he remembered how painfully shy she’d been then.

He took one of her hands and razed a kiss across the knuckles. ‘Can you walk to the bedroom or shall I carry you?’

Her eyes flashed and she managed to inflect dignity into her reply. ‘I can walk.’

She allowed him to help her to her feet and held onto his arm as he led her to the bedroom he’d slept alone in for the past month.

The last twenty-four hours had brought such a change to his fortunes that Stefano was tempted to wonder whether it was he who had suffered a bump to his head.

His wife was back under his roof and shortly to be back in his bed.

He caught her unconcealed surprise when he opened the door to reveal a room cast in soft muted colours and dominated by an enormous emperor bed.

‘We chose the decor together,’ he told her. ‘You chose the bed.’ It had been the first thing they’d bought as a married couple. He’d known she would hate sleeping in a bed he’d shared with other women.

And now they would share it again. Anna needed to know that this was theirs, a bedroom they’d created together, a room they’d made love in hundreds of times. He needed to consolidate in her mind that they were a properly married couple and that it was natural for them to sleep together.

He couldn’t begin to dissect his own feelings about sleeping by the side of the woman who had played him for a fool so spectacularly.

‘Seriously?’ she asked in a voice that had gone husky.

‘Sì. And when you’re better I can promise you’ll enjoy it as we always used to. But all that can wait. Consultant’s orders are for you to do nothing but rest for the next few days. I promised I would take care of you and you know I am a man of my word.’

He always kept his word. To his way of thinking it was what separated humans from animals. He’d married Anna giving his word that he would be faithful. He’d given his word that if he ever felt the impulse to cheat he would tell her before acting on it and they would go their separate ways.

She’d given him her word too. She’d promised she would trust him. Her word had been a lie. Her intentions had been a lie. It had all been a lie. Their entire marriage had been built on lies and deception. No sooner had she left him than she’d hit him with her demands for a massive slice of the fortune he’d built from nothing.

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