Page 22 of Marriage Made In Hate

L UCA DID NOT speak as he drove away. There were things he wanted to think about— needed to think about.

He needed to accept that six years ago he hadn’t appreciated the pain he’d caused her, even if unintentionally, because he’d never experienced anything similar himself.

His life had been sunny, pain-free—until the tragedy of losing his parents had hit him.

Her words to him on the palazzo terrace echoed in his head—how she’d never felt she belonged to anyone, how that had made him more important to her than just a passing affair.

She wanted someone to belong to—anyone.

Of their own volition his eyes slid to her.

She was sitting quite still, hands looped in her lap, looking out through the windscreen, her face in profile.

He could not read her expression. But with his rapid glance he saw there was something about it that, on impulse, made him drop his right hand from the steering wheel, reach across, press lightly on her folded hands. As if to comfort her…

Her reaction was immediate. She flinched. Pulled her hands away. She didn’t say anything, but the message was clear.

Once they had shared a communal body space.

No longer.

He changed gear, accelerating and then slowing down as a curve approached. Out of nowhere he heard his own voice speaking. Where the words came from, he didn’t know—he knew only that he wanted her to hear them.

‘I missed you, Bianca, when I went back to Italy. I want you to know that.’

Did she turn her head to look at him? He didn’t know. He was keeping his eyes on the road. It made it somehow easier for him to talk.

‘There were times when I wanted to get in touch with you…maybe invite you for a holiday.’

‘But you didn’t.’ There was no emotion in her voice as she spoke.

‘No, I didn’t. It didn’t seem…wise.’

‘Because it might have given me ideas…false hopes?’ Bianca’s voice was flat.

‘Yes, I suppose that was it,’ he said.

There was another silence. He wanted to look at her, but made himself not.

Then she was speaking again. Her voice less flat, more…weary. ‘It was better that you didn’t get in touch, Luca. It would only have prolonged matters. I had to do what you told me to do. Accept that our affair was over.’

He heard her draw a breath.

‘And now I’ve finally done that,’ she said. ‘It’s taken six years, but now it’s done. Seeing you again has enabled me to do so—ironic though that is.’

He wanted to say something, though he wasn’t sure what. What she’d just said jarred. ‘Ironic’, she’d called it. But that irony applied to him, too. Only in reverse. Seeing Bianca again had not had the same effect on him as it had on her…

She’s decided she is over me finally. Whereas I—

He let his eyes go to her now. Only a rapid glance, because he was driving. But something had flared inside him—something that refuted what she’d just said to him.

I’ve said I want us to behave as though we are the strangers Matteo believes us to be. But even if we were it could not make me impervious to the effect she has on me! Her beauty is too great for that.

And they were not strangers—he had reminded her of that inescapable truth. They had been lovers who had burned in each other’s arms, consumed in a passion that had never quite been sated.

I could have made my London posting twice as long and still not tired of her.

Only when his recall had come he had faced up to reality. A reality he’d forced upon her.

A reality that no longer exists.

His glance flicked to her yet again, and then away, leaving her image on his retinas.

She had said the differences between then had lessened only because she’d turned out to be his godfather’s niece, and because now she dressed accordingly and was a university graduate with a professional career.

And, yes, he was glad for her that she’d found the family she’d never known and had made a career for herself—an achievement to be proud of.

And, yes, six years on he did prefer her more elegant fashion style and image.

But what had flared between them from the moment he’d set eyes on her was flaring once more.

For him, at least.

And for her?

She’d said he’d only kissed her that night at Matteo’s to wind her up, to retaliate for her scathing denunciation of his assumption that she’d persuaded his godfather to come up with his insane idea.

And that was true. But the moment their lips had touched there had been only one motivation, one reason for kissing her.

And only one reason for her kissing him back… He knew that with every male instinct in his body.

That reason had not disappeared when he had ended their affair.

It was still there, in every glance at each other, every flicker of constant awareness.

Yes, perhaps six years ago she had looked to him to provide the sense of belonging that she now had from her uncle, but that did not mean that what he felt whenever he looked at her she did not feel too.

If she would only let herself…

Because it’s there—it’s still there. And not even all her denial can deny its truth.

Not to her. Not to him. Not any longer.

* * *

Bianca was on her laptop, but her mind was not on her work.

Other things were filling it. The day had brought so much—too much.

How could she make sense of it? Less than three days ago she’d had no idea that Luca was about to walk back into her life, and now—now he was dominating it. Dominating her thoughts, her feelings.

Her desires.

She felt herself tense, lifting her hands from the keyboard.

Restless, suddenly. Abruptly she levered herself off her bed, where she’d been propped up against the pillows, and set aside her laptop.

She crossed to the window overlooking the villa’s gardens.

A moon was rising, casting silvered shadows over the topiary standing sentinel in the night.

How different this formal garden was from the naturalistic landscape of the palazzo .

Luca’s palazzo . His home…his birthplace…his birthright.

Her thoughts moved to and fro, sifting through all that she had thought and felt that day, the day before, the night before…

So short a space of time, and yet so much had happened.

So much had changed.

Her anger at Luca had dissipated…drained away.

She’d let go of it. Because now she realised why she had been so desperate not to lose him.

And he—he had changed too. Had acknowledged how brutal his dismissal of her had been—how he had been driven to it because she had wanted him too much, had feared losing him too much.

She must accept that. And he had to accept— had accepted—that she was not who she had been when he’d walked out on her.

She was his own godfather’s niece. Bianca Fiarante.

Who one day would be a wealthy woman. She was a woman already embarked upon a demanding science-based career, earned through her own determined efforts, and now she dressed and looked and sounded perfectly eligible and perfectly entitled to be part of the elite world of wealth and ancestry that Luca had always been part of.

The world of Luca the Visconte D’Alabruschi, with his eighteenth-century palazzo , his land and his estates, his crested silverware and his very own personal Roman ruins—the world he had always been part of.

The world she had once been excluded from.

Yes, so much had changed since then.

But one thing had not.

Her eyes looked out over the shadowed gardens, mysterious in the moonlight, and she heard the cry of a nightbird piercing the low, nocturnal murmur of the cicadas.

One thing had not changed at all.

She shut her eyes, but on her inner eyelids was still the image imprinted there six long years ago. And three brief days could never expunge it. It would always, always be there.

Luca. Only Luca.

She thrust away from the window, a half-cry of anguish stifled inside her. Oh, what use was it that she should feel like this? What use was it that she should still be so drawn to him? Nothing could happen between them. Nothing must happen.

Somehow—for the remainder of this painful, conflicted time, while they were still playing out her uncle’s sad, desperate fantasy—she had to stay strong.

Keep Luca at bay. She shut her eyes, as if she could shut him out of her vision, out of her head.

Why was he tormenting her, saying what he had said to her, that her beauty still called to him?

I must resist it—I must!

Because anything else—

She would not go there. Not in her thoughts, nor in her imaginings. And most of all not in any reality at all.

Determinedly, she sat herself down on her bed, swung her legs up, propped the laptop on her knees once more, and made herself focus on her work. Blocking out, as best she could, all that had happened since she’d looked across the saloni to see Luca walking out of the past…

Again, ruthlessly, she pulled her thoughts away.

Luca had left the villa after he’d dropped her off, staying only to spend a few minutes with Matteo, then heading off.

She’d been relieved—especially when he’d told her, in a voice without expression, that he’d be going to Rome the next day and was unlikely to return for a fortnight.

She’d only nodded as he’d bade her goodbye, watched him head downstairs, then gone in to see her uncle.

Matteo had been in high spirits, and over the dinner she’d shared with him upstairs in his room had been eager to hear all about her visit to the palazzo. She’d waxed lyrical, but evaded any questions or assumptions her uncle had made about what she would do when she was mistress there.

That day would never come—for all her uncle’s hopeless fantasies.

For any fantasies at all…

* * *

‘Luca, you sly devil! When did all this happen? You’ve kept it damned quiet!’

Luca looked nonplussed at his colleague, a friend from school and university, and the son of good friends of his parents and Matteo.

‘Kept what quiet?’ he asked.

Pietro slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Your engagement!’

‘My what ?’ Luca’s reaction was explosive.

Pietro laughed. ‘No point trying to hide it any longer! Not with your engagement party the weekend after next. Short notice—but I won’t be missing it, I can tell you.’

A pool of ice formed in Luca.

‘Engagement party?’ His voice was still blank.

Pietro gave another laugh. ‘Trying to keep it secret a bit longer, were you? No luck, my friend. The invitations have gone out!’

The moment he could get to it, Luca was on his phone. As soon as Bianca was on the line, he exploded.

‘What the hell ,’ he demanded, ‘is going on? An engagement party?’

‘What?’

Bianca’s reply was just as explosive as his had been.

‘I have just been congratulated on my engagement by an old family friend who tells me he will be delighted to come to my engagement party in a fortnight,’ Luca bit out grimly.

‘Oh, grief…’

Bianca’s voice was hollow. He heard her take a breath. ‘OK, Luca, I’ll try and find out what Matteo has done.’

‘Matteo?’ There was an edge in Luca’s voice—he could hear its sharpness himself.

Bianca’s, however, was even sharper. ‘What are you trying to imply, Luca? That I had any idea about this?’ Her tone hardened. ‘Still indulging in your conceited vanity that I might actually want to marry you and let the whole world think so?’

Her derision stung. Rightly so. He should not have said that. He knew she deplored their charade as much as he did. Because that, after all, was the only way to regard it.

There is nothing between us except in Matteo’s deluded longings.

Yet even as he asserted it, memory challenged. That day at his palazzo had drawn him and Biance closer together as they had exhumed the past to exorcise it. Get it out of the way.

But out of the way for what?

The question hung unanswered…unanswerable.

Bianca was speaking again, brisk and impersonal. ‘I’ll speak to Matteo and phone you back.’

She cut the call.

Slowly, Luca put his phone down. Conscious, with a sense of confusion and disquiet, that it had been good to hear Bianca’s voice again…

But what has that to do with deepening this unholy charade with, of all things, an engagement party conjured out of Matteo’s imagination? Dear God!

Surely there had to be a way to knock it on the head?

But when Bianca phoned back, his heart sank.

‘I asked Matteo over lunch,’ she said, her voice heavy.

‘He said he wanted it to be a surprise for us, but he is glad we know. He says he’s invited “everyone”—whatever that means…

you’d know better than I—and it will be in two weeks’ time.

It is short notice, he admits, but Giuseppe will see to it all.

All I have to do,’ she went on, her voice hollow, ‘is buy a beautiful gown for the evening.’ She paused.

‘He…he sounded so happy, Luca. I didn’t have the heart to show how dismayed you and I are by it. ’

He could hear the choke in her words and gave a resigned sigh. ‘I can’t see a good way out of it—not without hurting Matteo. All we can do is play along…for now, at least.’

He got off the line, his disquiet mounting. This whole deception was getting deeper and deeper. Now he would be parading Bianca as his fiancée—his fidenzata —deceiving his friends with a lie. Because what else could it be but a lie? There was nothing between Bianca and himself. Not any longer.

Yet even as he made the assertion in his mind he knew, with even more confusion and disquiet, that that, too, was a lie…

With Bianca at the heart of it.