Page 12 of Seduced by Her Fake Husband (The Martinelli Wedding #2)
She pulled a face to convey that this was like the pot calling the kettle black and then gave a dazed laugh. “Gennaro… It’s only taken two years but he’s finally taken something I said seriously.”
“What do you mean?”
She shook her head. “Nothing I can talk about. You know, that damned contract he made me sign.”
Marisa did know, although, strictly, she wasn’t supposed to.
But then, Niccolo wasn’t supposed to know the truth either and Luisa knew he did.
Siblings were a whole different ballpark when it came to secrets and lies, and it suddenly came to her that if Gennaro was capable of loving anyone, it was his brother and with that thought came a deep pang down in the pit of her stomach.
“Luisa?”
She blinked and met her sister’s concerned stare. Mustering a smile, she cleared her throat. “Sorry. Just thinking of something I shouldn’t.” And feeling something she shouldn’t because she shouldn’t care that Gennaro was incapable of love.
“Gennaro?” Marisa asked.
She nodded, wishing she could deny it. Wishing she could pretend to herself that her feelings for him weren’t growing. Mushrooming.
Wished, too, that she could pretend to herself that her mushrooming feelings were tied solely to her desire for him.
There had been a moment earlier when she’d been silently removing clothes from her wardrobe and had been helpless to stop herself from watching him sleep.
He’d been on his stomach, cheek turned towards her, an arm hooked around his head.
The arrogant cynicism she’d thought embedded in his gorgeous features had vanished.
To watch him unobserved and at his most vulnerable had made her chest so full it had felt like it was choking her.
She didn’t want to think of Gennaro as human. She wanted – needed – to hold on to her loathing of him for reasons she didn’t dare explore.
A couple of the Esposito sons strolled past and then backed up on themselves and joined them without invitation. No doubt they assumed the Rossellini sisters would be delighted to have their company.
Despising them almost as much as she wanted to still despise her husband, Luisa swallowed her growing melancholy and forced her features into a welcoming smile.
More people gravitated to them. What had started as a private brunch for two soon turned into an early lunch party of ten, all drinking coffee and chatting excitedly about the evening’s masquerade ball.
It seemed to be the one event of the week everyone was looking forward to, more so, Luisa thought cynically, than the wedding itself.
“Hey, Niccolo, Gennaro,” one of the party said, the first words to properly penetrate Luisa’s mind, and she whipped her head around before she could stop herself. Her pulses had skyrocketed before she’d fully taken him in.
Dressed in casual khaki shorts and a black polo shirt, a pair of shades resting on the top of his head, her husband strode towards them with his brother beside him, his tall, muscular perfection gleaming under the high sun.
A waitress hurried over with a couple of chairs. Gennaro sank into one directly across from Luisa with an elegance no man his size should be able to pull off and ordered a coffee.
Only then did his gaze seek hers.
There was a moment that stretched for an age when everyone surrounding them faded to grey and the chatter diminished to a distance buzz.
Neither acknowledged the other by word or gesture.
Neither needed to. In that long, stretched moment where the beats of her heart became weighted and her skin saturated with a prickling, lifting sensation, it could have been only the two of them in existence.
The moment ended when Siena, flanked by her closest friends, bounded over to join them too.
Luisa’s gaze flicked to Niccolo, who stretched out his hand to his fiancée and playfully pulled her onto his lap.
Whatever Gennaro had said to him was already having an effect, and it was an effect that spread throughout their group, the light atmosphere becoming raucous and peppered with laughter she absorbed only minimally because her entire being was consumed with Gennaro.
As hard as she tried, she was helpless to stop her gaze seeking his.
Every dart of her eyes to him was met by his stare on her, as if some irresistible force had locked them in a private bubble.
Oh this was hopeless !
A whole night spent sleeping on a sofa to put distance between them and create distance for her desire had failed miserably.
He hadn’t got within three feet of her since arriving on the terrace but the whole of her body burned with awareness for him, and when he received the same message as Niccolo and the other groomsmen reminding them of their imminent wedding suit fittings and got to his feet to leave, her stomach’s plummet of disappointment was strong enough to frighten her.
They shared one last, lingering glance before he disappeared with his brother and the Espositos.
In normal circumstances, Gennaro’s tolerance limits found their peak when in the presence of the Espositos.
Lorenzo, the patriarch, was an overbearing Pitbull of a man – the most complimentary description Gennaro could muster for him – his thuggish sons boorish and entitled.
He despised each and every one of them, but nowhere near as much as he despised his own father.
Spending a few hours in Lorenzo’s suite – the suite that should have been Gennaro’s – so the groom, all the groomsmen (bar Dante) and the fathers of the bride and groom could have their last fitting was something he would rather have waxed all the hair from his body than endure.
That afternoon, his mind was too full of Luisa to feel anything but mild revulsion at his father’s kiss-arsing of Lorenzo Esposito, too full to feel more than passing pity for the women spoken of so salaciously by the Esposito sons. For once he didn’t need to train his face into not reacting.
He let the conversation swirl around him, sipping on Lorenzo’s specially imported bourbon and allowing Luisa to take centre stage in his thoughts.
He could hardly do otherwise, not even when Leonardo, who was late for the fitting because of a ‘staffing emergency’, finally joined them, looking strained and smelling faintly of sex.
Gennaro couldn’t bring himself to care about the strain on his cousin’s face or care who the lady was. With Leonardo, it could be anyone.
It was rare that sex drove itself to the forefront of Gennaro’s mind. He’d always been excellent at compartmentalising, and that included sex. Sex was a tool to satisfy his natural urges, nothing more, the women in his fantasies faceless. Generic.
Luisa was the opposite of generic. His reactions to her were the opposite of generic, and that’s why he’d spent two years ruthlessly suppressing them, but in this suite with its two beds that should have been his and Luisa’s and with the air he was breathing filled with more testosterone than a professional football team’s changing room came the slow revelation that he didn’t need to suppress it anymore.
Why continue keeping Luisa at a distance when the danger of their attraction had reduced to nothing?
How could there be danger when they were parting in five days?
Why should they not enjoy their last days together in the most pleasurable way?
Throw off the shackles of two years of celibacy before they were in a position to start taking lovers again with a few days of hedonistic fucking to see out the dying days of a marriage neither had enjoyed nor wanted.
He drained his bourbon and swiped the residue with the back of his hand.
Fuck everything.
It was time to take the gamble of his wife and play the cards.
It was time to twist.
The rules for that evening’s masquerade ball were simple.
No mixing of the sexes until the ball started, males and females expected to dress for the evening in separate rooms and suites.
All male guests had to be in the ballroom by seven thirty p.m., the ladies joining them at eight.
The seating allocation would be chosen by lottery, the swapping of seats forbidden, and masks that covered at least the top half of the guests’ faces to be worn at all times.
Unwritten was the rule that anything that happened at the masquerade ball stayed at the masquerade ball.
Luisa got ready for the evening in her sister’s room in the main part of the hotel with a thrumming heart, and when Marisa helped her into her dress, she was helpless to stop her thoughts straying to Gennaro peeling it off.
She hadn’t seen him since he’d left for his last wedding suit fitting but he’d been in her thoughts every passing second, that last lingering look between them a constant image in her mind’s eye.
Luisa wasn’t the only one with an occupied mind.
The Rossellini sisters must have got ready for an evening out together dozens and dozens of times in their lives, but even though they played their usual music and sipped champagne, the bonhomie between them that usually came naturally was taking effort from them both.
Marisa had disappeared that afternoon and when Luisa asked where she’d been, her sister’s mumbled answer of sunbathing on the beach would have been believable if her cheeks hadn’t turned so red.
She hadn’t pressed her, too sick with anticipation of what the evening…
night… could bring to give her sister the attention she deserved.
Nothing had to happen, she continually told herself with increasing desperation.
Both sisters dressed and ready, it was with a lot of relief that they left Marisa’s room, popped into their parents’ room next door – they’d begged off the ball – for the obligatory proud parents gushes and photos, and then took the elevator to the ground floor lobby where all the women were gathering.
The bride-to-be, the deserved centre of attention, looked spectacular in a gothic gold dress and gold and black harlequin mask. Her blonde hair gleamed, and when she approached Luisa, she looked more relaxed than she’d ever seen her.
Where Luisa’s reaction to the male Espositos was a visceral dislike, she felt a strange sense of compassion towards the only daughter, and she welcomed her approach with a genuine smile.
“I’m having a sleepover in my suite for some select friends to celebrate my last night of freedom on Friday night,” Siena said in an undertone. “Would adore for you to join us.”
“That sounds great, thank you,” Luisa replied, trying not to sound too taken aback.
Despite Siena marrying Luisa’s brother-in-law, the two women hadn’t had much to do with each other since the engagement party, something she suspected had been deliberately engineered by both Martinelli brothers.
They were probably afraid Gennaro’s wife and Niccolo’s fiancée would talk and reveal secrets both preferred to keep hidden.
“Wonderful. You look amazing, by the way.” Pressing her cheek to Luisa’s – no danger of lipstick transferring – Siena moved on to the next woman to catch her attention.
Luisa had barely started on her glass of champagne when a gong rang out. In an instant, the atmosphere shifted.
It was time for the ladies to enter the ballroom and for the masquerade to begin.