Page 4 of Seduced by Her Fake Husband (The Martinelli Wedding #2)

Inwardly cursing himself, his heart suddenly thumping, he filled his lungs slowly through his nose, then carefully gathered her long hair.

In all their time together, Gennaro had instinctively known Luisa’s hair would be soft to the touch but could never have known it would feel like silk.

The urge to bury his fingers in it was close to irresistible, and, teeth gritted, he placed it over her shoulder, taking great pains not to allow their skin to connect, blocking out that the movement of her hair had released the scent of her shampoo and that it was mingling with her perfume to create a scent so divine his senses reeled.

Luisa had forgotten how to breathe. In the two years they’d been nominally husband and wife, Gennaro had never stood so close to her, not in private.

Even in public he kept physical contact to a minimum; the occasional hand to her lower back when entering a function the most he could bring himself to touch her.

He’d never been so close that she could feel the exhalation of his breaths in her hair, never stood so close that she could feel the heat of his skin, and now her heart had ballooned and was making thrashing movements, and she had to concentrate harder than she’d ever concentrated before to stop her weakening legs from turning into jelly.

Fingers pressed lightly into her back. They didn’t touch her skin. They didn’t need to.

She closed her eyes and snatched a short breath.

When it came, the sound of the zip being pulled up seemed magnified, a ringing to join the white noise already whooshing in her ears.

Done, he stepped away.

They left their suite without another word exchanged.

The Bianchi’s lobby was filled to bursting with glamorous guests.

The entire hotel had been turned over for the exclusive use of the wedding party, but that first evening nothing formal had been planned, the guests nominally free to do as they pleased.

Tomorrow, the pre-wedding celebrations would start in earnest with four days of forced fun to look forward to until the wedding day itself.

A month earlier, each guest had been sent a gold-leafed booklet with the itinerary for the duration and accompanying instructions.

Having pored over it, the only part of the itinerary Luisa was looking forward to was Wednesday’s masquerade ball, but only because the instructions had stated guests were required to make all efforts to disguise themselves and that the evening would start with guests strictly segregated by sex.

A whole evening where she wouldn’t have to be glued to Gennaro’s side, an evening where they could happily ignore and avoid each other.

Unfortunately, he was glued to her side that evening, but she made sure to fix a smile to her face and not give away so much as a flicker of emotion at his closeness or a flicker of her distaste at the members of the Esposito family holding court.

There was no sign yet of Lorenzo and Valeria, but their three brutish sons were already there and, of course, their daughter the bride.

Siena Esposito stood with Niccolo, her groom, their smiles as big and as fake as the smile Luisa was wearing.

It was an open secret that theirs was a business arrangement rather than a love match, and she wondered if they had a contracted end date like she and Gennaro had.

Through the crowd of mostly familiar faces in the main restaurant, she spotted her parents and sister and Gennaro’s parents and maternal grandparents seated together.

She could feel the tension from across the vast space, and she pulled an even bigger smile and was more effusive than normal as she circled the table to kiss greetings to everyone, even to her hateful godparents.

She’d been too knotted with the sickness of sharing a bed with Gennaro to have time to worry about this particular meal. Small mercies, she supposed.

The great friendship between the Martinellis and the Rossellinis had strained beyond repair.

If this meal had taken place three years ago, her parents and Gennaro’s parents would be sat together, laughing and talking in the familiar way that only came through decades of close friendship.

That evening, Gennaro’s grandparents sat between the two couples, Marisa, Luisa and Gennaro the other foils to keep them separated.

She noted Gennaro’s greeting to his parents was positively arctic compared to the greeting he gave his grandparents.

Luisa hadn’t seen Gennaro’s parents since their own wedding, and not for the first time wondered why he kept them at such a distance.

Their mutual distaste towards his parents was about the only thing they had in common, but the few times she’d probed about his relationship with them he’d looked at her as if she’d asked about the health of his prostate.

It was the same look she’d received when trying to probe about Niccolo and Siena’s forthcoming marriage.

Gennaro had always been emotionally aloof, but he hadn’t joined any family get-togethers that she’d been invited to since she was at least fifteen…

but then, once she’d turned eighteen and gone off to art school, she’d been too busy embracing adulthood to join family gatherings with any frequency either.

His absence in the decade before he’d made his marriage proposal, though, was something she’d always felt keenly, probably because she’d always felt his looming, terrifying presence so keenly.

Taking the seat beside her sister, she leaned in and whispered, “Is it me or is it cold enough to freeze the Sahara?”

Marisa grimaced and raised her eyebrows.

Growing up, neither Rossellini sister had liked Giuseppe Martinelli.

There had been something about him they’d been instinctively wary of, a coldness in his eyes that had made the coldness of his oldest son’s eyes seem tropical, but they had both adored Carmella.

Carmella Martinelli had always made a big deal about treating the Rossellinis as if they were blood.

Words, Luisa had realised when her father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, were cheap, and the aristocratic Martinellis were cheap too.

Sure, they’d been under no obligation to help her parents when the Rossellinis finances had taken such a nosedive, but to blame her father for it after all he’d done for them and as if their own actions hadn’t contributed to it and as if he’d deliberately got himself a debilitating, incurable disease, had been beyond the pale.

Family looked out for each other, that was the Italian way.

That the Martinellis had refused to help only proved they didn’t see the Rossellinis as family.

Even Gennaro’s marriage offer had been self-serving.

If he’d wanted to help her parents out of the kindness of his heart then he would have done.

Luisa might just have married him voluntarily as a thank you if he’d gone that route.

Instead, he’d used their precarious situation to his own advantage, and she couldn’t despise him more.

Niccolo excepted, the Martinellis were cold, selfish bastards. Seven more sleeps and she’d be shot of them all, and yes, she most definitely was counting. She would return to her family and rebuild her life; one in which the man seated to her right would have no part.

“How come you were so late arriving?” she asked Marisa after their wine had been poured and she’d taken a generous swallow to calm the skittishness that was threatening to overpower her.

She needed conversation. Whenever she sat next to Gennaro, she was always acutely aware of his physicality, but tonight that acuteness had ramped up, a blistering awareness that if she moved her arm or thigh she would brush against him.

God help her, she could still feel the spot on her back through where his fingers had touched her corset, still feel sensation in the roots of her hair from where he’d moved it.

“We were late setting off.”

Something in her sister’s tone made Luisa look more closely at her.

Marisa’s eyes were bruised with tiredness.

“Has something happened with Dad?” Their father’s condition meant he had difficulty walking unaided and made him prone to falling.

Luisa had never shaken the guilt that marriage to Gennaro meant she’d had to move out of their Tuscan home, leaving her unable to help as much as she should and as much as she wanted.

Their father’s health had deteriorated rapidly these last two years, all the caring responsibilities falling on Marisa and their mother .

Marisa shook her head and gave a smile that didn’t quite meet her eyes. “No, he’s not been too bad these last few days.”

Before she could ask if something else had made them late, the waiting staff arrived at their table to take their order, and the moment passed.

Gennaro listened to his mother chatter on about the latest charity she was patronising with only half an ear.

He found it was better to only pay a modicum of attention, just enough to make the expected noises of concentration to stop accusations of not listening.

It wasn’t that he disliked his mother’s chatter, more that when he listened to her blather on about starving children and cruelty to animals, he wanted to lift the table above his head and bring it crashing down with a roar of suppressed fury.

To release his fury though, would be to make him like his father, and he would rather live like a Tibetan monk than be anything like that man.

Living like a Tibetan monk was unnecessary for the very good reason that Gennaro had learned to control his emotions before he started adolescence.

Ruthlessly control them. It was in his relationships with the opposite sex that he exerted the most self-control, and he did this simply by not engaging with them.

Relationships that was. This wasn’t to say he didn’t have female interactions.

He enjoyed sex as much as the next man, but he selected his discreet, short-lived affairs carefully, physical appeal mattering less than attitude.

Any detection of needy vibes from a potential hookup, and he walked away.

Gennaro had reached the age of thirty-seven without a single long-term relationship, and he had every intention of spending his next thirty-seven years alone too.

He might consider getting a dog though. He loved dogs.

They were loyal and, unlike humans, were never cruel and only bit when provoked .

Luisa, he suspected, only bit when provoked.

Over the course of their marriage, he’d gone to great lengths to provoke no form of emotion from her.

It had been for her sake that he’d been a cold, remote husband.

He took no joy from it. It’s the way it had to be.

She was too great a temptation for him to behave differently.

He should have married the sister. Marisa was as beautiful as Luisa, but her beauty did nothing for him.

It didn’t strike his chest the way Luisa’s did.

Her entry into a room didn’t punch him in the guts the way Luisa’s did.

If he’d married Marisa, he wouldn’t have had to keep his distance to the extent that he had with Luisa, would have established a more cordial relationship from the start, just to make their time together bearable.

If he’d married Marisa, he wouldn’t be seated beside her as he was right now with Luisa, tortured with awareness sluicing through his veins.

He kept catching wafts of her perfume. Each inhalation landed straight in his loins.

This time next week, they’d be over. Luisa would be free of him, and he’d be free of her presence and her scent and the intolerable arousal and emotions she evoked in him.