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‘Yes,’ she agreed flatly, refusing to look at him and burrowing below the sheet.
‘I’m not a man who makes hasty decisions. I’ll give our marriage a chance. We’ll move one step at a time.’
Tears seeped out below her tightly shut lashes. She was defective goods, but he would graciously give her a trial before he sent her back to England. Once again a man was ensuring she believed that all she had to offer was her body. Feeling as though he had battered her with his condescension, she closed her eyes tight, praying for sleep to come quickly, for she was beyond even thinking about the future.
But she didn’t need to think about it, did she? Inevitably he would divorce her. There was no advantage to him in staying married to a woman like her. She had brought him no business dowry and she could not give him a child. What had happened with Matthew had happened a second time. But this time she was heartbroken, and it was all too easy for her to think of herself as absolutely useless again…
CHAPTER EIGHT
EVERY time she glimpsed the magnificent panoramic outlook from the terrace of the Villa Barbieri, Caroline wondered if she had accidentally strayed into paradise.
It was the most beautiful still day, and she loved the silence. The terracotta roofs of the sleepy village on the hilltop were a charming enhancement to the ancient honey-coloured and much-repaired stone walls of the buildings. The far view of the looming Alps was misty and indistinct, while the lush hills opposite were covered with fresh, green chestnut trees, acacias, scrub oak and broom, before petering out into the fertile valley where silvery-green olive groves and lines of grapevines took over.
She lay in the shade on her stomach, with her bikini top undone and Koko dozing beneath her lounger. If ever a cat had been born to live in a house the size of a palace it was Koko. She might hiss and spit at Valente, and emit noisy, sulky cries from a distance when he was around, but Caroline’s pet had wasted no time in making fans of the staff, who could not do enough to make the little cat feel at home.
‘She’s incredibly jealous of me,’ Valente had declared the week before. ‘As far as she’s concerned, I’ve stolen her place with you.’
And it was true, Caroline conceded with a wondering smile at that truth. Koko had been banned from the bedroom, while Valente slept with Caroline every night that he was in residence. He was travelling back and forth to Venice, usually only spending one night away from her at most. It hurt that he had never asked her to go with him, but when he was at the Villa Barbieri she woke up in his arms and increasingly fell asleep in them as well. Enclosed in that simple, unthreatening togetherness with a man for the first time, she had gradually learned to trust him. Somehow she had even learned to long for more than his kisses as he controlled his passion while assiduously stoking hers. Step by step, he had promised only four weeks earlier, and she was already becoming unnervingly eager for the next move forward.
From the first, he had encouraged her to touch him, to explore at will and experiment, and she had soon discovered that the more familiar she became with that lean, beautifully masculine and intensely responsive body of his, the less nervous she was around him. Her fear had gone, for he had proved how self-controlled he could be. With a little sigh she shifted her hips in a sensuous circle on the lounger, recalling how she had wakened him the day before, and the unrestrained sound of his satisfaction while he buried his hands in her hair and urged her on.
With a wicked little quiver of awareness alight low in her belly, she acknowledged that her physical barriers were coming down—and why not? If Valente’s wonderful patience with her had taught her anything, it was that he was still the man she had loved when she was twenty-one years old. And at least he was no longer being forced to go without any sexual satisfaction at all, she reflected. Her cheeks hot, she smiled in remembrance of the pleasure she had discovered she could give him. And she had given that pleasure eagerly, while marvelling at the change in herself and the newly learned confidence driving it.
A helicopter flew overhead while she ruminated over the truth that, given time, she was convinced she would be able to meet the terms of their marital agreement. Valente would win where Matthew had failed, which she supposed was only to be expected when she was in love with Valente and desperate to be part of a normal marriage. She had never got over losing Valente, which was hardly surprising in the circumstances. Her horribly ill-judged rebound marriage to Matthew had made it all too clear to her what she had lost … Footsteps sounded on the terrace and she lifted her head.
‘I thought you wouldn’t be back until late tonight!’ Caroline exclaimed, glancing up in surprise and welcome at her tall, well-built husband.
Valente sat down on the lounger beside hers, his lean, darkly handsome features serious. ‘Since you’re flying back to England to be with your father for his surgery tomorrow, I thought I should finish up early.’
‘Good.’ Caroline smiled up at him, her entire face lighting up.
Sexual hunger hit Valente as hard as a punch in the stomach. He wanted to haul into his arms and carry her up to bed, but he knew better than to succumb to such a caveman impulse around her. To occupy himself, he leant forward instead and retied the straps on her bikini top. ‘Keep the little white patches intact,’ he urged softly. ‘I find them very sexy, tesora mia.’
Caroline sat up, reddening to the roots of her pale hair. The atmosphere was thick with tension. Hot dark golden eyes travelled from her full pink mouth down to the taut little breasts restrained by her bikini top, which she longed for him to uncover. Her mouth ran dry, the hunger in his all-male gaze causing a burst of sudden heat in her pelvis. Her nipples tightened to an almost painful degree. The very knowledge of his desire made her feel dizzy, and somehow proud that she could have that effect on him. Yet she lived in constant fear that frustration would drive him into the arms of another woman before she could get over her hang-ups.
Valente gazed back at her steadily. ‘I need a cold shower, or …’
‘Or?’ she whispered.
‘I could take you up to bed and unwrap you and play with you like a toy,’ he husked, in a voice laden with lust.
His earthy proposition shocked her, because it was still broad daylight and during those hours they were usually very restrained. The tip of her tongue snaked out to moisten her dry lower lip because she was both seriously tempted and seriously scared that things would go further than she could cope with. ‘You won’t—?’
‘Haven’t I proved how good my self-control is yet?’
Having learnt that she got no attention when Valente was around, Koko cried mournfully at the foot of the staircase as Caroline and Valente disappeared from her view.
‘That cat is such a bad loser, belleza mia,’ Valente quipped.
‘I bring her up to keep me company when you’re not here,’ Caroline admitted. ‘I suppose it doesn’t help that I spoil her.’
‘You always had a thing about cats. I remember bringing you little glass cat ornaments back from Venice.’
‘I still have them. They’re somewhere in the boxes that went to your house in Venice.’
One step inside the doorway of her bedroom, he cupped her cheekbones and kissed her slow and deep, until she was kissing him back and leaning into him, arms stretching up to lock round his neck to keep herself steady. He hoisted her up against him to carry her over to the bed. Although she still seemed to weigh little more than a child, he was satisfied that she was eating more. There was a new, more rounded fullness to her face and her slender limbs. From the bed, she reached up to press the button that closed the curtains.
‘Killjoy,’ he teased, although the sun was still so bright it pierced through the curtains to illuminate the room.
Still bikini-clad, she scrambled into bed. She knew he liked to undress her and, although she wasn’t yet equal to modelling the fantastic collection of lingerie stored in the dressing room, she tried to compensate where she could. Her heart was already thumping as though she had been running. She lay back on the cool linen sheet and watched him remove his business suit. As always, he took her breath away. From his strong brown torso to his long, powerful thighs he was achingly male and extremely sexy. Little quivers of restive warmth were darting through her. She realised in genuine awe that what she was feeling was anticipation.
He slid in beside her. She curved into the heat of him as sinuously as a vine seeking support and parted her full lips for his. She tasted his hunger, the faint tang of wine and the familiar flavour that was uniquely his own. She smiled below the pressure of his mouth when he pressed her flat to the pillows and kissed her long and deep, with more passion than he usually revealed. He had missed her the night before; she was convinced of it, and she really loved that idea.
The bikini top was detached with one gentle tug. Suddenly there was nothing to hide behind any more, and for a split second she lay very still, unable to forget Matthew’s taunts. But Valente had already seen her in various states of undress; vanishing into the bathroom every time she needed to change had begun to seem ridiculous. So for him there would be no surprise or disappointment with her body, she reminded herself urgently.
Valente pushed back the sheet and her hands flew up to cover her exposed breasts He made no attempt to stop her but, his dazzling dark eyes intent, studied her through the dense screen of his black lashes and sighed. ‘Please let me look at you …’
Feeling foolish, Caroline slowly lowered her palms, and Valente feasted his attention on the pale, pouting perfection of her small breasts. ‘You’re so beautiful, and you don’t even know it because your first husband was an oaf, gattina mia.’
Breathing in and out shallowly, Caroline remained still.
‘He may not have appreciated you,’ Valente breathed, ‘but I do … very much.’
He traced the distended length of a swollen pink nipple with his forefinger and she shut her eyes tight and quivered. ‘Is that a yes or a no?’ he husked.
‘Y-yes,’ she stammered, weak with longing as the tingle of arousal darted straight down to the pulse already beating between her thighs.
He moulded his hand to one slight mound and she quivered, so innately responsive that she delighted him. He touched her delicate breasts, with the wonderfully lush and prominent nipples she had worked so hard to keep hidden from him, always turning away or covering up the instant she felt his eyes on her. He was as excited as a teenage boy let loose on a woman’s body for the first time. He dropped his dark head and let his mouth roam over that silky-soft skin, lingering on her protruding nipples with the skilled precision of a connoisseur.
Her mouth opened to provide a vent for her quickened breathing. To say that she liked what he was doing would have been an understatement. Her heartbeat was racing, and soon it became almost impossible to stop her hips from moving. She was wildly conscious of her body, and the heat and moisture gathering between her thighs. She arched up to him, aching unbearably for something more intense, while tiny involuntary cries fell from her lips. When he put his hand on the most sensitive part of her entire body she froze, but for once he ignored that fact. Through the barrier of her bikini pants he rubbed the tiny hidden bud at the heart of her, and she jerked in surprise before she began to squirm in delight.
He lifted his head to stare down at her, and told her simply and frankly what he wanted to do next. She went even pinker than she was already was, her eyes shifting from his, shock and sudden forbidden longing tearing her in two. Did he really want to.? Could he really want to do that? She recalled the intimacy she had already shared with him, and suddenly she was reaching down to help him skim off that last garment.
‘Just close your eyes, lie back and enjoy,’ Valente urged her thickly, parting her slender thighs.
She was trembling like a leaf, and he willed her to push another boundary back and trust him. He shimmied down the bed, pausing to dip his tongue into the shallow indentation of her tummy button. She giggled, and he tipped her back so that she lay open and naked before him.
Caroline was in shock at what she was allowing, breathing in little shallow pants, her aroused body quivering with an eagerness she could not suppress.
‘Stop thinking and shut your eyes,’ Valente commanded, settling confidently into the challenge of giving her more pleasure than she had ever dreamt he might give her.
Her sensitised nipples were wet and throbbing, but the heat between her legs was a torment. He teased her with the gentle caress of his fingers when, for the first time in her life, she wanted more force. But he toyed, he tugged, he licked and he suckled at her most private and tender flesh, until sensation consumed her in waves of frantic, writhing, exquisite pleasure. She heard herself whimper and cry out and she really couldn’t help it. She was out of control, out of her head at the surging flow of sensation which drove her hunger ever higher, and higher again—higher than she thought she could go. And then suddenly the fierce tension broke, and she reached a climax that rocked her world and made her scream before it splintered through her body like dynamite. After-quakes of sweet shocking pleasure came in ravishing ripples after that, and she lay there splayed like a beached starfish on the bed, in total shock at what had happened to her.
‘I never knew … I never dreamt that that’s what it would be like,’ she whispered dizzily.
‘You don’t know enough about your body, belleza mia.’ Valente laughed and pulled her into his arms. ‘It’s full of wonderful possibilities, and I shall enjoy teaching you about each and every one of them.’
The instant he drew her close she felt the strength of his erection. ‘My goodness, I’ve been so selfish,’ she muttered.
‘This … here … now … was all about you. I’ll take a cold shower. We’ll christen our bed in Venice tonight,’ Valente announced.
‘I’m going to Venice too?’ she gasped. ‘Tonight?’
‘Si, I have too much work to do to remain here, and why shouldn’t you join me? You can just as easily fly back to the UK from there tomorrow.’
‘It’s a great idea, ‘Caroline pronounced with a smile, relieved that he was no longer happy to leave her behind.
Heartbreakingly handsome, his black hair riotously curly after its lengthy assault by her clutching fingers, and with a shadow of stubble roughening his jawline, Valente dealt her a mocking glance. ‘I thought so too. You will love Venice.’
Her chin tilted. ‘When are you planning to tell me about your past? You still haven’t explained how you went from a tiny rented apartment to living like a prince,’ she reminded him ruefully.
Valente frowned. ‘It’s not a pleasant story,’ he warned her. ‘My mother was a maid in a house owned by Count Ettore Barbieri. My father, Salvatore, was Ettore’s eldest son. He was a drunk and a waster. When my mother was seventeen, Salvatore pushed her down on a bed and raped her. I’m the result …’
Caroline stared at him with wide, horrified eyes.
Lean, strong face grim, Valente continued. ‘The housekeeper refused to believe my mother and she was dismissed. She went home to her family in Florence, but when they realised she was pregnant they threw her out. They didn’t believe her story either. She spent all the years of her youth and my childhood cleaning for a living in Venice. She didn’t tell me what had happened to her until I was eighteen, and by then she had cancer.’
Caroline’s heart twisted with sympathy, and she gripped his arm to say warmly, ‘Valente, I’m so sorry. You must have been devastated.’
‘I confronted my father outside one of the clubs he patronised, but he called my mother a whore and his friends beat me up. Salvatore threatened to take my mother to court for spreading lies about him. She was dying,’ Valente breathed in disgust. ‘But the Barbieri family were well–respected, and when rumours of my mother’s accusation spread I suffered a lot of abuse in different quarters. A few years afterwards Salvatore died in a car crash and the Count, my grandfather, asked me to participate in some very discreet DNA testing. For his own peace of mind he wanted to be sure that I wasn’t a Barbieri.’
‘You must have hated your father’s family so much!’ Caroline said feelingly.
‘I felt sorry for the old man. When my claim was proved, he offered me an allowance to keep quiet and I told him to keep his money. That made him respect me. I refused to be a leech, like the rest of his family. I was studying for a business degree part-time by then, and the Count promised me my first job when I graduated. But I am very independent and I had my own plans.’
‘Knowing you as I do, I expect you did.’ Understanding his fierce pride and tough individuality so much better now that he had told her about his divided background and essential aloneness, Caroline snuggled close to him in a silent offering of support and comfort.
‘I made my first million on my own. I’m a shark in business, and very good at spotting opportunities,’ Valente murmured, with the wolfish assurance that characterised his business approach.
Caroline was buoyant with happiness, relief, and a huge sense of achievement at the success of their growing sexual intimacy. Convinced that she would soon manage to cross the final boundary and consummate their marriage, she was engulfed in a surging flood of love and gratitude. ‘Good in bed as well,’ she whispered teasingly, wrapping both arms round him and kissing him. ‘I love you so much, Valente Lorenzatto!’
In the circle of her clinging arms, his lean, powerful body went rigid. Her declaration of love had felt so natural to her that it took her a moment or two to register that it had had a quite different effect on him. The silence that had fallen was heavy, nerve-racking. Slowly she lifted her pale blonde head to look up at his lean dark face. ‘I’m not expecting you to reciprocate,’ she told him awkwardly.
‘I have no intention of reciprocating,’ Valente retorted with sardonic bite, shifting his bronzed shoulders to break her hold and ease back from her. His beautiful dark eyes were hard and unyielding. ‘I could never feel that way about you again.’
Shaken by that very extensive rejection, Caroline murmured, ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. I’ve got too used to not having to watch my words with you—but you’re right. It’s far too soon for me to be saying stuff like that.’
‘There could never be a right time. I need a shower.’ His lean, strong face was cold and set. Springing out of bed, Valente strode into the bedroom next door to use his own bathroom.
I could never feel that way about you again. Why on earth hadn’t she kept her mouth shut? How could she have been so foolish as to blurt it out like an infatuated teenager? He still hadn’t forgiven her for past events, and by the sound of it he would never do so, she conceded painfully. She cringed for herself, while at the same time fighting off a deep sense of hurt and rejection.
In the shower, she felt those feelings begin to recede, and anger took their place. Valente was full of contradictions and so volatile! For almost a month he had played the role of the perfect honeymoon partner and then, without any warning at all, he had turned on her! Everything a considerate lover could do he had done for her. And in bed he had been tender and patient, never putting pressure on her, always letting her set the pace. Was it any wonder that following that long, impossibly slow and very sexy seduction she had told him she loved him? But she had a right to know exactly where she stood with him. She pulled on a light green summer dress and went downstairs.
Koko was still waiting in the hall, and padded in her wake after being petted. Valente was watching the business news in the room he used as an office. He flicked the remote to mute the sound and dealt her a measuring glance. ‘I’m not in the mood for an emotional scene, Caroline.’
‘As you once said to me,’ she framed dulcetly, ‘tough! I need to know where I stand with you.’
‘You have a forty–five-page-long pre-nup that leaves no stone unturned on that score,’ Valente reminded her with sardonic cool.
‘I thought we’d moved on a little from that,’ she admitted tightly, hit on her weakest flank by that reminder of the bricks-and-mortar legal foundation of their far from normal marriage.
‘What made you think that? Nothing’s changed aside of the fact that we’re starting to have some fun in bed. Everything is as it should be.’ Brilliant dark eyes rested levelly on her, bright and cold as winter frost. ‘As you are very well aware, there is nothing sentimental about our agreement, so talk of love is ridiculous. I’ve kept my side of the bargain financially, and now I expect you to do what I have paid you to do.’
He had torn the deceptive veil of normality from their relationship and ripped it into tiny shreds, forcing her to face reality—indeed, rubbing her nose in the truth that all he wanted was her body and eventually a child. Her back remained poker-straight, her eyes undimmed. ‘No problem. But don’t forget that what you sow, you will reap.’
A satiric ebony brow lifted. ‘Meaning?’ he said, very drily.
‘That I’ll get over you. Of course I will—because I don’t see in you the man I used to love, and I’m no masochist,’ she told him, with unshaken dignity and her head held high in spite of the drum of pain starting to beat behind her left eye—the infallible warning of a migraine headache. ‘But think twice before you ask me to have a child with you. Does any child deserve to be raised in the corrosive, bitter atmosphere of a bad marriage?’
CHAPTER NINE
THE marital bed that lay in the lofty grandeur of the Palazzo Barbieri was not christened that night. Indeed, Valente and Caroline slept in separate bedrooms below the same roof for the first time since they were married.
Caroline’s migraine had settled in with a vengeance by the time they boarded the jet. Her medication had barely taken the edge off the drumming pain in her temples, and she’d been nauseous and wretched during the flight. Valente’s efforts to provide comfort had rolled off her like water off a duck’s back. He was the guy who didn’t love her, and just then she hated him.
There hadn’t been an ounce of forgiveness in her body during that taxing journey. The housekeeper, Maria, had helped her to get into bed when they’d finally arrived at the vast building on the Grand Canal, the mechanics of having to get there across all that water having merely exacerbated her misery. She’d lain there in the shaded room, the pain blinding every other sense, until a softly spoken doctor had arrived in Valente’s unusually unobtrusive company. The doctor had given her an injection that had sent her to sleep, and the last thing she’d recalled was the comforting feel of Koko’s soft trusting furry warmth nestled against her, and the realisation that her pet had finally triumphed over the bedroom ban.
By the following morning Caroline was fine again. Maria informed her that Valente had embarked on his day’s work in the offices on the floor below at seven, and Caroline breakfasted solitarily on a big stone balcony overlooking the world’s most famous waterway.
Early on a bright new day, that glorious, vibrant, unforgettable view of the city stole her heart. The magnificent buildings set against an azure-blue sky and lapped by the canal were rescued from picture-perfect beauty and brought to vivid life by the busy surge of water traffic and the milling crowds in the campo on the opposite bank.
Valente strolled out to join her, Maria bobbing in his wake to pour him coffee. Caroline snatched in a slow steadying breath. As always he looked amazing, sleek and dark and breathtakingly beautiful in a dove-grey designer suit, cut to a perfect fit for his strong, muscular body.
Cradling a cup of black coffee in one hand, he leant back against the ancient stone balustrade, trained liquid dark eyes on her and murmured lazily, ‘Feeling better?’
‘Back to normal, thankfully.’ Even as she looked at him, Caroline was disturbed by an ill-timed recollection of the mind-boggling pleasure he had given her the afternoon before. A dulled ache stirred between her thighs and she shifted uneasily in her seat, her face colouring as agonising awareness washed over her.
‘If you want me to, I will come to England with you, gattina mia,’ Valente informed her smoothly.
Caroline shifted her attention from him to the elegant china on the marble-topped table. Was he taking pity on his pathetic lovelorn wife, who could hardly be looking forward to doing without his divine presence for a few days, or was he just basking in the ego-boosting knowledge that he was adored? Her teeth gritted. She could still barely credit her stupidity in gushing out her love and inviting such humiliation.
‘I’ll be so taken up with Mum and Dad that it would be a waste of your time,’ she declared briskly.
An attractive brunette PA in a business suit put in a contrite appearance, holding a phone. With an apology Valente took the call, spoke at speed in Italian too fast for Caroline to follow, and tossed the phone down on the table.
‘Do you like the view?’ he enquired teasingly, evidently untouched by her assurance that his presence was not required in England.
‘Yes. Now I know why you once told me that you could never live anywhere else in the world but Venice. All this—’ Caroline raised small expressive hands, her appreciation sincere ‘—would be impossible to match.’
Just as she was without match, Valente conceded reluctantly, watching the sunshine gleam over the silvery pale long hair pooling in silken loops over her slight shoulders and then highlight her flawless skin, sparkling eyes and soft pink mouth. Seeing her in his home felt surreal. But such thoughts spooked him, since he was a very practical man. Somewhere—possibly even within the beloved city of his birth, he assured himself—there might well be another woman equally beautiful and possessed of Caroline’s special appeal. That imaginary woman might even be less complex than the woman he had married, and a great deal more entertaining, he told himself in emphatic addition. No woman was irreplaceable or irresistible. Nor had any woman ever been necessary to his comfort and peace of mind. He didn’t need Caroline; no matter how hard she tried to entangle him in her sentimental promises she would fail—because he would never allow a woman to have that much power over him again.
Yet, in spite of those reassuringly cautious reflections, Valente could not stop studying his wife’s attractions, nor seeking to pinpoint the source of them. She did that looking-up-through–the-eyelashes thing that all women did to flirt, yet in spite of her essential innocence there was a curiously sultry gleam of promise in her misty grey gaze that made the fit of Valente’s well-cut trousers uncomfortably tight. He regarded her broodingly from below luxuriant lashes, resenting the fate that would remove her from his bed when he most wanted her there, despising the ache at his groin. It would do him good to cool off without her for a few days.
Her body was already reacting without her volition to the growing heat of Valente’s appraisal. Her nipples were pushing against her green lace bra, her breasts felt constricted in the cups, and her heart was racing. And, angry though she still was with him, she could neither stifle that physical tumult of response nor break the hot connection with his gaze.
Valente reached a sudden decision. There would be plenty of time for him to cool off while she was in England with her family! She was his wife. He didn’t need to practice self-denial now. Who was he trying to impress? He swept up the phone to cancel all his appointments, unmoved by his senior PA’s astonishment at his instruction because business always came first with Valente. But if there had ever been a good excuse for breaking the rules it was Caroline, sitting there, huge pearl-grey eyes pinned to him, a silk top lovingly moulded to her delicate curves, a short floral skirt revealing her long slender legs.
He extended a lean long-fingered hand to her. ‘Come here …’
