A Sicilian Marriage

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‘Oh, what’s happened to me?’ she breathed, looking around at the bedroom she’d used to share but now had to herself. Even in here the only sign that life was still going on was the black dress hanging up, which she was going to wear tonight.

Snap out of it, her mother had said, and Nina truly agreed with her. But—into what?

The sound of a car coming up the driveway stopped her thoughts and sent her over to the bedroom window. The prospect of yet another unexpected visitor dragged a groan from her throat that was cut short when she recognised the sleek, dark limousine.

It was Rafael.

Her heart gave a sudden tight little flutter—not with pleasure, but with a sinking sense of dismay. He wasn’t due back from London for days, so what had brought him back here sooner than he’d intended?

Had someone told him about her mother’s visit? Could he know what that visit had been about?

No, don’t be stupid, she told the second sharp flutter that now had her freezing to the spot. He might be equipped to throw power around like thunderbolts, but even Rafael couldn’t get from London to Sicily in the space of two short hours.

The car slowed to take a sweep around the circular courtyard, then came to a stop at the bottom of the shallow steps that led up to the house. Rafael didn’t wait for Gino, his personal bodyguard and chauffeur, to climb out and open his door for him. With a brisk impatience that was his nature he pushed open the door and uncoiled his long frame from the back of the car. The top of his dark head caught the light from a golden sunset, then slid down to enrich the warm olive skin of his face as he paused to look at the house.

He was tall, he was dark, he was arrestingly handsome—a perfect example of a man in his prime. Black hair, golden skin, hard, chiselled features, straight, thin nose, and a firm and unsmiling and yet deeply, deeply sensual mouth.

Nina traced each detail as she stood there, despising herself for doing it yet unable to stop. Everything about him was so physically striking—the way he looked, the way he moved, the way he frowned with a restless impatience that was inherent in him. His dark silk suit was a statement in design architecture, tailored to a body built to carry clothes well—the wide shoulders, long arms and legs made up of steely muscle, wide chest and tight torso behind a white shirt.

But the really important things about Rafael had nothing to do with his physical appearance. He was frighteningly intelligent, razor-sharp, and ruthless to the core. The kind of man who had come from nothing and made himself into something in spite of all the odds stacked against him, amassing his wealth with a gritty determination that came from his fear of having nothing—again.

He was, Nina thought as she watched him turn to speak to Gino, a very suave, very sophisticated—mongrel. And she used the word quite deliberately. Rafael did not know where he had come from, so he’d spent most of his adult life hiding what he feared he might be by surrounding himself with status symbols of the kind of person he wanted to be.

Rejected by his mother before she had even bothered to register his birth, he had lived his childhood in a Sicilian state orphanage. The only thing that faceless creature had given him to cling to when she’d dumped his helpless newly born body on some unsuspecting stranger’s doorstep had been a note pinned to the blanket he had been wrapped in.

‘His name is Rafael,’ the note had said, and he had gone through the latter stages of his childhood fighting to hell and back for the right to use that name.

The orphanage had called him Marco Smith, or Jones, or some Sicilian equivalent. For the first ten years of his life he had truly believed it to be his name, until the day something—an inbuilt instinct to be someone, probably—had sent him sneaking into the principal’s office to steal a look at his personal file.

From that day on he had answered only to Rafael. Sheer guts and determination had brought him fighting and clawing to the age of sixteen, with his name legally changed to Rafael Monteleone—the Monteleone stolen from the man on whose doorstep he had been dumped.

But tenacity should be Rafael’s middle name—or the one Nina would add in if she could. From the minute he’d left state care he had set out like a man with a single mission in life—which was to trace the mother who had abandoned him.

To finance his search he’d worked hard and long at anything, and for anyone who had paid a fair wage, until he had accumulated enough money to risk some of it on a little speculation—thereby discovering his true mission in life: to make money—pots of it—bank vaults of it—Etna-sized mountains of it in fact.

Strangely, though, as the money mountain had grown so his need to know his roots had diminished. Rafael had succeeded in becoming his own man. If you did not count some deeply buried fears that lurked beneath the surface of his iron-hard shell, which forced him to struggle with the most incredible inferiority complex.

‘The mongrel syndrome’. Rafael’s term, not Nina’s. ‘I could come from the loins of anything.’

Rafael lived with the awful fear that the blood running in his veins might be rotten. It didn’t seem to help that the man he had built himself to be was so morally upright, honest and true that any suspicion of him being rotten inside was actually laughable. He could never know that for sure, so he dared not let his guard on himself drop for a moment—just in case something dreadful crept out.

How did Nina know all of this? The man himself had told her, during one of those long rare nights when they lay still closely entwined after the kind of loving that had always seemed to blend them into one. They’d swapped secret hopes and fears in the darkness because it had seemed so right, sharing—sharing everything. Bed to bodies, souls to minds.

That was the same night that she’d foolishly let herself believe he loved her, Nina recalled. To hear that soft, deep, slightly rasping voice reveal all its darkest secrets had, to her at least, been confirmation of something very special growing between them. She had discovered later that it was just another aspect of his complicated make-up that Rafael could bare his soul to her whilst keeping his heart well and truly shut.

It wasn’t long after that night when she’d discovered they were going to have a baby. She’d been ecstatic; to her way of thinking a child of their very own would only bond them closer together. What it had actually done was drive them wide apart. And she would never forgive him for the brutality he had used in forming that gulf.

They had barely communicated since. From that moment on their lives had reverted to the original plan—she being the beautiful well-bred trophy wife Rafael had bought to shore up his bruised ego, and he the man she had sold herself to so he could keep her family in the luxury they were used to.

The only blot on this otherwise squeaky-clean landscape Rafael had made for himself was Marisia—his first-choice bride. The Guardino granddaughter with the pure Sicilian pedigree who’d walked out on him the moment she’d discovered his mongrel beginnings, leaving his pride in tatters at his feet.

‘I will not marry a man who can’t say who his mother is, never mind his father!’ Marisia’s harsh words to Nina echoed through the years. ‘If you are so concerned about his feelings then you marry him. Trust me, cara, he will take you—just to leech onto your half-Guardino blood.’

He had done too—taken her—and it was pretty lowering to remember how eagerly she’d jumped at the chance. But then, she’d already been in love with him, though thankfully no one else knew that—including Rafael. He’d put his case in practical business terms, pointing out the financial advantages in marrying him and, because he was ruthless enough to use any persuasion, he had made her aware of other advantages by more physical means.

Oh, where had her pride been—her self-respect? How was it that she’d only had to look into his eyes to convince herself that she could see something burning there that made her cling to hope?

The sound of his laughter floated up to the window. Looking down, she saw his mouth had stretched into a grin. He had not done much of that recently, she mused.

Was that Marisia’s doing? Had her cousin put the laughter back into Rafael?

Were they sleeping together?

Had it gone that far?

Did she care?

Nina turned away from the window, tense fingers coiling around her upper arms to bite hard. She wasn’t ready to answer that question. She wasn’t ready to face Rafael.

Oh, why did he have to come back here today of all days, when she needed time to think—to feel something, for God’s sake?

The moment Rafael Monteleone stepped through the front door he felt the lingering residue of laughter he’d just shared with Gino die from his lips as a chill washed right over him.

It was the chill of cold silence.

He paused to stare at the perfectly symmetrical black and white floor that spread out in front of him like a chequered ocean—flat, cold, and as uninviting as the black wrought-iron work forming the curving staircase and the pale blue paint that coloured the walls.

Home, he mused, and thought about sighing—only to tamp down on the urge. Instead tension grabbed at his shoulders, then slid up the back of his neck before linking like steel fingers beneath his chin. He employed an army of staff to help keep this miserable if aesthetically stunning house running smoothly, yet but for the sound of Gino moving the car round to the garages he could be entirely alone here.

The sigh escaped—because he allowed it—because he needed to ease away some of his tension before he went looking for his wife.

Wife, he repeated. There was yet another word that had become a term of mockery—within the privacy of his mind, at least. He did not mock Nina—did not mock her at all. He mocked only himself, for daring to use the word in reference to the ghost-like image of that once beautiful person which now haunted this house.

He knew exactly where she was, of course. He’d felt the chill of her regard via her bedroom window from the moment he had stepped out of the car. If he closed his eyes he could even picture her standing there, slender and still, observing his arrival through beautiful blue eyes turned to glass.

‘Good afternoon, sir,’

Ah, a real human being, Rafael thought dryly, then had to laugh privately at that when he lifted his eyes to the ancient silver-haired pole-faced butler, who’d come with the house and all of its other soulless fixtures and fittings.

‘Good afternoon, Parsons,’ he returned, and felt himself grimace at the very English sound of his own voice.

But then, this house was English—a small piece of England placed upon Sicilian soil like a defiance. Nina’s father had had it built as a summer home for his wife and daughter to use when they visited. When Richard St James had died, leaving his wife and daughter virtually penniless, they’d been forced to sell up their fourteen-thousand-acre family estate in Hampshire and come to live here, bringing their faithful butler with them. The house belonged to Nina now, left to her in her father’s will, along with a trust fund aimed to ensure that she completed her education in England.

And if all of that did not add up to a man with an axe to grind on his beautiful Sicilian wife’s faithless hide, then he could not read character as well as he’d thought.

‘There are several telephone messages for you.’ Parsons’ smooth voice intruded. ‘I placed them in your study. One, from a—lady, sounded particularly urgent…’

Ignoring the slight hesitation before the word lady, Rafael offered a nod of his head in acknowledgment to the rest, but made no move towards his study. Instead he turned and headed for the stairs. Urgent messages or not, he had a chore to do that must take precedence.

Knowing and respecting this small ritual, Parsons melted away as silently as he had arrived, leaving Rafael to make the journey up the curving staircase to the upper landing, and from there through an archway which would take him to the bedroom apartments of a house he had agreed to live in only to please his wife.

A mistake? Yes, it had been a mistake, one of many he had made with the beautiful Nina, and all of which he intended to rectify—soon.

On that grim thought he arrived outside the bedroom suite, paused for a moment to brace his shoulders inside the smooth cut of his dark silk jacket, then gripped the handle and opened the door.

He never knocked. He found it beneath his dignity to knock before entering what he still considered to be their bedroom, even though they had not shared it for months.

Serenity prevailed—that was his first observation as he stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. She was wearing a blue satin wrap that covered her from throat to ankle and she was sitting at her dressing table, quietly filing her nails. Her hair was up, scraped back into an unflattering ponytail, and her face looked paler than usual—though that could be a trick of the fading light.

When she turned her head to look at him he met with a wall of blue glass.

‘Ciao,’ he murmured, keeping his voice pleasant, even though pleasure was not what he was feeling inside.

‘Oh, hello,’ she returned, ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you today.’ With that excruciatingly indifferent comment, the blue glass dropped away again.

Irritation snapping at the back of his clenched teeth, Rafael let the hit to his ego pass. He crossed the room to an antique writing desk on which sat a silver tray complete with crystal decanter and glasses. The ever-discreet Parsons had begun this small piece of thoughtfulness at the beginning of their marriage, when they’d used to spend more time in the bedroom than out of it, and had determinedly continued the habit though he must know that their marriage was now in tatters.

The decanter held his favourite cognac. Lifting off the smooth crystal stopper, he placed it aside, then turned to look at Nina.

‘You?’ he invited.

She gave a shake of her lowered head. ‘No, thanks.’

It was like talking to a dead person. Turning back to the tray, he poured himself a small measure, took it with him over to the window, then unclenched his jaw and drank.

Ritual rules, he mused as he stared out at the deepening sunset. Give her a minute or two and she was going to find an excuse to get up and leave the room.

Only this time he was going to stop her. This time he was going to stop the rot taking place in this room by bringing her—screaming and kicking if necessary—out of hiding and into reality.

His stomach warmed as the cognac reached it, and somewhere else inside him a different sensation gathered pace. The call to battle. He had wrecked this beautiful creature once, and now it was time to put her back together again.

With a bit of luck she would give him a chance to fortify himself with brandy before battle commenced, he mused wryly, unaware that the subject of his thoughts was already struggling to stay where she was.

CHAPTER THREE

TIMING was everything, Nina was reminding herself as she sat there fighting the urge to get up and go.

It was part of the ritual Rafael had developed, aimed to hide the true sickness in their relationship from the servants. He always came directly to her room when he arrived home, and stayed long enough to consume a measure of cognac. He always asked her if she wanted to join him in a glass and she always refused. After a suitable length of time one of them—usually her—would make up an excuse to leave.

But today was different. Today he had come in here wearing the shadow of another woman’s kiss on his lips, and there was no way she could sit here playing this the way it usually played out. She either said something, or left. It came down to those two options, she told herself tautly.

Rafael turned. ‘Nina, we need to talk—’

‘Sorry.’ She stood up. ‘I’m going for a shower.’

‘Later,’ he frowned. ‘This is important. I want to—’

‘So is my shower,’ she cut in. ‘Y-you should have warned me you were coming home, then I could have told you that I am out tonight.’

‘Your grandfather’s birthday—I know.’ He nodded. ‘That is what I want to talk to you about.’

Not Marisia? ‘Why? What has he done now?’ she asked, in the wary voice of one who knew her devious grandparent well.

‘Nothing,’ Rafael said. ‘I have not heard from him in several weeks. He is not the reason why I—’

‘Then he’s up to something.’ Nina cut in on him yet again. A sigh escaped her. ‘I suppose I had better try and find out what so I can—’

‘I would prefer that you didn’t…’

Just the way he said that was enough to put her nerve-ends on edge. Her chin came up. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ she demanded, finding herself suddenly in danger of almost—almost making contact with his eyes. She looked away again—quickly.

If he noticed her avoiding gesture he kept it to himself. ‘It means,’ he murmured levelly, ‘that I already know what he’s up to, so you don’t need to get involved.’

‘He’s my grandfather, Rafael. I have a right to know what he’s doing if it means—’

‘Not when it involves money, you don’t,’ he responded. ‘That is my territory.’

The implication in that certainly hit where it hurt. ‘Then I won’t,’ she answered stiffly. ‘Taking care of my family is why I married you, after all. Thank you for reminding me.’

‘I did not mean it like that.’ He uttered a short sigh. ‘I simply meant that I am able to handle him better if you don’t interfere!’

Well, there you go, Nina thought. You are an interfering wife, as well as a useless, faithless, traitorous one. Things are on the move—hence the reintroduction of Marisia into his life, she supposed.

‘I did not come home early to fight with you over your grandfather. I have something I need to tell you before—’

Time to leave, she decided. ‘Tell me later.’ Spinning away, she began walking quickly towards the bathroom, her spine tingling out a mocking challenge to the cowardly way she was retreating from this.

‘Take a very healthy piece of advice, mi amore and don’t do it…’

It was the silken edge to his voice that brought her to a wary standstill, with her fingers already gripping the handle to the bathroom door. Past experience with that tone warned her to beware—because the silkier Rafael’s voice became the more dangerous he became. If she dared to open this door now then he would not hesitate to react.

‘OK.’ She turned, slender shoulders pressing back against the door. ‘Say what you have to say,’ she invited.

He was still standing by the window, so his face was shadowed by the sunset coming from behind him. But she could see the tension in his jawline; could feel