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Her eyes didn’t waver although more colour crept over her face. ‘When you say you want it to be seen as legal in every respect, are you implying that we need to have sex?’
‘No.’ His voice dropped, heat unfurling within him as a memory of a dusky pink nipple floated into his mind. A small gust of wind fluttered across them, causing a strand of her hair to stray across her face. Unthinking, he reached out to brush it away. ‘But we will be married—what couples choose to do in the privacy of their own home is entirely their own business.’
Her throat moved, a subtle movement, but one he recognised.
He leaned in closer. ‘When we stay anywhere that is not under one of our own roofs, we will share a bed. What we choose to do in that bed is nobody’s business but our own.’
Their marriage would be a merger, yes, but not a business merger. This was going to be a merger of two flesh-and-blood people.
Something pulsed in her eyes and he knew with certainty that she was remembering how good it had been between them.
They had been combustible.
All the supressed memories of that night came back in startling colour.
She’d been wild. Carnal. Eager to please and be pleased, to touch and be touched.
Her arousal had been a living thing...
She cleared her throat. ‘And if I choose to sleep and only sleep...?’
Then his balls would probably turn blue.
‘Then you will be left to sleep.’ He let his voice drop further, inching his face closer to hers. ‘But, if you choose not to sleep, you won’t find me complaining.’
‘Is that because you’re not fussy about who you lie in bed with?’ Her words had a breathless quality to them. He could feel the tension emanating from her.
‘No.’ He shook his head in emphasis and pressed his lips to her ear. ‘It’s because you’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever known and I get hard every time I think of how you came undone in my arms.’
He moved back to see her lips part and her doe eyes widen.
‘I understand your opinion of my sex life is less than flattering,’ he said, thinking that she turned the most beautiful colour when she blushed. ‘But, I assure you, I think with the head on my shoulders and not the one in my boxer shorts.’
She swallowed before saying, ‘I think that’s a matter of opinion.’
‘Point proved,’ he said. ‘But, to prove my point, I will not make a move on you until we are legally married.’
Her eyes narrowed but he caught the spark that ignited in them.
‘And, of course, you will still reserve your right to say no.’ He dipped his head to whisper into her ear again, inhaling her scent for good measure.
All his senses heightened. He could feel the heat from her skin; knew the spark that had drawn them together in the first place was still well and truly alive. ‘We’re both going to have to make sacrifices for this to work—the bedroom is the one area where compromise and sacrifice are not needed, where our marriage can be about nothing but mutual pleasure.’
She raised a shoulder and exhaled a shuddering breath that sounded almost like a moan. It was a long moment before she next spoke, breaking the charged silence that had sprung up between them. ‘I will not have sex with you just because it’s expected.’
He pulled away, creating a little distance so he could look at her. ‘My only expectation is that, when we’re in public, we both put on a display of being in love.’
She held his gaze for a fraction longer before blowing out a puff of air and fixing her gaze back on the lake. ‘Bene.’
‘So we are in agreement?’
‘Yes. We are in agreement. I will marry you.’
It was Christian’s turn to exhale. Who would have thought he would feel relief to hear a woman agree to marriage?
‘It would be best to marry as soon as we can—before you start showing.’
‘I don’t want to arrange anything until I’ve spoken to Rocco.’
The mention of her brother’s name hit him like a blow: the metaphorical elephant in the room spoken aloud.
‘We will speak to him together.’
‘It will be best if I speak to him alone. He’s my brother.’
‘And he’s one of my closest friends. He’s not going to be happy about this.’
‘I would prefer it if he gave us his blessing but if he refuses...’ She sighed, a troubled expression crossing her features.
‘We will wait until he returns from his honeymoon,’ Christian decided, although his guts made that familiar clenching motion they did whenever he thought of what his friend’s reaction would be.
Rocco would never forgive him.
He didn’t blame him.
Whatever was thrown his way, he would take. It would be no less than he deserved.
He remembered the first time he’d met Rocco, Stefan and Zayed during his first week at Columbia. He’d never left Athens before that, never mind Greece. New York had been a whole new world. He’d felt out of his depth on every level, especially when comparing himself to his new friends’ wealth and good breeding. He’d had neither and hadn’t been able to understand why they’d accepted him as one of their own.
Even now, a decade on when his own wealth rivalled the best in the world, he still struggled to understand what they’d seen in him.
He was Christian Markos, born a gutter rat without a penny to his name. She was Alessandra Mondelli, born into one of Italy’s premiere families. She had class and breeding. She could be a princess.
In a perfect world she would marry someone from a similar background. Someone worthy of her.
All the same, they might be from disparate backgrounds but on marriage they had common ground: relationships were not for either of them. In that one respect they were perfect for each other. She would never need him or require more than he could give.
And he would never need her.
Messy, complicated emotions would never infect their marriage.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_1a9de5a5-f322-57f1-8622-0c8149c79899)
ALESSANDRA PRESSED THE button allowing Christian into the building and took deep breaths to compose herself.
It would be the first time she’d seen him in ten days.
They’d spent a couple of days together in Milan, seeing her doctor then a private obstetrician. Both had confirmed that she and the baby were in excellent health. She’d known in her guts everything was well but hearing it vocalised had lifted a weight she hadn’t been aware of carrying until it was gone.
A scan had been taken, a copy of which they had both taken before Christian had left. She’d spent hours gazing at that picture, making out the tiny head and limbs, so imperceptible she had to rely on memory from where the nurse had pointed. Sometimes, gazing hard, everything inside her would constrict, her throat closing so tight that she had to swallow to loosen it. Her beautiful baby. Her and Christian’s beautiful baby.
She hadn’t see him since, all their communication coming via daily text messages and phone calls, during which he filled her in on all the wedding plans. He wanted a Greek wedding so it made sense for him to organise it. She didn’t think she would have been able to handle getting involved anyway. She was having a hard enough time coping with the magnitude of what she’d agreed to.
She’d known Christian since she was twelve and Rocco had brought the Brat Pack—as she privately called her brother and his little gang of university friends—home for a week-long holiday at the family villa. But she didn’t know him.
He drank bourbon rather than his national drink of ouzo. He was a snazzy dresser. His brain was lauded around the world. He was completely self-made. He liked rock music. He’d slept with a quarter of the world’s most beautiful women, the others being shared out between her brother, Stefan and Zayed. He was used to getting his own way. And that was it. The rest was a mystery. She was marrying a stranger.
Dio l’aiuti—God help her—she would have to share a bed with him on occasion.
And, dio l’aiuti, the thought made her heat from the inside.
Ever since that particular aspect of their talk, it had felt as if a glow had been lit inside of her. His lips against her ear, his breath whispering on her skin...the heat it had ignited...
When he entered her apartment, impeccably dressed in a fashionable navy suit and striped pale-yellow tie, her heart made an involuntary skip. It skipped again when she caught his clean, freshly showered scent.
‘My apologies for the delay,’ he said, leaning in to give her the traditional kiss on each cheek.
Two little kisses; two tiny brushes of his lips against her skin, the hint of his warm breath on her...
The lit glow flickered and pulsated low within her, her body responding to his proximity like a bee to a field of pollen.
‘It’s fine,’ she said, stepping away from him and opening her handbag on the pretext of checking her purse. If he looked at her now, he would see the colour she knew had bloomed on her face scorching up her neck.
Christian had been due at her apartment early that morning. He’d called late last night to say he’d been delayed but would make it to her before lunch. She hadn’t been surprised. Men always made promises they had no intention of keeping. They told lies, whether deliberately or not. Even her grandfather, a man she’d thought full of morality, had lied. Only after his death had she learned he’d had an affair decades ago—with her new sister-in-law’s mother, no less. If her grandfather could lie to the wife he loved so much, then what hope was there for anyone else?
The only man she trusted was her brother.
She didn’t want to think what the cause of Christian’s delay could have been.
‘How did it go with the doctor?’ he asked.
‘Good.’ She bit back the question of whether he would attend any further appointments with her. It would save him having to lie. It would save her having to pretend to believe it.
‘Your blood pressure?’
‘Normal. Everything is normal,’ she said, anticipating further questions along the same vein. Feeling more on an even keel and in control of her reactions, she closed her handbag and looked at him.
He was watching her closely. ‘It wasn’t my intention to miss the appointment. There was a crisis at Bloomfield Bank and I had to attend an emergency board meeting.’
‘You don’t have to account for your whereabouts with me.’ She forced a smile. ‘After all, it’s not as if we’re married or anything.’ She couldn’t deny a tiny bit of the cramp in her belly lessened at knowing he hadn’t been with another woman.
He’d given his word not to make a move on her until they married. He’d made no such promise about making a move on another woman.
So long as he was discreet, who he slept with was none of her business.
He laughed, a familiar sound that plunged her back to the meal they’d shared. Of the Brat Pack, he’d always been her favourite, the one she’d privately dubbed ‘the Greek Adonis.’ A woman didn’t need wine goggles to appreciate the strength of his jaw or the dimples that appeared when he gave one of his frequent smiles.
With wine goggles, though, even the most inhibited of females would be putty in his hands. She, the woman who’d thought herself immune to any man’s charms, had been.
He hadn’t even tried. A couple of glasses of champagne on an empty stomach and an aching heart and she’d felt her secret attraction towards him, locked away out of reach, escape and bloom. Like the gentleman he was—and he was a gentleman in the traditional, chivalrous term of the word—he’d walked her home and right up to her door. She’d been the one to kiss him, not the usual two-cheek kiss but one right on his mouth.
The feel of his lips upon hers, the scent of his skin and warm breath...the effect had been indescribable. It had unleashed something inside her, something craven, a side she’d spent years denying the existence of, telling herself she’d rather die a virgin than give herself to a man.
It hadn’t felt like giving herself to Christian. Giving implied bestowing a favour, not the hot mix of desire and need that had made her desperate for his touch.
She could still feel and taste the heady heat of his breath...
But now she was stone-cold sober, her immunity back in its rightful place. Vivid memories might have the power to jolt her senses but they didn’t have the power to knock her off balance. No man would ever have that power. Her body might have a Pavlovian response to him but intellectually and emotionally she was safe.
When they married he could see whoever he wanted. It made no difference to her. All she cared about was her baby. As long as her baby made it safely into this world, nothing else mattered.
Maybe when her baby was placed in her arms, her own place on this earth would make sense.
Maybe then she would lose the feeling she’d carried her entire life that she should never have been born.
* * *
Christian sensed a slight change in Alessandra’s demeanour, an almost imperceptible straightening of the shoulders and stiffening of the spine.
She was looking good. She always looked good.
With her long hair loose around her shoulders, she wore faded tight-fitting jeans, a pale-blue cotton blouse unbuttoned to the top of her cleavage, a navy blazer and silver ankle boots with a slight heel. Heavy costume jewellery in shades of red hung round her neck and wrists, large, hooped gold earrings in her ears. Alessandra could wear a sack and carry it off, would still have that beautifully put-together air she carried so well.
Her apartment was the same: chic and beautifully put together, the walls and furniture muted but the furnishings bold and colourful. Giant prints of her work hung on the walls, enlarged, framed covers of Vogue and all the other glossy magazines she’d worked for.
He knew it would be a wrench for her to leave, but a third-floor apartment in the heart of Milan’s fashion district was not a feasible place to bring up a child. He’d raised the subject of her selling it on the phone a few days ago. Her response had been non-committal to say the least.
He’d give her more time to get used to the idea before discussing it again.
‘Are you ready to go?’ he asked.
She nodded, her plump lips drawing together. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
Out in the courtyard at the back of the building, where his driver waited for them, her yellow Vespa gleamed from its parking space. ‘I hope you’re not riding on that thing any more,’ he said, nodding at it.
‘No,’ she answered shortly, getting into the back of the car.
He followed her in, a pang hitting his stomach as he recalled the big beam on her face the one time he’d seen her ride on it—the day of their impromptu date. Another thing pregnancy would force her to give up.
When the car started to move, she turned to look at him, a set look on her face. ‘Christian, let me make one thing quite clear. You are going to be my husband, not my keeper. Do not dictate to me.’
He sighed. ‘Is this about the Vespa?’
‘Yes.’
‘I wasn’t dictating to you. I was satisfying myself that you’re not putting our child’s life at risk by continuing to ride on it, especially here in Milan.’
‘That is exactly what I mean. I don’t need you to tell me the drivers here all approach the road as an assault course that must be beaten—I live here. I might not have a penis between my legs but my brain and rationality work perfectly well.’
