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‘Why does that matter?’ Guido countered harshly. ‘Did you love him?’
Oh, how she wished she could say that yes, she loved Rafe. That she adored him. She longed to be able to fling her defiance right into his face but even as she opened her mouth the need for honesty caught her on the raw.
She hadn’t been marrying for love, she’d known that right from the start. But she had tried love once and it had blown up right in her face. She didn’t dare to risk that sort of bitter disillusionment all over again. So she was marrying for friendship—warm, gentle friendship. Without the savage bite of passion that had taken her heart and shattered it into a million irreparable pieces. She was marrying for freedom, for comfort and—yes—finally, for once in her life, to make her mother smile.
And Pamela Wellesley had smiled, at least for a moment or two. She had smiled when the engagement was announced. And she had smiled today when they had set out for the church and this wedding that meant so much to her.
‘I wanted to marry him,’ she managed stiltedly.
‘Oh, I’ll just bet you did. After all, the Honourable Rafe St Clair had so much more to offer you than an apparently penniless photographer trying to earn a living in Las Vegas.’
‘Apparently?’
She’d caught the unexpected word and looked up, turning a puzzled face in his direction. But Guido offered no hint of explanation. Instead he lifted one hand in an arrogantly dismissive gesture, brushing aside her question as if it were a buzzing fly that annoyed him.
‘But this won’t solve our immediate problem. The paparazzi outside won’t wait for ever. They want a story and the sooner the better. We should give them one—’
‘The one we should give them being that we are still a couple,’ Amber interjected, the cynicism and disbelief in her intonation making it plain just what she thought of that.
‘That we are back together again,’ Guido corrected smoothly. ‘They’ll love that!’
‘They might, but I most definitely won’t. And I can’t think why you should even imagine that it would work.’
‘Your English Press adore a love story—they want to write about that perfect ending where two people live happily after all.’
‘Happily ever after,’ Amber corrected automatically, the unwanted thought—if only it could be true—slicing at her from deep inside. ‘And you know only too well that I didn’t mean it wouldn’t work for them—but that there’s no way it would work for me!’
‘It doesn’t have to work for you,’ Guido dismissed scornfully. ‘It only has to work for the Press. And if we convince them that you were not thinking clearly when you agreed to marry Rafe, because you were broken-hearted…’
‘At losing you?’ Amber scoffed, needing to put the scorn into her voice to hide the way that unease twisted her nerves so painfully. Guido’s fictional scenario was coming way too close to the truth for comfort. ‘Tell me about it!’
‘But now that we’ve met up again—no matter under what circumstances…’ Guido persisted, blatantly ignoring her cynical interjection. ‘We…’
‘Don’t tell me—we looked into each other’s eyes and realised that we still cared so desperately for each other that we fell into each other’s arms…’
That was something she could dismiss without hesitation. At least she thought she could, so it was doubly disconcerting to feel those already twisted nerves tighten even more painfully as she spoke.
‘Something like that. It does not matter how we word it. Anything, so long as we go out of this church together to face that rat pack out there and give them a story with a positive spin on it that they can print in tomorrow’s editions.’
‘And you really believe they’ll run with it?’
She had to admit that she was tempted. For all sorts of reasons.
When her world had come crashing down with Guido’s explosive arrival at the aborted wedding ceremony—was it really barely half an hour ago?—she hadn’t been able to think beyond the immediate moment. All she had wanted then was to be left alone and to find a hole—the tinier the better—into which she could crawl to hide herself. Somewhere that she could lick her wounds, wait for the world to stop spinning in the sickening way it had been doing ever since that horrific interruption, and pray that one day things would quieten down so that she could dare to venture out again.
But that wasn’t going to happen. There wasn’t anywhere she could go; no one she could turn to.
Except Guido.
She had burned her boats with Rafe, that much was obvious. The sheer hatred in his eyes when he had turned to her, the venom with which he had spat the brutal insult at her, had made that only too plain. And who could blame him?
With Rafe had gone all his family, of course. The St Clairs were never likely to forgive the insult to their family honour that they believed she had inflicted today. What were they to expect from the Wellesley family? they would be saying. Like mother like daughter, after all. They’d always known it.
Her mother, too, would never forgive her for the public humiliation. That would be just one more thing to add to the long list of faults for which she could never atone, this one being the last and the worst in Pamela’s eyes. It would leave a stain that could never be erased. So there was no hope of help there, or comfort, or support.
There was no one in the world she could turn to.
Except Guido.
For the first time in the long-drawn-out minutes since she had taken refuge in the narrow wooden pew, Amber made herself look straight at Guido. She saw the way that the long, powerful body was leaning back against the heavy oak church door, behind which she could still vaguely hear the murmur of voices from the crowd. Every now and then someone would rap hard on that door, destroying her hope that the reporters and photographers might have given up in boredom and gone home.
Even as the thought entered her mind, another of those loud, aggressive knocks came from outside, making her flinch inside at the sound. And this time it was accompanied by an even louder voice calling her name, and asking for, ‘Just a word, Miss Wellesley—a few questions! You have to come out of there some time!’
Fearfully Amber let her eyes fly to Guido’s face, seeing there nothing of her own nervous apprehension. Instead, he seemed totally relaxed, his proud head flung back so that it rested on the edge of the door, muscular arms folded over the width of his chest. Long legs crossed at the ankles were stretched taut, pulling the fine material of his trousers tight against narrow hips and muscular thighs in a way that made her mouth dry in basic, sensual response.
His face too was totally calm, the strong jaw relaxed, the dark eyes only slightly hooded as he met her assessing stare with cool composure. He was between her and the ‘enemy’ outside—and so he seemed like a protector—but were appearances deceiving her? Was Guido the only real enemy?
She couldn’t begin to guess at the answer, only knowing that right now, in the situation in which she found herself, he seemed like her only possible hope.
‘Put it this way,’ Guido said at last. ‘I think that this is the only way for you to walk out of here on any sort of a positive note. You can leave this church with me—as my wife—or you can take your chance with the vultures outside.’
‘I think that’s what they call being caught between a rock and a hard place.’
Amber tried for an airy laugh and failed miserably, succeeding only in sounding cold and cynical even to her own ears. And it earned her another of those dark, glowering frowns, anger flashing in the deep-set eyes.
‘Then I am to take it that that is a no?’ he questioned harshly, levering himself away from the door so that he stood upright.
Amber knew it was impossible that he could have grown even half an inch taller in the time that he had been leaning back like that, but even so she had the irrational feeling that he had done just that. Grown bigger and stronger, his shoulders broadening, his head held higher so that he was even more imposing than he had ever been before.
The thought took all the strength from her legs so that she sank back onto the worn wooden seat of the pew, her hand twisting in the fine white silk of her dress. Her wedding dress. For a moment there she had almost forgotten.
‘Well?’ Guido prompted curtly when the thought dried her mouth too so that she couldn’t find any sort of an answer to give him.
‘I…’
Twice Amber opened her mouth to respond and both times her voice failed her completely, fading to a weak croak after the single word. How could she answer? What could she possibly say? It seemed that no matter which way she turned, something terrible and unbearable waited for her. So how did she choose the lesser of all those evils?
‘Così sia!’
Guido flung out his hands in a very Italian gesture, dismissing the whole topic and seeming to fling it from him.
‘If that’s the way you want it, then so be it! You can handle this alone.’
He had turned and headed back to the church door before she quite realised what he was doing. That he was leaving—that he had every intention of just walking out and leaving her here. Alone. And of course when he opened the door then the reporters and cameramen would just pour in…
Panic pushed her to her feet again, holding fast to the end of the pew as she took a couple of frantic steps into the aisle.
‘Wait!’
He actually had his fingers on the big metal door handle, was about to turn it…For the space of half a dozen uneven, fearful heartbeats, she thought that he hadn’t heard or, if he had, then he was determined to ignore her desperate cry. But then, very slowly, Guido stopped. His hand stilled on the big metal ring, then loosened, dropping down to his side again. He spared her just the smallest flick of a glance over his shoulder in her direction. That was all.
‘Wait?’ he said at last. ‘For what?’
‘For—for my answer.’ Amber stumbled over the words in her haste to get them out. Seeing him prepared to walk away like that had focused her mind brutally, She had no doubt at all now what she wanted; which way she had to go. There was only one way she could go.
‘And that answer is?’
Still he kept turned away from her and she wished he would turn round. It was so hard to speak to the long, straight back, to see nothing of his face but just the sleek, shining mane of black hair.
‘My answer is—you know what it is—it’s—Oh, please, won’t you just turn round?’
‘As you wish…’
He took his time about it, turning so slowly that she had time to rethink her request not once but twice while he did so. And when he was at last facing her again, those polished bronze eyes fixed on her face, she had to swallow hard to relieve the agonising tension in her throat. Now she wished she’d kept her mouth shut and let him stay where he was. Surely saying what she had to say to the back of his head couldn’t have been as bad, as nerve-racking as doing it now, to his face. Where all his features seemed to be carved from stone, and those eyes were as cold and hard as ice.
He didn’t speak again but just waited—and watched the play of emotions over her face as she struggled for the strength to speak again. And he wouldn’t say anything until she did, that much was obvious.
But still, could she come right out and say it? Say ‘Yes, I’ll do it. I’ll leave here with you—on your arm—as your wife—making public what for the past year has been my shameful little secret, the one I always prayed that no one would ever find out?’
And so she hedged, moving on to another topic. One that was almost as difficult—but one she sincerely needed an answer to.
‘There—there’s one thing I need to know.’
Guido kept silent when she paused, only the faint lift of his head, the way he tilted it to one side, revealing the fact that he had heard her and was waiting for her to elaborate.
‘I don’t really understand. If we do this—’
When we do this, because what choice did she have?
‘Then what would you get out of it?’
Guido didn’t hesitate and his deep, dark gaze didn’t waver for a second but remained so fixed on hers that she felt it might have the effect of a searing laser, marking her permanently like a brand.
‘I get what I want,’ he said with a calm decisiveness that made her toes curl up inside her white satin shoes.
‘And that is?’
The smile that touched his beautiful mouth was slow and dangerous, making her shiver in the same moment that she felt a rush of heat through her veins, flooding her skin with colour.
‘Oh, Amber, don’t play the naïve innocent, it doesn’t suit you—it never did. Isn’t it obvious? I get you.’
‘Me?’ It was a sound of pure horror and revulsion, one that should have provoked an equally passionate response from the man before her. But Guido just nodded, keeping that burning gaze targeted straight at her face.
‘I get you. I’ve always wanted you and now I’ll get you back in my life—and in my bed.’
Soft as they were, the words seemed to scrape away a much-needed protective layer from Amber’s skin so that she felt weak and vulnerable, dangerously exposed.
‘I only agreed to act as your wife—not really be that!’ she protested vehemently, her voice echoing round the church. ‘It won’t be a real marriage!’
She might have felt that the fervour of her protest would reawaken the dark, flashing anger of moments before but instead it simply made that wicked, dangerous smile—that shockingly seductive smile—grow wider and more devastating.
‘I’ll settle for that—for now.’
‘I won’t sleep with you!’
The subtle emphasis on that ‘for now’ made her shift uneasily from one foot to another, facing the worrying thought that she had well and truly jumped out of the frying-pan and landed right in the heart of the blazing, red-hot fire.
‘If that’s a condition of your help—’
‘It isn’t,’ Guido assured her, but then, just as she was allowing herself to relax just a little, he smiled again and went on, ‘It doesn’t need to be. I don’t have to offer any ultimatums, or make conditions about this—I know you and I know how we are when we’re together.’
The arrogant confidence of that assertion took Amber’s breath away, leaving her gasping in disbelief.
‘You’ll stay with me for as long as is needed to let this whole chiasso over your attempt at a second marriage die down and while we’re together you’ll still be my wife. I’m sure you’ll soon remember that the state of matrimony has its pleasures as well as its ties.’
‘I won’t—I’ll never…’
The words shrivelled on her tongue as he took the couple of long strides that brought him to her, standing right in front of her and sliding one powerful hand under her chin, lifting it so that he was looking down into her face. The darkened eyes burned on her skin, the clean male scent of his body was all around her, and her mouth was so dry that she had to slick her tongue over her lips to moisten them.
‘What is it they say about “never say never”, hmm, cara? Because, believe me, in our case it will be true.’
‘Nev…’ Amber began but had to swallow down the word when he shook his dark head almost gently, that smile playing at the corners of his seductive mouth once again.
‘Hush…’ he murmured softly, laying one finger over her mouth to silence her. ‘Don’t say anything you might regret later. I’m happy to wait—for a while.’
His tone heavily underlined the ominous words.
‘I know you will be worth waiting for. But I also know that you will find it harder than I ever will.’
With that restraining finger still on her lips, Amber didn’t dare to speak, to protest, besides, she had no idea what she could say, what argument she might be able to drag up to refute his shocking assertion, his outrageous self-confidence. So she had to content herself with widening her eyes in a look of total disbelief, praying that her expression communicated the meaning she wanted.
But Guido simply ignored her silent refutation of his claim. Removing his finger and replacing it with his mouth, he pressed a slow, lingering kiss onto her partly open lips, taking her breath and all her composure with it as he did so.
Oh, how she wished she could control her reactions to his touch! She wanted to stay absolutely still, to show no response at all. To convince him by her behaviour that his kiss meant nothing to her. That she was immune to his touch…
But her treacherous body just wouldn’t get the message that her terrified, rational brain was screaming at it. Instead of stiffening, her slender frame melted against his. Her mouth softened, letting his tongue slide tormentingly over her hungry lips, dip into the heat and moisture beyond them.
‘You see, bellissima,’ he murmured against her mouth, stealing another kiss as he drew breath to speak, ‘I know you. And I know what you want.’
‘I don’t…’ Amber tried but he shook his head and sealed off the words with another, deeper kiss, one that made her head swim, set her blood pounding.
‘You don’t want a cold-blooded English aristocrat like Rafe St Clair. You need a real man.’
‘Like you, I suppose?’ Amber wrenched her mouth away and tossed back her head to challenge him, green eyes blazing into bronze-rimmed black with what she hoped was daring defiance. She was struggling to deny her own senses, the yearning need that just his kiss, his touch had wakened in her all over again.
Guido smiled that tiger’s smile again and ran his finger down the side of her face, along her neck and into the low V at the front of her dress, the curve of his lips growing as he watched the shuddering response she couldn’t control.
‘I can give you more than your water-in-his-veins Englishman can ever offer you. I can give you the passion you need, the sensuality you crave. I know what it was like between us; what it can be like again. I can—’
