Page 27 of Modern Romance May 2026 Books 1-4
He would have taken her hand if steaming bowls of ravioli hadn’t been brought out to them, and he took the moment to take a breath and wonder what the hell was happening to him. Something was shifting—hadshifted—inside him, and he didn’t know if it was the fact of their child growing inside her slender body… He didn’t know what the hell it was, but whatever it was, it was stronger than him, and no amount of reminding himself that he’d never wanted to feel anything for her could deny the fact that he did. Just watching her spoon the soft ravioli into her mouth and chew it and swallow it and hold it down…
Dio, her suffering had marked him, and he was forced to admit he’d been more frightened he was going to lose her than he’d ever wanted to acknowledge to himself.
Chapter Nine
FRIGHTENED BY THEundercurrent of emotion she could see flickering on Domenico’s face, frightened because she knew much of it came from his memories of his first marriage, an undercurrent of emotion she would never elicit in him, Marnie picked up the conversation. ‘So was it your father’s death that drove you into turning Cannavaro Law into the behemoth it is today?’
‘Partly.’ His eyes locked back onto hers. ‘I needed to channel my grief, but I craved vengeance too; that more than anything. I wanted to make such a success of myself that Carmela spent the rest of her life regretting her treachery. My father had made modest investments in mine and my sister’s names, and I taught myself to play the stock market. I studied English law and American law simultaneously and used my returns to open offices around the world. I was ruthless and focused, and everything I touched turned to gold. I hired the best lawyers to work for me—lawyers as hungry as me—and pitched for contracts I had no business pitching for and winning them, and all the while my personal fortune was exploding. Five years after Carmela left me, I was a billionaire.’
Marnie chewed slowly as she digested all that Domenico had just shared. Of course, she’d known about the wife who’d come before her, had often come close to driving herself insane with curiosity about her, and now she wished fervently that she’d put a stop to this conversation instead of driving it forward.
To build what Domenico had built out of vengeance…
His vengeance must have burned him. A flame could only blaze that bright when real emotion lay behind it.
‘You must have loved her very much,’ she said with as much evenness as she could manage.
‘I thought I did when I married her, but in hindsight, we married because ours was a passionate lust and thought it meant we were in love.’
Something spasmed in Marnie’s heart, but she calmly reached for her water and forced herself not to gulp it down.
‘I wanted my father to see me settled down,’ he explained. ‘In my heart, I knew he didn’t have much time left. Carmela and I were crazy about each other, so marriage seemed the logical thing to do.’
She had no idea how she continued to keep her voice even. ‘I heard you met at school.’
‘The gossips were close. We met at university, married straight after graduation and divorced three years after that.’
‘It must give you great satisfaction to know your vengeance worked so well for you.’
The light brown eyes held hers. ‘The man who set out for that vengeance is a very different man to the one who married you.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’ With a graceful smile, she got to her feet. ‘Back in a mo—I need to use the ladies.’
Holding the base of her small bump, Marnie wove through the tables to the bathrooms indoors, fighting with all her might not to cry.
For the fourth morning in a row, Marnie woke to find Domenico wrapped around her. For the fourth morning in a row, she felt him waken and rouse and then roll away as if he were experiencing nothing.
Probably it was nothing to him, she thought miserably.
She only opened her eyes when she heard the bathroom door of the adjoining room close.
Rolling onto her back, she let out a deep breath and reminded herself yet again of the need formindset.
She remembered hearing a song once about morning glory and asking her mother what it meant. Finding the question hugely amusing, her mother had cackled before telling her.
Morning glory. Morning erection. Apparently, if her mother was to be believed, a common denominator amongst all men.
Clearly Domenico’s morning glory had nothing to do with Marnie. For the last three nights, he’d come to bed with her, stripped naked while she changed into her pyjamas in the bathroom, given her a gentle kiss goodnight and made not a single move on her, and she couldn’t stop herself from questioning why.
Was it that he didn’t need to bother having sex with her now that he had what he wanted? Now that she was incubating his baby?
Whatever his reasons, she supposed that at some point in the future he would want another child, and her sexual services would be required again. She supposed it might happen before then if his needs became too much for him to handle. Especially as he wouldn’t be getting it anywhere else. But he was a master of self-control, so who knew. It was only Carmela who’d ignitedpassionate lustin him. The only time Marnie had ignited any passion in him had been in that awful screaming row in her flat, and it broke her heart that it had been the passionate hate of that moment that had driven them both. The wildness of the sex itself had been glorious, but it would forever be tainted by her shameful loss of control in the build-up to it.
Marnie wished she hadn’t given in to her curiosity and done an internet search of Carmela. It hadn’t taken much digging to find the ex-wife of the great Domenico Cannavaro. A few of the searches had thrown up Marnie’s name, but the only picture of her was obscured, a picture from one of Domenico’s many parties. She’d never been into social media or felt the need to join online business groups. Carmela, though, was a different breed. The internet was filled with an abundance of photos of her. She was jaw-droppingly beautiful, and sexy in that inimically Italian way Marnie could never come even close to achieving. No wonder Domenico had fallen intopassionate lustwith her. He wouldn’t have had to be fired up with fury to have hot, passionate sex with Carmela.
She was still lying in bed brooding when he strolled back in, all showered and dressed and smelling gorgeous. He sat on the bed and leaned over her. ‘How do you feel about going to a party tonight?’
‘I’ll check my diary and see if I’m free,’ she deadpanned even as her heart thumped at the thought of getting dressed up and going out. She hadn’t had a proper night out since she’d left him.
