Page 116 of A Diamond Deal
Being married to Amelia meant they would be stuck together, in a way he never allowed himself to be with a woman. He couldn’t simply walk away when it suited him. Which made it even more important to delineate these boundaries.
He stepped out from behind the counter and moved to her, ignoring the stirring of desire in his gut, the way his body seemed to understand what she was demanding, and was already willing to oblige.
‘It would be one night, Amelia. Purely for the sake of meeting your request. It would change nothing about our original deal. I will continue to discreetly date, and I will have no issue with you doing the same.’
Her skin paled ever so slightly but she nodded, her blue eyes sparkling with determination as they met his.
‘I told you, I’m not clueless. That’s fine by me.’
He held out his hand, to seal the deal as he would any other. But when she put her small, delicate hand in his, his whole body seemed to ignite, so suddenly, their wedding night was almost all he could think of.
Amelia had lived in England her whole life. The only reason she even had a passport was because her father had insisted upon it.You never know when you might want to grow wings, petal.Amelia hadn’t wanted wings, even when she’d known it had been her father’s most deeply held wish. Not when she’d seen what wings could do, the damage they could cause. Her mother had flown away from them without a backwards glance, and from then onwards, Amelia had taken a dim view of the idea of impermanence.
Having lived in England, she had plenty of experience of rain and drizzle but very little of tornados. However, having spent the better part of four hours in the presence of Massimiliano Moretti, she was starting to feel as though she understood what it was like to be caught up in the centre of that kind of phenomenon.
From the minute she’d shaken his hand and agreed to their deal, the wheels had been set in motion. Lawyers were called, a hasty meeting formed to go over the details. All but their wedding night was included in the official documentation, and she understood why he’d omitted that particular component.
She didn’t need it in the contracts, anyway. Not when she had his word. Somehow, she just knew he wasn’t the kind of man to go back on a deal.
After the lawyers had left, she was sent to the department store down the road to meet with a professional shopper, who spent an hour selecting a complete wardrobe for Amelia as befitted Contessina Amelia Rossi. Everything, from underwear to jeans, suits, dresses, handbags and shoes, was selected and packed away for her. Amelia Redgrave was buried beneath a sea of silk and linen, exquisite tailoring and a colour-matched palette. Make-up was added—everything she could ever need, and from the sorts of brands Amelia always shied away from because a single lip gloss was a week’s grocery spend for her. Amelia stared at the accumulating parcels with a sense of dread. She couldn’t have hoped to pay for even one of the couture items, let alone the dozens and dozens that were standing in the corner of the personal shopper’s office.
‘I’ll have them sent to the airport, as Signor Moretti requested,’ the shopper said with a smile as Amelia walked from the store wearing one of the dresses she’d tried on, in a state of shock, to a waiting car. The luxurious limousine whisked her to the King’s Road, where a stunning hair salon welcomed her as though she were the most important client they’d ever seen. Which was saying something, given that there were two very famous actresses in the process of having their tresses seen to.
Amelia, who was naturally blonde, was given a few extra foils around the front, ‘for freshness’, the hair stylist had said with a wink, as well as a very skilful cut. While the length was maintained, layers were cut to frame her face and give the hair more wave and bounce. It was blow-dried to take advantage of that, so several voluminous curls formed. While her hair was being done, a manicurist added colour to her fingers and toes.
By the time the manicurist and hairdresser were finished, and the shiny black cape removed, Amelia hardly recognised herself. She reached into her brand-new handbag and removed one of the lipsticks she’d had thrust into her hands by the shopper, and swiped it across her lips. The colour was, as the shopper had promised, the perfect complement to her complexion.
But the face of the woman in the reflection was so polished and expensive. She looked… Her heart sank on the realisation.
She looked like her mother.
Her eyes closed for a moment on a fluttering wave of feelings. Nerves, anxiety and the sense that she wanted to run, as fast and as hard as she could, away from that. Ever since her mother had abandoned them, Amelia had been turning her back on any shared similarities. As a child, she’d been fluent, to an A grade in school level, in both Italian and English, but as soon as Aria had left, Amelia had ceased to speak the language at all, though her father had encouraged her to continue.I like the way it sounds, pet.
But to Amelia’s ears, it was her mother’s language, their shared communication method that had been special and unique, for them.
There was no need to pay for any of the services. When she pulled a debit card from her new wallet, scrambling to recall just how much she had available, the stylist had shaken her head. ‘It’s all taken care of, by Signor Moretti.’
Of course it was.
The limousine was waiting at the front of the salon when she stepped out, and, even more conveniently, a takeaway coffee and biscuit were stashed in the centre console.
‘Thought you might need a sugar hit,’ the driver said, glancing in the rear-view mirror and offering a kindly wink.
She smiled back at him, taking a bite of the biscuit and thinking it was the most normal thing she’d done all day. Despite the fact her stomach was in knots, she chewed on it gratefully as the car slipped through the streets of London, heading north-east, towards the airport.
The whole morning had been a bombardment of appointments, so she hadn’t stopped to consider when she would reunite with her fiancé, but now that a new and Cinderella-ified version of herself was en route to the airport, she knew it couldn’t be long.
And suddenly, the butterflies that had been kept at bay by how busy and distracted she’d been were ramping up again, hammering her from the inside out. Her eyes tracked the familiar London buildings as the car went past, an affection for this city, her home, clogging her with emotions. But her life here had been far from happy. Even before her mother had left, she could remember their fights. The screaming matches. The worry about money. The certainty that she could never have any of the things her peers did—from dolls to money for sweets. Their flat was cramped, her mother miserable, except for when she put on her favourite music and began to sing, and the whole house suddenly lit up with warmth and love.
The sting of tears caught Amelia by surprise. She blinked quickly, frowning, because she hadn’t thought of her mother with anything other than cool detachment in a long time.
Then again, she was going home now. Home to her mother’s parents, to her last surviving relatives. Home to reconnect with her Italian side—or at least make peace with it, for as long as she was married.
Buildings gave way to highways and green fields, and then, finally, to the unmistakable hallmarks of an airport terminal. But rather than taking the drive around to the front, the car veered to the right, towards a large security gate with guards on either side. The driver flashed something through his open window, the guards inspected it, nodded, and the gates swept open. Amelia craned forward to see better. It was all so different from her usual world, and she wanted to take in every detail.
The limousine came to a stop beside a glass-fronted building, and before she could so much as undo her seat belt, uniformed staff were rushing forward to open her door with a polite, ‘Good afternoon, Signorina Rossi. Signor Moretti is aboard your flight. If you’ll come this way, we’ll process you for travel as quickly as possible.’
And that they did, from a quick check of her passport, to a reverential and discreet security screening, then she was ushered out of the other side of the terminal, into a waiting black minivan, and driven a short distance to a waiting jet.
