Page 148 of A Diamond Deal
‘Beyond me going to a hotel for the night?’
‘That doesn’t solve anything.’
‘So what does?’
He stared down at her face, knowing the right thing was to let her go. To get her out of this mess of a situation he’d created.
‘If you’d like, you can leave me permanently. We’ll divorce,’ he said, rejecting that but knowing he had to offer it.
She closed her eyes. ‘I can’t, and you know why. My grandparents…’
The pain washing over him was like acid burn. He swallowed quickly. It wasn’t about him, them, their marriage. Nor should it have been. Still, the ferocity of that rejection cut him. ‘I will honour the terms of our agreement. Contrary to my behaviour in the last half-hour, I’m not a cruel man. I have no interest in seeing an elderly couple financially destroyed.’
She sobbed softly.
‘You said there were two choices.’
‘Stay.’
She looked up at him, biting into that sweet lower lip of hers, full and pink.
‘So you can keep ignoring me?’ she whispered. ‘So you can trot me out each night, your token society bride, for the world to see, then go back to pretending I don’t exist?’
‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘And if you think I’ve been ignoring you, you’re wrong. You have been in here,’ he said, pointing to the side of his head. ‘Like a fever dream. You have breathed yourself into my soul, and I hate it every bit as much as I know I cannot fight it. I am obsessed with you. You are here.’ He tapped his head again, more urgently now. ‘Every moment of every day.’
She gasped.
‘What does that mean?’
‘We need a new agreement,’ he said, carefully. Years of living with his experience of abandonment had shaped him in ways it was impossible to remove. He was not a man who could emotionally put himself on the line. But for Amelia, he would come as close as possible, if it meant her remaining under his roof.
‘Which would be?’
‘I want you in my bed,’ he admitted, the words dragged out of him, a dangerous territory for Massimiliano. ‘Every night that you’ll give me.’
She stared up at him, face a mask that gave nothing away. Or perhaps it was that he was so consumed by his own feelings, he couldn’t perceive hers.
‘And?’
‘It’s a negotiation,’ he said, carefully. ‘What do you want in exchange?’
‘For as long as we’re sleeping together, you won’t see other women.’
Disgust flooded him at even the idea of that.
‘I’ll do you one better,’ he said. ‘For as long as we’re married, I will be faithful to you, as you’ve said you will be to me.’
‘Whether we’re sleeping together or not?’
In the back of his mind, he admired the boundaries she was establishing. The way she was reminding them both that two years was a long time, and there was no reason to think this sexual infatuation would last.
It was a reminder that he should not be implementing emotional expectations into their agreement.
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets to stop from touching her. ‘My concern with this is your age and inexperience.’
‘I thought we’d dispensed with my lack of experience.’
He shook his head once. ‘I mean emotional inexperience.’
