Page 20 of Unveiled As The Italian's Bride
Husband and wife...
Except that was going to be a two-year fantasy! And beyond that the chasm between them was so great that ever to think about breaching it would risk being swept into its cavernous depths.
The mere thought was terrifying. A lifetime spent travelling from one place to another had bred in Kate a healthy respect for staying put, for a simple, quiet life. She adored her parents, but she was very well aware of the limitations their nomadic lifestyle had conferred on them. It was one of the reasons they were where they were now, for heaven’s sake!
Dante, with his suffocating, overwhelming personality and his dark, dangerous charisma was the very opposite of simple and quiet. He was a raging volcano and the line between fascination and mortal peril was wafer-thin. Gut instinct told her that, just as gut instinct had protected her for two years against the devastating sex appeal which lurked underneath the cool, remote veneer.
By the time they were on their way back to Antonio’s palace, with Angelina nodding off between them, she had still not managed to quite shake the disturbing, niggling thought that a gateway had opened up, inviting her to tread inside.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Sorry?’ Kate blinked, her almond-brown eyes locking onto his.
‘You’ve gone quiet on me. I thought today went...well. So, tell me what’s wrong.’ His voice was a silky murmur that feathered through her body with the intimacy of a caress.
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Kate said on a sharp intake of breath, gripped by a sudden hot pulsing in her veins that left her breathless and alarmed. ‘I guess I thought it might be a good idea to just sit back and allow you to spend time with Angelina.’ She cleared her throat and continued in a firmer voice, even though she was still acutely aware of him in ways that panicked her. ‘It’s great seeing the two of you interacting.’
‘Thank you for joining us.’
‘You honestly didn’t need me there,’ she countered huskily. ‘Why did you ask me along?’
‘Because...’ He shifted and flushed. ‘A day out with Angelina... It’s not something I am accustomed to enjoying. It’s not familiar terrain.’
‘You should do it a bit more. She loved having you with her for the whole day.’ Kate half-turned to look at him and stopped breathing for a few seconds as their eyes clashed in the darkness.
‘I know,’ he said huskily and then smiled with tentative warmth.
‘And you should dothata bit more,’ she added on impulse. Why not? If they were going to marry for convenience, then he would be around in her life, even if itwasfor a limited period of time. And the fastest way to kill these uneasy, uninvited stirrings ofawarenesswould be to get onto another track altogether.
Thefriendshiptrack was a safe one. She would be able to engage, to smile, to socialise at his side without this unwelcome and unexpected fluttering inside her just because their roles might be a little different. She didn’t know what to do with the restless stirrings inside her. She just knew that they had togo away.
‘Do what?’
‘Smile.’
Dante gazed into almond-shaped eyes the colour of milk chocolate flecked with green, and for a few seconds was utterly taken aback. Disoriented and not knowing why, he found himself staring at her, deprived of speech. What was that about...this hot stirring in his blood, the familiar way it tracked through his veins, making him restless and edgy? No, heknew. An inconvenient attraction, one he would have to sideline, to subdue, and subdue it he would.
In work, at play, in all the corners and angles of his high-voltage life, he was always in control. It was the way he had been raised—to keep his feelings contained, always to know where his focus lay. Inconvenient attractions? No, there was no room for them or for his eyes straying, feeding his imagination, shifting his focus. He was strong—always had been, always would be. It was the way he was, a rock hewn from his life’s experiences.
Distracted, Dante succumbed to thoughts of a past he always kept locked away.
The dramatic painting might hang behind his desk, a constant and everlasting reminder of the wife who had been perfect only on paper, and yet, despite that visual reminder, he had consigned her to a place that did not occupy a single scrap of his mind.
Luciana had been beautiful and as eligible as him. The match had been brokered by his parents and Dante had had no qualms about its suitability. Two great Italian houses would join forces. He was and never had been interested in romance. He had always known that marriage would be a simple matter of business and pragmatism, the continuity of the family line. Of course, he had had relationships with various women over the years, but he had never envisaged longevity with any of them, and in fact he had always been discerning when it came to those. Playing the field, like a kid without any parameters or sense of self-control, had never been his thing.
Had he expected his marriage to be the nightmare it had turned out to be?
Never.
He had entered into it in good faith but it had quickly become apparent that his stunning wife was utterly uninterested in him. Before the ink was dry on their marriage certificate, she’d announced she liked a varied sex life, and her assumption was that he would have no problem with that. Of course, she would provide him with an heir to the family empire, because that was part of the bargain, but that was it.
She’d done her own thing. He’d buried himself in work, gritted his teeth and wondered how long he would be able to put up with the men and women who entertained his wife. The tipping point had been reached the very second his daughter had been born, at which point he laid down some basic laws and resigned himself to a marriage in which Luciana did as she wished but with discretion, and so would he, should he so choose.
In fairness, he knew that it was a lifestyle not uncommon amongst many of his privileged acquaintances. The fact that she’d been rude to everyone she considered beneath her had been as repelling, in many ways, as her conscious philandering.
Would he have ended up pushed to the point of divorce? Or had his upbringing been so deeply ingrained that he would simply have shrugged it off and accepted the hand he’d been dealt? As many would have, and did, in the elevated circles in which they’d both moved. As far as his parents, and indeed his uncle, had been concerned, there’d been nothing amiss with the pairing.
It was a question Dante had never got to ask, because she had died in the very car crash that had taken his parents—an accident on a rainy road late at night after a trip to the opera. A distracted chauffeur. Seconds during which his future had changed for ever.
