The Proud Wife (4 page)

But most important to her had been that it was the name of the man she adored. And it should have been the name of her baby too. The cruel slash of pain that thought brought with it pushed her into unguarded speech.

‘Why would I want to keep the name of the man whose marriage to me meant nothing to him?'

To his lawyer's right, she heard Pietro snatch in a sharp, angry-sounding breath from between clenched teeth. Her throat tightened, knotting itself against the lurching beat of her heart as she tensed, waiting for his furious response.
But it never came. The look that Matteo flashed towards Pietro silenced whatever outburst had been about to escape his ruthless control and he subsided into silence again, merely indicating with a swift, impatient flick of his free hand that the lawyer should continue.

But Marina couldn't be unaware of the way that the other hand, the one still wrapped around his water glass, tightened against the hard surface until his knuckles showed white, revealing the fierce struggle he was having with himself to hold back the angry words that had almost escaped him.

‘I will have no trouble with that particular condition,' she managed stiffly, still keeping her eyes on Matteo's calm, controlled face.

‘Buon.'

The silver pen made a small check-mark against the relevant paragraph in the document.

‘Next, you will sign a confidentiality agreement, promising never to speak of your marriage, never to reveal anything of your life with Principe D'Inzeo, either during the time you were together or of the reasons why you split up.'

‘I…
What?
'

Now she had to turn to Pietro; she couldn't stop herself. She knew that her eyes were wide with anger and disbelief—and, yes, a savage degree of pain—when she turned them on the man who sat silent and immobile as a rock.

‘You want me to sign…?' she managed, but then the hurt got the better of her.

How could he think that she would ever want the world to know the truth about their life together? That would mean letting everyone know about the way she had been so bitterly disillusioned. The baby…

From nowhere came the thought that, if their baby had been born, it might have had the same pale, devastating eyes as its father and suddenly it felt as if the sides of the room were closing in on her, taking all the daylight with them, making it difficult to breathe.

‘How dare you?'

If she had thrown the words at the wall opposite, it could hardly have responded less. Pietro's reaction was to narrow his eyes until they barely gleamed from behind the darkness of his lashes as he sat back in his chair, watching and waiting.

‘I have my name to protect.'

‘But you can't really think that I would do anything to damage it?'

When Pietro blinked slowly and eased his position in the chair, he looked like nothing so much as an indolent lion, lazily considering the question of whether it was worth the trouble of pouncing. There was enough controlled menace in his stare to make her reach for her water glass and snatch at a quick gulp of the drink so as to ease the uncomfortable dryness of her throat.

‘And can you say the same for your boyfriend?'

‘What boyfriend?'

She didn't give Pietro the chance to answer that, rushing on instead in her determination to refute his implied accusations.

‘Just who do you think I am? I have had nearly two years apart from you. Two years! And in all that time did I so much as give an interview or get my picture in a magazine?'

‘You didn't have your freedom then,' he drawled coolly. ‘And you had a comfortable allowance that meant you needed to keep me sweet.'

‘No, I didn't. Do you ever check your bank statements?'
Marina challenged when one black eyebrow lifted in a cynical questioning of her assertion. ‘Or do you find it hard to notice when a paltry million is missing—or not—from the many hundreds of millions you have coming in and out each month?'

That had him finally sitting up straight. The flash of anger in the glare he turned on his lawyer was so sizzling that for a second Marina almost expected to see the elegant Matteo shrivel into a pile of smoking ash right where he sat.

‘I said…' Pietro began, but a strong sense of fair play had Marina rushing to the other man's defence.

‘Oh, I know—I can imagine what you said, or rather
ordered
, would be done. And I'm sure that poor Matteo did just as you commanded. But you can't order me around. I'm not married to you now.'

Pietro's beautifully sensual lips twitched into a wry smile that mocked her passionate outburst.

‘Are you implying that I was ever able to order you around?' he enquired sardonically. ‘Because believe me,
bella mia
, that was never the case. In truth, I doubt that anyone has ever been able to order you to do anything. So are you claiming that you never used the allowance?'

‘No—I'm not
claiming
!' Marina pushed back the annoying strand of hair that had worked loose from her ponytail with an impatient movement. ‘I'm
telling
you: I never used the allowance you sent. Not a penny.'

‘Why not? That money was for your keep.'

‘Why not? I would have thought that was obvious. I don't need to be kept. I have a job—I went back to the library. I earn my own living. I don't want anything from you. I never did and, now that we're not married, I never will.'

‘Might I remind you that we are at present only separated?' There was an odd edge to Pietro's voice, one that
roughened it shockingly at the edges. ‘We are not yet divorced.'

‘Not yet,' Marina admitted. ‘But it can't come soon enough for me. I just want it over and done with—signed and sealed so that I can get out of here with my freedom and never look back.'

‘In that case,' Pietro returned imperturbably, ‘perhaps you will let “poor Matteo”—' he echoed her words mockingly ‘—get on with things.'

But Marina had had enough.

‘No, I don't think so. I don't think we will “get on with things”.'

She pushed back her chair, thought about getting to her feet and then hesitated. A few moments more and it would have had much more effect. She was actually quite enjoying seeing Pietro off-balance for once. He didn't quite know how to take her—and for now that was exactly how Marina wanted it.

‘What things, Pietro?'

She directed the question straight into his watchful face, seeing the faint scowl that drew his dark brows together, frowning over narrowed eyes.

‘What things—more terms? More conditions? More dictates from the great lord and master, Il Principe D'Inzeo?'

‘Marina…' Pietro's use of her name was low-toned, deep, a strong note of reproof on the single word.

‘More “thou shalt do this” and “thou shalt not do that”? “Thou shalt not speak to the press”? Do you really think I'd want to let the scandal mags know the truth about our marriage?'

She was letting her tongue run away with her but somehow she couldn't even bring herself to care. This was why she had come here, why she'd felt she had to put herself
through the ordeal of seeing Pietro one last time. She had wanted to try to voice—partly, at least—the things she had never been able to say when they had been married. To try to provoke him into reacting, into something other than the carefully measured, icy distance that was all that he had showed her in the end. All that the once heady, burning passion had burned down into, cold and ashy.

‘Do you think I'd want the whole nasty, miserable mess spread out in the tabloids—our dirty washing hung out to dry in full view of the public?'

‘Marina…'

It was definitely dangerous now, definitely a warning. His eyes were blazing cold fury, and the hand that had held the water glass now drummed a warning tattoo on the polished table-top. But it was a warning Marina was well past heeding. She had the bit between her teeth, and she wasn't going to be called to order by anyone.

‘You think you can toss me some instructions and if I want your money I'll do as I'm told, will follow your conditions to the letter?'

‘I think you'd better listen to what those conditions are.'

‘No.'

Marina shook her head firmly, sending her auburn pony tail flying with the deliberate emphasis she put on the movement.

‘I don't need to hear them.'

She heard Pietro's breath hiss in sharply, watched his sharp, white teeth snap together and the muscles in his jaw tighten ominously.

‘Marina—you came here so that we could discuss the terms of our divorce in a civilised manner.'

‘No.'

‘No?'

That really shocked him and the flood of triumph she felt as a result had a devastatingly intoxicating result, rushing through every nerve and vein like the powerful effect of some richly potent brandy.

‘No—that's not what I came here for. In fact these “discussions” are nothing to me. Because, you see…'

Now was the time for her to get to her feet, and she pushed back her chair so that it almost overbalanced with the force of her action. Now was the time for her to stand upright so that Pietro had to look up to her as she straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin and looked straight down her nose at him.

‘I only have to follow your instructions, agree to your
conditions
, if I want anything from you. That was the bargaining card you thought you held—the one that gave you some sort of power over me. But you were wrong.'

Stooping to pick up the document case she had brought in with her, she turned it in her hands until it was just in exactly the right position. Her defiant green eyes met his coldly assessing blue ones with as much determination and strength as she could muster.

‘You only hold those bargaining cards if I take anything at all from you—that's what you counted on, and that was where you went wrong. Because you see, Your High and Mightiness, Principe Pietro Raymundo Marcello D'Inzeo, I want nothing at all from you—nothing.'

She had to pause for breath there, and when she did she expected that he would break in on her, that he had to say something. But still Pietro sat immobile, still as a sphinx. He barely even seemed to be breathing, he was so motionless, so ruthlessly in control. Only his eyes burned with something so fierce, so dangerous, that just for a moment Marina's heart lurched, her nerves stuttering. Then she
pulled herself together, drew a deep, unsteady breath and rushed on.

‘I came here today not to discuss terms but to give you them.'

Zipping open the leather case, she pulled out a sheaf of papers that exactly matched the ones in front of both Pietro and Matteo, the ones from which the lawyer had been reading the list of conditions.

‘I've seen your offer of a divorce settlement and I've decided to reject it—totally and completely.'

At last Pietro moved, even if it was only his mouth that opened to speak in a voice that was deadly and low.

‘Then you'll get…'

‘Then I'll get exactly what I want, husband dear—exactly what I came here to tell you I'll take from you—and the answer is nothing. Absolutely nothing. Because I came into this marriage with nothing and I'm going out of it with exactly the same. So you can take your divorce settlement and put it—put it wherever you like. Because I want none of it!'

As she finished speaking, she tossed the documents down onto the table in front of Pietro where they landed with a heavy thud, the impact throwing up the loosened pages and sending them flying up into the air—straight into her husband's icily controlled and rigid face.

‘I
WANT
none of it!'

The sound of Marina's voice died away, to be replaced by the fluttering of the papers still settling down on the desk in front of him. Then the room was filled with silence, a silence so taut and intense that you could have cut it with a knife.

At Pietro's side, Matteo had dropped his pen from his grasp and seemed to have frozen into statue form. The young secretary who had been sitting at the far end of the table, keeping tactfully quiet and trying to look inconspicuous as she took notes, was staring, goggle-eyed, with her mouth wide open.

All this Pietro took in with a single swift glance before turning his attention back to Marina. To his wife. The wife he had thought would soon be his ex.

All she had had to do was to accept the terms of the divorce he had offered and sign on the dotted line.

Instead of which…

She was still not fully back under control after her outburst of just moments before. Her chest was heaving as if she had run a marathon, the generous curves of her breasts lifting and falling with each irregular, snatched gasp of air. And the effect of her loss of temper, together with the effort of getting her breathing under control, had sent a rush of
colour into those normally pale cheeks, so that now they were delightfully flushed with pink in a way that no clever make-up, no matter how subtly used, could ever achieve.

Above that wash of rose, the green eyes were bright with emotion, sparkling wildly under the thick, black lashes. Her hair had escaped from its fastening and was now starting to tumble down around her shoulders in casual disarray.

This was the woman he had first met. The woman who had knocked him off-balance so that he couldn't think straight. She looked wild. She looked defiant. She looked magnificent. If truth be told, she had never looked so damn good—not even on their wedding day, when she had been as stunningly beautiful as he had ever imagined it was possible for a woman to be.

Perhaps later, on their wedding night—lying in their bed with that glorious hair spread out around her, bright against the creamy colour of the pillows; her mouth swollen with kisses and her green eyes deep and dark with the pleasure that came from sexual satiation?

No!

Furiously Pietro clamped down on the erotic thoughts that threatened to escape his control and forced himself to focus back on the situation in hand. He'd let them take charge once before, and look where that had got him.

The silence had stretched out now almost to breaking point, neither the secretary, nor indeed Matteo, daring to make a move to break it. Marina's still slightly ragged breathing was the only sound in the room other than the sudden lash of rain against the windows as the rainstorm outside started up again.

It was as Marina's wide green eyes met his, clashing sharply, that Pietro launched into action. Pushing back his chair, he got to his feet, one hand shooting out in a commanding gesture.

‘Everyone—out!'

His pointing finger indicated the door, but there was no need. Already Matteo and the secretary were heading in that direction.

So too was Marina. She had swung round on her heel and was marching out.

‘Not you!'

In a swift, pouncing movement, Pietro was round the table and at her side in a couple of determined strides. Reaching out, he caught hold of her arm, his fingers clamping tightly around her wrist when she would have ignored him and moved on.

‘I said, not you.'

The look she turned on him was mutinous, defiant, and he felt the muscles under his grasp tighten in instinctive rejection. But to his surprise she didn't put up the struggle he anticipated, the resistance she clearly wanted to use. Perhaps it was the fact that they were in his lawyer's office. Perhaps she realised that she couldn't just fling that challenge—and the papers—right in his face and walk out. She must have known he would only come after her. That they would have this out sooner or later. ‘Sooner' seemed to suit her.

And sooner definitely suited him.

‘Just what is going on?' he flung at her as soon as the door had closed behind the other two. ‘What the hell are you playing at?'

Marina's face was a mask of pure rebellion and her eyes flashed rejection of his closeness, his words. But she answered him at least. ‘I'm not
playing
at anything. I meant every word I said.'

‘But you can't. I mean, why the hell would you?'

‘Why the hell would I
what
, Pietro?' she flung back at him. ‘Turn down your offer of a divorce settlement? Reject
the money you would be prepared to give me if I would only accept your small, petty conditions?'

Of course, by ‘petty' she didn't mean small and insignificant; Pietro felt his jaw tighten against the furious response that almost escaped him.

‘I was offering you a generous—'

‘I'm sure you were,' Marina cut in sharply. ‘After all, you are a very wealthy man and, as I said, there are laws about these things.'

This time he couldn't hold back on his anger, outraged by the fact that she would consider that was all that mattered.

‘You think I was only offering you a settlement because of what the law says?'

Just for a moment their eyes locked together, clashing sharply so that he saw the moment her expression changed, saw the defiance and provocation leach from her gaze, leaving it darker and more subdued—a mossy green flecked with gold, rather than the sparkling, flashing emerald of just moments before.

‘No,' she conceded, glancing down and away as her sharp white teeth worried at the soft flesh of her bottom lip. ‘No, of course I don't think that.'

‘Then why…?'

His question brought her head up sharply. The look in those wide eyes twisted something deep in his gut that had him fighting against responding, against showing the burning rush of reaction that seared through him.

Hell, no!
Frustration, anger, shock and disbelief were already a volatile and treacherous mixture, one that had him disturbingly off-balance when he wanted to be fully and tightly in control. Add in sexual desire to that potent blend, and it was even more dangerous. All it needed was
a single spark and the resulting explosion would take his head off.

Sex was what had brought him and Marina together. Sex was what had kept them together, even when things were falling apart. Sex was the one thing that had never died between them, at least for him. And sex, damn it to hell, was what was still there.

With the width of the table between him and Marina, it had been bad enough. She had still been able to get to him—physically, at least—just as she always had. But he had been able to tamp it down, put a lid on it, keep it under control.

But now, with her eyes burning into his and her curvaceous body up close, it was so much harder to impose restraint. The scent of her skin was in his nostrils, sweet as a rose, mixed with some faintly herbal tang from the shampoo in her hair. He could feel the warm softness of her flesh and the delicacy of bone under his fingers, the contact sending electrical pulses of heat along every inch of nerve. It was all he could do not to give in to the demands of his senses.

‘Why?' Marina echoed now, her tone subtly different. ‘Why did I turn you down? Isn't it obvious?'

‘Not to me.'

Then, when she lifted a russet eyebrow to question his response, and those green-and-gold eyes flashed another challenge straight at him, he gave her the real truth.

‘All right, I will admit that I am torn between two possible explanations.'

‘Two?' She hadn't expected that. ‘What two?'

‘One—' Pietro lifted the first finger of his free hand to mark the point ‘—you think that if you play hard to get with this then I will increase the settlement—give you more
to keep you in—what is it you say?—the manner to which you have become accustomed.'

‘If you think that, then you couldn't be more wrong!' Marina protested, but Pietro cut across her with his second point, adding another finger to the first.

‘Or, two, you really don't want this divorce at all. So you believe that if you pique my interest enough then I will—'

‘Don't want this divorce?'

Marina's tone was sharp with disbelief and she was shaking her head swiftly and violently in rejection of what he was saying.

‘You can't possibly think I don't want it, that I…that I want to come back to you? Is that what you're saying?'

She couldn't be hearing right, Marina told herself. He couldn't have said any such thing. But even as she let the thought into her mind she suddenly knew a shock of recognition of exactly why he had said it.

In the moment that he had caught hold of her wrist she had tensed against the restraint. She had tried to pull away but he had held her, kept her there—without force, but also without effort—while Matteo and his secretary had left the room. Then they had been alone.

And that had been her opportunity to break free, to ease herself from his restraining grasp, fight with him over it, if need be. Instead she had become so absorbed in the argument between them that she hadn't even thought to insist on her freedom. She had stayed right there, close to him, her wrist in his hand for all the world as if she
wanted
it—as if she wanted to be that close.

And Pietro, being the man he was, had interpreted her behaviour in exactly that way. It was something she had to disabuse him of—and fast.

‘And, while we're talking about things I don't want,
would you mind taking your hand off my arm? You're hurting me.'

‘My apologies.'

It was cold and stiff, and he let go so fast that her hand dropped to her side. It was only as she felt the cooling rush of air over her skin that she knew a sudden shiver of regret at the loss of his touch. After two years' separation, the warmth of his fingers against her flesh had had a familiarity that seemed shockingly right. One that had her lifting her arm to cradle it close to her, feeling the loss as a wrench at her heart.

‘I am sorry,' Pietro said again, less stiffly this time.

‘Oh, no, you're fine,' she managed, unable to let him believe he might have hurt her. ‘It's nothing.'

She even waved her arm around between them to prove that there was no damage. But her uneasy gesture only created more tension in her already twisting stomach when she saw that those pale eyes didn't follow the rather wild movement, but remained fixed on her face. And there was a new, disturbing darkness about them, one that made her shift uncomfortably, moving her weight from one foot to another and then back again.

He was so close, physically so close, and yet emotionally so very far away.

She might have thought that two years away from him would do much to dilute the impact he had on her. But the truth was the exact opposite: it was as if she had been starved for all of that time so that now, when she was presented with a glorious feast for her eyes and her senses, she didn't know where to look, what to absorb first.

His hair was black, and glossy as polished jet, and even in the darkness of the rain-soaked day it gleamed with health. His olive skin still had the lingering tan of high summer, in stark contract to her own winter pallor, and the
burning ice-blue of his eyes blazed above the high, slanting cheekbones in his carved face.

He had never been one to wear much in the way of cologne or aftershave, but with the familiarity of memory she could catch the scent of the lime shampoo he had used when they'd been together and apparently still favoured now. Even more memorable, and agonisingly bitter-sweet with the thoughts it aroused, was the clean, faintly musky scent of his body that came to her as he moved and that lingered on her arm where he had held her.

Unthinkingly, she rubbed at the spot where his fingers had touched her skin, reviving that scent and sending it whirling around her, so that she closed her eyes for a moment against the impact of it.

‘I know.'

His tone pulled her from her memories, flung her eyes wide open to stare at him. Something that wasn't quite a smile flickered over Pietro's mouth and his gaze held hers with a shocking intensity.

‘I know. I feel it too. It's still there, isn't it?'

‘I don't know what you mean.'

Marina took an uneasy step backwards, acknowledging privately that she knew exactly what he meant, but unable to stop herself.

‘There is nothing
still there.
'

‘Liar,' Pietro inserted smoothly, silkily, and he matched her step away from him with one of his own towards her. Slow, careful, nothing in it to frighten her—on the surface, at least. But the burn of his hooded eyes made her stomach tie itself in knots.

‘I'm no liar—I don't know what you're talking about.'

But she did. She knew exactly what he meant. He had only to touch her and her whole body was fizzing with it, sensual heat stinging along every nerve.

Pietro shook his head slowly.

‘I'm not afraid to admit that I still want you. I'd be a fool to even try. I don't want it to be there any more than you do, but at least I'm not scared to acknowledge what there is between us. As you should, if you'll only be honest with me.'

‘I'm not scared!'

Not scared? Who was she kidding? It had always terrified her, this irrational burn inside her, this primitive intensity of need that took away her sanity, her sense of self. No one else in the world had been able to set it off in her, but it seemed that when Pietro was anywhere near she simply inhaled it on the air they both breathed.

It scared her, but it also thrilled her like nothing else in her life had ever done. And the truth was she missed that thrill.

‘If you want honesty then, yes—all right—there's always that. There's always sex. But there has to be more to a relationship than passion.'