The Sicilian's Wife (13 page)

And he had lost his chance to court her in the way he had wanted.

As always, when he thought of Gary Rowell, a red cloud of jealousy hazed his mind, blurring his thoughts. He had never even seen the man and yet he hated him savagely.

‘What does Rowell look like?'

It was obviously the last question she had expected and she paused, slightly further up the path, looking down at him in bewilderment.

‘Why on earth do you want to know?'

‘Just curious.'

He obviously hadn't quite hit the casual note he had aimed for. Something had jarred, making her frown suddenly.

‘Why?'

‘I wondered what you saw in him.'

What she saw in him! Now how did she answer that? Megan asked herself. And why this question? Why now?

If she had seen it coming, then she might have been better prepared for it, but there was no way she could have anticipated it. It had come right out of the blue, knocking her mentally off balance in a second. And she had no idea at all how to answer it.

S
HE
didn't
want
to answer it. Perhaps she could get away with dodging it completely.

‘Nothing much…' she muttered, turning and trudging up the path again.

She hadn't really thought that she would get away with it, and she was right. Cesare came after her at speed, his longer legs covering the ground much more quickly than she could manage. He caught her up, just as she reached the flatter ground at the top of the cliff, taking hold of her arm and whirling her round to face him.

‘And what the hell does “nothing much” mean?'

The edge of the cliff was uncomfortably close and Megan found that even the slightest glance down towards the beach and the waves crashing against it made her feel uncomfortable again, the dizziness threatening her ability to think clearly. In her haste to get safely back onto secure ground, she snatched her arm from Cesare's grasp and marched towards where the car was parked. Of course he came after her, as she had known he would.

‘I don't think that's any of your business!'

‘I'm making it my business! Megan—!'

He'd caught her up once again, this time clamping both his hands down on her shoulders so that she was forced to a halt, unable to shake off his much greater strength.

‘Are you telling me that you went to bed—gave your virginity to a man you thought was “nothing much”?'

Embarrassment combined with various other unpleasant forms of mental discomfort to make it impossible to think
straight. She only knew she desperately wanted to get Cesare off this decidedly distressing topic, but she couldn't think of any way to do it.

Perhaps attack really was the better form of defence?

‘What's the matter, Cesare? What's really bugging you? Is it the fact that it was Gary who—who—deflowered me and you didn't? Is that what you would have preferred? A virgin bride who was truly entitled to the white dress she wore when she trotted up the aisle to you on your wedding day? Someone who hadn't known any other man's touch so that she couldn't compare you with her previous lover when you got her into bed?'

‘Don't be bloody stupid! I don't give a damn about that!'

Cesare dismissed her furious accusation with an imperious wave of one powerful hand.

‘For one thing, this is the twenty-first century. I may be Sicilian, but I am not so hypocritical as to think that men can enjoy sexual freedom while women have to stay at home, preserving their modesty until they have the sanctity of marriage to liberate them.'

‘Then—'

‘And for another…'

Cesare cut across her attempt at an interjection, tossing back his proud head and looking straight down his aristocratic nose at her.

‘I know I need have no fears at all where any comparisons between my performance in bed and Rowell's are concerned. If I was any less the lover he was then you could not respond to me as you do!'

‘I—'

‘I know women,
carina.
I know when they are aroused—when they come alive in my arms. I know when they are feeling pleasure, when they are out of their minds with delight—and I know that you find that delight in my bed.
I know it, and because of this I am sure that if you did make any comparisons, then it was your former lover who would come off the worst—not me!'

‘Why—you…!'

It was all that Megan could manage. She was totally dumbfounded by his egotistical declaration, knocked sideways by the supreme confidence of it all. The fact that every word of it was true only made matters worse.

‘You arrogant swine!'

Her furious insult had no effect on him. Instead it just bounced off his conceited hide, leaving him impervious to her anger.

‘Arrogant, maybe!' he retorted. ‘But at least I am also honest—or are you going to try and deny the truth of what I said?'

‘I'm not going to confirm or deny anything!'

Either way it would stick in her throat. If she tried to lie and say that he wasn't the lover he thought, that he didn't turn her on at all, that she was just pretending to respond to him in bed, he would see straight through the pretence, and despise her for even trying it. And she was damned if she was going to increase his already overly-swelled ego by admitting that from the moment he had first kissed her she had never been able to think of any other man at all.

‘I'm not even going to honour your outrageous statement by bothering to answer it. It strikes me that you're already big-headed enough as it is!'

‘Which, roughly translated, means that you are too afraid to come right out and say that it's the truth.'

‘I'm not
afraid
to do anything!'

The fact that that was exactly how she felt damaged her composure even more.

‘I'd tell you if I wanted to.'

‘Of course.'

Cesare's smile only incensed her further, destroying the little that remained of her fraying hold on her temper.

‘All right! You want the
truth
?' she flung at him, completely losing her grip on her tongue. ‘You want to know what Gary looked like—well, the honest truth is that he was a dead ringer for you!— He could have been your twin,' she amended hastily when Cesare frowned, even his fluent English stumped by that particular phrase.

‘He…'

If she had seemed stunned earlier, now it was Cesare's turn to look as if he had been slapped hard in the face. He hadn't been prepared for this and he didn't know how to take it.

Gary Rowell had been the dark figure on the edge of his consciousness ever since Megan had first mentioned the other man's name. He was the black cloud that hung over this marriage, one of the barriers that came between Megan and himself, destroying their chances of a real relationship. But that was all he had been—a shadow. He didn't think he was prepared for the rat to become reality—a solid, physical figure with a face and a body he could picture in his thoughts.

And what was the significance of the fact that Rowell looked like him? Were they both of a type that Megan was attracted to? Or, worse, when she responded to him, when she came alive in their bed at night—in his arms—was she doing so because she was imagining that he was her first lover, the man who had broken her heart? The man she had loved and lost.

Pushing his hands into the pockets of his jeans so that Megan wouldn't catch sight of the sudden lack of steadiness that betrayed his inner turmoil, he leaned back against the car with what he hoped was at least a semblance of cool disinterest.

‘What exactly does that mean?'

‘What it means is that you and Gary Rowell could have been brothers. Tall, black hair, a killer tan, cheekbones you could cut yourself on. He looked even more like you than Gio does, and that's saying something.'

The words just wouldn't be held back now. They came tumbling out of her, jerky and uneven, tripping over themselves in their haste to be spoken. Her tongue was getting tangled up on them but she couldn't stop, had to get it all out, have it all said. Snatching in a deep, raw breath, she went on.

‘Why do you think I fell so hard for him in the first place?'

‘Why?'

He truly sounded as if he didn't know, but that couldn't be the case. Cesare wasn't that stupid. He had to know what she meant. After the way she had behaved at New Year…

‘
Why
? You surely don't need to ask that.'

‘I'm asking.'

‘But you must know what I mean—what I'm talking about. Gary Rowell was the spitting image of you,' she went on when he shook his head slowly, his eyes taking on a blank, opaque look. ‘Probably your double. That's why I was attracted to him in the first place. It was…'

Suddenly realising the dangerous path her words were taking, she changed tack hastily. Letting Cesare know that he had broken her heart at that party, and that it had been because she was so hopelessly in love with him that she had been so vulnerable to Gary's practised seduction techniques, was telling him far too much than was wise.

‘I had this almighty crush on you for a couple of years, as a result of which I acted very stupidly at New Year—
flinging myself into your arms and practically saying “Take me, I'm yours”.'

‘That is exactly what you said, as I recall,' Cesare murmured, earning himself a blazing glare from those burning green eyes.

‘Well, you made your feelings very, very clear on that matter—and it
hurt
! So when Gary showed he was interested—more than interested—naturally I saw it as a way of healing that hurt…'

‘So now you're saying it's
my
fault you ended up with Rowell? That you ended up pregnant…'

‘Except that I didn't end up pregnant after all, so it's not a problem.'

She tried for flippancy, missed it by a mile. The way his face darkened, the deep frown that drew his brows together told her that. And suddenly a cold, creeping sensation slid over her skin, bringing with it a new fear, one she pushed aside quickly, too afraid to face it.

‘It was all just a stupid mistake.'

‘It might not have been.'

Had he really hurt her that badly? He knew he had been more forceful than he had ever intended, driven to the edge of desperation by the innocent temptation she had offered him, but he had never meant to drive her to
that
! Had he really damaged her self-esteem so that she had flung herself into the arms of the first man who offered?

‘Yes, well, now you know that even if I
had
been, it would have looked enough like you for it not to matter. No one would ever have guessed that the poor little thing wasn't yours, that—'

‘That didn't matter to me and you damn well know it! I
didn't marry you because you were pregnant—or thought you might be. That had nothing to do with it.'

‘No, of course it didn't,' Megan flung at him the bitter taste of pain on her tongue. A pain far worse than the one she had endured with his rejection of her at the New Year.

She had thought that she had been through the worst it was possible to feel then, in those moments after his rejection of her. Now she knew that compared to the agony of soul she had experienced since, it had barely hurt at all.

‘We both know why you married me. And if I was ever in any doubt, you spelled it out in words of one syllable. You wanted me in your bed. That was your primary motivation—the one thing that really drove you. You wanted me in your bed and you thought that offering me marriage would get me there.'

Deny it! She begged him miserably in her thoughts. Please, please deny it! Tell me that that wasn't the real reason. That it was just a mask, carefully assumed to cover up the real reason. Oh, I don't need you to tell me that you love me—I won't ask for that. But please, please tell me it wasn't
just
sex!

The silence that had greeted her bitter accusation dragged on and on, until she was ready to scream in pain and frustration. At long last Cesare straightened up, raked one bronzed hand through the black sleekness of his hair, and expelled his breath in a deep, deep sigh.

‘Yes,' he said slowly, his voice lacking any emotion whatsoever. ‘You're right. That was about it.'

Megan managed a smile that was stiff and tight, lacking in any sort of warmth.

‘So now we both know where we stand, don't we? I married you because I was desperate—trapped by a preg
nancy that if I'd only waited a week or so I would have discovered never existed. And you married me because you couldn't get into my bed any other way. If you ask me, we're pretty well matched.'

‘Yeah,' Cesare muttered bleakly. ‘I think I'd agree with that. I'd say we were just about perfect for each other.'

‘So what do we do now?'

Cesare lifted his broad shoulders in a shrug that he knew must seem dismissive, coolly indifferent, but he was beyond caring how he looked. What was there left for them to do when they had just, mentally at least, torn each other to pieces? She had told him bluntly that she felt trapped in this marriage, forced into it by the mistaken belief she was pregnant and, in return, lashing out like a wounded animal, he had confirmed her very worst fears of his own motives.

But what the hell had he been supposed to do? Tell the woman who had just described their marriage as a trap that in fact he was crazily in love with her? Let her know that she was his once in a lifetime love, just as Lucia had been Gio's? She would probably have laughed in his face if he had. Told him just what he could do with his love—a love she clearly wanted nothing to do with.

‘I don't see that there's anything we can do. Nothing has changed after all. We just know rather more clearly exactly where we stand. So I suppose we might as well go home and continue as before.'

‘Home.'

The emotive word was positively the last straw for Megan. Coming on top of everything else, it seemed to split her mind apart. One half hated Cesare with all her soul, loathing him for the way he had treated her, for marrying her solely out of lust, callously manipulating the desperate
situation in which she'd found herself for his own selfish ends.

But the other half, the weak, foolish, gullible half, still clung desperately to the love she had always had for him. The love she had dreamed of having returned only to see those dreams shattered and trampled under his uncaring feet.

‘
Home
! Do you mean back to the villa?'

‘Yes, of course I do. Where else would we go?'

‘Oh, it wasn't
where
we went that bothered me!' Once more Megan took refuge in sarcasm, hiding her pain under the cynical words. ‘It was what you called it I didn't like.'

‘What…'

‘We'll go
home
, you said, when you know perfectly well that the villa isn't a home to me at all! It might be
your
home—but to me it's just a place that I live in. It's the place where I eat, where I sleep, where I have sex with my husband because he bought the rights to my body with this ring…'