Chapter Eleven #2
‘How dare you?’ she screamed, at the top of her lungs, angry tears misting her eyes.
The stress and rejection of the past two weeks were loaded into those three single words.
She heard her voice as if from a long way away, a tormented, furious sound, chilling her to the bone.
Because in that moment, she felt more like her mother than ever before.
Reacting with emotion, rather than thought.
Arguing, rather than walking away, or pacifying.
‘He is my Italian teacher,’ she said, through the tears, still so angry, but also overcome by pent-up emotion.
By all the feelings of rejection she’d experienced since those blissful nights they’d shared.
It was as if a volcano had suddenly roared to life and were ejecting lava across the entire room.
‘We’ve been working together for weeks. Your assistant booked him for me.
He is someone I consider to be a friend, but, my God, it is not romantic, it is not sexual. How can you even say that?’
He stood his ground, staring down at her, not reacting at all.
Not to her tears, nor to her words. ‘Because I know you,’ he said, after a beat.
‘I have seen what a sensually demanding woman you are. Two weeks since we slept together, it’s natural that you would be wanting to explore that side of yourself more.
Only please, as I say, consider an alternative location. ’
She stared up at him in absolute shock. ‘I can’t—I can’t believe you—that’s—’
‘I will not bring women here, Amelia, rest assured. I’m only making sure we play by the same rules.’
She felt her whole world spinning completely out of control. She shook her head quickly, unable to think of anything to say, then spun on her heel and stalked away from him.
Fuck.
Not only had that escalated quickly, it had exploded way out of his control.
He’d walked in and seen his beautiful wife with her head bent so close to another man’s, laughing at something he’d said.
The other man, objectively handsome, much closer in age to her.
Something inside Massimiliano had snapped.
A part of him he hadn’t even known existed.
Not once had he felt possessive of a woman.
Even his real fiancée, all those years ago. Not once had he felt jealous.
It had caught him completely off guard, and rather than admit that to her, rather than be placated by her explanation, he’d gone out of his way to say whatever he could to cover his tracks.
To make it seem as though he were approaching their situation from an etiquette consideration, rather than one of the basest emotions people were capable of.
He flicked his assistant a text, asking her to reschedule the interview and photoshoot, then poured himself a Scotch. He held it, staring out at the city, replaying the godawful scene in his head, knowing he had to fix the mess he’d just made, until he became conscious of a faint noise behind him.
He turned on autopilot to see Amelia walking through the room, dragging a small suitcase with her. The world seemed to tip sideways. Her face was pinched, a mottled pink.
He hadn’t seen his father leave. The coward had slipped out of their home in the middle of the night, leaving no note, nothing to indicate where he was going.
But the same feeling of abandonment was spearing him in the side now.
How absurd, given they’d met so recently.
It gave him a thousand and one reasons to let her go.
Wasn’t this what he expected the people in his life to do?
To leave? Wasn’t that a huge reason he’d spent the last sixteen years keeping people at arm’s length, rather than getting attached?
Because abandonment hurt like hell. Being left stung.
So he should let her go, get it over with.
Like ripping off a plaster. At least then he’d know he was through it—that she was just like everyone else in his life.
But even as he hardened in that resolve, he was rejecting it. Letting Amelia go like this was untenable. He wouldn’t do it.
He kept his voice measured, even when his insides were rioting, dragging him from one side to the other, in a constant state of flux over what he wanted, and what made sense. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m sorry about the photoshoot, but I can’t stay here,’ she said, without looking at him.
‘I’ve rescheduled it.’
She nodded once, kept walking.
His gut fell out of his body. He couldn’t let her leave. It was as simple as that. Not without at least asking her to stay, first.
‘Amelia.’ Desperation meant he spoke her name more curtly than he’d intended, but she stopped walking and finally glanced somewhere in the vicinity of his direction. ‘Where are you going?’
‘You’re the one who reminded me I have money now.
I can book a hotel.’ His insides twisted.
All his life, he’d protected himself from this, but in this moment, when he needed to wrap those barriers around himself harder, tighter, he mentally rejected them outright.
‘I don’t need to stay here and be spoken to like that. ’
‘Amelia—’
‘No.’ Now she looked at him, and the loathing and pain in her eyes sliced him in half.
‘You bought me. I’m your wife. But you have no right to yell at me, to speak to me as though I’m some cheap, sex-obsessed woman who can’t wait to move on to her next conquest. You have no right to treat my friend as you did this afternoon.
If you think I’m going to stick around and wait for you to say something else like that, then think again. I will not be treated—’
‘You’re right,’ he said, knowing immediately that he had gone so far over the line of acceptability, she was doing the only thing she could.
He put his drink down quickly and crossed to her, hating the way she seemed to pull back from him even before he reached her.
‘My behaviour was disgusting. I had no right to say those things, to act that way. I’m truly sorry.’
She shook her head, lips compressed.
If he was going to fix this, he had to be completely honest. ‘I was jealous.’
Her eyes lifted to his but slipped away again, just as quickly. ‘I’m not completely stupid. I guessed as much. But sleeping together once doesn’t give you a right to dictate who I can spend time with. We’re intending to be married for two years; are you saying I can’t have friends over?’
Male friends, when he wasn’t home? That was most definitely his preference, but he recognised the absolute unfairness of that. Particularly when he’d predicated the whole marriage agreement on their freedom to continue discreetly pursuing relationships outside their situation.
The idea of that was anathema to him now.
Why would he want another woman in his bed, when he could have Amelia?
Except that was far from certain, right now.
‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated, hands on hips. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been jealous before. Evidently, I don’t know how to handle it.’
She wrapped her arms around her chest, looking so frail that a part of him broke apart.
‘I don’t think I can do this,’ he said as realisation unfurled in his gut. He felt the danger of what he was about to suggest, the perilous situation he was preparing to step into. But he genuinely couldn’t see an alternative, besides letting her leave, and that he had already discounted.
‘Do what?’ she whispered, so softly he barely heard.
‘I don’t want to think of you seeing other men.’
She shook her head, consternation in her expression. ‘I never had any intention of cheating on you.’
His gaze narrowed.
‘I know this is just a fake marriage, but I’m not someone who can pretend those vows don’t matter.’
He ignored the flare of triumph and assurance her words brought, because it was a house of cards.
Her declaration should have been reassuring, yet he felt the earth wobble beneath him.
Because it wasn’t based on her wanting to be married to him, wanting to be faithful to him.
It was the cage he’d built for her, without intending to.
‘We have two options,’ he said, slowly, realising that there was another door he hadn’t considered. One he hated the thought of going through, even while he knew he had to hold it open for her.
‘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.’
She blinked up at him.
‘The sex between us is unlike anything I’ve ever known.’
‘I thought it was “normal”.’
‘Did I say that?’
She frowned. ‘I think you implied it.’
He remembered then, how she’d asked him in the shower if it was always like this, and he’d brushed the question off with some line about connection. ‘Your question caught me off guard.’
She rolled her eyes and, despite the tenuous situation they were in, a flicker of amusement sparked in his chest. When was the last time someone had rolled their eyes at him?
‘But sex is still just sex, Contessina. Even with a beautiful woman who has taken over your every waking, and sleeping, thought.’
She nodded slowly. ‘You’re worried I’m going to fall in love with you.’
He dipped his head once.
‘Frankly, I think you should be more worried about that for yourself,’ she pointed out archly. ‘You’re the one who went all diabolical caveman because I was innocently studying with some other guy.’
He smiled at her description, but sobered quickly, because he was still fast-walking over quicksand.
‘I’m not going to fall in love with you,’ she said.
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I’m not stupid. I have plans beyond this marriage, and they don’t include you.’
‘I’m glad, Amelia. Clearly there are things about me that I didn’t realise, things about myself I didn’t know, but this is not one of them. I decided a long time ago that love and marriage were not for me, and I will never change my mind on that score—nor allow it to be changed.’
She simply stood there, so impatience chewed its way through his gut, making him doubt her, him, the wisdom of this. In the back of his mind, though, he knew that this infatuation would fade eventually. No passion remained at this intensity for long.
Once they were through this phase, they’d drift apart of their own volition. It was the way of things. He was sure of it. As sure as he was of the fact he couldn’t fight this any longer. He needed her in a way that was killing him to ignore.
‘Amelia, I’m sorry,’ he said, again. ‘Please, stay.’
‘You gave me two options,’ she reminded him, but she took a step closer, pressing a finger to his abdomen. ‘I’m still considering them.’
His eyes flared as her finger began to snake downwards, towards his belt.
‘Is there anything I can do to help you make up your mind?’
‘Oh, I’m absolutely sure there is, Signor Moretti.’
He didn’t need to be asked twice.