Chapter Six
CHAPTER SIX
Rosy walked back through the woods, lost in the turmoil of her whirling thoughts. As the cabin came into view, she saw the workmen scattered across the roof.
‘Temporary repairs. A proper fix will have to wait until we leave in a few days,’ Alessio explained. ‘I also asked for the damp rooms upstairs and the drawing room to be cleared and the furniture disposed of. The linen should all be replaced as well—’
‘So, does all that mean that you’re planning to keep this place?’ Rosy pressed in surprise.
‘Yes. Coming back here with you has somehow dispersed the unhappy memories,’ Alessio admitted quietly as they walked into the kitchen where she immediately saw the changes. A large fridge freezer had replaced the old fridge, and the freezer compartment was packed with ready-made gourmet meals. A microwave had appeared and a sophisticated coffee machine sat in another corner. The fridge was stuffed with fresh food and a prepared meal for that very evening.
‘I was quite happy cooking for us,’ she said ruefully.
‘But now you won’t have to work so hard at it and we can relax,’ Alessio pointed out as she moved out into the hall and then crossed to the drawing room to stare at the new contemporary sofas and note that the moth-eaten hunting trophies had been removed.
‘Did you have furniture brought all this way from the palace?’ she asked with growing incredulity at the improvements that had been implemented in such a short space of time.
‘No, a store in Rifka was happy to step up and supply us with everything. It’s only twenty miles from here,’ he pointed out, referring to Sedovia’s third largest city.
Rosy could only imagine the alacrity with which a store proprietor would have stepped up to provide Sedovia’s reigning prince with such purchases. She glanced upwards and wasn’t at all surprised to see that the ugly antler chandelier had been replaced as well.
Alessio noted the direction of her gaze, his emerald-green gaze gleaming with wry comprehension. ‘I’m head of the Sedovian conservation society. Such relics from the past are better removed and there will have to be some sort of public consultation about what to do with them because the palace still contains problematic items as well. Destruction—denying our past—may not always be the best remedy. Hunting within accepted guidelines is still a popular rural pursuit.’
‘I can’t see anyone wanting to go to a museum dedicated to old hunting trophies,’ she remarked. ‘But you could be surprised, if you included the artworks that devolved from them. Add in an antique gun exhibition and old photos and it could work though, particularly if you added a conservation exhibition, showing how much attitudes have changed over the years.’
‘I hadn’t even considered that possibility.’ Alessio dealt her an appreciative and lingering appraisal. ‘That’s quite a comprehensive plan to come up with so fast. I can see that your museum training will be an asset.’
Rosy flushed, striving not to show how pleased she was by the compliment. ‘Let’s go upstairs,’ she suggested, because she wanted to shower and change.
‘We’ll have the Internet back now and a booster has been installed for phone reception,’ Alessio proffered as she glanced into the study to see one of the palace technicians still at work.
‘You really did think of everything.’
‘Not really. I had to concentrate on what could be done quickly. Even for a few days we don’t want to live inside a building site. The whole place requires extensive work but at least it should be clean and reasonably comfortable now.’
‘It’s certainly clean,’ Rosy conceded as they walked past empty bedrooms now stripped of all evidence of rot and damp and another bathroom that now looked surprisingly functional.
As she opened the door on their bedroom, Alessio was opening the room next door. ‘And this will be my room,’ he advanced calmly, walking into a neatly furnished room, coloured in pale shades of blue and grey. ‘I’ll use the other bathroom as well, so we won’t be getting under each other’s feet…’
Or snuggling or colliding in the same bed, Rosy translated with an inner wince of discomfiture. Without warning the oddest sense of hurt, regret and disappointment was assailing her and, her cheeks burning at that awareness, she hastened on into the bedroom that they had shared the night before. There she stopped dead on the threshold, only to stare at the unexpected new furniture and the fresh contemporary bedding with a green tropical colourway.
‘Why did you change this room?’ she enquired.
‘It was done in my mother’s favourite colours and I dislike being reminded of her,’ Alessio confessed rather stiltedly, faint colour scoring his hard cheekbones as she swivelled to look at him.
Rosy compressed her lips. ‘Oh,’ she said, keeping to herself the reality that she had actually quite liked the previous décor. True, it had been a little shabby, a little dated, but she found feminine florals soothing.
‘And you required more storage for your clothes. You were living out of your suitcases,’ Alessio pointed out, clearly determined to cover his tracks lest she suspect that he was more sensitive to reminders of his mother than was strictly masculine.
‘I was living out of my cases because I was too lazy to unpack last night, and now…’ she said in open appreciation as she opened a wardrobe door to view hanging garments, neatly folded garments on shelves and filled drawers ‘…it’s all been done for me, which is wonderful!’
‘The maids have been very efficient on our behalf but I didn’t request any live-in staff because—’
‘We don’t need them in a place this size when we’re not staying long,’ Rosy slotted in calmly. ‘You thought of everything…thanks. We’ll be more comfortable now but you didn’t need to have a second bedroom prepared for yourself—’
Alessio gazed down at her with hooded green eyes that smouldered. ‘I did . You need your privacy while you decide where you stand in this marriage of ours. I chose to give it to you for your sake as much as mine. If you want a quick exit from this marriage, I want to know soon so that I can prepare the way,’ he murmured tautly.
It was the scorching intensity of his gaze that flushed heat through her entire body. She knew he was thinking about the cave. Did he think she was a bit on the wanton side? After all, in a temper just before that development she had told him she hadn’t signed her whole life over to him and had assumed that their marriage would be relatively brief. And that was true, but she had also made it surpassingly obvious that she found him very attractive and in an outrageously short space of time he had charmed her out of most of her clothes. So perhaps, she reflected as she closed the bedroom door, he was right to say that separate bedrooms were a better idea than too much dangerous proximity.
Even if she kind of really, really strongly resented him for enforcing a separation? After all, she had never known what it was to crave a man the way he had made her crave him. That was utterly new, that was exhilarating, and it was perfectly normal for her to wish that that compelling sexual attraction had been allowed to go to its natural conclusion. After all, she might never again meet a man who attracted her as much as Alessio did. Only, Alessio had put himself off-limits. Alessio, very unexpectedly, was acting like a bit of a prude, wasn’t he? In the end, whether they consummated their marriage or not didn’t really matter even if they did break up a couple of years down the road, she reasoned unhappily.
Uneasy with the conflicting thoughts whizzing through her head, Rosy went for a shower. Was she trying to argue herself into bed with Alessio again? What else was she doing? So, she was curious about what it would be like to be with him that way. Nothing wrong with that when that curiosity came solely from her inexperience. A recollection of the physical feelings that had engulfed her in the cave shimmied through her body afresh and she shivered, still shaken by how potent and powerful those responses had been.
Towelling herself dry in the bedroom while she perused her new wardrobe and selected a casual long dress in a pretty fabric, she heard a noise and walked over to the window. She was astonished to realise that Alessio was chopping wood. Even as she watched two workmen she recognised from the palace approached him, clearly offering to do the job for him. Alessio, however, was determined to do the job himself and he reached behind his back to peel off his tee shirt in that distinctively masculine way. Rosy’s mouth ran bone dry.
Tearing her attention from all those flexing back and abdominal muscles on the beach had been tough enough and watching him with an axe was an even hotter experience. Perspiration glistened on his bronzed skin as he worked. For goodness’ sake, she was practically perving on the guy! Her face burned as she donned her clothing and wondered why he was chopping wood when it was still so warm. As she went back for another look at his truly stunning torso, muscular biceps and lean hips, she smiled. If she chose to perve over her very hot husband, that was her business.
She went downstairs and noted that the dining room table had been laid for their meal, complete with glasses, tablecloth and napkins. She was being shown the correct way and she supposed Alessio wasn’t accustomed to casual dining unless he was on the beach. She had worked as a waitress while at university and she would manage.
* * *
Alessio strode through the front door and paused in the entrance to the kitchen. Her hair wildly curly and still rather damp round her incredibly delicate triangular face, Rosy was looking particularly appealing in something summery and soft that clung to the sweet pouting curve of her breasts. As she looked up from her task, the fullness of her lush mouth and the brightness of her blue eyes entrapped him.
In a split second, the nagging pulse at his groin raced from zero to sixty and he shifted his lithe hips as if to ease the pressure of arousal. ‘Have I got time for a shower?’
‘If you’re quick. Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes,’ she told him. ‘In the dining room. We’re going to be formal tonight in honour of all the work that has been done here.’
‘The roofers finished while you were upstairs,’ he told her. ‘They did a great job.’
Punctual to the minute, Alessio reappeared in the dining room clad in the perfect mix of formal and casual, tailored trousers smoothly outlining his long strong legs, a shirt rolled back to his elbows and open at his brown throat, his luxuriant black hair still damp from the shower. Rosy was setting out the cold starters and he was in the act of pouring the wine when his phone rang and he dug into his back pocket to answer it.
A frown line divided his brows. ‘How may I help you?’ he asked, his dark deep drawl unusually cool and clipped in tone. His attention moved to Rosy and he said in aside to her, ‘Excuse me… I’ll take this outside.’
* * *
Alessio strode out onto the shaded front porch, anger he was striving to contain paling his olive complexion. ‘Graziana?’ he prompted in an expressionless voice.
‘Look, I honestly believed I had no choice,’ she declared stridently. ‘I know you have to be angry with me but at the time, I thought I was pregnant.’
‘Pregnant?’ Alessio almost whispered in his astonishment.
‘And I knew that I couldn’t do that to you.’
‘ And that, in our circumstances, I couldn’t be fooled,’ Alessio cut in with lethal bite, wondering if she was also aware that secret DNA tests were now mandatory with royal births.
‘That too. But I panicked. I told Marco and the only answer seemed to be for us to run away and face the music at a later date. I persuaded the palace priest to do the marriage honours and then we rushed to the airport.’
‘And at no stage could you find five minutes to phone and warn me?’ Alessio interposed with scorn.
‘I sent you a text!’
‘Saying that you were sorry but not what you were sorry for.’
While Graziana argued weakly that she hadn’t known what to say, Alessio thanked her for her explanation, keen to end the exchange.
But his former fiancée was far from finished and continued. ‘The important point is that I’m not pregnant! I found that out before we even arrived in New York. It was all a stupid, crazy comedy of errors,’ she lamented, her tone sharpening into angry shrillness. ‘So, now Marco and I are applying for an annulment, but my father has cut off my access to my trust fund. I didn’t even know that he had the power to do that!’
‘I don’t understand what all this has to do with me,’ Alessio admitted flatly.
‘Oh, don’t act as if you’re dim!’ Graziana snapped. ‘Or superior, just because you contrived to produce a new bride overnight to replace me. What I’m trying to say is that you could go for an annulment or a divorce now too, and we could—’
‘No,’ Alessio pronounced succinctly. ‘There is no “we” now. I’m married. Let’s leave this pointless conversation here and agree to continue as former friends for the sake of both our countries.’
He cut off the call against a backdrop of her protests because he had nothing more to say to her. All he knew was that she wasn’t the woman he had once believed her to be. She had no sense of honour or loyalty and now that her father had pushed her into a corner by flexing his financial control, she was trying to turn back the clock in the craziest way possible.
* * *
While he was still outside, Rosy finished pouring the wine and sipped hers. She spread her napkin and toyed with a lettuce leaf on her plate before defiantly taking a first bite. Several minutes passed and just as she was about to commence her own meal, Alessio came back.
‘Sorry about that,’ he breathed, folding down into his seat and reaching for his wine.
‘It was… Graziana and I needed to hear what she had to say.’
‘Graziana?’ Rosy parroted in surprise at the admission.
‘I had to speak to her. No matter what she’s done, I can’t ignore the fact that we should remain on reasonable terms with so close a neighbour,’ he admitted grimly.
‘What did she want?’ Rosy asked baldly.
‘She ditched me because she believed she’d fallen pregnant by her bodyguard. That’s why she married him and took off. Then she realised she had been too hasty and she’s now pursuing an annulment,’ Alessio advanced.
Rosy had frozen. ‘Might it be your child?’
Alessio groaned. ‘No, there is no baby. It was only a scare and even if it hadn’t been, it couldn’t have been mine because Graziana and I haven’t had sex.’
Rosy’s lips rounded in a silent ‘oh’ because that information took her aback. Like most people, she had assumed that he and Graziana were already lovers, even if they were not ‘in love’.
‘And now she’s chasing an annulment for her marriage to the bodyguard?’
‘On the grounds of non-consummation.’
Rosy nodded and stood up as she prepared to go into the kitchen to fetch their food. ‘Are you thinking of doing the same thing?’ she couldn’t help asking, her heart sinking at the prospect.
Alessio slung her an incredulous look. ‘Why would I want to do that?’
‘Because she was everything you wanted and, by the sounds of it, she’ll soon be available again…and you could be too,’ Rosy pointed out, lifting her chin as she headed back out to the kitchen. ‘It makes me a little superfluous.’
As she set out the main course on the counter, she realised that she felt deeply hurt by the prospect of their unlikely marriage being set aside before it even got a chance to get going. Why did she feel so hurt? She had married him for the money that had settled her family’s debts, hadn’t she? It had been an impersonal arrangement, so how had her feelings got involved? But if she had only married him for the money, shouldn’t she be relieved if their marriage came to a sudden sharp halt? After all, he was unlikely to ask her or her family to return that money and an annulment would leave her free to return to her life.
Only, she registered, she didn’t want to set Alessio free when tantalising possibilities were now hovering on the horizon ahead of them. The chance of them settling into a real marriage? The chance of them staying together, eventually raising a family? The concept of such developments between them sent her heart racing and soaring with hope and happiness. And why was that? When had her emotions even got involved? When had she begun caring what Alessio might think and feel? And when had she begun stressing about how he might compare her suitability as a royal wife with Graziana’s? Graziana, who would naturally slide into a royal role with all the ease of a princess born and bred?
OK, she reasoned with herself, she was fiercely attracted to Alessio…and she liked him, probably much more than she should. He was good company, neither vain, nor arrogant, indeed he was none of the things she had once dimly assumed he would be. Here with her, shorn of his usual opulent surroundings and servants, he wasn’t pompous or condescending or selfish or spoilt. When he had opted for a separate bedroom, he’d been thinking of her, hadn’t he? Giving her the opportunity to think about what she wanted, no matter how little her ultimate decision might match his needs as a public figure.
‘Rosy?’ Alessio demanded from the doorway and she glanced up, noting the angry glitter of his jewelled eyes and the tight set of his sculpted jawline. ‘What on earth makes you think that I would still want to marry a woman who was clearly cheating on me throughout our engagement?’
‘I… I—’ she stammered.
‘I had a lucky escape and I know it,’ he breathed with subdued ferocity. ‘Her affair might well have continued after our marriage! She was obviously very discreet about the relationship because nobody appears to have known about it or suspected anything.’
‘I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions,’ Rosy said ruefully. ‘It’s just Graziana wanting you back and hovering and her being so perfect for the royal role makes me feel insecure.’
‘That’s foolish and your insecurities are without foundation as far as I’m concerned,’ Alessio stated, lifting the plates out of her hands to set them aside and closing his hands round hers instead. ‘I’m the son of parents, who lied to and cheated on each other. I have no desire to be married to a dishonest woman without loyalty. Nor could I ever want such a woman to become the mother of my children.’
‘I see that,’ Rosy conceded, pulling her hands free, her face deeply flushed as she reached for the plates again. ‘Come on, let’s eat.’
* * *
Frustration rippled through Alessio as he searched her shuttered face. Maybe he shouldn’t have told her about Graziana’s phone call or his ex’s current plans. But he preferred honesty and had little tolerance for lies and half-truths. In reality, his parents’ numerous self-indulgences had made him into their very opposite in character. He had married a sincere, honest woman and he didn’t want to risk damaging her faith in him. That was why he was stepping back from the intense sexual chemistry between them, offering her the space to decide what she wanted, because, no matter how much he wanted her, he didn’t want to take advantage of her. But first she needed to think through whether or not she was prepared to stay with him and give their marriage a chance.
They were finishing the last course and Rosy had been thinking hard when she said rather abruptly, ‘I’m not the only one of us who needs to be considering what he’s doing.’
Alessio lifted a satiric ebony brow. ‘Meaning?’
‘You hand out mixed messages all the time, stop, then start, so that I never really know where I stand with you,’ Rosy framed tightly. ‘First I think we’re in a fake marriage, then I realise I’m in a trial marriage—’
‘When did I say that you were on trial?’ Alessio demanded, tossing down his dessert fork.
‘That’s the impression you give me. You want me to decide to be all in or all out before you waste your time on me. You let us get…er… close in the cave, and then I return here and you’ve moved yourself into a separate bedroom to keep your distance. So, you’re not one hundred per cent committed either, are you?’ Rosy shot at him before she snatched up the tray she had left nearby and began to clear the table.
‘Leave those!’ Alessio ordered in exasperation.
‘No, I don’t fancy coming back to them in the morning,’ Rosy told him steadily and walked out to the kitchen to begin filling the dishwasher.
* * *
‘Rosy…’ Alessio stalked into the kitchen, his lean, strong features taut with annoyance. ‘I said leave them,’ he reminded her.
‘Oh, did you think I didn’t hear you the first time?’
Rosy studied him. He was impossibly good-looking and sometimes, like right at that very minute, it infuriated her because her physical awareness of him put her very much on edge. ‘I heard you fine but I’m not one of your little minions, eager to do as I’m told and please. What I’m telling you—in case you haven’t got the message yet—is not to tell me what to do. I’m neither a member of your staff nor a child. Unless I’m doing something wrong or dangerous or offensive in some way that I don’t understand, don’t shoot orders at me, because I won’t listen!’
Averting her eyes from his taken-aback appraisal, Rosy spread her attention to the kitchen clean-up that was still required and decided that she’d had enough for one day. She would take care of it all in the morning when she was fresh and in a better temper. Slinging down the dishrag she was still holding in one hand, she neatly sidestepped Alessio and headed for the hall.
‘Goodnight. I’m off to bed.’
* * *
Meanwhile, Alessio began to load a dishwasher for the first time in his life. Rosy had made him uncomfortable by showing him the truth of his behaviour. His parents had pretty much ignored him all his life and he had craved a better relationship with them. He had promised himself that when he was married, he would do everything differently. There was just one small problem, he acknowledged: he didn’t know how to have a normal relationship because he had absolutely no experience in that line. Fleeting affairs didn’t count, Graziana patently did not count and the one seemingly good relationship he had had with a woman while he was a student had crashed and burned before he’d even told her that he loved her. Possibly that explained why he was handing out mixed messages on his intentions…