Chapter Two
THERE WAS A long moment when all Domenico could hear was a loud ringing in his ears.
He stared unblinking at his ex-wife. The long, streaky blond hair chopped in layers framed a pretty heart-shaped face drained of so much colour that the sprinkling of freckles over the pretty nose and high cheekbones were prominent.
The chameleon eyes were currently dark blue.
She’d lost weight her already slender frame could ill afford to lose.
His heart thumped into life, the memory he’d fought to forget of their last night together suddenly vivid. Their only night together in six months.
It had happened six weeks ago, the day their decree nisi had come through.
Right up until that point, he’d still believed she would see sense and come back to him.
Fortified by a couple of strong whiskeys, he’d turned up at her tiny flat—dio, he hadn’t realised until then what a dangerous place she lived in—determined to make one last effort to talk sense into her.
She’d been drinking too, he remembered. She’d opened the door with a glass of white wine in her hand, which had surprised him as she didn’t drink alcohol.
On the tiny coffee table in the tiny living room sat the bottle, over half of it gone.
The little mouse had roared that night. Meek, subservient Marnie had vanished; in her place was a lion who shouted her anger and resentment at Domenico’s efforts to make her see reason.
Her righteous fury had ignited something in him, not just his own anger and resentment but a hunger that had risen out of nowhere and gripped him, a hunger he’d never wanted, and even now he couldn’t remember how their mouths had gone from trading insults and obscenities to trading saliva, but in the blink of an eye they were naked in her bed, making love like it was their last hours on this earth.
It hadn’t been their last hours on earth, but it had been their last hours together. In the morning, when he’d woken with a sense of relief that she’d finally be coming back home, she’d turned her back to him and, with a voice of steel, told him to leave.
The euphoria that had come from their unexpected night together had been doused in her coldness, and it was a coldness that had shocked him back to his senses. He’d wanted his wife back, but not like that. Never like that.
He’d never wanted any form of passion with her, and so to have shared and experienced all that…
He’d been unable to throw his clothes on quickly enough.
He’d never wanted to see her again.
‘Stay there,’ he said now, pulling himself together. ‘I’ll get rid of everyone.’
She gave a weak shake of her head. ‘There’s no need. It’s just morning sickness. Go back to your guests.’
Morning sickness because she was pregnant with the child he’d married her for.
If the situation weren’t so serious, he would have laughed at the irony. ‘If you think I’m still capable of partying…’ He shook his head and dragged air into his lungs. ‘Just stay there.’
Alone in the bathroom, Marnie rubbed her mouth to her knees and fought back more tears.
All those months of their marriage spent praying for the baby she’d stupidly convinced herself would magically turn their marriage into the fairy tale she’d dreamed of, and then all those months spent praying for her period while her head and heart fought over what she should do.
His proposal, the day after his thirty-fifth birthday, had set the tone for their marriage, but she’d been too love-blind to see it.
He’d invited her out to lunch, which had immediately alerted her to something being up because Domenico never lunched alone with a female employee.
He didn’t even allow his office door to be closed when alone with a female employee.
He was a playboy, but only in his private life, and never put himself in any form of compromising situation with his staff.
At the time, they’d been in Rome, his home city. At the time, Marnie travelled everywhere with him. He’d taken her to a fancy restaurant that mortals needed to book a year in advance to get a table at, but Domenico Cannavaro was no mortal. He was a Roman god.
After thanking her again for his birthday card, he’d added more wine to her untouched glass and stunned her by asking if she wanted children; stunned her because personal matters were never discussed between them.
Never. ‘Um, sure,’ she’d stuttered, her cheeks turning into a flame because in her fantasies, Domenico was the father of her children.
He’d flashed his beautiful teeth. ‘So do I. I always thought I would have them by the time I reached thirty-five.’
She’d been unable to think of a response to that.
‘I have a proposition for you,’ he’d said, unfazed by her silence.
She’d still been too gormless to respond. Her mind had been racing too hard to formulate anything.
‘I want children, and you want children, and I believe you would make an excellent mother. What do you say to us marrying?’
If her eyes could have popped out of her head, they would have.
He’d laughed, correctly reading her expression. ‘I am being very serious. Trust me, I have given this a great deal of thought, and I can think of no one better suited to bearing my children and raising them with me than you.’
Marnie had carried a thumping great crush on Domenico for six years.
From the day she’d met him, he’d been a constant in her mind.
She was never late for work, never took a day off sick, and never complained about the overtime because she would never voluntarily miss a minute of his company.
The hours spent without him were spent thinking of him, and when she went to bed it was always with the same fantasy of Domenico looking at her and suddenly seeing her as a woman.
He would declare his undying love for her and beg her to marry him.
Finally, she’d managed to make her vocal cords work. ‘You want to marry me?’ she’d stammered, hardly daring to believe her dream was coming true.
‘Very much.’ He’d lifted his glass. ‘What do you say? Will you marry me, Marnie?’
She’d been nodding like a dog in a window before she could get the words out. ‘Yes. Yes, of course I’ll marry you.’
Suddenly aware the music had stopped playing, the memory faded and Marnie dragged herself onto the small armchair. The queasiness had passed—at least for now—but she felt drained, as if all the life had been sucked out of her.
The door opened. ‘The caterers and DJ are still packing up, but all the guests have gone,’ Domenico told her quietly. ‘Can you walk?’
She nodded and hoped it was the truth.
Upright, she pressed a hand to the wall until the dizziness that came from standing had passed and wished he wouldn’t stand so close to her. For years, she’d loved nothing more than inhaling Domenico’s scent. Now it hurt her terribly.
‘How long have you felt like this?’ he asked as she shuffled out of the bathroom and back into the party room that now had the feel of the Mary Celeste to it.
It was like all the guests had been spirited away without any warning, the only evidence of their existence the glasses and bottles strewn around, many of them still full of alcohol.
She dimly wondered what he’d said to get rid of everyone.
Whatever excuse he’d made, they would all know it had something to do with her, and she tried not to imagine what the more scurrilous gossips would be saying.
Marnie’s marriage to Domenico had broken probably a thousand hearts.
News of their divorce would have repaired those hearts in super-quick fashion.
‘About a week,’ she replied as she tried, again, not to allow herself to wonder how many women he’d been with since she’d left him.
It had taken superhuman effort not to quiz him about his other women when they’d been married.
She’d never had proof he’d been unfaithful; it just seemed a reasonable assumption to make.
Marnie was the one who’d spent years fielding calls from disgruntled lovers he’d blocked from his personal phone, and he certainly hadn’t married her for love.
‘You’ve known that long?’
‘I only took the test this morning.’
He was silent for a moment. ‘You waited until the divorce was final before taking it?’
‘Yes.’ She grabbed the banister of the basement stairs and held it tight. She wouldn’t look at him. ‘I knew that when it was confirmed I would have to tell you and you’d use it as a weapon to stop the divorce.’
Domenico clenched his jaw at her admission and tempered the surge of fury by the skin of his teeth. ‘So you did know.’ If Marnie wasn’t so obviously unwell, he’d have no compunction in telling her exactly what he thought of her and her deliberate deceit.
Too damned right he’d have tried to stop the divorce being finalised. A baby changed everything.
Her husky voice was tired. ‘I didn’t know for certain.’
He did some quick mental maths. They’d ripped each other’s clothes off six weeks ago.
By his reckoning, she must have been carrying this secret for anything between two and four weeks.
If he were a gambling man, he’d put his money on her having sat on it for close to four weeks, especially when he worked back to the date of her last period from when they’d still been together.
Marnie’s menstrual cycle ran like clockwork.
On the ground floor, she flopped onto the nearest armchair in the reception room, too tired to walk to the living area.
‘Can I get you a drink?’
Her eyes briefly met his. ‘Water, please.’
‘Any food?’
A quick shake of her head.
Figuring it would be quicker to get the water himself than ask one of the staff to get it, and needing a moment to get a grip on his growing anger, Domenico went to the kitchen and filled a pint glass for her, oblivious to the caterers clearing up around him.
She took the glass with a murmured thanks and had a few small sips from it.