Chapter Nine
FRIGHTENED BY THE undercurrent of emotion she could see flickering on Domenico’s face, frightened because she knew much of it came from his memories of his first marriage, an undercurrent of emotion she would never elicit in him, Marnie picked up the conversation.
‘So was it your father’s death that drove you into turning Cannavaro Law into the behemoth it is today? ’
‘Partly.’ His eyes locked back onto hers.
‘I needed to channel my grief, but I craved vengeance too; that more than anything. I wanted to make such a success of myself that Carmela spent the rest of her life regretting her treachery. My father had made modest investments in mine and my sister’s names, and I taught myself to play the stock market.
I studied English law and American law simultaneously and used my returns to open offices around the world.
I was ruthless and focused, and everything I touched turned to gold.
I hired the best lawyers to work for me—lawyers as hungry as me—and pitched for contracts I had no business pitching for and winning them, and all the while my personal fortune was exploding.
Five years after Carmela left me, I was a billionaire. ’
Marnie chewed slowly as she digested all that Domenico had just shared.
Of course, she’d known about the wife who’d come before her, had often come close to driving herself insane with curiosity about her, and now she wished fervently that she’d put a stop to this conversation instead of driving it forward.
To build what Domenico had built out of vengeance…
His vengeance must have burned him. A flame could only blaze that bright when real emotion lay behind it.
‘You must have loved her very much,’ she said with as much evenness as she could manage.
‘I thought I did when I married her, but in hindsight, we married because ours was a passionate lust and thought it meant we were in love.’
Something spasmed in Marnie’s heart, but she calmly reached for her water and forced herself not to gulp it down.
‘I wanted my father to see me settled down,’ he explained. ‘In my heart, I knew he didn’t have much time left. Carmela and I were crazy about each other, so marriage seemed the logical thing to do.’
She had no idea how she continued to keep her voice even. ‘I heard you met at school.’
‘The gossips were close. We met at university, married straight after graduation and divorced three years after that.’
‘It must give you great satisfaction to know your vengeance worked so well for you.’
The light brown eyes held hers. ‘The man who set out for that vengeance is a very different man to the one who married you.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’ With a graceful smile, she got to her feet. ‘Back in a mo—I need to use the ladies.’
Holding the base of her small bump, Marnie wove through the tables to the bathrooms indoors, fighting with all her might not to cry.
For the fourth morning in a row, Marnie woke to find Domenico wrapped around her. For the fourth morning in a row, she felt him waken and rouse and then roll away as if he were experiencing nothing.
Probably it was nothing to him, she thought miserably.
She only opened her eyes when she heard the bathroom door of the adjoining room close.
Rolling onto her back, she let out a deep breath and reminded herself yet again of the need for mindset.
She remembered hearing a song once about morning glory and asking her mother what it meant. Finding the question hugely amusing, her mother had cackled before telling her.
Morning glory. Morning erection. Apparently, if her mother was to be believed, a common denominator amongst all men.
Clearly Domenico’s morning glory had nothing to do with Marnie.
For the last three nights, he’d come to bed with her, stripped naked while she changed into her pyjamas in the bathroom, given her a gentle kiss goodnight and made not a single move on her, and she couldn’t stop herself from questioning why.
Was it that he didn’t need to bother having sex with her now that he had what he wanted? Now that she was incubating his baby?
Whatever his reasons, she supposed that at some point in the future he would want another child, and her sexual services would be required again.
She supposed it might happen before then if his needs became too much for him to handle.
Especially as he wouldn’t be getting it anywhere else.
But he was a master of self-control, so who knew.
It was only Carmela who’d ignited passionate lust in him.
The only time Marnie had ignited any passion in him had been in that awful screaming row in her flat, and it broke her heart that it had been the passionate hate of that moment that had driven them both.
The wildness of the sex itself had been glorious, but it would forever be tainted by her shameful loss of control in the build-up to it.
Marnie wished she hadn’t given in to her curiosity and done an internet search of Carmela.
It hadn’t taken much digging to find the ex-wife of the great Domenico Cannavaro.
A few of the searches had thrown up Marnie’s name, but the only picture of her was obscured, a picture from one of Domenico’s many parties.
She’d never been into social media or felt the need to join online business groups.
Carmela, though, was a different breed. The internet was filled with an abundance of photos of her.
She was jaw-droppingly beautiful, and sexy in that inimically Italian way Marnie could never come even close to achieving.
No wonder Domenico had fallen into passionate lust with her.
He wouldn’t have had to be fired up with fury to have hot, passionate sex with Carmela.
She was still lying in bed brooding when he strolled back in, all showered and dressed and smelling gorgeous. He sat on the bed and leaned over her. ‘How do you feel about going to a party tonight?’
‘I’ll check my diary and see if I’m free,’ she deadpanned even as her heart thumped at the thought of getting dressed up and going out. She hadn’t had a proper night out since she’d left him.
He grinned. ‘Do you remember Matteo and Isla? The couple with the army of uncontrollable children?’
‘She’s the redhead?’
‘That’s the one. It’s their tenth wedding anniversary, and they’re throwing a party for it. Matteo heard we’re in Rome and has invited us along. It should be a good night—you’ll know a lot of the other faces too. Have a think about it and let me know later if you feel up to going.’
Great. Just what she wanted, to be scrutinised and gossiped about by the Italian crowd Domenico considered his real friends. Oh well, she’d committed to trying again with him. She’d have to face his friends at some point, and now that he’d mentioned a party, she found herself yearning to go.
‘In that case, my diary’s clear.’
His brow creased. ‘You are sure? Don’t agree if you think it’ll take too much out of you.’
‘I’m fine, Dom. I feel normal. No sickness, only a little tiredness. I’m fine.’
‘Okay, but if you change your mind, don’t be afraid to say.’
‘I won’t.’
‘And when we’re there—if we go—then as soon as you want to leave, you tell me, okay?’
‘I promise.’
He pressed another of his featherlight chaste kisses that had as much meaning as the kiss from one friend to another to her mouth. ‘Good.’
‘What’s the dress code?’
‘Formal.’
She sat up. ‘Then I need to go shopping for something to wear.’
His brow creased again. ‘Can you manage shopping and a party in one day?’
‘I’m pregnant, not an invalid.’
‘I know, I just don’t want you overdoing things. Why don’t I get a stylist to…’
‘I want to go shopping,’ she interrupted firmly. ‘If I’m tired when I get back, I’ll have a nap.’
‘When we get back,’ he corrected before his face broke into a smile. ‘I’m coming with you.’
Of course he was. Since they’d agreed to try again, he’d barely let her out of his sight.
Probably afraid that the minute his back was turned, she’d change her mind and do a runner.
Other than that afternoon spent video-calling all his senior staff, he’d left her alone only to take two further conference calls, which for a workaholic like Domenico was the equivalent of taking a month off, and his insistence on coming shopping with her made Marnie’s stupid heart jump for joy.
While she would never admit this to him, the six months they’d spent apart had served to make her forget how quickly the hours passed when with him.
Breaking away from him after all those years spent revolving her world around him had left her unmoored, as if she’d lost the gravity holding her to the here and now, and it was terrifying how quickly time was passing again and how quickly his gravity was reclaiming her.
Marnie remembered walking down Via dei Condotti when she’d done all her sightseeing the year before.
Filled as it was with the flagship stores of most of Italy’s major luxury fashion houses and high-end boutiques, she’d felt like a lost little sheep amongst Rome’s elite.
Rather than go into any of the stores, she’d drunk coffee in a cute little café and people-watched.
She’d never, in the whole year of their marriage, been able to get her head around the fact that she was now considered one of the elite.
Although she would never have fought the derisory settlement Domenico offered in their divorce, that she’d barely spent a penny of the allowance that had credited her bank account each month meant that, along with her settlement, she had a decent nest egg put aside.
Obviously, it was peanuts compared to Domenico’s wealth, but she’d never needed much.
The last time she’d gone shopping—actual spending-money shopping—had been the day after their wedding when he’d bought half of London for her dressing room.