Chapter 1 #2
“No,” she whispered and shook her head. “I don’t need to knock my head repeatedly on a stone wall to discover I cannot get free of you any sooner.”
“Good. So, why are you here? May I hope that you’ve come to your senses and returned to fulfill your obligation? It was one we undertook before God.”
She sighed inwardly. She should have expected him to start railroading her into compliance. Hadn’t that been the basis of their marriage from the start? He’d set the terms and expected her complete acquiescence.
They should have really talked more and bedded less.
“I’m not here to stay. I came for a favor that has nothing to do with our matrimonial situation.”
“You need money. Your little business not thriving?”
“My business is fine, thank you for asking.”
“I think you’ve found running a bookstore is not the fun you thought it would be.”
She should have guessed he’d know what she’d been up to. She’d naively thought that when she’d walked out and heard nothing from him he’d wiped her from his mind.
“Don’t look so surprised. Did you think I’d let a woman who still carries my name out into the world without keeping an eye on her? You of all people know how I safeguard the Lombardi name. I repeat, is your visit about money?”
“What else could it be about?”
He swept his gaze over her body, making her wish she’d worn another layer of clothes. He took a step closer. “Some women find me attractive enough to want to share my bed.”
“Been there, done that. The sex was good, but it wasn’t enough.”
His face flushed with anger. “But my name comes in handy, especially when you want a bank loan.”
How could he know about that? “I didn’t volunteer the connection. The bank assumed.”
“So, the divorce will take time, you don’t want to warm my bed once more, and the bank gave you the money for your store. Why are you here, then?”
“I need a lot more money for something else.”
“You are not making sense, mio fiore.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Touchy. You were my little flower.” He reached and stroked a finger down her bare arm. “Like jasmine, you bloomed at night in my bed.”
She fought the urge to close her eyes and block the images of his mind-blowing lovemaking. He’d been such a fabulous lover—yet a terrible husband.
She swallowed her denial. She’d be a liar and he knew it. When they’d first married, he only had to look at her and she grew wet with desire. A single touch had her begging for him to take her. It would appear nothing had changed.
“Please, sit,” he said with a proud, satisfied smile.
“I’d rather stand, thank you.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders and took a seat back on the couch. Leaning back just a little, he crossed one long leg over the other, watching her intently. Did he notice the way her eyes followed the movement as she tried to disguise her hunger for him?
His lips broke into a lascivious smile before it died in the ensuing silence. “What is it you want? I am a busy man and I have…company waiting for me.”
“The redhead can wait.”
He leaned forward, almost rising off the couch. “That was brilliant acting. I would almost believe you are jealous if not for the fact that you walked out on me.” He slammed his hand into the couch, sending cushions flying.
She could get angry too. “You know why I left. The choice you gave me wasn’t fair.
I was twenty-one. I was beginning my life.
I deserved your love and support. I was petrified coming into your world.
” Her shoulders slumped. “Never mind. You’ll never understand.
I was a foolish young girl. I didn’t realize on our wedding day that I had neither your love nor your support. ”
Abby watched his face darken in anger. He’d always been a proud man.
“I’ve had to run the Lombardi Group since I was twenty.
I understand how daunting the world of Lombardis is.
There has been a Lombardi male leading the company for over ten generations.
” He leaned forward. “I didn’t have the luxury of running away when things got difficult.
I was twenty years old and still in university when my father died, leaving me with a multinational conglomerate to run and enormous responsibilities and everyone in the family flailing and looking to me for both comfort and security.
I needed to make decisions, important ones, difficult ones, on behalf of my family and I still do.
Everything I do is for my family. Everything! ”
“Your father would be proud of you,” she whispered.
She watched his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. “Thank you.”
She raised her hand appealing to him. “Please, this is not why I came. I know why you married me. I think I might even understand it.”
“Do you? Really?”
She gave a choked cry. “Of course I do, because I was there.” The pain sliced at her memories. He had not married her for love.
“You think I was so desperate that I had to marry the first beautiful woman who caught my eye?”
“Suitable woman,” she mumbled, although his assertion of beauty sent tingles of warmth over her skin.
Dante had thought he was getting an infatuated, quiet, and willing wife to stand by his side.
A woman who was madly in love with him and his family.
Once he’d made up his mind to marry, she’d had no chance of escape.
“Unbelievable. Are you listening to yourself?” He swore in Italian. “I could have married anyone, but I chose you! Although why escapes me right now.”
“Does it? Perhaps if you’d told me how you felt about me—”
“I showed you every night, usually all night. I picked you to be the mother of my children.”
“Oh, here we go again. Children! That is really what you married me for, admit it.” She moved closer. “Most couples marry because they’re madly in love with each other. You married to gain a brood mare.”
“If I’d wanted a brood mare, I could have married a local Italian girl from a Catholic family. Then there would be no stupid talk of divorce. I’ll never understand you. You used my desire for children as an excuse to run from what scared you, nothing more.”
“Perhaps I left because you think love is a dirty, four-letter word.”
His silence spoke volumes. Abby couldn’t remember Dante ever saying those three little words that hold such power. All she’d wanted was to become like any other member of his family. Loved. By him. Her husband.
“As for love and cherish…how do you think I felt when I saw you coming out of the hotel with Elena? You knew how much I wanted that job, yet you gave it to her. You wanted a child more than my happiness. You never once considered my feelings.”
“I couldn’t be seen to be doing you favors. Elena was the right person for the position.”
“But you couldn’t tell me that?”
“Would you have listened?”
“It doesn’t matter. Our marriage is over.
Since we applied for our formal separation last year, even the powerful Dante Lombardi can’t stop me from divorcing a man who does not love me.
When the three uninterrupted years from now have passed, we’ve satisfied Italian law, and you can find another, more suitable wife. One far less reluctant than I.”
“What was wrong in wanting my wife to have my child? To start a new family? Most woman long for children.” The way he said the words made her feel abnormal, unfeminine.
“I want a family, someday, but I had only just turned twenty-one when I actually married into your illustrious family. I was still finding my feet. I was nervous and scared and alone in a strange country with a new extended family.” She raised her eyes to glare at him.
“You’ll never understand. You’re always so sure of yourself. ”
“At least I was honest about what I wanted. You stooped to deception. Where’s the honesty in that?”
“You weren’t honest, were you? You stood in a church and swore to love me.”
His face paled under his olive skin.
She let out her breath. What had she been waiting for? For Dante to declare he did love her and wanted her back? Fool. “It doesn’t matter now. I need money. A lot of money. Well, a lot of money in my book.”
He gave a short, harsh laugh. “Women are so predictable. What do you want this money for?”
This time she looked fully into his eyes, refusing to plead for his sympathy and understanding.
“For my grandmother. She needs a heart operation, but the hospital in Liverpool refuses to give her the surgery, saying due to her age she is not a priority patient. She is on a waiting list but I don’t think she has enough time.
” Her eyes filled with tears. “She’s the only family I have left.
I would like enough money for her to have the operation done privately, by the best surgeons. ”
The doctor in her hometown of Southport, on the northwest coast of England, had been sympathetic to her grandmother’s plight, but his hands were tied.
He’d advised her to get the operation done as quickly as possible and that meant privately.
She held herself straight and proud. “I returned the money you sent me when I left. I’d hoped you would allow me to now accept your generous settlement. ”
His voice was softer, kinder when he finally spoke. “Your grandmother must mean a lot to you, to risk the humiliation of having to come to me for this favor.”
“I owe her everything. She raised me, gave me love when I had no one else.”
“I gave you a home, a family. Yet you could walk away from that without a second glance.” His voice was cold and flat.
She closed her eyes. Fleeing home to England and walking away from him and his family was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. Her throat constricted and she gulped back a sob. No, she thought, coming back and seeing what she had given up was harder.
Before she could get a grip on her emotions, her eyes flashed open. “It would appear you have not been short of someone to fill my bed since I left.”
He remained silent, but something like guilt flickered deep in his eyes.
“Carla is only a friend. I pretended she was more to see your reaction.”
She met the silent challenge in his gaze. “I don’t think you were in any doubt that I used to love you.”
“Past tense. I see. Did you really think I would sit around pining for you?”
Her faced flushed with warmth. Of course not.
Women flocked to him. It wasn’t difficult to see why.
His striking masculinity was like a beacon.
He had money, but more devastating were his charisma and his power of persuasion.
Now his eyes held nothing but scorn. He looked precisely like the man he’d been back then, only she’d been too blind to see past his sensual persona.
He was powerful, ruthless. Lethal. Not someone with whom to tangle.
“No.” she sucked in her breath at the stabbing pain under her rib cage. “Knowing your appetites, I did not expect you to wait.”
“You are wrong. I did wait.”
She took a step back in surprise.
“Since I have waited, waited for my wife to come to her senses and return to me, I think you owe me. You owe me my son.”