Chapter Two #3
She resolutely fixed her gaze on his face, not that that was any better. She’d traced those hard-cut planes with her fingers and mouth too many times to count. ‘Good,’ she bit out. ‘We’re on the same page.’
Appearances. She could do appearances. After all, she was a model, it was her job to appear and put a mask on.
She would just approach this as a three-month gig.
Something audacious occurred to her and for the first time since she’d seen Leo again she felt a smidgeon of control.
He might have compelled her to be his wife but he couldn’t control any other aspect of her.
She certainly didn’t have to give him an easy ride.
‘What is that look?’
Angelica felt a jolt in her gut. She’d forgotten how easily he could read her.
And she’d spent the last three years hiding behind a serene mask.
She couldn’t let it drop now. She thought of something to divert his attention, ‘Actually…if you’re so concerned with appearances, won’t it attract the wrong sort of attention when people realise you’ve married the widow of your ex-partner, the man who put you in jail? ’
He shrugged. ‘It’s not ideal, no, but in the circumstances I don’t think I could have found a more convenient wife.
It’s common knowledge we were together before.
People will just assume you’re the fickle one, following whoever has the money.
I’m sure something or someone else will come along to divert their attention away from speculation. ’
At that moment Angelica vowed to do everything in her power to ensure that people’s attention wasn’t diverted. And if it helped to hurry up the demise of this marriage, then all the better.
She forced a sweet smile, ‘I’m sure you’re right.’
Leo finally looked away from her face and down at the tablet in his hand. Angelica sucked in a breath. He still affected her. After three years encasing herself in ice, it was disconcerting to feel things again. Even if it was just physical sensations. Not emotional, just physical.
Her phone buzzed silently on the seat beside her and she turned it over to see a message from her mother with a sad crying-face emoji.
Her heart felt sore. She’d told them she wouldn’t be able to see them just yet, but, for her, knowing that they were safe and getting on with their lives was enough to sustain her.
It had to be, because she had nothing else.
As if hearing her thoughts, Leo asked abruptly, ‘Why do you have no luggage?’
She looked at him again as she pulled her legs out from under her.
They were getting crampy. She saw how his gaze dropped to her thighs before coming back up.
The slight flare of colour in his cheeks.
Maybe he wasn’t as immune to Aldo’s leftovers as he made out to be.
Damn it but that shouldn’t be making her feel a spurt of adrenalin.
Her heart rate increasing. Blood flowing to parts of her body that had lain dormant since…
him. She pushed that uncomfortable revelation to one side.
‘Because there was nothing I wanted to take with me.’ It was true. She’d wanted nothing of what her husband had bought her. He’d had all of her own personal items taken and destroyed.
A swooping sense of panic gripped her as she realised that she had kept one personal item. A necklace that Leo had given her when they’d been together. Not an expensive item…but sentimental.
She could feel it almost burning against the skin of her upper chest now like a brand. She sent up silent thanks she was wearing a high-neck dress so he couldn’t see it. She’d put it on, almost without thinking, as soon as she’d heard the news that Aldo was dead.
Not that Leo would remember the moment when they’d been walking hand in hand along a small Venetian street and they’d passed by a tourist shop full of Murano glass trinkets. One had caught her eye, a heart-shaped piece of glass on a gold chain. Green and gold and orange. Like a beating heart.
Leo had stopped and seen where her gaze had fallen and as soon as she’d realised she’d blushed and tried to pull away but before she’d known what was happening, he’d been urging her into the shop and had asked the proprietor to take the necklace out of the window before paying for it.
Angelica had objected but secretly she’d been touched.
Her father had never exhibited such thoughtful gestures to her mother.
Leo had tied the necklace around her neck and it had been the following day that Angelica had told him she loved him, high in a beautiful frescoed room in his apartment in a palazzo on the Grand Canal.
She’d never considered herself a sentimental person, given to romantic whims, and yet she’d fallen hard for this man and she’d taken out her heart and presented him with it.
Only for him to crush it.
And then when Aldo had put her in an impossible situation, he’d only hammered home the realisation that she’d been beyond weak and naive. Never again.
Leo cut through the unwelcome memories, ‘When we get to New York, I’ll arrange for someone to meet with you and you can give them a list of whatever you need. I’ll also arrange for a stylist to come and discuss what you’ll need for social events.’
‘I have my own money and I know how to dress myself,’ Angelica pointed out.
‘While you’re married to me you won’t spend your own money.’
Another reminder, as if Angelica needed it, that Leo had always been incredibly generous.
The opposite to Aldo, who’d been mean and tight.
The only reason he hadn’t got his hands on her earnings was because she’d questioned why he would need them, wasn’t he rich enough?
His colossal pride had stopped him from pursuing her money ever again.
So at least she’d had that—her financial independence.
It chafed to have a man pay for her but Angelica told herself now that Leo owed her as much as she owed him—if she’d never met him she wouldn’t have been humiliated and she wouldn’t have met his business partner—so she just shrugged minutely and said carelessly, ‘Whatever.’
She picked up a magazine from a pile on the coffee table near the seat and idly flicked through it, no more interested in the glossy photos than the fact that it was her face staring out at her in many of the pictures.
She willed the plane to get to New York as soon as possible because the sooner they got on with this charade, the sooner it would be over and she could finally reunite with her family.