The Italians: Cristiano, Vittorio and Dario: Once a Ferrara Wife... / A Dark Sicilian Secret / Blackmailed Bride, Innocent Wife

Laurel felt like a matador trapped with a very angry bull with nothing for protection but her own anger. And that anger burned slow and dangerous because he was behaving as if he’d played no part in the demise of their relationship.

He just couldn’t see it, she thought numbly. He just didn’t see what he’d done wrong.

And that made it a thousand times worse.

One sorry might have healed it, but to say sorry Cristiano would first have had to admit fault.

Reminding herself of her determination not to discuss the past, she changed the subject. ‘How is Dani?’

‘Looking forward to officially becoming an us. Unlike you, she has no fear of intimacy.’

She remembered thinking once that their relationship was too perfect and time had proved her right. Perfection had proved as fragile as spun sugar.

‘If you are going to carry on taking bites out of me perhaps I’d better just get on the next flight home.’

‘And make things easy for you? I don’t think so. You are our guest of honour, after all.’

His tone made her flinch more than the words themselves, because it was tinged with a bitterness and regret that stung her wounds like the juice of the Sicilian lemon.

Occasionally, when the pain grew almost too much to bear, she asked herself if her life would have been better if she’d never met him. She’d always known that life was hard, which was why meeting Cristiano Ferrara had been like falling straight into a starring role in her own fairy tale. What she hadn’t known was how much harder life would be once she’d given him up.

‘It’s obvious that coming here wasn’t one of my better ideas.’

‘If this was anything other than Dani’s wedding you wouldn’t be allowed to set foot on the island.’

She didn’t state the obvious. That if this was anything other than his sister’s wedding, she wouldn’t have been here.

The divorce could have been handled at a distance. And Laurel preferred distance in everything.

They’d been driving for fifteen minutes, through chaotic Palermo with its jumble of streets littered with Gothic and baroque churches and ancient palaces. Somewhere in the centre was the Palazzo Ferrara, Cristiano’s city residence, now occasionally used as an exclusive venue for weddings and concerts, its wonderful mosaics and baroque ceiling frescos drawing academics and tourists from around the world. It was one of many homes that Cristiano owned around the island but he rarely used it as a base.

Laurel had fallen in love with it and tried not to think about the tiny private chapel that had been the setting for their wedding.

She knew that, despite his aristocratic lineage and his encyclopaedic knowledge of Sicilian art and architecture, he preferred living in modern surroundings with state-of-the-art technology at his fingertips. Cristiano without Internet access would be like Michelangelo without a paintbrush.

Glancing out of the window, she saw that they’d emerged from the choked Palermo traffic and were speeding along the coast road that led to the Ferrara Spa Resort, the ultimate destination for the discerning traveller and one of the top hotels in the world.

It was a hideaway for the glitterati, for that stratosphere of international society that craved privacy and seclusion. Here it was guaranteed, both by the legendary Ferrara security but also by the geography of the coastline. The Ferrara brothers had built the exclusive hotel on a spit of land surrounded on three sides by private beach and spread across lush gardens, dotted with luxury villas. It was a Mediterranean paradise, each individual villa offering the ultimate in pampered seclusion.

The pain of being back here was intensified by the memories that were carved in every glimpse of the place because it had been here, in the exclusive villa on a rocky promontory at the far end of the private beach, that they’d spent the first nights of their honeymoon. It was the villa that Cristiano had built for his own use. The ultimate bachelor pad.

Laurel stiffened. Surely they hadn’t booked her a room in the hotel? ‘I booked a hotel outside the resort.’

‘I know exactly where you were staying. My staff cancelled the booking. You’ll stay where I put you and be grateful for Sicilian hospitality that makes it impossible for us to turn away a guest.’

Her stomach churned. ‘My plan was to stay elsewhere and arrive just for the wedding.’

‘Daniela wants you to be part of all of it. Tonight is a gathering of local people. Black tie. Drinks and dancing. As her maid of honour, you are expected to join in.’

Drinks and dancing?

Laurel felt cold and wished his driver would turn off the air conditioning. ‘Obviously I don’t expect to be part of the pre-wedding celebrations. I have my laptop so I can just get on with some work. I’m buried under a mountain of it at the moment.’

‘I don’t care. You’ll be there and you’ll smile. Our separation is amicable and civilized, remember?’ Civilized?

There was nothing civilized about the emotions spinning inside her and nothing civilized about the dangerous glint in his eyes. Their relationship had never been civilized, she thought numbly. The passion they’d shared had been scorching, crazy and out of control. Unfortunately all that heat had burned through her ability to think clearly.

Laurel tried to breathe normally, but the prospect of facing his family was impossibly daunting. They all hated her, of course. And part of her understood that. From their point of view she was the English girl who’d given up on the marriage and that was unforgivable in the circles in which he moved. In Sicily marriages endured. Affairs, if they happened, were overlooked.

She had no idea what the rule book said for handling what had happened to them. No idea what the rules were for coping with the shocking loss of a pregnancy and a monumentally selfish husband.

The only thing that comforted her in the whole disastrous episode had been that Dani, generous extrovert Dani, had refused to judge her. And the downside of that acceptance was that she was here now, putting herself through hell for the only true friend she’d ever had.

‘I’ll do whatever people want me to do.’ It was a performance, she thought. If she had to smile, she’d smile. If she were expected to dance, she’d dance. The outside didn’t have to reflect the inside. She’d learned that as a child. She’d learned to bury her feelings deep, so deep that few ever saw them.

Her confidence that she could cope with the situation lasted until they drove through the entrance gates and she realised the driver was taking the private road towards the Aphrodite Villa. The jewel in the crown. Cristiano’s beachside bolt-hole, his personal retreat from the demands placed on him by his thriving business empire.

When they’d built the Resort they’d used part of the land to relocate their corporate headquarters and Laurel had never ceased to drool over his office, which exploited the stunning coastal position. Cristiano had qualified as a structural engineer and his talents in that area were visible in the innovative design features incorporated into his headquarters.

As would be expected, the walls of his office were glass. What was unexpected was the floor, also glass and stretching out over the water so that a visitor to his office could find himself distracted by shoals of colourful Mediterranean fish darting beneath their feet.

It was typical of Cristiano to merge the aesthetic with the functional and there were similar touches throughout his hotels.

‘I don’t see why an office has to be a boring box in the centre of a smog-choked city,’ he’d said when she’d gasped at her first sight of his office. ‘I like the sea. This way, if I’m stuck behind my desk, I can still enjoy it.’

It was that same breadth of vision that had made the company so successful. That, and his sophistication and appreciation for luxury. Her first glimpse of the Aphrodite Villa had made her jaw drop, but going there now drew a very different response from her.

The shock of it tore a hole in her composure. ‘Why are we going this way? I’m not staying here.’ It was too reminiscent of their wedding night, when she’d been so happy and full of optimism for the future.

‘Why would you care where you sleep?’ His tone was hard and unsympathetic. ‘If what we shared was “just a wedding,” then presumably this was “just a honeymoon”, in which case the place holds no sentimental value. It’s just a bed.’

Laurel struggled to bring her breathing back to normal. She carried an asthma inhaler in her bag but there was no way she was going to use it in front of him unless she was half dead.

And now she was trapped. To admit how the place made her feel would be to reveal something she had no intention of ever revealing.

Not to admit it meant staying here.

‘It’s your premium property.’ Occasionally, she knew, he had been persuaded to loan it to honeymooning rock stars and actors. ‘Why waste it on me?’

‘It’s the only vacant bed in the place. Sleep in it and be grateful.’ His tone was so chilly and matter-of-fact that for a moment she truly believed that the villa held no significance for him whatsoever. For a man who owned five homes and spent his working life travelling the world, this was just another few hundred square metres of luxurious accommodation.

Or was it?

Was he doing this to punish her?

‘Well, at least it has a good internet connection.’ She kept her eyes ahead, refusing to let him access her secrets. She tried not to remember that gazing into his eyes had once been her favourite pastime. On more than one occasion she’d woken him just so that she could experience that incredible connection that happened whenever they looked at each other. With him, she’d discovered intimacy. But intimacy meant openness and openness meant vulnerability, as she’d learned to her cost.

He’d demanded that she trust him and gradually she’d yielded to that because he would accept nothing less. And then he had let her down so badly she doubted the bruises would ever heal.

‘You’re being treated as an honoured guest. We both know it’s more than you deserve. Let’s go.’ Without giving her the chance to argue further, he opened the door and sprang from the car with that same driven sense of purpose that characterised everything he did.

All he could focus on was the fact that she’d left him, Laurel thought numbly. It was all about his pride. Not about their relationship. He saw himself as the injured party.

She had no choice but to follow him up the pathway that led to the villa. Inside, she knew, there would be air conditioning so there would be some relief from the blistering Sicilian sun. Unless it was the chemistry between them that burned hotter than the fires of hell.

Cristiano flung open the door and she heard the sound of the car reversing as his driver retreated back to the main hotel complex.

Laurel stepped across the threshold, trying not to remember their wedding night when he’d carried her through the door, both of them frantic in their indecent desperation for each other. ‘Why isn’t he waiting for you?’

He dropped her case onto the tiled floor. ‘Why do you think? Because I’m staying here too.’

The words floated right past her because they made no sense.

‘Please tell me that’s a joke—’ Her voice sounded strange, robotic. ‘There’s only one bedroom.’ One enormous bedroom overlooking the pool and the beach. The bedroom where they’d spent long sultry nights together.

Cristiano gave a bitter smile. ‘Blame Dani again. Her wedding. Her room allocation.’

‘I’m not sharing a bed with you!’ The words flew out before she could stop them and he turned with an angry snarl that was animal-like in its ferocity.

‘You think you need to say that to me? Do you think I would have you back in my bed after what you did? Do you?’

Her heart was hammering and she took an instinctive step backwards even though she knew he’d never hurt her. Not physically. ‘I can’t stay here with you.’ The emotions she’d kept locked down during the horrendous car journey were bubbling up like milk on the boil, refusing to be contained.

‘It’s too—’

‘It’s too what?’ Something about the way he was looking at her made her heart beat faster. He’d always been frighteningly good at reading her mind and this time it was imperative that he didn’t.

She didn’t want to open up. It was way too late for that.

Grateful for years of practice at hiding what she felt, Laurel hauled her emotions back inside her. ‘It’s awkward,’ she said coldly. ‘For both of us.’

He stared at her for another few seconds and then his mouth hardened. ‘I think “awkward” is the least of our problems, don’t you? Don’t worry. I’ll sleep on the couch. And if you’re worried that I won’t be able to keep my hands off you, then don’t be. You had your chance.’ Insultingly indifferent, he strolled away from her but even that didn’t give her breathing space because there were traces of him everywhere.

A tailored jacket slung carelessly over the back of a chair. The glass of fresh Sicilian lemonade, half drunk because he’d been disturbed and too busy to finish. His laptop, the battery light glowing because he worked such long hours he never bothered to shut down. All those things were so familiar, so much a part of him, and for a moment she stood still, unable to breathe, swamped by a longing to turn the clock back.

But turn it back to when?

How could there have ever been a different outcome? Their love had been doomed from the beginning. Together they’d managed to make Romeo and Juliet look like a match made in heaven.

CHAPTER TWO

CRISTIANO downed the glass of whisky in one, trying to blunt the savage bite of his emotions as he waited on the terrace of the villa for Laurel to make an appearance.

He’d promised himself that he would be icily calm and detached. That resolution had lasted until she’d stepped off the plane. His plan to make no reference to their situation had exploded under the intense pressure of the reunion. The conflicting emotions had been like a storm inside him, made all the more fierce by her own lack of response. Laurel had turned hiding her emotions into an art form.

Wishing he had time to go for a run and burn off some of the adrenalin scalding his veins, Cristiano lifted a hand and slid a finger into the collar of his white dress shirt. Deprived of one stress reliever, he reached for another and topped up his glass with a hand that wasn’t quite steady.

She still blamed him. That much was obvious but, even now, she wouldn’t talk about it.

Immediately after the event he’d tried, but she’d appeared to be in shock, her reaction to the miscarriage far more extreme than he would have anticipated.

His own sadness at the loss of their baby had been tempered with a sense of realism. Miscarriages happened. His own mother had lost two babies. His aunt, one. It was Laurel’s first pregnancy. He’d been philosophical.

She’d been inconsolable. And stubborn.

Apart from that one message on his voicemail, the one telling him not to bother to cut short his meeting because she’d lost the baby, she’d refused to talk about what had happened.

Sweat prickled the back of his neck and he wished for the millionth time he hadn’t switched off his phone before going into that meeting.

If he’d answered the call, would they be in a different place now?

Contemplating the celebration that lay ahead made him want to empty the bottle of whisky. He was in desperate need of an anaesthetic to dull his senses and relieve the pain.

Maybe it was because his own marriage was such a total disaster that he hated weddings so much.

Part of him wished his sister had just eloped quietly, but that had never been on the cards. She was marrying a Sicilian man in true Sicilian style and he, as her older brother and the head of the family, was expected to play a major part in the celebrations. The family honour was at stake. The image of the Ferrara dynasty. He was expected to celebrate.

‘I’m ready.’ Her voice came from behind him and this time he made sure that he had himself fully under control before he turned.

Even prepared, the connection was immediate and powerful.

It was like being trapped in an electrical storm. The air around him crackled and buzzed with a tension that hadn’t been there before she’d stepped over the threshold.

Ready? He almost laughed. Neither of them would ever be ready for what they were about to face. Their estrangement had attracted almost as much attention as their wedding. There would be no cameras tonight, but that didn’t mean the guests wouldn’t be interested. With that macabre fascination that drew people to stare at the wreckage of car accidents, everyone was waiting to see how he was going to treat his scandalous estranged wife.

Looking at her, he felt the attraction punch through his gut. Her body was slim and supremely fit and wrapped in a dress of fine blue silk. On most women the dress would have been monumentally unforgiving. Laurel had nothing that needed forgiving. Her body was her brand and she dressed to showcase it and drive her business. It wouldn’t have surprised him to see her web address stamped on her hemline. Ferrara Fitness. He’d been the one who had spotted her potential and persuaded her to expand—to broaden what she offered from the personal to the corporate.

She wasn’t beautiful in a classical sense, but her guts and drive had proved a greater aphrodisiac than sleek blonde hair or a perfect D cup. Only he knew that her restrained appearance and tiger-like personality hid monumental insecurities.

From the outside no one would ever have guessed that on the inside she was such a mess, he mused, but he’d never met anyone more screwed up than Laurel. It had taken months for her to open up to him even a little and, when she had, the cold reality of her childhood had shocked him. It was a story of care homes and neglect, and just a brief glimpse into what her life had been was enough for him to begin to understand why she was so different from most of the women he met.

Had it been arrogance, he wondered, that had made him so sure that he could break down those defensive barriers? He’d demanded trust from someone who had never had reason to give it and, in the end, it had backfired badly.

Any residual guilt he might have felt about his own behaviour at that time had long been erased by his anger that she hadn’t even given him a chance to fix his mistake. She’d ended their marriage with the finality of an executioner, refusing both rational conversation and the diamonds he’d bought her by way of apology.

Dark emotions swirled inside him and he studied her face for signs that she was regretting her decision. Her features were blank, but that didn’t surprise him. She’d trained herself to reveal nothing. To rely on no one. Extracting anything from her had been a challenge.

Even now she chose to keep the conversation neutral. ‘You changed the room overlooking the garden from a gym to a cinema.’

She would have noticed, of course, because that was her job. And Laurel was one hundred per cent committed to her job. Which was why they’d wanted her involved in the business. From the moment her success with one very overweight actress had been blazoned over the press, Laurel Hampton had become the personal trainer that everyone wanted. The fact that she’d agreed to advise the hotel had been a coup for both of them. He had her name on his brand and she had his. It had been a winning combination.

Hampton had become Ferrara.

And that was when the combination had exploded.

‘I watch sport. I don’t need a gym when I’m here.’ Cristiano felt a flicker of exasperation. Their marriage was writhing in its death throes and they were discussing gym equipment?

Something glinted around her neck and he frowned at the thin gold chain. The fact that she was wearing jewellery he didn’t recognise racked his tension levels up a few more notches and drove all thoughts from his brain. He hadn’t given her the chain, so where the hell had it come from?

He pictured a pair of male hands fastening the necklace around her slender throat. Someone else touching her. Someone else persuading her to part with her secrets—

It was something that hadn’t occurred to him before now.

Only when he heard the splintering sound of glass on ceramic tiles did he realise he’d dropped the glass he was holding.

Eyeing him as she would an escaped tiger, Laurel backed away. ‘I’ll get a brush—’ ‘Leave it.’ ‘But—’

‘I said, leave it. The staff will sort it out. We need to go.

I’m the host.’

‘Everyone will be speculating.’

‘They wouldn’t dare. At least, not publicly.’

She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Sorry. I forgot you even manage to control people’s thoughts.’

Suddenly Cristiano wished he hadn’t dropped the glass. God only knew he needed something to get him through the next few hours. The gold necklace glinted in the sunshine, taunting him. Following an impulse he didn’t want to examine too closely, he grabbed her left hand and lifted it. She made a sound in her throat and tugged but he simply tightened his grip, shocked by the emotion that tore through him when he saw her bare finger.

‘Where is your wedding ring?’

‘I don’t wear it. We’re no longer married.’

‘We’re married until we’re divorced and in Sicily that takes three years—’ Teeth gritted, tone thickened, he held tightly to her hand as she twisted her fingers and tried to free herself.

‘It’s a bit late to be possessive. Marriage is about more than a ring, Cristiano, and more than a piece of paper.’

‘You are telling me what constitutes marriage? You, who treated our marriage as something disposable?’ Outrage and fury mingled in a lethal cocktail. ‘Why remove your ring? Is there someone else?’

‘This weekend isn’t about us, it’s about your sister.’

He’d wanted a denial.

He’d wanted her to laugh and say, Of course there isn’t anyone else—how could there be?

He’d wanted her to admit that what they’d shared had been rare and special. Instead she was dismissing it. She’d consigned it to the dustbin of past mistakes.

Driven by an emotion he didn’t understand, he grabbed her shoulders and yanked her against him. If he’d been more controlled he might have asked himself why he was trying to goad her, but he didn’t feel controlled. The fact that she seemed indifferent simply intensified his urge to draw a response from her.

Caught off balance, she swayed against him. That brief whisper of contact was all it took. Thin blue silk proved an ineffectual barrier and the heat spread from him to her. He heard her breathing quicken and felt the powerful surge of desire as his body acknowledged her response. It confirmed what he already knew—that the chemistry between them was as powerful as ever. Not indifferent, he thought with grim satisfaction. It was the one emotion she couldn’t mask. In a moment he’d be kissing her and he knew from bitter experience that once they kissed that was it. There was no turning back from it and it seemed that even after her betrayal that hadn’t changed.

‘There is no one else.’ Her voice reflected all those painful emotions right back at him. ‘One lousy relationship in a lifetime is enough.’

The words acted like a bucket of cold water over the flickering flames.

Cristiano released her as suddenly as he’d grabbed her. If he’d felt like laughing he would have laughed at himself. All his life women had thrown themselves at him. He’d taken it as a right that he could win any woman he wanted. And then he’d met Laurel and been slapped in the face with his own arrogance.

He stepped back from her, needing the distance. ‘We’re expected to attend this dinner. Let’s get it over with.’

For once, the mask slipped. ‘I’m going to call Dani and explain that I’m tired. She’ll understand.’