On the top were the Italian tabloids. There was a picture of her and Lazaro emerging from the town hall. Skye winced. She looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights, eyes wide and startled, clutching her very homemade bunch of flowers and latched onto Lazaro’s arm.
She couldn’t have looked less like the sleekly perfect woman he should have married.
All she could think about now was that he might not have loved Leonora, but he had felt something for her, and he must have desired her—how could he not have? And if they were here right now they’d be in the bedroom—
Skye cursed out loud.
Lazaro came over. ‘What is it?’ He saw what she was looking at and swept up the papers and dumped them in a rubbish bin near the door.
Skye didn’t want Lazaro to see an atom of what she was feeling, so she went back over to the balcony to look out over the canal. They were married now, and having a baby. She had to deal with it and stop feeling so insecure.
But, as if sensing her turmoil, Lazaro came over. ‘Skye?’
Stubbornly, she kept her gaze forward.
‘Skye, look at me.’
With extreme reluctance she did, turning to face Lazaro, thinking churlishly in that moment that for a man who was fixated on world domination he seemed to have an uncanny ability to push her when she wanted it least.
‘What is it? What’s going on in that head of yours?’ he asked.
‘Nothing... Just...’ But she couldn’t keep it in. She blurted out, ‘Leonora—she was so beautiful and perfect... You must have wanted her... She should be here, not me...’
* * *
Lazaro was struck by the fact that Skye was wrong on so many levels.
‘I didn’t want her. That’s why it was so easy to let her go.’
In that instant Lazaro realised that he would never have been as sanguine about letting Skye go. She was embedded under his skin and he hungered for her on a constant basis.
But it was more than that. Just watching the expressions on her face as they’d arrived in Venice had enthralled him. He would have bet money she’d never seen it before, and when she’d said she had a small part of him had felt something disturbingly like jealousy. Because he hadn’t witnessed her very first viewing of this magical city.
Desire made you think crazy things.
Skye was frowning. ‘You mean you never...?’
Lazaro was almost enjoying her inarticulacy. ‘Are you asking me if I slept with her?’
Skye blushed.
It was still amazing to Lazar
o every time she did it. And especially here, against this sophisticated backdrop.
‘Don’t make fun of me,’ Skye said hotly.
Lazaro acted on impulse and ran his knuckles down one hot cheek. Her hair was coming undone and her freckles were starting to pop through her wedding make-up. And just the feel of her hot cheek under his knuckle was enough to tip him over the edge of his control.
‘I didn’t sleep with Leonora, Skye. I wasn’t marrying her because I wanted her. Desire complicates things.’
Now her expression shuttered, and everything in him rejected that way she had sometimes of closing off.
‘You mean I’ve complicated things?’ she said.
He put a finger under her chin, tipping it up. She was still trying to control her face. He could see the effort.
‘Funnily enough, this is one complication I don’t seem to care about any more.’