He’d had no choice to do otherwise. No choice at all.
I could not have them both—those times are gone.
His mouth contorted and he rubbed his hand across his face—a rough gesture, as if he could wipe out what was inside his head.
Two images formed in his vision.
Francesca delle Ristori—the woman he was going to marry.
Carla Charteris—the woman he had put aside to do so.
Carla...
And, like a sluice gate opening, a dam breaking, all the images that he had kept out of his head since the moment he’d walked out of her apartment stormed in upon him.
More than images...worse than images.
Memories—vivid, tangible, indelible.
Carla swimming with him at midnight in the pool at the villa in Lazio, their naked bodies glistening in starlight.
Carla, her limbs wound with his, spine arched as she cried out in his arms.
Carla smiling at him across the dinner table, telling him something about Luciezo, or Tintoretto, or Michelangelo—some detail of art history he did not know—while he set it in historical context and they discussed the implications of it.
Carla shaking her hair free as he drove along the autost
rada towards the villa in Lazio, taking their time off together, looking forward to nothing more than easy, restful, peaceable days together—to sensual, passion-fuelled nights...
Memory after memory.
Nothing more than memory now. Now and for ever—for the rest of his life.
As it must be.
Desperately, urgently, he made his thoughts fly across the ocean, back to where he’d left the woman who was going to be his contessa, his destined bride, the woman who was right for him in every way. But Francesca’s image would not come—would not be conjured. Instead dark hair, blue-violet eyes, that rich, sensuous mouth that could smile, or kiss, or gasp in passion at its peak...all occluded his vision.
She didn’t marry him.
The words came again—sinuous now, soft and dulcet, weaving in and out of his synapses. He felt his blood quicken, let memory ripen in his thoughts.
More than memory.
He shifted restlessly in his chair. It had been so long...so long since he had set her aside. Yet she was here—so close. Across the city—a kilometre or two...no more than that. How often had he gone to her apartment in those six months that had been their time together? How often had his hands closed over her shoulders, drawing her lush body to his as his mouth lowered to her parting lips, tasting the delectable sensual nectar of her kiss, deepening to heated arousal...?
Carla—with her blue-violet eyes, her rich mouth, her full breasts and rounded hips—with the dark, lustrous hair he’d loved to spear and tangle his hands in as he spread her body out on the bed for himself to caress, possess...to take and be taken while flames of passion had seared them both—Carla... Ah, Carla, who was only a dozen rooftops away...
Carla, whom he had set aside to fulfil his responsibilities to his name, his house... Carla, who could never be more to him than what she had been—and to have been that was...
Carla, who had thought to marry a man who was nothing to her! Merely for the reallocation of a handful of shares.
His mouth twisted. He had told himself she was entirely entitled to marry Viscari, had made himself applaud it—be glad of it. Glad that he could set her aside knowing she would be making a future for herself as her step-cousin’s wife. Telling himself that her marriage made sense, was entirely suitable—just as his own was.
He could tell himself all he liked.
It was a lie. A barefaced lie to hide the truth of why she had taken such a step.
That was not why she’d walked up the aisle towards Vito Viscari! She’d done it for one reason and one reason only and he knew it—knew it with every burning fibre of his being.