The Mistress Wife

‘I feel like hell…you’re upset. I should be with you.’

‘No…no, you shouldn’t be,’ Vivien framed jaggedly and she put the phone down again.

The walls of the room felt as if they were closing in on her. She opened the door out onto the small balcony that overlooked the back garden and dragged in a great gulp of the cool evening air. When the phone began ringing again, she walked out of the bedroom and closed the door on it. But phones were ringing downstairs as well. She sank down on a step halfway down the handsome staircase. What foolish threats she had flung at Lucca! He wasn’t in love with her. How would it upset him if she slept with other men?

A tempest of emotion was storming her. He was the guy she loved but she couldn’t have him. She didn’t want to see him, knew she shouldn’t let herself see him. How was she supposed to get over him when he wouldn’t leave her alone to grieve? She had to be braver, stronger. Surrendering to a spiteful desire to make him feel bad would do her no good at all.

The bell on the front door shrilled an unmistakable call and when she ignored it, the knocker went instead. Irritated beyond bearing, she leapt up, raced down the stairs and shouted through the door, ‘I hate you!’

Her voice snapped in the middle like a bendy twig and she wondered if he too had heard that all too audible sound of weakness through the thickness of the wood door separating them. Biting back another tempestuous sob, she retreated hurriedly into the hall again. She did not want him to realise that she was crying.

On the other side of the solid door, Lucca swore long and low and fiercely. He should never have given that key back! Somehow he had to get back into the house even if it meant breaking in. Light was pouring down from the balcony at the side of the house. Lucca groaned when he saw the door left open up there like a mocking invitation. All his life he had fought his fear of heights. It was his biggest, darkest secret.

He got into his McLaren F1 and reversed it to below the balcony. He got up on the roof of the car. It was an old house with high ceilings and he still had a good way to climb. Edging across the slippery car roof, he grasped a hold of the sturdy ivy trunk growing up the wall. He snatched in a shuddering breath. He knew his fear was irrational. He was barely six feet off the ground but it felt like twenty. In a cold sweat, he hauled himself up. Jock hurtled out of the house, literally bouncing on his three legs with every frantic, explosive bark.

‘Shut it!’ Lucca warned him.

Jock growled, a long, deep, threatening growl that would not have shamed a Rottweiler about to attack.

Lucca reached for the stone parapet and dragged himself over it. Clumsy with eagerness, he misjudged his step and landed hard enough on the tiled floor to jar every bone in his powerful body. Jock jumped on top of him like a Victorian big-game hunter posing for a triumphant photograph.

Vivien was curled up in a ball on the bottom step of the stairs, still and silent and small. ‘Vivi…’ he breathed tautl

y to lessen the shock of his appearance.

In disbelief, she twisted round and vaulted upright. ‘Lucca…?’

‘I was worried about you. I came in by the balcony. ‘Lucca strode down the stairs, intense golden eyes locking to her pale tear-streaked face and lingering.

She could think of nothing to say. She trembled, tried to shrug and, without any warning whatsoever, he just hauled her into his arms and brought his mouth crashing down on her full, soft lips, demanding and receiving a response that was equally fierce.

He crushed her to him, spread long fingers either side of her face and let his sensual mouth rove from her unmarked brow to her delicate eyelids and the petal softness of her cheeks before closing with hungry, passionate fervour to her parted lips again.

‘We mustn’t…’ she mumbled in a daze.

Shimmering dark golden eyes ensnared hers with unashamed purpose. ‘We must…’

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘BLISS…?’ Vivien whispered uncertainly, anxious green eyes pinned to Lucca’s lean, strong face.

Lucca vented a harsh laugh. ‘It was over with her the first time I held you in my arms again. I had a fever only you could quench, gioia mia.’

Vivien breathed again. ‘I’m glad…’ How glad, she was too choked up to tell him. It was an effort to think when she simply wanted to glory in him. He was holding her so tightly that she could barely feed air into her lungs. Even though he was crushing her, she made no complaint, for she craved that intensity with every fibre of her being.

With a husky sound of all-male satisfaction, Lucca bent down and swept her slight body up into his powerful arms. ‘While I’m with you, there will be nobody else in my life,’ he delivered with hard clarity. ‘That is how it always was and I don’t change.’

There was an unspoken rebuke in that declaration. That was the moment that she knew she had to say goodbye to the past if it was not to destroy the present. He was an all-or-nothing guy and, two years ago, she had let him down. She had walked out on their marriage instead of staying to fight for it and the truth. She had to accept that in leaving she had given Lucca his freedom back. He had not put his life on ice, he had gone on living, and what right did she have to complain about that? She had judged him unfairly, denied him any right of appeal and her lack of trust had outraged his sense of justice. Her thoughtless limitations on the time he got to spend with Marco had only increased his bitterness, adding to the barriers he had put up against her. But one by one those barriers were falling and that was all, absolutely all that really mattered, she told herself feverishly. The second chance she had prayed for had been granted and she was not going to be ungrateful for it.

Halfway up the stairs, Lucca paused to plunder the swollen pink welcome of her ripe mouth. He had never felt a hunger so intense. He needed to be with her. He was with her. He refused to think beyond that as he laid her down on the bed. ‘Vivi…’ he breathed in a throaty tone that made her ache.

‘I’m glad you wouldn’t take no for an answer,’ she whispered, her voice gruff from the amount of crying she had done.

His gorgeous eyes were darker than the sky on a stormy night. He lifted a not-quite-steady lean brown hand and let long, lean fingers score very lightly down one soft cheek. ‘When I want something, I go for it, cara mia.’

‘Don’t stop wanting me,’ she muttered, taut as a bowstring.

‘You’d have to tell me how…’ Lucca confided in a roughened drawl.