The Temporary Mrs. Marchetti

Alice shifted her gaze. ‘Yes, well, I’m only twenty-eight. I don’t have to panic just yet.’

There was an odd little silence.

Alice wondered if he was thinking of the irony of their situation. He had desperately wanted a family seven years ago while she had wanted her freedom. Now he wanted his freedom while she was peering into every pram that went past.

What if she didn’t find a man she could love enough to father her children? But who else could she want but Cristiano? Her feelings for him had been on slow burn in her heart. Banked down out of bitterness because he hadn’t fought for her in the past. But the more she thought about her future, she couldn’t imagine sharing it with anyone other than him. She would rather be alone than be with someone else.

Maybe that was why she had panicked and pushed him away. She had seen him as the one man who could make her sacrifice the dream of owning her own business. It had been too confronting for her as a twenty-one-year-old on the threshold of her life. Too threatening in case he hadn’t loved her enough to give her the freedom to pursue her own goals instead of subsuming her life into the powerful engine of his.

But now...now she had established her business. She knew who she was and what she wanted for her life. And that included the things he no longer wanted. Marriage. A family. To love and be loved.

But Cristiano no longer loved her, if he ever had. The only reason he was with her now was because of the shares that hung in the balance. If it hadn’t been for his grandmother’s will she would never have heard from him again. She had to remember that. He was only marrying her to get what he wanted. He might still desire her but he was a full-blooded man with a healthy appetite for sex.

This thing they had going on was for now, not for ever.

CHAPTER NINE

CRISTIANO LED ALICE through the villa but his mind was preoccupied.

She wanted a family.

After all those heated arguments in the past over not wanting kids. It had been a sticking point in their relationship. He had thought her selfish for putting her career above having a family. Selfish and unnatural. But now he was the one who was career focussed. He had made himself so busy he couldn’t find time for a steady relationship, let alone a family that would need nurturing day by day, week by week, year by year. He didn’t want it because the thought of losing it was too terrifying. Too awful to even contemplate.

He knew all too well how it felt to have his world ripped out from under him. Once was enough. More than enough. Loving someone meant you could lose them. You could lose part of yourself and never get it back.

‘May I see the garden now?’ Alice said, breaking through his reverie.

‘Sure.’ Cristiano took her hand and led her to the French doors leading out to the terrace. ‘This was one of my grandmother’s favourite places. She would sit out here for hours watching the birdlife in the garden.’

‘It’s such a beautiful place.’ Alice’s voice had a reverent note to it. ‘Around every corner is another surprise. It’s like a story unfolding.’

Cristiano waited on the terrace while she wandered about the garden. She stopped to smell the roses his grandmother had planted as a young bride, her fingers softly touching the fragrant petals. The sun caught her hair and turned it into a skein of shining silver, and she brushed some strands away from her face that the light breeze had toyed with and tucked them back behind her ear. She caught him looking at her and gave him a smile that made something inside his chest ache.

‘This would make a great wedding venue, don’t you think?’ she said. ‘The wisteria walk would be a gorgeous place for the bride to walk towards the groom.’

‘Would you like to get married here?’ Cristiano asked.

A slight frown creased her smooth brow. ‘But I thought you wanted a church wedding?’

He shrugged. ‘As long as it’s legal who cares where it’s conducted?’

She pulled at her lower lip with her teeth and turned slightly to look at the angel fountain his grandmother had installed after the stillborn birth of her first child the year before Cristiano’s father had been born. So much of his family’s history was embedded in this place. There wasn’t a shrub or tree or yew hedge that hadn’t witnessed a Marchetti triumph or tragedy.

After a moment Alice turned to look at him. ‘To be honest, I’d rather be married here than in a church. It would make it less...’ She seemed to be searching for the right word and bit into her lip again.

‘Binding?’ Cristiano said.

Her mouth went into a flat line. ‘Don’t you feel the slightest bit uncomfortable about all this? Marriage is a big deal. As the words of the ceremony say: it’s not to be entered into lightly.’

Was she having second thoughts? His guts churned. If she didn’t marry him he would lose the shares and the villa. He couldn’t allow that to happen.

‘Look at it this way. We’re fulfilling an old lady’s dying wishes by getting married. It’s not about us. It’s about Nonna. And I think she would be thrilled if we had the ceremony here. I’ll get working on it straight away.’ He held his hand out for hers, drawing her against his side. ‘Now, let’s make the most of the day here in Stresa.’

It was a lovely day in spite of Alice’s misgivings about where things were heading in their relationship. Cristiano organised a private tour of the islands and a gorgeous lunch at a restaurant by the lake. They drove back to Milan late in the afternoon and, after a quick shower and freshen up, he took her to one of the city’s premier restaurants, where the maître d’ welcomed Cristiano by name and showered them with effusive congratulations and a bottle of champagne on the house.

Alice sat opposite him sipping her champagne and wondered if he was thinking about that other restaurant only a few streets from here where he had proposed to her while the rest of the diners looked on. With the benefit of hindsight, she wished she’d handled it a little better than she had. But the shock of his sudden proposal after only a few weeks of dating had thrown her into a panic.

Surely she could have let him down without publicly humiliating him. Why had she been so crass and immature? How must he have felt to be left in that restaurant with everyone staring at him open-mouthed? The ring he’d chosen thrown onto the table as if it were a cheap fairground trinket. She hadn’t even gone back to his villa, because her passport had been in her tote bag, and she’d caught a taxi straight to the airport and got on the first flight she could.