The Temporary Mrs. Marchetti

He dragged a hand down his face. ‘Is that what you call it? I feel like I’ve been awake for a month.’ He narrowed his gaze and lifted his arm to peer at his watch. Dropping it back to the bed with a dead arm flop. ‘God. Five a.m.’

Alice stroked her fingers down the raspy slope of his cheek. ‘Do you realise that’s the first night we’ve spent together without making love?’

He cranked open one eye. ‘Why do you think I’m on the outside of these sheets?’

She nestled closer, leaning over him so her breasts were crushed against his chest. ‘I’m not sick now. In fact, I’m fighting fit.’

The other darkly glinting eye opened. ‘I thought we weren’t supposed to be fighting any more?’

Alice slipped a hand down to where he was as hard as stone. ‘Feels to me you’re already armed and dangerous.’

He gave her a sexy grin and flipped her so she was lying beneath him, his hand cupping her breast. ‘If I were a good man I’d insist you have something to eat and drink before I ravish you.’

She trailed a fingertip across his lower lip. ‘I’m only hungry and thirsty for you.’

He took her mouth in a long slow kiss that stirred her senses into overdrive. But just when she thought he’d reach for a condom and take things further, he pulled back and got off the bed. Something about his expression alerted her to a change of mood.

‘Sorry, cara. I must be a better man than I thought.’ He leaned down to brush her forehead with a light-as-air kiss, so light it was just shy of being impersonal. ‘Stay right where you are. I’m going to give you breakfast in bed.’

Alice lay back against the pillows while she waited. Maybe they’d talk about their future over breakfast. Surely he hadn’t forgotten what he’d said last night?

They’d been given a second chance to work at their relationship.

He was being so kind, so solicitous. He was acting exactly like a man in love...wasn’t he? Last night he had looked so distraught at the hospital and again when they’d come home, fussing over her and holding her in his arms all night without getting a wink of sleep himself. Didn’t that mean he loved her?

Then why hadn’t he said something?

She’d told him last night she loved him...or at least that she had fallen in love with him the first moment they’d met. Why hadn’t he said it back? Or hadn’t he said it because he didn’t feel that way now? Had his tenderness last night just been a reaction to the shock of finding her in hospital?

Alice couldn’t stop the panic rising. What if she’d misread their conversation last night? What if he’d just said those words to settle her for the night after her health scare? Was it her imagination or was he withdrawing from her? When had he ever pulled away from a kiss? Was he backing away from a longer relationship?

Had her confession of love made him rethink their involvement?

In two weeks they would be married, but on what terms? Temporary. No future stretching out in front of them. No plans for making a family together and raising them with love and commitment. Their relationship, although it would be formalised

with a certificate of marriage, would be nothing more than a transient affair—as he’d stated time and time again he wanted it to be.

How could she agree to that when she wanted the opposite?

Yesterday, when the doctor asked Alice if there was any possibility she could be pregnant, a balloon of hope had risen in her chest. But then she’d realised the futility of harbouring such a hope. Cristiano didn’t want a family. He didn’t want what she wanted.

The sad irony of their reversed wishes made her realise again how devastated he must have felt when she’d walked out on him that day in that restaurant. When the pregnancy test came back negative she was both relieved and disappointed. She didn’t want to force him to stay with her. She wanted him to love her and commit to her, not because of a baby, not because of his well-meaning grandmother’s machinations, but because he loved her more than anything else in the world. More than his stupid old shares, more than a luxury villa.

She thought of her friend Jennifer. She and Cristiano and Jennifer and Marcus would be married within a week of each other and yet you couldn’t find two different couples. Jennifer and Marcus were deeply in love. They planned to do all the things young couples on the threshold of a life together planned.

What did Alice and Cristiano have? A six-month time limit. He wanted his shares and his family villa and the only way to get them was to marry her. Without his grandmother’s will their affair would not have resumed. She would be fooling herself to think otherwise. He’d had seven years to do something about their ‘unfinished business’ and he had done nothing.

Cristiano came back with a tray with muesli and toast and juice and tea. One bowl. One plate. One cup. ‘Here we go.’ He balanced the tray on her knees. ‘Breakfast in bed.’

Alice picked up the cup of steaming tea. ‘Aren’t you going to join me?’

‘I have a couple of emails to see to. Stuff to do with the wedding and so on. Do you need a hand choosing a dress? I’ve got some time today if you’re—’

‘Don’t you know it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride’s dress before the wedding?’

Something about his slanted smile made her heart shrivel like a dried-up leaf. ‘It’s not like we have to worry about that, do we?’

Alice searched his face for a moment, her teeth worrying her bottom lip. He didn’t seem at all fazed by the fact their marriage was going to be temporary. Surely if he cared about her he would say something?