The Mistress Wife

Newly aware of the astonishing amount of time and effort that Marco’s needs took up at the start of the day, Lucca almost groaned out loud at that question.

A sunny smile of helpless amusement lit up Vivien’s face. ‘I was only joking…I just wanted to see your reaction!’

‘Witch!’ Lucca growled with mock annoyance, brilliant golden eyes welded to her lovely laughing face and lingering. At the back of his gaze there was a shadow of concern. Their divorce was final. He had been notified yesterday and he had intended to mention it casually last night. But then he had wondered if she already knew and was preserving a diplomatic silence. He had finally decided that it would be wiser to leave her solicitor to pass on that news. Personalising the announcement might be a mistake, he reasoned. He did not want to upset her.

Conscious of the tension that had tautened his big muscular length, Vivien looked up into his lean bronzed face, heart skipping a beat at his lethal dark attraction. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Wrong? Nothing.’ Shrugging a wide brown shoulder to emphasise that determined negative, Lucca rolled over and sprang out of bed.

So, he was sleeping with his ex-wife! She was happy, Marco was happy and he was happy. Their sleeping arrangements were their own private business. Even so, possibly he should send her some flowers today so that she would know that he appreciated her. Flowers in exchange for a wedding ring, a derisive inner voice enquired. Lucca gritted his teeth.

Perhaps he would also make time to call in at Tiffany’s and buy her some diamonds…something spectacular…a necklace or a bracelet. But she wasn’t really into jewellery. She would say thank you and put it in a drawer and forget about it again. He would have taken her out to dinner but he didn’t want the paparazzi jumping all over them and printing inflammatory stuff in the tabloids that might distress her. He would buy her the most magnificent fern he could find. That would impress, wouldn’t it? Something she could stick under a microscope and study if she liked.

‘Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?’ Vivien asked gently, bemused by his most unusual abstraction.

‘No, I was just thinking. What we need…what you need,?

?? Lucca corrected his phraseology hurriedly and wondered what the hell was wrong with his brain and his usually rock-solid nerves, ‘is a nanny to help out with Marco.’

Vivien pretended not to have noticed that slip that revealed that Lucca was once again thinking of them as a couple, but she wanted to grin from ear to ear. ‘Rosa Peroli, the nanny who worked part-time for me in Oxford, did say she wouldn’t mind trying out city life.’

His brows pleated in surprise. ‘Is Rosa Italian?’

Vivien smiled. ‘Her parents are and she speaks the language fluently. I thought it was good for Marco to hear Italian spoken in his home as well.’

Lucca was taken aback by that information. Even when the bitterness between them had been at its worst, Vivien had chosen to respect their son’s mixed cultural inheritance by employing a nanny of Italian extraction. He had misjudged Vivien. ‘She sounds perfect.’

While he was in the shower, Vivien surveyed her untidy bedroom with immense contentment, her green eyes softening with love and sentimental thoughts. Two of Lucca’s shirts lay discarded on the floor along with a black tee shirt and a pair of denim jeans that had looked stupendously sexy on him, she reflected dreamily. Three business suits hung from the picture rail. A male hairbrush lay on the dresser beside his mobile. A state of the art little PC, his keys and a file were piled up on the chest of drawers. Various newspapers in Italian and English were scattered throughout the room. He was used to servants, who picked up after him, laundered his linen and dealt with every household task. He really did generate an awful lot of work on the domestic front. And the truth was, the very sight of one of his shirts thrown on the floor made her ecstatically happy.

For two years her bedroom had been a clutter-free zone empty of Lucca and his untidiness and quick-fire energy. She did not even want to think now about how horribly unhappy she had been. After all, why waste time reliving the past when the present was so much better? She had been back in London for only a week and every day Lucca spent more time with her. He was virtually living with her. He was no longer leaving for the office at six in the morning either and he was finishing earlier. The weekend had been wonderful. Incredibly, he had switched off his phone and he had done no work whatsoever. They had had loads of fun with Marco. The simple pleasure of behaving like a family for the very first time was not one she took for granted. She cherished everything they had shared.

Lucca, she was beginning to appreciate, had changed during their time apart. He was so much less arrogant and a lot more unselfish and patient. Time and time again he had demonstrated that he could now temper his own inclinations and compromise for her sake and for Marco’s. Yet only two short years ago, Lucca had been very much the kind of male to whom compromise was a dirty word. He had done exactly as he’d wanted when he’d wanted. Her every attempt to make a more secure and comfortable place for herself in his world had ended in abysmal failure.

With hindsight she could now see that, while Lucca might have married her, he had in many ways carried on living his life as though he were still single. She was amazed that she had not registered that reality sooner. She did believe that Lucca had been faithful to her during that year they had first lived together as man and wife, but at the heart of what should have been Lucca’s commitment to their life as a couple had been a giant black hole.

He had insisted on hanging onto his flash single-guy apartment even though she’d disliked it. He had refused to moderate his working hours or the frequency of his trips abroad. He had continued to organise his social life without consulting her in any way. They had shared a bed but not much else and what had been shared had been entirely at his discretion. When she had found out that she was pregnant, it had hardly been surprising that she had been unable to picture Lucca adapting to the restrictions that a baby would inflict on his freedom of choice. After all, even though she had been in denial about the fact, Lucca had pretty much refused to make the smallest adaptation to being married.

But in the present that resistance to change had gone. Lucca was behaving very much like a male keen to demonstrate how adaptable he could be to family life. Even when Marco was cranky, Lucca was marvellous with him. On the most personal terms of all, she reflected in a glow of shy pleasure, Lucca was being exhaustingly passionate and flatteringly attentive.

Indeed, there was just one cloud on her horizon: Vivien always liked to know exactly where she stood. She found it hard to live in an atmosphere of uncertainty and harder still not to question it. If she had had free choice it would have been to see her future mapped out in front of her with Lucca locked into a lifetime contract, but nothing was that simple. It was true that Lucca was with her at this very moment in time, but on what terms and for how long? It would be very dangerous for her to start trying to make assumptions. She felt it was also too soon for her to seek any form of reassurance. But did they have a future together again?

Lucca reappeared, superbly dressed in an exquisitely tailored Armani suit. Tall, dark and dazzlingly handsome, he surveyed her from the foot of the tumbled bed, a charismatic smile curving his beautiful mouth. He had come up with an innovative solution to their current situation and he was proud of himself. ‘How would you like to take a trip to Italy, cara?’

Dragged from her thoughts, Vivien blinked uncertainly. ‘Italy?’ she echoed in astonishment.

‘I have a country house a few miles out of Florence. We can be private there,’ he murmured, thinking how enchanted she would be when she saw his Tuscan home. ‘We’ll leave this afternoon.’

‘That soon?’ Vivien exclaimed dizzily while wondering when and why he had bought a country house. He had talked about doing that on their honeymoon but nothing had come of it. He had already owned the fabulous villa in Rome, which had been his family home. She had visited it twice in flying visits.

His spectacular dark golden eyes rested on her. ‘It would please me a lot, bella mia,’ he told her.

Rarely had Lucca been so sincere in expressing a sentiment. His beautiful hideaway in the Tuscan hills would be ideal. The paparazzi would not know where they were. Nobody would know where Vivien was either. She was unlikely to receive potentially distressing phone calls from her solicitor or letters. They would both enjoy only perfect peace.

‘Then of course I can’t wait to go,’ Vivien answered softly.

An aspidistra in a magnificent pot was delivered a couple of hours later. She thought it was an unusual gift but rang Lucca and thanked him.

‘I know how you feel about ferns, cara mia,’ he retorted with audible satisfaction.