The Italian's Bride

The short drive through the steep, winding roads brought them to the village, perched high above the valley, and to Portia its fairy-tale quality reinforced the feeling that she was living in a dream, one there would be no waking from.

Lucenzo took her hand and she clutched it gratefully. At least he was solid and real, and her fingers tightened round his as they wandered into the square. It was surrounded by little red-roofed houses and narrow medieval streets. Geraniums spilled from window boxes and the tiny gardens overflowed with courgettes and tomatoes ripening in the hot sun.

Avoiding the ducks and chickens wandering about the square, Lucenzo led her into the church, which was small and austerely beautiful.

‘Tomorrow I will start making all the necessary arrangements for our wedding,’ Lucenzo imparted unemotionally, glancing down at her when she shivered convulsively. ‘You are cold?’

‘No.’ It was cool in the church, but pleasantly so. Her eyes fixed on the carved pulpit, she asked quietly, verbalising the thought that had chilled her, ‘Were you married here—before?’ She pulled her hand out of his and wrapped her arms around her body.

There was a slow beat of silence, while Portia battled with an emotion she couldn’t put a name to, then Lucenzo said, ‘No. Flavia was Venetian. She was married from her home.’ He cupped her chin in one hand, forcing her to meet his eyes, and asked gently, ‘Is it important?’

‘No, of course not. I just wondered.’ Portia’s lashes lowered heavily. She couldn’t look at him while telling lies. Her own eyes might reveal the truth: that it mattered very much indeed.

He had loved his first wife so much that he still mourned her. No other woman could take her place in his heart. She knew all that, and had accepted it because there was no other option. But that didn’t mean she could go through a wedding ceremony, stand exactly where his beloved lost Flavia had stood, and know that when he looked at her he would be remembering the one and only love of his life and making bitter comparisons.

‘Perhaps we should get back into the sunlight.’ She gave a tiny manufactured shiver, flashed him a smile that was so bright it hurt, and walked to the door with her head held high.

She couldn’t afford to let him see how she really felt about him. He would hate it. As far as he was concerned their marriage would be nothing more than a legal contract, with duty on his side and compliance to the family will on hers.

Marriage to a clinging, love-sick loon would be the very last thing he wanted!

‘Slow down!’ He caught up with her as she stumbled down the steps, taking her hand. ‘There is a good alimentari on the opposite side of the square—we will take food with us into the hills. You would like that?’

A disarmingly charismatic smile lit his staggeringly handsome features. Portia had never seen him look this relaxed and, yes, happy. The important banker-man on a rare holiday, she divined, melting at once, instinctively giving in to the need to please the man she loved, even if knowledge of that state of affairs was to be kept well away from him.

‘Sounds good!’ she said, with another sunny smile—one she kept firmly in place as they crossed the square.

Lucenzo paused to exchange a few words with the old women who sat sewing on their doorsteps. They addressed him as padrone, grinning and talking so rapidly that Portia, with her beginner’s tenuous grasp of the language, could barely understand one word in a hundred.

Standing by while a round little man kept up a joyful running commentary as he filled Lucenzo’s order, breathing in the smell of freshly baked bread, coffee beans, cheese and garlic, Portia heard her stomach grumble at an embarrassing volume. Lucenzo’s dark eyes met hers, smiling eyes, and she knew his thoughts were the same as hers.

They had both been too preoccupied to eat supper last night, and she wasn’t sure about him, but she hadn’t touched breakfast, other than a sip of scalding coffee.

It was a moment of intimacy she thought she might remember for ever, and something ached inside her that had nothing at all to do with lack of food.

Half an hour later Lucenzo pulled the car off the narrow twisting road and Portia, entranced, breathed, ‘Oh, Lucenzo—how lovely!’

High meadows overlooked cypress-covered hills, and further down the valley vineyards swept to the edge of the river.

‘We will walk a little way.’ Lucenzo’s arm rested on the back of her seat, and the yearning to lean back, turn her head and taste the tanned, hair-roughened skin of his forearm, was pretty well unendurable.

Her eyes must have given her away, because he gave her a slow, sleepy, incredibly sexy smile and murmured, ‘Later. First we walk and then we eat and then…’ His eloquent shrug said it all. ‘And then we will see.’

High heels weren’t the ideal footwear for walking through the long flowering grasses, Portia thought. Or perhaps her knees were still shaking with the effects of what he’d said, the way he’d looked at her, his eyes intent on her face, drifting from feature to feature for long moments, then narrowing as his gaze slid down to rest on the evidence of breasts that were peaking with tingling anticipation against the thin silky fabric of her scarlet shirt.

The second time she stumbled Lucenzo swept her laughingly into his arms and manoeuvred the bulky carrier of food onto her tummy. ‘Your legs are too pretty to break, cara.’ He placed a swift, all-too-brief kiss on lips that were still parted with the surprise of being swept off her feet. ‘It is a pity no one ever comes here, not even the most intrepid tourist, to see how manfully I play the hero!’

This unprecedented playful mood made him totally irresistible, so Portia didn’t even try. One hand was clutching the carrier, but the other was free to loop around his neck, to drag his head down to claim a kiss that was far from brief this time.

Portia was still breathless and trying to recover from the after-effects when Lucenzo sank bonelessly down in a grassy hollow and held her firmly on his lap. One hand curved round the tight fullness of her breast, the other wound the silky fall of her hair around his wrist, keeping her captive to demands that were made explicit when he fluidly rolled her over and crushed her soft mouth with driven hunger.

What could have been hours or days later, she watched him from beneath eyelids that had suddenly become alarmingly heavy. His breathing was as raggedy as her own and his heart was beating wildly beneath the palm of her hand.

His eyes were liquid with unashamed hunger as his fingers lifted to the buttons on her shirt. They worked deftly, those long, lean fingers, and he was removing the third from its moorings when a terrible feeling of loss overwhelmed her. This was all wrong for her! She pushed his hand away and blurted out feverishly, ‘No, Lucenzo!’ Looking for something to say to explain her sudden rejection, she added dully, ‘I’m hungry.’

‘Ah.’ He gave her a wry smile, immediately lifting himself off the elbow he’d been leaning on, then turning to hold out his hands and haul her into a sitting position. ‘So am I, bella, so am I. But my appetite will wait until after we’ve eaten.’

Sex for the sake of it, she thought dolefully as he reached for the forgotten carrier. ‘Appetite’ summed it up exactly. Something to be forgotten once it was assuaged. She had imagined she could live with that. It was part of the bargain after all. But now she wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t sure at all.