The Marriage He Must Keep

He was about done with challenges for the moment, though, he thought with a scowl.

He slid his attention to the tomato slices sprinkled with chopped basil and scooped a circle of toasted bread into the tapenade, topped it with an artichoke heart, then chased it with two of the stuffed grape leaves.

“You could have brought him down,” he chided. “You’re hiding.” Not that he blamed her. He had no desire to go to the dining room now he was here.

“I’m acclimating,” she corrected. “It’s nice to feel the sun and smell the earth and hear Italian again.” She tilted her closed eyes to the sky.

His conscience pinched, but then he reminded himself she’d been considering staying in London. He might have sent her away, but he’d brought her home, too.

The thought didn’t ease the havoc inside him. His muscles were still twitching with aggression after holding himself back so heroically in his meeting with his grandfather and his uncle.

A fierce need to see his wife had driven him in swift steps up to their room. Funny how, after years of being the safety net for his entire family, he’d alienated nearly all of them and really only had an ally in Octavia. No one else appreciated the depth of betrayal he was experiencing and it bound him to her in a way he hadn’t recognized until his uncle had confronted him on it.

“What hold does she have on you that you’d choose her over Primo?” That bark from Giacomo had lit a fire in Alessandro. His own grandfather had asked if there was some way—or reason—her family could have done this.

Octavia was his wife, he’d near shouted in completely uncharacteristic ferocity. They’d stared at him flatly. The statement wasn’t an explanation.

You don’t choose a woman over your family, his uncle had spat, adding to his grandfather, He was always unpredictable. It had been a deliberate attempt to goad Alessandro into losing his temper completely.

It had nearly worked. Instead, he’d said something that he hadn’t even computed until the words had come out of his mouth. “Octavia is my family. She and my son are as much my family as any of you. I protect all of my family. Provided they remain loyal to me.”

Thankfully Octavia’s eyes remained closed and she couldn’t see the barely banked rage he was still struggling to contain. Or his confusion as he belatedly wondered if he really was choosing his marriage over his fealty to the Ferrantes. He had fashioned himself into a bastion of dependability and allegiance and couldn’t let a woman shake his resolve. That’s why he hadn’t wanted a love match when he married.

But as she’d held him off this past month, showing more caution than warmth, he’d been acutely aware of a sense of loss. He was ready to do just about anything to get back what he’d had.

Which disturbed him.

Leaning his backside on the balcony rail, he studied his wife, trying to determine how she was managing to affect him so deeply. She wasn’t a calculating femme fatale making a deliberate effort to provoke him. Quite the opposite. In some ways she was more aloof than when they’d first met, but wasn’t doing it as a lure.

She was genuinely disappointed and mistrustful, which cut a straight line through his ego.

Plus, she was so beautiful his throat hurt just looking at her. The baby weight still softening her pretty features made them even more sensual and fascinating. Her hair was loose and longer than he remembered it. He wanted to comb his hands through the silky strands, letting them caress between his fingers, then bury his nose in the almond-and-nutmeg scent. That hair of hers had been a fetish since his first whiff. Why?

Her color was better, he noted, though her brow remained tense and there was an underlying anxiety in the somberness of her mouth. She still seemed very wary and worried.

But she’d called him Sandro earlier. It had been so sweet it had touched off a pang in his chest, until he’d seen how badly she’d wanted to swallow it back, fearful she’d let her defenses down too far. He’d taken such encouragement from that little slip and had been shaken by how much she’d regretted letting it happen.

He sighed at the gridlock before him.

She opened her eyes.

“Don’t you want to look at the view?” She indicated the cushioned chair on the other side of the table, then nodded past him to the sweep of land toward the distant water.

“I am,” he said, delivering his compliment with a dose of self-mockery, mostly because it was so damned true. He could barely take his eyes off her.

And he wasn’t above using every weapon at his disposal to overcome her defenses, even flattery.

Which he supposed she realized because she dismissed his words with a downward sweep of her lashes. It should have been a relief that she didn’t know how sincere he was in his praise of her, that he was entranced by her, but it just reminded him that she didn’t even trust him to be honest about something as simple as her beauty.