The Marriage He Must Keep

Her heart swelled and she encouraged him to play out their long, passionate kiss, rubbing against him invitingly as she felt his arousal.

He pressed her away with a warning flashing in his gaze. “I’ll need another cold shower at this rate. Will you dress and come down?”

“They’re going to hate me,” she sighed, but lowered to flat feet and moved into the walk-in closet. Of course she would accompany him. It wasn’t just for Lorenzo, either. It was for Sandro. For this marriage they were trying to save.

She wanted to save it, she admitted tentatively to herself.

“I sent an email to Michaela to come and fit you with a new wardrobe,” he said, following to lean in the doorway as she started to remove the overwrap for her nightdress. “You’ll need something for Nonno’s birthday anyway.”

“Thank you.” She paused with the open ties in her hands, glancing at him.

He made no move to leave, looking very comfortable leaning there.

“Is that all?” she asked.

“Unless you have something.”

“No, I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes or so.”

“Good.” Still he didn’t move.

She folded her arms. “Are you planning to stand there and watch me change?”

“Yes.”

“No,” she assured him, moving forward to press him out of the closet. “You’re not.”

“We have been married too long for shyness,” he argued, refusing to be budged, hands finding her hips and straying freely.

She caught them and pushed them off her. “Go have a baby and come back and talk to me about shyness.” She applied her full weight to his shoulder, pushing until he made a tsk noise and backed out of the doorway.

“You’re being silly. You’re beautiful,” he told her.

She pulled the door closed to lock him out.

His blurry silhouette remained on the far side of the frosted glass. She stayed where she was, watching him.

He stepped closer, one hand pressing so his fingertips were a half circle of dots, as if he was trying to touch her through the barrier. “Octavia.” That was his sex voice and sent the best kind of shivers down her spine. “I wish we’d had the lights on last night. I liked everything I felt.”

A giddy happiness broke open inside her, making her smile wobble as she admitted breathlessly, “I did, too.”

He stood there a moment, as if he might be willing her to come out again. She was tempted, but then he finally said, “You’ll meet me downstairs?”

“Fifteen minutes,” she promised.

“Grazie.” He left.

While she stood at the door much as he had, as though she was waiting for this translucent barrier to dissipate so she could be with him and finally see him clearly.

* * *

Alessandro meant to spend the week in town, but he felt a lingering unease where his wife was concerned. Despite the delicious physical connection they’d enjoyed the other night, her leap to suspicions in the morning told him she still didn’t trust him. As he spoke to her through the week, she reminded him of the woman she was in London, offering facts with very little editorial.

It made him dwell on the conversation with his grandfather that had kept him up late their first night here.

“Your father taught me to let my son make his own choices, so I will support all the decisions you’ve made, Sandro,” Ermanno had said.

“You were furious at some of the choices Papa made,” Sandro had scoffed. “Eloping with my mother...”

His grandfather had swept his hand through the air. “Her family was...well, you know we’ve had to carry some of them at different times. And her capricious ways...” He shook his head. “Such a wild little bird.” But there was fondness in his papery voice.

“She’s bringing her new fiancé to your party. She wants your blessing. I couldn’t talk her out of it,” Sandro warned. “If you want me to—”

“No, no. I would like to see her,” Ermanno insisted. “She’ll have my blessing. She loved my son.” His grandfather’s eyes had gone watery and sincere. “And she gave you to me, even left you here when she went off to marry her Englishman. I have come to love her like my own daughter. I was angry with your father for marrying her, but now I’m grateful. And I worry for you, because Octavia doesn’t love you.”

Sandro’s heart had derailed in his chest.

“Yet,” his grandfather had added, voice distant and muffled in the rush that filled Sandro’s ears. “Your wife can come to love you, Sandro. Mine did.” His grandfather sobered with the grief he still felt nearly ten years after Nonna had passed away. “If you let her.”