The Temporary Mrs. Marchetti

Her lips twisted in a rueful motion. ‘No, it was completely consensual, it’s just I hated every minute of it. Not that there were too many minutes of it, mind you. Three or four at the most.’

Cristiano brushed back some strands of her tousled hair from her forehead. He hated the thought of her making love with someone else. Hated, hated, hated it. For years he’d refused to think about it. He wouldn’t allow his mind to torture him with the thought of another man touching her body the way he had touched her, holding her the way he held her. He knew it was arrogant, but he wanted to believe he was the only one who brought that passionate response out of her. His body. His touch. His need of her triggered the fire in her blood in the same way she triggered his.

‘If the chemistry isn’t there then the sex will always suffer.’

Her fingertip traced a slow line around his mouth. ‘That’s something we were never short of, isn’t it?’ Her words had a faint wistfulness about them.

He captured her finger and kissed the end of it. ‘No, that’s one thing we had in spades.’ In spades and buckets and truck and trailer loads. Still had. He could feel it thrumming between them, the way their bodies meshed as if unable to keep their distance.

Alice linked her arms around his head, her fingers lifting and tugging and releasing the strands of his hair in a way that made every inch of his scalp tingle. ‘I’ve never enjoyed sex with anyone else like I do with you.’ Her lips gave a little sideways quirk. ‘I should hate you for that. You’ve ruined my sex life.’

Cristiano gave her a look of mock reproach. ‘You haven’t done mine any favours, either, young lady.’

Her eyes studied his for a long moment. ‘Are you saying it’s...better with me?’

He pressed a soft kiss on her forehead. ‘It’s different.’

Two fine pleats appeared between her eyes. ‘How?’

He smoothed away her frown with the pad of his index finger. ‘We should get a move on. It will take an hour or so to get to Stresa.’

Her frown snapped back. ‘Don’t change the subject. Talk to me, Cristiano. Tell me what was different—’

‘Look, it just was, okay?’ Cristiano rolled away and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. What did she want him to say? That he’d missed her every goddam day since? That every time in the last seven years when he’d touched another woman he’d thought of her? And how much he wished it were her? That sex was just sex with anyone else but with her it was making love?

No way was he going to say that.

Even if it was regrettably true.

He heard her sit up on the bed, and then felt her silky hand travel the length of his rigid spine, from his neck to his tailbone, in a soothing caress that made every knob of his vertebrae quiver. She leant her head against his back, her arms going around his waist, the little rush of air from her sigh tickling the skin behind his shoulder blades like the wings of a moth.

‘Don’t be mad at me,’ she said.

Cristiano let out his own sigh and swivelled round to gather her against his side. He dropped a kiss to the top of her head. ‘I’m not mad at you, tesoro.’

I’m mad at myself.

For still wanting her when he should have been well and truly over her. He wasn’t some creepy stalker guy who couldn’t let go. There should be no reason he was stuck on her to the point where he couldn’t bear to contemplate a future with anyone else. He could have anyone he wanted. He didn’t have to fight for dates. If anything, he had to fight them off. But something about Alice had stayed with him. Like a tune he couldn’t get out of his head.

Alice snaked a hand up around his neck, gazing into his eyes with such intensity he wondered if she could sense how much he had missed her. That in spite of all his denials and dissembling she knew—her body knew—he only felt this body-stunning magic with her. Her eyes went to his mouth, her tongue sneaking out to moisten the soft swell of her lips.

‘I don’t want us to bicker and fight any more. A relationship shouldn’t be a competition. It’s so...so exhausting.’

Cristiano slid a hand under the curtain of her hair, his mouth coming down to within reach of hers. ‘Then we’d better put that energy to much better use, sì?’

Her eyes shone with anticipation and she lifted her face for his kiss. ‘Now you’re talking.’

After a quick breakfast, Cristiano drove Alice the ninety-kilometre distance to his grandmother’s villa in Stresa situated on the shores of Lake Maggiore. Alice hadn’t forgotten how beautiful the lake was with the historic Isola Bella and Isola Superiore a short boat trip from the shore. But seeing it again on a gorgeous autumn morning with the leaves just starting to turn was nothing less than breathtaking.

Cristiano pulled into the driveway of the villa, which had remained empty since his grandmother’s death. He’d explained on the journey there that Volante had insisted on dying at home even though he had offered to have her with him in Milan. He had visited as often as he could and Alice was not surprised to hear he had been with Volante when she’d drawn her last breath. But it made her wonder if coming back now his grandmother was gone was far more painful than he was letting on.

Cristiano opened the front door and led the way inside the quiet villa. It was built on a grand scale with dozens of rooms both formal and informal. It was so big it should not have felt like a family home and yet seven years ago it had.

Not now, however.

Now it was a place of ghosts. The furniture was draped in dustsheets and the long corridors and high windows with their curtains drawn were like eyelids closed over tired eyes. Silence crept from every corner. Achingly lonely silence.

Alice slid her hand into Cristiano’s, her own eyes suddenly tearing up. ‘It must be so hard to come here now. Have you been back since...?’