The Temporary Mrs. Marchetti

‘More champagne?’ Cristiano asked into the silence.

Alice put her hand over the top of her glass. ‘Better not. I’ve had too much already.’

‘You’re not driving so if you want another I don’t mind.’

She waited a couple of beats. ‘Did you ever meet the person who—?’

‘No.’ The word was delivered with such finality it sounded like a gavel falling.

Alice moistened her lips. ‘Did they express any remorse? Make any effort to contact you or your grandparents?’

His mouth was twisted in an embittered line. ‘No. He was the sort of person who blamed everyone but himself for his wrongdoing. He didn’t even get jail time. The judge overseeing the case had connections with his influential father. But karma got him in the end. He was killed in a bar fight. A drug deal gone sour.’ He shifted his water glass half a centimetre and then did a slow tap of his fingers on the tablecloth. ‘I thought it would help to know he’d got his comeuppance, but strangely it didn’t.’

Alice reached across the table and grasped his hand. ‘That’s because you’re not at heart a vengeful man.’

His half-smile was a little crooked. ‘Am I not?’ His fingers toyed with her engagement ring. ‘You would not have liked what I was thinking when you stormed out of that restaurant seven years ago.’

She looked at their j

oined hands rather than meet his gaze. ‘I’m sorry I reacted the way I did back then. It was so...so petulant and immature of me to behave like that.’

He gave her hand a quick squeeze before he released it to sit back in his chair. ‘I shouldn’t have put you under so much pressure. I was in too much of a rush after my grandfather died.’ He did that slow tapping thing again next to his glass, his forehead creasing in a frown. ‘Funerals can do that to you. Make you realise how fragile life is.’

Alice thought about him attending his family’s funerals, the weight of grief he’d had to shoulder so bravely as a child, and then as an adult saying goodbye to each of his grandparents in turn. She had only been to one funeral—an elderly client who had passed away after a short illness. It had been sad but not tragic. Her family had celebrated her long life and sent her off with a party that had gone on until the early hours of the morning. What did Alice know of how it must feel to say that final goodbye to someone so beloved as a parent, grandparent or sibling?

‘All the same, I wish I’d been a little kinder to you.’ She let out a tiny sigh. ‘I guess that’s why you didn’t contact me.’

Something flickered in his gaze. Surprise? Alarm? Regret? It was hard to distinguish which. ‘Did you want me to?’

Alice wasn’t sure it served any purpose to admit to how much she’d hoped he would. What was done was done. It was in the past and best left there. ‘No. We were over as far as I was concerned.’

His eyes held hers for a long beat or two. ‘How soon did you date someone else?’

She gave a little shrug. ‘I don’t know...six or so months maybe.’ She flashed him a brittle glance before she could stop herself. ‘Certainly longer than it took you.’

There was a small silence.

‘I made sure I was seen with other women within days of us breaking up,’ he said. ‘But it was eight months before I could bring myself to sleep with anyone.’

Alice flickered her eyelids in shock. He’d waited that long? ‘Eight months? Really?’

He gave a grim nod. ‘It just didn’t feel right rushing into another intense relationship.’

‘It was pretty intense, wasn’t it?’

He gave that sexy half-smile again and reached for her hand. ‘It still is.’

* * *

The door was barely closed behind them when they returned to Cristiano’s villa when he reached for her. The drive home from the restaurant had been a form of foreplay. His looks, his touch on her thigh when he changed the gears, the throb and roar of the engine that reminded Alice of the potent hormones surging through his body. His mouth came down on hers in a scorching kiss, his tongue tangling with hers in a provocative duel that made her tingle with anticipation.

She tore at his clothes with desperate hands, sliding her palms over the warm hard flesh of his chest and abdomen. He shrugged off his shirt and set to work on her dress, ripping down the zipper at the back and sliding his hand down the length of her spine, holding her against his pulsing heat. He brought his mouth to her neck and décolletage, his lips and tongue lighting spot fires beneath her skin. His hands cupped her breasts from below, pushing them upwards for the descent of his mouth.

She gasped out her pleasure when his mouth closed over one tightly budded nipple, his tongue swirling around the sensitive areola until she was sagging at the knees.

Alice sent her hands lower to free him from his trousers and underwear, taking him in her hand and stroking and squeezing him the way she knew he liked. He groaned his approval against her breast, creating a buzzing sensation that made the hairs on her scalp lift in a Mexican wave.

He lifted his mouth from her breast, his voice low and deep and gravelly with desire. ‘Ti desidero.’