Delucca's Marriage Contract

Her hand tightened around the paper. ‘I didn’t know anything about this. You can’t possibly think I did, do you?’

But that was a rhetorical question.

Gianni pretended to consider for a moment and then said musingly, ‘Let me see, from the moment we’ve met, you’ve displayed a dizzying array of roles in an obvious effort to distract me from what your real agenda was.’

Keelin opened her mouth to defend herself again but he cut her off brutally. ‘Don’t bother wasting your breath. The answer is yes, I absolutely believe you were all over this. Your father has admitted that your role was crucial—via the marriage of convenience, so that when he went down, I’d feel somehow obliged to step in and save him, for the sake of family ties. The depth of your collusion with him is astonishing. He knew he was in trouble and your loyalty knew no bounds, even going so far as to fake disharmony.’

Keelin gasped at that injustice. ‘I did not collude with my father, anything but. Everything I told you was true—I didn’t want to marry you. I just went along with it to placate him.’

The extent of her father’s machinations was too horrific to absorb under Gianni’s disgusted gaze and he saved her the need to do so. He put up a hand. ‘Save it. I’m done. We’re done, Keelin. That divorce you wanted so badly? It’s yours. Now get out. I never want to see you again.’

* * *

Gianni felt nothing as he watched Keelin flounder, her skin as pale as alabaster, the golden lustre of the last week leached away. He felt nothing because ice flowed through his veins.

A voice urged him that perhaps he was being too hasty? But he shut it down. From day one Keelin had been running rings around him. Doing her best to distract him with enough smoke and mirrors to make sure he didn’t look too closely at the deal, or suspect that O’Connor was in trouble.

The longer Keelin stood there though, the more he could feel the ice thawing in his veins, being replaced by heat. He curled his hands around his desk behind him and gripped it so tight he heard his knuckles crack.

Damn her. Why wasn’t she moving? He felt something surge inside him, something terrible and wild. Uncontrollable. ‘Get out, Keelin.’

She seemed to come out of some sort of shocked trance and she looked as if she might say something, and without even knowing what he was doing, Gianni found himself standing in front of her feeling nothing but pure rage. He told himself that it stemmed from having been betrayed professionally, but he knew that it stemmed from a much more personal betrayal.

If possible she went even paler. But then she stepped up to him and said very deliberately, ‘I told you that you don’t scare me. You’re not your father, Gianni.’

She turned then and left, and Gianni caught sight of his reflection in a mirror. For a moment he almost didn’t recognise his own twisted features. He looked at his hands and noticed that they were shaking.

Why had she just done that? Said that? Had she seen it on his face? And known that he might see himself and think the worst?

Damn her. She knew too much, that was all, and right to the last was trying to distract him with smoke and mirrors.

Three weeks later

‘Signor Delucca can’t be disturbed.’

Keelin tried to maintain a calm facade in the face of the frosty reception she was receiving from Gianni’s staff. She hadn’t got as far as the lift today before someone had stopped her. She had no doubt that her husband had left very clear instructions where she was concerned. Namely, not to admit her under any circumstances.

It didn’t go unnoticed that Lorenzo, the doorman, was gone. Had he been fired for letting her into the inner sanctum? Somehow when Keelin thought of Gianni on that last day, she wouldn’t doubt it.

‘I’ll wait.’

The sleek efficient-looking brunette was disapproving. ‘Miss O’Connor, I really can’t recommend—’

Keelin felt irritation rise. ‘It’s still Signora Delucca, and I said I’ll wait. Grazie.’

She went and sat down in one of the plush chairs near the receptionist’s desk, staring straight ahead, her hands on her leather briefcase. She felt hot and prickly at the thought of seeing Gianni again, but determined.

She’d arrived in Rome from Dublin a short time before, dressed as if she was going to an interview in a sober dark grey trouser suit and court shoes, hair tamed into a chignon.

Keelin heard the woman on the phone, presumably to Gianni, speaking in low hushed tones and too fast for her to make out any words. But of course there was no sign of him.

To her chagrin, she couldn’t get moments of their time together out of her head, like a bad movie running on a loop. And as time ticked on, Keelin became more and more determined, anger at Gianni festering like a ball of acid in her belly. She could absolutely understand why he was so livid with her but there was no evidence to support his accusations of her involvement. It merely proved how duped she’d become—believing that something had changed between them in Umbria.

He’d played her like a virtuoso—especially with that whole letting her go so that she’d come back act. He’d known her better than she had herself. Damn him. But he would never guess how she felt. She’d come today because, in spite of everything, she owed him. Her father owed him, but he was too much of a mess to sort anything out.

She would do what she’d come to do and then go back to Dublin and pick up the pieces of her life. A life where her family business no longer existed. To her surprise, all she’d been feeling in relation to that news had been a sense of liberation.

The receptionist was packing up her stuff for the day and Keelin looked at her watch in despair. But just then the phone rang and the girl picked it up. She looked at Keelin and then appeared to pout slightly before replying and hanging up.