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“You realise that you are about to turn our marriage into a battle?” he raked in undertone back to her, his mouth taut. “Dio, when I was prepared to try and put everything in the past where it belongs, you begin to cause trouble. It won’t work, cara, I warn you.”
She swallowed with difficulty. “Content yourself with what you’ve got, Alex. It’s all you’re going to get.”
Unhidden anger gleamed in his narrowed scrutiny. “Don’t start it up again.”
“You started it. You got us both into this marriage,” she reminded him.
He sprang upright and strode up to the built-in bar, where he barked at the steward, who hurried to serve him. He looked ready to commit murder. Golden brown eyes arrowed piercingly over her coolly composed face, and against her will she trembled. She had had to tell him before tonight. Perhaps she had not employed particular tact. But there really wasn’t a diplomatic way of telling Alex that he was barred from his wife’s bedroom. He behaved as if he owned her body and soul. He always had. And he only wanted to exert his rights over her sexually in revenge. He had told her that with unforgettable candour. She was amazed that he could still behave as if she was the one being unreasonable.
“Daddy’s cross,” Nicky whispered when she got down to help him with his puzzle. “Did I do somefin’ wrong?”
“No.” She gave him a guilty little hug. Alex was emanating enough hostility to carry them to Rome without jet engines.
“Did you do somefin’ wrong?” Nicky asked guilelessly.
Reluctantly, she approached Alex. “Nicky is picking up the atmosphere,” she reproved tautly.
His fingers came down on her tense shoulder and she froze. His other hand splayed across her narrow back as he drew her firmly up against him. Deliberately taking advantage of her inability to struggle, he tasted her angrily parted lips. She stopped breathing, she was so busy fighting the danger of response. He laughed with throaty enjoyment against her lips, and merely deepened the pressure.
“Stop it!” Nicky screeched hurling himself at Alex’s legs. “That’s my mummy, leave her alone!”
Alex released her and dropped down lithely in front of their son. She had expected him to lose his temper, but he soothed Nicky and lifted him up, leaving her out of what appeared to be a man-to-man exchange. Annoyance snaked through her. It was the first time she had ever seen her child turn in his distress to someone else.
Nicky returned with enormous, hurt, dark eyes to stare at her.
“What on earth did you say to him?” she demanded of Alex.
“That I won’t be leaving you alone. What did you expect me to say?” Alex enquired with a brilliant smile. “What he just saw he has to get used to. He’s likely to see a lot of it in the future. That’s a fact of life.”
“Not of mine,” she assured him through gritted teeth.
* * *
IT WAS POURING with rain when they landed in Rome. The Veranchetti home there was an enormous, impressive town house behind high walls. Kerry was quiet as the car wafted them through the gates. The courtyard was full of opulent vehicles. The family had evidently turned out en masse. Her own tension mounted another notch.
“It will be all right,” Alex said gently. “I promise you that.”
“I’m not worried. They’re mostly a set of hidebound troglodytes with too much money,” she parried wildly.
“What’s a troglodyte?” In the echoing hall with its alcoves and tall Chinese vases, Alex bent his dark head teasingly.
She reddened. “It’s not very complimentary.”
A brown forefinger confidently brushed a straying strand of vibrant hair back from her cheekbone, and his breath fanned her cheek. “It’s like a sunset, your hair. A glorious, multicoloured sunset,” he growled half under his breath. “The very first time I saw you I imagined it cascading over white pillows…”
The tip of her tongue snaked out to moisten her dry lips. They had gone from troglodytes to sunsets to pillows. He lowered his head and ran the tip of his own tongue erotically along the same path, hunger burnishing his golden eyes, a devouring, smoulderingly sexual hunger which tightened his hard bone structure and sent Kerry into shaken retreat. “Later…” Alex practically tasted the word.
No, there wasn’t going to be a later. Her colour high, she spun and recognised the tall, dark young man standing watching them. “Mario?”
“Kerry.”
Alex’s younger brother bent to kiss her cheek. While she had been away, he had grown to manhood from a lanky and boyish sixteen. He backed off again awkwardly, stuck for the verbal social niceties to fit the occasion. Nicky streaked past them. “Nonna!” he hollered at the top of his voice.
On the threshold of the crowded drawing-room Kerry stilled in surprise. Her son went hurtling cheerfully towards the thin woman with the patrician features seated in a wing-backed chair by the fire. His grandmother, Athene. He gave her an exuberant hug and grabbed her hand. “Come and meet my mummy.”
Oh, my God, Kerry thought, feeling Alex’s hand welding to her spine like a bar preventing retreat. “He’s her favourite,” he divulged.
But only next to her firstborn son, Alex. Athene looked upon Alex with a fierce pride which only dimmed when her eyes slid to the wife by his side. A cool kiss was pressed to her cheek. “You are welcome,” Athene said graciously.
She was threaded through the gathered cliques. Alex was one of six children, with three sisters and two brothers. Between them they had about thirty offspring, or so it had always seemed to Kerry. Both the sisters and the daughter-in-law conformed in the Veranchetti clan. They maintained their husbands’ homes and raised children and shopped as if there was no tomorrow…real exciting stuff, Kerry thought wryly. Entering this old-style family was like stepping back a century in women’s rights to a time where the men were still men and the women were delighted they were. Alex’s rule here was supreme. By some quixotic quirk of heredity, none of his siblings had an ounce of his drive and self-assurance. They followed him like a flock of sheep. His sisters adored him and his brothers admired him. His opinion was sought on the most minor decisions.
The general warmth of her reception surprised her. Athene’s frosty smiles were the equivalent of a red carpet. It seemed that her supposed infidelity remained a secret within the family circle. Her discomfiture eased and Nicky bounced along beside her, showing off by introducing her to all and sundry.
“Nicky is so like you,” Alex’s middle sister, Carina, exclaimed.
“Me?” Kerry laughed. She only ever saw Alex when she looked at her son. His amber-brown eyes, black hair and lean, above average height all echoed his paternity.
“Your smile…he has your smile and your liveliness.” Carina patted the seat beside her. “How does it feel to be back?”
But I’m not back, I’m only passing through…where? Dear heaven, where were they spending the night?
“A little strange,” Kerry admitted truthfully. Yet there was a subtle difference to her own responses. She was no longer overwhelmed by the opulence and the formality which Athene insisted upon. It wasn’t Kerry and it never would be, but she didn’t feel a failure simply because she did not fit the family female mould. It was over four years. A woman did a lot of maturing in that time, she acknowledged.
“I am pleased that Alex and you are together again,” Carina declared carefully. “Mamma was…er…disturbed by the divorce, and Alex cut himself off from the family for a long time. He…how you say…? Dug himself into work. Alex, he’s like Mamma. Too strong…you understand?”
“No,” she said frankly.
Carina moved a plump beringed hand. “He can’t bend, he can’t talk of what he really feels…you know? But where would we be without Alex to tell us what to do?”
Heaven? “I don’t know,” said Kerry dutifully.
“Alex is the clever one in the family. We were lost when he was too busy for us, but I think we learned that Alex had a life to lead of his own,” Carina confided, her round,
