She shook her head.
‘Do you want to borrow a T-shirt to sleep in?’ He’d kept everything she’d left behind in her dressing room until exactly five weeks and six days ago, when he’d returned to his home from his night in her flat and ordered everything to be donated to charity. To think he’d been a breath away from ordering it all to be doused in petrol and set alight! If Marnie had learned about that, he imagined she might take it personally, so it was just as well he’d decided she wasn’t worth the cost of the petrol.
The next shake of her head was more violent.
Promising to return shortly with fresh water, Domenico slipped out of the room and finally allowed himself a smile of grim satisfaction that his not-so-docile Marnie was back where she belonged and, even better, was pregnant with the child they’d both so longed for.
Chapter Three
MARNIE WOKE TOdusky morning light with a head aching as badly the nausea crippling her stomach and as badly as the misery gripping the rest of her. She didn’t even have to think to know where she was. She was back in her old room. Domenico would be sleeping on the other side of the dividing wall.
Lifting her aching head, she reached for the glass of water she had no recollection of him bringing to her. Her last memory was of kicking off her sandals and crawling beneath the duvet. Beside the glass was a box of tissues and a packet of ginger biscuits, and her heart clenched sharply to know he must have sent someone out to buy them for her.
She drank the water slowly, knowing from experience that drinking too quickly only agitated the nausea. A bucket had been left at the foot of the bed by her head.
When she’d drunk half the water, she put her aching head back on the pillow and prayed to feel better soon. It had been twenty hours since she’d forced a slice of toast down. Her stomach was empty, she needed to eat, but she couldn’t face nibbling even one biscuit. She needed to start feeling better soon, not just for her baby’s sake—it needed much more nutrition than Marnie was currently able to provide—but for her own. She’d never imagined morning sickness could feel this bad. The way she currently felt, she didn’t feel strong enough to walk to the bathroom, never mind cross London to her flat.
At least the room was cool. Temperatures in London had been roasting in recent weeks, and her flat didn’t have air conditioning. It was the only positive she could cling to, especially when she heard the faint sound of Domenico’s shower running, and it increased her misery to realise how attuned she still was to all the old noises of her old life. The old noises of Domenico waking and coming to life.
She supposed he would check on her when he was dressed; imagined he was this moment dreaming up some new Machiavellian scheme to make her remarry him. Running one of the world’s most successful corporate law firms had made him an expert in the art of playing dirty, and he’d used his full armoury on her.
She could only assume his carrying her into his bedroom had been another of those dirty ploys. She’d never crossed its threshold before. She’d never been invited. She’d never been carried in his arms, not even on their wedding night.
She wished she’d asked him to take her to one of the guest rooms. There were no memories of her old life in the other rooms. All her best memories had been made in this room. All her worst memories since childhood too. They were one and the same, and when she closed her eyes, the best and worst of those memories swam before her. Their wedding night.
Everything had happened super-quickly, only four weeks between proposal and wedding. Domenico had taken charge of everything. He’d been the one to decide they would marry in an English registry office with only his mother, sister, brother-in-law and two small nephews as their guests. His reasoning had been that he’d already had a big white wedding in Italy. It hadn’t occurred to him that Marnie might have wanted to marry in a church, and he’d displayed zero curiosity when she’d turned down his oh-so-gracious offer of inviting her closest family too. Domenico had been the one to decide that their celebratory meal with their handful of guests should be in a pretty countryside hotel and that they would return to London in the evening for a huge celebratory party. That party had been held in the basement of this very house. The guest list had run into the hundreds. He’d shown zero curiosity at Marnie’s failure to add any names of her own to it.
Instead of being upset at his taking charge and organising the wedding entirely for his wants and needs and his complete lack of curiosity about her, Marnie had been too busy floating on her cloud of dreams to remove the blinkers from her eyes. She was marrying Domenico! All her dreams were coming true!
She’d been pathetic.
Once the guests had gone, he’d led her upstairs—without taking her hand—and opened the door to this room. Finally, she’d thought, Domenico would express his inner feelings for her. The fact he’d held off making love, held off even kissing her, was proof of how meaningful this, their first night together, was. She’d had so much excitement charging through her veins that she’d had to imagine her feet had glue on the soles to stop herself from bouncing.
When she looked back on the Marnie who’d climbed into this bed with such high hopes and fairy-tale dreams, she wanted to rip the blinkers off and shout some sense into her.
Instead of carrying her over the threshold, he’d told her he was going to take a quick shower and to make herself comfortable, then left the room, which had killed her fantasy of him carrying her to the bed and laying her down on it. Her cloud of dreams, though, had been very resilient, and she’d showered in the pretty, feminine bathroom thinking he must be wanting to build the anticipation. Her blinkers had remained when she brushed her teeth with the only toothbrush in the pot, stayed firmly on when she slipped the white silk negligee she’d splurged half her salary on as a surprise for him, and continued to blind her when she gazed around the beautiful bedroom that was as feminine as the bathroom and practically the same size as her flat. She would swear the bed was bigger than her entire kitchen.
Innate shyness had gripped her when Domenico finally joined her in the bedroom. She was waiting for him in bed, and smiled timidly at his wide grin as he strode across the room wearing nothing but a pair of snug black hipster boxers which he’d nonchalantly shucked down his muscular legs and stepped out of, as blasé about his nudity as she was shy about hers. And why should he not be blasé? His body was as beautiful as the rest of him, and her already pounding heart came close to punching through her ribs that first time she saw him in all his naked glory. He was perfect. Everything about him, from the muscular leanness of his physique to the deep olive hue of his skin, to the dark hair that neatly covered his chest. Even the huge appendage between his legs was beautiful…not that she had anything to compare it to.
He’d climbed onto the bed, and then he’d climbed on top of her.
‘Had a good day?’ he asked when his face was over hers, his tone the same as all the times he’d asked her on a Monday morning if she’d had a good weekend.
Her senses engulfed, full to bursting with emotion, she’d nodded, pleading with her eyes for him to kiss her.
This was it. The fulfilment of all her dreams.
When she’d felt the first brush of his lips on hers, she’d melted, melted so deeply that it took a long while for the thought to hover in her near-delirious mind that his expert kisses and caresses weretooexpert. Domenico was going through all the motions she’d read about and seen in films; preparing her for sex—and preparing her beautifully, every touch and every kiss heavenly—but there was something missing and she’d had the fleeting thought that she was being made love to by an android plugged intoexpert lovermode. The only real hint of human emotion had come when he’d deemed her ready and rubbed the head of that huge appendage between her legs, and she’d whispered, ‘You will be careful?’
For the first time since their first kiss, he’d looked in her eyes, a slight frown in his brow. ‘You’ve not done this before?’
She’d shaken her head.
His lips had tightened, jaw clenching, and there had been a beat of a moment when she’d been certain he was going to climb off her. But it had only lasted a beat. His features had relaxed into their normal gorgeous, amiable state. ‘Just relax. I’ll take care of you.’
He’d been as good as his word. He’d eased himself inside her slowly, and she’d been so turned on that she’d experienced only the slightest discomfort. It had felt good. Really good. But even as he’d brought her to her first ever orgasm, there had been a disconnect in her head, like she was hovering on the ceiling watching herself climax and trying to pinpoint what was missing.
When it was over, she’d lain beneath him with her heart pounding and the feel of his heart thumping between their meshed bodies, and found herself faintly surprised that there was a beating heart in him.
