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‘Come into my study,’ Lorenzo said, standing aside just enough to let her brush past him. ‘We still have a lot to discuss.’
It was another impressive glass-walled room with sliding doors that opened directly onto a wide decking area next to a large fishpond edged with a mass of flowering purple irises.
But Chloe was only conscious of Lorenzo as she slipped through the narrow gap he’d left for her, feeling the heat of his body even in the brief moment it took to slip past. She felt tiny next to him, especially in her flat shoes. For an instant she wished again she hadn’t changed out of the formal grey suit—but then she pushed the thought aside.
She might be small, but she was a strong woman. She would not let herself be overwhelmed by Lorenzo. She’d been through such a lot over the last three months, and this conversation with Lorenzo was just another hurdle to get over. She might as well get on with it—on her own terms.
‘I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about my intention to adopt Emma,’ she said immediately, seizing the opportunity to speak first. ‘I understand why you are upset about it, but it doesn’t have to have any impact on you at all.’
‘Of course it does,’ Lorenzo said. ‘Don’t be so foolish—we’re married.’
He stared down at her impatiently. His body was already responding to her presence—she looked as sexy as hell in her figure-hugging jeans and T-shirt. But for the first time he was struck that he hardly recognised her as the woman he’d married just three months earlier. She seemed so different.
It was clear that she hadn’t had much time to spend on her appearance, but that was understandable. She looked tired and washed-out, and her freckles were more pronounced than ever against her milky complexion.
Her pale blonde hair had grown out of the sleek, tailored bob into a shapeless, uneven curtain that brushed her shoulders, with a tendency to fall forward and obscure half of her face. Her clothes were verging on scruffy and her flat shoes had seen better days.
The physical differences were distracting, but what he really found disconcerting was the change in her attitude. She had behaved badly and, even though she’d just offered him a partial apology, there was still a determined set to her shoulders and a defiant thrust to her chin.
‘No, it needn’t affect you—not if we hurry the divorce through before I take the adoption any further,’ Chloe said.
A flash of anger surged through Lorenzo and for a moment he could not believe what he was hearing. Chloe had walked out on him on their wedding day without a backwards glance, and now she had the audacity to tell him this!
It was unacceptable—there was no way that he would tolerate Chloe telling him their marriage was over.
‘No.’ The word fired out of him like a bullet. ‘There will be no divorce.’
‘Why not?’ Chloe gasped, staring at his furious face in disbelief. ‘After all the things that have happened, I thought it was what you would want.’
‘It is not what I want,’ Lorenzo grated. ‘A string of broken marriages is exactly what I intend to avoid.’
‘One divorce is not a string of broken marriages,’ Chloe said. ‘Anyway, this is hardly a marriage. It was only a few hours after the ceremony when I found out that you didn’t…’ She hesitated, searching for words that were not too painful to say. The memory of him saying that he didn’t want her love had haunted her every day for the last three months. ‘I had to leave. We could probably even get an annulment if you don’t want a divorce.’
As soon as she had spoken, she knew it was a mistake. A storm of powerful emotions raged across Lorenzo’s face but before she had a chance to react he stepped forward and seized her upper arms, pulling her roughly towards him.
‘We may not have made love on our wedding day,’ he grated, lifting her onto her tiptoes and leaning down so their faces were only inches apart, ‘but that doesn’t mean that this union was never consummated.’
Sexual energy crackled in the air between them, making it hard to think straight. But Chloe knew that was all it was. Just sex.
‘We never made love!’ She struggled in his vice-like grip, trying to pull away—but her mind was spinning with images of the many mind-blowing nights she’d spent in his arms. ‘That was the problem. I thought it meant something—that what we had was real. But it was all meaningless. You misled me into this marriage. Surely that alone is enough to make it null and void!’
‘It was never meaningless,’ Lorenzo said.
He glowered down at her, his expressive black eyebrows drawn low and menacing, and there was a dangerous predatory glint in his eyes. For a moment Chloe half expected him to kiss her—and to her utter confusion and shame she almost wanted him to.
‘Well, it clearly didn’t mean the same to you as it did to me,’ she cried as she finally managed to wrench herself out of his hold.
She stood her ground and met his eyes boldly, aware that she was still easily within the reach of his strong arms. That knowledge sent a startling jolt of excitement through her, and she felt her cheeks start to burn. She lifted her chin and glared up at him, desperately trying to ignore the way her pulse rate was suddenly responding to his physical proximity.
Her body might be attuned to his—every inch of her skin tingling with a growing desire to feel his hands on her again. But it was just hormones. Emotionally he was a million miles away.
‘You have no idea what our marriage meant to me,’ Lorenzo said.
‘No, I don’t,’ she agreed, remembering the confusing and heartbreaking argument they’d had on their wedding day, ‘but I do know that I thought I’d found my soulmate—my partner for life. Instead, all I’d found was a lie!’
‘I never lied to you,’ Lorenzo said, ‘and I thought the same thing as you—that I had found my partner for life.’
‘How can you say that?’ Chloe demanded. ‘After everything you told me about not believing in love, how can you say that?’
