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“Right. And I said that was good because I don’t think they carry your size here.”
“Raffaele. Perhaps you did not—” Her brow furrowed. “Excuse me?”
“You don’t, do you, Nella?” He looked at the saleswoman. “You don’t have anything, well, um, anything in a size big enough for my wife?”
Nella’s lips twitched. “Well, Mr. Orsini, I must admit, I’d have to check.”
Chiara was bristling.
“I am a small size,” she said coldly. “A very small size. I am not a stick, which is perhaps the way you prefer your women, Signor Orsini, but I can assure you—”
“What you are,” Rafe said, pulling her into his arms, “is gorgeous.” He kissed her. And kissed her. Nella bit back a smile and drifted toward a display of cashmere sweaters. When he finally ended the kiss, what he wanted more than his next breath was to tell Nella to go away, but he behaved himself, pointed his wife toward the saleswoman and stepped safely out of the line of fire.
It was a new experience, sitting on a sofa too small and dainty for a man his size, quietly asking himself what in hell he was doing.
He had bought things for women before. Necklaces. Bracelets. Flowers and perfume and chocolate. Okay, correction. He’d had his PA buy them. He had never been part of the selection process.
A new experience, absolutely.
He felt weird at first, sitting there like some kind of potentate, nodding each time Chiara appeared. Appeared was too generous a word. Nella sort of prodded her out of the dressing room. At the start, anyway.
After a while, though, as the parade of cashmere sweaters and jeans, wool trousers and silk blouses, long dresses and short dresses kept going, there seemed to be less prodding and more, well, more prancing.
She might never admit it, but his wife was enjoying this game of dress up.
So was he.
She looked spectacular in everything and when Nella began adding shoes and boots with heels high enough to make him salivate, he wondered why nobody had ever come up with an evening’s entertainment called Watching a Beautiful Woman Parade before Her Lover.
Parade before her husband.
Well, he wasn’t. Not really. He wasn’t anybody’s husband. He wouldn’t be, not for a very long time, certainly not at the behest of his old man.
“…the last one, Raffaele.”
Rafe blinked. His wife stood before him. Her hair had come loose of that abominable knot. It spilled over her shoulders like long waves of dark silk. She wore a cashmere sweater the color of garnets, tight jeans and black leather boots that could only look better than they already did if she’d worn them without the sweater and the jeans and, damn it, he was on the verge of embarrassing himself.
“What?” he said, and cleared his throat.
“I said, this is the last outfit. You must decide which one we should buy.”
He knew there was only one correct answer. He also knew better than to offer it in front of her.
Instead, he rose to his feet.
“This looks nice,” he said, as casually as possible.
She beamed. “I think so, too.”
He nodded and turned to Nella. “My wife will take these things. In fact, she’ll wear them now.
Just add a jacket. Leather, to match the boots.”
Nella nodded and hurried off. Chiara leveled a look at him.
“Raffaele,” she said, the single word filled with warning.
“What?” he said innocently. “New York’s cool this time of year.”
“I have a coat.”
Nella hurried back with a leather jacket. “Just try this on,” he said. “Please.”
Knowledge of the night they’d shared was in his eyes. Chiara’s expression softened. “I will try it on, but I am not promising anything.”
She slipped into the jacket and turned to the mirror. Rafe watched her reflection in the glass, saw her lips form a perfect O, heard her little sigh of pleasure. It struck him that there had not been much pleasure in his wife’s life. The realization made him want to return to Sicily and shake her father until his teeth rattled.
The saleswoman raised her eyebrows. “Don’t you like the jacket, sir?”
Rafe took a steadying breath. “I like it a lot.” Forcing a smile, he took his Amex Black card from his wallet and handed it to her. “We’ll take everything,” he said quietly.
Nella’s eyebrows rose another inch. “Everything?”
“Everything,” he said, putting his finger to his lips. “Have it all delivered to my home.
Understand?”
The woman’s smile was wide and gentle. “I most certainly do, Mr. Orsini.”
Good. Excellent. At least someone understood, because he damned well didn’t. He had a wife who wasn’t really his wife. A wife he didn’t want. A wife forced upon him by the machinations of her father and his.
