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CHAPTER ONE
SHE SHOULDN’T BE HERE! Not at her ex-husband’s wedding.
Sienna Fisher glanced frantically around the packed church, wondering if she could escape without anyone noticing.
There was not a chance, she decided, her heart sinking. She was wedged into a pew filled with guests, and sitting next to her was the little girl she had found crying outside in the graveyard. Sienna’s maternal instincts had been aroused by the child’s distress and she’d taken hold of her hand and led her into the church via the vestry to find her grateful mother, who was sitting on the other side of her daughter.
The organist started playing and as the rousing notes of Handel’s Arrival of the Queen of Sheba soared to the rafters, a ripple of interest ran through the congregation. Every head turned towards the main door to catch a first glimpse of the bride. Only Sienna stared straight ahead at the broad shoulders of Domenico De Conti, the man she had married in this very church ten years ago.
Standing with Nico was his younger brother, Daniele. Both men were tall but Nico had the advantage of a good three inches over Danny. Despite a five-year age-gap the brothers had always been close, and it was no surprise to Sienna that Nico had chosen Danny to be his best man again—just as he had done for their wedding.
Her breath caught in her throat when Nico turned his head. She assumed he would look towards his bride but instead his gaze was focused directly on her, as if some sixth sense had alerted him to her presence. From across the nave, she sensed his shock. Evidently her wide-brimmed hat did not conceal her face as well as she had hoped it would, but she hadn’t planned to hang around long enough for Nico to notice her. She’d just wanted a glimpse of the man she had once been madly in love with before he had betrayed her and broken her heart.
Sienna hadn’t intended to enter the church, and, earlier, she had hidden behind a tombstone when she’d seen Nico and Danny arrive. Nico must still have a passion for fast cars and had driven himself to his wedding in a sleek silver sports car. She’d watched the two men chat to the vicar for a few minutes before they had walked into the church, and she’d been about to leave when she was alerted to the sound of a child sobbing.
It was purely by accident that she was part of the congregation. Her heart fluttered in panic. She was too far away from Nico to make out the colour of his eyes that burned into her like laser beams, but she knew they were the bright blue of the sky above the moors on a cloudless summer’s day. His eyes and incredible bone structure were the only features he had inherited from his English mother, but for the rest: his almost black hair that was swept back from his brow, the dark stubble shading his jaw and his olive-gold skin denoted his Italian heritage.
Ten years ago Nico had been a boyishly handsome bridegroom. Now he was in his mid-thirties, his features had honed and hardened to chiselled perfection. He was sinfully gorgeous, with a latent strength and power in his whipcord body that his elegant grey morning suit could not disguise.
Sienna snatched her gaze from Nico’s, shaken by the effect he had on her after all this time. They had been divorced for eight years and she had come to the church today to prove to herself that she was over him. Her heart thudded as she waited for him to denounce her. Surely he would stop the wedding and instruct an usher to escort her from the building.
She felt her cheeks grow warm at the prospect of being humiliated in front of the population of the Yorkshire village where she had grown up. Although she hadn’t recognised many locals in Much Matcham’s pretty church of St Augustine’s. She supposed that most of the guests at the high-society wedding were from London, or Verona where Nico’s hotel business, De Conti Leisure, was based.
Her eyes were drawn involuntarily back to his dangerously attractive face and a sizzle of heat seared her body, a hunger that only Nico had ever stirred in her. Even more confusing was the fierce possessiveness that swept through her. He was hers, cried a voice inside her. But in a few minutes he would promise himself to another woman. Tears, hot and unexpected, stung her eyes when he finally turned his head away and looked to the front of the church while he waited for his bride.
Sienna’s hands shook as she pretended to study the order of service sheet that an usher had given her. ‘We’re running a little late,’ the usher had told her, interrupting her attempt to explain that she wasn’t actually a wedding guest. ‘Are you a friend of the bride or groom?’
‘Groom, I suppose, but...’
‘Sit here, please.’ The usher had practically pushed her into a pew and now she was trapped and about to witness the marriage of her ex-husband to the vision of ethereal loveliness, wearing an exquisite wedding gown, who had joined Nico in front of the altar.
Except that it wasn’t Nico. It was his brother standing next to the bride.
‘In the presence of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we have come together to witness the marriage of Daniele to Victoria,’ the vicar intoned.
It was Danny’s wedding! A riot of emotions stormed through Sienna. Her thoughts flew back to the previous weekend when she had visited her grandmother at the nursing home in York where ninety-year-old Rose Fisher had moved to eighteen months ago.
‘Much Matcham’s local newspaper is delivered to me every week and I was surprised to read that your husband is getting married again,’ Grandma Rose had commented over tea and scones.
Sienna’s stomach had swooped and she’d set her cup back on its saucer clumsily so that the delicate china rattled. ‘There’s no reason why my ex-husband shouldn’t remarry,’ she’d said coolly. But nothing fooled her grandmother and Rose had given her a sharp look. ‘I imagine he needs a wife to help him run Sethbury Hall, and...give him an heir.’ Pain had lanced through Sienna. Her inability to have a child was something she tried not to think about, just as she deliberately blocked out thoughts of the baby she had lost years ago.
‘Who is Nico marrying?’ She’d striven to sound uninterested as she’d taken the newspaper from Grandma Rose and skimmed down the births, deaths and marriages column to read the announcement of the wedding of Miss Victoria Harington and Mr Domenico De Conti, which would take place on the tenth of June at St Augustine’s church in Much Matcham. There had not been a picture of the couple, and now, as Sienna watched Danny turn his head and smile at his bride, she could only suppose that the paper had muddled the De Conti brothers’ names.
The rest of the wedding ceremony passed in a blur until the vicar finally pronounced that Daniele and Victoria were husband and wife. As the couple walked back down the aisle and the guests spilled from the pews to follow them out of the church, Sienna edged towards the vestry, hoping to slip away unnoticed.
‘Sienna? What are you doing here?’
She had almost made it to the vestry door when an achingly familiar voice made her freeze and simultaneously sent molten heat flooding through her veins. Nico’s husky accent had always made her weak at the knees. There was nothing she could do but try to brazen it out, and she squared her shoulders before she swung round to face him.
‘Hello, Nico.’ Was that breathless, sexy voice hers? Sienna cursed silently, flushing when she saw mockery in his piercing blue eyes. He skimmed his gaze over her in a proprietorial manner that was totally inappropriate considering their history. She felt a sharp, almost painful tingle in her nipples, and did not need to glance down to know that the betraying hard peaks were visible beneath her yellow silk dress.
She had deliberately worn a summery outfit: a white hat decorated with yellow flowers, champagne-coloured stilettos and matching handbag so that people would assume she was one of the wedding guests milling around outside the church before the ceremony. The predatory gleam in Nico’s eyes made her acutely conscious of how the close-fitting dress clung to her breasts and hips and the silky material felt sensuous against her skin.
Up close he was even more devastating. A shaft of sunlight filtering in through one of the high windows danced in his night-dark hair and emphasised the hard angles and planes of his face. He smelled divine. Sienna breathed in the spicy notes of his aftershave mixed with something else that was evocatively male and uniquely Nico. An unbidden memory filled her mind, of him sprawled on the tangled sheets after they had made love, sweat beading the dark hairs on his chest, his shaft already hardening again as he pulled her down on top of him.
In the early days of their marriage they hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other and their passion had been explosive. But that was before she had lost the baby, and then sex had been dictated by fertility charts as her desire to fall pregnant again had become an obsession that had driven a wedge between her and Nico.
She was an idiot to have come here today, Sienna thought bleakly. It would have been better if she had never seen him again. Kinder to her foolish heart that still yearned for the relationship they had once had, even though her sensible head knew it had been a romantic fantasy she had built up in her imagination. But she wasn’t imagining the frank awareness in Nico’s eyes. She was overwhelmed by his raw sexual magnetism and dismayed by her reaction to him.
