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‘Sienna.’ The impatience in his voice pulled her mind back to the present and her embarrassing situation. ‘I didn’t see your name on the guest list.’ He frowned. ‘I’m certain Danny would have told me that he had invited you to his wedding.’
‘I...um...’ She could feel her face burning. ‘I saw in the local paper that Danny was getting married at St Augustine’s. Churches are open to the public and anyone has the right to attend a wedding taking place in a church. I wanted to give Danny and his new bride my best wishes.’
Nico’s eyes narrowed. ‘It’s odd that you knew it was my brother’s wedding. The local paper mixed up o
ur names when they printed the forthcoming marriage announcement.’
‘My grandmother told me.’ Sienna crossed her fingers behind her back as she made the white lie. ‘Rose keeps in touch with your grandmother and when they spoke recently, Iris told her about Danny’s wedding.’
She lifted her chin and forced herself to meet Nico’s speculative gaze, hoping to project an image of cool composure she did not feel. Her insides were churning, her heart was racing and there was a dull ache low in her pelvis that made her press her thighs tightly together.
‘So you didn’t come because you hoped to see me?’ he drawled.
‘Of course not. What reason could I possibly have for wanting to see you again?’ She was defensive, mortified that he might guess the truth. ‘Our disaster of a marriage was over a long time ago.’
‘I wouldn’t call it a disaster,’ he murmured, taking her breath away with that mind-boggling statement. ‘There were good times.’ His voice lowered in a way that sent a shiver across Sienna’s skin. ‘Some very good times.’
‘When we were in bed, you mean?’ She had intended to sound sarcastic but the words emerged as a whisper. She licked her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. When had Nico moved closer so that his thigh was almost touching hers? ‘A marriage needs more to sustain it than dynamite sex.’
His lips twitched and she hated that he found her amusing, but when he spoke there was no mockery in his voice, nor in the fierce gleam in his eyes. ‘We were dynamite together, weren’t we, cara?’
‘Don’t,’ she said sharply, trying to ignore the leap her heart gave at his careless endearment. She stiffened when he lifted his hand and brushed his finger lightly down her cheek. The action was a blatant invasion of her personal space but she didn’t pull away, couldn’t. Her feet were glued to the floor and her gaze was trapped by his as she drowned in the cobalt-blue depths of his eyes. Everything faded and there were only the two of them standing in the church where they had once promised to love and honour each other, forsaking all others, for the rest of their lives.
Nico lowered his head so that his impossibly wicked mouth was inches from hers. ‘You are even more beautiful than my memory serves me, Si-enna.’ He rolled the syllables around his tongue, making her name sound like a caress. ‘It makes me wonder why I let you go.’
The spell shattered and she jerked away from him so forcefully that her hip bone collided with the end of a pew. ‘You were sleeping with your secretary.’ Hurt and humiliation, those two poisonous serpents that had haunted her for years, coiled inside her. ‘You didn’t let me go, I chose to leave,’ she snapped, her voice too loud, bouncing off the walls of the church.
‘Oh, Nico, there you are,’ came a softer voice. Looking past him, Sienna wished the floor would open up and swallow her when she saw Nico’s grandmother manoeuvring her wheelchair along the aisle towards them. But if Iris Mandeville had heard her angry outburst she made no comment. ‘Sienna, how delightful to see you.’ The elderly woman greeted her warmly. ‘How is your grandmother? I haven’t spoken to Rose for months.’
Sienna flushed when Nico gave her a hard stare. Clearly he was wondering how she could have known it was Danny’s wedding if Iris had not told Grandma Rose.
‘I am unable to visit Rose so often now that she lives in York and I have to use this wretched contraption.’ Iris tapped the arm of her wheelchair. ‘Rheumatoid arthritis has left me rather immobile,’ she answered Sienna’s unspoken question before turning her attention to her grandson.
‘Domenico, you are wanted for the photographs. I can’t get my wheelchair down the church steps but there is disabled access through the vestry. Sienna, my dear, would you be so kind to help me out to the car? Hobbs is bringing it round to the side of the church. Jacqueline was supposed to help me, but of course she wants to be included in the photographs.’
Sienna had noticed Nico and Danny’s mother during the ceremony. Jacqueline Mandeville loved being the centre of attention and her extravagant hat festooned with ostrich feathers had made her impossible to miss. When Sienna had married Nico, her mother-in-law had worn a dramatic ivory-coloured outfit, which had outshone her store-bought wedding dress. She had been so young and unsure of herself, she remembered ruefully. Her voluminous dress had hidden her baby bump, but everyone in the church, everyone in the village, had known that she was pregnant.
She jerked her mind from the past and forced a smile for Nico’s grandmother. ‘Yes, of course I’ll push your wheelchair out to the car.’
Footsteps sounded on the stone floor behind her. ‘Nico, I’ve been looking everywhere for you,’ a voice said tersely. ‘The photographer wants to take group pictures and Victoria is going into meltdown because you’d disappeared and one of the bridesmaids says she feels sick.’ Daniele De Conti stopped dead and stared. ‘Sienna? Wow! You look amazing.’
‘Hello, Danny,’ she murmured, taken aback by the undisguised male interest in Nico’s brother’s eyes. He had only been married for five minutes! But she remembered that he had always been an incorrigible flirt. Danny was a year older than her and when they were teenagers he’d asked her out a couple of times. But it had been nothing serious, and the minute she’d met Nico she’d only had eyes for him.
Against her will, her gaze was drawn to Nico, and her heart collided with her ribs when she recognised a glint of possessiveness in his eyes as well as something hotter, hungrier that sent a tremor through her. She was barely aware that Danny was speaking again.
‘I must say you are the last person I expected to be here today, Sienna.’
‘I just came to the church...’ she began awkwardly, feeling herself blush. She tensed when Nico slid his arm around her waist.
‘Sienna is here because I invited her,’ he told his brother smoothly. ‘I didn’t reveal the name of my plus-one guest as there was a chance that Sienna wouldn’t be free to travel to Yorkshire this weekend. But luckily for me she was able to come to the wedding.’
What the devil was he playing at? She was conscious that Danny and Iris were both looking at her curiously but her gaze was riveted on Nico, on his mouth as he lowered his head towards her.
He was going to kiss her! She read the message in his brilliant blue eyes and her heart did a somersault. Her common sense told her to step away from him, run, scream—maybe all three, but she had never been sensible around this man. She opened her mouth to tell Danny that she wasn’t Nico’s plus-one guest, no way.
‘Actually that’s not...’ The rest of her words were smothered by Nico’s mouth as he crushed her lips beneath his in a fierce kiss that made her head spin. His arm felt like a band of steel around her waist and there was blatant possession in the way he clamped his hand on her hip.
Her brain told her to pull away from him and demand to know what he was doing. But her body reacted instinctively to the heat emanating from him and the bold demands of his mouth on hers. The years fell away and she was eighteen again, a girl on the cusp of womanhood, standing on a windswept moor and overwhelmed by the wild passion that Nico stirred in her. A tremor ran through her as she opened her mouth beneath his and kissed him back. Her body recognised his touch and desire swept fierce and hot through her veins as he deepened the kiss and her lips clung to his.
