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He was quiet for a long moment; it was a silence that tore her to shreds. And then he gave a simple, decisive nod that was the death knell to the fragile hopes she still held deep inside.
The memories were swirling through her, threatening to suck her back in time, but the door clicking shut jolted her into the present.
They were alone.
‘Well, Skye, this is...unexpected.’
Her heart thumped painfully in her chest, ramming against her ribcage. God, his accent. How had she forgotten the sensual appeal of his husky, deep, Italian-edged voice?
Be strong. This will be over soon enough.
‘You must have known I’d come back at some point,’ she said with a shrug of her slender shoulders, pleased with how confident the words sounded, even as her fingers were shaking a little.
‘I knew no such thing,’ he countered. His accent was thicker—a sign of his fury, she knew. It was only in moments of deep emotional distress that this happened. ‘You disappeared into thin air after you left my office without so much as the courtesy of a goodbye.’
Skye’s caramel eyes flew wide. ‘Courtesy? You want to talk about courtesy?’
His eyes narrowed warningly. ‘I want to talk about where the hell you’ve been.’
‘Like you care,’ she said with a roll of her eyes.
‘My wife disappeared, leaving no way to contact her. You think I don’t care?’
‘This is all about acquisition and ownership for you, isn’t it? Your wife.’ She shook her head angrily, realising that she was fighting a losing battle. ‘I was in England,’ she said on a sigh.
‘Not at your house,’ he said, and for a second her heart squeezed. Because it was proof he’d looked for her. Proof he’d tried to find her.
‘No.’ A rejection of that tenderness.
She knew why he’d looked for her and it had nothing to do with their sham marriage. He must have been furious to discover that she’d cancelled his purchase. That she’d found out about the pieces he’d been casually, secretly, manoeuvring through their short, disastrous marriage. Had he thought he could keep her so sensually fogged that she wouldn’t wake up and realise what the hell was going on? He had almost been right. He’d come so close to taking the hotel from her without her even realising.
‘Where were you?’ he pushed, his own words hardened with something she knew to be anger. Because Matteo Vin Santo liked to win. He liked to win at all costs, and she’d found out just in time.
‘It’s none of your damned business.’ She glared at him now, the veneer of civility slipping away. She tried to grab it but being here with him, in this room, overpowered by how damned handsome he was, made something inside her snap.
‘You’re my wife,’ he corrected, moving closer so that she caught a hint of his masculine fragrance. Her knees almost buckled. ‘I have every right to know.’
But it was the wrong thing to say. His casual insistence of his rights fired every hint of anger in her body. ‘That’s outrageous.’ Her eyes held the strength of steel when they locked with his. ‘You have no rights. Not where I’m concerned.’
A muscle throbbed at the base of his jaw. ‘You’re my wife.’ As though that explained everything!
‘That’s what I’m here to talk to you about,’ Skye asserted forcefully in an attempt to regain control of the situation, reaching for her handbag at the same moment a sharp knock on the door preceded the interruption of the receptionist.
She brought a bottle of mineral water and a glass with ice cubes and a wedge of lemon into the room and placed them on the boardroom table.
‘Thank you,’ Skye murmured, relieved to have a form of distraction. She hoped it might calm her raging nerves. She twisted the lid, waiting for the hiss of bubbles to silence and the receptionist to leave the room, before tipping half the water into the glass.
‘What, exactly, are you here to discuss?’ he prompted, crossing his arms over his chest. She didn’t need to look at him to know how broad that chest was. She lifted her mineral water and moved towards the window instead, staring down at Venice without really seeing it.
‘Our marriage.’ The words were a ghost. They conjured all the memories she wanted to forget.
The love-at-first-sight romance. The wedding itself. The way their marriage had been marked by nights of complete sensual abandon. Long days of waiting for him to come home hadn’t mattered. She’d been so exhausted she’d napped and eaten, preparing for his return, and then she’d been his willing sex slave. Self-disgust at her stupidity gnawed at her gut.
She twisted the enormous diamond around her finger before sliding it off one last time. ‘And how we’re going to end it.’ She spun round, her back to the view, her eyes landing squarely on his face, locking to his. She bravely held his gaze as she placed the ring on the boardroom table, then hastily stepped away from it as though it might burn her.
His expression was grim, but he said nothing initially. There was no shock. No outrage. No attempt to argue. To win her back.
Because it had never really been about her.
