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Then she’d have said no, he thought angrily.
When had he picked up the mantle of this feud as though his own life depended on it? Hadn’t enough already been sacrificed to its purposeless pursuit? His grandfather had been broken by another man’s vengeance.
And now Matteo was breaking Skye.
Had broken her.
Her face, as it had been that afternoon, came to his mind and he felt the sharp, unrelenting point of blame stab him square in the chest. She had looked...
Words flew through his mind. Sad? No, so much worse than sad.
Disappointed? Angry? Bereft?
All of the above. And something else. Something indefinable that sat heavily inside him like an accusation he would never lose.
Loving Maria had been simple. They’d made sense. She was a glamorous actress, albeit not a very good one, with legs that went on for ever. She had a penchant for expensive jewellery and six-star vacations, and he’d been happy to give them to her.
The fact she’d been using him for his social status had never occurred to him until she’d leap-frogged him to sleep with a Swedish duke. It had broken his heart. He’d felt that pain, which was how he recognised it so clearly on Skye’s features.
He’d broken her heart. Badly. She had been a means to an end—a pawn in his fight to return Il Grande Fortuna to its rightful owner. He hadn’t thought beyond the steps he needed to take to reacquire the property. Marry Skye, make her trust him, take what he wanted.
And her?
Had he really never thought about how his actions might affect her? Or had he simply never cared, because she was the daughter of the only person he’d ever hated? Had he carried his hatred of Carey Johnson onto Skye, almost delighting in the knowledge he was using her?
With an angry sigh, he pushed to standing, moving towards the open doors and breathing in the unique tang of Venice’s air.
He had only seen his grandfather cry once.
The sight had dug right into his heart and pressed into his nerves, changing everything he thought he knew about life. Alfonso hadn’t known that Matteo had been watching. He’d thought he was alone. And he’d given into the groundswell of emotions without hesitation. They had consumed him, his strong, powerful body racked by sobs as he’d stared at the papers before him. Papers that hadn’t made sense to Matteo at the time.
Now he knew what they were.
Overdue notices.
Mortgage payment requests.
Bills that Alfonso couldn’t cover.
Matteo gripped the railing hard, remembering more than Alfonso’s tears. Now he remembered Skye’s father. The smug, condescending glint in his face as he’d refused to deal with Matteo. When he’d refused to see reason and sell the hotel back.
You’re going to regret this. That was what Matteo had said.
It had been a prophetic statement, in the end. Only it was Matteo who was full of regrets.
Matteo who had lived to wish things—everything—had been different.
There was only one thing in the midst of this that made sense. There was one way Matteo had to erase Skye’s hurts—and mitigate his own. There was one thing he could remind her of that would bring happiness to both of them.
His face was set in a grim line as he moved back into the villa, walking with a slow determination to her bedroom.
She was his wife. And, when she was in his arms, nothing else seemed to matter a damn.
CHAPTER TEN
IT WAS THE lawyer’s office, right beside the doctor’s, that made her think of it. Skye stared at her bruschetta without attempting to bite into it.
‘Matteo?’
