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‘Tough,’ Dante said, remembering his rules. ‘You are his wife!’
‘But I don’t want to be in the car on my own.’
‘Then where are your family and friends?’ Dante asked, but halted immediately because, from the little he had been told by his father, he knew both her parents were dead. Yet he would not be guilted out of pointing out the facts. ‘You insist this is a real marriage, so why isn’t anyone here to support you in your loss? Or are they tired of the games you play? You have a brother,’ Dante pointed out, ‘yet he wasn’t at the wedding, neither is he here today, though I seem to remember that last year you went home forhiswedding. Are you worried, if he were here, that he might let slip some of your lies?’
Mia didn’t answer him.
Dante stood to go, but he could not leave it there. ‘It is not a punishment that you travel alone; it is a courtesy that the Hamilton family have their own car at the front of the procession. It is not my fault you have no one to fill it.’
She turned from speaking to his reflection and faced him. ‘Are you hoping that the villagers pelt me with rotten fruit?’ Mia asked.
Dante saw a flash of tears in her sapphire-blue eyes. It was her first real display of emotion since he had arrived; in fact, it was her first display of emotion since the day they’d met, and he detested that it moved him. He detested that he wanted to reach out and take her in his arms, and that the sight of her in her pale coral robe would remain with him all night.
Worse, he would be fighting the memory of her all night.
Dante’s want for her was perpetual, a lit fuse he was constantly stamping out, but it was getting harder and harder to keep it up. His breathing was ragged; there was a shift in the air and his resistance was fast fading. ‘What did you think, Mia, that we were going to walk into the church together? A family united? Don’t make me laugh...’
No one was laughing.
‘Take your tea and go to bed.’ Dante dismissed her with an angry wave of his hand, but even as he did so he halted, for it was not his place to send her to bed. ‘I didn’t mean that. Do what you will. I will leave.’
‘It’s fine. I’m going up.’ She retrieved the tray.
‘We leave tomorrow at eleven,’ he said again as they headed through to the entrance.
‘Yes.’
She turned then and gave him a tight smile, and saw his black eyes meet hers, and there was that look again between them, the one they had shared at the dining table. It was a look that she dared not decipher.
His lips, which were usually plump and red, the only splash of colour in his black-and-white features, were for once pale. There was a muscle leaping in his cheek, and she was almost sure it was pure contempt, except her body was misreading it as something else.
She had always been aware of his potent sexuality, but now Mia was suddenly aware of her own.
Conscious that she was naked beneath the gown, her breasts felt full and heavy, aware of the lust that danced inappropriately in the air between them. The prison gates were parting further and she was terrified to step out. ‘Goodnight,’ she croaked, and climbed the stairs, almost tipping the tray and only able to breathe when she heard the door slam.
Tea forgotten, she lay on the bed, frantic and unsettled. So much for the Ice Queen! She was burning for him in a way she had never known until she’d met Dante.
Mia had thought for a long time that there was something wrong with her, something missing in her make-up, for she’d had little to no interest in sex. Even back at school she would listen in on her peers, quietly bemused by their obsessive talking about boys and the things they did that to Mia sounded filthy. Her mother’s awkward talk about the facts of life had left Mia revolted. Thefact ofMia’slife:it was something she didn’t want! There was no reason she could find. There had been no trauma, nothing she could pin it to. Just for her, those feelings simply did not exist. Mia had tried to ignite the absent fire and had been on a couple of dates, but had found she couldn’t even tolerate kisses, and tongues positively revolted her. She couldn’t bear to consider anything else.
And while this marriage had given her a unique chance to heal from the appalling disaster that had befallen her family, the deeper truth was that it had given her a chance to hide from something she perhaps ought to address.
A no-sex marriage had felt like a blessing when she and Rafael had agreed to it.
Yet the ink had barely dried on the contract when she had found out that though those feelings might be buried deep, they were there after all.
Mia had been just a few days into the pretend position of Rafael’s PA, and the carefully engineered rumours had just started to fly, when Dante Romano had walked in. A mere moment with him had helped her understand all she had been missing, for with just a look she found herself reacting in a way she never had before.
His dark eyes had transfixed her, the deep growl of his voice had elicited a shiver low in her stomach, and even his scent, as it reached her, went straight to form a perfect memory. When Dante had asked who she was, his voice and his presence had alerted, startled and awoken her. So much so that she had half expected him to snap his fingers like a genie right before her scalding face.
Three wishes?
You.
You.
You.
Except she had been there to execute a business arrangement—one to which even Angela had agreed. She was to marry Rafael.
