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‘I don’t have a family. My mother’s dead, Ifirstmet my father when I was twenty-one and my acquaintance with Aldo only began last month,’ he told her flatly.
‘I didn’t realise any of that,’ Maya admitted, silenced by those admissions, striving to think of what her life might have been like without the background of support and love that she pretty much took for granted. ‘You’re very alone.’
Raffaele shrugged and frowned. ‘I’m a loner by nature. It hasn’t harmed me.’
Maya almost dared to differ with that sentiment because it explained a lot to her—his lack of emotional understanding, for a start. ‘You did something kind for me. I didn’t think you were capable of that,’ she admitted frankly.
Raffaele inclined his arrogant dark head and one of the staff approached with a pile of gift-wrapped boxes. ‘It’s a wedding gift.’
Her brow furrowed. ‘Who from?’
Raffaele tensed, outrageously long black lashes curling up with incredulity. ‘From me.’
‘Oh...’
‘I decided that I didn’t want you wearing my mother’s jewellery.’
Her facial muscles tightened. ‘That’s perfectly understandable.’
‘No, you’re misunderstanding me...again,’ Raffaele stressed. ‘For me, there’s nothing but bad memories attached to my mother’s jewellery, and I’ve now arranged to have it auctioned off. These jewels are new, and for you to wear andkeep.’
Badmemories? Curiosity assailed her, furthered by the haunting darkness of his gaze. But she was also disconcerted and embarrassed because it would never have occurred to her to buy anything for him even as a token wedding gift. Maya nodded jerkily. ‘Thank you very much.’
Raffaele gazed down at her in mounting frustration, craving something he wanted from her, unable to label it, only able to recognise by his own dissatisfaction that he wasn’t receiving it. ‘It’s no big deal. I’ve got money to burn,’ he fielded drily.
‘I’d better go and start getting dressed,’ Maya muttered, backing slowly away, her eyes locked involuntarily to the liquid burning gold of his.
‘All I can think about isundressingyou,’ Raffaele confided without even thinking about it, and then he watched her face freeze and shutter and knew it had been the wrong thing to say. Butwhywas it the wrong thing? Once again, he felt at a tactical disadvantage, as if everyone else but him had the right script in Maya’s radius. She wanted him. He could see that in her eyes, when she looked at him with need and desire. What could be wrong with expressing that? Was she really that shy? And if shewasshy, how did he handle that? Because vast as his experience was, he had never been with a shy woman.
A maid leading the way, Maya hurried upstairs to arrive breathless in an opulent bedroom suite embellished with superb polished antique furniture. There a hair stylist, a make-up artist and her grandmother eagerly awaited the bride’s arrival. Hernonnaaddressed the maid in Italian, ordering some drink that Maya had never heard of.
‘We drink it at weddings,’ Assunta Parisi assured her, her likeness to Maya’s mother, Lucia, in her greying dark hair and warm eyes lifting Maya’s spirits. ‘It’s wonderful that you speak Italian. Raffaele didn’t mention that.’
‘He doesn’t know yet. He speaks to me in English. I picked it up from Mum when I was a child and then added Italian in as an additional course at university,’ Maya admitted, and when the maid arrived with an elaborate decanter and fancy glasses, she felt that it would have seemed churlish for her to declare then that she didn’t usually drink.
Anyway, she thought rebelliously as the preparation of the bride began, perhaps she needed a little pick-me-up to face what lay ahead: sex with Raffaele. Of course, she could get through that as long as she didn’t think about the logistics of having to strip off in front of him, open her body to a virtual stranger and act as if it were no big deal. Easy-peasy, she told herself firmly, no silly timid bride here, as she drank down the sweet liqueur. A little while later, a faint buzz hazed her thoughts and she began to feel a tad more relaxed. So, one or two drinks just to grease the wheels of her family-saving marriage and why not? After all, she probably wouldn’t be drinking while she was trying to get pregnant, she reasoned ruefully.
She had set the gift boxes on the dressing table when she entered the room and while the stylist was doing her hair, hernonnaasked what they were and, learning, urged her to open them immediately. With reluctance, because gifts struck her as inappropriate in her non-relationship with Raffaele, she opened the first and everyone present gasped. The opened boxes revealed a king’s ransom in jewels, ranging from a superb tiara to a necklace that was a glittering waterfall of diamonds.
Hernonnasqueezed her shoulder and leant down to whisper, ‘He told yournonnoand I that it was a marriage of business, but helied. No man gives such magnificence inthosecircumstances,’ she assured her grandchild with proud satisfaction. ‘You are very beautiful and educated and he has fallen in love. Finally, the old bitterness between our families will be buried and forgotten.’
Maya might have been betrayed into laughing out loud at that fanciful conviction had not the maid brought out the wedding gown to display to them. Her breath caught in her throat because it was gorgeous and absolutely not what she had expected when Raffaele had done the choosing. She had been prepared for something tight, revealing and sexy such as he preferred, not a dream of a long dress with fine lace sleeves, a fitted bodice and layers and layers of silk in the skirt that glistened with handmade embroidery and shimmering crystals. The most daring aspect of the gown was the cutaway above the waist, which would bare a section of her back, so not very daring at all, not chosen for him, but chosen by him forher, which was another surprise.
And she didn’tlikeRaffaele surprising her, especially not after she had believed she understood him to perfection and had set him in stone to play his role as the spoiled, selfish and dissolute bridegroom. As her grandmother enthused about the wedding gown, wild horses could not have dragged the truth out of Maya, that in fact Raffaele had chosen the dress, because suddenly she was ashamed of that truth, that she had agreed to their marriage but had nonethelessrefusedto playherrole. Shame made her reach for her glass of liqueur again and sip in haste because the alcohol was blurring her dark thoughts. She, who prided herself on being kind, fair and reasonable, had been mean, angry and resentful of a choiceshehad made because shecouldhave walked away from Raffaele’s offer.
Her fingers curled on her grandfather’s arm as he escorted her proudly down the aisle of the picturesque country church, which was festooned with flowers and crammed with smiling, staring guests. The wedding had never felt more real to Maya than it did at that moment as her gaze travelled anxiously to the male awaiting her at the altar. There he stood, Raffaele Manzini, the last man alive she had expected to try to turn their business marriage into a more normal one when she had made no effort whatsoever. And hewasbeautiful, tall and lithe and dark and sleek, for once formally clad in his wedding finery, a light grey morning suit teamed with a cravat, waistcoat and tailored dress pants.
Her throat tightened, butterflies buzzing like bees in her taut stomach, every inch of her reacting to his raw masculinity, and it was so completely, utterly unnerving to Maya, who felt so threatened by that instinctive response, that she hastily dropped her gaze again.
They knelt on velvet cushions and the priest performed the ceremony in both English and Italian, yet once again mutiny and a sense of wrong stirred within Maya, who had only ever expected to wed in all sincerity and love. Raffaele eased a slender platinum band onto her finger and tugged her round to face him as though he intended to kiss her while their guests swelled the church with song in celebration of their rites.
‘You look divine...like a breathtakingly beautiful ice maiden,’ he whispered, stunning dark tawny eyes locked to her flawless face with an intensity she could feel, and it only made her tremble.
‘It’s cool in here,’ she deflected with a faint shake in her voice, turning her head away from him in denial that he could make her feel so unlike herself.
Maya had never allowed a man to affect her, had believed that that was her choice alone, and now she was discovering different and it scared her. She met Raffaele’s eyes and her body lit up like the sunrise at dawn, sexual awareness flooding her in an unstoppable tide, heat and tension gripping her. It made her feel out of control for the first time ever and she hated that.
On the steps of the church he introduced her to his great-grandfather, Aldo, the man she knew she had to blame for masterminding her predicament, she conceded. Yet how could she bestow blame on anyone when her family was finally free of the debts that had stolen their happiness for so many years? Deciding that she could not, she met Aldo’s shrewd dark eyes, set in his worn face, with a smile.
