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Once Marcelo and Clara had signed their parts of the certificate as witnesses, they all left the chapel, cutting through the chapel garden to return to the castle, where a mockery of a banquet had been prepared for them.
‘Where’s the photographer?’ Clara asked as they walked the winding footpath.
‘There isn’t one,’ Gabriel informed her.
‘Then can I take a picture of you both? For posterity?’
‘That would be nice,’ Alessia said at the exact same moment Gabriel politely said, ‘The agreement was no photos, but thank you for the offer.’
It was seeing the disbelief on her sister-in-law’s face that made Alessia crack and, suddenly frightened she was going to burst into tears, she sped off.
She would not cry in front of Gabriel again.
A hand caught her wrist.
‘What’s wrong?’ Gabriel asked.
‘Nothing,’ she muttered, loosening her arm from him and setting off again. His legs being much longer than hers, he caught her in seconds and stood before her, blocking her path.
‘Clearly something is wrong.’ Not an auspicious start to married life, Gabriel thought wryly. ‘If I have upset you, you must tell me, else how can I fix it?’
Velvet eyes snapped onto his. ‘I don’t understand why you don’t want pictures taken.’
He strove for patience. ‘It was one of my conditions for marrying you. If you had a problem with it you should have said when you had the chance.’
‘You made it very clear they were take it or leave it conditions.’ She twisted as if to barge past him but then stopped and folded her arms tightly around her chest and raised her chin to meet his stare again. ‘You got your way about everything with this wedding.’
‘Not the date,’ he said lightly, trying to defuse the head of steam she was clearly building up.
‘No, that came from my family. Not from me. In fact, not once did you or any of my family ask whatIwanted from our wedding day.’
‘And what did you want?’
‘It’s a bit late to ask me that now, isn’t it?’ she suddenly shouted, before kneading the back of her neck and making a visible effort to calm herself. ‘I apologise. You were upfront about your conditions and the only thing that really bothered me about them at the time was your refusal to attend Amadeo’s wedding and other family events the press will be at, but I didn’t really think about our wedding in emotional terms until I put my dress on this morning. I chose this dress because it fitted the simple wedding we were having but my dream was always to wear an elaborate fairy-tale dress with a twelve-foot train and to have a dozen bridesmaids. I always envisaged my entire family and all my friends being there, and a truckload of confetti being tipped over my and the groom’s heads, and a huge party afterwards that went on until the sun came up, but I didn’t have any of that. So many people I love forbidden to be here, and now I’m not even allowed one photo as a reminder of my wedding day.’
Gabriel stared at the hurt on her face, the same hurt that had sounded in her husky voice, and wondered if she’d been given lessons on how to make a man feel like a heel. He had nothing to feel bad about, he knew that. He’d been upfront and open, unlike his bride, who’d clearly festered about the wedding day she believed her due and which she felt had been denied her. But she’d agreed to this. As she would say, he hadn’t put a gun to her head. She’d agreed to this marriage of her own free will and agreed to his conditions, so it was a bit rich to start complaining once the deed was done.
Closing her eyes, she kneaded the back of her neck again and breathed deeply. Then her eyes fluttered open and fixed back on his. ‘Ignore me. I’m just feeling a little more emotional than I expected and it’s making me unreasonable.’
With an apologetic smile, she set off back down the path.
Gabriel watched her. The sun high above her seemed to cast her in a golden glow. For a moment he could believe she’d been conjured by an enchantment.
‘You’re not being unreasonable,’ he called out, speaking through a boulder that had lodged in his throat.
She turned her head.
He breached the distance between them and gazed down at the pretty heart-shaped face and those sultry velvet eyes. A wave of desire sliced through him. Whether they could ever find common ground to build a successful marriage or not, she was now his wife, and she was breathtaking. There was not a man alive who wouldn’t ache to share a bed with her.
Her chest rose, lifting those perfect, pert breasts. The desire tightened, making his skin tauten.
Colour rose on her cheeks. The tips of her breasts strained through the silk of her dress. He leaned his face closer. Her lips parted and her breath quickened. Whatever his wife’s personal feelings about him, she wanted him. He could practically smell the desire radiating from her.
‘And you’re right,’ he finally added. ‘This is our wedding day. We should have photos to remember it by.’ Then he placed his lips to a pretty, delicate ear and whispered thickly, ‘And then, tonight, I will give you something else to remember this day by.’
The wedding banquet was as sorry an affair as the wedding itself but Alessia dragged it out as long as she could, eating at the same pace she’d done as a child when she’d wanted to annoy her brothers, who’d been forbidden from leaving the table until everyone had finished. She’d perfected the art of nibbling then and she brought those skills back out now. However, if Gabriel was annoyed at this, he hid it well, eating and drinking and conversing as if it were any meal for any occasion while she was filled with so many emotions that she didn’t know how her knotted stomach was admitting food into it. All she could think was that once this banquet was done, the ‘celebrations’ would be over, and then she and Gabriel would go to her quarters.Theirquarters.
As much as she tried to block them, his seductive words before he’d called Clara over to take photos of them kept ringing in her head. Every time she recalled them, heat flushed through her, a powerful throb deep in her pelvis sucking the air from her lungs. The same things happened every time she met his eye and caught the anticipatory gleam in them. Frightened at the strength of her desire for him, she tried hard not to look at him, but it was like Gabriel were a magnet her eyes were drawn to.
