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‘It...it was just as Rafaello said. We were always going to get divorced. I just...like he said...accelerated it...’
It was all she could get out.
‘Butwhy? Connie—why then? What happened? I don’t understand! We were sogoodtogether, and we were having such a wonderful time. It was like a non-stop holiday. Sowhy—?’
He broke off. She’d heard the total incomprehension in his voice. It matched the look on his face. Like a knife in her heart, it told her everything that she already knew. Had known since he’d clearly spelt it out to her on that last unbearable night in Rome. Spelt out just why all her stupid dreams had been just that.
Something was changing in his face. Something hard, and edged like a blade.
‘Is this to do with Raf?’ He stood there, looking down at her. Eyes like knives. ‘Egging you on. Resting his hand on your shoulder like he has a right to touch you.’
She was staring at him. Staring at him with an incomprehension in her face that outdid even his.
‘Raf...?’ she breathed. ‘You thinkRaf—?’
She broke off, not even capable of putting into words what Dante was implying.
‘Maybe that’s why he’s so keen on you getting divorced ASAP! Sohecan move in on you!’
Her face worked. She tried to speak, but couldn’t. What could she say? What could she possibly say to that?
She saw emotion flash again across Dante’s face. A different one this time. Vehement and possessive.
‘Well, he can take a hike! I won’t let him near you! Because you’re mine, Connie!Mine!My wife!’
She felt her face start to crumple.
‘Don’t say that, Dante. Don’t say it. It doesn’t mean anything!’ She took a breath...a rasping one. ‘We both know why we married—it got us what we wanted. You got your inheritance and I got security for my grandmother.’ She shut her eyes. ‘That was all we wanted...’
‘To getting what we want.’
The words of his toast as they’d drunk champagne to celebrate their wedding on the private jet stabbed in her head again.
True for him.But, oh, not for me—not for me! Because I have come to want so much more! Something that he cannot give me—can never give me...
Anguish filled her...possessed her utterly.
There was silence. Silence all around her.
Then she heard Dante speak. Slowly. Heavily.
‘That isn’t actually true.’
She heard him breathe in, then go on.
‘It stopped being true that night in London. When you walked into that cocktail bar and knocked the breath from my lungs.’
She shook her head, eyes still shut. ‘No,’ she said.
She opened her eyes, looked right at him before she spelt out the truth that it had cost her so dearly to discover...to face up to.
‘What has been between us since that night,’ she said, speaking slowly, carefully, every word a blade on her skin, ‘has nothing to do with marriage. It was simply...simply an affair.’
She had known that since that last dreadful night in Rome. An affair was all that Dante had wanted from her. That was the truth that had made a mockery of her hopes and dreams. She’d wanted to make their marriage a real one—had thought that was what was happening between them. But it wasn’t. Because all Dante had wanted from the moment she’d walked into that cocktail bar and seen desire flare in his eyes—desire forher,the woman he’d made himself marry to get his inheritance—was an affair.
An affair to while away the time until he could safely divorce her, as he’d always intended. Until he could part company with her. Get his life back.
‘It was all you ever wanted,’ she said now. ‘An affair. And now I’ve called time on it.’
