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“And why do you think I’d be at all inclined to grant you a favor, Bianca?”
She sucked in a deep breath. “Because you loved me once, and despite the way you’re behaving now, you are a good man.”
He narrowed his eyes, unprepared for that semi-compliment. “Fine. What is it that you require?”
“I need you to be my husband again.” Niko almost dropped the phone at her quietly voiced statement. “Just for two weeks.”
Now it was his turn to ruminate. A thousand questions came to mind, and none of them seemed adequate. Finally, he s
aid, gruffly, “Why?”
Bianca bit down on her lower lip, wondering for the hundredth time if she had absolutely lost her senses to be going through with this. Surely she could have just owned up to her family about their split? But then, she pictured her father, in the hospital bed after his heart attack, and she knew she had to protect them from the shock and disappointment of their beloved daughter’s impending divorce.
“My family is coming to visit. Over Christmas.”
“And why does that news affect me?”
“I haven’t exactly got around to telling them about us yet, Niko.” She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, as she always did when she thought of their divorce. It was the only option, of course. She’d hoped against hope he would see sense and try to work through it, but Niko Casacelli was too proud for that. Despite the inevitability of it, Bianca couldn’t think of their marriage and the marriage breakdown without a physical pain in her chest.
His disembodied voice was doing funny things to her body; and it was both a pleasure and a pain. His honeyed timbre, which she had always found so sexy, made her bones weak with remembered need, but the sheer impossibility of fulfillment was almost cruel.
A flat out refusal was on the tip of his tongue when he thought of his predicament. He had just admitted to himself that he loved the idea of gaining revenge against this woman; and here was the perfect opportunity. Posing as her husband would give him ample ways to hurt her pride in the same way his had been ripped apart. But to plot against her inexplicably reviled him, despite her unfaithfulness, and so he hesitated.
“So because you are too terrified of your parents, you have decided to create an elaborate deception?”
It was a pretty accurate summation of what she was doing. “It’s not that I’m terrified of them…”
“You ache for them to be proud of you, Bianca. For as long as I’ve known you, your family has been a double-edged sword. You might be incredibly close to them, but you’re still afraid of letting them down. My guess is that you think our divorce will make you less of a success in their eyes. Frankly, that’s a little pathetic from a grown woman.”
Weakly, she eased herself down into the leather armchair of her study. “You are the last person who should be lecturing me on family relationships.”
The oblique reference to his difficult relationship with his mother hit its target, as she had known it would. Niko and his brothers had tried for a long time to love their mother out of a sense of duty, but Nicoletta had made it impossible.
“For as long as you expect my help, you will put up with my lectures, or whatever the hell I want to say to you,” he rebuffed coldly.
Bianca dipped her head into her hands, rubbing at her tired eyes. She tried, and failed, to ignore the feeling she was jumping into bed with the devil. “Does that mean you’ll do it?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” he lied through his teeth. “Come over tonight and I’ll let you know.”
Bianca felt her pulse race at the promise of seeing him later that day. “I’m working,” she said, her voice husky.
“I’ll wait up.”
She nodded and was about to say goodbye, when she realized he’d already disconnected the call. It was classic Niko. Unapologetically arrogant.
God, how the heck was she ever going to pull this off if one phone conversation dissolved her into an overwrought mess?
***
She hadn’t been back to their marital home since that night in December when she’d walked away from their life together. That night she’d painstakingly wrapped up their Christmas ornaments and stored them neatly in the attic, as though they might need them again for years to come. She might as well have thrown them in the trash, for all the use the decorations would get now.
With fingers that weren’t quite steady, she lifted her hand and pressed the doorbell. It was just after midnight, but this was the earliest she’d been able to make it to the townhouse. Her restaurant was booked solid for months; the two sittings she accommodated meant she worked even crazier hours now than when she had been married. And it suited her just fine to be so busy she didn’t have a second to think, or feel.
She smoothed a hand down her jean-clad thigh, trying to hide how nervous she was. But the knowledge that she was about to see her husband for the first time in ten months was making breathing almost impossible. Bianca had not dressed up. Her feminine desire to look her best had lost out to pride, which dictated that she not let him know she still cared what he thought of her.
Jeans and a black skivvy were her work staples, and he could just deal with the fact that his wife was more of a homebody than a glamazon. With a frown, she leaned forward and peered through the tinted glass windows. No use; she couldn’t see a thing. She pressed the button again, shivering a little in the cold October night air.
Niko wrenched the door open impatiently, his face guarded, his expression neutral. Bored, if anything, she would have said with an indignant stab of pain in the region of her heart. And though she’d promised herself she’d keep her own feelings hidden, she couldn’t control the way her eyes hungrily roamed his body, savoring the sight of him after so long without.
