Claimed by the Sicilian: Sicilian Husband, Blackmailed Bride / The Sicilian's Red-Hot Revenge / The Sicilian's Wife

‘We don’t?’

He laced the words with a note of warning, one that she seemed determined to ignore.

‘No way! All I want is to wait for the furore that my aborted wedding caused to die down and then to organise a quickie divorce—and, believe me, it can’t be quick enough.’

‘No chance.’

Guido couldn’t hold back the harsh bark of laughter that escaped him, drawing the full concentration of those green eyes to his face again.

‘Why not?’ she demanded.

‘Why not?’ Guido echoed cynically, drawling out the words deliberately. ‘I should have thought that the answer to that was obvious to anyone. If you were hoping for a quickie divorce, mia cara, then I’m afraid you’d better think again. You see, what we did here, just now…’ he nodded towards the bed, where the still rumpled bedclothes, the dented pillows, were blatant evidence of just what they’d been doing only a short time before ‘…will count as a renewal of our marriage.’

As he had expected, she looked appalled at the thought, her face losing all colour and one slender hand going up to her mouth to hold back the cry of horror that almost escaped it.

‘But no one needs to know. If we don’t tell anyone…’

‘We don’t need to tell anyone. They already know. Are you forgetting that we had an audience of hundreds—your former wedding guests—who were witnesses to the fact that we were shut in here for hours just after we declared to the world that our marriage was back on again? I’m damn sure that, if asked, any one of them would be happy to give evidence to that fact.

No, carissima, like it or not, I’m afraid we have to accept that in the eyes of the law we are very definitely man and wife again and this afternoon’s pleasure is going to cost us dear in that it will have put the date of our permanent freedom from each other back by at least two years.’

CHAPTER TEN

IT REALLY won’t be quite as bad as you’re expecting—in fact, it won’t be what you’re expecting at all.

Guido’s words replayed over and over inside Amber’s head as she left the bedroom and walked out onto the balcony that overlooked the sea, stepping out of air-conditioned coolness and into the heat of a Sicilian afternoon. Her blue and green patterned voile dress swirled around her legs in a welcome breeze and the warmth of the sun beat down on her arms and shoulders exposed by the delicate shoe-string straps.

It won’t be what you’re expecting at all.

He could say that again—and again! This beautiful, luxurious, long, low-built villa perched right on the edge of a cliff, facing out towards the ocean, was the last thing she had been expecting when Guido had declared that he was taking her to his home.

Of course, by the time that they had left England for Sicily she had learned the truth—and discovered just how much Guido had not told her. But it had already been dawning on her before that. How could it not, when she had experienced the sort of first-class attention that had been lavished on her from the moment they left the hotel?

She should have thought of it earlier, too, she acknowledged grimly. The chauffeur-driven car that had taken them from the church to the hotel should have been the very first clue to anyone who was not completely stupid. But she had not been functioning on all cylinders at that moment. She hadn’t been functioning at all. The shock and turmoil of her shattered wedding had devastated her thought processes, driving the ability to reason right out of her mind.

She hadn’t felt much better when she’d left the security of the hotel bedroom, a place that had come to seem like a secure bolt-hole from all that had happened, and had ventured out into the world again. From the moment that the lift doors had opened to reveal that the huge marble-floored foyer was still crowded with Rafe’s friends and family, the guests who had been invited to their wedding, she had known that Guido had been right. There was no way they could escape from here without anyone—without everyone—knowing.

The way that the crowd fell silent as they walked through the foyer, the buzz of conversation that started up behind them, following them like a wave rushing into the seashore, had all confirmed that he had been right. If the Press or anyone else wanted a story, there would be no shortage of people ready to step forward to give them one.

That thought had been enough to keep her quiet in the car, and at the first stage of their arrival at the airport, even though the questions were already surfacing in her mind. But it was her first sight of the plane that had brought her to a stunned halt, unable to believe the evidence of her own eyes.

‘That is not any commercial plane!’ she’d declared, turning furiously to Guido, who had only just managed to step to one side to avoid cannoning into her as she stopped dead right in his path. ‘It’s so small—it has to be a private jet—can’t be anything else. So I think it’s about time you did some explaining. Like who, for a start, does this thing belong to?’

‘It’s mine,’ Guido told her. ‘Well, mine and my brother’s. It belongs to Corsentino Marine and Leisure—which Vito and I own.’

‘Corsentino…’ Amber shook her head in confusion as she struggled to take this in. ‘I’m not going a single step further until you tell me exactly who you are and the truth about what you are.’

Amber flinched inwardly now as she remembered the nasty little public spat that had followed her declaration.

Guido had wanted to wait until they were on the plane, but she had dug her heels in and refused to move, causing him to hiss an explanation at her in a furious undertone. So intent were they on their own private conflict that it was only when a camera bulb had flashed over to their right, making them both start and blink, that they had become aware of the fact that they were still the centre of interest from the Press.

An interest she now understood much more than ever before.

Because Guido Corsentino was not just the photographer she had thought he was. The photographer who had stolen her heart and taken it away from her forever. He was Guido Corsentino of Corsentino Marine and Leisure. But it was only since she had arrived on the island that she had come to realise just how big that company was.

And with each new realisation of what Guido’s life—Guido’s real life—was like, it was as if she was taking another step backwards and further away from him. As if this man she now lived with, this man she was married to, became more of a stranger with each new discovery she made about him.

The truth was that she wasn’t married to the man she’d thought she’d married. The man she’d told herself that she loved so desperately. But she didn’t know if she loved this man. She didn’t know him.

This was not the Guido Corsentino she had fallen so hopelessly, helplessly in love with. That man she had thought was a photographer, a man with a very basic income but huge amounts of charm, intelligence and endless sex appeal.

Nor yet was he the Guido Corsentino who had marched into the church a week ago today to break up her wedding and ruin her half-formed plans for the future. That Guido had at least had something of the old Guido about him, something that had reminded her of the man she had loved so much. Something that had brought her to make love with him again.

No, this Guido Corsentino was someone else again. A man of power and wealth, it seemed. A man who, along with his brother, ran a huge leisure corporation and speedboat-building business. This man was a stranger to her.

And a man who hadn’t even tried to touch her since they’d arrived at his villa almost a week ago. Unexpectedly she’d been shown to this bedroom, and Guido had moved into another room, several doors down the corridor. She had spent her days lonely, and her nights alone.

Amber sighed, pushing back her hair from her face, and flexed shoulders that ached with the effort of holding them straight and not allowing them to slump. If she let them drop then she was sure that Guido would see it as a sign of weakness.

And weakness was something she was determined not to show him.

A sharp rap at the door of her room drew her attention back from her despondent thoughts and into the present. She was still debating whether or not to answer it when the door was pushed open and Guido strolled into the room.

‘Did I say you could come in?’

Amber didn’t care that she sounded aggressive and bad-tempered-she felt aggressive and bad-tempered. It was the only way that she could keep herself from falling into a pit of darkness and despair.

Was it really only a week since she had thought that she had her life all mapped out—that her future was planned, and she could finally move forward into it, putting the past behind her? Now it seemed that she had stepped back into that past and yet even that was a place she no longer recognised. Just as she no longer recognised Guido for the man she had thought him to be.

Even physically, he looked so very different. This man, so casually dressed in white polo shirt and blue denim jeans, was much more relaxed, comfortable, at ease in his own home, his own surroundings. The tan of his skin seemed darker, the jet-black hair gleamed more than ever in the brilliant light of the day, and the bronze eyes seemed to have caught a new heat and warmth from the sun so that they gleamed like molten metal, searing her skin at a glance.

He was more stunning, more devastatingly handsome than ever before, but this Guido was a man she didn’t know.

‘I did knock—and this is my home. Besides, you are my wife, and most married couples don’t worry about modesty…’

‘We’re very definitely not like most married couples! In fact, I’d think that even saying we are man and wife is rather up for debate at the moment, isn’t it?’