The Millionaire's Marriage

Feeling utterly foolish, Gabriella muttered, “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

“Because you immediately assumed the worst before I had the chance to explain anything. Now that we’ve cleared up the misunderstanding, though, I suggest you take that pout off your face, smile for a change, and join me in a toast.” He passed a glass of wine to her and lifted the other mockingly. “Here’s to us, my dear wife. May your parents be taken in by appearances as easily as you are, and go home convinced their daughter and son-in-law are living in matrimonial clover!”

Twenty minutes later, they sat at the glass-topped patio table on the west side of the terrace. The Pouilly Fuissé stood neck-deep in a silver wine cooler. A hurricane lamp flickered in a sconce on the wall.

Outwardly, they might have been any of a hundred contented couples enjoying the mild, calm evening. Inwardly, however, Gabriella was a mess. Poking her fork into her barely touched meal, she finally braved the question which had been buzzing around in her mind like an angry wasp from the moment he’d misled her into thinking his housekeeper had been a lover. “Have you really never…been with another woman, Max? Since me, I mean?”

“Why don’t you look at me when you ask that?” he replied in a hard voice.

Because, she could have told him, if she’d dared, it hurts too much. You’re too beautiful, too sexy, too…everything except what I most want you to be, which is mine.

“Gabriella?”

Gathering her courage, she lifted her head and took stock of him, feature by feature. He leaned back in his chair, returning the favor with equal frankness, his eyes a dark, direct blue, his gaze steady.

His hair gleamed black as the Danube on a starless night. His skin glowed deep amber against the stark white of his shirt. He shifted one elbow, a slight movement only, but enough to draw attention to the width of his chest and the sculpted line of his shoulders.

Miserably, she acknowledged that everything about him was perfect—and most assuredly not hers to enjoy. She knew that as well as she knew her own name. Devouring him with her eyes brought her nothing but hopeless regret for what once might have been, and painful longing for something that now never could be.

Nonetheless, she forced herself to maintain her steady gaze and say serenely, “Well, I’m looking, Max, so why don’t you answer the question? Have you been with anyone else?”

He compressed his gorgeous mouth. Just briefly, his gaze flickered. “You want me to tell you I’ve lived like a monk since you ran off to pursue a career?”

“I want you to tell me the truth.”

He shook his head and stared out to where the last faint show of color from the sunset stained the sea a pale papaya-orange. “No, you don’t, Gabriella. As I recall, you’re not on very good terms with honesty and I doubt you’d know how to handle it in this instance.”

She flinched, his reply shooting straight to her heart like a splinter of glass. Normally the most brutally candid man she’d ever met, his evasion amounted to nothing but an admission of guilt delivered as kindly as he knew how.

Unbidden, the night she’d lost her virginity rose up to haunt her, most particularly the exquisite pleasure he’d given her after he’d recovered from the shock of finding her in his bed and before he realized her duplicity. How practiced he’d been in the art of lovemaking; how knowing and generous and patient. And most of all, how passionate!

Had she really supposed all that masculine virility had lain dormant during her absence, or that he’d feel obligated to honor wedding promises he’d made under duress?

If she had, then she was a fool. Because what right had she to expect either when he’d never professed to love her? When she hadn’t a reason in the world to think he might have missed her after she walked out on a marriage which had been a travesty from the start?

But the truth that hurt the most was the realization of how easy it would be to fall under his spell again. His tacit admission that there’d been another woman—possibly even women—was the only thing which pulled her back from the brink. Another minute, a different answer, and she’d have bared her soul to him!

Staggered by her near self-betrayal, she murmured shakily, “I see.”

“I suspect not,” he said, “but the real question is, does it matter to you, one way or the other?”

“Not in the slightest,” she lied, the glass sliver driving deeper into her heart and shattering into a million arrows of pain.

“Should I take your indifference to mean there’ve been other men in your life?”

“No,” she said forthrightly, unwilling to add further deceit to a heap already grown too heavy to bear. “I’ve never once been unfaithful, nor even tempted.”

“Not even by those pretty plastic consorts you team up with in your photo shoots?”

“Certainly not.”

He hefted the bottle from the cooler and splashed more wine in their glasses. “Why should I believe you?”

“Because I’m telling the truth.”

A mirthless smile played over his mouth. “The way you were when you told me you were pregnant? The way you were when you intimated you’d had a string of lovers before me?”

“I’m not that person anymore.”

“Of course you are, Gabriella. People never really change, not deep down inside where it matters. They just pretend to.”

“When did you become so cynical, Max?” she asked him sadly. “Did I do that to you?”

“You?” he echoed cuttingly. “Don’t flatter yourself!”

The pain inside was growing, roaring through her like a fire feeding on itself until there was nothing left but ashes. For all that she’d promised herself she wouldn’t break down in front of him, the scalding pressure behind her eyes signaled how close the tears were, and to her horror she felt her bottom lip quiver uncontrollably.

He noticed. “Don’t you dare!” he warned her, in a low, tense voice, starting up from his chair so violently that its metal legs screeched over the pebbled concrete of the terrace. “Don’t you dare start with the waterworks just because I didn’t give you the answers you came looking for! I know that, in the old days, tears always worked for you, but they aren’t going to get you what you want this time, at least not from me, so save them for some other fool.”

When she first started modeling, there’d been times that she’d found it near impossible to smile for the camera. Days when she’d missed Max so badly, it was all she could do to get out of bed and face another minute without him. Nights when she hadn’t been able to sleep for wanting him, and mornings when she’d used so much concealer to hide the shadows under her eyes that her face had felt as if it were encased in mud.

But she’d learned a lot more in the last eighteen months than how to look good on command. She’d learned discipline, and become expert at closing off her emotions behind the remote elegance which had become her trademark.

She called on that discipline now and it did not fail her. The familiar mask slipped into place, not without effort, she had to admit, but well enough that she was able to keep her dignity intact.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” she said, rising to her feet with fluid, practiced grace, “but I stopped crying over you so long ago that I’ve quite forgotten how.”

“Don’t hand me that. I know what I saw.”

She executed a smooth half turn and tossed her parting remark over one provocatively tilted shoulder. “What you saw was a flicker of regret for the mistakes I’ve made in the past—a passing weakness only because weeping does terrible things to the complexion, especially when one’s face is one’s fortune. Good night, Max. I’ve worked hard enough for one day, so if you’re feeling energetic, you might try loading our plates and cutlery into the dish-washer—always assuming, of course, that you remember how to open it. Oh, and one more thing. Please don’t disturb me when you decide to turn in. I really do need to catch up on my beauty sleep.”

CHAPTER THREE

IF THERE’D been any plausible alternative, he’d have spent the night anywhere but in the same room with her. Since he didn’t have that option, he gave her a good two hours’ head start before he went up to join her.

She was asleep—or pretending to be—perched so close to the far edge of the mattress, all it would have taken was a gust of air from the open window to topple her to the floor. Being scrupulously careful to leave enough space between them to accommodate a third body, he inched carefully between the sheets on his side of the bed.

Her breathing was light and regular, which made him think perhaps she really was out cold, and eventually he must have dozed off as well because the next thing he knew, it was four in the morning and somehow, while they slept, they’d gravitated toward each other. She lay spooned against him, with her back pressed to his front.

She was wearing a soft cotton nightshirt and it was either very short to begin with, or it had ridden a long way up from where it was supposed to be. He knew because his hand had found its way over her hip so that his fingers were splayed across the bare skin of her warm, taut little belly. A few inches higher and it would have been her breast he was fondling, a realization which put his nether regions onto instant and standing alert.

She stirred. Stretched a little, like a lean, pedigreed cat. Rolled over until she was half facing him. In the opaque light of predawn, he saw her eyes drift open. Then, as awareness chased away sleep, she grew very still and very, very wary.

For about half a second, they stared at one another, then simultaneously rolled away from each other. She retreated to her side of the bed again and he slunk off to the bathroom, telling himself his problem was that he had to pee.

It hadn’t been the problem then, and it wasn’t the problem three hours later when he found himself suffering the same physical reaction all over again at the sight of his wife—his estranged wife! he reminded himself for about the fiftieth time—presiding over the breakfast table and looking even more delicious than the food on his plate.

“Are you coming with me to the airport this afternoon?” she asked him, her tone suggesting she’d be hard-pressed to notice whether he did or not.