Husband By Contract

Donato nodded in a sharp little bow, clicking his fingers at Antonio, who reached behind her for the case, his pock-marked face beneath its chauffeur’s cap of blue and gold apologetic. ‘Scusi, signora.’ The voice was humble, the appearance of the big, beefy individual anything but.

Antonio might not know any English, Grace reflected with a touch of wryness, but he had certainly had no trouble in following the general theme of the conversation.

She had always thought Donato’s chauffeur resembled a member of the Sicilian mafia rather than a household servant, and this idea was reinforced now as she followed the swarthy, dark figure out to the Vittoria Mercedes, Donato’s hand at her elbow, feeling for all the world as though she was being led to her execution.

The fifty-or-so-mile drive to Donato’s magnificent villa in Sorrento would be no problem—the Mercedes’ excellent air conditioning added to the fact that the late-April temperature was only just touching seventy degrees made travelling at midday still a pleasure, unlike in high summer—but sitting in close proximity to Donato for well over an hour was a different matter.

Grace had planned to stay overnight in Naples and travel down to Sorrento early the next morning by hire car in time for the funeral, returning the same day. That would have meant she could have paid her last respects to Liliana while retaining some degree of independence, but...she might have known Donato would overrule any arrangements she had made.

Donato opened the car door for her but she paused before sliding in, looking up into his cold, handsome face as she asked, ‘How did you know I was coming today, and on that flight?’

‘Does it matter?’ His voice was cool and dismissive, his manner remote. It was an attitude she had seen him adopt many times in the past and it usually had the desired effect of forestalling further conversation, but not so with her, and not today.

‘Yes, it does, to me.’ She continued to hold his glance, her vivid blue eyes with their thick, curling lashes dark with determination. ‘I wasn’t aware I told anyone of my plans.’

‘Possibly not,’ he said.

‘Well, then?’ Her gaze was becoming a glare but she couldn’t do anything about it; his arrogance was bringing up a strong feeling of rebellion. ‘How did you know?’ she asked again.

‘I know most things about you, Grace.’ The way he said her name still had the power to make her weak but she would rather have walked through coals of fire than admit it, even to herself.

‘Meaning?’ she snapped tightly, her eyes hot.

‘You want me to list all the things I know about you?’ he asked smoothly, with simulated surprise. ‘Here? Where we could so easily be overheard?’

‘Stop playing games, Donato.’ She said it with a touch of weariness that narrowed his eyes on the whiteness of her face, in which exhaustion was suddenly all too evident

‘Is that what you think I am doing, mia piccola?’ he said softly. ‘Playing the game? Nothing could be further from the truth.’ For a moment something fierce and hot blazed in the heavily lashed black eyes but then his lids shuttered the fire as he half turned from her, gesturing into the car. ‘Get in and I will tell you what you wish to know.’

She got in—there was really little else she could do after all, she told herself flatly—and when he joined her a moment later on the spacious back seat, and her senses caught a whiff of the familiar aftershave he had specially made for him, the wickedly blended allure of spices and lemon and something indefinable made her nerve-ends jump. How many nights had she spent locked in his arms, she asked herself tremulously, breathing in that heady fragrance after hours of mad, passionate love? Hours that had sent her up to the heights, hours that had had her begging, pleading for sweet relief and then barely able to stand the ecstasy when he had obliged.

She had thought then that they would be together for the rest of their lives, that nothing in this world or the one beyond could possibly separate them, that they were two halves of one glorious whole. But she had learnt... Her mouth tightened and she breathed deeply through her nostrils. Oh, how she had learnt.

‘Well?’ She forced her face to remain blank as she turned slightly, although his nearness sent her heart flickering into her throat. ‘How did you know I was arriving today?’

‘I have been aware of all your movements in the last year, Grace,’ he said calmly. ‘You surely did not think it could be otherwise?’

‘All of my movements?’ she echoed, puzzled. ‘I really don’t see...’ And then it dawned. ‘You don’t mean... You haven’t had me watched?’ she asked angrily, her voice and colour rising in unison. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Of course.’ He eyed her coldly, the straight line of his mouth expressing distaste at her lack of control.

‘Of course?’ Her cry of outrage made him wince slightly, but she had given up trying to maintain the new cool image; she had never been so furious in all her life. ‘You dare to sit there and tell me you’ve been spying on me,’ she hissed heatedly, ‘without the slightest shred of guilt or embarrassment? How dared you do that, Donato? I can’t believe even you would sink so low.’

‘Careful, Grace.’ He leant towards her now, his face stony and his eyes dark, glittering chips of black ice. ‘I will only permit so much.’

‘You will only permit so much?’ She was quite oblivious to the big car negotiating its way out of the airport surroundings or of Antonio sitting stoically in the driving seat. The glass partition made their conversation inaudible but no one could have doubted the tenor of their exchange. ‘And what about me? What about what I will permit? You tell me you’ve invaded my privacy, reduced me to a goldfish in a glass bowl—’

He swore, softly and vehemently in swift Italian, before growling, ‘This is a ridiculous conversation and one which I have no inclination to continue. There is no question that you are the fish in the bowl.’

‘But you paid someone to spy on me!’ she spat shrilly. ‘What gives you the right to think you can act like that? It’s...it’s immoral.’

‘I will not discuss this with you until you can control yourself,’ he said icily, ‘and I have no wish to argue with you at this time, Grace. It is not fitting.’

His words brought the image of Liliana’s proud, beautiful face onto the screen of her mind, and she clenched her teeth in an effort to prevent more hot accusations spilling out. She was here for his mother’s funeral—she had to remember that, she told herself painfully, and if there was one thing she was sure of it was that Donato had loved Liliana dearly. But once she was back in England...

She bit her lip as she forced the rage to subside. There was no way she was going to let such a situation continue. For twelve months she had hesitated to proceed along the road she had chosen but now the way was clear and free of obstacles. There was no reason to vacillate any longer—she knew it in her heart—but still, still it hurt, and she was angry, furious with herself because of it. But this last outrage had confirmed everything. Her mouth tightened and she took a long, silent breath to ease the churning in her stomach. The die was cast.

When they arrived at the Hotel La Pergola Donato leant forward and slid the glass partition aside as Antonio brought the car to a standstill on the pebbled sweep of drive in front of the gracious building. ‘Antonio will see to the cancellation,’ he said over his shoulder to Grace as the powerful engine died.

‘I would prefer to do it myself,’ she said quickly. She had conceded to his insistence that she stay at Casa Pontina for Liliana’s sake, but he might as well learn right now that she was capable of running her own life without his assistance.

‘As you wish.’ The voice was lazy, the expression in his eyes anything but as she climbed out of the car before Antonio could open her door and marched stiffly up the wide, curving steps and into the hotel interior without glancing back.

Once inside she paused for a moment before continuing to the massive semicircular reception desk, aware that her legs were shaking and her stomach trembling at the shock of seeing him again. ‘Control, control, Grace,’ she murmured quietly to herself, earning a sidelong glance from an old Italian couple who were passing. Their relationship was over, irrevocably over, he knew that as well as she did. All she had to do was get through the next day or two as best she could until she could fly home to her tiny flat and job as receptionist at the local doctors’ surgery in a quiet part of Kent.

The hotel accepted her explanation that friends had picked her up from the airport and were insisting she stay with them with customary Italian good humour, and within a few minutes they were on their way again, driving deeper into the countryside where the magic of Italy reached out to touch her. She had always loved the country, from the first moment she had set foot in it five years before, as an eager eighteen-year-old desperate to prove herself in her new position as nanny to a wealthy Italian couple with two children, until the agonising parting a year ago.

She was particularly receptive to beauty, and the winding streets of terracotta-roofed stone houses, ancient gothic cathedrals and medieval fountains, poplar-shaded farmsteads surrounded by vineyards and olive groves, and the unspoilt tranquillity of the real Italy, had moved her to tears in the early days.

Sorrento, the family home of the Vittorias for centuries, was quaint, colourful and romantic, and their magnificent seventeenth-century villa, situated high above the blue waters of the Bay of Naples, had panoramic views from its wonderful old balconies bright with trailing bougainvillea. The whole area around Sorrento was a treasure trove of mythology, history and scenic splendour, and Grace had fallen deeply and hopelessly in love with it and...Donato.

He was a friend of the young couple whose children she had come out to nanny, and almost from their first meeting, when she had been in Italy all of two weeks, she had known she loved him. He was wildly handsome, an experienced and worldly-wise twenty-five to her innocent eighteen, and he’d swept her off her feet, utterly and completely.

How was she going to get through the next three days staying at Casa Pontina? Grace asked herself now, aware that the powerful memories the grand old house—named after the southern wind of Sorrento—was capable of evoking would not be conducive to her peace of mind.

As the oldest son Donato had inherited the villa and the Vittoria estate and businesses on his father’s death just months before Grace had first come to Italy, and he ran his small empire with the help of a management team of trusted employees who were completely committed to both Donato and the Vittoria name.

Bianca, Donato’s adopted sister, had married his best friend at seventeen and lived some miles away in the Sant’Agnello district of Sorrento where her husband cultivated his large crop of orange groves, although it was the Bellini business interests in Naples that had provided her husband with his vast wealth.

Although Bianca was only a month or two younger than Grace the two girls had never become friends, Bianca’s jealousy and bitterness at Grace’s popularity within the family remaining despite all Grace’s efforts to win the beautiful Italian girl over. Bianca had particularly resented Grace’s closeness to little Lorenzo, the youngest member of the Vittoria family, who had been something of a miracle baby, his parents having been told at Donato’s birth that no more children were possible. He had adored Grace with the devotion of a small puppy and she had loved him right back.

‘There was no problem at your hasty departure?’ Donato’s cool, deep voice broke into her thoughts of Lorenzo and brought her eyes to his dark profile. For a moment she thought he was referring to that other soul-searing time, so firmly had her mind retreated into the past, but then realisation dawned.

‘No.’ She quickly lowered her gaze; the hard-boned male face with its strong classical features and firm, sensual mouth still possessed a magnetism that was unnerving. ‘Everyone was very understanding,’ she said quietly.

‘And Dr Penn? He too was...very understanding?’ Donato asked expressionlessly without turning to glance her way.

‘Jim? Yes, of course; I’ve said, haven’t I? Everyone was very sympathetic...’ Her voice trailed away and she raised her eyes to his face again but the cold fa?ade was blank, no emotion in the stony features as he kept his gaze fixed straight ahead.

She didn’t ask how he knew the individual doctors’ names; no doubt his source had been very thorough, she thought tightly, but why pick Jim Penn out for special mention above the other three doctors at the busy surgery?

‘This is good.’ Donato’s voice was smooth, too smooth, and now he turned to her slowly, his dark eyes flashing over her pale face and his mouth twisting in a smile that was no smile at all. ‘I’m sure you will be greatly missed.’

‘I doubt it, not in a week.’ There was something here she didn’t understand, another undercurrent flowing into the dark, turbulent river that made up her relationship with the Vittorias—and one Vittoria in particular. ‘There’s another girl, Claire, a friend of mine, and she is very efficient.’

‘I was not talking about efficiency,’ he said softly, ‘but being missed.’

She stared at him for a moment, her eyes wary, before saying, ‘Now look, Donato, I told you I’m not into playing games—’