Bound By The Billionaire's Vows

She wanted to run at him. But to kiss him? Or claw his eyes out? Probably, she realised with a sinking heart, the former. She wanted to wrap her arms around his neck and pull his head down, pull his mouth to hers, to greet him as though she still believed in love and happily ever after.

He looked good enough to eat. It was pure coincidence that he was wearing the suit she’d always loved—the navy-blue one that drew attention to his broad shoulders and dark tan. Her eyes lifted to his face: his square jawline with the stubble that was nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with his impatience with something as dull as shaving; higher, to his generous lips and patrician nose; to cheekbones that were firm and high, slashed into his face in a sign of his determination; and eyes that were so dark they were almost black but for the flecks of gold that glistened in their depths.

Eyes that were staring at her now, undertaking their own inspection, running down her body with the kind of passion and possession she had, once upon a time, found mesmerising and addictive. Eyes that missed nothing, that skated over her stiletto-clad feet, higher to her slim, bare legs and the floaty dress she wore that fell to just above her knees and covered her in a mysterious cloud of pale yellow fabric. Her arms were bare; he caught a glimpse of her wedding ring and grimaced.

Good.

Let him feel the awkwardness of this.

His eyes lifted higher to her face, roaming it freely...marking it for changes?

There were not many. In fact, Skye would have said she looked almost exactly as she had five weeks earlier when she’d left their house, their marriage, their life. All of her changes were internal, except for the heavy fringe she’d had cut a week or so earlier, having decided spontaneously that she needed a change. Some outward sign that she was no longer the same woman who’d been caught up in the Matteo Vin Santo Show.

She had grown up—a lot—in the short space of time. She barely recognised the woman she’d been. So naïve, stupid and so damned trusting!

‘Thank you for seeing me,’ she said, breaking the silence with a businesslike tone, pleased with how crisply she enunciated each syllable. ‘I won’t take up much of your time.’

Ah, how well she knew him! She saw the glint of sardonic mockery in his eyes and she resented him for that. His ability to make her feel foolish and immature even in this, the most adult of circumstances.

He said nothing, though, simply stepping deeper into the room, making room for her to enter his office. She did so with no degree of pleasure. She’d been in the room before, and her eyes fell to the table, taking in the very spot where she’d sat and started to sign the papers. The papers that had been the beginning of the end.

‘You don’t love me, do you?’ She stared at the documents and then her husband as all the pieces of information came together. ‘I asked my lawyer about this. He told me everything. You. My dad. The whole sordid history. This is why you married me!’

His surprise was obvious and it infuriated Skye.

‘You really didn’t think I’d find out? You didn’t think I’d ask about this?’ She waved the contract in the air. ‘It’s all been about this damned hotel, hasn’t it? A hotel my dad bought from your grandfather. A hotel you’ve been trying to buy back for fifteen years. My God! This is what our marriage is all about!’

Silence stretched between them. Silence that pulled, pulled and pulled at her nerve-ends until they snapped.

‘We should talk about this later,’ he said seriously. ‘Just sign the papers and we’ll go for dinner tonight.’

‘Don’t.’ She slammed her palm down on the table. ‘Don’t you dare infantilise me! I deserve to know the truth. I want to hear it from your own mouth. This hotel is why you came to London. Why you met me. Right?’

His eyes narrowed and for a moment she wondered if he would say something to make this better, to alleviate the pain that was cracking through her soul.

‘Yes.’

Skye’s heart shook in her chest. She gripped the chair-back for support. ‘And why you married me?’

He was quiet for a long moment; it was a silence that tore her to shreds. And then he gave a simple, decisive nod that was the death knell to the fragile hopes she still held deep inside.

The memories were swirling through her, threatening to suck her back in time, but the door clicking shut jolted her into the present.

They were alone.

‘Well, Skye, this is...unexpected.’

Her heart thumped painfully in her chest, ramming against her ribcage. God, his accent. How had she forgotten the sensual appeal of his husky, deep, Italian-edged voice?

Be strong. This will be over soon enough.

‘You must have known I’d come back at some point,’ she said with a shrug of her slender shoulders, pleased with how confident the words sounded, even as her fingers were shaking a little.

‘I knew no such thing,’ he countered. His accent was thicker—a sign of his fury, she knew. It was only in moments of deep emotional distress that this happened. ‘You disappeared into thin air after you left my office without so much as the courtesy of a goodbye.’

Skye’s caramel eyes flew wide. ‘Courtesy? You want to talk about courtesy?’

His eyes narrowed warningly. ‘I want to talk about where the hell you’ve been.’

‘Like you care,’ she said with a roll of her eyes.

‘My wife disappeared, leaving no way to contact her. You think I don’t care?’

‘This is all about acquisition and ownership for you, isn’t it? Your wife.’ She shook her head angrily, realising that she was fighting a losing battle. ‘I was in England,’ she said on a sigh.

‘Not at your house,’ he said, and for a second her heart squeezed. Because it was proof he’d looked for her. Proof he’d tried to find her.

‘No.’ A rejection of that tenderness.

She knew why he’d looked for her and it had nothing to do with their sham marriage. He must have been furious to discover that she’d cancelled his purchase. That she’d found out about the pieces he’d been casually, secretly, manoeuvring through their short, disastrous marriage. Had he thought he could keep her so sensually fogged that she wouldn’t wake up and realise what the hell was going on? He had almost been right. He’d come so close to taking the hotel from her without her even realising.

‘Where were you?’ he pushed, his own words hardened with something she knew to be anger. Because Matteo Vin Santo liked to win. He liked to win at all costs, and she’d found out just in time.

‘It’s none of your damned business.’ She glared at him now, the veneer of civility slipping away. She tried to grab it but being here with him, in this room, overpowered by how damned handsome he was, made something inside her snap.

‘You’re my wife,’ he corrected, moving closer so that she caught a hint of his masculine fragrance. Her knees almost buckled. ‘I have every right to know.’

But it was the wrong thing to say. His casual insistence of his rights fired every hint of anger in her body. ‘That’s outrageous.’ Her eyes held the strength of steel when they locked with his. ‘You have no rights. Not where I’m concerned.’

A muscle throbbed at the base of his jaw. ‘You’re my wife.’ As though that explained everything!

‘That’s what I’m here to talk to you about,’ Skye asserted forcefully in an attempt to regain control of the situation, reaching for her handbag at the same moment a sharp knock on the door preceded the interruption of the receptionist.

She brought a bottle of mineral water and a glass with ice cubes and a wedge of lemon into the room and placed them on the boardroom table.

‘Thank you,’ Skye murmured, relieved to have a form of distraction. She hoped it might calm her raging nerves. She twisted the lid, waiting for the hiss of bubbles to silence and the receptionist to leave the room, before tipping half the water into the glass.

‘What, exactly, are you here to discuss?’ he prompted, crossing his arms over his chest. She didn’t need to look at him to know how broad that chest was. She lifted her mineral water and moved towards the window instead, staring down at Venice without really seeing it.

‘Our marriage.’ The words were a ghost. They conjured all the memories she wanted to forget.

The love-at-first-sight romance. The wedding itself. The way their marriage had been marked by nights of complete sensual abandon. Long days of waiting for him to come home hadn’t mattered. She’d been so exhausted she’d napped and eaten, preparing for his return, and then she’d been his willing sex slave. Self-disgust at her stupidity gnawed at her gut.

She twisted the enormous diamond around her finger before sliding it off one last time. ‘And how we’re going to end it.’ She spun round, her back to the view, her eyes landing squarely on his face, locking to his. She bravely held his gaze as she placed the ring on the boardroom table, then hastily stepped away from it as though it might burn her.

His expression was grim, but he said nothing initially. There was no shock. No outrage. No attempt to argue. To win her back.

Because it had never really been about her.