Weddings: The Nights: Virgin on Her Wedding Night / Claiming His Wedding Night / One Wild Wedding Night

‘This … here … now … was all about you. I’ll take a cold shower. We’ll christen our bed in Venice tonight,’ Valente announced.

‘I’m going to Venice too?’ she gasped. ‘Tonight?’

‘Si, I have too much work to do to remain here, and why shouldn’t you join me? You can just as easily fly back to the UK from there tomorrow.’

‘It’s a great idea, ‘Caroline pronounced with a smile, relieved that he was no longer happy to leave her behind.

Heartbreakingly handsome, his black hair riotously curly after its lengthy assault by her clutching fingers, and with a shadow of stubble roughening his jawline, Valente dealt her a mocking glance. ‘I thought so too. You will love Venice.’

Her chin tilted. ‘When are you planning to tell me about your past? You still haven’t explained how you went from a tiny rented apartment to living like a prince,’ she reminded him ruefully.

Valente frowned. ‘It’s not a pleasant story,’ he warned her. ‘My mother was a maid in a house owned by Count Ettore Barbieri. My father, Salvatore, was Ettore’s eldest son. He was a drunk and a waster. When my mother was seventeen, Salvatore pushed her down on a bed and raped her. I’m the result …’

Caroline stared at him with wide, horrified eyes.

Lean, strong face grim, Valente continued. ‘The housekeeper refused to believe my mother and she was dismissed. She went home to her family in Florence, but when they realised she was pregnant they threw her out. They didn’t believe her story either. She spent all the years of her youth and my childhood cleaning for a living in Venice. She didn’t tell me what had happened to her until I was eighteen, and by then she had cancer.’

Caroline’s heart twisted with sympathy, and she gripped his arm to say warmly, ‘Valente, I’m so sorry. You must have been devastated.’

‘I confronted my father outside one of the clubs he patronised, but he called my mother a whore and his friends beat me up. Salvatore threatened to take my mother to court for spreading lies about him. She was dying,’ Valente breathed in disgust. ‘But the Barbieri family were well–respected, and when rumours of my mother’s accusation spread I suffered a lot of abuse in different quarters. A few years afterwards Salvatore died in a car crash and the Count, my grandfather, asked me to participate in some very discreet DNA testing. For his own peace of mind he wanted to be sure that I wasn’t a Barbieri.’

‘You must have hated your father’s family so much!’ Caroline said feelingly.

‘I felt sorry for the old man. When my claim was proved, he offered me an allowance to keep quiet and I told him to keep his money. That made him respect me. I refused to be a leech, like the rest of his family. I was studying for a business degree part-time by then, and the Count promised me my first job when I graduated. But I am very independent and I had my own plans.’

‘Knowing you as I do, I expect you did.’ Understanding his fierce pride and tough individuality so much better now that he had told her about his divided background and essential aloneness, Caroline snuggled close to him in a silent offering of support and comfort.

‘I made my first million on my own. I’m a shark in business, and very good at spotting opportunities,’ Valente murmured, with the wolfish assurance that characterised his business approach.

Caroline was buoyant with happiness, relief, and a huge sense of achievement at the success of their growing sexual intimacy. Convinced that she would soon manage to cross the final boundary and consummate their marriage, she was engulfed in a surging flood of love and gratitude. ‘Good in bed as well,’ she whispered teasingly, wrapping both arms round him and kissing him. ‘I love you so much, Valente Lorenzatto!’

In the circle of her clinging arms, his lean, powerful body went rigid. Her declaration of love had felt so natural to her that it took her a moment or two to register that it had had a quite different effect on him. The silence that had fallen was heavy, nerve-racking. Slowly she lifted her pale blonde head to look up at his lean dark face. ‘I’m not expecting you to reciprocate,’ she told him awkwardly.

‘I have no intention of reciprocating,’ Valente retorted with sardonic bite, shifting his bronzed shoulders to break her hold and ease back from her. His beautiful dark eyes were hard and unyielding. ‘I could never feel that way about you again.’

Shaken by that very extensive rejection, Caroline murmured, ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. I’ve got too used to not having to watch my words with you—but you’re right. It’s far too soon for me to be saying stuff like that.’

‘There could never be a right time. I need a shower.’ His lean, strong face was cold and set. Springing out of bed, Valente strode into the bedroom next door to use his own bathroom.

I could never feel that way about you again. Why on earth hadn’t she kept her mouth shut? How could she have been so foolish as to blurt it out like an infatuated teenager? He still hadn’t forgiven her for past events, and by the sound of it he would never do so, she conceded painfully. She cringed for herself, while at the same time fighting off a deep sense of hurt and rejection.

In the shower, she felt those feelings begin to recede, and anger took their place. Valente was full of contradictions and so volatile! For almost a month he had played the role of the perfect honeymoon partner and then, without any warning at all, he had turned on her! Everything a considerate lover could do he had done for her. And in bed he had been tender and patient, never putting pressure on her, always letting her set the pace. Was it any wonder that following that long, impossibly slow and very sexy seduction she had told him she loved him? But she had a right to know exactly where she stood with him. She pulled on a light green summer dress and went downstairs.

Koko was still waiting in the hall, and padded in her wake after being petted. Valente was watching the business news in the room he used as an office. He flicked the remote to mute the sound and dealt her a measuring glance. ‘I’m not in the mood for an emotional scene, Caroline.’

‘As you once said to me,’ she framed dulcetly, ‘tough! I need to know where I stand with you.’

‘You have a forty–five-page-long pre-nup that leaves no stone unturned on that score,’ Valente reminded her with sardonic cool.

‘I thought we’d moved on a little from that,’ she admitted tightly, hit on her weakest flank by that reminder of the bricks-and-mortar legal foundation of their far from normal marriage.

‘What made you think that? Nothing’s changed aside of the fact that we’re starting to have some fun in bed. Everything is as it should be.’ Brilliant dark eyes rested levelly on her, bright and cold as winter frost. ‘As you are very well aware, there is nothing sentimental about our agreement, so talk of love is ridiculous. I’ve kept my side of the bargain financially, and now I expect you to do what I have paid you to do.’

He had torn the deceptive veil of normality from their relationship and ripped it into tiny shreds, forcing her to face reality—indeed, rubbing her nose in the truth that all he wanted was her body and eventually a child. Her back remained poker-straight, her eyes undimmed. ‘No problem. But don’t forget that what you sow, you will reap.’

A satiric ebony brow lifted. ‘Meaning?’ he said, very drily.

‘That I’ll get over you. Of course I will—because I don’t see in you the man I used to love, and I’m no masochist,’ she told him, with unshaken dignity and her head held high in spite of the drum of pain starting to beat behind her left eye—the infallible warning of a migraine headache. ‘But think twice before you ask me to have a child with you. Does any child deserve to be raised in the corrosive, bitter atmosphere of a bad marriage?’

CHAPTER NINE

THE marital bed that lay in the lofty grandeur of the Palazzo Barbieri was not christened that night. Indeed, Valente and Caroline slept in separate bedrooms below the same roof for the first time since they were married.

Caroline’s migraine had settled in with a vengeance by the time they boarded the jet. Her medication had barely taken the edge off the drumming pain in her temples, and she’d been nauseous and wretched during the flight. Valente’s efforts to provide comfort had rolled off her like water off a duck’s back. He was the guy who didn’t love her, and just then she hated him.

There hadn’t been an ounce of forgiveness in her body during that taxing journey. The housekeeper, Maria, had helped her to get into bed when they’d finally arrived at the vast building on the Grand Canal, the mechanics of having to get there across all that water having merely exacerbated her misery. She’d lain there in the shaded room, the pain blinding every other sense, until a softly spoken doctor had arrived in Valente’s unusually unobtrusive company. The doctor had given her an injection that had sent her to sleep, and the last thing she’d recalled was the comforting feel of Koko’s soft trusting furry warmth nestled against her, and the realisation that her pet had finally triumphed over the bedroom ban.

By the following morning Caroline was fine again. Maria informed her that Valente had embarked on his day’s work in the offices on the floor below at seven, and Caroline breakfasted solitarily on a big stone balcony overlooking the world’s most famous waterway.

Early on a bright new day, that glorious, vibrant, unforgettable view of the city stole her heart. The magnificent buildings set against an azure-blue sky and lapped by the canal were rescued from picture-perfect beauty and brought to vivid life by the busy surge of water traffic and the milling crowds in the campo on the opposite bank.

Valente strolled out to join her, Maria bobbing in his wake to pour him coffee. Caroline snatched in a slow steadying breath. As always he looked amazing, sleek and dark and breathtakingly beautiful in a dove-grey designer suit, cut to a perfect fit for his strong, muscular body.

Cradling a cup of black coffee in one hand, he leant back against the ancient stone balustrade, trained liquid dark eyes on her and murmured lazily, ‘Feeling better?’

‘Back to normal, thankfully.’ Even as she looked at him, Caroline was disturbed by an ill-timed recollection of the mind-boggling pleasure he had given her the afternoon before. A dulled ache stirred between her thighs and she shifted uneasily in her seat, her face colouring as agonising awareness washed over her.

‘If you want me to, I will come to England with you, gattina mia,’ Valente informed her smoothly.

Caroline shifted her attention from him to the elegant china on the marble-topped table. Was he taking pity on his pathetic lovelorn wife, who could hardly be looking forward to doing without his divine presence for a few days, or was he just basking in the ego-boosting knowledge that he was adored? Her teeth gritted. She could still barely credit her stupidity in gushing out her love and inviting such humiliation.

‘I’ll be so taken up with Mum and Dad that it would be a waste of your time,’ she declared briskly.

An attractive brunette PA in a business suit put in a contrite appearance, holding a phone. With an apology Valente took the call, spoke at speed in Italian too fast for Caroline to follow, and tossed the phone down on the table.

‘Do you like the view?’ he enquired teasingly, evidently untouched by her assurance that his presence was not required in England.

‘Yes. Now I know why you once told me that you could never live anywhere else in the world but Venice. All this—’ Caroline raised small expressive hands, her appreciation sincere ‘—would be impossible to match.’

Just as she was without match, Valente conceded reluctantly, watching the sunshine gleam over the silvery pale long hair pooling in silken loops over her slight shoulders and then highlight her flawless skin, sparkling eyes and soft pink mouth. Seeing her in his home felt surreal. But such thoughts spooked him, since he was a very practical man. Somewhere—possibly even within the beloved city of his birth, he assured himself—there might well be another woman equally beautiful and possessed of Caroline’s special appeal. That imaginary woman might even be less complex than the woman he had married, and a great deal more entertaining, he told himself in emphatic addition. No woman was irreplaceable or irresistible. Nor had any woman ever been necessary to his comfort and peace of mind. He didn’t need Caroline; no matter how hard she tried to entangle him in her sentimental promises she would fail—because he would never allow a woman to have that much power over him again.

Yet, in spite of those reassuringly cautious reflections, Valente could not stop studying his wife’s attractions, nor seeking to pinpoint the source of them. She did that looking-up-through–the-eyelashes thing that all women did to flirt, yet in spite of her essential innocence there was a curiously sultry gleam of promise in her misty grey gaze that made the fit of Valente’s well-cut trousers uncomfortably tight. He regarded her broodingly from below luxuriant lashes, resenting the fate that would remove her from his bed when he most wanted her there, despising the ache at his groin. It would do him good to cool off without her for a few days.

Her body was already reacting without her volition to the growing heat of Valente’s appraisal. Her nipples were pushing against her green lace bra, her breasts felt constricted in the cups, and her heart was racing. And, angry though she still was with him, she could neither stifle that physical tumult of response nor break the hot connection with his gaze.

Valente reached a sudden decision. There would be plenty of time for him to cool off while she was in England with her family! She was his wife. He didn’t need to practice self-denial now. Who was he trying to impress? He swept up the phone to cancel all his appointments, unmoved by his senior PA’s astonishment at his instruction because business always came first with Valente. But if there had ever been a good excuse for breaking the rules it was Caroline, sitting there, huge pearl-grey eyes pinned to him, a silk top lovingly moulded to her delicate curves, a short floral skirt revealing her long slender legs.

He extended a lean long-fingered hand to her. ‘Come here …’