The Wedding Charade

CHAPTER THREE

THEY had barely stepped outside the hotel on the Grand Canal when the paparazzi swarmed upon them. A journalist pushed a microphone towards Nic and asked, ‘Signor Sabbatini, the news of your engagement and impending marriage to Ms Sommerville has taken everyone by surprise. You must have been conducting a very secret liaison. Do you have any comment to make about your romance? ‘

Nic smiled charmingly but Jade could tell he was grinding his teeth behind it. ‘Ms Sommerville and I have been family friends for years. We finally decided to become more than friends. We are very much looking forward to our wedding next month. Now, if you’ll allow us to celebrate our engagement in private, please move on.’

One of the older journalists pushed forward a microphone in Jade’s direction before Nic could do anything to block it. ‘Ms Sommerville, you were involved some months ago with Richard McCormack, the husband of one of your best friends. Do you think the news of your engagement to Nic Sabbatini will finally repair your relationship with Julianne McCormack?’

Jade felt the subtle tightening of Nic’s fingers around hers. ‘I have no comment to make on any issue to do with my private life, apart from being very happy about my engagement to Nic. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I am so—’

‘Excuse us.’ Nic took command and led her through the crowd of tourists who had gathered.

‘I thought I told you to leave the questions to me,’ he said in an undertone as they weaved through the knot of people.

‘Everyone will think it strange if I don’t say something,’ Jade argued. ‘This is a momentous occasion, after all.’

He gave her a quelling look before heading for a restaurant on one of the canals.

They were led to a table in a lavishly appointed private room. Crystal chandeliers twinkled from the ceiling, plush velvet covered the chairs and hung from the windows in thick curtains in a rich shade of scarlet. There were Venetian masks on the wall, each one a work of art. The atmosphere was one of intimacy and privacy, and again Jade wondered how many women Nic had entertained here, wining and dining them before taking them back to his penthouse apartment to pleasure them. Strangely, she felt a jagged spike of jealousy poke at her and she shifted in her chair. Why would she be jealous? There would always be other women with Nic. It was the way he was made. He was not cut out for commitment and continuity in his love life. He was a playboy with a PhD in seductive charm. He could have anyone he wanted. He had had anyone he wanted.

The menus were placed in front of them and within minutes a bottle of champagne arrived in a silver ice bucket. Jade looked at it with wariness. She had already had one more glass than usual. Being with Nic had the same effect as alcohol. It had made her head spin to see him dressed in nothing but his black underwear back there at the hotel. She had set out to be as brazen as she could—getting dressed in front of him to show him she was just as the press reported her—but it was completely different when he had done the same to her. She had tried not to look at his carved to perfection body. She had seen plenty of male bodies on the beach or at the gym, and some of them had been downright gorgeous. But something about Nic’s always made her heart race and her senses tingle in a way they never did with anyone else. It made her feel deeply unsettled. She was the one who played the cat and mouse game with men, not the other way around. She didn’t like the thought of Nic having that much power over her, in fact any power over her.

The attentive waiter filled both of their glasses before moving away to leave them in privacy.

Nic picked up his glass and raised it to hers. ‘Let’s drink to our first year of marriage.’

Jade gave him an ironic glance. ‘Don’t you mean the only year of our marriage? Don’t the terms of the will state we have to be married by the first of next month and stay married for exactly a year?’

He drank from his glass before he answered. ‘Yes, but what if we enjoy being married to each other? What if it turns out to be more convenient than we first thought? We could make it last as long as we like.’

Jade sat back in her seat as if he had pushed her backwards with one of his strong hands against her chest. ‘You can’t mean that!’ she gasped.

He gave her one of his white-toothed smiles. ‘Only teasing,’ he said, his hazel eyes twinkling. ‘Once the year is up next May, we can both take the money and run.’

Jade worked hard at squashing her sense of pique. She knew his motive for marrying her was only to get the money he felt entitled to; after all, she was doing it for the very same reason. She could hardly blame him for going ahead with his grandfather’s stipulations. His two older brothers had had no such conditions placed upon them, but then Giorgio and Luca were both happily married with children. Giorgio and Maya had separated for a time, but had reconciled just before the old man’s death. It had been Salvatore’s desire to see all of his three grandsons settled before he died, but when he became ill so suddenly he had obviously decided to take matters into his own hands and make sure Nic bowed to pressure to settle down instead of playing the field for too much longer. Why Salvatore had chosen her as Nic’s bride was a mystery. He could not have been unaware of the enmity between them. For the last decade they had snarled and sniped at each other when they had to be together at Sabbatini or Sommerville functions.

Jade knew a lot about the history of the Sabbatinis, having been a part of their circle for so many years. Her Australian-born father had befriended Salvatore when he was just starting out as an accountant and, with his Italian friend’s help, his small accounting firm had become one of the most prestigious in Europe.

Like Nic and his brothers, Jade had grown up brushing shoulders with the rich and famous. Celebrities were not idols from afar; they were friends and acquaintances who regularly attended the same parties and social gatherings.

Jade’s mother, Harriet, had been a London socialite herself until her untimely death from an overdose when Jade was five. Whether it had been suicide, a cry for help or an accident was something Jade and her brother Jonathan had never been told. There had always been speculation regarding Jade’s parents’ marriage. Throughout their childhood, it had been a case of don’t-mention-your-mother-in-your-father’s-presence by all the nannies and au pairs that had come and gone. Whether it would upset their father because of unresolved grief or anger was another mystery that had never been solved.

Jade looked at the menu and chewed her bottom lip in concentration. She hated eating out; it was something she usually avoided, but not for the reasons everyone assumed. It had been splashed all over the papers enough times—how she had been admitted to a special clinic when she was fifteen and then again at eighteen when she had skirted with death as her weight had dropped to a dangerously low level during the months following Jonathan’s death. She was well and truly over all that now, but eating out still threw up the problem of how to choose when she had no idea what was written on the menu.

She felt Nic’s gaze on her now, the weight of it like a stone. She looked up and closed the menu. ‘What are you thinking of having?’ she asked.

‘The crab fettuccine to start with and maybe the veal Marsala for mains,’ he said. ‘What about you?’

Jade ran her tongue over her sand-dry lips. ‘Why don’t you choose for me?’ she said, pushing the menu to one side. ‘You seem to know the place pretty well. I’m not fussy.’

He cocked one of his eyebrows at her. ‘No?’

‘I’ve dealt with a lot of stuff over the years, Nic,’ she said, giving him a hard look. ‘I’m not going to embarrass you by dispensing with my meal in the bathroom as soon as your back is turned.’

A frown appeared between his brows. ‘I wasn’t suggesting any such thing,’ he said. ‘It was a tough time for you growing up, losing your mother so young and then your brother like that.’

Jade had perfected her back-off look over the years and yet, as she used it now, it was with shaky confidence that it would work. ‘I’d rather not talk about it. They died. Life goes on.’

The waiter arrived to take their order, and when he left Nic shifted his mouth in a musing pose and continued to study her. She began to feel like a specimen under a powerful microscope. Nic always made her feel like that. He saw things that other people didn’t see. His eyes were too all-seeing, too penetrating. It made her feel vulnerable and exposed—something she avoided strenuously at all times and in all places.

‘Do you see much of your father?’ Nic asked.

She toyed with the stem of her champagne flute, her eyes averted from his. ‘Before this latest blow up, yes. He called in occasionally with his latest girlfriend,’ she said tonelessly. ‘The last one is only a year or two older than me. I think they might eventually marry. He wants a son—to replace Jonathan. He’s been talking about it for years.’

Nic heard the pain behind the coolly delivered statement. ‘You’ve never been close to him, have you? ‘

She shook her head, still not meeting his eyes. ‘I think I remind him too much of my mother.’

‘Do you remember her?’ he asked.

Her jade-green eyes met his, instantly lighting up as if he had pressed a switch. ‘She was so beautiful,’ she said in a dreamy tone. She picked up her glass and twirled it gently, the bubbles rising in a series of vertical lines, each one delicately exploding on the surface. ‘She was so glamorous and always smelt so divine—like honeysuckle and jasmine after a long hot day in the sun.’

She put the glass down, and ran her finger around the rim, around and around as she spoke. ‘She was affectionate. She couldn’t walk past Jon or me without encompassing one or both of us in a crushing hug. She used to read to me. I loved that. I could listen to her voice for hours … ‘

A little silence settled like dust motes in the space between them.

She gave a little sigh and picked up her glass again, twirling it before she took a tentative sip. She put it back down, her mouth pursing as if the taste of the very expensive champagne had not been to her taste. ‘She loved us. She really loved us. I never doubted it. Not for a moment.’

Nic knew a little of the rumours surrounding Harriet Sommerville’s death. There was some talk of an illicit affair that had gone wrong and Harriet had decided to end it all when the other man involved refused to leave his wife. Other rumours suggested Jade’s father had not been the best husband and father he could have been at the time, but it was hard to know what was true and what had been fiction.

The press had a way of working it to their advantage: the bigger the scandal, the better the sale of the papers. Nic had experienced it himself, along with his brothers. But there was something about Jade that intrigued him. At regular intervals over the years she appeared at all the right functions, dressed to the nines, playing to the cameras, flirting with the paparazzi, but still he wondered if anyone really knew who the real Jade Sommerville was. Not the slim, beautiful and elegantly dressed and perfectly made-up young woman who sat before him now, twirling her champagne flute without drinking any more than a sip or two, who refused to speak of her dead brother, who spoke of her father with thinly disguised disgust.

Who was she?

Who was she really?

Was she the woman who had broken up the marriage of her best friend, as the papers had reported?

Or was she someone else entirely?

‘Losing a parent is a big deal,’ Nic said to fill the cavernous silence. ‘I was knocked sideways by my father’s accident. Seeing him like that … ‘ he winced as he recalled it ‘ …one minute so vitally alive, the next in a coma.’ He raked his fingers through his hair. ‘It was a relief when he died. No one wanted to say it but it was true. He would have hated being left with brain damage.’

She looked up at him with empathy in her eyes. ‘You are a lot like him,’ she said gently. ‘I suppose lots of people have said that to you before. He hated being tied down.’

Nic smiled wryly as he picked up his glass. ‘My parents’ marriage was an arranged one. Not a lot of people know that. My mother loved him from the start but he was not so keen on being shackled to one woman. They muddled along as best they could until Chiara came along. My father loved having a daughter. He had three sons but his daughter was everything to him.’

He put his glass down with a clunk on the table, his eyes moving away from hers. ‘Losing her was like the bottom of his world falling out from under him. He felt he was being punished by God for not loving his wife and sons enough. He went through a tumultuous time. As young as you were, I am sure you heard of it: numerous affairs with shallow gold-diggers until he finally realised the only woman he could love was the mother of his still living children who had loved him the whole time.’

‘Everyone reacts to grief in their own way,’ she said softly.