Italian Deception: The Salvatore Marriage / A Sicilian Seduction / The Passion Bargain

They didn’t talk; both had their faces half turned to the car’s side windows, preferring to remain sunk into their own bleak thoughts.

They barely touched unless Luca was taking her arm to politely help her in or out of the car.

They arrived at his mother’s house to find that the whole vast and scattered Salvatore family had congregated. Everyone was subdued, grave, but kind and sympathetic towards Shannon, which was nice of them given their knowledge of her past relationship with Luca—not that anyone but the closest family members knew what had happened, only that they’d parted under bitter circumstances. But still, Shannon appreciated their willingness to put all of that aside for today at least—though some could not help throwing curious glances at herself and Luca, who was never more than a step away from her side, though they did not acknowledge each other’s presence.

From the moment they stepped out of the house everything took on a bleak, dreamlike quality that led them frame by agonising frame through the ensuing hours. Mrs Salvatore was bereft. Each time she broke down the whole sombre gathering felt its rippling effect. And it was heartrending to watch her cling to her surviving son as if she was afraid to let go in case he was lost to her too.

Renata and Sophia clung to their husbands, Tazio and Carlo. One sister was older than her surviving brother, the other slotting in between Luca and Angelo. Both were stunningly beautiful, as were all the Salvatores, and their two men had been picked to complement their outstanding looks and great name.

Shannon clung to no one, though she knew that Luca somehow always managed to keep himself within arm’s reach of her just in case she broke down, but she didn’t; she just kept her head lowered and did her grieving silently beneath her black lace veil.

She almost cracked at her first sighting of the two flower-decked coffins. And again later when she stepped into the church and was shocked by how many more people there were packed into it. Friends and colleagues, she presumed, most of whom were strangers to her but not to Angelo and Keira. In her heart all these people represented life surrounding the tragic couple as they made their journey to their final resting place.

She didn’t shed tears throughout the service. She didn’t do anything other than go where she was instructed to go, sit, stand, kneel, wait—follow. The waxen mask of her composure took its worst beating during the graveside ceremony. Mrs Salvatore almost collapsed and Luca had to support her in both his arms. Sophia wept, Renata wept, the whole flower-bedecked site seemed to rock beneath the rolling weight of everyone’s grief.

Afterwards they made the journey to the Salvatore family villa set high above Florence on the outskirts of Fiesole. It was a beautiful place steeped in the fabulous trappings of wealth collected over centuries and surrounded by the most exquisite gardens big enough to lose yourself in. It was a place used by all factions of the Salvatore family for throwing extravagant parties. Today it became a place shrouded in sorrow, where the whole congregation gathered to pay their respects to the family.

Mrs Salvatore was led away to her private apartments so she could have a few minutes to compose herself. Luca, his two sisters and their husbands took up the role of hosts as the many formal reception rooms began to fill with black-clad sombre people and sober-dressed serving staff that mingled amongst them carrying white-linen-covered silver trays holding a choice of refreshment.

And Shannon had never felt so lost and alone in her entire life as she did as she wandered aimlessly from room to room, smiling politely at those who offered her their sympathy and murmuring all the right phrases in response, but she felt strange inside, oddly out of place as if she did not belong here and she knew why she felt that way.

She had just buried her sister, yet she felt as if her right to grieve had been hijacked by this great, heaving wave of Salvatore grief. It was silly, selfish and unfair of her to think this way, but telling herself that did not remove the feeling. Everyone spoke in Italian and she wanted to speak English. She wanted to remember her sister in their own language and scream at the top of her voice—Let me have my sister back!

Someone caught her arm as she was stepping out of one room into another and she was hustled into a quiet alcove set into the side of the grand staircase. Luca loomed over her like a dark shadow.

‘The British stiff upper lip is still in use, I see,’ he drawled sardonically.

CHAPTER SEVEN

IF HE only knew what was going on inside her head, Shannon thought. ‘I didn’t see you showing signs of letting your composure crack,’ she countered distantly.

‘It is cracked inside—bleeding, in fact.’ Luca surprised her with the gruff admission. ‘Here, drink some of this,’ he said and put a glass in her hand.

‘What is it?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘Brandy. It might help warm you up. You look in danger of turning into an ice sculpture.’

She drank some of the brandy and was annoyed with herself afterwards because it went straight to her eyes.

‘Don’t,’ Luca husked.

‘You started it,’ she blamed, stretching her eyes wide to stop the tears, and lifted a set of fingers to press them against her trembling mouth.

His sigh arrived with the gentle touch of a long finger as it brushed a stray lock of hair from her cheek. It was contact enough to make her want to throw her arms around his neck and sob her heart out.

Someone appeared on the periphery of their vision. It was Renata; she took one look at the intimacy of their little one-to-one and tensed. Luca’s older sister was one the nicest people anyone would wish to meet, but she struggled to look at Shannon without showing her disapproval.

‘Mama has come down and is asking for you, Luca,’ she informed her brother stiffly.

‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ he said without taking his eyes from Shannon.

‘Mama said—’

‘A minute, Renata,’ he interrupted incisively.

There was a pause that set the fine hairs on Shannon’s body tingling and kept her eyes firmly fixed on the black silk knot of Luca’s tie, then Renata spun away leaving an uncomfortable silence behind her.

‘That wasn’t very nice,’ she chided.

‘I don’t feel like being nice,’ he clipped in reply. ‘For the whole of this terrible day you have looked like a lonely piece of fragile porcelain someone put down and forgot to pick up again. I want to pick you up and never put you down.’

It was Shannon’s turn to murmur an uneven, ‘Don’t.’ He had no right to be saying things like that to her—especially not after the way he’d used her last night.

‘We need to talk. Last night was a mess,’ he said abruptly, hooking right into her thoughts again. ‘It should not have ended the way that it did.’

‘I don’t want to discuss it.’ She made a move to follow in Renata’s footsteps.

Luca blocked her exit from the alcove with a broad shoulder that effectively held her captive. ‘We have to talk about it,’ he insisted. ‘There are things I should have said last night that got lost in the war. But they are about to come up and hit us both in the face so I need you to listen.’

‘Listen to what—more insults?’

‘No,’ he denied on a rasp of impatience. ‘The marriage thing,’ he explained. ‘You said no to marrying me for our child’s sake but—’

‘There is no child!’ she inserted sharply.

‘Luca …’ It was the softer voice of Sophia that interrupted this time, sounding very cautious. ‘I am sorry to disturb you but Signor Lorenzo has arrived. He wants to …’

A string of near-silent curses left Luca’s lips while Shannon closed her eyes and prayed to God that Sophia hadn’t heard what she’d said. ‘I’m coming,’ he bit out in grinding impatience.

Sophia wasn’t up to pushing her point as her older sister had done, because she walked away without saying another word, leaving Shannon trapped in the alcove by a man who was literally pulsing with frustration and a burn in his eyes that made her think of—

Stop it, she thought painfully. Don’t do this to me here! She dragged in a tense breath. ‘Go to your mother, or Mr—whoever,’ she said tautly.

But Luca was not going anywhere. ‘Just listen,’ he instructed, ‘because I do not have time for this but I know it must be said!’ He took a deep breath, impatience fighting with something Shannon couldn’t quite put a name to but it set her trembling as he caught her eyes again and began feeding words to her in a quick, sharp rasp. ‘I want you to think about Rose. I want you to put your own feelings aside, and my feelings, for that matter, and think about her and what is best for her.’

‘Rose will come home with me. I mean to—’

‘No!’ he shot at her forcefully. His hands came up to grip her shoulders, the sudden angry shift of his body almost knocking the glass of brandy out of her hand. ‘I knew you were planning something like this,’ he bit out like a curse, ‘but it cannot be like that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because—’

‘Luca …’ There was no dismissing the owner of this particular voice. It belonged to Mrs Salvatore herself. Shannon almost sagged with relief when he let go of her shoulders on a sigh of surrender and turned to his mother.

‘Father Michael has to leave now but he says you wanted a word with him before he—Oh, Shannon,’ Mrs Salvatore cut off to acknowledge. ‘I did not see you standing there.’

Which was a blatant untruth because if this wasn’t part of a conspiracy to stop whatever it was the family believed they were doing in this alcove, then Shannon would eat her hat.