Once a Ferrara Wife...

The pain of being back here was intensified by the memories that were carved in every glimpse of the place because it had been here, in the exclusive villa on a rocky promontory at the far end of the private beach, that they’d spent the first nights of their honeymoon. It was the villa that Cristiano had built for his own use. The ultimate bachelor pad.

Laurel stiffened. Surely they hadn’t booked her a room in the hotel? ‘I booked a hotel outside the resort.’

‘I know exactly where you were staying. My staff cancelled the booking. You’ll stay where I put you and be grateful for Sicilian hospitality that makes it impossible for us to turn away a guest.’

Her stomach churned. ‘My plan was to stay elsewhere and arrive just for the wedding.’

‘Daniela wants you to be part of all of it. Tonight is a gathering of local people. Black tie. Drinks and dancing. As her maid of honour, you are expected to join in.’

Drinks and dancing?

Laurel felt cold and wished his driver would turn off the air conditioning. ‘Obviously I don’t expect to be part of the pre-wedding celebrations. I have my laptop so I can just get on with some work. I’m buried under a mountain of it at the moment.’

‘I don’t care. You’ll be there and you’ll smile. Our separation is amicable and civilized, remember?’ Civilized?

There was nothing civilized about the emotions spinning inside her and nothing civilized about the dangerous glint in his eyes. Their relationship had never been civilized, she thought numbly. The passion they’d shared had been scorching, crazy and out of control. Unfortunately all that heat had burned through her ability to think clearly.

Laurel tried to breathe normally, but the prospect of facing his family was impossibly daunting. They all hated her, of course. And part of her understood that. From their point of view she was the English girl who’d given up on the marriage and that was unforgivable in the circles in which he moved. In Sicily marriages endured. Affairs, if they happened, were overlooked.

She had no idea what the rule book said for handling what had happened to them. No idea what the rules were for coping with the shocking loss of a pregnancy and a monumentally selfish husband.

The only thing that comforted her in the whole disastrous episode had been that Dani, generous extrovert Dani, had refused to judge her. And the downside of that acceptance was that she was here now, putting herself through hell for the only true friend she’d ever had.

‘I’ll do whatever people want me to do.’ It was a performance, she thought. If she had to smile, she’d smile. If she were expected to dance, she’d dance. The outside didn’t have to reflect the inside. She’d learned that as a child. She’d learned to bury her feelings deep, so deep that few ever saw them.

Her confidence that she could cope with the situation lasted until they drove through the entrance gates and she realised the driver was taking the private road towards the Aphrodite Villa. The jewel in the crown. Cristiano’s beachside bolt-hole, his personal retreat from the demands placed on him by his thriving business empire.

When they’d built the Resort they’d used part of the land to relocate their corporate headquarters and Laurel had never ceased to drool over his office, which exploited the stunning coastal position. Cristiano had qualified as a structural engineer and his talents in that area were visible in the innovative design features incorporated into his headquarters.

As would be expected, the walls of his office were glass. What was unexpected was the floor, also glass and stretching out over the water so that a visitor to his office could find himself distracted by shoals of colourful Mediterranean fish darting beneath their feet.

It was typical of Cristiano to merge the aesthetic with the functional and there were similar touches throughout his hotels.

‘I don’t see why an office has to be a boring box in the centre of a smog-choked city,’ he’d said when she’d gasped at her first sight of his office. ‘I like the sea. This way, if I’m stuck behind my desk, I can still enjoy it.’

It was that same breadth of vision that had made the company so successful. That, and his sophistication and appreciation for luxury. Her first glimpse of the Aphrodite Villa had made her jaw drop, but going there now drew a very different response from her.

The shock of it tore a hole in her composure. ‘Why are we going this way? I’m not staying here.’ It was too reminiscent of their wedding night, when she’d been so happy and full of optimism for the future.

‘Why would you care where you sleep?’ His tone was hard and unsympathetic. ‘If what we shared was “just a wedding,” then presumably this was “just a honeymoon”, in which case the place holds no sentimental value. It’s just a bed.’

Laurel struggled to bring her breathing back to normal. She carried an asthma inhaler in her bag but there was no way she was going to use it in front of him unless she was half dead.

And now she was trapped. To admit how the place made her feel would be to reveal something she had no intention of ever revealing.

Not to admit it meant staying here.

‘It’s your premium property.’ Occasionally, she knew, he had been persuaded to loan it to honeymooning rock stars and actors. ‘Why waste it on me?’

‘It’s the only vacant bed in the place. Sleep in it and be grateful.’ His tone was so chilly and matter-of-fact that for a moment she truly believed that the villa held no significance for him whatsoever. For a man who owned five homes and spent his working life travelling the world, this was just another few hundred square metres of luxurious accommodation.

Or was it?

Was he doing this to punish her?

‘Well, at least it has a good internet connection.’ She kept her eyes ahead, refusing to let him access her secrets. She tried not to remember that gazing into his eyes had once been her favourite pastime. On more than one occasion she’d woken him just so that she could experience that incredible connection that happened whenever they looked at each other. With him, she’d discovered intimacy. But intimacy meant openness and openness meant vulnerability, as she’d learned to her cost.

He’d demanded that she trust him and gradually she’d yielded to that because he would accept nothing less. And then he had let her down so badly she doubted the bruises would ever heal.

‘You’re being treated as an honoured guest. We both know it’s more than you deserve. Let’s go.’ Without giving her the chance to argue further, he opened the door and sprang from the car with that same driven sense of purpose that characterised everything he did.

All he could focus on was the fact that she’d left him, Laurel thought numbly. It was all about his pride. Not about their relationship. He saw himself as the injured party.

She had no choice but to follow him up the pathway that led to the villa. Inside, she knew, there would be air conditioning so there would be some relief from the blistering Sicilian sun. Unless it was the chemistry between them that burned hotter than the fires of hell.

Cristiano flung open the door and she heard the sound of the car reversing as his driver retreated back to the main hotel complex.

Laurel stepped across the threshold, trying not to remember their wedding night when he’d carried her through the door, both of them frantic in their indecent desperation for each other. ‘Why isn’t he waiting for you?’

He dropped her case onto the tiled floor. ‘Why do you think? Because I’m staying here too.’

The words floated right past her because they made no sense.

‘Please tell me that’s a joke—’ Her voice sounded strange, robotic. ‘There’s only one bedroom.’ One enormous bedroom overlooking the pool and the beach. The bedroom where they’d spent long sultry nights together.

Cristiano gave a bitter smile. ‘Blame Dani again. Her wedding. Her room allocation.’

‘I’m not sharing a bed with you!’ The words flew out before she could stop them and he turned with an angry snarl that was animal-like in its ferocity.

‘You think you need to say that to me? Do you think I would have you back in my bed after what you did? Do you?’

Her heart was hammering and she took an instinctive step backwards even though she knew he’d never hurt her. Not physically. ‘I can’t stay here with you.’ The emotions she’d kept locked down during the horrendous car journey were bubbling up like milk on the boil, refusing to be contained.

‘It’s too—’

‘It’s too what?’ Something about the way he was looking at her made her heart beat faster. He’d always been frighteningly good at reading her mind and this time it was imperative that he didn’t.

She didn’t want to open up. It was way too late for that.

Grateful for years of practice at hiding what she felt, Laurel hauled her emotions back inside her. ‘It’s awkward,’ she said coldly. ‘For both of us.’

He stared at her for another few seconds and then his mouth hardened. ‘I think “awkward” is the least of our problems, don’t you? Don’t worry. I’ll sleep on the couch. And if you’re worried that I won’t be able to keep my hands off you, then don’t be. You had your chance.’ Insultingly indifferent, he strolled away from her but even that didn’t give her breathing space because there were traces of him everywhere.

A tailored jacket slung carelessly over the back of a chair. The glass of fresh Sicilian lemonade, half drunk because he’d been disturbed and too busy to finish. His laptop, the battery light glowing because he worked such long hours he never bothered to shut down. All those things were so familiar, so much a part of him, and for a moment she stood still, unable to breathe, swamped by a longing to turn the clock back.

But turn it back to when?

How could there have ever been a different outcome? Their love had been doomed from the beginning. Together they’d managed to make Romeo and Juliet look like a match made in heaven.