Her mother-in-law’s sweet thoughtfulness brought another rush of tears. Brooke knew Sophia would be devastated if she and Leo broke up. So would Giuseppe. Brooke could not do it to them, or to her children, or to herself. She loved Leo. She would always love him, no matter what. Life without him was unimaginable!
Brooke fell asleep with tears still wet on her cheeks. But they had long dried when she woke many hours later to the sounds of someone in the en suite bathroom, in the shower.
Her errant husband, it seemed, had finally deigned to come home.
CHAPTER THREE
ODDLY, Brooke’s first reaction was fury, not distress.
The room was dark, she noted angrily. Leo must have turned the bedside lamp off when he came in.
She rolled over to check the luminous numbers on the bedside clock and saw it was twenty minutes past eleven. Not too late, so a wife wouldn’t be suspicious. Certainly not one as stupidly doting and one-eyed as herself!
With a bitter resentment in her heart, she rolled back onto her side, facing the far wall, curling her body up in a foetal position, glad she was wearing one of her more modest nighties.
Leo had a thing for short, slinky black satin night-wear which barely covered her bottom. This particular nightie was much longer, reaching her knees. It was particularly low-cut up top, however, and had only the thinnest shoulder straps keeping it in place. Still, with her back to him, its length was the most important factor.
I’ll pretend to be asleep, she vowed savagely as she lay there. That way I won’t say anything I might regret in the morning.
Maybe if Leo hadn’t stayed in the shower so darned long Brooke might have been able to keep to that vow. But fifteen minutes went by and the water was still running, evoking all sorts of darkly jealous thoughts.
He was trying to wash the smell of her off his body. He probably reeked of her, and that heavy, musky perfume she always wore.
By the time the taps were turned off, five minutes later, Brooke had rolled back over and was glaring in the direction of the bathroom, watching and waiting for him to come out.
She was still glowering at the door when it finally opened.
Leo emerged, obviously trying not to make a sound, turning off the bathroom light before carefully closing the door behind him.
But not before Brooke got a good long look at him, framed in the brightly lit doorway.
There was no doubting Leo was an impressive man naked. Brooke had never seen better.
He had it all. Broad shoulders. Deep chest. Flat stomach. Slim hips. Gorgeous olive skin. Not too much body hair. Strong arms and lovely muscular thighs…with more than adequate equipment in between.
Brooke had been overawed by him from the first time he’d stripped for her. She was still overawed by him. Even now, when she wanted to hate him.
Her heart began to pound as his darkened silhouette crossed the room, lifted the sheet and slid, still naked, into the bed. Not an unusual occurrence. Leo often slept in the nude.
But the cool, casual arrogance of the man infuriated her. When he rolled over and put his back to her, she wanted to kill him.
Brooke lay there, scowling up at the ceiling, thinking of the cruellest most uncivilised way of putting him to death for his crimes against her and their marriage. The guillotine was too quick and too kind. The same applied to a firing squad. She wanted him to suffer as she was suffering, to endure…in agony.
Hanging, drawing and quartering would do just fine, she decided. Like in past times. But only after a few years’ solitary confinement in one of those cold, old prisons, where his only companions would be cockroaches and rats!
Unfortunately, there was no real solace or satisfaction in such thinking, and Brooke’s jealous fury was soon sidelined by an equally savage determination to know for sure just how great Leo’s crimes against her were: how far things had progressed, how many times he’d been unfaithful to her that day.
The state of his body, she resolved with a wild recklessness, would be much more telling than the sight of his car in that car park this afternoon.
He flinched when her hand landed on the indent of his waist, then stiffened when it began to slide around further. Abruptly he rolled onto his back, his head twisting on the pillow to face her.
By this time the palm of Brooke’s hand was resting provocatively on his stomach, and her heart was racing. With fear of what she’d find, she wondered? Or fear of what he’d do if she dared touch him down there?
‘I thought you were asleep,’ he said, his voice as cool as his skin.
‘I was.’ She could just make out his face. The moon was out and the curtains which covered the bedroom windows were light and filmy, letting in enough light to see by once your eyes had adjusted.
Leo was looking at her rather oddly, his eyes narrowed and wary.
‘I tried to be quiet,’ he said, a measure of defensiveness in his voice.
‘Why?’
‘Mamma told me you’d had a bad migraine all day. She said she’d given you some pills.’
‘Yes. She did. She’s very kind, your mum.’
‘True.’
There was a moment’s awkward silence when Leo said nothing further and Brooke’s courage began to fail her. Her hand lay still on his stomach while her heart thudded away.
‘You’re very late, Leo…’
‘Yes. I know. I’m sorry, but Lorenzo’s left a damned awful mess behind him. I’m trying to have everything sorted out before we leave on Friday. I haven’t finished yet, either. I wasn’t as productive today as I would have liked to be. Too many interruptions. So I might have to work late tomorrow night as well.’
‘I see,’ Brooke said, and another awkward silence fell between them.
‘It’s not like you to have a migraine, Brooke,’ Leo said at last. ‘I wonder what brought it on?’
Thinking of you in love with Francesca all these years, she wanted to throw at him. Thinking of you in bed with her all afternoon and half the night.
Such thoughts renewed her bitter resolve to see the lie of the land, once and for all.
‘I feel much better now,’ she murmured, and slid her hand back and forth across his stomach.
He sucked in sharply.
‘So I see,’ he bit out.
When he made no move to stop her, Brooke’s hand changed direction. A little shakily, it began to travel downwards, till it encountered then encircled her intended target.
Shock held her fingers still for a few moments. For never had Leo felt so limp, or less interested in her touch!
As Brooke had already found out this afternoon, it was one thing to think something, another to find hard evidence of its truth, even when that evidence wasn’t hard, but soft. Crushingly, cruelly soft!
Waves of emotion swept through her. Dismay. Devastation. Despair! How could he betray her this way? Deceive her? Destroy her!
And how could Francesca? The bitch! And so soon after her husband’s death!
Eventually, surprisingly, the wish to kill them both was sublimated by the mad desire to make Leo respond, to show him that she—his wife—knew him better than any other woman, knew what he liked, could give him pleasure unequalled elsewhere. Francesca couldn’t possibly do for him what Brooke knew she could.
Finally,