He didn’t, of course. He never did. Restless, energetic, he was never happier than when he was on the move, making things happen. At the age of thirty-seven and looking ten years younger, he was a millionaire several times over, his fortune made from asset-stripping—buying up large, moribund companies all over the world, splitting them into smaller, leaner, profitable components, selling some of them off as soon as they were viable but keeping the pick of the bunch, personally overseeing every last one of them. He had the energy, dynamism and enthusiasm of ten ordinary mortals and the enviable ability to switch off immediately.
As he was doing now. He was utterly relaxed as he sprawled out on one of the two matching sofas which flanked the hearth—the genuine Adam surround setting off a state-of-the-art coal-effect gas fire.
‘I ate on the plane, but I could use a drink.’ Relaxing, his eyes closed, he looked completely composed, but there was a tightness in his voice that made her drag her lower lip between her teeth. Was he still thinking about that phone call, turning it over in his mind? Hadn’t the photographic evidence of his own indiscretions thrown him off the scent?
Time to attack again, perhaps, before he started asking questions, demanding answers she wasn’t ready to give him.
Unusually, her fingers were shaking as she poured two fingers of the single malt he preferred into a glass and added just the right amount of bottled spring water. Her composure—one of the things he frankly admired about her—had been leaching away over the last few days. She was going to have to take herself in hand, think things through to find a logical, inevitable conclusion and act on it. That was something else she was good at. Usually.
And would be again. Starting as of now.
She hovered above him, patiently getting her breathing under control. His thick dark lashes lay heavily on those high, jutting cheekbones, softening them, and, like this, relaxed, the hard, arrogant line of his mouth was transformed into a thing of pure male beauty. Eminently kissable. Which, no doubt, the principessa had discovered, to her endless delight.
The lancing pain that sent her heart into spasm was an unwanted revelation. She hadn’t believed herself capable of such a reaction. They had been married for almost two years and she had often wondered how many women he’d bedded. No one could doubt his virility—it shouted through every line of his lean, tough body, blazed in the depths of his knowing grey eyes. But he had promised discretion—they both had—and he had broken his word. Maybe pain was a shattered promise, she thought bleakly, her hand tightening around the glass.
Leaning forward, she touched the cool surface to his artlessly open palm and watched him snap to full alertness in the disconcerting way he had. His hand closed around the glass, deliberately trapping her fingers, and she felt the little color she did have in her pale ivory skin wash out of her face.
He never touched her. He had always been almost painfully careful not to, not even accidentally. Not even when their coolly constructed ‘perfect marriage’ was on public display.
If she struggled to free her hand the whiskey would go all over the place, and there was no room for such indignities in their relationship. Aquamarine eyes battled with incisive grey until she saw the sudden flare of hard mockery and lowered her lids and he transferred his glass to his other hand, releasing hers, asking grimly, ‘Do you dislike being touched, per se, or is it only by me?’
‘I don’t think that question deserves a response, do you?’ she uttered calmly, forcing herself to retreat with slow and careful dignity to the opposite sofa and not fly headlong from the room as every cell in her body urged her to do. But as she sank into the comfortably upholstered depths nothing on earth could prevent her snapping out acidly, ‘I’m surprised you cut your Italian trip short. Wasn’t the principessa as irresistible as she’s made out to be?’
She was appalled at herself. They never quarreled. Never came near it. She didn’t know what was happening. And when he announced, with languid grace, ‘I couldn’t possibly comment, my dear,’ she wanted to hit him. Wanted it with an intensity that shook her to her soul.
‘What’s bugging you? I’d have marked you down as a woman who could handle a slice of unpleasant publicity with a sophisticated shrug of one superlatively elegant shoulder.’ He took a reflective sip of his drink, his narrowed eyes never leaving her. ‘We were pictured leaving the opera. If you’d been there—you were invited, remember—it wouldn’t have happened. And you would have enjoyed it. La Traviata. Juanita del Sorro sang Violetta. She was quite superb.’
‘I’m quite sure she was.’ Only by forcing herself to respond could she stop her teeth from audibly grinding together. Was he saying his public lapse from grace was all her fault? How dared he?
And of course he had expected her to be in Rome with him. Although he did a fair amount of business there they didn’t own an apartment in the city for her to turn into a home on the hoof. They always used the same small, privately run hotel near the Piazza Venezia where she acted—as was her part of the bargain—as PR officer, private secretary, mistress of the wardrobe, companion and sounding board. Everything she had been happy to be for the past two years.
The visit to Rome had been scheduled for months and she’d been looking forward to another all too brief trip to her favorite city until that phone call from the UK. Thankfully Jake had been out, so she’d had the Manhattan apartment to herself. If he’d been in she wouldn’t have been able to avoid his inevitable questions. She would have had to tell him the truth. And although she knew she owed it to him, that honesty within their relationship had been something they’d both decided on, right from the start, she knew she couldn’t face it, not quite yet.
And when he’d turned up, all fired up with the successful completion of yet another brilliant business deal, she’d dealt with the pressing emergency and had come up with a believable excuse for backing out of the Rome trip.
‘It’s the first time I’ve ever let you down, Jake, but would you mind if I skipped Rome? Say if you do. But suddenly I feel tired.’ She’d felt drainingly guilty at his swift look of concern and had had to force herself to add, ‘I could spend an extra, quiet day here, fly back to England and have the London apartment ready for when you get home from Rome.’
She had needed a few days’ grace, time to face up to the consequences of telling him the truth and what would be the inevitable ending of their marriage. But he’d returned two days ahead of schedule, and she didn’t know why, but she still hadn’t worked up enough courage to tell him. Just thinking about it made her ask now, suddenly in deadly earnest, ‘Jake—you and the principessa—is it serious?’
It had been part of the bargain, the let-out clause. If either of them, at any time during their paper marriage, met someone, felt serious enough about them to want a real marriage, then the other wouldn’t stand in their way. There would be an annulment, followed, if Jake was the one who wanted out, by a healthy financial settlement. If she invoked the clause she would forfeit the settlement, but she could live with that now. She wouldn’t give the lack of the kind of lifestyle she’d enjoyed during her marriage a second thought.
‘Of course not.’ He sounded as if he was on the point of yawning. And, moments later, did. He stood up, stretching, the fabric of his shirt pulled tight against his strong, lean torso. ‘I’m for bed. I’m surprised you weren’t tucked up hours ago, considering how desperately tired you were supposed to be.’
She ignored that, the acid tone, everything. She didn’t know why she felt so buoyant, as if she’d won a reprieve, when she should be feeling thwarted. If he’d told her he’d fallen in love, at last, found a woman he genuinely wanted to spend the rest of his life with—for all the right and natural reasons—then that would have created a way out for her.
She didn’t understand herself. She managed a cool goodnight and took herself off to her own peaceful room, and decided she was being dog-in-the-manger about it. She didn’t want him to walk out on her. That was what it boiled down to. If their marriage ended—and