The wedding dress was on its hanger again, and Lara now wore a sleeveless mid-length shirt dress in the softest blush colour. It had a high ruffled neck and was cinched in at the waist with a belt. She wore strappy high-heeled sandals. Her hair was left down, to tumble over her shoulders, and a make-up artist touched up her make-up.
For a hysterical moment she felt like an actress, about to take her cue to go on stage.
Ciro was waiting outside when she emerged. His dark gaze swept her up and down. ‘You look beautiful.’
The immediate flush of warmth that bloomed inside Lara felt like a betrayal. She didn’t want his words to have any effect on her. They weren’t infused with emotion. They were purely an objective assessment. She was a commodity. Just as she’d always been.
He’d changed into a dark grey suit and white shirt, open at the neck. Elegantly casual. They complemented each other. He extended his arm and she took a breath before putting her arm in his, so he could lead her down the stairs to the main foyer, where people were waiting.
The crowd parted to let them through, and a few people clapped Ciro on the shoulder as they passed. Lara caught Lazaro’s eye. He still had that grim expression on his face. She felt like pulling free from Ciro, so she could go over and tell him that he had it all wrong. Ciro had hurt her, not the other way around...
And then she glanced up and saw Ciro’s scar, standing out so lividly, and fresh guilt for her responsibility in that made her keep her eyes forward until they were outside and in the back of a sleek SUV. Lazaro Sanchez was right to look at her the way he did.
‘Try to smile, hmm...cara? You’ve just married the man of your dreams and you will never have to lift a finger again if you are wise with your divorce settlement when it comes.’
Lara’s rattled emotions bubbled over. She turned to Ciro as the vehicle pulled into the traffic. ‘I couldn’t care less about the money, Ciro. You, on the other hand, are obsessed by it. I pity you—because if it all went tomorrow, what would you have?’
Stupid question, Lara.
She realised that as soon as the words were out of her mouth. He’d have the towering Sicilian pride and immense self-belief that had brought him to where he was today.
But he merely shrugged lightly and said, ‘I’d start again and be even more successful.’
That stopped anything further coming out of Lara’s mouth.
Ciro conducted some phone calls in Italian while they were en route, and soon they were pulling into a private part of the airport where a small silver jet was waiting.
The pilot and staff welcomed them on board and Lara accepted a glass of champagne when they were airborne. Below them Rome was bathed in a magical golden sunset.
She sneaked a look across the aisle to see Ciro holding his own glass of champagne, which didn’t look at all ridiculous in his big hand. Her belly fluttered with nerves and awareness. Would he expect her to sleep with him tonight? Take it as his due? Would he force her?
She shivered. He wouldn’t have to. Not like her first husband. She diverted her mind from that bilious memory.
As if sensing her regard, Ciro turned and looked at her. She cast around for something to say—anything but what was on her mind. ‘All those people at the wedding and afterwards...do you know them?’
Ciro’s mouth twitched slightly. ‘Of course not. They’re mostly peers...business acquaintances. A small number of friends and staff whom I trust.’
Whom I trust.
Lara smarted at that. Even though he’d married her, he didn’t trust her. She thought of the pre-nuptial agreement and how it had specified that no children were expected from the union.
They hadn’t really discussed children before. Lara had just assumed Ciro would want them, as he was the last in the Sant’Angelo line.
However, for her it had been more complicated. The memory of losing her own parents and her brother had been so painful she’d always believed she couldn’t have borne that kind of loss again, or inflicted it on anyone else... And yet after meeting Ciro, she’d found herself yearning to be part of a family again. He’d made her want to risk it for the first time.
Ciro was still looking at her, as if he could probe right into her brain and read her thoughts. Terrified in case he might ask her what she’d been thinking about, she scrabbled around for the first thing she could think of.
‘Where are we going in Sicily?’
‘My family’s palazzo. Directly south from Palermo—on the coast.’
‘Does anyone live there?’
He shook his head. ‘Not since my grandfather passed away a few years ago. It was his property and he left it to me because he was afraid my mother would persuade my father to sell it or turn it into a resort. She never liked Sicily.’ Ciro’s jaw clenched. ‘As you might have noticed from her absence at the wedding, we’re not really in contact.’
Lara said nothing. He’d told her before of his mother’s serial philandering, and the way his father had devoted himself to her regardless of the humiliation. How his mother had persuaded his father to move to Rome, away from his homeland of Sicily. But Ciro had spent a lot of time there with his grandfather.
Lara had always believed that his experience at the hands of his mother had explained the ease with which Ciro had believed in Lara’s duplicity and betrayal. He had told her once that when he was very small she’d used to make him collude with her in hiding the evidence of her infidelity from his father. Making him an accomplice. Lara could understand how her own betrayal must have been a huge blow to his pride, and more.
But while knowing all that was very well, it didn’t really do much to help her now. Ciro’s beliefs were entrenched, and what she had done had merely confirmed for him that women were not to be trusted.
Lara was quiet. Unnervingly so. Ciro remembered the way she’d used to chatter when they’d first met. She’d ask him so many questions that he’d resort to kissing her to stop them. And yet there’d been those moments when no conversation had been required and she hadn’t filled the silence with nonsense. She’d been just as happy not to talk. Something he’d found refreshing.
This time around he was under no illusions.
He thought of the moment just a few hours before, when he’d emerged from the cathedral with Lara on his arm. When the paparazzi’s cameras had exploded into life he’d felt her flinch ever so slightly on his arm, and the sense of triumph which had been so elusive had finally oozed through his veins.
He’d envisaged that moment—the beauty marrying the beast. And yet when he’d looked down at her she hadn’t had a look of revulsion on her face at being photographed with Ciro and his livid scar—she’d looked haunted by something else entirely and he hadn’t liked that...
In fact, since they’d met again he’d never got a sense from her that she considered him some sort of monster—which was how he felt sometimes, when people looked at him with horror or fascination. In her eyes there was something else...something almost like...sympathy. Or guilt. Which made no sense at all.
Ciro looked over Lara’s form broodingly. Her head was turned away, as if the shape of the clouds outside the window was utterly fascinating. The silk of her dress clung to her slim curves in a way that made his hands itch to uncover her inch by inch and see the bounty he had denied himself before...
He’d been such a fool. Lust had clouded his judgement the first time around. Of course a woman as beautiful as Lara couldn’t have been a virgin. Or if she had been she wasn’t one now.
No matter. Tonight she would be his in every way—wife and lover. Tonight he would slake the hunger he’d felt since the moment he’d laid eyes on her. Tonight he might finally feel