Steeling herself, she stepped over the threshold.
All the decoration, paintings, furnishings...everything was exactly as she remembered it. As if time had stood still.
But of course, time had not stood still. Her own life had simply accelerated. She had lived a decade in less than a year.
The first time she had been in this room she’d been on top of the world, the happiest woman in existence. At the time she could never have foreseen that the beautiful walls would start to suffocate her. She certainly could not have foretold that the man she would marry would change with such speed, and that the gun she assumed he carried around for personal protection would take on a completely different meaning.
And now she was little more than his prisoner.
Donatella had removed Lily from her car seat and was cradling her, a look of pure bliss on her perfectly made-up face.
Lily’s eyes were open. If she was perturbed to be held in the arms of a stranger, she made no show of it.
Donatella’s shrewd eyes flickered to Grace. ‘She is beautiful.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And Lily; such a beautiful name.’
‘Thank you,’ she repeated, wondering if there had been a more excruciating, incongruous experience in the history of the world.
Luca’s warning played over and over in her mind. Under no circumstances could she intimate she was there for any reason other than devotion. But it would help if she knew exactly what he had told his mother about her sudden reappearance in their lives and about the fact of Lily.
‘It’s getting late. I need to get Lily settled and into bed,’ Grace said, not wanting to be stuck in an interrogation that was surely forthcoming and for which she didn’t know the correct answers.
Her mother-in-law’s eyes flashed before the lines around her mouth softened. ‘Please, Grace, let me enjoy my first grandchild for a little longer. I have only just learned of her existence.’
A big stab of guilt twisted in her stomach. Reluctantly, she nodded. ‘How about if I go and get our stuff unpacked and then come back for her?’
Donatella’s grateful smile twisted the guilt a little more. ‘That sounds perfect.’
Traipsing back up the corridor, Grace opened the door that led into the wing she had shared with Luca and took another step into the past.
This time all traces of the past really had been eradicated.
The only familiar item was a large family portrait on the wall, the last photo of the Mastrangelos taken before Pietro, Luca’s father, had so tragically died. It had been taken at Luca’s graduation. The pride shining on Pietro Mastrangelo’s face was palpable. And who, she reflected, would not be proud of such a family? There was Luca, the eldest son, whose serious expression was countered by the amusement in his eyes. Next to him was Pepe, Luca’s younger brother, whose air of mischief was not countered by anything. Then there was the composed, elegant Donatella. There was no pride on her face. Donatella radiated serenity. These men were her pride.
A mere two months after the picture had been taken, Pietro had died of a heart attack. The mantle of head-of-family had passed to his eldest son, Luca, a role he had now held for sixteen years.
Slowly she walked through the reception room and began opening the doors of all the rooms that made up their quarters. The vivid colours and delicate murals she had painted in each of the rooms had been painted over in drab, muted tones; the furniture they had chosen together replaced with bland, masculine replicas.
It was not until she opened the door to the master bedroom that her throat closed.
The walls she had spent literally scores of hours painting to create an erotic woodland, filled with beautiful cupids and lovers entwined, had been painted over. The walls she had been so proud of and conceived with such love and hope were now covered in a drab cream. They might never have existed.
Out of everything that had happened that day, this was the one thing that brought her closest to tears.
‘You appear shocked.’
She hadn’t heard Luca approach.
Her chest rose and she blinked rapidly, fighting the burn in her eyes before turning to face him. ‘Not shocked,’ she lied. ‘More surprised.’
‘You are surprised I would paint over the reminders of you?’
She went to tuck her hair behind her ear, an old habit she still couldn’t break even though her hair had been cropped for months.
‘I had no wish to sleep surrounded by lovers when my own wife had run away.’
‘So you didn’t change it because your new lover didn’t approve?’ Where that question came from, she was not quite sure, but the scent of his new cologne had wafted back under her nose.
Had he found a lover who had bought him this new scent?
Had this lover lain in his arms, in this very room, happy to drift into sleep with this scent imprinting on her senses?
Her belly churned at the images playing in her head.
Luca’s eyes narrowed. ‘I do not think you are in a position to ask me anything like that.’
She shrugged to display fake nonchalance at the subject. ‘I couldn’t care less who you’ve been screwing. As far as I’m concerned, the day I left we both became free agents.’
A large, warm hand reached out and cupped her shoulder. Even with one arm out of order, he trapped her against the wall with such efficiency she had no time to think, let alone resist. ‘I do hope you’re not implying that you’ve been with other men since you left me?’
‘It would be none of your business if I had. Now let go of me.’ Apart from his hand, none of his body touched her. But she could feel him. That heat that radiated from him; she could feel it. It warmed her, penetrating her skin, heating her veins. The way it always had.
The moment she had met him she had experienced the most incredible charge. It was as if she had been hit by a bolt of lightning. Whenever she was with him the charge would glow red-hot. While their marriage deteriorated, the bedroom had remained the one area in which they remained wholly compatible.
In all the time they had been apart she had not thought about sex. Not once. Protecting herself and her baby had consumed her. In the cold of night she had missed sleeping next to his warm, solid presence, but the actual sex was something she never thought about. Never allowed herself to think about. Assumed it had all been extinguished.
She couldn’t breathe.
The extinguished charge that had flickered as if awakening from a deep sleep since he broke into her house came roaring back to life, and for the maddest of moments she longed to be taken into his arms, feel the firm warmth of his lips upon hers and his body harden...
‘It is my business,’ he contradicted silkily, his face square in front of her, forcing her to look into the fire spitting from his eyes. ‘You are still my wife and Lily is my daughter. I have a right to know if you have allowed another man to act as her father.’
His breath was hot on her face, all her senses responding like a sweet-deprived child handed a bag of chocolate.
She twisted her head to the side. How she wished she could tell him tales of scores of lovers she had enjoyed in their time apart. ‘There hasn’t been anyone else.’
‘Good.’ He traced a finger down her turned cheek. ‘And so there is no room for doubt, know that if you screw another man I will throw you onto the street. You won’t even have time to forget to write a note.’
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