Rafael lived with the awful fear that the blood running in his veins might be rotten. It didn’t seem to help that the man he had built himself to be was so morally upright, honest and true that any suspicion of him being rotten inside was actually laughable. He could never know that for sure, so he dared not let his guard on himself drop for a moment—just in case something dreadful crept out.
How did Nina know all of this? The man himself had told her, during one of those long rare nights when they lay still closely entwined after the kind of loving that had always seemed to blend them into one. They’d swapped secret hopes and fears in the darkness because it had seemed so right, sharing—sharing everything. Bed to bodies, souls to minds.
That was the same night that she’d foolishly let herself believe he loved her, Nina recalled. To hear that soft, deep, slightly rasping voice reveal all its darkest secrets had, to her at least, been confirmation of something very special growing between them. She had discovered later that it was just another aspect of his complicated make-up that Rafael could bare his soul to her whilst keeping his heart well and truly shut.
It wasn’t long after that night when she’d discovered they were going to have a baby. She’d been ecstatic; to her way of thinking a child of their very own would only bond them closer together. What it had actually done was drive them wide apart. And she would never forgive him for the brutality he had used in forming that gulf.
They had barely communicated since. From that moment on their lives had reverted to the original plan—she being the beautiful well-bred trophy wife Rafael had bought to shore up his bruised ego, and he the man she had sold herself to so he could keep her family in the luxury they were used to.
The only blot on this otherwise squeaky-clean landscape Rafael had made for himself was Marisia—his first-choice bride. The Guardino granddaughter with the pure Sicilian pedigree who’d walked out on him the moment she’d discovered his mongrel beginnings, leaving his pride in tatters at his feet.
‘I will not marry a man who can’t say who his mother is, never mind his father!’ Marisia’s harsh words to Nina echoed through the years. ‘If you are so concerned about his feelings then you marry him. Trust me, cara, he will take you—just to leech onto your half-Guardino blood.’
He had done too—taken her—and it was pretty lowering to remember how eagerly she’d jumped at the chance. But then, she’d already been in love with him, though thankfully no one else knew that—including Rafael. He’d put his case in practical business terms, pointing out the financial advantages in marrying him and, because he was ruthless enough to use any persuasion, he had made her aware of other advantages by more physical means.
Oh, where had her pride been—her self-respect? How was it that she’d only had to look into his eyes to convince herself that she could see something burning there that made her cling to hope?
The sound of his laughter floated up to the window. Looking down, she saw his mouth had stretched into a grin. He had not done much of that recently, she mused.
Was that Marisia’s doing? Had her cousin put the laughter back into Rafael?
Were they sleeping together?
Had it gone that far?
Did she care?
Nina turned away from the window, tense fingers coiling around her upper arms to bite hard. She wasn’t ready to answer that question. She wasn’t ready to face Rafael.
Oh, why did he have to come back here today of all days, when she needed time to think—to feel something, for God’s sake?
The moment Rafael Monteleone stepped through the front door he felt the lingering residue of laughter he’d just shared with Gino die from his lips as a chill washed right over him.
It was the chill of cold silence.
He paused to stare at the perfectly symmetrical black and white floor that spread out in front of him like a chequered ocean—flat, cold, and as uninviting as the black wrought-iron work forming the curving staircase and the pale blue paint that coloured the walls.
Home, he mused, and thought about sighing—only to tamp down on the urge. Instead tension grabbed at his shoulders, then slid up the back of his neck before linking like steel fingers beneath his chin. He employed an army of staff to help keep this miserable if aesthetically stunning house running smoothly, yet but for the sound of Gino moving the car round to the garages he could be entirely alone here.
The sigh escaped—because he allowed it—because he needed to ease away some of his tension before he went looking for his wife.
Wife, he repeated. There was yet another word that had become a term of mockery—within the privacy of his mind, at least. He did not mock Nina—did not mock her at all. He mocked only himself, for daring to use the word in reference to the ghost-like image of that once beautiful person which now haunted this house.
He knew exactly where she was, of course. He’d felt the chill of her regard via her bedroom window from the moment he had stepped out of the car. If he closed his eyes he could even picture her standing there, slender and still, observing his arrival through beautiful blue eyes turned to glass.
‘Good afternoon, sir,’
Ah, a real human being, Rafael thought dryly, then had to laugh privately at that when he lifted his eyes to the ancient silver-haired pole-faced butler, who’d come with the house and all of its other soulless fixtures and fittings.
‘Good afternoon, Parsons,’ he returned, and felt himself grimace at the very English sound of his own voice.
But then, this house was English—a small piece of England placed upon Sicilian soil like a defiance. Nina’s father had had it built as a summer home for his wife and daughter to use when they visited. When Richard St James had died, leaving his wife and daughter virtually penniless, they’d been forced to sell up their fourteen-thousand-acre family estate in Hampshire and come to live here, bringing their faithful butler with them. The house belonged to Nina now, left to her in her father’s will, along with a trust fund aimed to ensure that she completed her education in England.
And if all of that did not add up to a man with an axe to grind on his beautiful Sicilian wife’s faithless hide, then he could not read character as well as he’d thought.
‘There are several telephone messages for you.’ Parsons’ smooth voice intruded. ‘I placed them in your study. One, from a—lady, sounded particularly urgent…’
Ignoring the slight hesitation before the word lady, Rafael offered a nod of his head in acknowledgment to the rest, but made no move towards his study. Instead he turned and headed for the stairs. Urgent messages or not, he had a chore to do that must take precedence.
Knowing and respecting this small ritual, Parsons melted away as silently as he had arrived, leaving Rafael to make the journey up the curving staircase to the upper landing, and from there through an archway which would take him to the bedroom apartments of a house he had agreed to live in only to please his wife.
A mistake? Yes, it had been a mistake, one of many he had made with the beautiful Nina, and all of which he intended to rectify—soon.
On that grim thought he arrived outside the bedroom suite, paused for a moment to brace his shoulders inside the smooth cut of his dark silk jacket, then gripped the handle and opened the door.
He never knocked. He found it beneath his dignity to knock before entering what he still considered to be their bedroom, even though they had not shared it for months.
Serenity prevailed—that was his first observation as he stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. She was wearing a blue satin wrap that covered her from throat to ankle and she was sitting at her dressing table, quietly filing her nails. Her hair was up, scraped back into an unflattering ponytail, and her face looked paler than usual—though that could be a trick of the fading light.
When