Italian Bachelors: Irresistible Sicilians. Michelle Smart

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       CHAPTER FIVE

      IT TOOK ANOTHER two days before Grace gave in. Leaving Lily with Donatella, who was delighted to be granted her first official babysitting duty, she headed through the thick forest that surrounded the monastery to her cottage.

      Her cottage. Given to her by Luca on their wedding day.

      She could still recall her excitement when she’d first walked inside and seen the lengths he had gone to to make it into a proper studio for her. The walls of the ground floor had been knocked down to make one enormous room, and painted white to enhance the natural sunlight. Daylight-mimicking light bulbs had been installed for when the muse took her at night. There were easels to accommodate all different sizes of canvas, a hundred different brushes of varying sizes and hair and, best of all, he had bought every shade of paint from the specific brand she favoured. She had been in heaven.

      She had not picked up a paintbrush or done anything as basic as a doodle since she had left. All her creative juices had died when she walked out of the estate.

      Taking a deep breath, she turned the key and pushed the door open. Immediately she was hit with the trace of turpentine and oil paint, scents that had seeped into every crevice of the cottage.

      At first glance it looked exactly as she had left it. The canvas she had been working on was still on its easel, a fine layer of dust now covering it; her brushes all rammed into varying pots, her tubes of paint still scattered randomly across her workbench. Stacks of blank and completed canvases still lay in neat stacks; half-finished canvases she had left to dry before working on them again still lined the walls.

      Someone had been in there during her absence. It was nothing specific she could put her finger on, more of a gut feeling.

      Her stomach tying itself in knots, she climbed the open staircase to the first floor. The sense that someone had been there grew stronger, especially when she entered the bedroom. This was the room she had slept in whenever Luca was abroad or tied up with business until the early hours, something that had dramatically increased throughout the second year of their marriage. Although she’d missed him being around so much, she would take the opportunity to work through the witching hours without guilt and then flop into bed shattered.

      One thing she had always been able to take heart from was that he would always join her if he was in Sicily. Wherever she slept, he would seek her out. Always. She would wake to find herself wrapped in his arms. Invariably, they would make love and she would tell herself that everything between them was fine.

      She was certain she had left the bed unmade.

      The bathroom was dusty but clean, relatively tidy, her toothbrush and other toiletries on display where she had left them. A quick peek in the laundry basket revealed the tatty jeans and paint-splattered jumper she had last worked in.

      Her bittersweet trip down memory lane was interrupted when she heard the front door shut.

      ‘Hello?’ she called, hurrying to the stairs. About to step down, she paused when she saw Luca leaning against the front door staring up at her.

      ‘What do you want?’ They were alone for the first time since he had found her. Now there was no Lily to temper the tone of her voice for, she made no attempt to hide her hostility.

      The first thing she noticed was his lack of a sling. Dressed in black jeans and a light blue sweater, his arms folded across his broad chest, his jawline covered in dark stubble, he carried a definite air of menacing weariness.

      ‘We’ve been invited to Francesco Calvetti’s birthday party in Florence next Saturday,’ he said without any preamble.

      ‘Why’s he holding it in Florence?’ Francesco Calvetti was as big a gangster as her husband. It was only after Luca had invested in a couple of casinos and nightclubs with him that the cracks in their marriage had appeared and he had begun to change...

      ‘He bought a hotel there. I’ve accepted the invitation for us.’

      ‘It’s far too short notice.’

      ‘I wasn’t asking your opinion on the matter. I was telling you.’

      ‘And what about Lily?’

      ‘I have spoken to my mother and she has agreed to care for her overnight.’

      ‘Absolutely not.’ No way was she going to leave her baby to attend that man’s party.

      ‘I have also seen the local priest about having Lily baptised,’ he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘I have booked her in for the first Sunday of the new year.’

      ‘Well, that’s telling me,’ she said, stomping down the stairs. ‘We can argue about the christening in a minute. I am not leaving Lily to attend a silly party.’

      ‘It is not a silly party. It is an important event that you will attend as my devoted wife.’

      The way his eyes burned into her left Grace with no doubt as to the meaning laced in his words.

      Devoted wife.

      Luca might have abandoned the idea of displaying togetherness in front of his family but this did not extend to the wider world.

      She would be expected to accompany him and act the docile, dutiful wife.

      She would be expected to play the role of lover to a man she hated with every fibre of her being. The consequences of failure would be harsh. Banishment from her daughter’s life.

      ‘Am СКАЧАТЬ