The Sheikh's Unwilling Wife. Sharon Kendrick

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СКАЧАТЬ in handbags. I am interested in showing you Naples.’

      ‘I have a map.’

      ‘And I have a car.’

      Alexa glimmered him a smile. ‘I like to walk. But thank you all the same.’

      ‘I am used to getting my own way,’ he purred.

      ‘Then I have a feeling that this time you’re going to be disappointed.’

      ‘I am never disappointed when I set my heart on something.’

      Alexa discovered that he was rich, and that he changed his women more often than his cars. She told herself that the best thing would be to avoid him—but Giovanni da Verrazzano laid siege to her, and the more she refused his invitations, the more ardent became his pursuit.

      If she’d had been older and more experienced she would have realised that her unwillingness to go out with him was only increasing his determination, and his admiration. But she wasn’t doing it to play games. She was doing it because she was frightened of being hurt.

      So that by the time she could refuse him no longer, and agreed to have a chaste lunch in a tiny restaurant scented with jasmine and overlooking the city, Giovanni had placed her on a pedestal as high as Vesuvius itself.

      He swept her off her feet with a masterful arrogance which left her reeling—and yet it was his surprisingly tender restraint which ensnared her and fuelled the fires of a passion she hadn’t known she possessed. The almost reverential respect he showed for her determination not to fall into his bed meant that Alexa could relax.

      For the first time in his life Giovanni listened to a woman, and talked with her—and it was a novel experience. She made him laugh—while he showed her that a sexy and virile man could have the soul of a poet.

      He fell in love—was blown away by it—as innocent as a child beneath the onslaught of this powerful feeling. The cynical man of the world who had seen and done everything was as susceptible as the next when it came to the age-old vulnerability of the heart.

      But nobody told them about brevity of the colpo di fulmine—the thunderbolt of love—which crashed into lives for such a brief moment before crashing out again. If anyone had tried, they’d have never believed them.

      ‘Marry me,’ he said one day.

      Alexa’s heart lurched, and threatened to deafen her with its sudden wild pounding.

      ‘But—’

      ‘Marry me, Lex,’he said again—softly, sweetly—his lips brushing over hers in way which made her want to faint with pleasure.

      Maybe it was madness, but in Giovanni Alexa saw her glorious future. He wanted to take care of her. Her beautiful, strong, old-fashioned Italian seemed to be the answer to something she hadn’t even been aware she was looking for.

      So they married, in a ceremony which was intended to be simple—until Giovanni’s mother arrived back from a spending spree in Monte Carlo to turn it into something of a spectacle. But nothing could destroy Alexa’s slightly disbelieving pleasure in the unexpected twist her life had taken. It felt like a dream—it was a dream, she thought happily, forgetting that dreams didn’t stand up to the cold light of day.

      And hers crumbled on their wedding night itself, when Giovanni made the discovery that his bright-haired and perfect bride was no virgin. He stilled, staring down at her in disbelief, words torn from his lips moments after he entered her.

      ‘There has been another?’

      It was a question designed to break the bubble of her passion—though for a moment Alexa wasn’t quite sure she had heard properly. But then he repeated it—or rather, he shouted it—and the lovemaking which up until the moment of penetration had been like her wildest expectations come true—suddenly mushroomed into something else entirely. Something ugly. Something shameful. Giovanni’s face closed up—closing her out—but he didn’t stop what he was doing. He carried on moving inside her, and the only chink in his armour came in that brief moment when he lost control and cried out her name.

      Afterwards, she lay back against the pillows, feeling as if he had ripped something from her heart and her soul, staring up in the moon-washed silence as his terse and furious interrogation began.

      And the first night of their honeymoon was only the start of it—for his discovery had awakened the dark green serpent of a jealousy which up until that moment had lain dormant. Every move she made was watched; every statement she uttered was analysed. She had slept with five men, no—ten. Or was it more than that? And how many was she sleeping with now, other than him? She must tell him, for he needed to know!

      Yet he seemed determined to give her satisfaction—almost as if he was demonstrating a master-class in sex. As if he wanted to show her how good it could be. And in some ways it was. In his arms, Alexa gasped out her pleasure time and time again, but the lack of emotion and the simmering anger on Giovanni’s face made her feel empty afterwards. Like a beach, when the tide had turned and flowed away.

      It was a slow kind of torture, and Alexa lasted only three months of her doomed marriage. Then she had fled vowing never to revisit that black landscape of despair ever again—but she would never forget Giovanni’s snarled and angry words ringing in her ears.

      At least we must give thanks that you aren’t pregnant—for how would we ever know the identity of the father?

      Yes, the facts were simple—it was what lay behind them which was complex. She had been too young to know the difference between love and lust, or between protection and possession. She should have known something about Italian men—and Southern Italian men in particular—before she committed herself to marriage.

      ‘Are you going to tell him?’ asked Teri now, her concerned voice bringing Alexa back to the present. ‘That he has a son?’

      Alexa wiped away the last tear and shook her head. ‘I can’t,’ she said, swallowing defiantly. ‘I can’t afford to.’

       CHAPTER TWO

      AFTER Teri had left the shop, Alexa forced herself to deal with practicalities. She phoned the childminder, who said that, yes, of course Paolo could have his tea there.

      ‘I’ll pick him up at about seven-thirty,’ said Alexa, in a voice which suddenly sounded shaky. ‘Will you…will you send him my love?’ She heard the emotion trembling in her voice as the childminder said she would, and that they would see her later.

      Alexa put the phone down. Her proud and beautiful little son would not be happy to have his normal routine changed, but he would soon have the childminder acceding to his every wish just by looking at her from beneath the thick curtain of his dark lashes and twisting her with that heartbreaking smile.

      What would Paolo say if he knew that his daddy was in town? She bit her lip with pain and guilt—but it was pointless allowing her mind to go there. Hadn’t she gone over this, over and over again, and decided this was the only way that her son could be guaranteed a life that wasn’t filled with acrimony and trauma?

      But by the time Alexa finally locked the shop door at the end of the day she was a bag of nerves, and knew she had to pull herself together. СКАЧАТЬ