Italian Deception: The Salvatore Marriage / A Sicilian Seduction / The Passion Bargain

‘I came back to f-find it like this. I don’t know wh-what—’

His hand reached out to open the drawer Shannon had pushed shut. He saw her stiffen then start to tremble, then lower her eyes when he drew out the packet of condoms.

Condoms, bloody condoms, he thought viciously. The blight of his bloody life!

One was missing—not that it mattered that one was missing; the fact that they were there at all was enough to turn his blood to bile. They did not use condoms. And that scent—that damned strong male scent had clung to his nostrils while he’d stood there trying to deal with what it was he was being forced to face.

‘I can explain …’ She’d sounded deep-voiced and husky, like someone suffering from an intolerable amount of anxiety and stress.

Without saying a word he put the packet back in the drawer and closed it, then turned to look at her. ‘Before you jump to your rotten conclusions—it wasn’t me, Luca, it wasn’t me!’

‘Who, then?’ he challenged.

Her face was white, her eyes black pools of utter torment; tears trailed down her cheeks and worked at her throat. ‘Keira,’ she whispered.

Keira. Of all the lying excuses she could have come up with, she had to choose to place the blame on the one person who would never betray her man—never. Her willingness to do that to her own sister broke his calm. What followed had been another nightmare that had lived inside him ever since.

A telephone began ringing somewhere, bringing him out of the blackness of that second nightmare to discover that he was standing in the bathroom staring at the ceramic tiles covering the floor where water was dripping from his body to form a pool around his brown feet. He lifted his head and caught sight of his face in the mirror. It was not him. It was like looking at a stranger. A man with no colour and no warmth.

Only Shannon could do this to him.

And he had offered her marriage again?

Pulling on a bathrobe, he made himself walk on legs that felt oddly stiff, as if he had just run a marathon. Maybe he had done—run a marathon through agony, lies and deceit.

He had left his jacket on the chair by the lift. His mobile phone was in one of its pockets and he strode through the apartment to collect it. The call was from Marco, his assistant. He frowned at the lateness of the hour and felt a hard snap of irritation because if Marco was still in the office then he was probably being snowed under trying to keep up in his absence.

He was bringing the call to an end when Shannon appeared in the archway. She was wearing the skimpy blue pyjamas beneath a thin blue cotton wrap, which hung open down her front. Her face was scrubbed and shiny, her hair piled up on top of her head leaving her slender neck exposed. Her eyes were like two dark bruises set on a background of porcelain white and her mouth looked tiny, pinched and—pink.

Hunger roared to life inside him followed by a self-contempt that wrapped itself like a steel band around his chest. He turned his back on her to listen in grim silence to whatever it was Marco was asking him. The poor devil sounded harassed and bone weary. Luca knew both feelings. Shannon still hovered in the archway; he wondered what she wanted.

‘Just leave it for tonight, Marco,’ he commanded quietly. ‘The business is not going to go down the tubes if you go home and get some sleep.’

He ended the call and dropped the phone onto his jacket, then had to flex his shoulders before he could bring himself to turn and face Shannon again.

She blinked at the toughness hardening his features. ‘I’m sorry to intrude,’ she apologised stiffly. ‘But we left my shopping in the car and I need to hang up my suit …’

He sighed at the stupid oversight and the pendulum swing of his emotions took yet another violent swerve. What kind of selfish bastard was he to be adding to her stress at a time like this?

Misreading the reason for his sigh, she walked towards him with her hand outstretched. ‘If you let me have your car keys I’ll go and collect the bags myself.’

Let her loose in a basement car park at this time of the night dressed like this? ‘Not while I still breathe,’ he hissed, making her frown because she didn’t understand.

And he was not going to enlighten her.

‘I’ll go,’ was all he said, and turned to get his wallet and car keys from where he’d placed them on the table by the lift.

She was waiting at her bedroom door when he came back with her shopping bags.

‘Thank you.’ She took them from him.

‘Prego,’ he replied.

She took a step back, and closed the door in his face.

A sudden blistering urge to push the damn door open again and have this out almost had him doing just that. Then common sense arrived and along with it a burst of frustration, which had him aiming a clenched fist that didn’t quite land on the oak panelling.

Then he went back to his own room to fester in silence.

While Shannon threw herself down on the bed to cry her eyes out again.

She hated him but she loved him and that was her toughest problem—she loved, loved—loved the brute!

The next day was a day Shannon hoped she would never have to endure again. From the moment she donned the black outfit the full weight of what she was about to face took her deep, deep inside herself.

She met Luca in the foyer. A fleeting glance at him standing there in his sombre black suit, white shirt and black tie, his lean face drawn into a pale grey mask of steely composure, and she knew he was feeling the same way she did. He studied her briefly, taking in her own waxen composure before he enquired expressionlessly if she was ready to leave.

Fredo drove them in a black limousine that made no attempt to disguise what it was. Even the day had decided to wear a grey cloud cast as if it knew that this was not a day to fill with warm sunlight.

They didn’t talk; both had their faces half turned to the car’s side windows, preferring to remain sunk into their own bleak thoughts.

They barely touched unless Luca was taking her arm to politely help her in or out of the car.

They arrived at his mother’s house to find that the whole vast and scattered Salvatore family had congregated. Everyone was subdued, grave, but kind and sympathetic towards Shannon, which was nice of them given their knowledge of her past relationship with Luca—not that anyone but the closest family members knew what had happened, only that they’d parted under bitter circumstances. But still, Shannon appreciated their willingness to put all of that aside for today at least—though some could not help throwing curious glances at herself and Luca, who was never more than a step away from her side, though they did not acknowledge each other’s presence.

From the moment they stepped out of the house everything took on a bleak, dreamlike quality that led them frame by agonising frame through the ensuing hours. Mrs Salvatore was bereft. Each time she broke down the whole sombre gathering felt its rippling effect. And it was heartrending to watch her cling to her surviving son as if she was afraid to let go in case he was lost to her too.

Renata and Sophia clung to their husbands, Tazio and Carlo. One sister was older than her surviving brother, the other slotting in between Luca and Angelo. Both were stunningly beautiful, as were all the Salvatores, and their two men had been picked to complement their outstanding looks and great name.

Shannon clung to no one, though she knew that Luca somehow always managed to keep himself within arm’s reach of her just in case she broke down, but she didn’t; she just kept her head lowered and did her grieving silently beneath her black lace veil.

She almost cracked at her first sighting of the two flower-decked coffins. And again later when she stepped into the church and was shocked by how many more people there were packed into it. Friends and colleagues, she presumed, most of whom were strangers to her but not to Angelo and Keira. In her heart all these people represented life surrounding the tragic couple as they made their journey to their final resting place.

She didn’t shed tears throughout the service. She didn’t do anything other than go where she was instructed to go, sit, stand, kneel, wait—follow. The waxen mask of her composure took its worst beating during the graveside ceremony. Mrs Salvatore almost collapsed and Luca had to support her in both his arms. Sophia wept, Renata wept, the whole flower-bedecked site seemed to rock beneath the rolling weight of everyone’s grief.

Afterwards they made the journey to the Salvatore family villa set high above Florence on the outskirts of Fiesole. It was a beautiful place steeped in the fabulous trappings of wealth collected over centuries and surrounded by the most exquisite gardens big enough to lose yourself in. It was a place used by all factions of the Salvatore family for throwing extravagant parties. Today it became a place shrouded in sorrow, where the whole congregation gathered to pay their respects to the family.

Mrs Salvatore was led away to her private apartments so she could have a few minutes to compose herself. Luca, his two sisters and their husbands took up the role of hosts as the many formal reception rooms began to fill with black-clad sombre people and sober-dressed serving staff that mingled amongst them carrying white-linen-covered silver trays holding a choice of refreshment.

And Shannon had never felt so lost and alone in her entire life as she did as she wandered aimlessly from room to room, smiling politely at those who offered her their sympathy and murmuring all the right phrases in response, but she felt strange inside, oddly out of place as if she did not belong here and she knew why she felt that way.

She had just buried her sister, yet she felt as if her right to grieve had been hijacked by this great, heaving wave of Salvatore grief. It was silly, selfish and unfair of her to think this way, but telling herself that did not remove the feeling. Everyone spoke in Italian and she wanted to speak English. She wanted to remember her sister in their own language and scream at the top of her voice—Let me have my sister back!

Someone caught her arm as she was stepping out of one room into another and she was hustled into a quiet alcove set into the side of the grand staircase. Luca loomed over her like a dark shadow.

‘The British stiff upper lip is still in use, I see,’ he drawled sardonically.

CHAPTER SEVEN

IF HE only knew what was going on inside her head, Shannon thought. ‘I didn’t see you showing signs of letting your composure crack,’ she countered distantly.

‘It is cracked inside—bleeding, in fact.’ Luca surprised her with the gruff admission. ‘Here, drink some of this,’ he said and put a glass in her hand.

‘What is it?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘Brandy. It might help warm you up. You look in danger of turning into an ice sculpture.’

She drank some of the brandy and was annoyed with herself afterwards because it went straight to her eyes.

‘Don’t,’ Luca husked.

‘You started it,’ she blamed, stretching her eyes wide to stop the tears, and lifted a set of fingers to press them against her trembling mouth.

His sigh arrived with the gentle touch of a long finger as it brushed a stray lock of hair from her cheek. It was contact enough to make her want to throw her arms around his neck and sob her heart out.

Someone appeared on the periphery of their vision. It was Renata; she took one look at the intimacy of their little one-to-one and tensed. Luca’s older sister was one the nicest people anyone would wish to meet, but she struggled to look at Shannon without showing her disapproval.

‘Mama has come down and is asking for you, Luca,’ she informed her brother stiffly.

‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ he said without taking his eyes from Shannon.

‘Mama said—’

‘A minute, Renata,’ he interrupted incisively.

There was a pause that set the fine hairs on Shannon’s body tingling and kept her eyes firmly fixed on the black silk knot of Luca’s tie, then Renata spun away leaving an uncomfortable silence behind her.

‘That wasn’t very nice,’ she chided.

‘I don’t feel like being nice,’ he clipped in reply. ‘For the whole of this terrible day you have looked like a lonely piece of fragile porcelain someone put down and forgot to pick up again. I want to pick you up and never put you down.’

It was Shannon’s turn to murmur an uneven, ‘Don’t.’ He had no right to be saying things like that to her—especially not after the way he’d used her last night.

‘We need to talk. Last night was a mess,’ he said abruptly, hooking right into her thoughts again. ‘It should not have ended the way that it did.’

‘I don’t want to discuss it.’ She made a move to follow in Renata’s footsteps.

Luca blocked her exit from the alcove with a broad shoulder that effectively held her captive. ‘We have to talk about it,’ he insisted. ‘There are things I should have said last night that got lost in the war. But they are about to come up and hit us both in the face so I need you to listen.’

‘Listen to what—more insults?’

‘No,’ he denied on a rasp of impatience. ‘The marriage thing,’ he explained. ‘You said no to marrying me for our child’s sake but—’

‘There is no child!’ she inserted sharply.

‘Luca …’ It was the softer voice of Sophia that interrupted this time, sounding very cautious. ‘I am sorry to disturb you but Signor Lorenzo has arrived. He wants to …’

A string of near-silent curses left Luca’s lips while Shannon closed her eyes and prayed to God that Sophia hadn’t heard what she’d said. ‘I’m coming,’ he bit out in grinding impatience.

Sophia wasn’t up to pushing her point as her older sister had done, because she walked away without saying another word, leaving Shannon trapped in the alcove by a man who was literally pulsing with frustration and a burn in his eyes that made her think of—

Stop it, she thought painfully. Don’t do this to me here! She dragged in a tense breath. ‘Go to your mother, or Mr—whoever,’ she said tautly.

But Luca was not going anywhere. ‘Just listen,’ he instructed, ‘because I do not have time for this but I know it must be said!’ He took a deep breath, impatience fighting with something Shannon couldn’t quite put a name to but it set her trembling as he caught her eyes again and began feeding words to her in a quick, sharp rasp. ‘I want you to think about Rose. I want you to put your own feelings aside, and my feelings, for that matter, and think about her and what is best for her.’

‘Rose will come home with me. I mean to—’

‘No!’ he shot at her forcefully. His hands came up to grip her shoulders, the sudden angry shift of his body almost knocking the glass of brandy out of her hand. ‘I knew you were planning something like this,’ he bit out like a curse, ‘but it cannot be like that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because—’

‘Luca …’ There was no dismissing the owner of this particular voice. It belonged to Mrs Salvatore herself. Shannon almost sagged with relief when he let go of her shoulders on a sigh of surrender and turned to his mother.

‘Father Michael has to leave now but he says you wanted a word with him before he—Oh, Shannon,’ Mrs Salvatore cut off to acknowledge. ‘I did not see you standing there.’

Which was a blatant untruth because if this wasn’t part of a conspiracy to stop whatever it was the family believed they were doing in this alcove, then Shannon would eat her hat.

Then she smashed that bit of untimely sarcasm when she saw the devastation written in the older woman’s face. Luca’s mother had every right to want her remaining son all to herself just now, she thought guiltily, and managed to squeeze past Luca to offer his mother a smile.

‘Luca brought me a drink,’ she explained.

‘So thoughtful of you, Luca,’ Mrs Salvatore nodded in approval. ‘It seems to have done the trick, Shannon, and put some of the colour back into your cheeks. You needed it, poor dear,’ she added on a husky quaver. ‘Today has been such an ordeal for all of us.’

‘Yes, such an ordeal,’ Shannon endorsed as the full power of it came clattering back down upon her head. To her surprise, Mrs Salvatore reached out to put her arms around her and brushed a kiss on both of her cheeks. ‘I will miss Keira so much,’ she confided thickly—and she said it in English.

It was almost Shannon’s undoing. She had to swallow the tears and was able only to nod and return the two kisses because she knew she couldn’t speak. Luca’s mother seemed to understand that because she patted her gently before releasing her, then turned her attention to her son.

‘I don’t understand why you need to speak with Father Michael but I don’t think you should keep him waiting.’

‘No,’ her son agreed.

Shannon took this as her cue to make good her escape, ‘Excuse me,’ she murmured, and was about to melt quietly away when Luca stopped her with the touch of long fingers to her arm. ‘OK?’ he asked huskily.

She kept her eyes lowered, swallowed and nodded, but he didn’t appear impressed. She could feel his irritation, his frustrated desire to finish what he had begun. But he couldn’t and he knew that he couldn’t. ‘Think about what I said,’ he clipped out eventually.

Not if I can stop myself, Shannon thought bleakly, but nodded because his mother was listening. Then she slipped her arm free of his fingers and walked away, aware of his eyes following her—aware that his mother’s eyes were doing the same.

She looked so damn fragile he knew she was going to have to break soon, Luca was thinking grimly.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ his mother said.

He looked down into the pale, anxious face of this woman he loved without question and wished he could love Shannon that way again. ‘I know exactly what I’m doing,’ he assured her soberly.

‘Still …’ his mother heaved in a breath of air ‘… it is best not to make hasty decisions while you are feeling so vulnerable.’

The comment amused him enough to have him tilt a mocking eyebrow. ‘I wish I knew what you were talking about,’

‘You and Shannon,’ he was informed. ‘It only takes a pair of eyes to know that you two are sleeping together.’

‘Madre!’ he admonished.

‘Why else would you insist that she stay at your apartment?’ She shrugged off the censure. ‘Why else would Shannon refuse my invitation to stay with me? The sparks fly between you like electricity and it took three—three—people to prize you out of this alcove.’

‘Maybe that was because we did not want to be prized out,’ Luca suggested dryly.

His mother was not impressed. ‘It is a known fact that life clings to life in times of tragedy,’ she persisted stubbornly. ‘I can understand it—even sympathise with it. I cannot imagine another situation in which the two of you could be thrown together again so powerfully. But you now have Father Michael waiting to talk to you and Angelo’s lawyer awaiting his turn. I am concerned about what it is you are planning to do.’

There was a lot he could say in reply to this, but Luca’s attention was already fixed elsewhere. Throughout his mother’s very sensible lecture his eyes had followed the glowing crown of Shannon’s head as she moved amongst the darker heads clustered at the other end of the hall. He’d watched her pause, listen, accept embraces of sympathy, watched her pretend to sip at the glass of brandy she still held in her hand. She seemed fine, composed, coping admirably—yet a niggling sensation was clawing at his instincts.

‘Luca, please listen to me,’ his mother urged anxiously. ‘I don’t want to see the two of you hurt each other again!’

His eyelashes gave a reluctant flicker as he made himself look away from Shannon and into his mother’s worried face. Lifting his hands to cover his mother’s fingers where they rested against his chest, he drew them to his lips to kiss them gently, then firmly lowered them to her sides. ‘I love you,’ he told her gently. ‘It breaks my heart that you let yourself worry about me. But we are going to have to finish this later, mi amore …’

Because something more urgent was tugging at him. And to lift his gaze back to the spot where he had last seen Shannon only to discover he couldn’t see that distinctive flame head of hers anywhere turned that tug into a roar that had him striding away, passing by the tall, slender figure of Father Michael and the more rotund Emilio Lorenzo without even seeing them.

Where did she go—?

Shannon had opened the door and slipped quietly inside the Salvatore library with its beautiful pale wood-panelled walls and light blue furnishings, and ornately corniced bookcases filled with rows of priceless books. It was quiet in here, and so free of other people that her shoulders dipped in relief. Luca had hustled her into thinking when she did not want to think. Now she had an ache building behind her eyes that was promising to develop into a blinding headache if she didn’t snatch a few minutes to herself.

At first she walked across to the window to stare out at the gardens laid out with classical Italian formality and awash with the yellow and purple heads of the season’s first spring flowers. There was a moment when she was tempted to open one of the French doors and step out onto the terrace to breathe in some fresh air. But the greyness of the day warned her it was cold out there, and instead she turned to face the room again and was drawn towards the huge white marble fireplace where a burning log fire sent out flickering fingers of inviting warmth.

She was about to sit down in one of the winged chairs flanking the fire when she saw the row of silver framed pictures standing on the mantel top. Her heart gave a pained little flutter as she put down her glass on a small table, then went to study each picture in turn.

They were all there in their wedding finery and standing beneath the same stone archway to the same church they had visited today. Renata with Tazio, Sophia with Carlo—even Mrs Salvatore stood with her handsome husband whom Shannon had never been fortunate enough to meet, but she still knew that if he’d walked by her in the street she would have known who he was because Luca looked so much like him.

And then there was the picture of Angelo and Keira. Reaching up with fingers that weren’t quite steady, she gently floated them over the faces of these two happy people she would never see smile like this again. It came then, breaking free on an anguished sob followed by another and another that sent her sinking to her knees where she knelt, hugging herself as she rocked to and fro, pouring out everything she had been so staunchly holding in.

The door flew open and a cluster of people came to a stunned halt in its opening. She didn’t know, had no idea that Luca had been causing quite a scene out there because he couldn’t locate her. She didn’t know that he’d found her until he was dropping to his knees in front of her and was uttering something thick and uneven as he gathered her up against him.

‘I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it,’ she could hear herself sobbing as he lowered his dark head over hers, and she could feel the tremors shaking him.

Someone else uttered a broken sob and a different hand arrived at the base of her spine. It was Luca’s mother’s hand. Despite her concerns Mrs Salvatore was no match for the depth of Shannon’s broken-hearted grief. Tears thickened her voice as she offered words of comfort. Over by the door several others struggled to keep their tears in check.

But it was Luca who held her, Luca’s composure she could feel tearing apart at its seams.

‘Idiota,’ he muttered as she buried her face in his throat and washed him with the deep, gulping agony of her tears. ‘I take my eyes off you for two short seconds and you disappear to do this! Why are you so stubborn?’ he demanded unevenly. ‘Why do you insist on believing you can carry all of this grief without help from me? Don’t I know better? Don’t you always fall apart eventually? When we are married I am going to shackle you to my side, then I will not need to—’