Claimed by the Sicilian

‘You said—you said they’d get their story later,’ she managed, forcing the words past lips that suddenly seemed wooden and stiff with fright.

‘And so they will,’ Guido returned with stunning calm. ‘Just as soon as we come up with the story we want them to believe.’

There it was again, that ‘we’ that took everything out of her hands and put Guido right in control whether she wanted it or not.

And the truth was that right now she had no idea at all what she wanted—or how she was going to go about getting it. Held close to him like this, she was painfully aware of the burning heat of Guido’s body next to hers, of the steel-hard band of his arm clamped tight around her waist, crushing her close and constricting her breathing

‘We?’

He might feel hot, Amber realised, but his brain was very definitely cool. Definitely in controlled, analytical mode. Even the swollen arousal she had felt in his body before had now eased and she could almost hear the calm ticking-over of his brain as he assessed the situation, considered his options and came up with a plan.

‘Why we…?’

Dark eyes looked down into hers, cold and assessing and totally in control.

‘Because we have no other option,’ he stated calmly. ‘The Press have seen us together—your family—your fiancé’s family have too. From now on we’re in this together, whether we like it or not.’

CHAPTER FOUR

FROM now on we’re in this together, whether we like it or not.

And Amber didn’t like it; not one little bit. It was obvious—Guido could see it in her face. In the way that her eyes shadowed, the tension that pulled her pretty jaw tight, clamped her soft lips together. She wanted out of this—and she wanted him out of her life, that much was plain. But right now he really didn’t see that they had any sort of a choice.

‘And just what sort of a story did you have in mind?’

Her voice was cold and clipped, her tone matching the frost in her gaze, the way that those beautiful green eyes flicked over him, looking him up and down with cool contempt.

Something that she was going to like even less than the thought of them working together. And it was the obvious distaste on her face that made him all the more determined to carry it through.

The idea had come to him when he’d seen her gathering up her skirts and heading down the aisle away from him. Running away from him as fast as she had done that first time—and the burn of rejection had been as bitter and as savage as ever.

He had known in that moment that he couldn’t let her go.

Just moments before he had held her in his arms and kissed her and his body had throbbed with the heated, hungry passion that he had believed was dead to him—long dead. Certainly no woman had stirred that same hot yearning in twelve empty months as this Amber Wellesley—Amber Corsentino—seemed to be able to create in the space of a single heartbeat.

He’d seen her and his body had started to crave everything this woman had once brought him. He’d touched her and that craving had grown into an uncontrollable desire. He’d kissed her and every sense had gone up in flames, unable to bear the torment of being separate from her.

But Guido had to content himself with that kiss. Knowing all the time that he was only stirring up trouble for himself. Stirring up the memories, the needs, the passion that he had thought was long since buried, tamped down hard, hidden under the hard, bitter weight of the feelings she had left him with on the day she had walked out of his life.

Feelings he had spent the past year trying to forget—trying and failing miserably.

And so when he had seen her running away from him once more, he had known, deep in his soul, that he couldn’t let it happen again. He couldn’t let this woman walk out of his life without having her once more.

‘No!’

The only way he could get a grip on his thoughts was to say the word out loud, making Amber blink in shock as she stared at him, green eyes shadowed with confusion.

‘No?’ she questioned shakily. ‘No, you have no story to tell them? Or no—?’

‘Oh, I’ve a story we can give them, all right…’

Suddenly horrifyingly aware of the fact that he still held her close, Guido released Amber with an abruptness that almost dropped her to the ground, making her stagger back in shocked bewilderment, her hand going out to the wall to steady herself.

‘Then tell me!’

‘You’re not…’ Guido began, then caught himself up sharply. What was the point of warning her, letting her prepare herself? She was going to fight him on this, anyway. He could see it in her face. She’d fight him all the way, no matter what she said. So he might as well just let her have it straight and take it from there. At least that way he’d have the advantage of surprise once more, as he had when he’d arrived at the church.

The memory of the way she’d frozen when he’d spoken, the time it had taken her to turn round, was still clear in his memory. He’d been planning that moment for weeks, ever since he’d learned of her upcoming marriage, and it had brought a dark satisfaction to his soul. The sort of satisfaction he wanted to know again.

‘Let them think we’re a couple.’

‘What?’

There was no need to ask what she thought of his suggestion. It was etched into her lovely face, darkening the pools of her eyes above cheeks that had gone white in appalled shock.

‘Let them…?’

‘Let them think we’re back together.’

‘You have to be joking!’

‘No joke.’ Guido shook his dark head emphatically. ‘It’s the only way you’re going to walk out of here with any sort of reputation-and able to look people in the eye. Your chances of marriage to St Clair are ruined…’

‘Thanks to you!’

Guido glanced down at the tight little fists into which she had clenched her hands. He could read in her eyes the way she was tempted to launch herself at him, raise her fist to pound him on the shoulder, maybe even hit him in the face.

Perhaps he should tell her the truth about her supposed bridegroom. If she knew the real Rafe St Clair and the way that the man had been prepared to use her for his own ends, then would she be so quick to attack? Would she fight so hard for him then?

‘You’ve destroyed my life!’

‘No, cara,’ Guido reproved silkily. ‘You did that for yourself when you tried to get yourself a new groom without making sure that you had got rid of the old one first.’

‘You said it was not a legal marriage!’

‘I said we didn’t have any sort of real marriage—it’s not at all the same thing. The marriage you walked out on was perfectly legal, perfectly binding, as you would have found out if you had bothered checking.’

‘It didn’t seem necessary.’

Amber couldn’t believe she had been such a fool. Ever since the day that she had walked out on Guido, she had struggled to put their charade of a marriage behind her. It had been bad enough thinking that Guido had only gone through the ceremony to control her, to keep her in his bed. To find that she had swallowed the idea of it being real when in fact it had just been a fake, set up to deceive her, had twisted the original knife in even deeper.

As a result, she had ruthlessly locked away all thoughts of that day into a sealed compartment in her memory, refusing to let herself bring them out to look at them for any reasons whatsoever. When Rafe had asked her to marry him, she had wondered briefly if she should check on the legality of her first ‘wedding’. But the memory of Guido’s brutal tone, his callously scornful words, had made her flinch right away from even thinking about it.

Fear had added an extra impetus too, she admitted, feeling the sense of horror that had gripped her then take her by the throat once again. If she had found that the Las Vegas ceremony had been binding, then she would have had to admit it to Rafe, and—far worse—she would have had to connect with Guido in order to arrange for a divorce.

Cravenly—and foolishly, it now seemed—she had dodged away from the whole issue and had let herself believe that there had been no earlier marriage to stand in the way of the present one.

‘To tell you the truth, I didn’t even remember our time together,’ she lied in a desperate attempt to protect herself from the anguish that was slashing at her heart. ‘It didn’t really matter.’

She’d got in a knife cut of her own that time, she saw as she watched the flames of dark anger blaze in the depths of his eyes. His jaw clamped tight shut over the flare of anger and a muscle tugged in his cheek.

Hastily she backed away, down the aisle, moving into one of the pews so as to put the strength of the wood between him and her. She felt better that way. He’d never, ever hurt her physically but the emotional anguish he’d put her through had been hard enough to bear. Not that any wood, however strong and solid, was any sort of protection against a broken heart.

‘So you were in such a rush to become a lady that you didn’t care whether this marriage was lawful or not also?’ Guido questioned stiffly. ‘You really should not be so careless about the legalities of your weddings, carissima. Now you’ve lost the title you aimed for…’

‘And the husband I wanted!’

That brought him up sharp. For a moment something new flared in those deep-set eyes. Something that wasn’t anger but something darker and more dangerous even than his fury had been.

‘So I’m supposed to believe that the man himself was what you really wanted in all this? You aren’t going to claim that you loved him, are you?’

Amber’s hands folded over the edge of the pew back, holding on tight until her knuckles showed white under her stretched skin. She knew she was on very dangerous ground here. One false step and she could give herself away completely, putting herself right into her tormentor’s hands and giving him the perfect set of weapons to torture her with.

‘Did you even consider that before you marched in here and broke up my life?’ she demanded, her harsh, tight voice echoing around the high, arching roof of the church. ‘Did it make you pause to think about what you were doing?’

‘Why does that matter?’ Guido countered harshly. ‘Did you love him?’

Oh, how she wished she could say that yes, she loved Rafe. That she adored him. She longed to be able to fling her defiance right into his face but even as she opened her mouth the need for honesty caught her on the raw.

She hadn’t been marrying for love, she’d known that right from the start. But she had tried love once and it had blown up right in her face. She didn’t dare to risk that sort of bitter disillusionment all over again. So she was marrying for friendship—warm, gentle friendship. Without the savage bite of passion that had taken her heart and shattered it into a million irreparable pieces. She was marrying for freedom, for comfort and—yes—finally, for once in her life, to make her mother smile.

And Pamela Wellesley had smiled, at least for a moment or two. She had smiled when the engagement was announced. And she had smiled today when they had set out for the church and this wedding that meant so much to her.

‘I wanted to marry him,’ she managed stiltedly.

‘Oh, I’ll just bet you did. After all, the Honourable Rafe St Clair had so much more to offer you than an apparently penniless photographer trying to earn a living in Las Vegas.’

‘Apparently?’

She’d caught the unexpected word and looked up, turning a puzzled face in his direction. But Guido offered no hint of explanation. Instead he lifted one hand in an arrogantly dismissive gesture, brushing aside her question as if it were a buzzing fly that annoyed him.

‘But this won’t solve our immediate problem. The paparazzi outside won’t wait for ever. They want a story and the sooner the better. We should give them one—’

‘The one we should give them being that we are still a couple,’ Amber interjected, the cynicism and disbelief in her intonation making it plain just what she thought of that.

‘That we are back together again,’ Guido corrected smoothly. ‘They’ll love that!’

‘They might, but I most definitely won’t. And I can’t think why you should even imagine that it would work.’

‘Your English Press adore a love story—they want to write about that perfect ending where two people live happily after all.’

‘Happily ever after,’ Amber corrected automatically, the unwanted thought—if only it could be true—slicing at her from deep inside. ‘And you know only too well that I didn’t mean it wouldn’t work for them—but that there’s no way it would work for me!’

‘It doesn’t have to work for you,’ Guido dismissed scornfully. ‘It only has to work for the Press. And if we convince them that you were not thinking clearly when you agreed to marry Rafe, because you were broken-hearted…’

‘At losing you?’ Amber scoffed, needing to put the scorn into her voice to hide the way that unease twisted her nerves so painfully. Guido’s fictional scenario was coming way too close to the truth for comfort. ‘Tell me about it!’

‘But now that we’ve met up again—no matter under what circumstances…’ Guido persisted, blatantly ignoring her cynical interjection. ‘We…’

‘Don’t tell me—we looked into each other’s eyes and realised that we still cared so desperately for each other that we fell into each other’s arms…’

That was something she could dismiss without hesitation. At least she thought she could, so it was doubly disconcerting to feel those already twisted nerves tighten even more painfully as she spoke.

‘Something like that. It does not matter how we word it. Anything, so long as we go out of this church together to face that rat pack out there and give them a story with a positive spin on it that they can print in tomorrow’s editions.’

‘And you really believe they’ll run with it?’

She had to admit that she was tempted. For all sorts of reasons.

When her world had come crashing down with Guido’s explosive arrival at the aborted wedding ceremony—was it really barely half an hour ago?—she hadn’t been able to think beyond the immediate moment. All she had wanted then was to be left alone and to find a hole—the tinier the better—into which she could crawl to hide herself. Somewhere that she could lick her wounds, wait for the world to stop spinning in the sickening way it had been doing ever since that horrific interruption, and pray that one day things would quieten down so that she could dare to venture out again.

But that wasn’t going to happen. There wasn’t anywhere she could go; no one she could turn to.

Except Guido.

She had burned her boats with Rafe, that much was obvious. The sheer hatred in his eyes when he had turned to her, the venom with which he had spat the brutal insult at her, had made that only too plain. And who could blame him?

With Rafe had gone all his family, of course. The St Clairs were never likely to forgive the insult to their family honour that they believed she had inflicted today. What were they to expect from the Wellesley family? they would be saying. Like mother like daughter, after all. They’d always known it.

Her mother, too, would never forgive her for the public humiliation. That would be just one more thing to add to the long list of faults for which she could never atone, this one being the last and the worst in Pamela’s eyes. It would leave a stain that could never be erased. So there was no hope of help there, or comfort, or support.

There was no one in the world she could turn to.

Except Guido.

For the first time in the long-drawn-out minutes since she had taken refuge in the narrow wooden pew, Amber made herself look straight at Guido. She saw the way that the long, powerful body was leaning back against the heavy oak church door, behind which she could still vaguely hear the murmur of voices from the crowd. Every now and then someone would rap hard on that door, destroying her hope that the reporters and photographers might have given up in boredom and gone home.

Even as the thought entered her mind, another of those loud, aggressive knocks came from outside, making her flinch inside at the sound. And this time it was accompanied by an even louder voice calling her name, and asking for, ‘Just a word, Miss Wellesley—a few questions! You have to come out of there some time!’

Fearfully Amber let her eyes fly to Guido’s face, seeing there nothing of her own nervous apprehension. Instead, he seemed totally relaxed, his proud head flung back so that it rested on the edge of the door, muscular arms folded over the width of his chest. Long legs crossed at the ankles were stretched taut, pulling the fine material of his trousers tight against narrow hips and muscular thighs in a way that made her mouth dry in basic, sensual response.

His face too was totally calm, the strong jaw relaxed, the dark eyes only slightly hooded as he met her assessing stare with cool composure. He was between her and the ‘enemy’ outside—and so he seemed like a protector—but were appearances deceiving her? Was Guido the only real enemy?

She couldn’t begin to guess at the answer, only knowing that right now, in the situation in which she found herself, he seemed like her only possible hope.

‘Put it this way,’ Guido said at last. ‘I think that this is the only way for you to walk out of here on any sort of a positive note. You can leave this church with me—as my wife—or you can take your chance with the vultures outside.’

‘I think that’s what they call being caught between a rock and a hard place.’

Amber tried for an airy laugh and failed miserably, succeeding only in sounding cold and cynical even to her own ears. And it earned her another of those dark, glowering frowns, anger flashing in the deep-set eyes.

‘Then I am to take it that that is a no?’ he questioned harshly, levering himself away from the door so that he stood upright.

Amber knew it was impossible that he could have grown even half an inch taller in the time that he had been leaning back like that, but even so she had the irrational feeling that he had done just that. Grown bigger and stronger, his shoulders broadening, his head held higher so that he was even more imposing than he had ever been before.

The thought took all the strength from her legs so that she sank back onto the worn wooden seat of the pew, her hand twisting in the fine white silk of her dress. Her wedding dress. For a moment there she had almost forgotten.

‘Well?’ Guido prompted curtly when the thought dried her mouth too so that she couldn’t find any sort of an answer to give him.

‘I…’

Twice Amber opened her mouth to respond and both times her voice failed her completely, fading to a weak croak after the single word. How could she answer? What could she possibly say? It seemed that no matter which way she turned, something terrible and unbearable waited for her. So how did she choose the lesser of all those evils?

‘Così sia!’

Guido flung out his hands in a very Italian gesture, dismissing the whole topic and seeming to fling it from him.

‘If that’s the way you want it, then so be it! You can handle this alone.’

He had turned and headed back to the church door before she quite realised what he was doing. That he was leaving—that he had every intention of just walking out and leaving her here. Alone. And of course when he opened the door then the reporters and cameramen would just pour in…

Panic pushed her to her feet again, holding fast to the end of the pew as she took a couple of frantic steps into the aisle.

‘Wait!’

He actually had his fingers on the big metal door handle, was about to turn it…For the space of half a dozen uneven, fearful heartbeats, she thought that he hadn’t heard or, if he had, then he was determined to ignore her desperate cry. But then, very slowly, Guido stopped. His hand stilled on the big metal ring, then loosened, dropping down to his side again. He spared her just the smallest flick of a glance over his shoulder in her direction. That was all.

‘Wait?’ he said at last. ‘For what?’

‘For—for my answer.’ Amber stumbled over the words in her haste to get them out. Seeing him prepared to walk away like that had focused her mind brutally, She had no doubt at all now what she wanted; which way she had to go. There was only one way she could go.

‘And that answer is?’

Still he kept turned away from her and she wished he would turn round. It was so hard to speak to the long, straight back, to see nothing of his face but just the sleek, shining mane of black hair.

‘My answer is—you know what it is—it’s—Oh, please, won’t you just turn round?’

‘As you wish…’

He took his time about it, turning so slowly that she had time to rethink her request not once but twice while he did so. And when he was at last facing her again, those polished bronze eyes fixed on her face, she had to swallow hard to relieve the agonising tension in her throat. Now she wished she’d kept her mouth shut and let him stay where he was. Surely saying what she had to say to the back of his head couldn’t have been as bad, as nerve-racking as doing it now, to his face. Where all his features seemed to be carved from stone, and those eyes were as cold and hard as ice.

He didn’t speak again but just waited—and watched the play of emotions over her face as she struggled for the strength to speak again. And he wouldn’t say anything until she did, that much was obvious.

But still, could she come right out and say it? Say ‘Yes, I’ll do it. I’ll leave here with you—on your arm—as your wife—making public what for the past year has been my shameful little secret, the one I always prayed that no one would ever find out?’

And so she hedged, moving on to another topic. One that was almost as difficult—but one she sincerely needed an answer to.

‘There—there’s one thing I need to know.’

Guido kept silent when she paused, only the faint lift of his head, the way he tilted it to one side, revealing the fact that he had heard her and was waiting for her to elaborate.

‘I don’t really understand. If we do this—’

When we do this, because what choice did she have?

‘Then what would you get out of it?’

Guido didn’t hesitate and his deep, dark gaze didn’t waver for a second but remained so fixed on hers that she felt it might have the effect of a searing laser, marking her permanently like a brand.

‘I get what I want,’ he said with a calm decisiveness that made her toes curl up inside her white satin shoes.

‘And that is?’

The smile that touched his beautiful mouth was slow and dangerous, making her shiver in the same moment that she felt a rush of heat through her veins, flooding her skin with colour.

‘Oh, Amber, don’t play the naïve innocent, it doesn’t suit you—it never did. Isn’t it obvious? I get you.’

‘Me?’ It was a sound of pure horror and revulsion, one that should have provoked an equally passionate response from the man before her. But Guido just nodded, keeping that burning gaze targeted straight at her face.

‘I get you. I’ve always wanted you and now I’ll get you back in my life—and in my bed.’

Soft as they were, the words seemed to scrape away a much-needed protective layer from Amber’s skin so that she felt weak and vulnerable, dangerously exposed.

‘I only agreed to act as your wife—not really be that!’ she protested vehemently, her voice echoing round the church. ‘It won’t be a real marriage!’

She might have felt that the fervour of her protest would reawaken the dark, flashing anger of moments before but instead it simply made that wicked, dangerous smile—that shockingly seductive smile—grow wider and more devastating.

‘I’ll settle for that—for now.’

‘I won’t sleep with you!’

The subtle emphasis on that ‘for now’ made her shift uneasily from one foot to another, facing the worrying thought that she had well and truly jumped out of the frying-pan and landed right in the heart of the blazing, red-hot fire.