One Night: Red-Hot Secrets: A Secret Disgrace / Secrets of a Powerful Man / Wicked Secrets

Now, as he watched Aldo Barado approaching her, Caesar excused himself to his companion and made a determined path towards them. It was his responsibility, his inbuilt duty, to protect his wife and his son, and he certainly wasn’t going to let her down as her father had done.

Was she actually foolish enough to feel relief because Caesar had suddenly materialised at her side seconds ahead of Aldo? Louise derided herself. If so, she was making a big mistake. Caesar and Aldo had been on the same side all those years ago, and that side hadn’t been hers, had it?

Her relief quickly turned to a sharp surge of anxiety and agitation when Caesar put his arm around her to draw her close, his unexpected movement taking her completely off guard. Even worse, her instinctive defensive attempt to keep her body from actually touching his somehow resulted in the pressure of his arm actually causing her to sway into him, just as though she was a weak and adoring fool who actually wanted his embrace. Wasn’t it bad enough that he had blackmailed her into this wholly false pretence of a marriage without him heaping even more deceit on her by looking for all the world as though he adored her and they were the only two people in the room?

She hated herself for not being able to break the eye contact he was inflicting on her, and for allowing him to make her a party to this sideshow of husbandly affection. What was even worse was that, given that she knew he was doing it to deceive onlookers, because his own pride could not bear the thought of anyone knowing that he had been forced to marry her in order to be a proper father to his son, her own senses were somehow falling into the trap of actually responding to the fake look of male longing only restrained for the sake of propriety that Caesar was giving her.

It shocked her to her core to feel tiny darts of female heat leaping from nerve-ending to nerve-ending in tiny but devastatingly effective points of fiery awareness. And what shocked her even more was the sudden knowledge that this wasn’t the first time she had felt that sensation. Louise could feel self-protective alarm and denial racing down her spine, but it was too late. She was eighteen again, and standing with her grandparents in the village square, watching whilst Caesar strode around it, talking to his people, her attention for the first time in her life focused wholly on a man who wasn’t her father and who was affecting her in a totally unfamiliar way.

It was impossible for her to suppress her small betraying gasp. She had buried that moment as deeply as though it had never happened. She wished desperately that it had not happened. But the truth was there in the open now, confronting and shocking her. So she had momentarily felt the young woman’s reckless thrill of sensual reaction to a good-looking man? What did that mean except that she was human? Nothing. She had soon learned that Caesar was no romantic hero for a naive girl to put on a pedestal and adore.

‘My lovely wife.’

The sound of Caesar’s voice dragged her back to the present, her body tensing instinctively and immediately when he reached out and drew her towards him, his arm around her waist. He was simply playing a role. She knew that. If she felt acutely aware of him then it was simply because she didn’t like the deception she was being forced to share. Nothing to do with the fact that she was acutely aware of the hard male strength of his arm around her in its parody of protection. She certainly wasn’t in the least bit vulnerable to the image Caesar was creating, and nor was she vulnerable to those quivers of sensation springing from the contact between their bodies. Even if that contact between them was making her tremble from head to foot.

Caesar could clearly see Louise’s rejection of her body’s helpless response to him in her gaze. All those years ago she had trembled just as she was doing now—but back then she had made no attempt to conceal her body’s reaction to his simplest movement, as though she had been powerless to control her sensual response to him, openly delighting in it instead, as her eager yearning movements towards him had urged him to take what she was offering. Guilt shadowed his own body’s automatic response to this unwanted betrayal of her reaction to him. Why did it so affect him to see that, though she was so obviously hostile to that reaction, she was incapable of controlling it? What was the matter with him? He wasn’t a naive boy to be driven by a need he couldn’t control simply because a woman trembled with sensual awareness of him. He had far more important matters on which he needed to focus. It was Oliver who mattered now. Oliver and his future. Oliver’s acceptance by his people and with that Louise’s acceptance as well.

‘You will have to forgive me, Aldo,’ he told the village headman. ‘I confess I can hardly bear to let Louise out of my sight now that we have found one another again after so many years apart.’ As he said the words Caesar recognised how much truth they held. Because if he let Louise out of his sight she was likely to leave and take Oliver with her.

Caesar’s voice was warm and soft, his look for her tender and rueful, his hold on her that of a man who had no intention of letting her go—all very much in keeping with the attitude expected from a newly married man reunited with an old and lost love, Louise recognised, but of course none of it meant anything. And did she want it to? No, of course not. She only had to think of the past and the way in which Caesar had treated her and hurt her to know that.

But if that past didn’t stand between them, if she was meeting him now for the first time, with no preconceptions to overshadow them …? Hah—that was good, when the only reason she was here was because of a very important conception indeed: that of their son. Without Ollie there would be no reason for Caesar to want her in his life, no reason for him to pretend he cared about her, and certainly no reason for him to marry her.

‘I can’t say that this isn’t a surprise,’ Aldo Barado responded, before acknowledging grudgingly, ‘Although there is no question that the boy has to be yours.’

‘No question at all,’ Caesar agreed, the hard note of steel in his voice causing Louise’s heart to flip over, as though it really was foolish enough to believe that Caesar genuinely wanted to protect her.

‘My duchess has been generous indeed in giving me the chance to make up for my past errors of judgement,’ Caesar continued. ‘And, given the understanding I have discovered in her nature, I am sure she will be prepared to extend the same generosity to others as well.’

Louise’s eyes widened slightly as she listened to this exchange. She was under no illusions where Aldo Barado was concerned. He was the one who had kept the gossip flowing and who had stirred up more trouble for her in their community in London. She didn’t need her degree to know that he had not been heading for her because he wanted to apologise for the past—far from it.

‘I am a very lucky man,’ Caesar went on. ‘A man who is proud to say how honoured he is to have such a wife, and to have the gift of a son.’

‘A son is indeed a great gift,’ Aldo Barado agreed.

‘Later this week the ashes of my wife’s grandparents will be interred at the church of Santa Maria. It will be fitting and respectful for those from the village where they grew up to attend that event. I shall donate a new stained-glass window to replace the one that was broken by last year’s storms in honour of their memory.’

Nothing more was said. Nothing more needed to be said.

Louise knew how the community worked. Caesar had given an instruction and Aldo Barado would carry it out. The people of her grandparents’ home village would attend the interment of their ashes, and in doing so grant them the respect her grandfather had always wanted. With just a handful of words Caesar had achieved what she could never have made happen. Such was his power. Once he had used that power against her. Now he was using it for the benefit of her grandparents. Because Oliver was his son. That was what mattered to Caesar. Nothing and no one else. Certainly not her. Well, that was fine by her. She didn’t want to matter to Caesar. Not one little bit. He certainly didn’t matter to her.

She waited until Aldo Barado had gone before rounding on Caesar to hiss indignantly, ‘There was no need for you to come over. I am perfectly capable of dealing with the likes of Aldo Barado. He might have terrified me as a girl; he might have bullied and humiliated my poor grandparents. But things are different now. And as for what you said about the service. Do you really think I want anyone there who has to be bribed to attend?’

‘You might see it that way, but to your grandparents and the more traditional amongst the villagers how many members of their community are there is important.’

There was too much truth in what he was saying for her to be able to deny it, but at least she was able to tell him curtly, ‘You can let me go now. There’s no need to go on with the charade. Aldo’s gone.’

‘His isn’t the only scrutiny to which we will be subject,’ Caesar told her, keeping his arm around her waist and leaning towards her as though he was about to whisper some private endearment to her rather than having a far more mundane conversation. ‘We both agreed that for Oliver’s sake it is important that our marriage is accepted as being the result of an old love-match between us. People will expect to see at least some outward evidence of that love—especially on our wedding day.’

With his free hand he tucked a loose strand of her hair behind her ear, his gaze fixed on her mouth as though he was having to restrain himself from kissing her. How was it possible for her lips to burn and swell as they were doing just because he was looking at them, almost caressing them with that assured, tormenting male gaze that lied when it said so publicly that he couldn’t wait to crush their softness beneath the fierce pressure of a passionate kiss.

Her face was burning now, her throat aching, her instinctive betraying, ‘Don’t,’ a suffocating sound of frantic denial.

‘Don’t what?’ Caesar challenged her.

‘Don’t look at me like that.’

‘And how am I looking at you?’

‘You know perfectly well what I mean,’ Louise said shakily. ‘You were looking at me as though …’

‘As though I want to take you to bed? Isn’t that exactly what we’ve agreed that we want people to think?’

Was it? She couldn’t remember them ever discussing the reality of having him look at her the way he was doing now, but somehow her brain was refusing to work, and any idea of cool logical thought was impossible to formulate in the fierce aching heat within her body and her frantic attempts to smother those flames. What was happening to her? It was ten years since she had last lain in a man’s arms—ten years since the one and only time she had experienced the intensity of physical desire allied to what she had naively then thought of as love.

‘We’re married. Surely that’s enough to convince them that we want to be together? After all we aren’t going to … That is we won’t be …’

For all that little tremor earlier, Louise was showing him what really mattered to her—and the truth was that she didn’t want him, Caesar recognised. Logic told him that he should be pleased, because the last thing he wanted was the complication that would come from allowing a sexual relationship to develop between them. So why, instead of being pleased, did he feel a sense of chagrin? Male vanity? He hadn’t thought himself so shallow. The focus of their marriage was going to be their son. They both knew that. But her reaction now reminded him of an issue they had not discussed.

‘Our marriage might be sexless, but I am sure you will that agree that that is something that only you and I should know.’

‘Yes,’ Louise was forced to agree, and a small shiver chilled through her. Why should she feel so cold and so … so … alone just because Caesar had stated the obvious? After all, she didn’t want to have sex with him, did she? Of course she didn’t.

‘And whilst we are on this subject, when it comes to sexual relationships outside our marriage … for the present, whilst Oliver’s emotional security must be our priority, it is my opinion that celibacy must be the order of the day for both of us. Since neither of us is currently involved in a relationship—or has been for some time—’

Louise stopped him. ‘You’ve been checking up on me? Digging into my private life?’

‘Naturally I wanted to know what kind of men you might have been introducing into my son’s life as potential future stepfathers,’ Caesar answered her.

‘You really think that I would take risks with Oliver’s emotional security? The only reason I have agreed to marry you is because you are Oliver’s father and he needs you. No matter what my personal opinion of you, I believe that you will put him first and be a proper father to him. Not like … not like what I experienced with my own father.’

Abruptly Louise turned away from him. She was saying too much, giving away too much, revealing her own vulnerability.

It was a relief to see Oliver coming towards her, accompanied by Caesar’s cousin’s sons. The boys were getting on very well together. Just to see her son’s confidence growing and to know he was happy meant that whatever sacrifices she personally had to make would be worthwhile, she assured herself as she listened to Oliver’s enthusiasm for a trip that was being planned to a newly opened water park on another part of the island.

One of the happiest and best moments of the day for her was when Anna Maria’s husband toasted them as a newly married couple and Oliver, standing next to Caesar, demanded, pink-faced with delight, ‘I really have a proper dad now, don’t I?’

Caesar immediately got up from his chair to go and hug his son tightly as he told him emphatically, ‘You have a father, Oliver, and I have a son. Nothing can ever take that relationship away from us.’

Those words, and the emotions that so plainly went with them, touched a place in her heart that had long hurt her on Oliver’s behalf—a place that was now beginning to be salved. It was still a huge risk, a huge act of faith for her to put her trust in Caesar’s promise to love their son, but what other choice did she really have when Ollie so plainly wanted Caesar as his father?

Under cover of the others’ smiles, she had turned to Caesar and warned him quietly, ‘If you ever, ever let Ollie down I shall never forgive you.’

In response Caesar had told her, equally quietly but fiercely, ‘If I were ever to let him down I would never forgive myself.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘OH, CAESAR, I nearly forgot! I think the excitement of your marriage must have been a bit too much for your housekeeper. I overheard Signora Rossi telling the maids to make up your parents’ old interconnecting state bedrooms for you and Louise this morning, just before I came down to the chapel for the ceremony.’

Caesar’s cousin wrinkled her nose and laughed, whilst Louise froze. The adults of the family were in the ‘small’ dining room—all fifty feet of it—having a brief post mortem on the undeniable success of the day, before retiring.

‘So old-fashioned of her—but then, of course, she was your parents’ housekeeper. As though you and Louise would want to have separate rooms! I told her to instruct the maids to move Louise’s things to your own suite instead. Apart from anything else your suite is so much more modern and comfortable than those dreadfully old-fashioned state bedrooms your parents occupied. I know that for a fact from when she allocated them to Ricardo and me on our first visit after our marriage.’ She stifled a small yawn.

Louise had to take a small sip from the brandy glass she had been nursing, her lips trembling against the glass as she did so. She wasn’t really a drinker, but Anna Maria’s lightly amused words had sent such a shock of dismay through her that she felt she needed the glowing warmth of the spirit to banish that shock’s icy coldness.

‘You must both be exhausted. I know I am,’ Anna Maria continued, thankfully oblivious to the consternation she had caused.

As much as Louise desperately wanted to look at Caesar, to see how he was receiving his cousin’s well-meaning interference in his careful arrangements, she couldn’t trust herself to do so.

‘The boys dropped off the minute they were in bed, didn’t they, Louise?’ Anna Maria chattered on.

Numbly, Louise nodded her head.

When they had discussed their marriage Caesar had mentioned the fact that for form’s sake their marriage must seem ‘normal’, but that they could get round the fact that neither of them wanted any sexual intimacy with the other by occupying the interconnecting state bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, dressing room and private sitting room, which until his parents’ death had traditionally always been occupied by the Duca and his duchess.

The rooms need some refurbishment, Caesar had told her when he had shown her over them, and he intended to leave the choice of redecoration of her own rooms to her. He would return to his own suite whilst those renovations were taking place, and she had agreed with him that the arrangement would give them both the physical separation from one another they wanted whilst preserving the fiction that their marriage, and with it their sexual relationship, was that of a normal married couple.

Now, though, it seemed that thanks to Anna Maria their sleeping arrangements had been changed, and Louise knew that she would have to wait until they were finally alone in Caesar’s suite before she could give vent to her feelings about that change.

Once they were in Caesar’s personal suite of rooms, though, it wasn’t her angry dismay at the changes that had been made that occupied her thoughts so much as the emotions gripping her throat and momentarily silencing her as she looked round the familiar space that was Caesar’s exclusive territory.

On their first visit to the castello it had been her father’s girlfriend Melinda who had prettily but determinedly insisted on seeing Caesar’s private suite. Her pouting and teasing him about the probability of his bed being covered in decadent black silk sheets had resulted in him admitting them into his private domain. Louise admitted that then she had found the simplicity of the decor in his study-cum-office and adjoining bedroom rather dull and unexciting, after Melinda’s deliberate flirtations and sexy verbal build-up. It had only been later, as she’d matured and learned, taught herself to appreciate real style and elegance, that she had come to realise how very smart and understated the colour scheme actually was.

Here in Caesar’s private quarters the wooden panelling was painted a soft blue-grey, with deeper toned beautifully soft modern rugs softening the starkness of the marble floor. Modern leather-covered furniture—heritage pieces for future generations, Louise felt sure—broke up the space of the businesslike and yet comfortable space that was the sitting room for the whole suite. Bookshelves and cupboards filled the space either side of the fireplace, and a very modern computer desk set beneath one of the now shuttered windows.

Through the off-white painted double doors she could see into the bedroom—and see the enormous double bed, its bedding folded down at both sides, ready for shared occupation.

Louise couldn’t control her reaction—a physical shudder that ripped through her body.

Once before she had shared that bed with Caesar. Shared it? Wasn’t it the truth that she had virtually begged him to take her there?

The sheets—white and very, very expensive—were of the finest quality possible, even if back then she had not known enough about such things to recognise that fact, and it was surely safer to focus on that fact and use it to block out those awful unwanted images that were threatening to crash through the barriers she had erected against them.

On one side of the bed were double doors that led to a modern marble-and-glass bathroom with a free-standing bath, and on the other a pair of double doors that led to a dressing room.

She didn’t want to be here. It wasn’t good for her. Not now, when she was feeling so vulnerable, so aware of the past and its consequences not so much for her or for Caesar but for their son. It was there in that room, in that bed, that he had been conceived. There in that bed that she had somehow convinced herself that Caesar wanted and loved her, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary; there that she had willingly allowed herself to be swept away by needs, desires and emotions she had been pitifully incapable of understanding, never mind resisting.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Caesar remove the dinner jacket into which he had changed for their evening meal, throwing it carelessly onto one of the off-white leather sofas. As he did so, the fabric of his dress shirt pulled tautly cross his shoulders. Traitorously, shockingly, dangerously, her stomach muscles clenched and her heart rolled over.

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