Marrying the Italian: The Marcolini Blackmail Marriage / The Valtieri Marriage Deal / The Italian Doctor's Bride

The despair she felt at that moment almost consumed her. It was so hurtful to realise how badly he thought of her, how for all this time he’d believed her to be an avaricious opportunist, when all she had ever wanted from him was his love. How could he have got it so wrong about her? Hadn’t he seen how much she had adored him? Claire knew she had been a little goggle-eyed at his lifestyle to begin with, but as their relationship had progressed she’d thought she had demonstrated how little his fame and fortune meant to her. Was his heart so hard and impenetrable he was unable to recognise genuine love when he saw it?

‘Come here, Claire,’ he commanded again, holding out his hand for her.

Claire released her tightly held breath and pressed herself away from the back of the lift, where she had flattened her spine. She took his hand, struggling to hide the way his fingers curling around hers affected her. His hands—his so very clever, life-saving hands—felt strong and warm against hers. They had been one of the first things she had noticed about him all those years ago in Riccardo’s salon. Antonio had strong, capable hands—tanned, lightly sprinkled with hair, broad and yet long-fingered, his nails cut short and scrupulously clean from the hundreds of washes he subjected them to in order to operate.

She looked down at their entwined fingers and suppressed a tiny shiver. Those hands had explored every inch of her body. They had known her intimately; they had taught her everything she knew about sexual response. She could feel the warmth of him seeping through her skin, layer by layer, melting the ice of her resolve to keep herself distanced and unaffected by him.

The lift doors opened and a camera flashed in Claire’s face as she stepped out hand in hand with Antonio. She cringed, and shielded her eyes from the over-bright glare, but within seconds another journalist had rushed up and thrust a microphone towards her.

‘Mrs Marcolini,’ the young woman said, struggling to keep up with Antonio’s determined stride as he pulled Claire towards the front of the hotel. ‘Is it true you are returning to your husband after a five-year estrangement?’

Antonio gently but firmly moved the microphone away from Claire’s face. ‘Do you mind giving my wife some space?’ he asked.

The journalist took this as encouragement, and directed her line of questioning at him instead. ‘Mr Marcolini, you are reputed to be here in Sydney for a limited time. Does that mean your new relationship with your wife will be on a set time-frame as well? Or do you intend to take her back to Italy with you once your lecture and surgical tour here in Sydney is completed?’

Claire looked up at Antonio, her breath catching in her throat, but he was as cool and collected as usual, the urbane smile in place, his inscrutable gaze giving no clue to what was ticking over in his mind.

‘That is between my wife and I,’ he answered. ‘We have only just sorted out our differences. Please give us some space and privacy in which to work on our reconciliation.’

‘Mr Marcolini.’ The young female journalist was clearly undaunted by his somewhat terse response. ‘You and your wife suffered the tragedy of a stillbirth five years ago. Do you have any advice to parents who have suffered the same?’

Claire felt the sudden tension in Antonio’s fingers where they were wrapped around hers. She looked up at him again, her heart in her throat and the pain in the middle of her chest so severe she could scarcely draw in a much needed breath.

‘The loss of a child at any age is a travesty of nature,’ he answered. ‘Each person must deal with it in their own way and in their own time. There is no blueprint for grief.’

‘And you, Mrs Marcolini?’ The journalist aimed her microphone back at Claire. ‘What advice would you give to grieving parents, having been through it personally?’

Claire stammered her response, conscious there were women out there just like her, who had been torn apart by the loss of a baby and would no doubt be hanging on every word she said. ‘Um…just to keep hoping that one day enough research will be done to make sure stillbirths are a thing of the past. And to remember it’s not the mother’s fault. Things go wrong, even at the last minute. You mustn’t blame yourself…that is the important thing. You mustn’t blame yourself…’

Antonio, keeping Claire close, elbowed his way through the knot of people and cameras. ‘Just keep walking, cara,’ he said. ‘This will die down in a day or two.’

‘I can’t see why our situation warrants the attention it’s just received. Who gives a toss whether we resume our marriage or not? It’s hardly headline material.’

Antonio kept her hand tucked in close to his side as he led the way down the sidewalk to the restaurant he had booked earlier. ‘Maybe not here in Australia,’ he said. ‘However, there are newshounds who relay gossip back to Italy from all over the world. They like to document whatever Mario and I do—especially now we are at the helm of the Marcolini empire.’

‘So what is Mario up to these days?’ Claire asked, not really out of interest but more out of a desire to steer the conversation away from their unusual situation. ‘Still flirting with any woman with a pulse?’

Antonio’s smile this time was crooked with affection for his sibling. ‘You know my brother Mario. He likes to work hard and to play even harder. I believe there is lately someone he is interested in—an Australian girl, apparently, someone he met last time he was here—but so far she has resisted his charm.’

‘Yes, well, maybe he could try a little ruthlessness or blackmail,’ she said. ‘Both seem to run rather freely in the Marcolini family veins.’

He turned to face her, holding her by the upper arms so she couldn’t move away. ‘I gave you a choice, Claire,’ he said, pinning her gaze with his. ‘Your freedom or your brother’s. You see it as blackmail, I see it as a chance to sort out what went wrong between us.’

She wrenched herself out of his hold, dusting off her arms as if he had tainted her with his touch. ‘I can tell you what went wrong with us, Antonio,’ she said. ‘All I ever was to you was a temporary diversion—someone to warm your bed occasionally. You had no emotional investment in our relationship until there was the prospect of an heir. The baby was a bonus, and once she was out of the equation, so was I.’

Antonio clenched and unclenched his fingers where hers had so recently been. He could still feel the tingling sensation running up under his skin. ‘I fulfilled my responsibilities towards you as best I could, but it was never enough for you. So many men in my place would not have done so. Have you ever thought of that? I stood by you and supported you, but you wanted me to be something I am not nor ever could be.’

She sank her teeth into her lip when it began to tremble. Moisture was starting to shine in the blue-green pools of her eyes, making him feel like an unfeeling brute for raising his voice at her. How on earth did she do it to him? One wounded look from her, just one slight wobble of her chin, and he felt the gut-wrenching blows of guilt assail him all over again.

He let out a weighty sigh and captured her hand again, bringing it up to his mouth, pressing his lips warmly against her cold, thin fingers. ‘I am sorry, cara,’ he said gently. ‘I do not want to fight with you. We are supposed to be mending bridges, si?’

She looked at him for a stretching moment, her eyes still glistening with unshed tears. ‘Some bridges can never be mended, Antonio,’ she said, pulling her hand out of his.

Antonio held the restaurant door open for her. Let’s just see about that. he thought with grim determination, and followed her inside.

CHAPTER FIVE

A FEW minutes later, once they were seated at a secluded table with drinks, crusty bread rolls and a tiny dish of freshly pressed olive oil placed in front of them, Claire began to feel the tension in her shoulders slowly dissipate. She could see Antonio was making every effort to put her at ease. His manner towards her had subtly changed ever since that tense moment outside the restaurant.

The earlier interaction with the press had upset him much more than she had thought it would. He was well used to handling the intrusive questions of the paparazzi, but this time she had felt the tensile strain in him as he had tried to protect her. It had touched her that he had done so, and made her wonder if his motives for their reconciliation were perhaps more noble than she had first thought.

The waiter took their orders, and once he had left them Antonio caught and held Claire’s gaze. ‘Did you blame yourself, Claire?’ he asked, looking at her with dark intensity.

Claire pressed her lips together, her eyes falling away from his to stare at the vertical necklaces of bubbles in her soda water. ‘I don’t suppose there is a mother anywhere in the world who doesn’t feel guilty about the death of her child,’ she said sadly.

He reached for her hand across the table, his long, strong fingers interlocking with hers. ‘I should have arranged some counselling for you,’ he said, in a tone deep with regret.

Claire brought her eyes back to his. ‘Would you have come to the sessions as well?’

His eyes shifted to look at the contents of his glass, just as hers had done a moment or so earlier. ‘I am used to dealing with life and death, Claire,’ he said, briefly returning his gaze to hers. ‘I lost my first patient, or at least the first one I was personally responsible for under my care, when I was a young registrar. It was unexpected and not my fault, but I blamed myself. I wanted to quit. I did not think I could carry on with my training. But my professor of surgery at the time took me to one side and reassured me that a surgeon is not God. We do what we can to save and preserve lives, but sometimes things go wrong. Things we have no control over.’

‘Is that why you chose plastic surgery rather than general surgery?’ Claire asked, wondering why she had never thought to ask him that before.

‘I was never really interested in plastics as such,’ he answered. ‘I understand how many people are unhappy with the features they are born with, and I fully support them seeking help if and where it is appropriate, but I never saw myself doing straight rhino-plasty or breast augmentations or liposuction. Reconstructive work has always appealed to me. Seeing someone disfigured by an accident or birth defect reclaiming their life and their place in the world is tremendously satisfying.’

‘I’ve seen some of the work you’ve done on your website,’ Claire said. ‘The before and after shots are truly amazing.’

He picked up his glass, his expression somewhere between quizzical and wry. ‘I am surprised you bothered looking at all. I thought you wanted me out of sight and out of mind.’

She twisted her mouth. ‘I guess intrigue got the better of me. From being an overworked registrar when we met to what you are now—a world leader in reconstructive surgery…Well, that’s a pretty big leap, and one I imagine you might not have achieved if I had stayed around.’

A frown tugged at his dark brows. ‘That seems a rather negative way of viewing yourself,’ he said. ‘The early years of surgery are punishing, Claire. You know that. It is like any other demanding profession. You have to put in the hard yards before you reap any of the rewards.’

‘I suppose some of the rewards, besides the financial ones, are the hordes of women who trail after you so devotedly,’ she put in resentfully.

He made an impatient sound at the back of his throat. ‘You really are determined to pick a fight every chance you get, are you not? Well, if it is a fight you want, you can have one—but not here and not now. I refuse to trade insults with you over a table in a public restaurant.’

Claire twisted her hands beneath the table, her stomach tightening into familiar knots. ‘I don’t see that it is necessary for me to move in with you,’ she said, nervously moistening her dry lips. ‘Surely we can just see how it goes from day to day? You know…go on the occasional date or something, to see if things work out.’

He looked at her with wry amusement. ‘Come now, Claire, surely we have moved well past the dating stage, hmm? You have shared my bed and my body in the past. I am quite sure you will not find it too difficult to do so again, especially since there is financial gain to be had.’

Claire had to look away from his taunting gaze. She felt shattered by his chilling assessment of her. He was treating her like a gold-digger, someone who would sleep with him for whatever she could get out of the arrangement. ‘I don’t want your money,’ she said stiffly. ‘I have never wanted it.’

He put his glass down so heavily the red wine splashed against the sides, almost spilling over the rim. ‘That is not quite true, though, is it, Claire?’

She twisted her hands even more tightly together, forcing herself to hold his accusatory gaze. ‘I wanted your time,’ she said. ‘But you were always too busy to give it to me.’

‘I gave you what I could, Claire,’ he said, frowning at her darkly. ‘I know it was not enough. You did not always get the best of me; my patients back then and now still have that privilege. Most truly dedicated specialists feel the same way. We have lives in our hands. It is a huge responsibility, for they are all someone’s son or daughter, husband or wife, brother or sister.’

‘What about your own daughter, Antonio?’ she asked, tears filling her eyes. ‘The specialist you recommended I see failed to get there on time, and so did you. I felt let down. You both let our baby down.’

Antonio hated going over this. They had done it so many times in the past and it had achieved nothing. All it did was stir up a hornets’ nest of guilt in his gut. ‘Leave it, Claire,’ he said. ‘We have to let the past go and move forward. It is the only hope we have to get things right this time around.’

Claire pushed her barely touched food away. ‘We wouldn’t even be sitting here now if I hadn’t asked you for a divorce. You couldn’t stand the fact that I’d got in first—just like you couldn’t stand the fact that I was the one who left you, not the other way round. And now you have the audacity to use my brother to blackmail me into being with you. I can’t believe how ruthless you have become.’

‘Your brother has nothing to do with this,’ he said, releasing a tight breath. ‘I was going to contact you in any case and suggest a trial reconciliation. He just gave me the means to make sure you agreed to it.’

Claire sat in stony silence, wondering whether to believe him or not. He had certainly taken his time about contacting her; she had heard nothing from him for years. But then she began to wonder if it had something to do with the death of his father. Could Antonio have an ulterior motive for chaining her to his side? Suspicion began to make her scalp prickle. No wonder he had looked at her with such fury in his gaze while she had been talking to Isaac, and when she had questioned him about whether his father’s estate had been divided between his brother and himself. She was starting to think Antonio would do anything rather than divide up his assets—even if it meant reconciling with his runaway wife.

‘You have been on my mind a lot over the years, Claire,’ he said into the silence. ‘When this offer to come to Australia came up I decided it was a perfect opportunity to see if anything could be salvaged from what was left of our relationship. You had not pressed for a divorce, so I felt there was a chance you might still have feelings for me.’

‘Well, you were wrong,’ Claire said, tossing her napkin to one side and glaring at him as her anger towards him raced with red-hot speed through her veins. ‘I feel nothing for you.’

He held her caustic look without flinching. ‘That is not true, cara. You feel a lot of things for me. Anger and hate to name just two of them.’

‘And that’s not enough to send you and your blackmailed bride scheme packing?’ she asked, with vitriol sharpening her voice to dagger points.

‘Not until I know for sure there is no hope,’ he said, with an intransigent set to his features. ‘And the only way to find out is to start straight away—from tonight.’

Claire felt her eyes flare in panic. ‘You can’t mean for me to spend the night with you? Not yet. I’m not ready. It’s too soon.’

He gave her an imperious smile, like someone who knew the hand they were about to spread out on the table was going to be a royal flush. ‘You want to pull out of our deal?’ he asked, reaching for his mobile. ‘I can call Frank and tell him the police will be there in half an hour to pick up your brother and press charges on him.’

Claire clenched her hands beneath the table again. ‘No, please,’ she choked. ‘Don’t do that…I…I’ll stay with you…’

His dark eyes travelled over her face for a pulsing moment. ‘I will not force myself on you, Claire,’ he said. ‘You surely do not expect me to act so boorishly towards you, do you?’

She compressed her lips, waiting a beat or two before she released them. ‘I’m not sure what to think…’ she confessed. ‘We’re practically strangers now…’

‘Even strangers can become friends,’ he said. ‘If nothing else, would that not be a good outcome of this three-month arrangement?’

Her eyes were wary as they met his. ‘I can’t imagine us exchanging Christmas cards and newsy e-mails, Antonio. Besides, we come from completely different worlds. I honestly don’t know what I was thinking, getting involved with you in the first place.’

‘Then why not tell me about your world?’ he said. ‘You hardly ever mentioned your family when we were together. You did not even want them to come to our wedding, though I offered to pay for their flights. I have never even seen a photograph of any one of them.’

Claire felt a tide of colour creep into her cheeks. ‘They are my family, and I love them,’ she said, knowing she sounded far too defensive. ‘They’re not perfect—far from it—but things have not been easy for any of them. My mother in particular.’

‘What is she like?’ he asked. ‘You told me so little about her in the past.’

She tucked a corkscrew of curls behind her left ear, wondering where to begin. ‘She’s had a hard life. She lost her mother when she was in her early teens, and I guess because she felt so rudderless got pregnant at sixteen. Like a lot of other girls left holding the baby, she looked for love in all the wrong places, with each subsequent relationship producing a child but no reliable father. As the eldest and the only girl I kind of slipped into a pseudo-parenting role from an early age. My brother Callum is doing OK now, after a bit of a wild time in his teens, but it’s Isaac I worry about. He’s a little impulsive at times. He acts before he thinks.’

‘He is young, and will eventually grow out of it if he is pointed in the right direction,’ Antonio said. ‘Frank Guthrie will be a good mentor for him. It sounds like your brother needs a strong male influence.’

Claire lifted her eyes back to his. ‘Where did you meet this Frank guy?’ she asked. ‘I don’t recall you mentioning him in the past.’

‘I operated on his brother Jack about eighteen months ago,’ he said. ‘He was involved in a head-on collision just outside of Rome. There was a lot of facial damage. We had to put plates and screws in his forehead and cheeks, and rebuild both of his eye sockets. He was lucky to survive. No one thought he would come through, and certainly not without heavy scarring or disfigurement. I got to know Frank, who had flown over to be with him. He spent a lot of time at the hospital, so we often had a coffee and a chat after my ward rounds.’

‘It must be very rewarding, seeing people recover from something like that,’ she said. ‘Your parents…I mean your mother…must be very proud of you.’

He gave her a wry half-smile. ‘My father made it very clear when I first announced I was going to study medicine that he would have preferred me to take up the reins of his business. And my mother complained for years about the long hours I work. But I have always wanted to be a surgeon for as long as I can remember.’

Claire picked up her soda water again. ‘How is your mother coping after your father’s death?’ she asked.

A shadow passed through his gaze as it met hers. ‘She is doing as well as can be expected under the circumstances,’ he said.

Claire was even more certain now that his father’s death had everything to do with Antonio contacting her about this trial reconciliation. There would be certain expectations of him as the firstborn son of a wealthy businessman. An heir would be required. But he could hardly provide one whilst still legally married to his estranged wife.

A divorce between them had the potential to be messy, and no doubt very public. In their haste to marry close to six years ago, when Claire had announced her pregnancy, there had been no time for drawing up a prenuptial agreement. Antonio could not be unaware of how the family laws in Australia worked. She would be entitled to a considerable share of his wealth, including that which he had just inherited upon the death of his father, even though they had been living apart for so long.

She toyed with the edge of the tablecloth, struggling to keep her expression shuttered in case he saw how confused she was. It would be different if she still loved him. She would take him back without hesitation. But her love for him had died the day she had seen him in Daniela Garza’s arms.

Or had it?

Claire looked at his face, her heart giving an uncoordinated skip as her gaze came into contact with his coal-black eyes. She had been aware of a disturbing undercurrent the whole time they had been together this evening. Every time her eyes met his she felt the zap of attraction—unwilling, almost resentful, but no less unmistakable, and it definitely wasn’t one-way. Her body recognised him as her pleasure-giver. She had not known such pleasure before or since, and while she imagined in her most tortured moments he had experienced physical ecstasy with many other women, she was more than aware of his ongoing desire for her. She could see it in his eyes, in the way they locked on hers for a second or two longer than necessary. She had felt it in the way his fingers had wrapped around hers in that possessive way of his, their warmth seeping into the coldness of hers. She could only imagine what would happen if he should kiss her at some point. Her lips could almost sense the gentle but firm pressure of his, and her tongue snaked out to try and remove the sensation. She didn’t want to remind herself of all she had felt in his arms. She had locked away those memories. They were too painful to recollect.

They were far too dangerous to revisit.

‘Have you finished playing with your meal?’ Antonio asked.

Claire put down the fork she had been using to move around the seafood risotto she had been vainly trying to push past her lips. ‘I guess I’m not as hungry as I thought I was,’ she said, her shoulders going down on a sigh.

He took out his wallet and, signalling the waiter, placed his credit card on the table in anticipation of the bill. ‘I will give you a night of reprieve, Claire,’ he said. ‘Go home and get a good night’s sleep. If you give me a spare key to your flat I will send someone over tomorrow to shift your things to my suite at the hotel. Do not worry about your lease or the rent for the next three months. I will see to that. All you need concern yourself with is stepping back into your role as my wife.’

He made it sound so simple, Claire thought as she drove back to her flat a short time later. All she had to do was pack a bag or two and slip back into his life as if she had never been away.

Even more worrying—how many nights would pass before he expected her to slip between the sheets of his bed?

CHAPTER SIX

THE salon was fully booked the following day, and it seemed as if every single client of Claire’s had seen the press item documenting her reunion with Antonio Marcolini. All were intent on expressing their congratulations and best wishes. She smiled her way through each and every effusive comment, hoping no one would see through the fragile façade she’d put up.