Gennaro had always been emotionally aloof, but he hadn’t joined any family get-togethers that she’d been invited to since she was at least fifteen… but then, once she’d turned eighteen and gone off to art school, she’d been too busy embracing adulthood to join family gatherings with any frequency either. His absence in the decade before he’d made his marriage proposal, though, was something she’d always felt keenly, probably because she’d always felt his looming, terrifying presence so keenly.
Taking the seat beside her sister, she leaned in and whispered, “Is it me or is it cold enough to freeze the Sahara?”
Marisa grimaced and raised her eyebrows. Growing up, neither Rossellini sister had liked Giuseppe Martinelli. There had been something about him they’d been instinctively wary of, a coldness in his eyes that had made the coldness of his oldest son’s eyes seem tropical, but they had both adored Carmella. Carmella Martinelli had always made a big deal about treating the Rossellinis as if they were blood.
Words, Luisa had realised when her father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, were cheap, and the aristocratic Martinellis were cheap too. Sure, they’d been under no obligation to help her parents when the Rossellinis finances had taken such a nosedive, but to blame her father for it after all he’d done for them and as if their own actions hadn’t contributed to it and as if he’d deliberately got himself a debilitating, incurable disease, had been beyond the pale. Family looked out for each other, that was the Italian way.That the Martinellis had refused to help only proved they didn’t see the Rossellinis as family. Even Gennaro’s marriage offer had been self-serving. If he’d wanted to help her parents out of the kindness of his heart then he would have done. Luisa might just have married him voluntarily as a thank you if he’d gone that route. Instead, he’d used their precarious situation to his own advantage, and she couldn’t despise him more.
Niccolo excepted, the Martinellis were cold, selfish bastards. Seven more sleeps and she’d be shot of them all, and yes, she most definitely was counting. She would return to her family and rebuild her life; one in which the man seated to her right would have no part.
“How come you were so late arriving?” she asked Marisa after their wine had been poured and she’d taken a generous swallow to calm the skittishness that was threatening to overpower her. She needed conversation. Whenever she sat next to Gennaro, she was always acutely aware of his physicality, but tonight that acuteness had ramped up, a blistering awareness that if she moved her arm or thigh she would brush against him. God help her, she could still feel the spot on her back through where his fingers had touched her corset, still feel sensation in the roots of her hair from where he’d moved it.
“We were late setting off.”
Something in her sister’s tone made Luisa look more closely at her. Marisa’s eyes were bruised with tiredness. “Has something happened with Dad?” Their father’s condition meant he had difficulty walking unaided and made him prone to falling. Luisa had never shaken the guilt that marriage to Gennaro meant she’d had to move out of their Tuscan home, leaving her unable to help as much as she should and as much as she wanted. Their father’s health had deteriorated rapidly these last two years, all the caring responsibilities falling on Marisa and their mother.
Marisa shook her head and gave a smile that didn’t quite meet her eyes. “No, he’s not been too bad these last few days.”
Before she could ask if something else had made them late, the waiting staff arrived at their table to take their order, and the moment passed.
Gennaro listened to his mother chatter on about the latest charity she was patronising with only half an ear. He found it was better to only pay a modicum of attention, just enough to make the expected noises of concentration to stop accusations of not listening. It wasn’t that he disliked his mother’s chatter, more that when he listened to her blather on about starving children and cruelty to animals, he wanted to lift the table above his head and bring it crashing down with a roar of suppressed fury. To release his fury though, would be to make him like his father, and he would rather live like a Tibetan monk than be anything like that man.
Living like a Tibetan monk was unnecessary for the very good reason that Gennaro had learned to control his emotions before he started adolescence. Ruthlessly control them. It was in his relationships with the opposite sex that he exerted the most self-control, and he did this simply by not engaging with them. Relationships that was. This wasn’t to say he didn’t have female interactions. He enjoyed sex as much as the next man, but he selected his discreet, short-lived affairs carefully, physical appeal mattering less than attitude. Any detection of needy vibes from a potential hookup, and he walked away. Gennaro had reached the age of thirty-seven without a single long-term relationship, and he had every intention of spending his next thirty-seven years alone too. He might consider getting a dog though. He loved dogs. They were loyal and, unlike humans, were never cruel and only bit when provoked.
Luisa, he suspected, only bit when provoked. Over the course of their marriage, he’d gone to great lengths to provoke no form of emotion from her. It had been for her sake that he’d been a cold, remote husband. He took no joy from it. It’s the way it had to be. She was too great a temptation for him to behave differently.
He should have married the sister. Marisa was as beautiful as Luisa, but her beauty did nothing for him. It didn’t strike his chest the way Luisa’s did. Her entry into a room didn’t punch him in the guts the way Luisa’s did. If he’d married Marisa, he wouldn’t have had to keep his distance to the extent that he had with Luisa, would have established a more cordial relationship from the start, just to make their time together bearable. If he’d married Marisa, he wouldn’t be seated beside her as he was right now with Luisa, tortured with awareness sluicing through his veins.
He kept catching wafts of her perfume. Each inhalation landed straight in his loins.
This time next week, they’d be over. Luisa would be free of him, and he’d be free of her presence and her scent and the intolerable arousal and emotions she evoked in him.
Chapter Three
There was a chill in the air, a reminder that, despite the balmy daytime temperature they’d enjoyed that day, they were still in spring. Luisa hugged her arms for warmth. She’d been so desperate to get out of the suite and escape the heat the simple fastening of a zip had induced that she’d forgotten her jacket.
“Are you cold?”
Gennaro’s question startled her. She wouldn’t have thought he’d notice, never mind mention it.
“A bit.”
“Here, take my jacket.”
Heart thumping, she recoiled internally at the unexpected offer. “I’ll be okay. We’ll be back in a minute.”
“I don’t need it.” Without missing a step, he shrugged it off and passed it to her.
Feeling she had no choice but to take it, she murmured, “Thank you,” and slipped her arms into its warmth. Warmth that came from Gennaro’s body. It dwarfed her small frame and smelt of leather and his cologne, and she experienced analmost irrepressible urge to rub her nose into it and inhale the scent deep into her lungs.
The rest of the short walk was conducted in silence. It seemed to Luisa that it took forever.
Not until they were back in their suite was the silence broken.
“I’ve got work I need to catch up with,” he said. “I’ll take it out on the balcony so as not to disturb you.”
She took the jacket off. “You should wear this. It’ll only get colder.”
He gave a fleeting, almost mocking smile. “You sound like a wife.”