Claimed by the Sicilian: Sicilian Husband, Blackmailed Bride / The Sicilian's Red-Hot Revenge / The Sicilian's Wife

Once again those broad shoulders lifted in a dismissive shrug. Amber tried not to notice how the movement flexed the muscles in his chest, defining the tightness of them, the narrow waist.

‘You would never have been happy with St Clair.’

But that was too much. The arrogance of the way that he had moved in, taken over her life, turned it upside down, was more than she could bear.

‘Did you even give me a chance to find out? Did it ever cross your mind that I might have wanted to be with Rafe?’

‘Do you love him?’

The question came harshly, thrown into her face almost brutally so that she reared back away from it as if it had been an actual blow.

‘Do you?’

‘You asked me that once already; why ask it again?’

‘Because you brought it up again. And isn’t it a normal thing to ask of a bride on her wedding day? Wouldn’t her family—her friends—want to know if she was in love with the man she was marrying?’

‘You’re neither my family, nor my friend.’

And the memory of just how little her mother had actually cared brought the sting of tears to her eyes, making her blink fiercely to drive them away. Under the covering of the sheet, the tightly boned basque was digging into her painfully and she wished she could take the time and space to adjust it. But with Guido still sitting so close, his eyes watching every movement, every expression like a hawk, she didn’t dare even try.

‘And you’re never likely to be either.’

Oh, damn, damn, damn it! Just saying those words had made the tears burn even more cruelly, and blinking so hard didn’t seem to be working. Instead of holding them back it was making them spill out onto her cheeks, blurring her sight, soaking into her lashes.

‘Don’t worry, it’s not your friend I want to be.’ Was she imagining things or had there been the faintest of emphasis on that word ‘friend’? ‘So why don’t you answer the question?’

‘Why are you asking it?’ Amber countered. ‘Are you telling me that if I say I love him you’ll let me go—set me free to be with him?’

The sudden hope in her eyes stabbed daggers at Guido, making him clench his hands furiously over the sheet, crushing it mercilessly. The temptation to gather it up and rip it from end to end to express the way he was feeling was a tormenting provocation in his thoughts, one he fought an ugly little battle with, only just managing to subdue it in time.

Just for a wild, crazy second, he almost wished that she was right. Wished that she could say she loved Rafe St Clair with all her heart, all her soul. At least that would get him off this appalling treadmill that he had been on ever since she’d left him. If he’d been able to believe that she truly loved any other man—even Rafe St Clair—if she could say that to his face and mean it, then he would have to let her go, he admitted to himself. He would have no option.

But of course she was never going to say any such thing.

So what was it that had brought tears to her eyes, spiking her long dark lashes and sparkling like diamonds against the blackness? The temptation to reach out and touch a finger to one of those sparkling drops ate at him inside so that he tightened his grip on the sheets again in order to resist it.

‘You had your chance to say you loved him in the church,’ he challenged her roughly. ‘You didn’t take it. You couldn’t take it.’

Just for a moment she looked as if she was going to fight him on that. As if she was going to try and say he was wrong, even though they both knew before she started that she would never convince him.

Her green eyes flashed defiance, the warm pink lips even opened and she drew in a ragged breath…

Then let it out again in a sigh.

‘No,’ she admitted, low and soft. ‘No, I’m not madly in love with Rafe.’

It was what he knew anyway. What he’d been wanting her to say, pushing her to admit. So what did he feel now that she had admitted it?

Nothing.

And that was the most disturbing thing. He had been thinking he would feel something—satisfaction at least. Satisfaction at the thought that she didn’t care about someone who wasn’t worthy of her love. Relief that he hadn’t broken up a true match.

But instead he knew a strange emptiness where his feelings should be. And a cold, uncomfortable voice was whispering inside his head that of course she hadn’t loved Rafe St Clair because when had Amber Wellesley—Amber Corsentino—ever loved anyone but herself?

With the thought of that name—that Amber Corsentino—came the sudden rush of realisation of an extra complication in this whole mess that had never entered his head until now.

D’accordo, no—it had entered his head, but he’d pushed it right out again. Other, more powerful feelings, at that moment more vital, more demanding feelings, had pushed it out again. And only now was he remembering it and looking at just what it really meant.

He was looking at the yawning gap between what he had planned to do, what had been in his mind as he made the journey from Siracusa to London, and from London to the village, and the church—and what had actually happened in that church. And here, in this hotel room.

‘So now you know,’ Amber was saying, bitterness darkening her tone, making her voice brittle. ‘I suppose that condemns me totally in your eyes. Well, don’t worry—you won’t have to put up with me for long. We just need to ride these uncomfortable few days and then, hopefully, things will calm down.’

‘You think they’ll do that?’ Guido questioned, looking into her face and seeing that realisation hadn’t yet dawned there. She was still a couple of steps behind him on this. She had to be or she wouldn’t be sitting there so calm and composed.

‘Of course they will. It will be just a nine-day wonder…’

Something in his voice had caught on her nerves. The words faltered, faded from her tongue and she stared into his face in obvious uncertainty.

‘You don’t think they will?’ she questioned sharply.

‘We have to get out of here first.’

‘Oh, I know that!’ Amber actually sounded relieved. ‘That won’t be fun. But surely…’

Once more her voice faded as she watched his expression change. Guido was surprised that she couldn’t read his thoughts in his face. He felt sure that every second of regret, of disbelief, of sheer blind fury at himself and the way he had handled this had communicated itself to her without any need for words.

Because he hadn’t handled this in the way that he had meant to and because of that he had complicated things even more.

It had seemed so simple at the beginning. He was supposed to have walked into that church and stopped the wedding—then taken Amber away from there. Taken her somewhere where they could talk, where they could be alone together. Somewhere where they might have a hope in hell of sorting out this mess.

Somewhere where he could find out what she had really felt about him—if she felt anything. Where he could tell her the truth about Rafe St Clair and the bastard’s real reasons for wanting to marry her.

Where he could see if they had anything that bound them together other than that fierce, blazing passion that had put them in bed together from the start.

That passion was the thing that had caused all the trouble from the beginning. It had rushed them from a bed to the wedding chapel, into an ill-conceived and ill-thought-out wedding—and then back into bed again. And when they were in bed they didn’t talk. They communicated in far more basic, far more fluent ways.

So this time he had vowed to himself that he would do this so very differently. He would not touch her, not even kiss her. He wouldn’t risk a repeat of that fiery passion that had stopped them both thinking, stopped them ever getting to know each other, the first time. He would hold back, take things steady, turn the rush to the altar they’d had the first time into a steady, controlled voyage of discovery. That this time he would run his relationship with Amber with his mind and not with his hormones—and he’d see where that would take them.

And he’d failed completely.

He’d made a total, ruinous mess of the whole thing. He hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her. He’d fallen into bed with her every bit as fast—faster—than he had done that first time. And so now here they were, both caught in the same cleft stick. Except that this time they were both painfully aware of the fact that this marriage was legal and binding and they couldn’t get out of it and he was sure that Amber hadn’t thought out the repercussions for herself.

‘Dannazione!’

The viciousness of the curse brought him to his feet in a rush, slamming the fist of one hand into the palm of another as he paced his way around the room. The movement brought Amber’s head round to stare at him, her eyes turning the colour of moss as they clouded with apprehension and confusion.

‘What is it?’

With an effort Guido imposed a degree of control on himself, forced himself to swallow down the second outburst that almost escaped him. He even managed a smile, though his lips felt as if they were formed from marble and might split open on the movement.

‘You’re right,’ he said, knowing he was avoiding the real issue, and suspecting that she realised that too. ‘Getting out of here won’t be fun. But we’re going to have to venture out some time. So I suggest you get dressed and collect your bags and we’ll head for the airport.’

‘The airport?’

Amber’s bright head went back, smoky green eyes narrowing in suspicion.

‘Where exactly are we going?’

Where were they going? There was only one place he could think of where they would have the privacy they needed.

‘Sicily. Siracusa in Sicily, if you want me to be exact.’

She didn’t like the mockery of his tone. It showed in the quick frown that drew her brows together. Or was it that she was still assuming that he was the impoverished photographer he had claimed to be when they first met? In that case, she was very definitely heading for a shock.

It seemed that was what was in her mind because she studied him coolly and went on, ‘Siracusa is where you live, I take it.’

‘Si. Oh, don’t look like that, bellezza. It really won’t be quite as bad as you’re expecting—in fact, it won’t be what you’re expecting at all. You see—’

‘And what if I don’t want to go to Sicily?’ Amber cut into his attempt to explain the truth to her.

Oh, well, she’d see soon enough.

‘I don’t think you have a choice. We need somewhere we can stay and take stock and think about what our next move will be.’

‘I don’t need to think about it!’

Amber pushed herself off the bed, taking the sheet with her and wrapping it round her body like some sort of white linen toga.

‘I don’t want to go anywhere with you. And we don’t have a next step to plan at all.’

‘We don’t?’

He laced the words with a note of warning, one that she seemed determined to ignore.

‘No way! All I want is to wait for the furore that my aborted wedding caused to die down and then to organise a quickie divorce—and, believe me, it can’t be quick enough.’

‘No chance.’

Guido couldn’t hold back the harsh bark of laughter that escaped him, drawing the full concentration of those green eyes to his face again.

‘Why not?’ she demanded.

‘Why not?’ Guido echoed cynically, drawling out the words deliberately. ‘I should have thought that the answer to that was obvious to anyone. If you were hoping for a quickie divorce, mia cara, then I’m afraid you’d better think again. You see, what we did here, just now…’ he nodded towards the bed, where the still rumpled bedclothes, the dented pillows, were blatant evidence of just what they’d been doing only a short time before ‘…will count as a renewal of our marriage.’

As he had expected, she looked appalled at the thought, her face losing all colour and one slender hand going up to her mouth to hold back the cry of horror that almost escaped it.

‘But no one needs to know. If we don’t tell anyone…’

‘We don’t need to tell anyone. They already know. Are you forgetting that we had an audience of hundreds—your former wedding guests—who were witnesses to the fact that we were shut in here for hours just after we declared to the world that our marriage was back on again? I’m damn sure that, if asked, any one of them would be happy to give evidence to that fact.

No, carissima, like it or not, I’m afraid we have to accept that in the eyes of the law we are very definitely man and wife again and this afternoon’s pleasure is going to cost us dear in that it will have put the date of our permanent freedom from each other back by at least two years.’

CHAPTER TEN

IT REALLY won’t be quite as bad as you’re expecting—in fact, it won’t be what you’re expecting at all.

Guido’s words replayed over and over inside Amber’s head as she left the bedroom and walked out onto the balcony that overlooked the sea, stepping out of air-conditioned coolness and into the heat of a Sicilian afternoon. Her blue and green patterned voile dress swirled around her legs in a welcome breeze and the warmth of the sun beat down on her arms and shoulders exposed by the delicate shoe-string straps.

It won’t be what you’re expecting at all.

He could say that again—and again! This beautiful, luxurious, long, low-built villa perched right on the edge of a cliff, facing out towards the ocean, was the last thing she had been expecting when Guido had declared that he was taking her to his home.

Of course, by the time that they had left England for Sicily she had learned the truth—and discovered just how much Guido had not told her. But it had already been dawning on her before that. How could it not, when she had experienced the sort of first-class attention that had been lavished on her from the moment they left the hotel?

She should have thought of it earlier, too, she acknowledged grimly. The chauffeur-driven car that had taken them from the church to the hotel should have been the very first clue to anyone who was not completely stupid. But she had not been functioning on all cylinders at that moment. She hadn’t been functioning at all. The shock and turmoil of her shattered wedding had devastated her thought processes, driving the ability to reason right out of her mind.

She hadn’t felt much better when she’d left the security of the hotel bedroom, a place that had come to seem like a secure bolt-hole from all that had happened, and had ventured out into the world again. From the moment that the lift doors had opened to reveal that the huge marble-floored foyer was still crowded with Rafe’s friends and family, the guests who had been invited to their wedding, she had known that Guido had been right. There was no way they could escape from here without anyone—without everyone—knowing.

The way that the crowd fell silent as they walked through the foyer, the buzz of conversation that started up behind them, following them like a wave rushing into the seashore, had all confirmed that he had been right. If the Press or anyone else wanted a story, there would be no shortage of people ready to step forward to give them one.

That thought had been enough to keep her quiet in the car, and at the first stage of their arrival at the airport, even though the questions were already surfacing in her mind. But it was her first sight of the plane that had brought her to a stunned halt, unable to believe the evidence of her own eyes.

‘That is not any commercial plane!’ she’d declared, turning furiously to Guido, who had only just managed to step to one side to avoid cannoning into her as she stopped dead right in his path. ‘It’s so small—it has to be a private jet—can’t be anything else. So I think it’s about time you did some explaining. Like who, for a start, does this thing belong to?’

‘It’s mine,’ Guido told her. ‘Well, mine and my brother’s. It belongs to Corsentino Marine and Leisure—which Vito and I own.’

‘Corsentino…’ Amber shook her head in confusion as she struggled to take this in. ‘I’m not going a single step further until you tell me exactly who you are and the truth about what you are.’

Amber flinched inwardly now as she remembered the nasty little public spat that had followed her declaration.

Guido had wanted to wait until they were on the plane, but she had dug her heels in and refused to move, causing him to hiss an explanation at her in a furious undertone. So intent were they on their own private conflict that it was only when a camera bulb had flashed over to their right, making them both start and blink, that they had become aware of the fact that they were still the centre of interest from the Press.

An interest she now understood much more than ever before.

Because Guido Corsentino was not just the photographer she had thought he was. The photographer who had stolen her heart and taken it away from her forever. He was Guido Corsentino of Corsentino Marine and Leisure. But it was only since she had arrived on the island that she had come to realise just how big that company was.

And with each new realisation of what Guido’s life—Guido’s real life—was like, it was as if she was taking another step backwards and further away from him. As if this man she now lived with, this man she was married to, became more of a stranger with each new discovery she made about him.

The truth was that she wasn’t married to the man she’d thought she’d married. The man she’d told herself that she loved so desperately. But she didn’t know if she loved this man. She didn’t know him.

This was not the Guido Corsentino she had fallen so hopelessly, helplessly in love with. That man she had thought was a photographer, a man with a very basic income but huge amounts of charm, intelligence and endless sex appeal.

Nor yet was he the Guido Corsentino who had marched into the church a week ago today to break up her wedding and ruin her half-formed plans for the future. That Guido had at least had something of the old Guido about him, something that had reminded her of the man she had loved so much. Something that had brought her to make love with him again.

No, this Guido Corsentino was someone else again. A man of power and wealth, it seemed. A man who, along with his brother, ran a huge leisure corporation and speedboat-building business. This man was a stranger to her.

And a man who hadn’t even tried to touch her since they’d arrived at his villa almost a week ago. Unexpectedly she’d been shown to this bedroom, and Guido had moved into another room, several doors down the corridor. She had spent her days lonely, and her nights alone.

Amber sighed, pushing back her hair from her face, and flexed shoulders that ached with the effort of holding them straight and not allowing them to slump. If she let them drop then she was sure that Guido would see it as a sign of weakness.

And weakness was something she was determined not to show him.

A sharp rap at the door of her room drew her attention back from her despondent thoughts and into the present. She was still debating whether or not to answer it when the door was pushed open and Guido strolled into the room.

‘Did I say you could come in?’

Amber didn’t care that she sounded aggressive and bad-tempered-she felt aggressive and bad-tempered. It was the only way that she could keep herself from falling into a pit of darkness and despair.

Was it really only a week since she had thought that she had her life all mapped out—that her future was planned, and she could finally move forward into it, putting the past behind her? Now it seemed that she had stepped back into that past and yet even that was a place she no longer recognised. Just as she no longer recognised Guido for the man she had thought him to be.

Even physically, he looked so very different. This man, so casually dressed in white polo shirt and blue denim jeans, was much more relaxed, comfortable, at ease in his own home, his own surroundings. The tan of his skin seemed darker, the jet-black hair gleamed more than ever in the brilliant light of the day, and the bronze eyes seemed to have caught a new heat and warmth from the sun so that they gleamed like molten metal, searing her skin at a glance.

He was more stunning, more devastatingly handsome than ever before, but this Guido was a man she didn’t know.

‘I did knock—and this is my home. Besides, you are my wife, and most married couples don’t worry about modesty…’

‘We’re very definitely not like most married couples! In fact, I’d think that even saying we are man and wife is rather up for debate at the moment, isn’t it?’

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