Pietro groaned inwardly. The lie was tightening around his chest.
‘My father speaks of you often, you know,’ she murmured, apparently having no clue that her husband was in a self-induced hell of sorts. ‘He adores you.’
Pietro’s smile was tight. ‘It’s mutual.’
‘Why?’ She pushed up on her elbows to study him. ‘Why are you so close?’
That bleak time from his past sat like a weight on his chest. ‘I’ve always admired him.’
‘That’s not the same thing.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Years ago, I was in negotiations with your father. I was buying some commercial real estate of his—just off the Champs Elysées. I was devastated by my father’s death—I got the call about it while we were in a meeting—and your father... Col...supported me. Not just that day, but afterwards too. I’d always admired him as a businessman, a politician, but as a friend he was irreplaceable.’ He shrugged. ‘He was a rock when I badly needed one.’
As Pietro spoke the words they reverberated around his soul. Col had been his rock when there’d been no imperative on him to be any such thing. He had been strength and resilience, and he had imparted those qualities to Pietro.
How could he be anything but loyal to the statesman now, in his own time of need? Pietro owed Col his allegiance, even though lying to Emmeline was beginning to poison him.
‘That’s just like him.’ Emmeline smiled. ‘He’s so selfless...’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘GOOD MORNING, MRS MORELLI.’
He dragged a finger down her body, finding her womanhood and brushing against it possessively. She writhed beneath him, remembering the way they’d made love the night before. Her body still throbbed from the strength of that pleasure.
‘Buongiorno.’ She blinked up at him.
‘Do you know what today is?’
Her smile was irrepressible. ‘My first day at university.’ She grinned. ‘Yay!’
He laughed. ‘“Yay”?’
‘Uh-huh. Yay. Just...yay.’
He dropped his head and kissed her gently. ‘Which means we have been married two months.’
‘And it feels like two weeks.’ She stretched her arms over her head. ‘Time really does fly when you’re having fun.’
His wife—his beautiful wife—stared up at him with all the goodness in her soul and he felt as though the sun was beaming right through his chest.
‘Are you nervous?’
‘Nervous? God, no. I’m excited. I have been wanting to study for so long, Pietro. I can’t believe I’ve put this off. I feel like there’s a whole world out there—a world of learning and knowing—and finally it’s going to be mine.’
She sat up excitedly, pushing the covers off her naked body and stepping out of the bed. He watched as she strolled across the room, uncaring of her nakedness. She pulled a pair of jeans off a hanger, and then a cream blouse, and took his favourite pair of briefs from her underwear drawer.
He groaned across the room. ‘Not those.’
The smile she threw over her shoulder was pure impish cheek. ‘Oh, yes. You can imagine me in them all day.’
‘I’ll imagine stripping them off you all day,’ he corrected.
‘That too.’ She winked, sashaying into the adjoining bathroom and switching the fan on with the light.
The noise droned in the background and Pietro fell back against the mattress, staring up at the ceiling fan that was spinning lazily overhead.
The sense that he was betraying her had lessened. So, too, the feeling that he was living on borrowed time. After several more attempts at getting Col to tell the truth to his daughter Pietro had been forced to accept that the secret was there and that it existed beyond Pietro’s control. They would deal with the fallout when it happened.
It never once occurred to him that there might be a fallout bigger than they could handle, because he and Emmeline had become a single, unified force. The idea of anything happening to them that they couldn’t handle was impossible to contemplate.
He listened to the running of the shower and the soft singing that she did without even realising. Smiled wider when he caught the tone-deaf notes she seemed always to miss.
He stepped out of bed, strode across the room and pushed the door inwards. Steam swirled around him. She had her eyes closed, her face lifted towards the showerhead, and water was raining over her face and down her back. She hummed now, quietly, and he grinned as he pulled the shower door open and brought his mouth down on hers without warning.
Her eyes flew open and then she surrendered to the kiss, moaning as he pushed her back against the cold tiles, groaning as his body pinned hers and water ran over them both, down their faces and into their mouths.