‘No, you’re not.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because I know you,’ he said simply.
And her stomach flopped because she didn’t doubt he was being honest.
‘So why do you not want to look like Patrice?’
‘You’ll never be like me! Take this off! Wipe it all off! It’s too much rouge, too much mascara. You look like a porn star gone wrong.’
Emmeline shuddered, her smile as fake as the night was dark. ‘You’re wrong,’ she insisted, even as the memory scratched its fingers over her spine.
‘I’m never wrong.’ His eyes sparked with hers. ‘But I can be patient.’
He placed a handful of strawberries on the plate, then a wedge of cheese and some bread.
But I can be patient.
Did he have some mysterious super-ability to know just what she needed to hear?
‘It’s complicated,’ she said, after a moment of silence had passed.
‘Family stuff often is.’
His smile showed a depth of experience that she understood.
‘Are your parents pleased you’ve “settled down”?’ She made inverted commas with her fingers and he lifted his broad shoulders.
‘I suppose so. Rafe thinks you’re quite irresistible,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘I think he’s more than a little jealous that your father chose me as your groom du jour.’
Emmeline made a sound of amusement and lifted a strawberry to her lips. Strangely, she was not remotely self-conscious in her nudity. Everything about that moment felt right.
‘Have you ever been in love?’
Except that.
The question came from her lips completely unexpectedly, uninvited and unwanted. He stared at her for a moment, his expression unreadable.
‘No.’
‘Seriously?’
She reached for the plate but his hand caught hers, lifting it to his lips. He pressed a kiss against her palm and then took her finger into his mouth, sucking on it for a moment. Her stomach rolled.
‘Seriously,’ he murmured, coming around the kitchen bench to stand opposite her.
‘But you’ve been with so many women.’
‘Sex isn’t love, cara.’
Just like that the floor between them seemed to open up; a huge hole formed and it was dark and wide...an expanse of confusion and heartache that she couldn’t traverse.
Sex isn’t love.
And it wasn’t.
Sex was just a physical act. A biological function. A hormonal need.
Nothing more. Why had she asked that stupid question?
‘What about that woman you broke up with? The one the press went into a frenzy over?’
‘Which one?’ he muttered, arching his dark brows.
‘Five years ago—before you bought this place.’
‘Bianca,’ he said quietly. ‘I cared for her. I still do.’
Jealousy was no longer just a flame in her blood; it was a torrent of lava bubbling through her, burning her whole.
‘Bianca as in that beautiful redhead you were all over at our wedding?’
Contrition sparked inside him—and regret too. He’d forgotten that Emmeline knew her name. It was a stupid, foolish oversight that Pietro would never ordinarily have made.
‘That was wrong of me.’
‘You can say that again,’ she snapped, reaching for a pistachio nut as a distraction. ‘You’re still seeing her?’
Her insides ached. Her body still throbbed with his possession, her nerve-endings were vibrating with the awakening he’d inspired, and she was jealous. So, so jealous.
‘No.’
Emmeline stood up. She felt strange. Strange and achy.
‘It’s none of my business,’ she said quietly, moving around to the other side of the kitchen bench—ostensibly to grab some more food, but in reality because she needed space.
‘Of course it is. You’re my wife.’
‘But this isn’t a real marriage, remember? We have a deal. You’re free to...to do what you want.’
He stared at her long and hard. ‘You don’t think that’s changed now, Emmeline?’
Doubts flickered inside her. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I don’t want to see anyone else.’
He hadn’t even realised that himself, but as he stared at his beautiful bride he knew it was the truth. And he knew she deserved to know it.
‘I want to sleep with you. A lot. I want to be married to you. And I know we are doing this all the wrong way around, but I want to get to know you. There is so much of you that is a mystery to me, and for some reason I have become obsessed with uncovering all your secrets.’
He came around to her side of the bench and dug his hands into her hips.
‘Every. Single. One.’
* * *
‘This place is so beautiful.’ She stared out at the rolling hills of the countryside, her eyes clinging to the fruit orchard in the foreground before moving on and landing on the glistening ocean. ‘I don’t know how you can ever leave.’