belonged to a former lover and shimmied into the night-dress before scrambling into bed. Valente was getting undressed, and she looked away hurriedly, shrinking from that intimacy.
‘I’m not making any other promises,
‘Yes,’ she agreed flatly, refusing to look at him and burrowing below the sheet.
‘I’m not a man who makes hasty decisions. I’ll give our marriage a chance. We’ll move one step at a time.’
Tears seeped out below her tightly shut lashes. She was defective goods, but he would graciously give her a trial before he sent her back to England. Once again a man was ensuring she believed that all she had to offer was her body. Feeling as though he had battered her with his condescension, she closed her eyes tight, praying for sleep to come quickly, for she was beyond even thinking about the future.
But she didn’t need to think about it, did she? Inevitably he would divorce her. There was no advantage to him in staying married to a woman like her. She had brought him no business dowry and she could not give him a child. What had happened with Matthew had happened a second time. But this time she was heart-broken, and it was all too easy for her to think of herself as absolutely useless again…
CHAPTER EIGHT
EVERY time she glimpsed the magnificent panoramic outlook from the terrace of the Villa Barbieri, Caroline wondered if she had accidentally strayed into paradise.
It was the most beautiful still day, and she loved the silence. The terracotta roofs of the sleepy village on the hilltop were a charming enhancement to the ancient honey-coloured and much-repaired stone walls of the buildings. The far view of the looming Alps was misty and indistinct, while the lush hills opposite were covered with fresh, green chestnut trees, acacias, scrub oak and broom, before petering out into the fertile valley where silvery-green olive groves and lines of grapevines took over.
She lay in the shade on her stomach, with her bikini top undone and Koko dozing beneath her lounger. If ever a cat had been born to live in a house the size of a palace it was Koko. She might hiss and spit at Valente, and emit noisy, sulky cries from a distance when he was around, but Caroline’s pet had wasted no time in making fans of the staff, who could not do enough to make the little cat feel at home.
‘She’s incredibly jealous of me,’ Valente had declared the week before. ‘As far as she’s concerned, I’ve stolen her place with you.’
And it was true, Caroline conceded with a wondering smile at that truth. Koko had been banned from the bedroom, while Valente slept with Caroline every night that he was in residence. He was travelling back and forth to Venice, usually only spending one night away from her at most. It hurt that he had never asked her to go with him, but when he was at the Villa Barbieri she woke up in his arms and increasingly fell asleep in them as well. Enclosed in that simple, unthreatening togetherness with a man for the first time, she had gradually learned to trust him. Somehow she had even learned to long for more than his kisses as he controlled his passion while assiduously stoking hers. Step by step, he had promised only four weeks earlier, and she was already becoming unnervingly eager for the next move forward.
From the first, he had encouraged her to touch him, to explore at will and experiment, and she had soon discovered that the more familiar she became with that lean, beautifully masculine and intensely responsive body of his, the less nervous she was around him. Her fear had gone, for he had proved how self-controlled he could be. With a little sigh she shifted her hips in a sensuous circle on the lounger, recalling how she had wakened him the day before, and the unrestrained sound of his satisfaction while he buried his hands in her hair and urged her on.
With a wicked little quiver of awareness alight low in her belly, she acknowledged that her physical barriers were coming down-and why not? If Valente’s wonderful patience with her had taught her anything, it was that he was still the man she had loved when she was twenty-one years old. And at least he was no longer being forced to go without any sexual satisfaction at all, she reflected. Her cheeks hot, she smiled in remembrance of the pleasure she had discovered she could give him. And she had given that pleasure eagerly, while marvelling at the change in herself and the newly learned confidence driving it.
A helicopter flew overhead while she ruminated over the truth that, given time, she was convinced she would be able to meet the terms of their marital agreement. Valente would win where Matthew had failed, which she supposed was only to be expected when she was in love with Valente and desperate to be part of a normal marriage. She had never got over losing Valente, which was hardly surprising in the circumstances. Her horribly ill- judged rebound marriage to Matthew had made it all too clear to her what she had lost… Footsteps sounded on the terrace and she lifted her head.
‘I thought you wouldn’t be back until late tonight!’ Caroline exclaimed, glancing up in surprise and welcome at her tall, well-built husband.
Valente sat down on the lounger beside hers, his lean, darkly handsome features serious. ‘Since you’re flying back to England to be with your father for his surgery tomorrow, I thought I should finish up early.’
‘Good.’ Caroline smiled up at him, her entire face lighting up.
Sexual hunger hit Valente as hard as a punch in the stomach. He wanted to haul into his arms and carry her up to bed, but he knew better than to succumb to such a caveman impulse around her. To occupy himself, he leant forward instead and retied the straps on her bikini top. ‘Keep the little white patches intact,’ he urged softly. ‘I find them very sexy,
Caroline sat up, reddening to the roots of her pale hair. The atmosphere was thick with tension. Hot dark golden eyes travelled from her full pink mouth down to the taut little breasts restrained by her bikini top, which she longed for him to uncover. Her mouth ran dry, the hunger in his all-male gaze causing a burst of sudden heat in her pelvis. Her nipples tightened to an almost painful degree. The very knowledge of his desire made her feel dizzy, and somehow proud that she could have that effect on him. Yet she lived in constant fear that frustration would drive him into the arms of another woman before she could get over her hang-ups.
Valente gazed back at her steadily. ‘I need a cold shower, or…’
‘Or?’ she whispered.
‘I could take you up to bed and unwrap you and play with you like a toy,’ he husked, in a voice laden with lust.
His earthy proposition shocked her, because it was still broad daylight and during those hours they were usually very restrained. The tip of her tongue snaked out to moisten her dry lower lip because she was both seriously tempted and seriously scared that things would go further than she could cope with. ‘You won’t-?’
‘Haven’t I proved how good my self-control is yet?’
Having learnt that she got no attention when Valente was around, Koko cried mournfully at the foot of the staircase as Caroline and Valente disappeared from her view.
‘That cat is such a bad loser,
‘I bring her up to keep me company when you’re not here,’ Caroline admitted. ‘I suppose it doesn’t help that I spoil her.’
‘You always had a thing about cats. I remember bringing you little glass cat ornaments back from Venice.’
‘I still have them. They’re somewhere in the boxes that went to your house in Venice.’
One step inside the doorway of her bedroom, he cupped her cheekbones and kissed her slow and deep, until she was kissing him back and leaning into him, arms stretching up to lock round his neck to keep herself steady. He hoisted her up against him to carry her over to the bed. Although she still seemed to weigh little more than a child, he was satisfied that she was eating more. There was a new, more rounded fullness to her face and her slender limbs. From the bed, she reached up to press the button that closed the curtains.
‘Killjoy,’ he teased, although the sun was still so bright it pierced through the curtains to illuminate the room.
Still bikini-clad, she scrambled into bed. She knew he liked to undress her and, although she wasn’t yet equal to modelling the fantastic collection of lingerie stored in the dressing room, she tried to compensate where she could.
