Emmeline’s heart sank.
Pretending to be married to Pietro Morelli was going to require a hell of a lot more patience and performance than she’d envisaged.
* * *
It was late in the night and Emmeline stifled another yawn. Sophie had found a group of friends—as always—and was charming them with her wit and hilarity. Emmeline listened, laughing occasionally, though she knew all the stories so well they might as well have been her own. Still, sitting with Sophie and pretending to laugh at her hijinks was better than watching her husband.
Her eyes lifted in his direction unconsciously.
He was still talking to her. The redhead.
Emmeline’s frown was instinctive—a response to the visual stimulus of seeing a stunning woman so close to the man she, Emmeline, had married only hours earlier.
The woman had auburn hair that tumbled down her back in wild disarray, and she was short and curvaceous, but not plump. Just the perfect kind of curvy—all enormous rounded boobs and butt, tiny waist and lean legs. Her skin was honey-coloured and her lips were painted bright red. Her nails, too. She wore a cream dress—wasn’t it considered bad manners to wear white to someone else’s wedding?—and gold shoes.
Who was she?
Pietro leaned closer, his lips moving as he whispered in the woman’s ear, and the woman nodded, lifting a hand to his chest as she dragged her eyes higher, meeting his. From all the way across the room Emmeline could feel the sexual tension between them.
She stood without thinking, her eyes meeting Sophie’s apologetically. I’ll be right back, she mouthed.
Sophie barely missed a beat. She carried on with the story of the time she’d got caught flying from Thailand to London with very illegal monkey droppings in her handbag—she’d been sold them at a market and told they would bring good luck...whoops!—and Emmeline walked deliberately across the room towards her groom and the woman she could only presume to be a lover—past or future. She didn’t know, and she told herself she definitely didn’t care.
She was only a step away when Pietro shifted his attention from the redhead, his eyes meeting Emmeline’s almost as though he didn’t recognise her at first. And then his slow-dawning expression of comprehension was followed by a flash of irritation.
He took a small step away from the other woman, his face once more unreadable.
‘Emmeline,’ he murmured.
‘Pietro.’ Her eyes didn’t so much as flicker towards the woman by his side. ‘I need you a moment.’
His lips twitched—with amusement or annoyance, she couldn’t have said. He walked towards her, putting a hand in the small of her back and guiding her to the dance floor.
Before she could guess his intentions he spun her around, dragging her into his arms and moving his hips. Dancing. Yes, he was dancing. Again.
She stayed perfectly still, her face showing confusion. ‘I don’t want to dance any more.’
‘No, but you want to speak to me. It is easier to do that if we dance. So dance.’
‘I...’ Emmeline shook her head. ‘No.’
He slowed his movements and stared at her for a long, hard second. ‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s not my...thing,’ she mumbled, looking away.
Mortification filled her. So many things she’d never really done. Experiences she’d blindly accepted that she would never enjoy. She’d made her peace with that. But now, surrounded by so many people who’d all lived with such freedoms as a matter of course, wasn’t it natural that she was beginning to resent the strictures of her upbringing?
Her voice was a whisper when she added, ‘As you so wisely pointed out.’
‘Then let me show you,’ he said.
And his hands around her waist were strong and insistent, so that her body moved of its own accord. No, not of its own accord; she was a puppet and he her master.
Just as she remembered—just as she’d felt hours earlier—every bit of him was firm. His chest felt as if it was cast from stone. He was warm too, and up close like this she could smell his masculine fragrance. It was doing odd flip-floppy things to her gut.
‘You told me you’d be discreet,’ Emmeline said, trying desperately to salvage her brain from the ruins of her mind. ‘But you looked like you were about to start making out with that woman a moment ago.’
‘Bianca?’ he said, looking over his shoulder towards the redhead. Her eyes were on them. And her eyes were not happy. ‘She’s a...a friend.’
‘Yeah, I can see that,’ Emmeline responded, wishing she wasn’t so distracted by the closeness of him, the smell. What was it? Pine? Citrus? Him?
‘Are you jealous?’
‘Yes, absolutely,’ she said with a sarcastic heavenwards flick of her eyes. She leaned closer, lowering her voice to a whisper. ‘We have a deal. I just don’t want our wedding guests to see you with another woman. What you do in private is up to you.’ She let the words sink in and then stopped moving. ‘I’d like to go home now.’
Pietro wasn’t used to being ashamed. He was a grown man and he’d lived his own life for a very long time. But something about her calm delivery of the sermon he really did deserve made a kernel of doubt lodge in his chest.
He knew he should apologise. He’d been flirting with Bianca and Emmeline was right: doing that on their wedding day wasn’t just stupid, it was downright disrespectful. To his bride, sure, and more importantly to their parents.
He stepped away from her, his expression a mask of cold disdain that covered far less palatable emotions. ‘Do you need anything?’
‘No.’
‘To say goodbye to anyone?’
She looked towards Sophie, enthralling her newfound friends, and shook her head. ‘I’d rather just go. Now.’
Silence sat between them and she waited, half worried he was going to insist on doing a tour of the room to issue formal farewells.
But after a moment, he nodded. ‘Okay.
