His words stuck in his throat as the tall, lithe form of his runaway wife stood inside his office, her back plastered to the door, her white-knuckle fingers clutching the strap of her cross-body bag, neatly delineating the globes of her high breasts in a way he was sure she didn’t realize.
“Hello, Vincenzo,” she said, and then he knew she was real.
That soft, lilting voice, with its strange mix of American and Italian accents—he’d know it in his sleep. He’d had it whispered in his ear while he’d moved inside her body, finding refuge in it at long last, after never knowing it. Refuge that had been denied him for more years than he cared to count. Peace that he hadn’t been able to afford however many millions he had made.
And then, just like a very vivid dream that you never wanted to wake up from, that refuge, that sense of peace had been snatched away from him.
No, she had snatched it away. At the first sign of trouble, she’d run. Very possibly straight into her ex’s arms.
His heart thudded in his chest as he took her in, his blood rushing through his veins with a ferocious hunger along with a burning resentment for how easily she evoked his desire. But something was different about her.
This Alessandra looked nothing like the woman who’d worn her hurt in her eyes when she’d learned who he was, nothing like the advocate who’d argued passionately about the children she championed all over the world, or like the beautiful princess he’d taken to his bed for a night and decided to make his wife the next morning.
One night and he’d been lost. Enslaved as simply as if she’d woven a spell around him.
This woman looked as if she was barely held together at the edges.
Her clothes had seen better days. At first glance, she could be mistaken for a poor grad student with no time or energy for anything beyond academics.
Her hair was a glorious mess, a light brown halo around her face, the edges falling to those high breasts. Her skin had always been golden, but now she was tanned, as though she’d spent the whole of the last nine weeks outdoors.
Frolicking under the sun with her ex, perhaps, the insanely jealous part of him piped up.
But it was her eyes that transformed the panorama of her perfectly symmetrical face. They held a fire Vincenzo had never seen before.
Instead of guilt or shame or any of the other emotions he’d imagined he might see when she returned, pure challenge shone in her eyes. Her mouth, lauded for its pillowy pout, was set into a firm line. Now that he was over his shock, he recognized the energy, the determination pouring out of her very stance.
She didn’t want to be here. But she was resolved to a particular action.
“Welcome back, Princess,” he said, pushing his chair back, but without making a move to get up. He wasn’t entirely sure his legs would hold him. His throat felt hoarse, his heart pounding away at a rate that threatened to send it bursting out of his chest. She’d been gone for weeks without a word, leaving him in a special kind of hellish limbo.
“Had enough of traipsing around the world with your ex?” he said, baring his teeth in a mockery of a smile.
She startled but recovered fast. Pushing away from the door, she ventured a few steps in. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I was nowhere near Javier.”
The hotter the anger that flared inside him, the more Vincenzo forced himself into stillness. He’d be damned if he showed his fragmented self-control in front of a woman who’d run out on him at the first sign of trouble. “No? Both he and you conveniently disappeared at the same time for over two months. It’s a logical conclusion.”
She snorted, her nose scrunching with distaste. “You think I’d run away from one deceitful, dishonest man to another?”
Beneath the resentment still burning within, Vincenzo heard the truth in her indignation. He ran a hand through his hair, wondering at how far his jealousy had taken his thoughts. How much Alessandra’s abandonment of their marriage had affected him.
How much he wanted the loyalty she gave so freely to the Brunettis.
“And yet, when I finally tracked him down on the phone, your ex wouldn’t deny that you weren’t with him.”
She sighed. “That’s because Javier, just like you, is a devious bastard. If he thought it would torment you, he’d say anything. He isn’t particularly happy with me at the moment, like the rest of the world.”
Vincenzo heard the weariness in her tone but it did nothing to assuage his own jagged emotions. Nothing to tell him that he was any different from that damned ex of hers. Nothing that would remove Massimo’s taunting claim that Vincenzo had only been a rebound fling for her. “But he knew where you were, si?”
“Yes,” she admitted, her gaze searching his face. “He got me in touch with a friend of his, a stud farm owner in Brazil.” Something shifted in her expression. “But he wasn’t with me at any point.”
“And while you were having this extended temper tantrum on a stud farm in Brazil, did you wonder about what it might look like to me? Nine weeks, Alessandra, you were gone for nine weeks with no word. Not even a bloody text.”
“You knew I was safe within a week of me leaving. I told Massimo to inform you.”
Vincenzo caught up to her in two long strides, frustration mounting. Almost as tall as him, Alessandra looked straight at him, chin lifting, shoulders squaring. Readying herself for a battle. Dio mio, where was that seductively sweet, uncomplicated woman that had beguiled him in Bali? “I’m your husband. Being informed secondhand, especially by that taunting creep Massimo, that you’re quite safe in some hole that you’ve
