Italian Bachelors: Irresistible Sicilians. Michelle Smart

      Immediately she switched the light off but not before he caught the glare she directed at him.

      She walked soundlessly past him and settled in the old rocking chair, curling her legs in a ball and placing the teat of the bottle in Lily’s tiny mouth. ‘I want her to go back to sleep after she’s had this,’ she whispered, nodding at the light switch.

      ‘Where have you been?’ he asked, adopting an identical whisper.

      ‘In the kitchen warming the bottle up.’

      The kitchen was on the other side of the monastery. In the early hours of winter it was always freezing down there. ‘Why didn’t you get a member of staff to do it for you?’

      Even in the dusky light he could clearly identify the look of disdain that crossed her face. ‘Apart from your security guards, everyone’s asleep.’

      ‘Does she always wake so early?’ It was five a.m.

      She nodded. ‘If I’m lucky she might go back down for another couple of hours. I had worried that after all the travelling she might have trouble settling, but she nodded off without any problems.’

      ‘In future I will ensure someone is available to warm the milk for you.’

      She rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll get a kettle and a jug brought up to my room.’

      ‘That’s what I pay the staff for.’

      ‘Luca, I’m not going to argue with you about it. I’m not going to have someone else’s sleep disrupted for the sake of a kettle and a jug.’

      ‘I think you’ll find you are already arguing with me about it.’

      The whisper of a smile curved on her cheeks. ‘No change there, then.’

      Grace had always enjoyed sparring with him but it had always been done in a gentle, amused fashion. She was the only person, aside from his mother and brother, who did not automatically assume his word was on a par with God’s. She challenged him, made him look at the world through a different prism. Where he saw things in black or white, she saw the varying shades of grey in between. It was one of the many things he’d loved about her: the context and sense she helped him make of the world.

      Having taken over the running of the estate at the age of twenty-one, he’d been so focused on keeping the high standards set by his father and keeping his family safe from those who would snatch everything away from them, he’d never had the time to really think about his place in the world.

      When, a year into Luca’s marriage, Francesco Calvetti, an old childhood acquaintance whose family had been the Mastrangelos’ bitter enemies, had suggested going into business together, it had seemed like perfect timing. Luca had already been toying with the idea. Both men were keen to establish themselves away from the long shadows cast over them by their respective fathers and equally keen to end a feud neither had wanted.

      Being with Grace and the fresh perspective she had on life had, for the first time, made him see that the life he had been living was the life expected of him. He was living in his father’s footsteps. His own hopes and dreams had been suppressed for the good of the family. For duty.

      It was time to strike out in his own name.

      Yet, for all the context his wife had given his world, he failed to see the context or sense in why she had run away.

      She thought he was a monster. She had wilfully kept their child a secret from him. Where was the context in that? So they’d had an argument? All couples rowed. One proper argument was not good enough reason to rip a marriage apart.

      A lump formed in his chest. He swallowed hard to dislodge it. ‘Did you find everything you need in the nursery?’

      ‘Pretty much. Thank you. And thank you for putting me next to her.’ She adjusted her hold on Lily and looked back at him. The rising sunlight was slowly dispersing the dusky grey, her features becoming clearer by the passing minute. ‘I admit, when you said I was to have the blue room, I thought it was deliberate because you knew how much I hated it. It took a while for me to remember it adjoined another room.’

      ‘She is sleeping in my old cot,’ he said. ‘My mother got the staff to take it out of hibernation.’

      ‘I did wonder.’

      He should leave; return to his room. Instead he found his eyes transfixed on the feeding baby. His feeding baby. Their feeding baby. A child he and Grace had created together.

      A part of him longed to reach over and touch her, to stroke his baby’s face, to hold her to his chest and feel her warmth on his skin, to smell that sweet, innocent scent.

      They looked so perfect together. Even Grace could not create a more beautiful picture.

      A spike cut through his heart, piercing him, a pain a thousand times stronger than the ache in his shoulder. It took all his strength not to sway with its force.

      And there was another ache too, a much baser ache that should not exist for her, not any more.

      His sex drive had always been high but Grace was the only woman who had been able to turn him to lava with nothing more than a seductive smile or the flash of a shoulder. To his body, there was no more desirable a woman. Even the curve of her ankle was erotic.

      There were times when he would swear she was a sorceress. How else could he explain the hold she had over him, the unquenchable yet ultimately poisonous desire that lived in his blood? Why else had he not grabbed his freedom when he’d had the chance, as any other red-blooded Sicilian man would have done?

      But he’d had no time for such pursuits. What with running the estate and his other, newer, business interests, there had been no time for any kind of affair. On top of all that, the main focus of his energies had been spent on tracing Grace. Sex had never crossed his mind.

      To discover his libido had reawoken because of her and that he could still respond when she wore nothing but a tatty old dressing gown sickened him. That his fingers ached to lean over and trace the delicate line of her neck, that his lips tingled to press against her...

      He dragged his gaze upwards and found her staring at him, the same pained yearning mirroring back at him, her angular cheeks heightened with colour. Then her eyelids snapped a blink and she turned her face away.

      Clenching his hands into fists, Luca looked to the door and willed his thundering heart to slow.

      The sooner he found himself a lover, the sooner he could be released from the sexual hold she still held on him.

      The sooner he stopped thinking about making love to his wife, the better.

      ‘Write a list of everything you need for you and Lily, and I’ll get someone to get it for you tomorrow.’

      Closing the door softly behind him, he went back to his room and fired up his laptop.

      There was no way he would be able to get any sleep now.

      Work would be his salve, as it had been since Grace disappeared. Work would help focus his attention on the matters that truly deserved it, not the deceptive, heartless bitch he had been foolish enough to marry.

      * * *

      As Grace tiptoed back into her bedroom from the adjoining nursery there was a rap on the door.

      She hurried over and yanked it open, her fingers already flying to her lips.

      ‘Shh,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve only just got her down for a nap.’

      ‘Here’s your passport,’ Luca said without any preamble, extending it to her, making no move to step over the threshold.

      Snatching it from his hand, she flipped through it. ‘I did wonder if you would give it back to me.’

      ‘Why would I want to keep it?’ he said, his top lip curving. ‘You are free to leave whenever you like.’

      ‘And