Italian Bachelors: Irresistible Sicilians. Michelle Smart

sizes and hair and, best of all, he had bought every shade of paint from the specific brand she favoured. She had been in heaven.

      She had not picked up a paintbrush or done anything as basic as a doodle since she had left. All her creative juices had died when she walked out of the estate.

      Taking a deep breath, she turned the key and pushed the door open. Immediately she was hit with the trace of turpentine and oil paint, scents that had seeped into every crevice of the cottage.

      At first glance it looked exactly as she had left it. The canvas she had been working on was still on its easel, a fine layer of dust now covering it; her brushes all rammed into varying pots, her tubes of paint still scattered randomly across her workbench. Stacks of blank and completed canvases still lay in neat stacks; half-finished canvases she had left to dry before working on them again still lined the walls.

      Someone had been in there during her absence. It was nothing specific she could put her finger on, more of a gut feeling.

      Her stomach tying itself in knots, she climbed the open staircase to the first floor. The sense that someone had been there grew stronger, especially when she entered the bedroom. This was the room she had slept in whenever Luca was abroad or tied up with business until the early hours, something that had dramatically increased throughout the second year of their marriage. Although she’d missed him being around so much, she would take the opportunity to work through the witching hours without guilt and then flop into bed shattered.

      One thing she had always been able to take heart from was that he would always join her if he was in Sicily. Wherever she slept, he would seek her out. Always. She would wake to find herself wrapped in his arms. Invariably, they would make love and she would tell herself that everything between them was fine.

      She was certain she had left the bed unmade.

      The bathroom was dusty but clean, relatively tidy, her toothbrush and other toiletries on display where she had left them. A quick peek in the laundry basket revealed the tatty jeans and paint-splattered jumper she had last worked in.

      Her bittersweet trip down memory lane was interrupted when she heard the front door shut.

      ‘Hello?’ she called, hurrying to the stairs. About to step down, she paused when she saw Luca leaning against the front door staring up at her.

      ‘What do you want?’ They were alone for the first time since he had found her. Now there was no Lily to temper the tone of her voice for, she made no attempt to hide her hostility.

      The first thing she noticed was his lack of a sling. Dressed in black jeans and a light blue sweater, his arms folded across his broad chest, his jawline covered in dark stubble, he carried a definite air of menacing weariness.

      ‘We’ve been invited to Francesco Calvetti’s birthday party in Florence next Saturday,’ he said without any preamble.

      ‘Why’s he holding it in Florence?’ Francesco Calvetti was as big a gangster as her husband. It was only after Luca had invested in a couple of casinos and nightclubs with him that the cracks in their marriage had appeared and he had begun to change...

      ‘He bought a hotel there. I’ve accepted the invitation for us.’

      ‘It’s far too short notice.’

      ‘I wasn’t asking your opinion on the matter. I was telling you.’

      ‘And what about Lily?’

      ‘I have spoken to my mother and she has agreed to care for her overnight.’

      ‘Absolutely not.’ No way was she going to leave her baby to attend that man’s party.

      ‘I have also seen the local priest about having Lily baptised,’ he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘I have booked her in for the first Sunday of the new year.’

      ‘Well, that’s telling me,’ she said, stomping down the stairs. ‘We can argue about the christening in a minute. I am not leaving Lily to attend a silly party.’

      ‘It is not a silly party. It is an important event that you will attend as my devoted wife.’

      The way his eyes burned into her left Grace with no doubt as to the meaning laced in his words.

      Devoted wife.

      Luca might have abandoned the idea of displaying togetherness in front of his family but this did not extend to the wider world.

      She would be expected to accompany him and act the docile, dutiful wife.

      She would be expected to play the role of lover to a man she hated with every fibre of her being. The consequences of failure would be harsh. Banishment from her daughter’s life.

      ‘Am I at least allowed a say in the christening? Or is Lily’s entire future to be decided by you?’

      His nostrils flared. ‘That all depends.’

      ‘On what?’

      ‘On whether your opinions concur with mine.’

      ‘So that’ll be never, then,’ she threw at him bitterly.

      ‘Consider yourself lucky to be here and able to voice an opinion,’ he said, his tone a low, threatening timbre. ‘It’s a sight more than you gave me.’

      ‘It’s a sight more than you deserved,’ she spat. ‘Now, unless there’s something else you want to tell me, you can leave.’

      * * *

      Luca clenched his fists by his sides at her defiance, at the folded arms crossed over the slender waist, her hair sprouting in all directions. Since they had returned, the red dye had faded, her natural honey blonde coming through.

      He didn’t know if he wanted to wrap his hands around her throat or kiss the defiance from her face.

      She had been home for six days. In all that time he had tried to block her from his mind but she was still there, festering in his psyche. He didn’t want to exchange one solitary word more than was necessary with her. Simply looking at her deceitful face made his stomach clench.

      ‘I am not yet ready to leave. You owe me some answers.’

      Her striking features contorted into something feral. ‘I don’t owe you anything.’

      Every sinew in his body tightened. When she turned her back on him and walked to her workbench, he had to fight the urge to wrench her round and force her to look at him.

      ‘You damn well do. One minute you were there, the next you were gone. No letter, no phone call, nothing to let me know if you were dead or alive.’

      She turned around, leaned against the bench and rolled her eyes. ‘Steady on, Luca—you make it sound as if you were worried about me. Surely a heart is needed to feel worry?’

      It was the dripping cynicism that did it for him. The sheer lack of remorse. The implication that her selfish, unrepentant behaviour was somehow his fault.

      All the rage he had been smothering since he found her exploded out of him, consuming him in a fury that accelerated when he found his tongue to speak.

      ‘Worried about you?’ he said, his words coming out in a raging flow. ‘Worried about you? I thought you were dead! Do you hear me? Dead! I imagined you lying cold on a verge. I pictured you cold in a mortuary. For two weeks I could not sleep for the nightmares. So no, I wasn’t worried about you. It was much worse than that.’

      For a moment he thought he caught a flicker of distress on her face before her now familiar insouciance replaced it. ‘I apologise if I caused you any distress...’

      Slam!

      Without conscious thought, the desperate need to purge the storm of emotions acted for him and he punched the wall.

      ‘You haven’t got a clue, have you?’ he raged. ‘I thought we were happy. When you went missing, I thought you’d been kidnapped but when I received