The Proud Wife. Kate Walker

about our marriage?’

      She was letting her tongue run away with her but somehow she couldn’t even bring herself to care. This was why she had come here, why she’d felt she had to put herself through the ordeal of seeing Pietro one last time. She had wanted to try to voice—partly, at least—the things she had never been able to say when they had been married. To try to provoke him into reacting, into something other than the carefully measured, icy distance that was all that he had showed her in the end. All that the once heady, burning passion had burned down into, cold and ashy.

      ‘Do you think I’d want the whole nasty, miserable mess spread out in the tabloids—our dirty washing hung out to dry in full view of the public?’

      ‘Marina …’

      It was definitely dangerous now, definitely a warning. His eyes were blazing cold fury, and the hand that had held the water glass now drummed a warning tattoo on the polished table-top. But it was a warning Marina was well past heeding. She had the bit between her teeth, and she wasn’t going to be called to order by anyone.

      ‘You think you can toss me some instructions and if I want your money I’ll do as I’m told, will follow your conditions to the letter?’

      ‘I think you’d better listen to what those conditions are.’

      ‘No.’

      Marina shook her head firmly, sending her auburn ponytail flying with the deliberate emphasis she put on the movement.

      ‘I don’t need to hear them.’

      She heard Pietro’s breath hiss in sharply, watched his sharp, white teeth snap together and the muscles in his jaw tighten ominously.

      ‘Marina—you came here so that we could discuss the terms of our divorce in a civilised manner.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘No?’

      That really shocked him and the flood of triumph she felt as a result had a devastatingly intoxicating result, rushing through every nerve and vein like the powerful effect of some richly potent brandy.

      ‘No—that’s not what I came here for. In fact these “discussions” are nothing to me. Because, you see …’

      Now was the time for her to get to her feet, and she pushed back her chair so that it almost overbalanced with the force of her action. Now was the time for her to stand upright so that Pietro had to look up to her as she straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin and looked straight down her nose at him.

      ‘I only have to follow your instructions, agree to your conditions, if I want anything from you. That was the bargaining card you thought you held—the one that gave you some sort of power over me. But you were wrong.’

      Stooping to pick up the document case she had brought in with her, she turned it in her hands until it was just in exactly the right position. Her defiant green eyes met his coldly assessing blue ones with as much determination and strength as she could muster.

      ‘You only hold those bargaining cards if I take anything at all from you—that’s what you counted on, and that was where you went wrong. Because you see, Your High and Mightiness, Principe Pietro Raymundo Marcello D’Inzeo, I want nothing at all from you—nothing.’

      She had to pause for breath there, and when she did she expected that he would break in on her, that he had to say something. But still Pietro sat immobile, still as a sphinx. He barely even seemed to be breathing, he was so motionless, so ruthlessly in control. Only his eyes burned with something so fierce, so dangerous, that just for a moment Marina’s heart lurched, her nerves stuttering. Then she pulled herself together, drew a deep, unsteady breath and rushed on.

      ‘I came here today not to discuss terms but to give you them.’

      Zipping open the leather case, she pulled out a sheaf of papers that exactly matched the ones in front of both Pietro and Matteo, the ones from which the lawyer had been reading the list of conditions.

      ‘I’ve seen your offer of a divorce settlement and I’ve decided to reject it—totally and completely.’

      At last Pietro moved, even if it was only his mouth that opened to speak in a voice that was deadly and low.

      ‘Then you’ll get …

      ‘Then I’ll get exactly what I want, husband dear—exactly what I came here to tell you I’ll take from you—and the answer is nothing. Absolutely nothing. Because I came into this marriage with nothing and I’m going out of it with exactly the same. So you can take your divorce settlement and put it—put it wherever you like. Because I want none of it!’

      As she finished speaking, she tossed the documents down onto the table in front of Pietro where they landed with a heavy thud, the impact throwing up the loosened pages and sending them flying up into the air—straight into her husband’s icily controlled and rigid face.

      CHAPTER THREE

      ‘I WANT none of it!’

      The sound of Marina’s voice died away, to be replaced by the fluttering of the papers still settling down on the desk in front of him. Then the room was filled with silence, a silence so taut and intense that you could have cut it with a knife.

      At Pietro’s side, Matteo had dropped his pen from his grasp and seemed to have frozen into statue form. The young secretary who had been sitting at the far end of the table, keeping tactfully quiet and trying to look inconspicuous as she took notes, was staring, goggle-eyed, with her mouth wide open.

      All this Pietro took in with a single swift glance before turning his attention back to Marina. To his wife. The wife he had thought would soon be his ex.

      All she had had to do was to accept the terms of the divorce he had offered and sign on the dotted line.

      Instead of which …

      She was still not fully back under control after her outburst of just moments before. Her chest was heaving as if she had run a marathon, the generous curves of her breasts lifting and falling with each irregular, snatched gasp of air. And the effect of her loss of temper, together with the effort of getting her breathing under control, had sent a rush of colour into those normally pale cheeks, so that now they were delightfully flushed with pink in a way that no clever make-up, no matter how subtly used, could ever achieve.

      Above that wash of rose, the green eyes were bright with emotion, sparkling wildly under the thick, black lashes. Her hair had escaped from its fastening and was now starting to tumble down around her shoulders in casual disarray.

      This was the woman he had first met. The woman who had knocked him off-balance so that he couldn’t think straight. She looked wild. She looked defiant. She looked magnificent. If truth be told, she had never looked so damn good—not even on their wedding day, when she had been as stunningly beautiful as he had ever imagined it was possible for a woman to be.

      Perhaps later, on their wedding night—lying in their bed with that glorious hair spread out around her, bright against the creamy colour of the pillows; her mouth swollen with kisses and her green eyes deep and dark with the pleasure that came from sexual satiation?

       No!

      Furiously Pietro clamped down on the erotic thoughts that threatened to escape his control and forced himself to focus back on the situation in hand. He’d let them take charge once before, and look where that had got him.

      The silence had stretched out now almost to breaking point, neither the secretary, nor indeed Matteo, daring to make a move to break it. Marina’s still slightly ragged breathing was the only sound in the room other than the sudden lash of rain against the windows as the rainstorm outside started up again.

      It was as Marina’s wide green eyes met his, clashing sharply, that Pietro launched into action. Pushing back his chair, he got to his feet, one hand shooting out in a commanding gesture.

      ‘Everyone—out!’