The Proud Wife. Kate Walker

unlike Marina.

      Obviously she had chosen the clothes deliberately to convey just the right sort of image. And what image was that? That she was cool and organised and totally in control? In that case, even less like Marina.

      The understated look suited her, though. It was undeniably sexy in a very different way. The white top provided a sharp contrast with the rich tones of her hair and the mossy-green glow of her eyes. The slim-fitting skirt flattered her curvy hips and thighs, its shorter length revealing the long lines of her slim legs.

      Those hips—and the rest of her body—had more of a curve to them than he remembered from the last time he had seen her, Pietro realised with a sense of shock. In contrast to the glowing woman she was now, then she had looked pale and thin—too thin. Life apart from him obviously suited her, he acknowledged. The thought stabbed him.

      The only things about her that were the Marina he remembered were the long, sparkling earrings that dangled close to her neck, gold and multicoloured crystals of different sizes and shapes. They were clearly costume jewellery and a long way from the emerald and diamond creations he had once given her.

      ‘Shall we all sit down?’ Pietro asked as his lawyer opened and poured sparkling water into a glass. It was time he took charge.

      Once more those green eyes flicked in his direction and, although he had his hand on the back of a chair ready to pull it out, Marina deliberately chose one on the opposite side of the big mahogany table, sinking into it in a graceful movement. She placed the document case on the polished surface in front of her, lining it up carefully and folding her hands on top of the brown leather. Seen like this, she had an almost nun-like composure and restraint. Again, so totally unlike the real Marina that it almost made him laugh. He caught back his amusement with effort. Marina, restrained and composed? The words just didn’t go together at all.

      He found he rather liked this new image she had assumed. It made him think of the contrast between the outward impression she gave and the person he knew was hidden beneath the conformist clothing. Made him imagine the challenge of getting her out of the subdued garments and freeing the real woman inside. That thought blazed an image into his mind that had him suddenly pulling out his own chair and dropping into it swiftly, so that the barrier of the polished table-top hid the betraying force of his heated response.

      As he took his own seat on the other side of the table, Marina accepted the glass that Matteo passed to her and sipped from it carefully. She was still wearing her wedding ring, Pietro noticed, seeing the glint of gold on the fingers wrapped around the glass. It was the last thing he had expected, and he was surprised by the force of his reaction to seeing his ring. It was the ring he had put on her finger after making their wedding vows, still there on the hand of the woman who hadn’t even pretended to play the role of his wife for over two years.

      ‘Pietro …’

      The sound of his name on his estranged wife’s lips jolted him back to the present. He had heard her use his name so many times, but this was like no other time before. This time the single word was both a question and a reproach for the fact that she had said something and, lost in a dangerous blend of angry and erotic thoughts, he had not heard her.

      ‘Cara?’ he responded, deliberately lacing the endearment with cynicism and knowing he had hit home when he saw her reaction.

      Her spine stiffened, her jaw tightened and the soft rosetinted mouth clamped into a thin, rigid line. Green eyes flashed an uncontrolled response. Now she was letting the real Marina show, he thought with a sense of grim satisfaction. Just for a moment the controlled mask had slipped and she had let him have a glimpse of the woman underneath. This was the Marina he knew of old.

      ‘What exactly are you doing here?’ she asked now, her tone making it clear that she wished he was a million miles away.

      He dealt her a smile across the table and felt a flare of dark satisfaction when he saw her eyes widen even more.

      ‘We arranged to meet to discuss the terms of the divorce,’ he reminded her, calm and reasonable.

      Marina took another sip of water and put down her glass with the sort of careful precision that he knew only came when she was really trying to keep a grip on her volatile nature. She wasn’t as much in control as she wanted to appear. That made him want to watch her more closely, to see what he could read in her face, in her eyes.

      ‘No, you summoned—ordered—me to Sicily so that I could meet with your lawyer to discuss the terms of the divorce. I did not agree to speak to you.’

      Oh, he recognised this mood. It was the one where she took everything he said, chewed it up and flung it back at him turned inside out so that it meant the opposite of what he had actually said. It was a mood he knew well. Strangely, it was also a mood that he had missed when she had left him—and before she had left him, his memory warned him, giving a nasty, uncomfortable little poke. Just how long was it since he had seen this Marina in his life at all?

      ‘We arranged that our lawyers would discuss the terms, yes,’ he pointed out smoothly. ‘We will leave everything to them, if that is how your prefer it. But for that we need your legal representative to be here. Where is your solicitor? He is coming later? Soon?’

      ‘He’s not coming at all.’

      The spark in her eyes, the touch of colour in those alabaster cheeks, the way her head was tilted slightly to one side, her neat chin lifted defiantly, told him he could make what he liked of that.

      ‘For your information, Pietro, not everyone has a lawyer at their beck and call—a man so ridiculously overpaid that he is obliged to jump and come running whenever you snap your fingers.’

      From under her lashes those green eyes went towards Matteo just once, briefly, and then came back to fix on his face again. She didn’t need to use words to tell him exactly what she thought.

      ‘You gave me precisely one hour to pack and come to Sicily. I had no choice. But I can just imagine what my lawyer would have said if I had even tried to suggest that he do the same.’

      Let him make what he wanted of that, Marina told herself. He didn’t like it, that much was plain from the way his whole body stilled and tightened in his seat, his head coming up so that his blue eyes blazed into hers. They were like shards of ice, so cold and clear. And she almost felt that the laser-like burn from them might actually mark her cheek where it rested.

      When he sat opposite her like this with his back to the windows, he was little more than a dark silhouette, black against the gloomy sky outside. The surprisingly pale eyes in his carved face were all she could really make out—not that it mattered. The truth was that every stunning feature, from the broad, high forehead down to the surprisingly full and sensual mouth, was seared into her memory, impossible to erase. And, if she let them, those memories would destroy her hard-won composure, take her back to the time when she had worshipped the ground this man walked on. To the time that had almost totally broken her.

      Just in the moment that she had looked up across the narrow road, and had seen him standing at the rain-dashed window, it had been like the first time she had met him. Then she had seen him through rain-spattered glass too, through the windscreen of her elderly Mini in the middle of an ice storm in a London street. She had been so stunned by the shocking sensuality of the tall, dark stranger’s beauty that she had lost control of the wheel just for a second—and had been horrified by the appalling crunch and screeching sound as her car had scraped against the side of his luxurious vehicle.

      The world had seemed to spin round her, her breath stilling in her lungs, and she had hardly been able to remember who she was or think to give him her insurance details. In the end she hadn’t needed them because he had assured her that the damage was slight and that he would cover the cost of repairs to both cars if she would promise to have dinner with him that night.

      She had been totally off-balance where this man was concerned ever since. Just being with him was like being in the eye of some wild, tropical storm every day. She had been swept off her feet, out of reality and into a world of such