Her Wedding Night Surrender. Clare Connelly

and some kind of budget for clothing. It is what people will expect of my wife.’

      She stared at him, agog. ‘You’re joking?’

      ‘No, carissima. It’s no joke.’ His eyes roamed her face analytically. ‘This is Roma. Find a boutique and worship your body, then I’ll consider it.’

      His arrogance and his grim, scathing indictment infuriated her, but the realisation of her dream, the closeness of her escape were things so close she could smell freedom and liberation and she wasn’t going to let her appearance stop her.

      Not for the first time, though, she felt the sharp needling of injustice at the lengths she had to go to in order to earn what most people perceived as a God-given right. What if she refused? Refused not just his request that she start to pay attention to her looks but also her father’s suggestion that they marry? What if she took a credit card and just ran away?

      It wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought about it. But the thought of what it would do to her father had always brought her swiftly back into line. She couldn’t hurt him. But here she had a way to be independent and make her father happy. She just had to tick a few boxes along the way.

      ‘Fine.’ Determination and resilience still glinted in her eyes.

      ‘Good.’ He nodded crisply.

      He reached into his pocket and pulled something out. Something small and white. When he handed it to her she saw it was a business card with a woman’s name on it: Elizabetta Ronimi.

      ‘This is my secretary’s number. She will organise the details with you. Any time in the next month is fine for me.’

      ‘You want me to organise our wedding?’

      He shrugged, as though it didn’t matter one bit to him. ‘I presumed you’d hire someone to do it, actually, but you’ll need to speak to Elizabetta regarding my availability and to co-ordinate your move to my villa. Si?’

      ‘Si,’ she mumbled wearily. ‘I suppose that makes sense.’

      ‘Good.’

      She stared at him for several seconds before the penny dropped that she was being dismissed. Colour warmed her cheeks as she moved towards the chair she’d occupied and scooped up her clutch purse.

      ‘I’ll have Remi take you home.’

      ‘Remi?’

      ‘My driver.’

      ‘Oh, right.’ She nodded, but then shook her head. ‘I can grab a cab,’ she murmured.

      He stopped her on the threshold to the room, his hand curving around her elbow. Warmth spiralled through her body, making her blood pound. Her gut twisted with something like anticipation and her mouth was dry.

      ‘He will soon be your driver too, cara. Go with him.’

      She didn’t want to argue. She wanted to get out of there by the quickest means possible.

      ‘Thank you.’

      ‘Non ce di che,’ he said softly. ‘See you soon, Mrs Morelli.’

      Emmeline’s eyes swept shut as she stepped out of his office, one single question pounding through her brain.

      What the hell have I just agreed to do?

       CHAPTER TWO

      THE SUN WAS high in the sky and beating down over Rome, but Emmeline barely felt it. She was cold to the centre of her being, anxiety throbbing through her.

      In the end it had taken five weeks to get all the paperwork in order, including a swift visa application for Italy, helped in no small part by the last name that had always opened doors for her.

      But who was this woman looking back at her now? She had a growing sense of desperation as she studied her own reflection, doubt tangling in her gut.

      ‘Aren’t you glad we went with the Vera?’ Sophie asked, wrapping an arm around her best friend’s shoulders, her own expression not showing even a hint of doubt. ‘You’re a vision.’

      Emmeline nodded slowly. Sophie was right. The dress was exquisite. A nod to nineteen-twenties glamour, with cap sleeves and a fitted silhouette, its beading was perfect, and the shoes she’d chosen gave her an extra lift of height—not that she needed it.

      Her hair had been styled in a similarly vintage look, pulled to one side and curled lightly, then held in place with a diamond clip that had belonged to Grandma Bovington. At her throat she wore a small diamond necklace, and vintage earrings completed the look. Her make-up was the work of some kind of magician, because the woman staring back at Emmeline actually looked...nice.

      Beautiful?

      Yes, beautiful.

      ‘I guess we should get going.’

      ‘Well, yeah, we’re a little late—but that’s your prerogative on your wedding day, isn’t it?’

      Emmeline grimaced, lifted her head in a brief nod.

      ‘Honey, you’re going to need to work on your happy face,’ Sophie said quietly. ‘Your dad’s never gonna believe this isn’t torture for you if you don’t cheer up.’

      ‘It’s not torture,’ she said hastily.

      Though she’d kept the truth behind this hasty marriage to herself, Sophie knew Emmeline well enough to put two and two together and get a glaringly clear picture of four.

      ‘It had better not be. I’ve seen your groom already and—whoo!’ She made an exaggerated fanning motion across her face. ‘He is hotter than a spit roast in hell.’

      Emmeline could just imagine. Pietro Morelli on any given day of the week was more attractive than a single human being had any right to be, but on his wedding day...? Well, if he’d gone to half the trouble and expense she had then she knew she’d better start bracing herself.

      ‘Suit?’

      ‘Yes. But it’s how he wears it!’

      Sophie grinned, and it occurred to Emmeline that Sophie was far more the type of Pietro’s usual love interest. With silky blonde hair that had been styled into a voluminous bun on the top of her head and in the emerald-green sheath they’d chosen for her bridesmaid’s dress, there was no hiding her generous curves in all the right places and legs that went on forever.

      Sophie was also a political daughter—though of a congressman rather than a senator—and yet she had a completely different attitude to life and love than Emmeline. She’d always dated freely, travelled wherever and whenever she wanted. For every measure of obsessive attention Col had suffocated Emmeline with, Sophie had been given a corresponding quantity of freedom and benign neglect.

      Emmeline had read her emails from Sophie with rapt envy, studying the photographs and closing her eyes, imagining herself alongside her friend. What had Paris on a spring evening smelled like? And how had Argentina been in the summer? And what about that time she’d travelled on a yacht around the Mediterranean, stopping in the French Riviera for a month just because it had taken her fancy?

      But all that was ahead of Emmeline now. Soon it would be her!

      This marriage was crazy in no small part, but it was also the smartest thing she’d ever done. Marriage to Pietro was freedom—freedom to live her own life without hurting her father. Freedom to explore, travel, to live—away from Annersty and yet not carrying the burden of having let her father down.

      Was there any other way? A way that would give her true freedom? The kind of freedom that wasn’t purchased by marriage? The freedom of knowing she could live her own life?

      She bit down on her lower lip, her eyes unknowingly haunted. Of course there was. She could have packed a bag and announced that she was leaving home at any