remarry,’ she’d said coolly. But nothing fooled her grandmother and Rose had given her a sharp look. ‘I imagine he needs a wife to help him run Sethbury Hall, and...give him an heir.’ Pain had lanced through Sienna. Her inability to have a child was something she tried not to think about, just as she deliberately blocked out thoughts of the baby she had lost years ago.
‘Who is Nico marrying?’ She’d striven to sound uninterested as she’d taken the newspaper from Grandma Rose and skimmed down the births, deaths and marriages column to read the announcement of the wedding of Miss Victoria Harington and Mr Domenico De Conti, which would take place on the tenth of June at St Augustine’s church in Much Matcham. There had not been a picture of the couple, and now, as Sienna watched Danny turn his head and smile at his bride, she could only suppose that the paper had muddled the De Conti brothers’ names.
The rest of the wedding ceremony passed in a blur until the vicar finally pronounced that Daniele and Victoria were husband and wife. As the couple walked back down the aisle and the guests spilled from the pews to follow them out of the church, Sienna edged towards the vestry, hoping to slip away unnoticed.
‘Sienna? What are you doing here?’
She had almost made it to the vestry door when an achingly familiar voice made her freeze and simultaneously sent molten heat flooding through her veins. Nico’s husky accent had always made her weak at the knees. There was nothing she could do but try to brazen it out, and she squared her shoulders before she swung round to face him.
‘Hello, Nico.’ Was that breathless, sexy voice hers? Sienna cursed silently, flushing when she saw mockery in his piercing blue eyes. He skimmed his gaze over her in a proprietorial manner that was totally inappropriate considering their history. She felt a sharp, almost painful tingle in her nipples, and did not need to glance down to know that the betraying hard peaks were visible beneath her yellow silk dress.
She had deliberately worn a summery outfit: a white hat decorated with yellow flowers, champagne-coloured stilettos and matching handbag so that people would assume she was one of the wedding guests milling around outside the church before the ceremony. The predatory gleam in Nico’s eyes made her acutely conscious of how the close-fitting dress clung to her breasts and hips and the silky material felt sensuous against her skin.
Up close he was even more devastating. A shaft of sunlight filtering in through one of the high windows danced in his night-dark hair and emphasised the hard angles and planes of his face. He smelled divine. Sienna breathed in the spicy notes of his aftershave mixed with something else that was evocatively male and uniquely Nico. An unbidden memory filled her mind, of him sprawled on the tangled sheets after they had made love, sweat beading the dark hairs on his chest, his shaft already hardening again as he pulled her down on top of him.
In the early days of their marriage they hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other and their passion had been explosive. But that was before she had lost the baby, and then sex had been dictated by fertility charts as her desire to fall pregnant again had become an obsession that had driven a wedge between her and Nico.
She was an idiot to have come here today, Sienna thought bleakly. It would have been better if she had never seen him again. Kinder to her foolish heart that still yearned for the relationship they had once had, even though her sensible head knew it had been a romantic fantasy she had built up in her imagination. But she wasn’t imagining the frank awareness in Nico’s eyes. She was overwhelmed by his raw sexual magnetism and dismayed by her reaction to him.
‘Sienna.’ The impatience in his voice pulled her mind back to the present and her embarrassing situation. ‘I didn’t see your name on the guest list.’ He frowned. ‘I’m certain Danny would have told me that he had invited you to his wedding.’
‘I...um...’ She could feel her face burning. ‘I saw in the local paper that Danny was getting married at St Augustine’s. Churches are open to the public and anyone has the right to attend a wedding taking place in a church. I wanted to give Danny and his new bride my best wishes.’
Nico’s eyes narrowed. ‘It’s odd that you knew it was my brother’s wedding. The local paper mixed up our names when they printed the forthcoming marriage announcement.’
‘My grandmother told me.’ Sienna crossed her fingers behind her back as she made the white lie. ‘Rose keeps in touch with your grandmother and when they spoke recently, Iris told her about Danny’s wedding.’
She lifted her chin and forced herself to meet Nico’s speculative gaze, hoping to project an image of cool composure she did not feel. Her insides were churning, her heart was racing and there was a dull ache low in her pelvis that made her press her thighs tightly together.
‘So you didn’t come because you hoped to see me?’ he drawled.
‘Of course not. What reason could I possibly have for wanting to see you again?’ She was defensive, mortified that he might guess the truth. ‘Our disaster of a marriage was over a long time ago.’
‘I wouldn’t call it a disaster,’ he murmured, taking her breath away with that mind-boggling statement. ‘There were good times.’ His voice lowered in a way that sent a shiver across Sienna’s skin. ‘Some very good times.’
‘When we were in bed, you mean?’ She had intended to sound sarcastic but the words emerged as a whisper. She licked her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. When had Nico moved closer so that his thigh was almost touching hers? ‘A marriage needs more to sustain it than dynamite sex.’
His lips twitched and she hated that he found her amusing, but when he spoke there was no mockery in his voice, nor in the fierce gleam in his eyes. ‘We were dynamite together, weren’t we, cara?’
‘Don’t,’ she said sharply, trying to ignore the leap her heart gave at his careless endearment. She stiffened when he lifted his hand and brushed his finger lightly down her cheek. The action was a blatant invasion of her personal space but she didn’t pull away, couldn’t. Her feet were glued to the floor and her gaze was trapped by his as she drowned in the cobalt-blue depths of his eyes. Everything faded and there were only the two of them standing in the church where they had once promised to love and honour each other, forsaking all others, for the rest of their lives.
Nico lowered his head so that his impossibly wicked mouth was inches from hers. ‘You are even more beautiful than my memory serves me, Si-enna.’ He rolled the syllables around his tongue, making her name sound like a caress. ‘It makes me wonder why I let you go.’
The spell shattered and she jerked away from him so forcefully that her hip bone collided with the end of a pew. ‘You were sleeping with your secretary.’ Hurt and humiliation, those two poisonous serpents that had haunted her for years, coiled inside her. ‘You didn’t let me go, I chose to leave,’ she snapped, her voice too loud, bouncing off the walls of the church.
‘Oh, Nico, there you are,’ came a softer voice. Looking past him, Sienna wished the floor would open up and swallow her when she saw Nico’s grandmother manoeuvring her wheelchair along the aisle towards them. But if Iris Mandeville had heard her angry outburst she made no comment. ‘Sienna, how delightful to see you.’ The elderly woman greeted her warmly. ‘How is your grandmother? I haven’t spoken to Rose for months.’
Sienna flushed when Nico gave her a hard stare. Clearly he was wondering how she could have known it was Danny’s wedding if Iris had not told Grandma Rose.
‘I am unable to visit Rose so often now that she lives in York and I have to use this wretched contraption.’ Iris tapped
