that restraining finger still on her lips, Amber didn’t dare to speak, to protest, besides, she had no idea what she could say, what argument she might be able to drag up to refute his shocking assertion, his outrageous self-confidence. So she had to content herself with widening her eyes in a look of total disbelief, praying that her expression communicated the meaning she wanted.
But Guido simply ignored her silent refutation of his claim. Removing his finger and replacing it with his mouth, he pressed a slow, lingering kiss onto her partly open lips, taking her breath and all her composure with it as he did so.
Oh, how she wished she could control her reactions to his touch! She wanted to stay absolutely still, to show no response at all. To convince him by her behaviour that his kiss meant nothing to her. That she was immune to his touch…
But her treacherous body just wouldn’t get the message that her terrified, rational brain was screaming at it. Instead of stiffening, her slender frame melted against his. Her mouth softened, letting his tongue slide tormentingly over her hungry lips, dip into the heat and moisture beyond them.
‘You see, bellissima,’ he murmured against her mouth, stealing another kiss as he drew breath to speak, ‘I know you. And I know what you want.’
‘I don’t…’ Amber tried but he shook his head and sealed off the words with another, deeper kiss, one that made her head swim, set her blood pounding.
‘You don’t want a cold-blooded English aristocrat like Rafe St Clair. You need a real man.’
‘Like you, I suppose?’ Amber wrenched her mouth away and tossed back her head to challenge him, green eyes blazing into bronze-rimmed black with what she hoped was daring defiance. She was struggling to deny her own senses, the yearning need that just his kiss, his touch had wakened in her all over again.
Guido smiled that tiger’s smile again and ran his finger down the side of her face, along her neck and into the low V at the front of her dress, the curve of his lips growing as he watched the shuddering response she couldn’t control.
‘I can give you more than your water-in-his-veins Englishman can ever offer you. I can give you the passion you need, the sensuality you crave. I know what it was like between us; what it can be like again. I can—’
‘No!’ Amber actually stamped her foot hard on the flagstones, shaking her head so hard that her veil flew wildly around her head, yet more strands of chestnut hair escaping from the ornate style and dangling about her face. ‘No, no, no! That isn’t what I want and it isn’t what’s going to happen. What we had was a mistake—the worst mistake I’ve ever made in my life. It isn’t going to happen again. I’d rather die than go back to that.’
‘You, carissima, are a liar,’ Guido told her softly. ‘Your words are a lie—your protestation too. You lie even to yourself—and you don’t do it terribly well. I shall enjoy proving your words to be untrue, even if it takes me some time. One day you will come to me, begging me to forget you ever said such things—and I…I will be waiting. The wait will be worth it—you will be worth it. Now…’
He held out his arm to her, obviously meaning her to take it.
‘What?’
Still stunned by what he had said to her, the way he had dismissed her protest, Amber could only blink in stunned confusion.
‘We are going to put the first part of our plan into action. We are going out there—as man and wife.’
‘We—are?’
He still expected her to go with him, after what he’d just said? After the promise, the threat, he’d just made?
‘Do you wish to back out of our agreement?’
Did she? And, more to the point, could she? Because if she didn’t go with Guido, then that left her with—with nothing, she admitted to herself miserably. With nothing and no one. It was Guido or…
Silently she shook her head, flinching inwardly away from the grim satisfaction she saw in his face, the dark triumph that gleamed in his eyes.
‘Then…’
Once more he held out his arm and this time she nerved herself to put her own arm in his, resting her hand on the hard strength of his forearm, feeling the tight power of muscle under her fingertips. The heat of his body seared her where her elbow was clamped against his side, pressed against the strong wall of his ribcage, sensing the heavy, regular beat of his heart so close by.
He had pushed his spare hand into his jacket pocket, pulling out a slim, silver-coloured mobile phone and flicking it open. With his thumb he pressed a single speed-dial button.
‘What…?’
‘I have a car waiting near by,’ he told her before speaking into the phone, obviously issuing a string of instructions in fast, authoritative Italian. ‘Franco will bring it to the gate—that way we will be able to get away as quickly as possible and so, hopefully, won’t have to endure too much from the vultures outside.’
‘But they’re going to ask for a statement—something to explain all this…What are you going to say?’
‘Leave that to me,’ Guido told her, his tone deep and firm. ‘Just follow my lead.’
And suddenly it was all that she wanted to do—to surrender herself to the strength of his body, the strength of his mind. To let him take control and handle everything as she knew he was more than capable of doing.
And if she had been able to think of anything for herself, or been able to act for herself, as soon as they started to move a sudden, flashing awareness slashed deep into her soul and took any last remaining ounce of strength from her, depriving her totally of the will to do anything.
As they walked down the aisle, arm in arm, towards the church door, she suddenly had a terrible, cruelly clear vision of just what they must look like to anyone seeing them there like that. She in her bridal finery, in the long white dress and the veil, the sweeping train that flowed from her waist at the back. And Guido in smartly tailored black, his head held high, his hand on her arm as he led her away from the altar and out towards the door at the end of the aisle.
Seen like this, anyone might take them for the bride and groom—the happy couple leaving the church after their wedding, starting out on a lifetime of happiness, a lifetime of love and sharing together as man and wife. And the image was so false, so deceptive, that it shrivelled her heart into ashes just to think of it.
And then, when she was least ready, least able to cope with it, her mind threw up another, even more painful memory. She saw herself as she had been a year before, on a late-winter day in Las Vegas. The whole wedding had been arranged in such haste, on such an impulse, that she had only a soft white cotton sundress to wear; no veil. Her only flower had been the single blood-red rose that Guido had given her as she got out of the taxi at the little wedding chapel he had booked for them to take their vows. She had had none of the silk and the lace that she wore now. No sweeping train, no fine tiara in her hair, but she had been so happy that day, so full of hope and joy for the future. Until the man she had married, the man who now walked beside her in a bitter parody of the walk of happiness of that day, had proved himself as false as she had come to believe that wedding to be.
Bitter, stinging tears burned in the back of her throat,
