detected marked amusement in his voice. Deciding it was safest to keep her hands busy with something harmless lest she forgot herself so far as to take a meat cleaver to him, she began preparing a tray with plates, cutlery and serviettes. “At least,” she said, “I haven’t given you grounds for divorce.”
“There are some who’d say a wife walking out on her husband is ample grounds for terminating a marriage.”
“Then why haven’t you taken steps to end ours?”
Finished with the chicken, he turned his attention to the wine. “Because we agreed there was no pressing need to formalize matters, especially given your parents’ age, health and religious convictions.” He angled a hooded glance her way. “Unless, of course, you’ve found some urgent reason…?”
“I’m not the one who went out shopping for a replacement within a week and had the bad taste to leave his possessions lying around for you to find!”
“Neither am I, Gabriella,” he said mildly, his mood improving markedly as hers continued to deteriorate. “The woman you perceive to be such a threat was a fifty-nine-year-old housekeeper I hired to come in on a daily basis to keep the place clean and prepare my meals. The arrangement came to an end by mutual agreement after one month because there wasn’t enough to keep her busy and she was a lousy cook. She must have left some of her stuff behind by mistake.”
Feeling utterly foolish, Gabriella muttered, “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
“Because you immediately assumed the worst before I had the chance to explain anything. Now that we’ve cleared up the misunderstanding, though, I suggest you take that pout off your face, smile for a change, and join me in a toast.” He passed a glass of wine to her and lifted the other mockingly. “Here’s to us, my dear wife. May your parents be taken in by appearances as easily as you are, and go home convinced their daughter and son-in-law are living in matrimonial clover!”
Twenty minutes later, they sat at the glass-topped patio table on the west side of the terrace. The Pouilly Fuissé stood neck-deep in a silver wine cooler. A hurricane lamp flickered in a sconce on the wall.
Outwardly, they might have been any of a hundred contented couples enjoying the mild, calm evening. Inwardly, however, Gabriella was a mess. Poking her fork into her barely touched meal, she finally braved the question which had been buzzing around in her mind like an angry wasp from the moment he’d misled her into thinking his housekeeper had been a lover. “Have you really never…been with another woman, Max? Since me, I mean?”
“Why don’t you look at me when you ask that?” he replied in a hard voice.
Because, she could have told him, if she’d dared, it hurts too much. You’re too beautiful, too sexy, too…everything except what I most want you to be, which is mine.
“Gabriella?”
Gathering her courage, she lifted her head and took stock of him, feature by feature. He leaned back in his chair, returning the favor with equal frankness, his eyes a dark, direct blue, his gaze steady.
His hair gleamed black as the Danube on a starless night. His skin glowed deep amber against the stark white of his shirt. He shifted one elbow, a slight movement only, but enough to draw attention to the width of his chest and the sculpted line of his shoulders.
Miserably, she acknowledged that everything about him was perfect—and most assuredly not hers to enjoy. She knew that as well as she knew her own name. Devouring him with her eyes brought her nothing but hopeless regret for what once might have been, and painful longing for something that now never could be.
Nonetheless, she forced herself to maintain her steady gaze and say serenely, “Well, I’m looking, Max, so why don’t you answer the question? Have you been with anyone else?”
He compressed his gorgeous mouth. Just briefly, his gaze flickered. “You want me to tell you I’ve lived like a monk since you ran off to pursue a career?”
“I want you to tell me the truth.”
He shook his head and stared out to where the last faint show of color from the sunset stained the sea a pale papaya-orange. “No, you don’t, Gabriella. As I recall, you’re not on very good terms with honesty and I doubt you’d know how to handle it in this instance.”
She flinched, his reply shooting straight to her heart like a splinter of glass. Normally the most brutally candid man she’d ever met, his evasion amounted to nothing but an admission of guilt delivered as kindly as he knew how.
Unbidden, the night she’d lost her virginity rose up to haunt her, most particularly the exquisite pleasure he’d given her after he’d recovered from the shock of finding her in his bed and before he realized her duplicity. How practiced he’d been in the art of lovemaking; how knowing and generous and patient. And most of all, how passionate!
Had she really supposed all that masculine virility had lain dormant during her absence, or that he’d feel obligated to honor wedding promises he’d made under duress?
If she had, then she was a fool. Because what right had she to expect either when he’d never professed to love her? When she hadn’t a reason in the world to think he might have missed her after she walked out on a marriage which had been a travesty from the start?
But the truth that hurt the most was the realization of how easy it would be to fall under his spell again. His tacit admission that there’d been another woman—possibly even women—was the only thing which pulled her back from the brink. Another minute, a different answer, and she’d have bared her soul to him!
Staggered by her near self-betrayal, she murmured shakily, “I see.”
“I suspect not,” he said, “but the real question is, does it matter to you, one way or the other?”
“Not in the slightest,” she lied, the glass sliver driving deeper into her heart and shattering into a million arrows of pain.
“Should I take your indifference to mean there’ve been other men in your life?”
“No,” she said forthrightly, unwilling to add further deceit to a heap already grown too heavy to bear. “I’ve never once been unfaithful, nor even tempted.”
“Not even by those pretty plastic consorts you team up with in your photo shoots?”
“Certainly not.”
He hefted the bottle from the cooler and splashed more wine in their glasses. “Why should I believe you?”
“Because I’m telling the truth.”
A mirthless smile played over his mouth. “The way you were when you told me you were pregnant? The way you were when you intimated you’d had a string of lovers before me?”
“I’m not that person anymore.”
“Of course you are, Gabriella. People never really change, not deep down inside where it matters. They just pretend to.”
“When did you become so cynical, Max?” she asked him sadly. “Did I do that to you?”
“You?” he echoed cuttingly. “Don’t flatter
