The only way he could get a grip on his thoughts was to say the word out loud, making Amber blink in shock as she stared at him, green eyes shadowed with confusion.
‘No?’ she questioned shakily. ‘No, you have no story to tell them? Or no—?’
‘Oh, I’ve a story we can give them, all right…’
Suddenly horrifyingly aware of the fact that he still held her close, Guido released Amber with an abruptness that almost dropped her to the ground, making her stagger back in shocked bewilderment, her hand going out to the wall to steady herself.
‘Then tell me!’
‘You’re not…’ Guido began, then caught himself up sharply. What was the point of warning her, letting her prepare herself? She was going to fight him on this, anyway. He could see it in her face. She’d fight him all the way, no matter what she said. So he might as well just let her have it straight and take it from there. At least that way he’d have the advantage of surprise once more, as he had when he’d arrived at the church.
The memory of the way she’d frozen when he’d spoken, the time it had taken her to turn round, was still clear in his memory. He’d been planning that moment for weeks, ever since he’d learned of her upcoming marriage, and it had brought a dark satisfaction to his soul. The sort of satisfaction he wanted to know again.
‘Let them think we’re a couple.’
‘What?’
There was no need to ask what she thought of his suggestion. It was etched into her lovely face, darkening the pools of her eyes above cheeks that had gone white in appalled shock.
‘Let them…?’
‘Let them think we’re back together.’
‘You have to be joking!’
‘No joke.’ Guido shook his dark head emphatically. ‘It’s the only way you’re going to walk out of here with any sort of reputation-and able to look people in the eye. Your chances of marriage to St Clair are ruined…’
‘Thanks to you!’
Guido glanced down at the tight little fists into which she had clenched her hands. He could read in her eyes the way she was tempted to launch herself at him, raise her fist to pound him on the shoulder, maybe even hit him in the face.
Perhaps he should tell her the truth about her supposed bridegroom. If she knew the real Rafe St Clair and the way that the man had been prepared to use her for his own ends, then would she be so quick to attack? Would she fight so hard for him then?
‘You’ve destroyed my life!’
‘No, cara,’ Guido reproved silkily. ‘You did that for yourself when you tried to get yourself a new groom without making sure that you had got rid of the old one first.’
‘You said it was not a legal marriage!’
‘I said we didn’t have any sort of real marriage—it’s not at all the same thing. The marriage you walked out on was perfectly legal, perfectly binding, as you would have found out if you had bothered checking.’
‘It didn’t seem necessary.’
Amber couldn’t believe she had been such a fool. Ever since the day that she had walked out on Guido, she had struggled to put their charade of a marriage behind her. It had been bad enough thinking that Guido had only gone through the ceremony to control her, to keep her in his bed. To find that she had swallowed the idea of it being real when in fact it had just been a fake, set up to deceive her, had twisted the original knife in even deeper.
As a result, she had ruthlessly locked away all thoughts of that day into a sealed compartment in her memory, refusing to let herself bring them out to look at them for any reasons whatsoever. When Rafe had asked her to marry him, she had wondered briefly if she should check on the legality of her first ‘wedding’. But the memory of Guido’s brutal tone, his callously scornful words, had made her flinch right away from even thinking about it.
Fear had added an extra impetus too, she admitted, feeling the sense of horror that had gripped her then take her by the throat once again. If she had found that the Las Vegas ceremony had been binding, then she would have had to admit it to Rafe, and—far worse—she would have had to connect with Guido in order to arrange for a divorce.
Cravenly—and foolishly, it now seemed—she had dodged away from the whole issue and had let herself believe that there had been no earlier marriage to stand in the way of the present one.
‘To tell you the truth, I didn’t even remember our time together,’ she lied in a desperate attempt to protect herself from the anguish that was slashing at her heart. ‘It didn’t really matter.’
She’d got in a knife cut of her own that time, she saw as she watched the flames of dark anger blaze in the depths of his eyes. His jaw clamped tight shut over the flare of anger and a muscle tugged in his cheek.
Hastily she backed away, down the aisle, moving into one of the pews so as to put the strength of the wood between him and her. She felt better that way. He’d never, ever hurt her physically but the emotional anguish he’d put her through had been hard enough to bear. Not that any wood, however strong and solid, was any sort of protection against a broken heart.
‘So you were in such a rush to become a lady that you didn’t care whether this marriage was lawful or not also?’ Guido questioned stiffly. ‘You really should not be so careless about the legalities of your weddings, carissima. Now you’ve lost the title you aimed for…’
‘And the husband I wanted!’
That brought him up sharp. For a moment something new flared in those deep-set eyes. Something that wasn’t anger but something darker and more dangerous even than his fury had been.
‘So I’m supposed to believe that the man himself was what you really wanted in all this? You aren’t going to claim that you loved him, are you?’
Amber’s hands folded over the edge of the pew back, holding on tight until her knuckles showed white under her stretched skin. She knew she was on very dangerous ground here. One false step and she could give herself away completely, putting herself right into her tormentor’s hands and giving him the perfect set of weapons to torture her with.
‘Did you even consider that before you marched in here and broke up my life?’ she demanded, her harsh, tight voice echoing around the high, arching roof of the church. ‘Did it make you pause to think about what you were doing?’
‘Why does that matter?’ Guido countered harshly. ‘Did you love him?’
Oh, how she wished she could say that yes, she loved Rafe. That she adored him. She longed to be able to fling her defiance right into his face but even as she opened her mouth the need for honesty caught her on the raw.
She hadn’t been marrying for love, she’d known that right from the start. But she had tried love once and it had blown up right in her face. She didn’t dare to risk that sort of bitter disillusionment all over again. So she was marrying for friendship—warm, gentle friendship. Without the savage bite of passion that had taken her heart and shattered it into a million irreparable
