way he was feeling, before swinging away to the window and staring down at the hotel grounds, where the evening was now gathering in, turning the sunlight of the day into dusk.
‘Guido?’
The voice—her voice—came from behind him. From the bed where he had thought—hoped—that she lay asleep. His unwary movements must have disturbed her and she was awake, well before he was ready to speak to her.
‘Yes?’
He knew the single word was a bad-tempered snap but didn’t turn to see the effect it had on her. Instead, he kept his back to her, stared determinedly out of the window even though his eyes were so unfocused that he couldn’t see a thing in front of him.
‘What do we do now?’
What do we do now!
She had asked him the question that had been in his mind ever since he’d come round from the frenzy of desire that had scrambled his brain. The question that he’d wanted more time to come up with an answer to.
‘How the hell should I know?’ he growled at the window, not ready to turn round and face her.
‘What?’
His tone had been so low, so rough that she hadn’t caught it.
‘Guido, I wish you’d look…’
Her voice faded as he swung round, hands pushed deep into his trouser pockets, jaw clamped tight over the things that clamoured to be said—the things he wanted to say—didn’t want to say. The things he had no idea how to say.
‘I said, how the hell should I know?’
She was regretting asking him to look at her now, that much was obvious in the way that she flinched back against the pillows.
‘I’m sorry…’
Conscience made him say it, but he knew that it came out far too abruptly and only sounded perfunctory. The truth was that he wished he hadn’t turned round. That was another stupid mistake he’d made.
Just looking at her lying there on top of the rumpled covers of the bed had an effect that was practically sending his brain into meltdown. She was still wearing only the ridiculous corset thing, that and the suspender belt and stockings-and nothing else. Her hair was tumbled all around her face, her green eyes huger than ever in her pale face. Her lips looked swollen from the heat of his kisses and her beautiful breasts were bare and exposed, their rosy nipples still glowing from…
Porca miseria—no! He was not going to think about that! Couldn’t think about it or he would lose what little grip he had on his self-control. Already, just looking at her, he felt the brutal clutch of lust between his legs, and in his concealing pockets his hands clenched into hard, tight fists to stop himself from pulling them out and using them to touch her—to arouse her again—to make her melt underneath him…
‘No!’
His already savagely uneasy mood was made all the worse by the way that Amber was reacting. She was staring at him as if he had suddenly grown a pair of horns. And while her eyes held his, one slender hand was reaching down, trying to find an edge on the covers, to pull them back up around her, covering her nakedness.
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ he exploded. ‘Isn’t it a little late to go coy on me? It’s not as if there’s anything I haven’t seen and touched—and more—already. And we are man and wife!’
‘Not from any choice of mine!’
She was being deliberately provoking and he knew it. But he also had no idea of just how much truth was actually behind those words and, because he didn’t know, it only added to his already unbalanced mood.
‘That wasn’t what you said the first time—then you couldn’t get to the chapel fast enough. You couldn’t wait. It was “Oh, Guido…can we do it soon? Can we do it here—now—as quickly as possible?” So I arranged a bloody wedding—I married you! And what do you do? You walk out on me as soon as you can to be with someone else.’
‘I told you—I thought it was a fake marriage!’
She’d succeeded in pulling the sheet up now, wrapping it around her and tucking it tightly under her arms, over her breasts. But the truth was that it didn’t make matters any easier. If anything, it made them worse.
He could still see the soft pink of her skin through the fine linen, the pout of her breasts was emphasised by the way she’d clamped her arms around herself underneath them, pushing them upwards, and the swell of her hips was an undulating curve to one side of the bed. Imagination combined with memory to act on the gnawing ache in his groin, driving him almost to distraction.
‘And what the hell made you think that? Amber…’ he insisted dangerously when she didn’t answer and dropped her gaze to where her narrow fingers pleated the sheet in front of her over and over again. ‘I asked you a question.’
Just when he thought she wouldn’t answer and took a hasty step forward, almost on the edge of grabbing hold of her, shaking the response out of her, her chin came up and she met his searching gaze with unexpectedly cool defiance. Which was just as well as he knew that if he touched her now, for whatever reason, then he would never stop. It might begin in anger but as soon as he felt her skin underneath his hands then the mood would change. He would have to kiss her—and caress her—and then he wouldn’t be able to stop.
‘I heard you!’ she declared, bringing his thoughts back to reality with a rush that jarred his brain painfully. ‘You did what?’
‘I heard you paying him—paying the man who’d arranged it all. I heard you thanking him for—for getting everything sorted out so fast.’
‘Because that was how you wanted it!’ Guido put in in exasperation. ‘“Can we get married tomorrow?”’ he quoted her own words at her brutally. ‘“Just find a chapel here and—and do it.”’
But it was obvious that Amber hadn’t heard, or if she had then she was deliberately ignoring him.
‘You—were grateful to him, you said…’ she ploughed on, her face as stiff and cold as if it had been the face of a marble statue, the green eyes blank and opaque. ‘Grateful to him for getting this farce of an event organised.’
Hearing his own words parroted back to him had an effect like being doused in icy water, freezing Guido instantly. His tongue wouldn’t work, wouldn’t let him say anything, particularly when she went on, recalling the conversation with devastating accuracy.
‘You said you could only be thankful that this wasn’t your real wedding as it was nothing like the one you’d imagined you would have if you ever were to be married. Not that you ever wanted to be married.’
‘And that was the absolute truth. I never wanted to marry.’
It was only when the cold, controlled words fell into the silence that followed her words that Amber realised just how much—how desperately—she had been hoping for something else.
Had she really been stupid enough—weak enough—to dream that he might suddenly have recanted all he’d said to the man he was paying off that night in Las Vegas? Was she really that foolish?
