Marrying the Italian: The Marcolini Blackmail Marriage / The Valtieri Marriage Deal / The Italian Doctor's Bride. Caroline Anderson
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a team of three surgeons: a neurosurgeon, a facial maxillary surgeon and a plastic surgeon. In this case it had been Antonio. The team had operated for twelve hours to give the little girl a chance at a normal life, without shame or embarrassment over her unusual appearance. The before and after photographs were truly amazing. So too were the happy smiles of the child’s parents and the little girl herself.
Once Antonio had finished his presentation he took some questions from the floor before returning to the table to thunderous applause.
The band began to play again and Antonio reached for Claire’s hand. ‘Let’s have one more dance before we go home,’ he suggested.
Claire moved into his arms without demur, her own arms going around his neck as his went around her back, holding her in an intimate embrace that perfectly matched the slow rhythm of the ballad being played.
‘I thought you handled Janine Brian’s little slip very graciously,’ Antonio commented after a moment or two.
She looked up at him with a pained expression. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘But you’re right in saying we can’t expect people to avoid the subject of babies all the time. I have friends with little ones, and I have taught myself to enjoy visiting them, even babysitting them without envy.’
He looked down at her for a beat or two. ‘That is very brave of you, Claire.’
She gave him another little grimace before she lowered her gaze to stare at his bow tie. ‘Not really…There are days when it’s very hard…you know…thinking about her…’
Antonio felt the bone-grinding ache of grief work its way through him; it often caught him off guard—more lately than ever. Being with Claire made him realise how much losing a child affected both parents, for years if not for ever. The mother bore the brunt of it, having carried the baby in her womb, not to mention having the disruption of her hormones during and after the delivery. But the father felt loss too, even if it wasn’t always as obvious as the mother’s. Certainly the father hadn’t carried the child, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel the devastation of having failed as a first-time father.
Antonio had grown up with an understanding of the traditional role of husband and father as being there to protect his wife and children. He might have gone into marriage a little ahead of schedule, due to the circumstances of Claire’s accidental pregnancy, but when their baby had died it had cut at the very heart of him. He had felt so helpless, swamped with grief, but unable to express it for the mammoth weight of guilt that had come down on top of it.
He wondered if Claire knew how much he blamed himself, how he agonised over the ‘what if’ questions that plagued him in the dark hours of the night. He still had nightmares about arriving at the delivery suite to find her holding their stillborn baby in her arms. A part of him had shut down at that point, and try as he might he had never been able to turn it back on. He felt as if he had fallen into a deep, dark and silent well of despair, locked in a cycle of grief and guilt that to this day he carried like an ill-fitting harness upon his shoulders.
The music changed tempo, and even though she didn’t say a word Antonio felt Claire’s reluctance to stay on the dance floor with him. He could feel it in her body, the way she stiffened when he drew her close. Whether she was fighting him or fighting herself was something he had not yet decided. But then he had the rest of the night to do so, and do so he would.
He felt a rush of blood in his groin at the thought of sinking into her slick warmth again. The tight cocoon of her body had delighted him like no other. It made his skin come alive with sensation thinking about her hands skating over him the way they’d used to, tentatively, shyly, and then boldly once her confidence with him had grown. The feel of her soft mouth sucking on him that first time had been unbelievable. He had felt as if the top of his head was going to come off, so powerful had been his response. He wanted to feel it all again, every single bit of it—her touch, her taste, the tightness of her that made his body tingle for hours afterwards.
‘Time to go home?’ he asked as he linked his fingers with hers.
Her cheeks developed a hint of a blush. ‘Yes…if you like…’ she said, her gaze falling away from his.
Antonio led her back to the table, from where, after a few words of farewell to the other guests, he escorted her out to the waiting limousine. It would take them back to his hotel, where she would have to share his bed in his arms or spend the night alone on the sofa.
It would be interesting to see which she chose.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS a mostly silent trip on the way back to the hotel.
Antonio looked at Claire several times on the way, but each time she had her gaze averted, and her fingers were restless as they toyed with the catch of her evening purse.
‘Do I unsettle you so much, cara?’ he asked, as the car purred to a smooth halt outside the hotel.
She turned her gaze on him, a shadow of uncertainty shining in their ocean-blue and green depths. ‘A little, I guess,’ she confessed as he helped her out of the car.
Antonio led her into the hotel, his hand at her elbow, his stride matching her shorter one. He pressed the call button for the lift, and as he waited for it to come turned to look at her. ‘I told you, Claire, we will not resume a physical relationship until we are both ready. I am not going to force myself on you. You can be absolutely sure of that.’
She rolled her lips together as she lifted and then dropped her gaze again. ‘I’m not sure what I want…that’s the problem…I feel confused right now…’
He tipped up her chin with the end of his index finger. ‘I want you,’ he said. ‘I think you know that. That is something that has not changed in the last five years.’
‘But is this right…what we’re doing?’ she asked, the tip of her tongue sneaking out to sweep over her lips. ‘It seems to me we’re back together for all the wrong reasons.’
The lift came to a stop at Antonio’s penthouse floor, and he held the doors open with his forearm for Claire to move past.
He swiped his key and led her into the suite, closing the door behind him. ‘We have a past, Claire,’ he said, securing her gaze with his. ‘We have to deal with it one way or the other.’
She bit her bottom lip, her throat moving up and down over a little swallow. ‘But is this the right way?’ she asked. ‘What if we make more problems than we’ve got now?’
‘Like what?’ he asked, pulling at his bow tie.
She gnawed at her lip again, releasing it after a second or two to say, ‘I don’t know…it’s just I don’t want any misunderstandings to develop between us.’
He tossed his bow tie and his jacket on the nearest sofa. ‘The whole point of this exercise is to see if what we started out with is still there, hidden under the sediment of our separation,’ he said heavily. ‘I do not want to go through the messy process of a divorce only to take the same unresolved issues to another relationship.’
Claire felt her heart clamp with pain. ‘So this arrangement you’ve orchestrated between us is basically an experiment?’ she asked, frowning at him.
He held her look for a moment before he blew out a sigh. ‘I want to get on with my life, Claire. You need to get on with yours. Neither of us can do that until we work through this.’
She pulled herself upright and faced him squarely. ‘So what you’re really saying is you need to have a three-month affair with me to see if there is anything worth picking over before you move on to the next woman you want to get involved with. Is that it?’
He gave her a brooding look. ‘No, that is not it at all.’
Claire felt as if her hopes and dreams were about to be shattered all over again. Would she ever be anything more than a fill-in for him? Was it too much to ask him to care something for her?