The Wedding Night Debt. Amanda Cinelli
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have been...women in your life over the past year or so more than willing to jump into bed with you... Why does it matter whether I do or not?’
Dio didn’t answer immediately. He knew what she thought, that he spent his leisure time between the sheets with other women. There had been no need for her to vocalise it. He had seen it in her face on the few occasions when he had happened to be in conversation with another woman, an attractive woman. He had seen the flash of resentment and scorn which had been very quickly masked and he had seen no reason to put her straight.
He didn’t think that there was any need to put her straight now. Not only had he not slept with any other woman since his marriage, but he had not been tempted. There wasn’t a human being on earth who wasn’t driven to want what was out of reach and his wife had been steadfastly out of reach for the past eighteen months. During that period, he had not found his eyes straying to any of the women who had covertly made passes at him over the months, happy to overlook the fact that there was a wedding ring on his finger.
‘I just can’t,’ Lucy breathed into the silence. ‘I... I’m happy to leave with a small loan, until I find my feet.’
‘Find your feet doing what?’ Dio asked curiously.
‘I... I have one or two things up my sleeve...’
Dio’s eyes narrowed as hers shifted away. He was picking up the whiff of a secret and he wondered, again, what was going on behind his back. What had been going on behind his back? Had the mouse been playing while the cat had been away?
‘What things?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ she said evasively. ‘It’s just that... I think we’d both be happier if we brought this marriage to an end, and if I could borrow some money from you...’
‘Lucy, you would need a great deal of money to begin to have any life at all in London.’
‘Money which you are not at all prepared to lend me, even though you have my word that you would be repaid.’
‘Unless you’re planning a big job in the corporate world or have a rich backer,’ he said dryly, ‘then I can guarantee that any loan I make to you would not be paid back. At least, not while I have my own teeth and hair.’
‘How do you think it would look if your wife was caught with a begging bowl, looking for scraps from strangers?’
‘Now who’s being dramatic?’ When he had met her all those months ago, she had been blushing and shy but he had had glimpses of the humour and sharp intelligence behind the shyness. Over the past year and a half, as she had been called on to play the role of perfect wife and accomplished hostess, her self-confidence had grown in leaps and bounds.
He also knew that, whatever she felt for him, she wasn’t intimidated by him. Maybe that, too, was down to the strange configuration of their lives together. How could you be intimidated by someone you weren’t that interested in pleasing in the first place?
‘You will, naturally, walk away with slightly more than the clothes on your back,’ Dio admitted. ‘However, you would still find it a challenge to have a lifestyle that in any way could be labelled comfortable. Unless, of course, there’s a rich patron in the background. Is there?’
Asking the question was a sign of weakness but Dio couldn’t help himself.
She shrugged. ‘I’m not into rich men,’ she told him. ‘I’ve always known that and having been married to you has confirmed all my suspicions.’
‘How’s that?’ Frankly, he had never heard anything so hypocritical in his life before, but he decided to let it pass.
‘Like you said, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. I know you say that it’s the most important thing in life...’
‘I can’t remember saying that.’
‘More or less. You said it more or less. And I know you think that I wouldn’t be able to last a week unless I have more money than I can shake a stick at but—’
‘But you’re suddenly overcome with a desperate urge to prove me wrong...’ His gaze dropped to her full mouth. Something about the arrangement of her features had always turned him on. She wasn’t overtly sexy, just as she wasn’t overtly beautiful, but there was a whisper of something other-worldly about her that kept tugging his eyes back to her time and time again.
She had screwed up his clear-cut plans to buy her father’s company at a fire sale price before chucking him to his fate, which would undoubtedly have involved wolves tearing him to pieces. He had been charmed by that other-worldly something, had allowed it somehow to get to him, and he had tempered all his plans to accommodate the feeling.
She had, over time, become the itch he couldn’t scratch. He might have had her signed up to a water-tight pre-nup but, even so, he would never have seen her hit the streets without any financial wherewithal.
In this instance, though, he was determined to have that itch scratched and, if it meant holding her to ransom, then he was pretty happy to go down that road.
Especially now that he knew that the attraction was returned in full.
‘I’m just trying to tell you that there’s no rich anyone in the background.’ Did he imagine that she fooled around the way he did? ‘And there never will be anyone rich in my life again.’
‘How virtuous. Is it because of those free lunches not coming for free? Do you honestly think that hitching your life to a pauper would be fertile ground for happily united bliss? If so then you really need to drag your head out of the clouds and get back down to Planet Earth.’ He abandoned the decision to go back to work, not that he would have been able to concentrate. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry. If we’re going to continue this conversation, then I need to eat.’
‘You were about to leave,’ Lucy reminded him.
‘That was before I became intrigued with your radical new outlook on life.’
He began heading towards the kitchen and she followed helplessly in his wake.
This felt like a proper conversation and it was unsettling. There were no crowds of people around jostling for his attention. No important clients demanding polite small talk. And they weren’t exchanging pleasantries before heading off in opposite directions in any one of their grand houses.
She knew the layout of the kitchen well. On those occasions when they had entertained at home, she had had to supervise caterers and familiarise them with the ins and outs of the vast kitchen. When he was out of the country, as he often was, this was where she had her meals on her own, with the little telly on, or else the radio.
However, it was a bit different to see him here, in it.
For a few seconds, he stared around him, a man at sea trying to get his bearings.
‘Okay. Suggestions?’ He finally turned to her.
‘Suggestions about what?’
‘Thoughts on what I can eat.’
‘What were you planning to eat if you hadn’t found me here?’ Lucy asked jerkily, moving from doorway to kitchen table and then sitting awkwardly on one of the chairs while he continued to look at her in a way that made her blood sizzle, because she just had to see that mouth of his to recall his very passionate kiss. Her lips still felt stung and swollen.
‘I have two top chefs on speed dial,’ he drawled, amused when her mouth fell open. ‘They’re usually good at solving the “what to eat?” dilemma for me. Not that it’s a dilemma that occurs very often. If I’m on my own, I eat out. Saves hassle.’
‘Go ahead and order what you want from your two top chefs,’ Lucy told him. ‘Never mind me. I...er...’
‘Ate already?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘And