Far From Perfect (13 page)

No!
Per dio
, no!

This was not possible. Would never be. He could never allow himself the luxury. For him, such marital bliss would never be a reality, because of his nature, and the legacy of domestic strife that bore down upon him.

More shaken than he wanted to admit, he glanced sideways, at Anna, and his sense of horror was compounded.

She too was staring dreamily at the house, something soft and yearning in her eyes telling him more surely than words that she was seeing the same vision, or her version of it. She even seemed about to poke her face through the tall, wrought iron gate for a better look.

About to speak, Nick suddenly experienced an even more disturbing revelation.

What if he wasn’t in this beguiling domestic scene with her? What if it was Martin Johnson instead?

Clamping his jaw, Nick bit back a spontaneous cry of outrage and felt his fists curl. Employing a supreme effort of will, he imperceptibly relaxed his almost painfully tense muscles.

What good did this fury he felt do him? He couldn’t offer Anna the beautiful, golden future he sensed they were both seeing. So why should she not anticipate it with another man? She was entitled to.

But not with Johnson. Never with that man. He simply wasn’t good enough for her.

“It’s for sale,” he heard Anna murmur, as if from a great distance, and following her eye-line, he saw the discreet estate agent’s board planted in a corner of the garden.

“So it is,” he drawled, instantly hating the hard, sardonic note in his own voice. “Were you thinking that Johnson might buy it for you as your future family home? A nest in which to raise a clutch of little solicitors, perhaps?”

Anna leapt away from him as if he’d struck her.

“Don’t be ludicrous, Nick,” she cried, her eyes flashing emerald sparks at him, the perfect curves of her face as set and hard as his were. “I was merely making an observation. And anyway, a house like this, in a location like this, is probably worth millions. Neither Martin, nor I could ever afford it.”

The sound of the other man’s name on her lips was like a poker in the gut to Nick. He felt the demon of his anger raging against its bonds inside him. The irrational possessiveness fulminated and surged.

“And sadly, I don’t think your father could bankroll you either, could he?”

Why, oh why was he saying these things?

“Perhaps I should buy the house for the two of you?” he added, “As a gift…a recompense…for services rendered?”

“That’s it! I’ve had enough!”

Turning on her heel, Anna strode away from him, back the way they’d come, her own fury making a rigid line of her straight, elegant spine. “Take me home immediately. I’ll phone Martin and I’ll explain everything to him privately,” she flung over her shoulder, “I’m not subjecting him to you when you persist in behaving like a pig.”

Raw shame washed through Nick. She was right. He was behaving like a boor and an irrational idiot. And yet still the thought of her with Johnson lay a red mist across his vision.

“What, would you make him look a fool? Stood up at expensive restaurant?”

He aimed the words at her beautiful back. “Surely, if you hold him in such high regard, you’ll at least have the decency to turn up now and save his feelings?”

Anna spun round again, her eyes still mutinous and her rosy mouth a thin, angry line. In a brief, telling gesture, she rubbed a fingertip against her temple, then drew a deep breath as if fighting a momentary pain.

Dannazione
! Had he made her ill now?

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Of course I’ll take you home,” he said quietly. He was making a disaster of this evening, and they’d not even reached their destination. He’d take Anna home, and he’d keep his mouth shut until he had her safely at her door.

Moving towards her, he reached to take her arm, but still she bristled away from him. The manifest revulsion in the way she looked at him was like a dagger through his heart.

“No,” she shot at him, beautiful green eyes acquiring a steely, determined cast, “We’ll go to the restaurant. We’ll meet Martin. And we’ll get this dismal business over with.”

With one last, baleful glance at him, she began walking back to the Vampiro again. Not turning, she continued to speak, “But just remember, Nick. I’m doing this for Carlo, and Carlo alone. None of it’s for you.”

I believe you
, thought Nick as his long stride caught him up to her.
I believe you
.

But why do I keep wishing things were different? Why do I keep wishing that my dream of the pink house was real?

Chapter Six

The evening had begun well. Astonishingly well. But with hindsight, Anna knew it could never have lasted.

Lying in the luxurious, darkened room, she pressed the cool pack against the stabbing ache in her head and tried to stop herself wondering what was happening now.

Had Martin accepted her decision and left with good grace? Or had he decided to take issue with Nick out in the car park or wherever?

A disturbing image of an agitated hyena yipping around a lordly and disdainful King of the Jungle made her smile, despite its inherent awfulness. Alas, the smile only made her head hurt more, and the following frown only piled on the agony throbbing behind her temple.

Conversation had flowed amenably at first, mainly thanks to the Vampiro. Their arrival in the fabulous car had caused a stir throughout the entire hotel, it seemed, and despite the fact he drove a fairly average saloon himself, Martin had seemed entranced by the beautiful supercar. He’d come out into the car park to admire it, and he and Nick had seemed to get on quite amenably as they discussed the car’s advanced features. While Anna waited with bated breath, wondering if Nick would suddenly turn the talk a different way.

It was only when they’d returned to the restaurant, however, and been shown to their table, that the atmosphere had begun to prickle and the conversation had stalled. Nick’s frown had been full of concern when she’d politely refused wine in favor of water, but a moment later he’d launched directly into his proposal.

And poor Martin’s jaw had literally dropped.

“I’m sorry, Martin,” murmured Anna, shifting painfully in an attempt to find a cooler area of the crisp cotton pillowcase, “You didn’t stand a chance. You never did.”

He’d tried hard enough—she had to give him that. Her now former boyfriend had done his utmost to put on a good showing against his wealthier more cosmopolitan rival. Martin had turned up in a smart, if undistinguished suit, in a clear attempt not to be outdone in the style stakes, but he’d been instantly eclipsed by Nick’s effortless, bred-in-the-bone Italian elegance.

And in the ensuing war of words that followed Nick’s unadorned announcement of his intentions, Martin’s usual solicitor’s fluency and his cogent way of putting things had seemed to disintegrate in the face of Nick’s low, assured tones. And his supreme, patent certainty that he was going to get exactly what he wanted. As he always did.

“But this is crazy!” Martin’s voice had shot up in pitch and he’d nervously crumpled the napkin he’d been in the act of unfolding, “Surely you’re not seriously considering this, are you, Anna? What on earth will my mother say?”

I don’t care what your mother says! It’s what
you
think…and feel.

Controlling her urge to protest, Anna tried to explain her debt of gratitude to Carlo for his many years of kindness. Not an easy task in the face of Martin’s confused and astonished interruptions and Nick’s silent, intense watchfulness.

Oh yes, it’s all right for you! You calmly fling a lighted match into a powder keg, then sit back to enjoy the explosion.

Eventually, after several minutes of to-ing and fro-ing between Anna and Martin, Nick finally inserted a comment.

“But it’s merely going to be a performance. For my father’s benefit.”

His tone was soft and silky. “Call it an engagement of convenience, if you will. Nothing more than an arrangement between two old friends. There’s no question of it being anything more intimate.”

Oh that’s great! Just great!
raged Anna silently, wincing from a pulse of pain behind her left eye, the unmistakable harbinger of a full-on migraine.
If you hadn’t mentioned it, it might never have entered Martin’s head. But now it’s the only thing he’ll be able to think of.

Which it clearly now was.

“I should jolly well think not!”

Martin was on his feet, his usual mild-mannered demeanor a thing of the past, and his face red with anger and suspicion.

Anna glanced from him towards Nick, and for a split second she caught a hint of devilish triumph in those shimmering blue eyes.

She wanted to slap him. Hard.

And the glint was still there as he quietly excused himself, offering them a few moments of privacy for their discussions while he had a word with the hotel owner, an old friend of his.

He’d done it on purpose; Anna had no doubt of that. He wanted to split her and Martin up for real, and this was the sure-fire way to do it.

And he’d succeeded.

Anna sighed into the pillow, gripped by the migraine that had developed with alarming rapidity, accelerated by the increasingly acrimonious conversation over their uneaten, untouched food. Despite her best efforts to clarify a situation that couldn’t be less clear if she’d actively
tried
to complicate it, Martin had grown more and more hostile, and in all honesty Anna couldn’t blame him.

How would she have reacted in his place? Just as angrily, no doubt.

When he’d finally laid down his ultimatum, it had come as a relief. The manifestation of something she’d already been contemplating, nay, planning to do long before she’d opened the door just yesterday evening and let Niccolo Lisitano step back into her life…and her heart.

“If you must go through with this ridiculous charade, I really don’t think we ought to go on seeing each other, Anna,” Martin had intoned.

He’d sounded aggrieved and deflated, yet it seemed he’d given in after only the first skirmish. Perversely, Anna knew if he’d stuck to his guns and fought for her, something might have been salvaged between them. “I can’t expose Mother to the possible embarrassment. And I have my own reputation to consider.”

A thought crystallized in her mind with such piercing clarity that it almost seemed like a gouging new manifestation of her headache. She groaned, low and soft, as she examined it.

If the positions had been reversed, Nick
would
have fought for her and crushed all opposition. The only reason she’d ever started seeing Martin—and men like him—was because in every way that mattered he was the antithesis of Nick.

For wildly differing reasons, she knew that neither arrogant, glamorous Nick nor quiet, self-effacing Martin were the perfect man for any woman. But in her heart, she knew which one she’d follow to the ends of the earth and beyond.

As she turned restlessly against the pillow, even that very slight movement ratcheted up the pain level appallingly. It became a hot haze in her brain, consuming her last ounce of energy and her every scrap of consciousness.

Yet as she surrendered to it, she accepted she’d made the right decision.

Nick strode along the corridor almost at a run, anxious to get back to the suite he’d secured for Anna as soon as he’d realized what was the matter with her.

His friend Gian-Baptiste had been glad to oblige, even though La Girandole was virtually fully booked for the night. They were lucky that just one particular suite was available.

Pausing with his hand on the doorknob, Nick ran his hand through his hair, wondering if he should have thrown as much money as was needed at the problem and secured himself separate accommodation.

On balance, he decided it was better not to. Anna might object violently to sharing a suite with him once she recovered from her migraine, but for the moment, she was ill and he couldn’t leave her to suffer alone for a second longer than was necessary. The image of her chalk-white face and the lines of pain etched across her beautiful features as he’d scooped her up and carried her bodily from the restaurant were seared into his memory.

He let himself into the room with the absolute minimum of noise, and then padded through the elegant sitting room, and into the darkened bedroom beyond. The irony of where he was brought a twisted smile to his lips. Though the circumstances were far from romantic, he and his new “fiancée” were now lodged in La Girondole’s honeymoon suite.

All he could see of Anna was a small mound beneath luxuriously embroidered ivory counterpane of the huge, canopied four-poster bed. She had the bedclothes over her head, presumably to keep out every scrap of agonizing light, and as soundlessly as he could, Nick pushed the door behind him closed in order to exclude the illumination of the sitting room.

Coming closer, he felt frustrated in a way that was totally alien to him. One of his greatest strengths was his ability to solve problems, but in this situation what could he really do to help Anna?

How could he take away the pain? If he so much as sat on the edge of the bed and tried to speak to her, the movement and the sound would only exacerbate her suffering. He’d never felt powerless before in his life, and he didn’t like the feeling. He suddenly wished with all his heart that he could simply assume the accursed migraine in her place.

A tiny sound, somewhere between a sigh and moan, issued from beneath the bedclothes, and at the same time there was movement beneath them. Plucking at the knees of his perfectly tailored trousers, Nick sank down to a kneeling position beside the bed and held his breath, wondering if a few reassuring words would help…or be rejected.

Slowly, Anna’s ashen face emerged from beneath the ivory silk, looking like an even paler oval in the faint veil of moonlight seeping in through the curtains. Her green eyes were dark and clouded, her shining hair ruffled and her soft mouth pinched with pain. With obvious effort, she frowned for a second, and then the ghost of a smile formed on her lips.

Her voice, when she managed to speak, was thin and reedy, but Nick still detected a distinct mocking edge that irrationally cheered him.