Enemies at the Altar Read online

  ‘Gisele’s pregnant,’ she said. ‘She’s having twins.’

  ‘That’s wonderful news,’ he said. ‘You must be very happy for her.’

  ‘I am … It’s just …’ She bit her lip again and dropped her eyes from his.

  ‘Just what?’ he asked, cupping the side of her face to bring her gaze back in line with his.

  Her eyes shimmered for a moment but then she blinked and her gaze cleared. ‘Just as well you’re using protection,’ she said lightly as she slipped out of his hold. ‘Can you imagine the snotty nosed little brats we would make? If we had twins, I bet they’d fight like demons from the moment of conception. I’d probably get stretch marks from all the punches and kicks going on inside.’

  Andreas felt a primal tug deep and low in his groin. He pictured Sienna ripe with his seed, her body swelling as each week and month passed. He thought of two little baby girls with silver-blonde hair, or two little boys with jet-black hair, or one of each. He imagined seeing them born, holding them in his arms, loving and protecting and providing for them for as long as he drew breath.

  He put a brake on his thoughts like a speeding driver trying to avoid a crash.

  In a matter of months he would have everything sewn up the way he wanted it. He would have the chateau and Sienna would have her money. He didn’t need or want the complication of being tied forever with her. Their passion would burn out. Their marriage had come about for all the wrong reasons.

  He would not be a slave to lust.

  It would burn out.

  It had to burn out.

  ‘We should get back to the reception,’ he said. ‘Everyone will be wondering what’s happened to us.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IT WAS late by the time they got back to their room at the hotel. Sienna kicked off her shoes and tossed her wrap on to the bed. She felt tired and overwrought. Her emotions had been building to a crescendo all evening. Andreas’s brooding silence hadn’t helped. He had barely spoken a word to her during the remainder of the reception. He had danced with her but it had felt as if he were just going through the motions, just like their relationship.

  Their marriage was a lie.

  It was a farce compared to her sister’s. It made her feel like a fraud. It made her feel cheap and tainted. How could she have signed up for something so far from what she longed and yearned for?

  She couldn’t carry on like this, telling lie after lie after lie. How long before Andreas saw through it? How long before everyone saw through it? She would become an object of pity, just like her mother. She would be known as the woman not good enough, not beautiful enough or smart enough to hold her man.

  ‘I’m going out,’ Andreas said.

  Sienna frowned. ‘What? Now? It’s almost one in the morning.’

  ‘I feel like some air.’

  She shrugged as if she didn’t care either way. ‘Don’t expect me to wait up for you,’ she said, pulling the pins from her hair and tossing them on to the dressing table willy-nilly.

  A stiff silence passed.

  ‘I have to fly to Washington DC for a few days,’ he said. ‘I’ve organised for Franco to collect you in the morning.’

  ‘You don’t want me to come with you?’ she asked, meeting his gaze in the mirror.

  His expression was unreadable. ‘I’ll be busy with meetings,’ he said. ‘The businessman I’m doing a collection for wants me to meet a colleague of his.’

  Sienna loathed the feeling of being dismissed like a mistress who no longer held the same fascination and appeal. Was this how her mother had felt? Discarded? Betrayed? Unlovable? Worthless?

  Her heart contracted as she looked at Andreas’s stony expression. She was not important to him. How could she have let things get to this? She had betrayed every one of her values. He had used her to get what he wanted. He felt secure now she had succumbed to his seduction. After all, he had nothing to lose. If she left him now, he would still get what he wanted, what he had always wanted. He wanted a wretched old pile of bricks and mortar, not her. She had been a silly little fool to imagine otherwise.

  She kept her expression cool and collected. ‘Aren’t you worried about what people will think of us being in separate countries when we’ve only been married a month?’ she asked.

  ‘I have a business to run,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be distracted when I’m working on such a big contract.’

  ‘Fine,’ Sienna said, throwing him a casual look to cover the wrenching pain she was feeling inside. ‘I guess I’ll see you when I see you.’

  He didn’t answer but the door closing on his exit was answer enough.

  ‘What do you mean she’s not here?’ Andreas said when he got back to his villa in Tuscany a week later.

  Elena lifted her hands in a don’t-blame-me manner. ‘She told me to tell you it’s over,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t want to be married to you any more.’

  Andreas sucked in a furious breath. ‘When did she leave?’

  ‘The day after her sister’s wedding,’ Elena said. ‘I tried to talk her out of it but she was very stubborn about it. She’d made up her mind.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call me and tell me this days ago?’ he asked.

  ‘She made me promise.’

  ‘You are employed by me, not her,’ Andreas railed at her. ‘You should have informed me the minute she left.’

  Elena gave him an accusing look. ‘Maybe you should have called her every day like a loving husband would have done,’ she said. ‘Maybe then she wouldn’t have run away.’

  Andreas clawed a hand through his hair. ‘Where the hell is she?’ he asked.

  ‘She didn’t say where she was going,’ Elena said. ‘I don’t think she wants you to know. She left this for you.’ She handed him his mother’s ring.

  Andreas closed his fingers over the ring until it bit into his palm. He had thought he’d had the upper hand by distancing himself for a few days but Sienna had turned the tables on him. Didn’t she want the money? If she left him she would automatically default. She wouldn’t get a penny. A month ago that would have pleased him no end. Now, all he could think about was getting her to come back.

  He reached for his phone and rapid-dialled her but it went straight to voicemail. He shoved his phone back in his pocket and glared at Elena. ‘She must have left some clue as to where she was going,’ he said. ‘Did she take her passport?’

  ‘I think so,’ Elena said, sighing heavily. ‘Scraps is pining for her. He won’t eat. I’m worried about him.’

  Andreas gave a scornful grunt as he raked his fingers through his hair. ‘Shows how much she cares about him.’

  ‘She loves him,’ Elena said.

  ‘If she loved him she’d be here with him, not running off to God knows where,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe she doesn’t know if he loves her back,’ Elena said with a direct look.

  Andreas glowered at her. ‘Don’t you have work to do? Some cushions to straighten or some clothes to fold and iron.’

  ‘Sì, signor,’ she said, ‘but without Signora Ferrante here there is not much for me to do. She makes this place come alive, no?’

  Andreas went out to the barn but Scraps barely lifted his head off his paws. His woebegone eyes followed Andreas’s movements as he crouched down in front of him. ‘What’s this I hear about you not eating?’

  The dog let out a mournful little whine.

  ‘She won’t answer her phone,’ Andreas said, absently scratching behind the dog’s tattered ears. ‘I’ve left hundreds of messages. She’s doing it deliberately, you know. She wants me to beg her to come back. But I’m not going to do it. If she wants to default, then that’s her business. It’s not as if I’m going to lose out if she pulls the plug on our relationship. I still get the chateau. That’s all I ever wanted in the first place.’

  Scraps gave a low growl, his tawny eyes staring un-blinkingly at Andreas.

  Andreas pulled his hand away and exhaled heavily. ‘OK, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’m an idiot for lying to myself for so long.’ He sent his fingers through his hair and let out another sigh. ‘And you’d be right. I don’t care about the chateau. I don’t want to live there, not unless she’s with me. I don’t want to live here without her either. The place is so formal and … tidy.’ He coughed out a humourless laugh. ‘I hate the way she leaves her mess everywhere. Do you know she always leaves the lid off the toothpaste? It drives me crazy. But I’d give anything to have her with me driving me crazy right now. I don’t know where she is or who’s she’s with.’ His gut clenched in anguish and dread. ‘I don’t know if I can get her back. What am I supposed to do? Crawl on my belly and beg her to come back to me?’

  Scraps gave his threadbare tail a wag against the dusty floor, his eyes still staring wisely at Andreas.

  ‘You’re right,’ Andreas said, sighing heavily again. ‘I’m crazy about her. I’m never going to get her out of my system, am I? We’re not talking about lust here. It’s never been about lust, has it? What was I thinking?

  She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I love her.’

  He frowned and gave his head a little shake. ‘I can’t believe I just said that. I don’t think I’ve told anyone that before, apart from my mother, which is totally different. I love her.’

  He cautiously reached out to ruffle the dog’s ears again. ‘What if she doesn’t love me?’ he asked. ‘I’m going to look the biggest fool if I gush out what I feel and she just laughs in my face.’

  Scraps let out a long doggy sigh and settled his head back down on his paws.

  ‘I’m not going to tell her over the phone or in a text message,’ Andreas said with steely determination. ‘I’m going to track her down and talk to her face to face. She thinks she can outsmart me but she’s wrong.’

  He got to his feet and dusted off his hands. ‘If you want to come inside I guess I could make an exception just this once,’ he said. ‘But no jumping up on the sofas and you are absolutely banned from any of the beds, do you understand?’

  The little cottage by the sea on South Harris in Scotland was a perfect hideaway. The long, lonely windswept beaches on the island gave Sienna plenty of time to walk and think about her future—her lonely future without Andreas. She had kept her phone on for the first week, hoping he would call or at least text, but he had cut her loose like the trophy wife he had fashioned her into and, even more galling, she had allowed it to happen.

  But now was different.

  Now it was time for her to rebuild her life, a life that did not include him, a life without love and passion and fulfilment—a wretchedly lonely, miserable life, the opposite of the one her twin sister was living. How could two people so identical in looks have such disparate lives?

  She had phoned Gisele, so as to avoid causing her sister any undue worry but she had refused to say where she was. She knew Gisele would immediately tell Andreas. She wasn’t ready to talk to him yet. As far as she was concerned, he’d had his chance and he had blown it.

  Sienna had since turned her phone off, only checking it once a day for messages. The second week there were literally hundreds of texts and missed calls from him each day. The messages had progressed from calm and polite pleas to get her to call him, to shouting tirades interspersed with colourful obscenities.

  She deleted them all, only wishing she could delete all her memories of him so easily.

  She lay awake at night as the wind howled against the shore, whipping up the waves like galloping white horses. She spent hours thinking of Andreas, of his touch, the way his hands felt against her skin, the way his mouth felt against hers, the way his body felt as it claimed hers.

  Sienna had been on the island almost a fortnight without once setting eye on a newspaper. She had avoided reading anything on the web browser on her phone as well. She didn’t want to know what the press were saying about her and Andreas. But while she was walking on Scarista beach that morning she had briefly turned on her phone and found a message from Gisele alerting her to an article that had come out a day or two before regarding the sex tape scandal. Apparently the man involved had given an exclusive interview to a journalist. He had seen the news of Gisele and Emilio’s wedding and had obviously thought he could cash in on the situation by giving a no holds barred tell-all interview.

  Sienna read the interview with a churning feeling in her stomach. It brought it all back: the shame and disgust she felt at herself. The way the man told it, she had acted like a drunken slut.

  Despair clawed at her chest as she stood on the windswept beach. Was there anywhere she could run, far enough away to hide from this? Was this never going to go away?

  But then she pressed on the second link Gisele had sent her.

  French-Italian tycoon Andreas Ferrante is pressing charges of slander against Eric Hogan over Mr Hogan’s claim that he slept with Mr Ferrante’s wife Sienna Baker in London two and a half years ago. The case is likely to be long drawn-out and expensive but Andreas Ferrante says he will not stop until his wife’s name is cleared. Police are making further enquiries regarding a possible drink spiking charge on Mr Hogan following the recent revelations of witnesses.

  Sienna’s heart was beating so fast she could barely breathe. She read the article again, her eyes prickling with tears.

  Andreas had stood up for her.

  He had publicly defended her. He was fighting her battle for her, not even counting the cost in money, let alone the cost to his fiercely guarded privacy.

  Sienna was heading back to the cottage to pack when a tall, imposing figure came striding towards her. She knew immediately who it was. She felt a shiver run over her flesh as soon as he came into view. The wild wind was whipping at his sooty black hair and his unshaven face looked as thunderous as the brooding sky above.

  ‘You’d better have a damn good reason for not returning any of my calls,’ he ground out. ‘Do you have any idea of the trouble you’ve caused? I’ve spent tens of thousands of euros looking high and low for you. Why couldn’t you have just told me? Just one phone call or text. God damn it, was that so hard?’

  Sienna just stood there looking up at him. Her gaze drank in his features.

  He had stood up for her.

  ‘OK, so give me the silent treatment; see if I care,’ he said. He shoved his windswept hair back with one of his hands. ‘Just answer me one thing. Why did you run away like that?’

  ‘How did you find me?’ she asked.

  ‘Gisele told me she thought she heard bagpipes in the background when you called her,’ he said. ‘That narrowed it down considerably. The rest I left up to a private investigator. Do you have any idea of what the press have been saying?’

  Sienna peeled a strand of hair away from her mouth. ‘I haven’t seen anything in the press until this morning,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about the embarrassment I’ve caused you.’

  ‘I’m not talking about that,’ he said, glaring at her fiercely. ‘I’ve taken care of that sleaze ball. He won’t be saying anything about you ever again. How could you think I wouldn’t be out of my mind with worry over you? Do you realise what a fool you made me look in front of my staff when I turned up there at the villa and you’d already been gone a week?’

  ‘I’m sorry but I didn’t want you to talk me out of it,’ Sienna said. ‘Anyway, you could have called me. I was giving you a dose of your own medicine.’

  ‘You realise you won’t get a penny because of this,’ he said still glowering at her. ‘You defaulted. I get everything.’

  ‘You’ve always had everything, Andreas,’ she said. ‘The irony is I’ve spent most of my life envying rich people like you. I wanted it all: the nice houses and the designer clothes, the jewellery and the fabulous holidays. I thought they would make me happy, that they would make me feel a sense of belonging. But I’ve come to realise possessions and prestige can never make up for what’s most important in life. They’re nothing when you don’t have love.’

  His eyes narrowed in anger. ‘You think I don’t love you?’ he said, shouting above the howling wind. ‘I’ve just spent the last fortnight without proper sleep or food. God knows what’s happened to my business because I haven’t put a foot inside my office or my workshop. And don’t get me started on that contract I just forfeited. I’ve been too busy trying to track you down to do a thing about it. How dare you stand there accusing me of not loving you?’

  Sienna swept her tongue over her wind-chapped lips as her heart went pitter-pat. ‘You love me?’ she said. ‘You’re not just saying it to save face and get me to come back?’

  ‘I’m saying it because it’s true, damn it!’ he said. ‘I love your madcap sense of humour. I love your mess. I love the way you tamed a flea-bitten mongrel dog that no one else wanted. I love your smile. I love your laugh. I love your cheekiness. I love the way you nearly always have a spark of mischief in your eyes. I love the way you feel in my arms. I love the way you say one thing and mean the total opposite.’ He drew in a breath and released it in a whoosh before he added, ‘Have I left anything out?’

  Sienna gave him a sheepish smile. ‘I think you’ve just about covered it,’ she said.

  He let out a laugh and grabbed her, hugging her close to his chest, breathing in the salty sea air that had clung to her hair. ‘You little minx,’ he said. ‘I love you so much it hurts.’

  She eased back to look up at him. ‘Where does it hurt?’

  ‘Here,’ he said, placing one of her hands over his heart.

  Sienna blinked back tears. ‘I’ve been so lonely and sad since Gisele and Emilio’s wedding. I couldn’t live the lie any more. I didn’t think it was right. Your father was wrong to set things up the way he did. It was cruel and manipulative.’

  ‘I know, ma petite,’ he said, gently cupping her face so he could stroke her cheeks with his thumbs. ‘I felt like that too. Seeing the love Emilio has for your sister unnerved me. All of my life I have avoided emotional commitment. I’ve always set the agenda in my relationships. But with you it was different. I couldn’t control what I felt. I refused to confront it. I don’t think I really understood how much I loved you until I saw the way Scraps behaved after you left.’

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