Sharon Kendrick - The Sheikh's Unwilling Wife

Only it isn’t over yet. Not by a long way.

She turned round and reached for the box of tissues she kept beneath the counter, for customers to wipe off their lipstick before they slithered into costly items of clothing, and dabbed furiously at the tears which couldn’t seem to stop welling at the corners of her eyes. She didn’t even register that the shop door had opened again, and it wasn’t until she heard a voice behind her that she whirled round and saw her boss standing there—an elegant blonde in her fifties, a concerned look on her face.

‘Teri!’ she gasped. ‘I was miles away. I didn’t—’

‘I know you didn’t. That was your husband, wasn’t it?’ guessed Teri perceptively. ‘The Italian Stallion currently wowing the female population of Lymingham?’

Alexa nodded, trying to compose herself. ‘Ex-husband,’ she corrected, swallowing back the tears.

‘I didn’t think you were divorced?’

‘We’re not—officially—but divorce is just a piece of paper,’ said Alexa fiercely. ‘Just like marriage.’

‘You think so?’ questioned Teri wryly, and then a note of curiosity crept into her voice. ‘How come we’ve never seen him before?’

Alexa tensed. ‘Because he lives in Naples and I live here, and we don’t have a shared life together.’

‘That’s not what I mean, Lex,’ said Teri gently. ‘He’s Paolo’s father, isn’t he?’

There was a pause. It was just as Alexa had thought—the resemblance was as unmissable as a dark cloud suddenly obscuring the sun. The boy was a carbon copy of the man. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

Teri’s eyes narrowed in a slowly dawning comprehension, and she raised the tips of her fingers to her mouth. ‘And he doesn’t know, does he?’

There was a terrible silence.

‘No.’

‘Oh, Alexa.’

But Alexa shook her head, remembering Giovanni’s bitter words. The torture of living with him once he’d decided she didn’t measure up to his exacting standards of what a woman should be. The accusation he had flung at her as she had left his house and his city and his life. And she remembered his immense wealth and determination. Oh, no. She would be a fool to start having some kind of euphoric recall about the man she had married—and an even bigger one to underestimate his power.

‘He would take him away from me if he knew,’ she said flatly. ‘And that’s the truth.’

‘But how…why?’ asked Teri in confusion. ‘I mean, how on earth has all this happened?’

How, indeed? Why did some people’s dreams get smashed to pieces while others merely faded away like the end of a film?

She could tell Teri that she had travelled to Naples and fallen in love with that vibrant, chaotic city which was flanked by Mount Vesuvius, the island of Capri and the crystal-blue waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Just as she had fallen in love with Giovanni—or thought she had. With his dark good looks and dangerous charm and his determination to possess her—yes, possess her—who could have resisted him?

Fresh out of university, and undecided about a future which had seemed to have a gaping hole in it since her mother had remarried and emigrated, Alexa had gone to Italy to brush up on a language at which she was already passably fluent.

It hadn’t taken her long to decide that Italian men were after one thing—easy, uncomplicated sex with women who were prepared to offer it to them on a plate. And Alexa hadn’t been. Her one foray into matters sensual had been enough to make her cautious—because the man to whom she had lost her virginity had had all the sensitivity of bull. But then she’d met Giovanni, and all her best intentions had flown out of the window.

Working in the air-conditioned splendour of the city’s biggest and plushest department store, Alexa had become a bit of a novelty. A foreigner who spoke cool and fluent Italian—and there certainly weren’t many English shop assistants in Naples! Customers had been charmed by her accent, and men in particular had come to purchase soft leather gloves from the pale-skinned creature with the green eyes and red-blonde hair and the pale, poised air. Sales had increased. She’d been given a raise and moved onto handbags.

And then one morning Giovanni had walked in, and everything had changed. In an instant she had become the victim of the feeling which had swamped over her—a feeling she’d never really believed in until it happened to her. But then no one ever did.

The world had stopped spinning, became suspended and frozen—and everything in it had blurred into insignificance except for the man who had sauntered in, seemingly oblivious of all the eyes upon him as he homed in on her like a moth to the flame. And Alexa had fallen in love.

She had not known that he owned the store, and several like it throughout Italy, or that he featured on all the Best-Dressed and Most Eligible lists—usually somewhere near the top. All she’d known was that he had eyes like ebony and skin which seemed especially dark—like sleek, polished wood—and that the suit he wore did little to conceal the hard, honed perfection of his body. Her mouth had dried, but she’d hidden it behind her polite shop assistant’s smile.

‘So, you are the woman who is causing all the excitement,’ he murmured.

Alexa glanced around the shop, taking deliberate note of all the women who were watching him, and she smiled as she answered him in Italian. ‘And you are the man who seems to be doing just the same!’

He was slightly taken back—as much by her retort as by her fluency. Giovanni had been told that she spoke his language, but he had not expected it to be so…so…perfect. ‘I have been told that you are very beautiful,’ he said huskily. ‘But words do not do you justice. I have never seen a mouth so begging to be kissed.’

Alexa’s eyes became shuttered. Because these were the kind of glib phrases she knew were meaningless. In the past weeks she had become a dab hand at spurning the advances of amorous men—though it had never seemed remotely difficult before. ‘Are you interested in buying a handbag, sir?’

Giovanni thought of a hundred ways he could react to her question. He could say yes, go through a flirtatious little pantomime of asking her advice and then buying the one she liked best—probably the most expensive one—and presenting it to her with a theatrical flourish before asking her out for dinner. But some cool reserve in the pale green eyes told him that this strategy would not get him the result he wanted. She was not flirting with him, he realised with a certain astonishment. Not flirting with him!

‘No, I am not interested in handbags. I am interested in showing you Naples.’

‘I have a map.’

‘And I have a car.’

Alexa glimmered him a smile. ‘I like to walk. But thank you all the same.’

‘I am used to getting my own way,’ he purred.

‘Then I have a feeling that this time you’re going to be disappointed.’

‘I am never disappointed when I set my heart on something.’

Alexa discovered that he was rich, and that he changed his women more often than his cars. She told herself that the best thing would be to avoid him—but Giovanni da Verrazzano laid siege to her, and the more she refused his invitations, the more ardent became his pursuit.

If she’d had been older and more experienced she would have realised that her unwillingness to go out with him was only increasing his determination, and his admiration. But she wasn’t doing it to play games. She was doing it because she was frightened of being hurt.

So that by the time she could refuse him no longer, and agreed to have a chaste lunch in a tiny restaurant scented with jasmine and overlooking the city, Giovanni had placed her on a pedestal as high as Vesuvius itself.