Once a Ferrara Wife... Read Online Free PDF

exploded.
    ‘I watch sport. I don’t need a gym when I’m here.’ Cristiano felt a flicker of exasperation. Their marriage was writhing in its death throes and they were discussing gym equipment?
    Something glinted around her neck and he frowned at the thin gold chain. The fact that she was wearing jewellery he didn’t recognise racked his tension levels up a few more notches and drove all thoughts from his brain. He hadn’t given her the chain, so where the hell had it come from?
    He pictured a pair of male hands fastening the necklace around her slender throat. Someone else touching her. Someone else persuading her to part with her secrets—
    It was something that hadn’t occurred to him before now.
    Only when he heard the splintering sound of glass onceramic tiles did he realise he’d dropped the glass he was holding.
    Eyeing him as she would an escaped tiger, Laurel backed away. ‘I’ll get a brush—’ ‘Leave it.’ ‘But—’
    ‘I said, leave it. The staff will sort it out. We need to go.
    I’m the host.’
    ‘Everyone will be speculating.’
    ‘They wouldn’t dare. At least, not publicly.’
    She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Sorry. I forgot you even manage to control people’s thoughts.’
    Suddenly Cristiano wished he hadn’t dropped the glass. God only knew he needed something to get him through the next few hours. The gold necklace glinted in the sunshine, taunting him. Following an impulse he didn’t want to examine too closely, he grabbed her left hand and lifted it. She made a sound in her throat and tugged but he simply tightened his grip, shocked by the emotion that tore through him when he saw her bare finger.
    ‘Where is your wedding ring?’
    ‘I don’t wear it. We’re no longer married.’
    ‘We’re married until we’re divorced and in Sicily that takes three years—’ Teeth gritted, tone thickened, he held tightly to her hand as she twisted her fingers and tried to free herself.
    ‘It’s a bit late to be possessive. Marriage is about more than a ring, Cristiano, and more than a piece of paper.’
    ‘You are telling
me
what constitutes marriage? You, who treated our marriage as something disposable?’ Outrage and fury mingled in a lethal cocktail. ‘Why remove your ring? Is there someone else?’
    ‘This weekend isn’t about us, it’s about your sister.’
    He’d wanted a denial.
    He’d wanted her to laugh and say,
Of course there isn’t anyone else—how could there be?
    He’d wanted her to admit that what they’d shared had been rare and special. Instead she was dismissing it. She’d consigned it to the dustbin of past mistakes.
    Driven by an emotion he didn’t understand, he grabbed her shoulders and yanked her against him. If he’d been more controlled he might have asked himself why he was trying to goad her, but he didn’t feel controlled. The fact that she seemed indifferent simply intensified his urge to draw a response from her.
    Caught off balance, she swayed against him. That brief whisper of contact was all it took. Thin blue silk proved an ineffectual barrier and the heat spread from him to her. He heard her breathing quicken and felt the powerful surge of desire as his body acknowledged her response. It confirmed what he already knew—that the chemistry between them was as powerful as ever.
Not indifferent,
he thought with grim satisfaction. It was the one emotion she couldn’t mask. In a moment he’d be kissing her and he knew from bitter experience that once they kissed that was it. There was no turning back from it and it seemed that even after her betrayal that hadn’t changed.
    ‘There is no one else.’ Her voice reflected all those painful emotions right back at him. ‘One lousy relationship in a lifetime is enough.’
    The words acted like a bucket of cold water over the flickering flames.
    Cristiano released her as suddenly as he’d grabbed her. If he’d felt like laughing he would have laughed at himself. All his life women had