The Chatsfield: Series 2. Кейт Хьюит
when she said with clear relief, ‘The groom has arrived. You should take your places.’
Keelin could feel the colour leach from her face. No. This isn’t how it was meant to go. She’d deliberately made sure everyone but Gianni was aware of the location and earlier time change. And right about when everyone would be feeling sorry for the jilted bride, he’d be realising far too late what she’d done. Too late to do anything but appear to have stood her up.
But he was here.
She was barely aware of her father taking her arm in a firm grip and saying, ‘About time. I knew he wouldn’t bail.’
Keelin was in too much shock to see the colour return to her father’s face. The Wedding March was playing, the guests had gone quiet. Someone pulled her veil over her face and pushed a bouquet into her hands. And then the door opened and her father propelled her forward.
* * *
Gianni felt Keelin arrive alongside him in front of the registrar for this civil ceremony. He was still too angry to look at her but he turned his head eventually and his eyes widened at the sight of her. A shot of lust went straight to his groin.
He didn’t know why he should have expected her to be wearing the elegant wedding dress he’d picked out, but he still wasn’t prepared to see her in a tight lace sheath of a dress that ended somewhere around her upper thighs, displaying those long bare legs to perfection.
Sheer sleeves and a lace neckline above the bodice was almost laughingly demure when every provocative curve of her body was lovingly outlined by the material.
Her hair was down in sleek red waves and a short veil covered her face but he could see through the gauzy material that she was pale and looking straight ahead. Something caught the corner of his eye and he looked down to see her hands in a white-knuckle grip around the bouquet, fingers trembling ever so slightly.
Gianni recognised that she was obviously in shock that he’d thwarted her plans, so with a quick nod to the celebrant he urged him on, knowing he needed to take advantage of this moment. He ruthlessly drove down any concerns about the evident lengths Keelin had gone to to signal her reluctance for this union. He’d narrowly averted a PR disaster but he was here now and he would deal with his errant wife afterwards.
* * *
Keelin was walking back down the aisle, her mouth still tingling from Gianni’s hard kiss with her hand tucked firmly in his arm, before she seemed to come out of the slightly nightmarish paralysis that had gripped her ever since she’d realised she hadn’t succeeded in derailing the wedding.
Everyone was clapping as they walked into a lavishly laid-out ballroom for the wedding reception/lunch. But Gianni veered away from the waiting staff and guests, saying curtly, ‘Give us a minute please,’ and took Keelin’s hand, all but dragging her over to a doorway which led into a little anteroom.
He pushed her in ahead of him none too gently and came in behind her, shutting the door. Keelin turned to face him, legs wobbly from shock, and a delayed surge of adrenalin. Had she really just repeated vows to this man? And signed a register? Like some kind of pathetic automaton?
Gianni was livid, and somewhere it registered uncomfortably into Keelin’s mind that she felt a kick of excitement to see him after the few days of little or no contact.
His accent was thicker than she’d heard it before. ‘Did you imagine that right about now you’d be playing the part of the poor jilted bride crying crocodile tears while the local rags drooled over the salacious headlines?’
Keelin opened her mouth but clearly he didn’t expect an answer.
‘If your acting was going to be anything like the performance you subjected me to when we first met, then they would have seen through you in seconds,’ Gianni said with derision dripping from his voice.
Keelin’s own anger at having sleepwalked through her worst nightmare finally broke through the shock and she gesticulated wildly with the hand holding the bouquet. ‘Well, you didn’t! So I might just have got away with it.’
Gianni’s mouth tightened. ‘You won’t be walking anywhere now except out of this hotel with me, as man and wife.’
He reached for her free hand and held it up to face her so she could see the platinum band of her wedding ring glinting mockingly under the lights. And then he held up his own hand, displaying the matching ring. ‘See? For better or worse, mia moglie.’ My wife.
The sight of those wedding bands side by side gave Keelin a jolt and it wasn’t one entirely of disgust. She’d always vowed not to be like her mother, married to a man just for the sake of security. Yet here she was, married, and she couldn’t seem to drum up the appropriate sense of rage. Gianni was scrambling her responses. And her brain.
But before she could make sense of that, he cupped her jaw, a look of unmistakable determination on his face, voice rough. ‘The sooner we consummate this marriage and make it real in every sense, the better.’
Keelin immediately felt breathless, a rush of excitement zinging straight to the cluster of nerves between her legs. She gritted her jaw. No way was he going to have her flat on her back and exposing all of her vulnerabilities to his blistering gaze. She still hid so much from him, not least of which was the fact that she was innocent and had a very real fear of a man making her feel powerless, and threatened. ‘Dream on, Delucca. I will not be sharing your bed.’
He just smiled. Infuriatingly confident. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that.’
And then with dismayingly easy strength he slid his hand around to the back of her neck and tugged her towards him, his other arm going around her waist to draw her up against his rock-hard aroused body.
To find him so ready, in the midst of this heated exchange, made Keelin burn. A giddy rush of instant desire rose up in answer to his body’s question. She wanted him too, and the knowledge mocked her. Where was the fear now? She’d lie down all too easily for this man, that was the problem, in spite of what had happened to her.
‘I thought I told you already. I have strong moral views and this will be a marriage in name and practice.’
Keelin opened her mouth to object even if her body wouldn’t but the light was blocked and her mouth was covered by the firm contours of Gianni’s lips, moving expertly, enticing. For a betraying few seconds, her entire being cleaved to his, her mouth clinging, tongues tangling passionately. And then, somehow—she wasn’t sure how—just before she lost any ability to stay clear, she bit down on his lower lip, making him pull back abruptly with a crude curse.
When she saw the droplet of blood and his tongue snake out to touch it her insides tightened with remorse. If he knew how innocent she really was, he would laugh his head off.
‘I meant it, Gianni.’ She felt shaky, and wasn’t sure what she really meant any more.
He licked away the blood, his eyes dark. And she found it hard to focus, or remember why she’d bitten him.
‘And I meant it too, gattino. You shouldn’t display your claws unless you’re prepared for the consequences. As much as I’d like to prove you wrong here and now, I refuse to let you reduce us to such baseness with a hundred guests waiting on the other side of this door. Another time perhaps.’
He took her hand and opened the door and then stopped dead. Keelin couldn’t see past him because his big frame blocked the doorway, and then he rounded on her so fast her head spun. If she’d thought he’d looked livid before then, now his rage was infinitely worse.
‘And who the hell invited my father’s old cronies?’
Keelin’s blood drained south and she swallowed. It had felt like a risky thing to do when she’d thought of it but she’d ignored her conscience when she’d decided to make contact with Gianni’s mother before the wedding.
‘I, er, mentioned something to your mother about being sure to welcome anyone