Page 32 of His Royal Bride Replacement
The bathroom door closed and Rosy just covered her tear-wet face with her hands and swallowed back an angry, wounded sob while striving to maintain control.
Clover emerged from under the giant bed and gambolled round her feet, relieved the noisy drama was over, and Rosy got a grip on herself and went out through the balcony doors in the sitting room, down the handsome stone steps and took the dog out to play in the courtyard below. Well, now she knew where she stood with the guy she loved!
CHAPTER TEN
Alessio and Rosytalked quietly over dinner, excruciatingly polite to each other while the staff were around.
Over coffee, Rosy murmured, ‘So, we’re not allowed to talk about this.’
Alessio slung a scorching appraisal at her. ‘No, we’re not. The discussion is closed. I have said all I can say on the subject.’
‘We can still exchange viewsquietly.’
‘You can’t. You made me angry,’ Alessio condemned as though that were an actionable offence. ‘And as a rule, I do not get angry.’
‘You’re not accustomed to anyone arguing with you,’ Rosy almost whispered. ‘But I’m also sure I’m difficult enough to get you into the habit without it being a total disaster.’
‘Enough!’ Alessio sprang upright and tossed down his napkin. ‘I have work to do.’
Tears stung the backs of Rosy’s eyes because she had never seen Alessio so upset about anything and it was true that he didn’t normally get angry. It disturbed her that she had managed to get him so riled up.
‘Please…’ she murmured as he was striding out of the room.
Alessio froze as if she had paralysed him with that single word and then he slammed the door shut and spun round to lean back against it, looking very much as though she had trapped him. Tall, dark and trapped against his will. He breathed in deep and slow before focusing shimmering, stormy green eyes on her anxious face. ‘This is our world and I can’t change it for you. You will be a target every day of your life if youstaymarried to me. Someone will always have a rumour to spread through the media and there is absolutely nothing I can do to prevent it happening,’ he framed with savage bitterness, taking a couple of steps away from the door. ‘I can’t fully protect you from it—how do you thinkthatmakes me feel?’
And the last piece of the puzzle smoothly fell into place then for Rosy. He blamed himself for that article that had distressed and embarrassed her. He was a future king and people wanted to know everything about him and that truth had made her, as his partner, equally fascinating. When he went to the lengths of warning her that she would be a target every day she stayed married to him, it was an exchange that had gone too far though, she reasoned. Such an extreme sentiment plunged them into an unnecessary drama as helpful as a dark, suffocating cloud.
‘The pressure on us will be relentless because we must live in the public eye most of the time. I’ve been aware of the glare of the cameras from early childhood,’ Alessio bit out in raw continuation. ‘Everythingis criticised or commented on, every personal choice, every outfit, every tattoo, every piercing, every woman on my arm. It was at its worst in the past until I reached the stage of not caring any more. I didn’t care what was said about me and still don’t, but that’s no comfort now because Idocare very much about what is said aboutyou.’
‘I know and I’m very grateful for that!’ Rosy crossed the room and tried to haul him into her arms but he was standing there still, rigid with tension and deep emotion. ‘I didn’t understand how you felt, not properly, because nobody’s ever been interested in me in that line before, because I was soordinaryuntil I met you.’
Alessio gazed down at her, stormy green eyes glittering. ‘Extraordinary,’ he corrected thickly. ‘You were never ordinary. You’ve dealt with everything that was thrown at you but this one thing…the adverse publicity is ironically the most dangerous thing in the life we lead. I’ve known women and men as well who live for the scandalous headlines and the praise. But, if you want to keep your sanity, you have to stay away from it. Sometimes it’s nice, just as often it’s vicious.’
‘I understand better how you feel now.’ Rosy ran caressing fingers up below the silk lining of his jacket, smoothing over his taut cotton-clad torso, feeling the slight shudder as he reacted helplessly to her touch. ‘And I know what will make you feel even better.’
Alessio bent down and scooped her up in his arms. ‘Yes, I hit the perfect word…extraordinary.’
And then he was kissing her with the fierce hunger that made her kick off her shoes as he carted her willy-nilly through a series of interconnecting doors into their bedroom and he launched them both down onto the bed.
‘I like being wanted,’ she gasped.
‘I like being wanted too,piccola volpe.’
And the pathos of that admission turned her heart inside out. Alessio, who hadn’t been wanted as a child by parents who had needed him only as a means to an end. Alessio, hunted like a big-game trophy by calculating women, who sought his wealth or his title or his body, she thought, reflecting on Lucia, who had simply wanted to enjoy him the way Rosy herself did. Yes, that thought was a true leveller of pretention, reminding her that she was far from unique in Alessio’s life, maybe just another woman who wanted him, craved him like an addictive drug because, in reality, he was fantastic in bed. It didn’t matter that she loved him, she was probably one of a crowd who had loved him but got no further. In fact, she was simply that one lucky woman who had been in the right place at the right time when he’d needed her to become his bride. It was a humbling reflection, grounding her in the midst of the soaring passion that only he could induce in her.
‘What are you thinking so hard about?’ he demanded in the blissful aftermath of that fury of desire, long fingers stroking soothingly up and down her spine.
‘Nothing,’ she fibbed, running her fingers through his silky hair, holding him close, secure in appreciating now that he liked affection, liked being snuggled, liked all sorts of stuff that she had once assumed men didn’t like. Alessio Maretti was his own unique self, fashioned by his love-deprived background, and she was his exact opposite because, in spite of her mother’s desertion, she had rejoiced in endless love and affection from her sister and her husband. And maybe that was why she understood him better now, what drove him, what troubled him…
And it was a huge plus to learn that Alessio only lost his temper when he sawheras being under threat and at risk of distress. Hecaredabouther. Did he even realise what that little scene had told her? She didn’t think so. Alessio didn’t spend much time agonising over his reactions, he just seemed to react in the heat of the moment. Volatile and intense. He could be snatched by force from his normal, remote calm control setting to a passionate vehemence of emotion that turned her upside down inside herself. The guy she loved, the guy she had married, and she couldn’t believe how strongly she felt about him after such a short time.
* * *
She was having a cup of tea at some indescribably early hour the next morning when Vittoria phoned. ‘You’ll never guess who was outside our hotel last night with a cameraman waiting to capture pics of our celebrity customers leaving?’ her sister told her in a playful tone.
‘So, tell me—’
‘Blasted Graziana!’ Vittoria gasped, her incredulity now unconcealed. ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw her. I mean, what’s a princess doing behaving like that?’
