CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

I T WAS ALL TRUE .

Her mother was dead.

The grief was beginning to hit her.

She understood she’d lived through it already, even though she couldn’t remember it, but it washed over her in waves.

It was a pain, an ache, an unfulfilled need all tied together in loops of barbed wire. And they sat in her ribcage now, all three side by side.

Her mother had been so young, with so much life left to live, and Emma didn’t understand how a woman who had survived everything life could throw at her was gone.

Something tore inside her.

She looked down at the plain gold band on her finger. It was nothing ostentatious. It didn’t scream wealth. Because it didn’t need to scream anything, did it?

It was a symbol. The oxblood-red leather sofa seat groaned beside her as Dante sat. And the foot of distance between them evaporated in a millisecond when his hand reached for hers. His fingers slid between her own, entwining them together.

‘Emma...’ His thumb stroked the soft flesh between her thumb and forefinger. ‘Are you okay?’

She pushed her bare toes into the thick carpet, halting the ridiculous urge to push her thighs together. He was touching her hand, for God’s sake. Not anywhere intimate.

But it was intimate, wasn’t it? His fingers entwined in hers meant she was allowing him to get close. Too close. And she wasn’t sure she was ready for that.

She dragged her gaze up to his face and looked at him looking at her as if it were the most natural thing to do to comfort her. Was she comforted?

It didn’t feel like reassurance. Her body was awake in parts she hadn’t known were sleeping. Heavy and sluggish, but zinging as if she’d had too much coffee, as if she was overstimulated. Too sensitised. Too awake.

She tugged her bottom lip between her teeth. Comfort was something she provided for herself with extralong baths, or a trip to a shop to look at the pretty things that gave her pleasure she couldn’t afford.

How had he convinced her to enter a relationship where holding hands was meant to provide comfort?

Emma did not hold hands.

‘No.’ Slowly, she withdrew her hand. ‘I’m not okay.’

She eased her fingers out of his hold, resisted the pull to return it and stood.

She walked towards the back wall, which was covered from ceiling to floor with shelves of books.

This whole place was like a doll’s house. It was the blueprint of every little girl’s dream house.

‘You will be okay, Emma,’ he guaranteed too confidently.

She rounded on him. ‘You can’t know that.’

‘But I can,’ he contradicted her smoothly, ‘because you are here.’ He stood effortlessly. Moved towards her across some priceless rug. His every stride bringing him closer to her. ‘With me.’

It took everything she had not to move backward. And what would be the point? There was a wall of books behind her. A dead end. She could move in another direction, but she didn’t know this house. Didn’t know the layout. All she knew was what was coming towards her.

She wasn’t naive to the real reason heat pulsed in her abdomen.

It wasn’t fear.

It was want .

She’d had encounters with men before. Fleeting and purely physical. She’d always found it easy to form a physical connection. To close her eyes and feel. Demand her body respond. Delight in momentary connections where she could take what she needed and walk away, emotionally untouched.

This time she hadn’t demanded anything of this man.

And yet it was there. Stirring inside her. Making itself known. Something frantic. Something consuming .

‘Do you always take charge so arrogantly?’ she said, and she’d wanted it to come across as an insult dripping in sarcasm, but her words were breathless.

‘Is it arrogance to give you what you need, Emma?’ He looked so at home, he belonged against the backdrop of this house that most people would need to win the lottery to afford.

‘Is it wrong to provide for you, my wife?’ he continued silkily. ‘To keep you safe? To make sure you never fall, that the load you carry is too heavy?’

Her heart snagged. Hadn’t her load always been too heavy? She had been her mother’s protector and her emotional support when she was far too young to be either.

That was why Emma had long ago made the safe choice never to become her mother. Never to be alone and waiting for a man, waiting for love. Never to get close enough to care, let alone need anyone. So, it was jarring to feel how soothing were his words that she didn’t have to worry about those things. She felt a warmth spread through her.

‘With me, they’ll be no more empty fridges,’ he declared, and his promise resonated with the little girl, the teenager, and the young woman who had never been promised an endless supply of food.

Her mum had worked endlessly to fill the fridge, but it had never been full for long enough. And when she’d got older, the cycle had repeated itself. Bigger bellies to fill, larger bills to pay, bills that were always overdue even when there were two pay cheques. And here he was, promising these things as if they were nothing.

‘Here, with me,’ he said, ‘you will have time, as the doctor recommended, to heal.’ And his words were seductive. Tempting . ‘Let me be clear—you are not a hostage. I’m not holding you against your will,’ he said, his voice deep and warm. ‘You can leave whenever you wish. But what better way to reclaim your memory than with me.’

The doctor had said her memory could return, or it might not. All she could do was wait and resume normal life.

Under the doctor’s instruction, Dante had summarised her life for her. Five years delivered to her in a heartbeat. Impersonal and without detail. Only simple information. Milestones.

A move to London when she’d been twenty-two. They’d met when she was twenty-six, and their wedding had been the same year. The death of her mother was a little over three months ago, from a heart attack. And then she’d returned to Birmingham to pack up her mother’s things, to attend her funeral, and then three months later, she’d fallen and hit her head.

And now she couldn’t remember any of that.

She had the facts, sure. But what came between those facts? Why had she taken her wedding ring off when she’d gone back to Birmingham? Why had she stayed there? If her mother was dead, nothing was there for her.

She couldn’t connect the dots. She and Dante were married and yet, he was in Mayfair, and she’d been there.

Alone.

She twisted the ring that was back on her finger. ‘Why did you have my ring?’

His face remained neutral. ‘You left it behind when you returned to Birmingham.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you didn’t want to wear it anymore.’

‘What did I want?’

‘To leave.’

‘London?’

‘No.’ His jaw hardened. ‘You wanted to leave me.’

‘I wanted to leave you?’ Her eyes grew wide. ‘Why?’ she asked again, because why was the word standing before every thought, and it flashed in neon green in her head.

‘I don’t know.’

‘How can you not know?’ she asked.

His lips thinned. ‘You never told me.’

‘I must have said something.’

‘ “I want out.” That’s all your note said.’

‘I left a note?’ she repeated.

Dante nodded.

‘And you didn’t ask for further clarification?’

‘No.’

None of this made sense. They didn’t make any sense. Not their marriage. Not their relationship. ‘Your wife leaves her ring behind, tells you she wants out and you never thought to ask the reason why ?’

‘Why would I ask?’ He shrugged. A nonchalant dip of his broad shoulder. ‘You left. The action required no further explanation.’

Tension threaded throughout her limbs.

Marriage was every commitment she’d never wanted, but she’d done it. For reasons unknown, she’d married him. And yet she’d walked away without a backward glance.

Her mother had never had the strength to leave her father. But Emma had left Dante.

Unbidden came the image of him with another woman. Her throat tightened against the wave of threatening nausea. Was that the reason?

Her chest seized.

Her lungs refused to function.

‘Did you cheat?’ she asked, because if he had cheated like her father had cheated on her mother countless times, she’d rather sleep on the streets than stay anywhere near him.

‘Cheat?’ he repeated, before closing the last few inches between them.

She prepared herself by pressing her heels firmly into the carpeted floor to steady herself for the impact of the vitriol that was surely headed her way.

But it didn’t come.

‘It has only been you,’ he murmured as he tucked the loose hair in front of her left cheek behind her ear. His touch was delicate. Soft. And it took everything she had not to lean into it. Lean into him. ‘Since the night we met, it has been only you.’

Blood flushed through her heart.

Air seeped into her lungs.

Only you.

The possessive sentiment scared her. Excited her.

Her mind wanted to reject his answer. Because how many times had she been told— seen —monogamy was a lie? Men always strayed. And yet here was Dante telling her that he hadn’t.

‘There must be a reason I left?’

‘A reason you never shared with me.’ He dropped his hand to his side. But he didn’t remove the distance between them.

‘If our marriage was over, why didn’t we get divorced?’ she asked, her mind still pulsing with the need to know, to understand... She’d dedicated a year of her life to their marriage and then walked away. Without saying goodbye. Without demanding a divorce.

‘Does it matter?’

Her breath shuddered up her windpipe and out through her open mouth. ‘Of course it does.’

‘Why focus on the end of us when there was no end, no divorce?’ he said. ‘You left. We remained married. And now here we are. Together. Again .’

‘Because of an accident,’ she reminded him.

‘Accident , fate, destiny ,’ he countered. ‘Use whatever word you will, but you are here and so am I. So ask the right questions, Emma.’

‘The right questions?’

‘Questions I can answer without speculation.’

He was right, she realised. She could push and probe him for answers but only she knew, didn’t she? Why she’d married him. Why she’d left...they had both been her choices and hers alone, hadn’t they?

‘How did we meet?’ she asked. He may not be able to answer the question of why she left, but there were other questions that he could answer.

‘At a black-tie event. A charity auction, here in London. You were a waitress at the event and you collided with me,’ he told her. ‘Spilt your tray of wine. Wine that the hostess, the Princess of Vreotus, had donated from her very own vineyard.’

Emma expected self-consciousness to buckle her knees, because that meant the night they’d met she had been the help. But it wasn’t self-consciousness making her knees wobble. It was desire, blooming inside her and swelling with every flick of his obscenely long eyelashes. Almost as if her body remembered what her mind could not.

‘Place your hand on my chest.’

Frowning, she asked, ‘Why?’

‘I promised I’d help you remember,’ he reminded her. ‘So let me show you how it began between us,’ he explained.

She lifted her hand. Touched him, tentatively.

‘Can you feel it?’ he asked.

Deep and steady, his heart thrummed beneath her fingers. ‘All I can feel is you.’

He covered her hand with his and heat crept into her fingers. Up into her arms. Her chest. Until breathing became difficult. Too tight. Too shallow.

‘And now?’ he asked. ‘What do you feel, Emma?’

Connection pulsed through her. A type of chaotic harmony. An illogical knowing her hand belonged there. Beneath his.

‘Heat,’ she breathed.

‘It is a flame,’ he said, and his voice was rough. Deep . ‘The night we met, when you raised your hand to my wine-drenched chest and touched me, right here, that flame ignited. Until it roared inside me. Unit it roared inside us both .’

Want pulsed inside her.

‘Did we have a one-night stand?’ she asked.

‘We did. That night—’ he leaned into her until their bodies stood millimetres apart ‘—and every night after,’ he said.

It was difficult to focus her mind and listen to his story—their origin story—and reclaim it as her own lived experience. Especially when the compulsion to press herself against him, to touch him was clamouring for attention.

‘Why did we get married?’ she asked, her voice not her own. ‘Why didn’t we just have an affair?’ she pushed, because she wanted to understand the choices she’d made. Because here she was, a girl from an industrial city who had moved from estate to estate when the rents were raised and they could no longer afford to stay. They’d had to relinquish their home so newer, younger, more prosperous families could move in with their two-point-four kids and domesticity.

A domesticity her mother had craved and Emma despised.

And yet here she was.

Domesticated.

‘We did.’ His breath feathered her lips. And she wanted to meet his breath with her own. Surrender her mouth up to his. Kiss him. ‘Our affair lasted a month.’

Her fingers clenched at his shirt. ‘What changed?’

‘It wasn’t enough.’

‘What wasn’t?’ she husked. One night had always been enough. For her. An affair should have been enough. She still couldn’t understand that.

‘The stolen moments between us,’ he said. ‘I wanted no more borrowed beds,’ he continued, ‘however soft the sheets or exclusive the hotel. But a bed we could call ours.’

‘And what did I want?’ she asked, because she’d never shared anyone’s bed for longer than was necessary. And no one had ever stopped her from leaving. They would feign sleep as she collected her things and disappeared without a backward glance.

But he’d wanted her to stay, to have a place they would meet and touch that was only theirs.

Had she wanted the same?

‘You wanted me,’ he said, and she heard it. Felt the unsaid part.

You want me.

‘I asked you to marry me, and you said yes,’ he finished. If she felt back then anything like she felt now, she could understand why she’d so readily agreed. Her body begged to be touched, to give in to the heat between them. To drown out the doubt, the questions.

A part of her still sensed there was more to the story of their marriage. But her mind was begging her in this moment to close the door on whatever that was. Because if everything he was saying was true, everything she believed about marriage—believed about herself—was a lie. It was simpler to believe that this really was about passion, desire and nothing more.

‘There are so many unanswered questions,’ she said, her fingers clinging to his shirt. ‘And not knowing the answers to so many important questions ... It feels like such a heavy thing,’ she admitted, and her mind whirred with the heaviness. It pressed down on her sternum. On her lungs.

‘It’s okay to be scared, Emma.’

‘I’m not afraid.’

‘Liar,’ he softly called her out, because he knew her, didn’t he? And he was right; she was scared of the instinctive and knowing chemistry between them.

‘But allow yourself to feel the anticipation of it,’ he coaxed, and his words bloomed inside her ears. ‘To be seduced by the unknown, to discover it piece by piece.’

The hand on top of hers moved to the base of her throat. His grip feather-light, his fingers skirted the flesh of her throat until the hilt of his hand met her chin, and lifted it.

‘Allow yourself to feel the excitement of knowing the answers are coming.’ Steady and intense, his gaze burrowed inside her. ‘And embrace the journey of rediscovering yourself and our marriage.’

Dante was her only guide in these unfamiliar times. But his words, his advice, the connection crackling between their bodies, it was all too much. They made her tremble. They made her want all the things he’d told her she could have: financial security, protection, adventure. All in a home they shared, all because he’d put a ring on her finger and she’d let him do it. Claim her.

Emma’s eyes travelled downward. Across the noble bridge of his nose to the dip above his top lip. It was the size of her fingertip and her hand itched to touch it. To smooth her finger across it to measure the indent.

Had she done that before? How many times had she tasted his mouth with her tongue, slipped her tongue between the slight opening between his thinner upper lip and fuller counterpart?

It was a mouth made for kissing.

Her insides tightened and squeezed on a breathless exhale.

With effort, she dragged her gaze away from his mouth to her hand which still sat against the hard muscle of his chest. It would be so easy to pull him closer, to surrender to instinct, use the fingertips clinging to his shirt to pull her closer and test how competent his mouth was.

She closed her eyes.

It felt reckless to put herself in his hands. To trust him to deliver his promises, when her logical mind told her his words were nothing but a seduction. A lie.

Her father had made countless promises to her mother and delivered on none of them. But still her mother had waited for the day he would keep his promise to protect her. Emma. His family.

And now she was dead.

Emma understood she owed it to herself, and to Dante, to rediscover their marriage. But marriage felt so final. The end— death —to the woman she thought she was.

Emma had had the courage to leave Dante once, for whatever reason, but she hadn’t been strong enough to sever the tie between them completely. That intrigued her the most. Had she been waiting for Dante to return to her?

He’d said he wasn’t holding her hostage, that she could leave at any time, and that gave her a strange sense of comfort. It softened the hard edges of her fear.

And she felt the sudden need to confirm that his intentions were true.

Emma opened her eyes. ‘If I decide this isn’t what I want anymore...’ Her fingers unfurled and splayed on his chest, steadying herself.

But his hand stayed where it was beneath her chin, keeping her head in position. Her eyes found his and she held his gaze.

‘At any time,’ she continued, her chest tight, her stomach in knots, ‘you’ll let me go, Dante,’ she said. Because she may not remember the version of the Emma who’d married him, or why, and she wasn’t in a position to walk away right now, but she knew twenty-two-year-old Emma would want this. However intensely she longed for his kiss, his body, she wanted an escape plan. In case she needed it.

‘You’ll give me a divorce?’

‘Divorce?’ Dante echoed, a slow, agonising breath flooding through his nostrils.

‘Neither of us know the reason I left... before . But I did leave. And—’ she swallowed, and he watched the delicate tendons in her throat constrict ‘—I want to give this life a chance,’ she explained when he didn’t speak. ‘ Us a chance,’ she corrected, ‘to rediscover our marriage. I owe that to you, as much as I do to myself. But I need to know if I want to walk away, again , that it’s really an option. That a divorce...’

‘Will finalise the end between us?’ he finished for her.

‘Yes.’

Did she remember? Perhaps not all of it, but somewhere in that brain of hers she knew that was their way. The rules of their marriage, which was designed to have a ‘get-out’ clause. He could tell her about the rules of their marriage. His rules. The contract. But their contract had already expired. By every rule in the playbook, they should already be divorced. But they weren’t. They were here. Still married.

And how did he explain that? Why he’d waited for the divorce papers to arrive. Why he hadn’t initiated the proceedings himself.

He couldn’t explain it. Not even to himself.

She was not his mother. She hadn’t been looking for a bigger payout. She hadn’t been trying to gain the upper hand, wrestle back power.

Emma had left him by choice; he understood that now, but he also understood she’d come back to him because she had no choice. And she was right; not knowing the reason she’d left was a heavy thing. He ached with it too.

But did it matter? As he’d said to her, they could speculate, but it would amount to nothing but more speculation.

The truth of it was neither of them had demanded a divorce. They were still married.

But it was all she could see, wasn’t it?

Marriage.

Everything she’d never wanted.

Until him .

He could tell her the truth of them, that they didn’t do emotions, it was a marriage purely for passion, but why would he tell her? Ultimately those things hadn’t made her stay before...

‘If a divorce is what you require,’ he conceded roughly, ‘a divorce is what you shall have, Emma.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Of course.’ He stroked the pad of his thumb along her jawline. ‘Why would we remain married if we no longer wanted one another?’

‘Exactly,’ she husked, and he heard the unspoken realisation between them that divorce hadn’t really been an option before because their marriage hadn’t been over.

It still wasn’t.

‘I think I want to go to bed.’ Her eyes glazed over, a mix of exhaustion and desire. His body reacted instinctively. His groin tightened. ‘To sleep,’ she clarified quickly. ‘Alone.’

He didn’t want to sleep.

He didn’t want to spend a night in this house without her beside him. In his bed. In his arms. It was the reason he hadn’t been back here since the day he’d found her gone.

His mind flashed with every moment he’d told her about. The beginning of them. The confident Emma who had touched him and met his mouth with the same ardent fever within moments of their first touch. The woman who’d embraced their physical connection as readily as he had. As if it gave them air. The woman who’d become his wife.

Every moment of their relationship had been borne from their physical connection. They never spoke about the past, what had made them the people who had met at that charity event. They’d only gone forwards, dived head-first into each other’s body and stayed there.

Curiosity bloomed where it shouldn’t. What made this Emma hesitate where she’d never hesitated before to welcome his kiss? His touch? Invite him into her bed? Any bed? What had happened to her between the ages of twenty-two to twenty-six to turn her into the woman he’d married?

He knew his wife. Every imperfection. Every sensitive spot. The spot behind her ear he let his breath heat and she would melt for him as he moved his breath, his lips, his mouth down and over her throat to her breasts.

But not... her .

In her mind they’d never kissed, never had sex.

It was all backwards. Upside down.

The urge to make her remember it all, to remember the feel of his mouth on hers, was overwhelming.

He knew she needed words. Needed reassurance before any of that. And he’d give it to her.

‘Emma,’ he breathed. ‘Understand this. You’re my wife. I’m your husband. This doesn’t give me any rights to you. I won’t take anything from you that you don’t want to give. Everything I said stands whether you invite me into your bed tonight, tomorrow or never,’ he said, because he knew that she needed to know in this upside-down world of theirs, she was safe. She had choices.

He dropped his hand and stepped away from her when his every muscle screamed for him to pull her to him, but he resisted.

Her head cocked to the side. She studied him silently.

‘Do you understand?’ he asked.

Jaw tight, she nodded.

‘Use your words, Emma,’ he said, because he needed confirmation that she understood she was safe with him. Secure .

‘I understand,’ she stated, but it wasn’t enough.

‘Tell me, what exactly it is you understand?’ he pushed.

‘That you’ll look after me whether I return to being your actual wife, or not.’ She exhaled heavily, and he heard the tremble she was badly trying to conceal. ‘I understand that whatever sexual relationship we had before it isn’t expected from me now. That just because we’re married, it doesn’t affect anything. Because being married to you doesn’t mean anything to me. Yet . It’s nothing but a ring that fits. And if that never changes, you’ll give me a divorce.’

He nodded, a tilt of his too-stiff neck. ‘And for now, is that enough for you?’ he asked, because he couldn’t help it. He needed to know if the temptation of security would seduce her more than his lips.

‘Yes.’ She clasped her hands together at her midriff. ‘It is.’

He stepped aside. ‘Top door to the left,’ he instructed. ‘You will find our bedroom. Yours ,’ he corrected. ‘Until you invite me to share it with you.’

And there it was. The dance between excitement and fear. The shimmer in her blue eyes. The pull tightening the skin on her cheeks. The tension in her shoulders threading into her muscles and lifting them.

‘Good night,’ she husked, and moved. She took a step forward, and another past him and ran.

He fisted his hands. The urge was so dominant to reach out to catch her.

He closed his eyes, denying the urge to follow his wife to bed.

He knew now what he hadn’t allowed himself to acknowledge for the last three months.

He wanted her back. In his life.

He wanted Emma back, in his bed.