CHAPTER ONE

DOMENICORICCIWAS in pain. His body was heavy with it, as if his bones had been lined with lead. Even the simple act of drawing in a breath was an effort, causing his chest to burn and his stomach muscles to sharply contract.

Grief, he thought disdainfully. It had always been his considered point of view that those who cited the crippling effects of grief were simply too weak to contend with the realities of life. Death was, after all, inevitable. A basic fact of life. It was far better to celebrate a person than wallow in mournful and distressed emotion upon their passing.

But now it was his adored aunt Elena who had departed the world and all Domenico could feel was the burden of sorrow. Even the sight of his beloved Venice—home since his scandalous and uncelebrated birth—in the mauve and indigo shadows of the approaching evening offered little comfort.

In spite of Elena's advanced age, he hadn't been prepared for it. For the loss of the only woman who had never rejected him and who had spent her life guiding and encouraging him. The woman who had given him a home and the embrace of a family when those who should have loved and cared for him had been set on deserting him to a crueller fate. And now she was gone.

Just like all those other people in his life, Elena had left him too.

In the faint reflection in the window Domenico watched his lips firm and lines of strain stream from the corners of his mouth as his meandering thoughts forced him to relive the rejections and desertions he had suffered over the years, beginning with his birth family and ending with his wife, Rae.

Rae.

His big body clenched as he thought of her, with her heart-shaped face, her tumble of chestnut hair and eyes so startlingly, beautifully blue they could penetrate even the coldest soul, compelling Domenico to raise the glass cradled between his fingers to his lips and numb the sudden sharp pinch of bitter feeling with a long swallow of the bright amber liquid. Out of all the women who had inflicted a scar, Rae had cut him the deepest. Because he had chosen her. He had invited her into his life, placed a ring on her finger and made a binding vow, and she had walked out on him. That desertion burned him far more than anything he had endured from his blood relatives.

Which made it all the more inexplicable that in his moment of sadness it was her comforting touch he craved. That out of all the mourners currently in his palazzo, hers was the only face he wanted to see, only she hadn't bothered to come and pay her respects...

Domenico raised the glass to his lips again, castigating his melancholic mood for turning him into a sentimental fool. Of course she hadn't come! Rae had left him. Rejected him. She hadn't even had the decency to tell him that she was unhappy in their marriage. Hadn't offered him the chance to fix whatever it was that was making her unhappy. She'd simply walked out of the door one day and left him to find the pathetic one-sentence note she had deigned to write to explain her sudden absence.

She was the last person deserving of room in his thoughts. The very last woman he should desire. If he needed comfort, there were countless others he could turn to, women who would appreciate him and be happy to share his bed. Because that was all that would be on offer. A night. An encounter. Never again would he open up his life to another soulless, treacherous female.

The floorboard behind him creaked in a way that told him someone was outside the door to his third-floor private study and then he heard the soft squeak of his partially closed door being nudged open. He remained still. Those who knew him knew better than to disturb him, which meant it was a stranger, someone seeking something he was probably in no mood to give. A reporter possibly, looking for a quote about Elena's passing, or some grossly nosy individual...

But then the skin on the back of his neck prickled, and his nose caught a light, barely-there scent and in defiance of the command issued straight from his brain, his heart missed a beat.

And he knew it was her.

‘Domenico?'

Saying his name felt strange. After such a long period of not saying it, of determinedly keeping him out of her mind, it sent a quiver through Rae Dunbar's blood.

And as for laying eyes on him for the first time in months...

Her view was only of his rear as he faced away from her, his attention fixed on the timeless elegance and twilight romance of the city that rose from the water beyond the window, but with his strong back and shoulders so broad that they threatened to bust the seams of every item of clothing he wore, he was still magnificent to behold. So magnificent that her throat was suddenly sandpaper dry and it felt as if a swarm of butterflies had been unleashed in her chest.

Not that she had expected him to have changed, to suddenly have become lesser than the Adonis it was widely agreed he was, but Rae had hoped, quite ardently, that his effect on her would have lessened. Preferably to nothing at all. But with that single initial glance, it was painfully clear that wasn't the case.

‘So you have bothered to show up. Late though you are,' he said, a visible surge of tension making the lines of his solid body even more distinct. Beneath the tailored black shirt he wore, Rae could make out the sharp definition of his powerful back muscles—muscles she had never tired of stroking her hands over—and without warning the need to feel his hot, smooth skin beneath her hands gushed through her veins, a torrent of helpless, burning longing.

‘I know. I'm sorry,' Rae stammered, having to push past that overpowering compulsion to touch him in order to locate her voice. ‘I've been trying to get here for days, ever since I read about Elena's passing, but an arctic storm was sat right over us. All trains and flights were cancelled. They only resumed today and I made sure that I was on the first plane out.'

The words raced out of her mouth and into one another in her haste to explain and exonerate herself of the aggravation he'd made no attempt to mask.

‘I'm surprised you tried so hard.'

‘I wanted to be here,' Rae responded immediately. ‘To say goodbye to Elena and pay my respects to her—the wonderful woman she was.' Her words caught as she was pierced again by guilt over how long it had been since she'd seen or spoken to the older woman. And now it was too late. ‘If I'd known she was ill...'

Domenico spun around, his face set in a thousand furious shadows. ‘And how would you have known that, Rae? Given that you walked out on this family.'

‘Please, Domenico,' Rae said, feeling his anger slam into her and almost knock her sideways, but after leaving him the way she had, she knew she deserved it. ‘I didn't come here to argue.'

‘Why come at all?' he demanded, some untethered emotion leaping dangerously in his darkened gaze as his stare closed around her. His fury only sharpened the chiselled planes of his face, making him more striking, and the dryness of Rae's throat intensified to an almost painful degree. ‘You were under no obligation to, you made sure of that.'

‘I told you.' Rae strove to keep her voice steady as she was treated to the full brutally masculine force of him. Six foot five, powerful shoulders, wide chest, jaw as sharp as a blade, aristocratic nose and eyes the shade of polished mahogany sat beneath thick, expressive brows. Looking at Domenico, no one could deny he'd been born to be a leader of men. In another time he would have been a warrior. The first time Rae had seen him, she had thought how at odds the expertly tailored suit and neatly knotted silk tie was with the man wearing it, so imposing and commanding was his physical presence. ‘To say goodbye to Elena and tell you how sorry I am for your loss.'

The truth was she was more than sorry. That was too generic. She ached for him, physically and emotionally. That was why she had returned to Venice.

When she had read the news of Elena's passing, her first thought had been of Domenico. Her second had been of how to get to him in his time of suffering. Even now that she was here, closer than she had been to him in almost four months, it didn't feel close enough. The ten feet between them felt like ten thousand miles and something in her—the same instinct that had compelled her to return to Venice and Palazzo Ricci without a single beat of hesitation—longed to cross the space dividing them and wrap him in her arms.

And that was enough to trigger alarm bells in every corner of her body, because in dropping everything and racing to Domenico's side, hadn't she repeated her past mistakes? Fallen back into the dynamic that had made her so unhappy? And yes, it was an exceptional moment that she was probably right to make an exception for, but it was making her question whether she'd changed as much as she'd thought she had in the past months. And that was a very disquieting thought.

‘Well, you've offered your condolences now,' he said, his eyes scraping over her in a merciless perusal which, despite their stoniness, roused tingles all over her skin. ‘You're free to leave this home that pushed you into such misery. I would offer to walk you to the door, but I'm sure you remember where it is from the last time you walked out of it.'

With another scathing glower, he returned to his contemplation of the world outside the window.

A stinging heat crept into Rae's eyes and cheeks. She'd always known Domenico could be ruthless and cutting. Managing a global conglomerate with thousands of employees required it of him at times. But he did not like to have to be so, she knew that too, and she had certainly never been on the receiving end of his cold dismissal.

It was an indication of just how unhappy he was with her, how deep his anger ran. She had left him, scorned and humiliated him. He'd probably never wanted to set eyes on her again—wasn't that why he'd made no effort to chase after her?

Yet here she was.

Rae's heart rattled with uncertainty. Maybe she should do as he bade and leave. Domenico clearly didn't want her here. And she didn't need to be here. Estranged wives didn't have any particular role to play in family events, after all. He had the palazzo staff to take care of any practical needs and no doubt he had...other companions to cater to his emotional needs.

Thinking about it now, there had really been no reason at all for her to make the journey to Venice. It had been utterly stupid of her to come!

Rae had taken a few steps in retreat when she stopped, her mind suddenly abuzz with the unpleasant awareness that she was once again being cowed by Domenico's mood, and was reacting in the same way as she always had before—letting it shut her down. Well, not this time, she thought, remembering the promise she'd made to never let herself be silenced again.

She had returned to Venice because she was worried about him. Worried that Elena's passing would be a tragedy so big to contend with he wouldn't know where to start. Worried that no matter how many willing companions he had, he would not express the depth of his feelings. From personal experience, Rae knew that getting Domenico to open up was like trying to pry tectonic plates apart and nothing she had seen so far had convinced her that her fears were unfounded. So she would not do as he commanded and leave, not until she had done what she'd come to do, and so with a quiet sigh, steeling herself to face more of Domenico's wrath, she turned back, her steps drawing her closer to him.

‘You want me leave and I will, okay. But first I want to make sure that you're doing as well as you can be right now. That's why I came,' Rae admitted, ‘not just to offer my condolences. But to check on you.'

He released a bark of derision that seemed to convey a lot more than a single sound should. It seemed to question why, if she cared so much about his well-being, had she left him? And it was a fair question, she supposed. But her feelings for him had never been the issue, had they?

‘I'm fine.'

Rae swallowed the urge to scream as he delivered his standard dismissive rebuff. Why did he always have to be so stubborn, so unwilling to lower his guard, even just an inch?

‘Are you, Domenico? Really? How many of those have you had this afternoon?' she demanded, striding into his side vision and gesturing to the antique crystal tumbler cradled between his long-fingered hands. ‘Have you eaten at all? Have you slept?'

‘My sleeping arrangements are no longer any of your business, Rae.' He threw the words at her in a way that implied it was not his sleeping pattern to which he was referring but his sleeping partners and it left the mark it intended, lodging beneath her skin like a burning bullet.

‘No, they're not,' she muttered, unable to fend off the image of him with another woman and instead fighting the surge of nausea that accompanied it. ‘But I know the weight that grief places on a body, on a heart and a head. I know how the day feels endless, how all you crave is the oblivion of night and sleep, but when you get there, sleep won't come. I know how hard it is to do the ordinary things, like eat and move.' Having inclined his head, Domenico stared at her as though she were a witch, knowing things she shouldn't, that he would never willingly share. ‘I've lived it too. Twice. Or had you forgotten that?'

Losing both of her parents in such a short space of time had been the hardest thing Rae had ever gone through. Most days she didn't know how she had survived that turmoil and emerged on the other side of it. She didn't credit herself as a particularly strong person—a person of any particular specialness, really—and she certainly didn't feel very strong in that moment, when being back in Domenico's orbit and subject to that astonishing force of his was only threatening to draw her back in. Making all the reasons why she'd had to leave feel so very minuscule, so very far away.

Making the warning bells jangle all over again.

‘No.' Draining what was left in his glass, Domenico set it down and in the dim light of the nearby lamp she could see how ravaged he was by the events of the past days. In the lines bracketing his mouth and the shadows hugging his eyes, she could see his fatigue, his strain. His heartbreak. Never before had she seen such raw, naked emotion etched into his too handsome face and once more all she wanted to do was go to him and make it better, if only for a moment. ‘I haven't forgotten. The death of a loved one is a wretched thing.' Something shifted behind his hard gaze as he turned the rest of his body to face her, leaning his hip against the large desk. ‘I assumed that since you knew that sting of loss, you would value your relationships all the more. But how wrong I was.' His features shifted again, rearranging themselves into an expression that wasn't difficult to translate. ‘You are a million miles away from the person I believed you to be.'

‘Then I guess we both suffered the sting of that particular disappointment.' He'd not turned out to be the man she'd believed him to be either!

Outrage filled his face and fuelled a heavy breath. ‘What disappointment did you ever have cause to feel? I gave you everything. I offered you everything.'

Rae could not and would never dispute that. Domenico had been unfailingly generous, at least materially, but it was the price of what he had given and offered that had been fatal to their relationship.

Be at his side always. Surrender all aspects of her own life. Place him and his needs ahead of her own, every single minute of every single day.

Doing so hadn't been hard. Considering him, wanting to do whatever she could to make his life a little easier when he shouldered such huge responsibilities without complaint had been easy. Making him happy had made her happy and what had made Domenico happy was having her beside him all the time. But then one day Rae had realised she had nothing of her own. No work. No friends. No hobbies. No life. Nothing to sustain her should she ever find herself alone again.

It was her worst nightmare come true.

Because she knew how that scenario ended. In desolation and depression.

She had watched it happen up close. She had lived it, powerless to do anything to stop the insidious spread of pain, though she had tried everything.

The thought of returning to that emotionally empty and destructive place terrified her, and with a husband who'd been entirely unwilling to help her make the space to build that fuller life she'd craved, Rae had feared it was a very real possibility.

Her stomach knotted with the strength of the remembered feeling, but Rae chased the discomfort away. The intention behind her return had not been to sift through the ashes of their marriage and she certainly wasn't going to do so on the day of Elena's burial and with a house full of mourners to overhear.

‘I think we'll have to agree to disagree on that point,' Rae muttered tautly.

Domenico said nothing, and skewered her with a look that was part exasperation and part loathing. But there was something else lurking in the shadows too, something that added a flicker of excitement to her pulse, that same undefined thing she could feel humming just beneath her own skin—something too dangerous to be acknowledged for any longer than a nanosecond.

Taking a step back from it, and from him, Rae released the breath that she hadn't realised had been building in her chest. ‘Downstairs is still full of guests, you know. You should be down there with them instead of up here alone.'

Her words were met with a stubborn silence, but then he exhaled a long breath. ‘I'd rather be up here,' he said flatly. ‘All anyone wants to tell me is how wonderful Elena was and I'm too furious with her right now to want to ruminate on her excellence.'

‘Domenico...' Rae breathed, the admission making her heart ache for him.

His relationship with Elena had been a treasured part of his life and the moment Rae had met the older woman she had instantly seen why. Elena had had a formidable mind, a generous heart and beautiful spirit. She had also been the constant in Domenico's life and his only family, raising him from when he was a few days old and his biological mother, a young relation of Elena's, couldn't. Or wouldn't. Rae wasn't too sure. Whenever she had tried to dig deeper into Domenico's family history, she had been firmly and unmistakably rebuffed.

In fact, whenever Rae had tried to engage him in any conversation about his emotions or his life, Domenico had shut her down. From the moment they'd met she'd sensed he was burdened by whatever had occurred in the past, but whilst he'd been happy to let her close physically, to even use their sexual chemistry as a way of silencing her questions, emotionally he had never let her in, always holding her at arm's length.

At one point in time Rae had thought their respective trauma would be something to bind them even closer together. Something they could share with each other that they couldn't with others. She had never imagined it would break them apart instead. But of all the matters that Domenico had refused to open himself up about, his unwillingness to trust her with any of the details about his family situation had cut deep. Because how could she live with someone who didn't want her to know him? How could she keep giving up so much of her own life and self for a man who wouldn't show her his heart?

However, in that moment his hurt was all too easy to see and, feeling that pain, Rae could no longer keep herself from moving towards him. It was the most natural thing to want to go to him, to slide her hands up his arms, across his shoulders and wind them around his neck and hold him tight. Let him know that he wasn't alone. Domenico was a physical being and physical touch had always been the best way to reach him, to breach the weight and distraction of a long day or stressful negotiation. To encourage him to open up. And Rae couldn't bear the thought of him isolating himself in his grief, in his understandable anger.

She remembered being furious in the aftermath of her father's death. How was it fair that it was him who had been taken too soon, her father and not anybody else's? Why did she and her sisters have to go on with their lives without their integral cog? She was certain Domenico would be feeling something similar. His spectacularly strong build made him look untouchable, but he had such capacity for feeling, experiencing every emotion sharply, deeply.

But she had only just reached out to him when the lift of his cold eyes halted her as if she'd been turned to stone.

‘What are you doing?'

‘I'm...'

‘Is this why you came?' he demanded, his eyes still pools of darkness as they probed her face, as if the answers were writing themselves across her skin, when all she could feel was a tormented, scorching heat filling her cheeks. ‘Were you hoping the opportunity would arise for you to comfort me and I'd fall back into your arms?' She was too stunned to speak. ‘Even grief-stricken I am not that stupid. You made it clear how little you care for me and that's not something I'll forget in a hurry, so I suggest you turn around and keep walking out of the door this time.'

He gestured towards the door with his hand, his eyes remaining fixed on her with a stoniness that turned her stomach inside out.

Rae had always known he'd be furious with her. Domenico, after all, was not used to others calling the shots. But with time she'd expected he would come to see that she had been right, that they wanted irreconcilable futures, and her leaving had been for the best. It had never crossed her mind that he'd stay so angry.

She hadn't wanted to hurt him. She'd just been trying to keep herself from becoming any more overwhelmed. Since talking to him had never yielded any positive results before, there'd been no reason to believe that he would hear her had she tried to do so again, so it had been easier to not try. To just leave. And nothing about his unwilling stance before her was making her think she'd been wrong to believe that.

But still, her throat was thick as she slowly turned towards the door and instructed her numbed legs to move.

‘Actually, I think it might be a good idea for Rae to stay.'

The intrusion had both of their heads lifting sharply. Elena's lawyer and the Riccis' long-time family friend, Alessandra Donati, paused in the doorway, surveying them mildly.

‘Che cosa? Perché?'Domenico demanded of her hotly, surveying her with his hands planted on his hips and a look that threatened to carve her in two.

Alessandra appeared unconcerned. ‘I think Rae should stay for the reading of the will tomorrow. She is, after all, family and I'm sure Elena would have wanted her here.'

Rae tried to hide her surprise that Alessandra, of all people, was speaking in her defence. Having known her since arriving in Venice, she had never been given any indication that she could consider her any type of ally.

Unleashing a curse in fervent Italian, Domenico seemed to struggle with controlling his body. ‘Are you seriously telling me that my aunt included her in her will?' A look of incredulity had cut itself into the beautiful planes of his face.

‘I'm not telling you anything,' Alessandra parried calmly. ‘Elena's final wishes will be revealed tomorrow, for everyone to hear at the same time. But my advice to both of you is that now that Rae is here, she should stay.'

Alessandra matched Domenico's hard gaze, some kind of exchange passing between them, and Rae felt a pinch of jealousy that there seemed to be no problem with their communication.

Overcoming his perplexed bewilderment, Domenico looked from Alessandra to Rae and then back again, his emotion building by the second if the shade of his face was anything to judge by. ‘Bene.' He threw up his hands. ‘Fine. She will stay.'

‘I don't...' Rae began, before falling silent beneath the quelling look Domenico dealt her. She looked instead to Alessandra. ‘What time is the reading tomorrow?'

‘Ten a.m. Here at the palazzo.'

She nodded her understanding, her throat tight with the thought of being such a patently unwanted guest at such a personal event. But she could hardly challenge it now, even if that was what she desperately wanted to do. ‘I will see you both tomorrow then.'

Alessandra smiled at her and slipped away and Rae decided it was past time she did the same. The encounter with Domenico had left her feeling off-balance and drained and in need of a long shower and then a soft bed.

‘Where do you think you are going?' Domenico queried as she took her first steps towards the door.

‘Back to my hotel.'

‘I don't think so. You'll stay here.'

Rae's heart slammed into her ribs at the thought of remaining in the palazzo, where memoires lurked around every corner, memories that were so incredibly potent. Walking through the front doors earlier and remembering how Domenico had once carried her through them had blocked her throat and brought her close to tears. As she'd climbed the staircase, with each step she had recalled all the times Domenico had led her up them, her hand in his, promise in his eyes whenever he'd looked back at her.

‘That's not necessary. I have a...'

Domenico's face darkened. ‘Don't test me, Rae. Not today. I don't trust you one bit. So you will stay here, where I can keep an eye on you.'

‘Keep an eye on me?' She couldn't keep the disbelief from her voice, not when he made her sound like a wayward charge. ‘What is it that you imagine I am going to do?'

‘I won't pretend to know your mind,' he hit back, and it was another heavyweight blow straight to her middle because he was the first person that Rae had allowed to know her in her adult life. She realised now that he hadn't known all of her, not the parts of herself that she'd lost or concealed in her effort to be the wife she'd thought he'd wanted, but he remained the first, and only, person she had let close to her after the horror of losing her parents. ‘But until I know exactly what involvement you have in Elena's will, I want you where I can see you. I will have Portia show you where you can sleep tonight.'

It was unsurprising to her that Domenico wrested complete control as usual, blatantly ignoring her wishes and her needs. No, not ignoring—not even asking!

Rae bristled with a fury that had her opening her mouth to vent the protest already on her tongue, but she was suddenly too exhausted to argue. Instead, she nodded and let herself be led away by Portia when she arrived, content to let Domenico have his way in that moment because once she'd benefitted from a restoring full night's sleep, and felt more like herself, she had no intention of letting it happen again.

She had changed, and the days of her silently acquiescing to his decisions and wishes were well and truly over.