And the sex each night, when he returned from work, co
ntinued to be addictive.
In fact, he had become so eager to see her each night, and so reluctant to leave every morning, it had begun to make him feel extremely uneasy. He’d promised himself after their wedding night that he would not spend the whole night with her, but each time he went to her bed he found it harder and harder to leave.
He’d planned this trip precisely so he could break the habit of keeping her in his arms until daybreak—and begin to re-establish the distance between them that a month of marriage had eroded.
He stared at Cara, standing a few feet away at the elaborate buffet, talking to Donati’s elegantly dressed seventy-five-year-old wife, and was forced to admit that his plan had failed miserably. She looked so luminous to him, she was practically glowing.
Anticipation thrummed through his system like an electrical charge. Tonight was important to his business. Tomorrow he was supposed to be sealing the deal with Eduardo Donati and beating out Romano to the best vineyards in Tuscany—and completing Durand’s expansion into the Italian market—but he couldn’t concentrate on anything, because all he could think about was taking his wife into his arms and making her sigh and moan and beg.
She was like a drug he was finding it increasingly hard to live without. He’d torn himself away from her for seven days to control his obsession with her and it had done exactly the opposite. All he’d been able to think about in the past week was her.
All he’d dreamt about was her. And not just sexual dreams, but more disturbing ones—dominated by the vision of her eyes filled with compassion the day they’d first met, the feel of her exhausted in his arms when he had carried her away from the Valentine’s Ball in London, the joy on her face when they had sat together in the Harley Street clinic and seen their son for the first time, the open smile that spread across her features each night when he arrived in her bedroom.
How had he become so attuned to even the most subtle of her reactions? He always tried to be considerate with the women he dated, but with Cara it was more than that. Every one of his senses was more focused, more alert, more desperate if he was near her, and now, he’d discovered, also when he was not.
No woman had ever distracted him from his business before now. But it was taking every ounce of his control not to stalk towards her, scoop her up and march out of this godforsaken event so he could take her somewhere private and relieve the insistent craving to have her again.
Apparently seven days of denial—during which he’d forced himself not to contact her—had only increased his addiction.
‘Pregnancy suits her—when is the child due?’
Maxim turned at Romano’s wry observation, his temper spiking at the man’s mocking smile. He’d had to force himself to leave Cara’s side five minutes ago—to calm his racing heartbeat—and had been waylaid on the way back from the restroom by Romano. The last damn person he wanted to speak to.
‘In the summer,’ he said. The twist of anxiety that thoughts of the child usually brought with it sharpened.
He had married Cara to keep her safe, and give his son a name, but every time he thought about the baby now, the guilty weight in his stomach seemed to become heavier. The fierce protective instinct he could not contain had begun to torture him every time he thought of the child growing inside her, and then his mother’s face—the last time he had seen it—would swim into his mind’s eye.
‘Ne me quitte pas, Maxim.’
He cut off the debilitating memory. Again.
The same memory that had first assailed him in the ultrasound suite, and then returned when he had left Cara’s bed on their wedding night—sated, exhausted and yet still aroused.
He had understood, as he’d cleared away the evidence of their night together in the bathroom, desperate to return to her bed and hold her throughout the night, that he couldn’t allow such a foolish indulgence. So why hadn’t he been able to stick to his promise?
The novelty value of sex with Cara, sex with his wife, had made their physical relationship more intense than any he had ever experienced. But he must not let that blind him to the limitations of this marriage, for Cara’s sake as well as his own.
He could not let her become dependent on him. The way his mother had been. Or he would fail her too.
‘You don’t sound too pleased about the prospect of fatherhood,’ Romano said, still with that wry mocking grin on his face. ‘Although I take it the pregnancy was planned?’
‘And this would be your business, how exactly?’ Maxim planted his fists firmly in his pockets, resisting the urge to knock the smug smile off Romano’s face.
Flattening the bastard at Donati’s eightieth birthday ball would defeat the purpose of the whole trip—namely to earn the old vintner’s trust so he would sell him the legendary Donati vines.
‘So you don’t deny it?’ Romano laughed, the sound rough with contempt. ‘I have to admire your dedication to the vines, Durand.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Maxim snapped, the control he had always been so proud of fraying dangerously at the edges. He wasn’t a thug, a gangster, an ill-bred upstart, as so many people had claimed when he had first had the audacity to enter the wine trade—he had ignored all those insults, determined not to live up to people’s low expectations, or his own father’s scorn, but Romano’s attitude was starting to irritate him. Big time.
‘Oh, I think you know,’ Romano said, the smug twist of his lips enough to send Maxim’s temper into a tailspin.
‘Really?’ Maxim’s hands shot out to grab the lapels of Romano’s dinner jacket and haul him forward until they were nose to nose. ‘I think you should spell it out.’
He ground the words out, not caring about the gasps of the nearby guests, who had shuffled back to give them room for their altercation.
‘All I’m saying is impregnating old man de la Mare’s hot little widow before the guy was even cold in his grave was a smart, and I’m sure very enjoyable, way to get his land.’