This was echoed all around the table, most volubly by Stephanie, still visibly bubbling. Lana felt as if she was the opposite, sitting motionless next to Salvatore, who was taking it all in his stride.
Well, of course he is. That’s what this is all about. Telling Rome—telling Giavanna and her father—that Salvatore Luchesi is now a married man, thank you, and off the menu.
And even as she reminded herself of the blunt truth behind the announcement she felt a sliver of...if not guilt, precisely, then definitely that sense of discomfort again. These people were genuine friends of Salvatore—their ease with each other, their familiarity, the warmth of their welcome to her all showed her that. Yet he was deceiving them. Making them believe that he had made a genuine marriage yesterday, however much out of the blue.
But it’s just fake. Not real. Not genuine. A show. A deceit—
She tried to shake the sense of discomfort from her to tell herself that the deceit was all on his part, not hers. That she was nothing to do with it...that she was just doing what she was as if it were a business arrangement, nothing personal at all.
But the unease remained. Strengthened, if anything, during the course of the meal. For herself, Lana kept conversation to the bare minimum, especially with Stephanie, simply saying that she and Salvatore had met in London at an after-party, that it had been a whirlwind romance, and that that, really, was that. There really was nothing more to say.
Stephanie rolled her eyes in frustration. ‘Well, at least tell us where you are going on honeymoon! The Caribbean, the Maldives, the South Seas...?’
‘Tuscany,’ Salvatore answered decisively, and Stephanie made a disgusted face at such a tame destination.
‘Your palazzo in Tuscany sounds more than gorgeous enough for a honeymoon.’ Lana smiled at her husband.
She made her voice warm, though it felt odd to do so. Oddly intimate. Or perhaps it was the word ‘honeymoon’ that did that...
Well, obviously it’s not actually going to be a honeymoon! It’s just a place to stash me after showing me off here in Rome to get the message home that he is off the menu for Giavanna!
‘Salva’s place is definitely gorgeous,’ Laura was saying. ‘Do you know Tuscany at all?’
Lana shook her head. The conversation became general again, as they talked about Tuscany and all its cornucopia of cultural treasures, and Lana was glad. Glad, too, when lunch finally ended, well into the afternoon, and the party dispersed, with a lot of hugging and kissing and invitations all round for her and Salvatore when they came back from Tuscany.
As Lana got into the car waiting at the kerb, the same disquieting sense of discomfort about the deceit she was being a party to assailed her. Everyone had been so nice, so friendly, believing her to be their friend’s real wife. It did not sit well with her.
Roundly, she admonished herself.
Well, you’d better damn well get used to it! It’s going to last an entire year! That’s how long you’ve got to fake this marriage for! And if you make any slip-ups you can kiss goodbye to your four-hundred-thousand-pound payoff at the end!
That was, after all, why she had married Salvatore.
Not for any other reason.
Any other reason was impossible...