CHAPTER TEN
SALVATORE’SMOODWASgood. It had never been better. It was impossible it should be otherwise. He had everything in the world he wanted. He had stopped Giavanna and Roberto in their ambitious tracks, his life was going just where he wanted, and right now that meant one thing only.
Lana...
Her name purred in his head. Her image was always there.
Beautiful, breathtaking—and his! Just as he had known she would be. Because how could it ever have been otherwise After desiring her so much?
It was impossible that such desire should have been denied any longer, for reasons that were as irrelevant as they were pointless. And hers was as strong as his—did he not know that now, with night after burning night in each other’s arms?
The week they’d spent at the chalet by the lake had proved that completely. He’d proved it. And he would go on doing so now they were here in Rome as well. He was eager to show her off—not, this time, simply because she was a blocking move, to counter Giavanna and Roberto, but because he just wanted everyone to see him with her.
Why? Why do you want everyone to see you with her?
The question flickered in his head now, as he got out of the car, which then drove off into the busy Rome traffic, leaving Salvatore to stride the few paces to the fashionable bar where he was meeting Luc Dinardi.
Why? He answered his own question dismissively. Because he wanted to—that was all. He didn’t have to justify it. Or explain it. Or even think about it. Let alone give any consideration to the fact that he’d never felt any need to show off the previous women in his life.
Well, he hadn’t had to, had he? he thought impatiently. The women he’d had affairs with had come from the same social circles as himself—and in Rome everyone knew each other, and who was with who, or not. Whereas Lana was new to them.
But she’s fitting in perfectly.
He’d already paid tribute to her in that first week of their marriage, telling her that she was playing Signora Luchesi flawlessly. And she still was. At all the glittering social events he had taken her to—showing her off—she’d been superb. She seemed to have made a hit with everyone—from his personal friends to old-school social arbiters such as the Duchessa, who had—as she had said she would that evening when Giavanna had shown off her spoilt brat credentials to perfection in chucking champagne over Lana—invited Lana to lunch. She was with the Duchess now, which was why he himself had agreed to meet up with Luc today.
He strode into the crowded bar, spotting Luc and heading towards him.
‘Salva—ciao! It’s good to see you again!’ Luc greeted him warmly, with a cheerful slap on his shoulder. ‘Let me look at you.’ Eyes with a familiar worldly expression flicked over Salvatore. Then...
‘Yes, marriage is definitely suiting you!’ Luc said with an approving air, amusement in his voice. ‘Who’d have thought?’ he murmured, the amusement now more pronounced. ‘Salvatore Luchesi—renowned bachelor of Rome, always playing the field—now a good and faithful husband!’
Salvatore tensed. ‘Good and faithful’ husbands did not run in the Luchesi family.
For a moment he felt an impulse to tell Luc the truth about Lana and himself—about the reason he’d married her. To disclaim any assumption that she was a permanent fixture in his life. But he bit his tongue. If he gave Luc any hint of the real reason for his marriage it would be all over Rome, courtesy of that one-woman gossip mill Stephanie, to whom Luc would be unable to resist passing on such a juicy morsel. And then it would reach Roberto and Giavanna, undoing all his efforts to get them off his case.
No, he had to keep up the fiction that Lana was going to stick around as his wife long-term.
Ruthlessly, he turned the tables on his friend, to avoid any further discussion of his own marriage, let alone the reason for it.
‘And what about you, Luc? Are you ever going to make an honest woman of Stephanie?’
Luc gave a shrug. ‘Oh, you know the score, Salva. She and I run around together when there’s no one else for either of us. But it’s out of habit as much as anything. I don’t think anything will change. Well...’ he made a face ‘...unless during one of our together periods she tells me she’s pregnant, I guess!’
Salvatore looked at him. ‘Would you know it was yours, though? Given your mutual lack of commitment to each other?’
Luc looked away for a moment, a strange expression on his face. ‘That might not matter so much,’ he said slowly.
Salvatore frowned. ‘You’d raise another man’s child?’ His voice sharpened unconsciously.
‘If the other man didn’t want to be a father...then, yes, I possibly would. Unless, of course, Steph didn’t want me any longer, only the other man.’
Salvatore took another mouthful of his martini. It tasted suddenly more sour than astringent. He put the glass back on the bar.
You’re not wanted any longer...
The words echoed in his head. He knew the pain that could be inflicted when someone was told that.
‘My darling boy, I have to accept—I have no choice but to accept—that your father simply does not want me any longer. Not in that way. As the mother to his son—yes, of course, and that will never change. But for himself? Ah, no, that has long gone.’