The Royal House of Niroli Collection

Emily blinked fiercely. What they had just shared had been incredibly close and physically satisfying. Emotional tears slid down her face. Surely it wasn’t possible for Marco to make love to her like this and not be in love with her? Perhaps the change she had sensed in him was because he was falling in love with her and he was reluctant to admit it? Tenderness for him, and for the vulnerability she knew he would never admit to, stole through her. She snuggled closer to him, warmed by his body and the intimacy they had shared, and most of all by the glow of the hope growing inside her. She would teach him that their love would make him stronger, not weaker; she would show him, as she’d tried to do all along, that he was what mattered to her and not the things he could give her. Marco had never told her why he was so adamant that love wasn’t something he believed in or wanted, and she assumed that it must be because as a very young man he had been badly hurt and had vowed never to fall in love again. In a man as proud as Marco, such a wound would go very deep. Although people had been quick to gossip to her about him when she’d first met him, and about the stream of glamorous women who’d graced his arm and his bed before her, no one seemed to know much about his life before he had come to London. Marco was fiercely protective of his past and his privacy, and Emily had learned very early on in their relationship how shuttered he could be when she tried to get him to open up to her. So, it had to mean something that they were still together, Emily told herself sleepily. Why shouldn’t that something be that he had fallen in love with her without even realising it?

CHAPTER FOUR

‘AND I want the whole place to—y’ know—like be totally me. So there’ll have to be plenty of pink and loads of open-plan storage for my shoes. All my fans know that I’m a total shoe-freak.’

Emily was finding it a struggle to focus on what her latest client was saying, and not just because the reality-TV star’s views on how she wanted her apartment designed and decorated were depressingly banal, she admitted.

The truth was that her normal professionalism and love of her work had in recent weeks become shadowed by her almost constant tiredness and bouts of sickness that had to be the legacy of a virus that she didn’t seem to have entirely thrown off.

The reality-TV star was pouting and looking impatiently at her watch.

‘Do we have to do this?’ she asked the PR executive who was ‘minding’ her. ‘I thought you said that I’d be doing a TV documentary about me designing my new apartment, not doing boring stuff like listening to some decorator.’

Whilst the PR girl attempted to soothe her charge, Emily moved discreetly out of earshot. Marco had left early this morning for his office whilst she had still been asleep, leaving her a scrawled note on the kitchen counter to say that he had some work he needed to catch up on. There was nothing particularly unusual in his early start. As an entrepreneur he often needed to be at his desk while the Far-Eastern financial markets were dealing. But today, for some reason, Emily was conscious of a deep-rooted emotional need to see him, be with him. Why? Surely not just because he had left without waking her to give her a good-morning kiss? A little rueful, she shook her head over her own neediness, determined to dismiss it. But it refused to go away, if anything sharpening so that it became a fierce ache of anxious longing. She looked at her watch. It was almost lunchtime. In the early stages of their relationship before Marco had told her that he wanted her to move in with him, she had, with some trepidation, and with what she had considered to be great daring, taken him up on what she had believed to be a casual invitation to drop in on him if she was ever passing by his office. Emily’s heart started to go faster in a sudden flurry of excited little beats, the grating sound of the TV star’s voice fading, as she recalled how she had taken him up on his offer…

Marco’s initial greeting of her had not been welcoming. ‘You were beginning to annoy me with the way you’ve been deliberately keeping me waiting,’ he told her flatly, after his secretary had shown her into his office and then discreetly left them alone together. ‘In fact you were beginning to annoy me so much that if you left it another day to visit, you wouldn’t have got past my receptionist,’ he added arrogantly.

His verbal attack stunned her into a bewildered silence, which had her shaking her head in mute protest.

‘If you think that by holding me off, and making me wait, you’ll—’

‘Why on earth should I do that?’ Emily interrupted him, too shocked by his accusations to recognise what she was giving away until she saw the satisfaction gleaming in his eyes and he came towards her saying softly,

‘Well, in that case, we’ve got some catching up to do, haven’t we?’ When he took hold of her hands and drew her towards him, she was trembling so much with arousal and excitement that he smiled again. Not that he wasn’t equally turned on; he told her with sexy intent in between his kisses how much he wanted her and what that wanting was doing to him.

If his telephone hadn’t rung, Emily suspected that she would have let him make love to her there and then in his office. She certainly hadn’t tried to stop him when he had unfastened her blouse and peeled back the lace of her bra, exposing her breast to his glitteringly erotic gaze and the skilled touch of his hand. His lips had been on its creamy slope when his phone had rung. She had tried to straighten her clothes as he’d answered the call, but he had stopped her, very deliberately tracing the tight excitement of her nipple with one lazy fingertip whilst he’d spoken to his caller. Emily could feel her body tightening now as she remembered the effect the highly charged atmosphere between them had had on her, and the contrast between the calm, businesslike tone of his voice and the deliberately sensual way in which he had been touching her. By the time he had finished his call she had been aching with longing for him to take their intimacy to its natural conclusion, but instead he had released her, fastening her top and then saying calmly,

‘Come on, let’s go out and have some lunch.’

She hadn’t known him well enough then, of course, to realise that his deliberate arousal of her had been his way of punishing her for what he believed had been her attempt to control their relationship, and him.

Those had been such achingly sweet times, when they had first met. Suddenly she yearned to recapture them. Impulsively, she went over to the PR girl and told her firmly, ‘I’m afraid I have to go. You’ve got my e-mail address if you need to contact me.’ Emily suspected from the look the TV star was giving her that she wasn’t going to get any commission for this project. But then, she told herself, right now being with Marco was more important to her than anything.

Marco stood beside his desk in the sleek modern office suite where he conducted his global financial affairs. When he had left Niroli vowing to make his own mark in the world without his royal status, his grandfather had laughed at him and warned him that he would be back within six months with his tail between his legs. He could have been, Marco admitted: at twenty-two, his belief in his own abilities had been far greater than his financial astuteness; initially he had lost money as he’d played the international stock markets. But, just when he had begun to fear the worst, his mother’s great aunt had died in Italy, leaving him a substantial amount of money. A second stroke of luck had led him to come to the attention of one of the City’s richest entrepreneurs, who had taken Marco under his wing, teaching him to use his skills and hone his killer financial instincts. Within a year, Marco had doubled his inheritance, and within five years he had become a billionaire in his own right.

Emily had designed Marco’s office for him. On the traditional partners’ desk she had given him as a birthday gift, there was a silver-framed photograph of the two of them, taken on the anniversary of their first year together, before the death of his parents. Marco now studied it: he saw Emily looking up at him, her expression filled with laughter and desire, whilst his own was shadowed and half hidden. But then, Marco knew, his eyes reflected the physical hunger he had seen in hers, just as the positioning of their bodies mirrored one another. Emily was gazing at him with open happiness in her eyes, because she knew he was a wealthy man and a skilled lover.

‘Niroli’s kings receive love, Marco,’ his grandfather had told him when he was a young adolescent, ‘they do not give it. They are above other, weaker men, and they do not try to turn physical desire into mawkish sentiment like other, lesser men. They do not need to. You are maturing fast and you will discover very soon that your royal status will draw to you your pick of the world’s most beautiful and predatory women. They will give you their bodies but, in return, they will try to demand that you give them money and status. They will try to scheme, lie and cheat their way into your bed, and if you are foolish enough to let them they will present you with bastard sons who will become permanent remind-ers of your own folly and permanent dangers to Niroli’s throne. It is not so many centuries ago that a newly crowned sultan would order the death or the castration of all his many male half-siblings in order to prevent them from trying to take his place. You’re welcome to taste the pleasure of the women who offer themselves to you as much as you wish, but remember what I have told you. Ultimately you will make a necessary dynastic marriage with a young woman of royal and unimpeachable moral virtue, and she will give you your legitimate heirs. Your only heirs, if you are wise, Marco.’

Well, he had been wise, hadn’t he? Marco told himself grimly. And he intended to continue to be so. He looked down at the letter on the desk in front of him. It had arrived the previous day, its royal crest and the Nirolean stamp immediately marking it out as the reason why he was in the office so early this morning. It was from his grandfather, setting out the final details of his abdication plans. The people of Niroli, King Giorgio had written, were already being encouraged to expect Marco’s return and to welcome him as their new ruler. He needed to speak with his grandfather. But protocol meant that, yesterday, Marco had patiently followed an archaic, convoluted procedure, which had ensured that none of the ancient statesmen who surrounded his grandfather would have their pride dented, before finally arranging to speak directly to the king. Marco intended to make a clean sweep of these elderly statesmen once he was on the throne. His plan was to bring a forward-thinking modern mindset to the way Niroli was ruled, via courtiers of his own generation who shared his way of thinking. In fact, this new regime was something he already had in hand after a few discreet one-to-one telephone calls.

He looked at his watch: in another twenty minutes exactly, the telephone on his desk would ring and the Groom of the Chamber would announce in his quavering voice that he was going to connect him to his grandfather. Marco sighed. The elderly courtier was hard of hearing, as indeed was his grandfather, although King Giorgio denied it! Marco had a rueful fondness for his older relative, and he knew that Giorgio had a grudging respect for him, but he also knew that both of them were far too similar to ever be willing to be open about those feelings. Instead they tended to conform to the roles they had adopted in Marco’s teenage years, when his grandfather had been the disapproving disciplinarian and he had been the rebellious black sheep. He checked the time again. All this simply so that he could assure his grandfather that he would be returning to Niroli just as soon as he had dealt with his outstanding business in London, something that should have been a simple matter of a quick phone call rather than this long-drawn-out ceremonial.

The part of Marco’s outstanding business that concerned Emily was of course something he did not intend to discuss with the old king. He estimated that it would be a few weeks yet before he would be ready to leave, and he had already decided that there would be no sense in telling Emily their relationship had to end until then. One single clean cut, with no possibility of any come-backs, was the best way to deal with the situation. He would tell her they were finished and that he was leaving the country—and that was all. He had taken her to his bed as plain Marco Fierezza and he saw no point in revealing his royal status to her now. She had known him as her lover and a wealthy entrepreneur, not as the future King of Niroli. It was true that she might at some future point come to discover who he was—the paparazzi took a keen interest in the Royal House of Niroli—but by then their lives would be entirely separate. Their relationship had never been intended to end in commitment. He had told her that right from the start. But they had been together for almost three years, when previously he had become bored with his girlfriends within three months. Marco shrugged away the dry inner voice pointing out things to him he didn’t want to acknowledge. So, sexually they might have been well suited, or maybe at thirty-six the raw heat of his sex drive was cooling and he demanded less stimulation and variety, which made him content to accept a familiar physical diet? It would do him good to get out of that kind of sexual rut, he told himself coolly.

It would do them both good. Marco started as, out of nowhere, a sharply savage spear of sexual jealousy stabbed through him. What was this? Why on earth should he feel such a gut-wrenching surge of fury at the thought of Emily moving on to another man? His mouth compressed. His concern was for Emily, and not for himself. She was after all the vulnerable one, not him. Emily’s sexual past was very different from his own, and because of that—and only that, he assured himself— he was now experiencing a completely natural concern that she was not equipped to deal with a lover who might not treat her as well as he had done.

Marco looked at her picture, reluctantly remembering the first time he had possessed her. He’d planned to surprise her, but in the end she had been the one who had surprised him…

He had seen how excited she’d been when he’d walked into her shop and told her that he was taking her away for a few days, and that she would need her passport. When he’d picked her up later that day, he had seen quite plainly in her expression how much she’d wanted him. As he had wanted her.

He had been totally—almost brutally, some might have said—honest with her about the fact that he had no time for the emotional foolishness of falling in love. He had informed her calmly that he had ended previous relationships for no other reason than that his girlfriends had told him that they were falling in love with him. Emily had greeted his announcement with equal calm. Falling in love with him wasn’t something she planned to do, she had assured him firmly. She was as committed to their relationship being based on their sexual need for one another as he was himself, she had smiled, adding that this suited her perfectly, and Marco had felt she was speaking the truth.

He had booked the two of them into a complex on a small private island that catered exclusively for the rich and the childfree. Everything about the location was designed to appeal to lovers and to cocoon them in privacy, whilst providing a discreet service.

The individual villas that housed the guests were set apart from the main hotel block, each with its own private pool. Meals could be taken in the villas or in the Michelin-starred restaurant of the hotel, where there was also an elegant bar and nightclub.

Amongst the facilities included for the guests’ entertainment were diving and sailing, and visits to the larger, more built-up neighbouring islands could be arranged by helicopter if guests wished.

They had arrived late in the afternoon, and had walked through the stunningly beautiful gardens. Marco recalled now how Emily had reached out to hold his hand, her eyes shining with awed wonder as they had paused to watch the breathtaking swiftness of the sunset. He remembered, too, how he had been unable to resist taking her in his arms and kissing her, and how that kiss had become so intimate it had left Emily trembling.

They had returned to their villa, undressing one another eagerly and speedily, sharing the shower in the luxuriously equipped bathroom. Emily’s physical response to him had been everything Marco had hoped it would be and more. She had held nothing back, matching him touch for touch and in intimacy until he had started to penetrate her. It had caught him off guard to have her tensing as he thrust fully into her, believing she was as eager to feel the driving surge of his body within hers as he was to feel her hot, wet flesh tightening around him.

At first he had assumed she was playing some kind of coy game with him, mistakenly thinking that it would excite him if she assumed a mock-innocent hesitancy. His frustration had made him less perceptive than he might otherwise have been, and more impatient, so he had ignored the warning her body had been giving him and had thrust strongly again. This time it had taken the small muffled sound that had escaped past her rigid throat muscles to make him realise the truth: she was still a virgin.

His first reaction had been one of savage anger, fuelled by the toxic mingling of male frustration and the blow to his own pride that was caused by the fact that he hadn’t guessed the truth. Sex with an inexperienced virgin—and the potential burden of responsibility that carried, both physical and emotional—was something he just had not wanted.

‘What the hell is this?’ he swore. ‘Okay, I know about your marriage, but I would have thought that…if only because of that…’

‘That what? That I’d jump on the first man I could find?’ Emily retaliated sharply. But beneath that sharpness he caught the quiver of uncertainty in her voice, and his anger softened into something that caught at his throat, startling him with its intensity.

‘Well, it did cross my mind,’ she told him. ‘But in the end I was too much of a moral coward to go through with it. Blame my grandfather, if you wish, but the thought of having sex with a man I didn’t truly want, just to get rid of my virginity, has made it harder rather than easier for me to find a man I did want enough.’

Marco shrugged dismissively, not wanting to have to deal with his own unfamiliar feelings, never mind hers!

‘If you’re expecting me to be pleased about this, then let me tell you—’

‘You don’t need to tell me anything, Marco,’ she had stopped him determinedly. ‘It’s rather obvious what you feel.’

‘I don’t know what you’re thinking, or hoping for,’ he told her, ignoring her comment, ‘but, despite what you may want to believe, the majority of sexually mature men do not fantasise about initiating a virgin! I certainly don’t. The reason I brought you here was so that we could indulge our need for one another as two people starting from the same baseline. For me, that means we share matching physical desires for one another and awareness of our own sexual wants and expectations.’

‘I’m sorry if you feel that I’ve let you bring me here under false pretences,’ Emily told him, admitting, ‘Maybe I should have said something to warn you?’

‘Maybe?’

The scorn in his voice made her flinch visibly. ‘I didn’t want to play the I’m-still-a-virgin card for the reasons you’ve just mentioned yourself,’ she defended. ‘I didn’t want it to be an issue and, besides, I wasn’t even sure that you’d notice.’

Marco remembered how she had coloured up hotly when he had looked at her in disbelief.

‘I really am sorry,’ she told him apologetically.

‘You’re sorry? I’m so damn frustrated…’ he began.

‘Me, too,’ Emily interrupted him with such candour that he felt his earlier irritation evaporating.

‘Frustrated, but virginal and apprehensive?’ he felt bound to point out.

‘Yes, but not one of those has to remain a permanent state, does it?’ she responded.

‘You trust me to deal effectively with all three?’

‘I trust you to make it possible for us to deal with all three,’ she corrected him softly. ‘I’m a woman who believes that participation in a shared event makes for mutual enjoyment, even if right now in this particular venture I am the junior partner.’

He wasn’t used to being teased, or to sharing laughter in an intimate relationship and, as he quickly discovered, shared laughter had its own aphrodisiacal qualities.

He made love to her with a slow intimacy which, he was the first to admit, had its own reward when in the end she showed him such a passionate response. It was she who urged him to move faster and deeper, until he was as lost in the pleasure they were sharing as she was. But not so lost that he couldn’t witness the shocked look of delight widening her eyes as her orgasm gripped her…

What the hell was he doing, thinking about that now? It was over; they were over; or rather they soon would be.

Someone was knocking gently on his office door. Marco frowned. He wasn’t expecting anyone and he had expressly told his PA not to disturb him. He was still frowning when the door opened and Emily stepped through, smiling at him. It wasn’t often that Marco was caught off guard by anything or anyone, but on this occasion…

‘My meeting finished early,’ he could hear Emily saying breezily, ‘So I thought I’d come over and see if you were free for lunch?’

When he didn’t answer her she closed the office door and came towards him, dropping her voice to a playfully soft tone as she told him, ‘Or maybe we could forget the going-out and the lunch. Remember, Marco, how we used to…What’s wrong?’ she asked him uncertainly.

Her smile disappeared and Marco recognised that he had left it several seconds too late to respond appropriately to her arrival.

Normally, the fact that his timing was at fault would have been his main concern. But, for some reason, he found that, not only was he acutely aware that he had hurt and upset Emily, he was also suppressing an immediate desire to go to her and apologise. Apologise? Him? Marco was astounded by his own uncharacteristic impulse. He never apologised to anyone, for anything.

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he told her flatly, knowing that something was very wrong indeed for him to have felt like that. It couldn’t be that he was feeling guilty, could it? a traitorous, critical inner voice suddenly challenged, pointing out: After all, you’ve lied to her and you’re about to leave her…

She knew the ground rules, Marco answered it inwardly. That his own conscience should turn on him like this increased his irritation and, man-like, he focused that irritation on Emily, rather than deal with its real cause.

‘Yes, there is,’ Emily persisted. ‘You were looking at me as though I’m the last person you want to see.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I just wasn’t expecting to see you.’ He flicked back the sleeve of his suit—handmade, it fitted him in such a way that its subtle outlining of his superb physique was a whispered suggestion caught only by those who understood. ‘Look, I can’t do lunch, I’ve got an important call coming through any time now, and after than I’ve got an appointment.’ That wasn’t entirely true, but there was no way he wanted Emily to suggest she wait around for him whilst he spoke with his grandfather. For one thing, he had no idea just how long the call would last and, for another… For another, he wasn’t ready yet to tell Emily what she had to be told.

Because he wasn’t ready yet to deny himself the pleasure of making love to her, his inner tormentor piped up, adding mockingly, Are you sure that you will ever be ready? He dismissed that unwanted thought immediately but its existence increased his ire. ‘Mrs Lawson should have told you that I’d said I didn’t want to be disturbed,’ he informed Emily curtly.

She heard the impatience in his voice and wished she hadn’t bothered coming. Marco’s arrogance made him forget sometimes how easily he could hurt her, and she certainly had too much pride to stay here and let him see that pain.

‘Mrs Lawson wasn’t there when I came in.’

‘Not there? She’s my PA, for heaven’s sake. Where the hell is she?’

‘She’d probably just slipped off to the cloakroom, Marco. It isn’t her fault,’ Emily pointed out quietly. ‘Look, I’m sorry if this isn’t a good time.’ She gave a small resigned sigh. ‘I suppose I should have checked with you first before coming over.’

‘Yes, you should have,’ Marco agreed grimly. Any minute now the phone was going to ring and if he picked it up she was going to hear his grandfather’s most senior aide’s voice booming out as he tried to compensate for his own deafness, ‘Is that you, Your Highness?’ The Comte had never really accustomed himself to the effectiveness of modern communication systems and still thought his voice could only travel down the telephone line if he spoke as loudly as he possibly could.

Emily’s eyes widened as she registered Marco’s rejection and then she stood still staring blankly at him, the colour leaving her face. He was treating her as though she were some casual and not very welcome acquaintance.

‘Don’t worry about it. I’m sorry I disturbed you,’ she managed to say, but she could hear the brittle hurt in her own voice. Right now, she wanted to be as far away from Marco and his damn office as she could get! She was perilously close to tears and the last thing she wanted was the humiliation of Marco seeing how much he’d wounded her. To her relief, she could hear sounds from the outer office suggesting that his PA had returned, enabling her to use the face-saving fib that she didn’t want to have Mrs Lawson coming in to shoo her out. Emily opened the door and left, barely pausing to acknowledge the PA’s surprise at seeing her, Emily hurried out of the office, her head down and her throat thick with unshed tears.

What was it with her? she asked herself wretchedly, five minutes later as she hailed a taxi. She wasn’t a young girl with emotions so new and raw that she overreacted to every sucked-in breath! She was in her twenties and divorced, and she and Marco had been together for nearly three years, the intimacy of their sex life having given her an outward patina of radiant sensuality. It had been so palpable in the first year they’d been together, one of her clients had told her semi-jokingly, ‘Now that you’re with Marco you’re going to start losing clients if you aren’t careful.’

‘Why?’ Emily had asked.

‘Jealousy,’ had been the client’s succinct answer.

Emily remembered how she had smiled with rueful acknowledgement. ‘You mean, because I’m with Marco and they’d like to change places with me?’ she had guessed.

‘They may very well want to do that, but I was thinking more of their concerns that their husbands might be tempted by the creamy glow of sexual completion you’re carrying around with you right now, Emily.’

Emily remembered she had blushed and made some confused denial, but the client had shaken her head and told her wisely, ‘You can’t deny or ignore it. That glow shimmers round you like a force-field and men are going to be drawn to you because of it. There is nothing more likely to make a man want a woman than her confident wearing of another man’s sexual interest in her.’

She doubted that she still wore that magnetic sexual aura now, Emily admitted sadly. That was the trouble: when you broke the rules, it didn’t only make you ache for what you didn’t have, it also damaged what you did.

The taxi driver was waiting for her to tell him where she wanted to go. She leaned forward and gave him the address of Marco’s apartment. Marco’s apartment, she noted—for that was how she thought of it. Not as their apartment, even though he had invited her to make it over to suit her own tastes and had given her a lavish budget for its renovation. Material possessions, even for one’s home that evoked deep-rooted attachments, were nothing without the right kind of emotions to surround them. Why had it had to happen? Why had she fallen in love with Marco? Why couldn’t she have stayed as she was, thrillingly aware of him on the most intimate kind of sexual level, buoyed up by the intensity of their desire for one another, overwhelmed by relief and joy because he had brought her from the dark, wretched nowhere she’d inhabited after her divorce to the brilliant glittering landscape of unimaginable beauty that was the intimacy they shared together? Why, why, why couldn’t that have been enough? Why had she had to go and fall for him?

Emily shivered, sinking deeper into the seat of the taxi. And why, having fallen for him, did she have to torment herself by hoping that one day things would change, that one day he would look at her and in his eyes she would see his love for her? The hope that, one day, it would happen sometimes felt so fragile and so unrealistic that she was afraid for herself, afraid of her vulnerability as a woman who needed one particular man so badly she was prepared to cling to such a fine thread. But what else could she do? She could tell him, honestly, how she felt. Emily bit her lip, guiltily aware that she wasn’t being open with him. Because she was afraid in case she lost him…Why was she letting herself be dragged down by these uncomfortable, painful thoughts and questions? Why did they keep on escaping from the place where she tried to incarcerate and conceal them? What kind of woman was she to live a lie with the man she loved? What kind of relationship was it when that man stated openly that there was no place for love in the life he wanted to live?