Page 2 of Back to Claim His Italian Heir

‘Will... I... I’m so sorry... I can explain...’ Except Emma knew she couldn’t, not really. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his mother swell up like a bullfrog, full of vindication as she turned to the woman on her left, some aunt or other. And then there was Nico...standing there like a dark angel, a determined warrior, fierce and furious and absolutely certain.

Her husband...back from the dead.

‘Emma, what’s going on?’ Will asked, his voice rising a little. ‘Who is this guy? Are you actually married to him?’

‘I told you about Nico...’ Emma began, in a whisper.

Will’s face flashed with confusion. ‘But hedied—’

‘Of course, she knows me,’ Nico cut him off, his voice vibrating with icy contempt. ‘And yes, she is married to me. I am her husband.’ His gaze swung from Will back to Emma, pinning her in place. Eyes as green as moss, and she’d seen them soft with desire, smiling down at her before he’d lowered his lips towards hers for a long and lingering kiss. Now those eyes looked like chips of emerald, glinting hard and cold. Well, there was no love lost on her side, either, all things considered. There had been no love at all, because she hadn’t known him. He hadn’t known her. No matter what she’d tried to let herself believe.

‘Emma?’ Will said again. The priest cleared his throat. Nico stared at her, his cold gaze not wavering. This was hideous. Hideous and unimaginable and really rather terrifying, because Nico wasn’t playing the besotted lover now. He looked as if he hated her, and maybe he did. Maybe he had before he left for the Maldives, or almost.

‘Nico was already tiring of you, Emma. He said as much to me. The sooner you leave, the better.’

After a lifetime of being passed like a parcel, she knew when it was time to get out. When she wasn’t wanted. She’d learned to read the signs—the flash of impatience in the eyes, the tightening of the lips, the weighted pauses and significant looks. And of course sometimes she didn’t need to read them; they were spelled out in blazing big lights.

‘Adopt Emma? Absolutely not.’

Her foster mother’s voice, laced with incredulity, echoed painfully through her all these years later. Yes, Emma knew what rejection looked like, felt like, and so she hadn’t waited around to face it again.

Now she opened her mouth. Closed it. Will let out a soft sound of distress, and the look of scorn on her husband’s face was mixed with an arrogant, blazing satisfaction. He was clearly in control here, calling the shots just as he always had before. As happy as she’d let herself be, Emma had been under no illusions about who had had the control in their short-lived relationship—Nico. Always Nico.

He was the one who had set the parameters of their affair.‘A few weeks in New York, yes, I’ll fly you to Rome, it will end when I say it does.’

And then, to her shock, he’d asked her to marry him, and even though she should have known better, she’d agreed. She’d wanted the fairy tale, no matter how brief it turned out to be. It was no surprise at all that Nico had come to regret his uncharacteristically impulsive decision.

‘I...’ she began, and then found she couldn’t go on. In addition to already feeling icy, incredulous and yes, terrified, she was also starting to feel dizzy. Very dizzy, because even as she stared at Nico standing there like an avenging angel her vision was starting to tunnel and she had a strange metallic taste in her mouth.

‘Yes, Emma?’ Nico drawled coldly.

‘I...’ She couldn’t see to get past that one word. A whisper ran through the congregation like a lit fuse. The world was blacking at its edges, as if she were looking through a telescope, and Will was still gazing at her with a puppyish mixture of hurt and concern. She wasn’t brave enough to look at Nico again.

Once more Emma tried to speak. No words came out. There were spots dancing in front of her eyes, and the sight of Nico was becoming smaller and smaller, like a pinpoint at the centre of her eye, shrinking into the distance. If only he would go away completely...

‘Emma—’ Will said, stepping towards her, but it was too late.

The last thing she saw before she crumpled to the floor was Nico’s incredulous fury emblazoned on every taut line of his beautiful face.

Well, that certainly was one way for his errant wife to weasel out of a situation. Nico tamped down on his fury as he stepped forward to Emma’s crumpled form. Her erstwhile groom was looking at her in dismay, fluttering his hands uselessly. What a waste of space, stuffed in a suit. He needed to be got rid of immediately, along with all these rubbernecking guests.

‘Clear the way,’ Nico commanded as he bent to pick up his wife. She smelled of the roses from her fallen bouquet along with the scent that was uniquely her, a scent he remembered, that he’d breathed in deeply. He’d once asked her what perfume it was, and she’d laughed, a gurgle of pure enjoyment.

‘Just soap,’ she’d told him, her golden eyes dancing, sparkling like bits of amber. ‘Eau de Dollar Store.’

He’d laughed back and snatched her up in his arms, breathed in the sweet, soapy scent of her hair, revelling in her, inthem. What a fool he’d been. What a naïve, deluded fool.

‘Sir—’ the groom began, and Nico silenced him with a single look, swift and blazing.

‘Your part in this farce is over,’ he told the man flatly. ‘Emma Dunnett—EmmaSantini—is my wife. I’ll take over from here. You can see yourself out, along with all your guests. As quickly as possible, if you please.’

He drew Emma, lolling lifelessly in his arms, against his chest. She was light, her body lithe and slender, maybe even more than he remembered. Her golden-brown hair was wreathed in roses with a short veil, and she wore a simple ankle-length shift dress of pale yellow. At least she hadn’t worn wedding white, he thought sardonically.

How could she have betrayed him like this?

And yet, why should he be surprised? He’d had betrayal in his life before, a string of deceptions that were still painful to acknowledge. His mother’s affair, his father’s remoteness, all based on the lie of who he was—and who he wasn’t. If the people he’d loved most in the world had deceived him so utterly, another treacherous act should hardly shock him...and yet from her.

From her.