Page 3 of Back to Claim His Italian Heir
The priest, having sprung into motion, gestured for Nico to head to a small room off the sanctuary of the church. Nico deposited Emma on a small, worn sofa and stepped back.
‘Sir,’ the priest stammered, ‘this is highly irregular...’
‘We’ll be out of your way in a few minutes,’ Nico assured him, ‘after my wife has regained her senses. Could you please leave Emma’s things outside the door for my driver to retrieve?’
He had a car waiting outside, and no interest or intention in staying here for a single second longer than necessary.
‘Please, if you could leave us alone,’ he commanded, and with an unhappy look the priest scurried away. Nico heard the murmur of voices and click of heels before the door closed, and he knew the guests were leaving. Good.
As he gazed down at the supine form of his wife, he hoped, belatedly, that she hadn’t injured herself, but then acknowledged that, despite her fall, Emma was clearly someone who always landed on her feet. She’d demonstrated that admirably today.
Her eyes fluttered open, and she caught sight of him—a gleam of awareness brightening her golden irises before her lids drifted shut again.
Lord help him, but she was beautiful. More beautiful than he’d even remembered. And he’d spentmonthsremembering—months in a hospital bed, trying to remember his own name, her face feeling like the only thing his mind hadn’t let him forget.
And that face was before him right now—heart-shaped and pale, her faintly snub nose scattered with golden freckles, her pink lips slightly parted. Her chest rose and fell in pants that were too agitated to be the deep and even breathing of someone rendered unconscious.
‘Open your eyes, Emma,’ Nico commanded flatly. ‘I know you’re awake.’
If anything her lids scrunched even more tightly shut. Nico let out a huff that would have been laughter if he’d been remotely amused. He wasn’t, because he was too angry for that. And he was angry because that felt so much better than being hurt.
Just a little over three months he’d been gone. Threemonths.
‘Emma.’
A breath shuddered out of her as she kept her eyes resolutely closed. ‘I don’t feel like opening them,’ she confessed in a croaky whisper.
‘Because you want me to just go away,’ Nico surmised in a hard voice. ‘I’m not surprised.’
Finally Emma cracked open a single eye, to gaze at him uncertainly. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘No, why should I be, considering how quickly you were able to forget me?’ he replied coolly. ‘Two weddings in the space of three months has to be a record for just about anyone.’
‘Three and a half months,’ she corrected weakly, and this time Nico did let out a huff of laughter—hard, humourless laughter, because she was certainly showing her true colours now. How could he have ever been so deceived? Because he’d let himself, he knew. Because, after the revelation of his own birth, he’d wanted to belong to someone. Well, lesson learned. Abundantly. Don’t go looking for love. Don’t even believe it exists, because he had yet to see it in his own life, from his own father.
‘I stand corrected,’ he told her. ‘Three and a half months from one wedding to the next...those two weeks makeallthe difference, clearly.’
She opened both eyes this time as she regarded him with a weary sort of apprehension. ‘How is it that you are alive?’
‘You sound so pleased that I am.’ She didn’t reply and he forced himself to continue, not to dwell on the truth that was staring him so bleakly in the face. She’d never cared about him at all. He’d just been a meal ticket, as his cousin Antonio had told him, right from the beginning, incredulous that he’d been so foolhardy as to marry a woman after an acquaintance of a mere three weeks. Nico had scoffed at his cousin, determined to believe that he was acting only out of spite and jealousy; their relationship had become increasingly strained since his father’s revelations, with Antonio embittered at not being handed the reins of Santini Enterprises.
And yet he, usually so pragmatic and resolute, had let himself, in a rare moment of weakness, be deluded by the most absurd fantasy. Well, no longer. Not for one second more. ‘I’m alive,’ he told her, ‘because I survived the plane crash. Obviously.’
She shook her head slowly, eyes wide as she stared at him in dismay. Clearly she didn’t relish the idea of living together as husband and wife again. Well, it wasn’t all appealing to him either, but he’d be damned if he’d let her commit bigamy by marrying another man.
‘But where have you been for the last three months?’ she asked, her voice sounding thin and papery. She was lying on the sofa like some sort of Snow White, her hair spread about the cushion, the circlet of roses having been knocked askew. Her figure was elegant and lithe, reminding Nico of how he’d explored every inch of that body, every intriguing dip and lush curve, how he’d made them his own.
He clenched his hands into fists to keep from reaching for her, even now. ‘Three and a half months, you mean,’ he reminded her in a voice like a blade, cutting and quick. ‘After the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean, I was rescued by a fishing boat, and then I was in a cottage hospital on a nearby island. After that I was transferred to a rehabilitation centre in Jakarta, before I returned to Rome last week. Any other questions?’
‘Why didn’t you let me know you were alive?’ This came out more stridently, a golden blaze in her eyes that reminded him of why he’d fallen in love with her, or at least thought he had. That spirit, that humour, the sparkle in her eye, the quirk of her lip. It had lightened something inside him, something that had desperately needed lightening, but of course it had all been false, a tissue of carefully constructed lies, because he’d never known her at all, not truly. That reality was staring him smack in the face right now.
‘Because first I was in a coma,’ he explained flatly, ‘and then I couldn’t remember my own name. I had no identification, no way of anyone knowing who I was. That had been destroyed in the crash.’ His voice pulsed with a pain that he did his best to hide. Those months had been torturous in their own way, and yet in the midst of all the pain and uncertainty, he’d remembered her. He almost wished now that he hadn’t.
Emma’s golden eyes widened as she scooted up on the sofa. ‘You were in acoma?’
‘It’s a little late to sound concerned.’
Her mouth dropped open, eyes flashing. ‘Nico, you can’t blame me for not knowing—’