The Marriage He Must Keep(58)

Octavia had been perfect. She’d come from the right background, had an honestly earned fortune and a conciliatory nature that hadn’t provoked strong feelings in him.

Except in bed.

And then out of it.

Yes, he couldn’t deny that his feelings for her had been growing from those first weeks of his marriage. He’d tried to stay them, had left her in London and convinced himself he hadn’t missed her, but since Lorenzo’s birth he’d been unable to effectively keep himself from growing more and more attached.

The attraction was never supposed to have deepened like this. Why should it have when he’d chosen her for logical reasons and they really didn’t have that much in common? It was a one in a million shot that she would turn out to capture his interest so thoroughly.

But her quiet, thoughtful nature had revealed itself to also be vulnerable, then sassy. She was complex, far more intriguing than he’d first suspected. Smart and funny and loving. That was the part that had really gotten to him. She loved their son, loved his family—hell, she loved her friend from the hospital and her friend’s baby.

She loved him.

That was the problem with emotions. With a curse, he slapped his hand on his desk so his palm stung. Why couldn’t he control this? Why couldn’t she? This wasn’t supposed to happen. They were entering territory where real hurt could happen. Couldn’t she see that?

Of course she had. When she had walked out, her last look had pulled his flesh from his bones before throwing his skin away. He’d been right back in London, seeing whatever she had felt for him shredded to nothing.

They were already in the danger zone. Hell, if he had been serious about protecting her heart, he should have left her in London when she had asked. He shouldn’t have pressed and cajoled and seduced her into coming back here with him.

He shouldn’t have made her fall in love with him.

Which was what he’d done. Not consciously. He’d told himself he wanted her trust. Her body. Her affection and acceptance of him.

But it was her heart he’d been courting. He wanted her love, damn it!

Because he loved her so much it was unbearable to think of being the only one this deeply invested.

He clenched his fists, trying to contain the massive rush of feeling as he admitted what he’d been denying. Love, thick and hot as lava seared his arteries, wrenching his heart. Who wanted this much need and anguish and possessiveness welling inside them?

Who wanted the power to hurt another and feel as though you’d punched a hole in your own chest when you did? Who wanted to be driven to open a door and go in search of a woman before he even knew what he wanted to say?

He took the back stairs because they were closer, checking Lorenzo’s room and finding it empty. He tried their new bedrooms in the renovated master suite. It had a long private balcony that wrapped the corner of the topmost floor of the castello, offering nearly a full 360-degree view of the Ferrante lands.

It also looked onto the front terrace where his family was congregating. Octavia wasn’t there, but another level below it, in the courtyard where the fountain burbled in front of the stairs at the entrance to the house, his wife was about to put his son’s car seat into the backseat of her mother’s car.

His heart dropped into the center of the earth.

“Octavia!” he bellowed.

She jerked and swiveled, hugging the car seat to her chest protectively. Her chin came up, up, up as she found him at the top of the house in some kind of reverse Romeo and Juliet satire.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He was shouting far louder than he had to, but all he could think was that there were too many flights of stairs between them for him to reach her before she got away. His voice had to pin her exactly where she was.

Immediately below him, his family looked up. His sister, standing near the rail, glanced down to the drive, saw Octavia and turned back to the rest of them. Her mouth and eyes formed a round O.



Octavia was aware of faces appearing across the lower terrace, but the Roman god standing at the top of the house catching thunderbolts and threatening to hurl them at her held most of her attention.

“I’m going to my mother’s. I need time to think,” she said. And, because Lorenzo was getting heavy, she set his car seat on the backseat inside the open door of the car.

“Do not—” Sandro roared, “—put that baby in that car.”

Her mother’s driver took a long, deliberate step back. Inside the car, her mother said, “Octavia, I don’t like this.”

On the terrace, Ysabelle’s count looked up at his stepson-to-be and said, “Sandro, you need to take control of yourself.”