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The Unwanted Wife(13)

By:Natasha Anders


“You look…” His voice was hoarse and he cleared his throat before starting again. “You look bellissima, cara.” His quiet voice seemed to ring with sincerity and something that, in any other man, would be akin to reverence. “Absolutely stunning.”

She blinked.

“Oh,” was all she could think of to say, and he came farther into the room, still so riveted on her hair and face that he very nearly tripped over a small footstool placed beside an easy chair. He frowned at the offending piece of furniture before sinking into the leather easy chair opposite the matching sofa Theresa was curled up on.

“Uh…” He dragged his focus down to the book in her lap and seemed strangely desperate to make conversation. “What are you reading?” His sharp eyes honed in on the title before he raised his gaze to hers in consternation. “Dogs?” He sounded so nonplussed that she hugged the book defensively to her chest.

“I happen to like dogs,” she said fiercely, and his strangely gentle eyes swept over her tight features before coming to rest on the book. He leaned forward and extended his right hand.

“May I?” He watched her steadily until she reluctantly let up on the death grip she had on the book and handed it over to him. “Thank you.” He leaned back and flipped through the glossy pages, pausing here and there before grinning almost boyishly at her. He looked so breathtakingly handsome that for a long moment she didn’t know that he was talking to her.

“Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that,” she whispered, and his smile widened as he flipped the book toward her, tapping his long index finger on a picture of a grinning black Labrador retriever.

“I had one just like this,” he informed her, and she frowned.

“One what?” she asked blankly, mesmerized by his devastating smile.

“Dog,” he told her patiently before turning the book back toward himself. His expression was gently reminiscent. “I like dogs too. The way I see it, anyone who doesn’t like dogs is not to be trusted. My retriever was called Rocco. He died just before I started university. I’d had him for sixteen years. I suppose you could say that I grew up with him.” She smiled at his obvious affection for what must have been a well-loved pet.

“You must have had a dog too, growing up?” he prompted, and she nodded slowly. “What breed?”

“She was a bit of a mutt,” Theresa whispered, more than a little reluctant to continue.

“What was her name?” Why was he being so damned persistent?

“Sheba,” she supplied, her voice going even quieter, and his smile faded as he leaned forward intently, his eyes fixed on her downcast face.

“Tell me more,” he invited quietly.

“Nothing much to tell,” she shrugged, clearing her throat. “My mother took me to the SPCA for my eleventh birthday and told me to choose any dog I wanted. I’d been going on and on about getting a dog for months before that, promising that I would take good care of it. It was getting to the point where, I guess, she would have done anything to shut me up. So I chose Sheba, with her soulful brown eyes, her scruffy black-and-white coat, and her happy, wagging tail.” He smiled at that and so did she. “She wasn’t much to look at but I adored her.” She sighed heavily before stopping and shrugging, ultimately lifting her eyes to meet his. “Time to get ready for that dinner now, isn’t it?” He frowned before shaking his head.

“How long did you have your dog?” he asked softly in a tone that said he wouldn’t rest until he knew everything, and Theresa tugged at her full lower lip with her teeth.

“About three weeks.”

He smothered a soft curse at the whispered confession.

“What happened?”

“Mom and Daddy didn’t agree on most things, and apparently my getting a dog was yet another excuse to fight. Getting Sheba was Mom’s way of scoring points against Daddy and getting rid of Sheba was Daddy’s way of scoring points against Mom.” Her parents had been deeply unhappy together, and it really shouldn’t have surprised anyone when her mother swallowed a handful of sleeping pills mere weeks later. Theresa had blamed herself for a long time, thinking that if she had been less insistent about the dog, her parents wouldn’t have fought and her mother wouldn’t have abandoned her. She had been petrified for many years that her father would desert her too if she wasn’t the perfect daughter, but by the time she had finished high school, she had understood that Jackson Noble was too selfish to harm himself in any way. By then, being the perfect daughter had become an unbreakable habit.

Now she strove to sound flippant about the dog, but the tremor in her voice made a liar out of her. Sandro said nothing but he seemed to be struggling with something, his jaw so tightly clenched that she could see the little muscles knotting just below his ears, and his knuckles showed white where his grip had tightened on the book.

“What did he do to the dog?” he gritted out, sounding like he was chewing nails.

“I never knew for sure,” she confessed. “Mom said Sheba went to a new family and was happy with them. But I don’t know…I always feared that he took her back to the pound.” Despite her best intentions, tears of long-remembered pain flooded her eyes, and she tilted her chin in an effort to appear casual. “I couldn’t sleep for the longest time afterward, imagining how confused Sheba must have been, and on the really bad nights I pictured them taking her into the vet’s operating room to be put down, because even though I loved her, she really wasn’t cute or clever or all that special. If she went back to the pound, I don’t think she would have gone to another home.”

“You mustn’t think like that,” he admonished.

“I know. Never mind, it’s so far in the past that the wound healed long ago. Not even a scar.” The way he looked at her told her that he didn’t believe a word of it.

“You were eleven?”

She nodded and dropped her eyes, uncomfortable beneath his burning regard. “Didn’t your mother die when you were eleven?” Everybody knew that her mother had committed suicide. She had been found by a servant, and the news had been leaked to the press within the hour. One of the unfortunate by-products of coming from a family such as hers was the complete lack of privacy and respect from the press. Her mother’s suicide had become fodder for the masses and her funeral a three-ring circus. It had made Theresa very cagey around the media and she tended to stay as far removed from the limelight as possible.

Her marriage to Sandro hadn’t made that easy—not when his family history was almost identical to hers and his glamorous sisters were always being hounded by the paparazzi.

“About two weeks after I lost Sheba,” she admitted, and he inhaled sharply, a muffled curse word dropping from his lips. “So, you see, I soon had bigger things to worry about than poor little Sheba’s fate.”

“I think I see a lot more than you want me to, Theresa,” he stated cryptically, and she raised her eyes back up to his only to be confounded by the tenderness and understanding she saw there. He handed the book back to her, and she took it with a nod, making sure to avoid all contact with his large hands. He noticed the evasion and, while his eyes narrowed, he chose not to say anything about it.

“So how casual is this business thing?” she asked, changing the subject abruptly, getting up carefully, not wanting another revealing wave of dizziness in front of him.

“Extremely casual,” he responded quietly, choosing not to challenge the blatant subject change. “Jeans, T-shirt, and a jacket will do.”

“You mean I had my hair done for nothing?” She frowned, rather disgruntled that she wouldn’t be showing off her new look in the best possible setting.

“I hardly think it was for nothing,” he protested with another one of those rare, breathtaking smiles of his. “I think the result was well worth the effort. I loved your long hair, cara, but this new chic, sleek little cut…Words fail me. You look…” He shook his head and in a quintessentially Italian gesture, raised his fingertips to his lips and kissed them to signify his approval. For some reason that struck Theresa as funny, and she stifled a giggle with her hand. Her eyes were iridescent with laughter, and he stood for a long moment, staring at her, before he cleared his throat.

“Go on, Theresa,” he prompted gently. “Meet me down here in half an hour?” She nodded at the question in his voice.




Sandro remained closemouthed about where they were going, ignoring Theresa’s increasingly desperate pleas for information. It was highly unusual for him not to tell her what to expect. He usually drilled information into her, what their hosts liked and what he wanted her to talk about. He always seemed afraid that she would mess up somehow, but he was markedly different this time. He was relaxed, and every time Theresa asked about their eventual destination, he told her not to worry about it. She peeked at his handsome profile, hating his nonchalance in the face of her edginess. He was dressed even more casually than she was, wearing name-brand sweatpants that had definitely seen better days, battered sneakers of the same brand, and a jacket to match the pants.