LITMIR.BIZ

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him rummaging among its contents, and the clink of a bottle tapping the edge of a shelf before he swung the door closed. “Well, as it happens, I did. For about a month, beginning the week after you left.”

      Hearing him confirm her worst fears shocked Gabriella into betraying the kind of distress she’d sworn she’d never let him witness in her again. “You mean to say you didn’t even wait until the sheets had grown cold before you let another woman into my bed?” she squeaked, and refusing to vent her outrage where it truly belonged—on him!—she accosted the hapless chicken, wielding the knife with savage intent. “Why doesn’t that surprise me, I wonder?”

      “I didn’t say that.” Calmly, he rummaged in one of the drawers for a corkscrew.

      “Not in so many words, perhaps, but the implication is clear enough! And so is the evidence!” Brandishing the two-pronged fork, she gestured at the drawer. That drawer! “I saw what’s in there, so don’t bother denying it.”

      He laughed. “And what is it that you saw, my dear? A body?”

      “Don’t you dare laugh at me!” Hearing her voice threatening to soar to top C, she made a concerted effort to wrestle herself under control. “I found the apron and the hand lotion.”

      “Well, as long as you didn’t also find high heels and panty hose, at least you don’t need to worry you’re married to a cross-dresser.”

      “Worry? About you?” she fairly screeched, aiming such a wild blow at the chicken carcass that a wing detached itself and slid crazily across the counter. “Let me assure you, Max Logan, that I can find better things to occupy my mind!”

      Suddenly, shockingly, he was touching her, coming from behind to close one hand hard around her wrist, while the other firmly removed the knife from her grasp and placed it a safe distance away. “Keep that up and you’ll be hacking your fingers off next.”

      “As if you’d care!”

      “As a matter of fact, I would. I don’t fancy little bits of you accidentally winding up on my plate.”

      “You heartless, insensitive ape!” She spun around, the dismay she’d fought so hard to suppress fomenting into blinding rage. “This is all one huge joke to you, isn’t it? You don’t care one iota about the hurt you inflict on others with your careless words.”

      “It’s the hurt you were about to inflict on yourself that concerns me.” As if he were the most domesticated husband on the face of the earth, he pushed her aside and started carving the chicken. “You’re already worried your parents might guess we’re not exactly nuts about each another, without your showing up at the airport tomorrow bandaged from stem to stern and giving them extra cause for concern.”

      “Don’t exaggerate. I’m perfectly competent in a kitchen, as you very well know.”

      He jerked his head at the unopened bottle of Pouilly Fuissé. “Then make yourself useful and uncork that.”

      “Do it yourself,” she snapped, the thought of how quickly he’d taken up with someone else once she’d vacated the scene rankling unbearably. She had honored her wedding vows. Why couldn’t he have done the same?

      “Now who’s being unnecessarily hostile?”

      She detected marked amusement in his voice. Deciding it was safest to keep her hands busy with something harmless lest she forgot herself so far as to take a meat cleaver to him, she began preparing a tray with plates, cutlery and serviettes. “At least,” she said, “I haven’t given you grounds for divorce.”

      “There are some who’d say a wife walking out on her husband is ample grounds for terminating a marriage.”

      “Then why haven’t you taken steps to end ours?”

      Finished with the chicken, he turned his attention to the wine. “Because we agreed there was no pressing need to formalize matters, especially given your parents’ age, health and religious convictions.” He angled a hooded glance her way. “Unless, of course, you’ve found some urgent reason…?”

      “I’m not the one who went out shopping for a replacement within a week and had the bad taste to leave his possessions lying around for you to find!”

      “Neither am I, Gabriella,” he said mildly, his mood improving markedly as hers continued to deteriorate. “The woman you perceive to be such a threat was a fifty-nine-year-old housekeeper I hired to come in on a daily basis to keep the place clean and prepare my meals. The arrangement came to an end by mutual agreement after one month because there wasn’t enough to keep her busy and she was a lousy cook. She must have left some of her stuff behind by mistake.”

      Feeling utterly foolish, Gabriella muttered, “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

      “Because you immediately assumed the worst before I had the chance to explain anything. Now that we’ve cleared up the misunderstanding, though, I suggest you take that pout off your face, smile for a change, and join me in a toast.” He passed a glass of wine to her and lifted the other mockingly. “Here’s to us, my dear wife. May your parents be taken in by appearances as easily as you are, and go home convinced their daughter and son-in-law are living in matrimonial clover!”

      Twenty minutes later, they sat at the glass-topped patio table on the west side of the terrace. The Pouilly Fuissé stood neck-deep in a silver wine cooler. A hurricane lamp flickered in a sconce on the wall.

      Outwardly, they might have been any of a hundred contented couples enjoying the mild, calm evening. Inwardly, however, Gabriella was a mess. Poking her fork into her barely touched meal, she finally braved the question which had been buzzing around in her mind like an angry wasp from the moment he’d misled her into thinking his housekeeper had been a lover. “Have you really never…been with another woman, Max? Since me, I mean?”

      “Why don’t you look at me when you ask that?” he replied in a hard voice.

      Because, she could have told him, if she’d dared, it hurts too much. You’re too beautiful, too sexy, too…everything except what I most want you to be, which is mine.

      “Gabriella?”

      Gathering her courage, she lifted her head and took stock of him, feature by feature. He leaned back in his chair, returning the favor with equal frankness, his eyes a dark, direct blue, his gaze steady.

      His hair gleamed black as the Danube on a starless night. His skin glowed deep amber against the stark white of his shirt. He shifted one elbow, a slight movement only, but enough to draw attention to the width of his chest and the sculpted line of his shoulders.

      Miserably, she acknowledged that everything about him was perfect—and most assuredly not hers to enjoy. She knew that as well as she knew her own name. Devouring him with her eyes brought her nothing but hopeless regret for what once might have been, and painful longing for something that now never could be.

      Nonetheless, she forced herself to maintain her steady gaze and say serenely, “Well, I’m looking, Max, so why don’t you answer the question? Have you been with anyone else?”

      He compressed his gorgeous mouth. Just briefly, his gaze flickered. “You want me to tell you I’ve lived like a monk since you ran off to pursue a career?”

      “I want you to tell me the truth.”

      He shook his head and stared out to where the last faint show of color from the sunset stained the sea a pale papaya-orange. “No, you don’t, Gabriella. As I recall, you’re not on very good terms with honesty and I doubt you’d know how to handle it in this instance.”

      She flinched, his reply shooting straight to her heart like a splinter of glass. Normally the most brutally candid man she’d ever met, his evasion amounted to nothing but an admission of guilt delivered as kindly as he knew how.

      Unbidden, the night she’d lost her virginity rose up to haunt her, most particularly the exquisite pleasure he’d given

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