His jaw clenched and unclenched. “I will.”
Her chin was still wobbling, her fingers still clamped around her cutlery, when she heard Tommaso’s car drive out of the gates.
The party had spread from Enrico’s villa into the garden. The heated pool was already proving popular, swimming costumes optional.
Champagne in hand, Tommaso observed it all with a detachment he’d been trying to shake off since his arrival three hours ago. He hadn’t come here to observe, he’d come to party. He’d come to get his equilibrium back, and there was plenty of choice to do just that. Enrico knew how to throw a party. The city’s most beautiful women were always guaranteed to be in attendance, and that evening was no exception. Directly in his sight, Roberto stripped off to his underpants and threw himself into the pool next to a group of topless, twenty-something beauties. Their squeals of outrage and laughter at the water that splashed over them blended into the loud music pumping out.
Maybe he should throw himself in the water, too, Tommaso thought morosely. A couple of the topless swimmers kept making eyes at him in unspoken invitation. They were both beautiful, but nothing stirred for them. Not his libido or his spirits.
“Hello, stranger.”
He hadn’t noticed Agostina sidle up to him.
He inclined his head in acknowledgement and leaned down for the requisite cheek kisses. “You’re looking well,” he said, wondering how he hadn’t smelt her coming towards him. Agostina’s perfume was close to being overpowering.
Lips painted a deep red smiled coquettishly. “So are you. Marriage must agree with you… Where is your wife?”
He worked to keep his features even. Most of the people here knew Gabriella. Not one person he’d spoken to hadn’t asked about her. “At home.”
Her eyes flashed with mischief. “She must be a trusting soul letting you off the leash, and so soon after your wedding, which I was very cross not to be invited to, by the way.”
“It was immediate family only,” he said by way of an apology.
“And very quickly organised, I’ve been told.”
“What else have you been told?” Agostina was one of his social media company’s most popular influencers and had her ear to the pulse.
“Exactly what you’d expect from the gossip-mongers.”
“Which is?”
“That you’ve been trying to get her into bed for years and that she comforted you over your father’s death and realised you wasn’t a complete bastard and so you slapped a wedding ring on her finger before she could change her mind… Although I do notice your wedding finger is bare.”
He laughed grudgingly. The gossip-mongers were technically correct, but only about the first two aspects. It was all the missing factors that told the real story, the most important one being that Gabriella was a rat. If Agostina hadn’t heard that aspect, then it meant the truth was contained. It meant he didn’t have to waste his time on damage limitation. Neither containment nor damage limitation would have been necessary if he’d actually done the damned job he’d insisted on being the one to undertake.
His gaze drifted back to the swimming pool. Roberto, free from his wife and mistress for the night, was making the most of the nubile young women gleefully flirting with him. Tommaso’s family name, astronomical wealth, reputation and looks meant that if he jumped into the pool like he kept trying to psyche himself to do, those nubile young women would be fighting for his attention. He could take his pick or have them all. The choice would be his.
“So why isn’t she here?” Agostina persisted.
Because he’d come to this party where anything that went on within its perimeter stayed within its perimeter, determined to screw and have fun and prove to himself that what he felt for Gabriella wasn’t impermeable, and all he could see was the way her cheeks had paled and she’d lifted her trembling chin and defiantly wished him a nice evening a split second after she’d understood exactly why he was choosing to leave her behind.
He’d married Gabriella to save her life. The ground rules he’d laid out at the start were her deserved punishment for her treachery. He didn’t owe her fidelity or loyalty, didn’t owe her a damned thing, and she knew better than to expect it.
But he’d hurt her. Deliberately hurt her for the failure of the cold turkey he was putting himself through to cure his addiction to her, and as he dispassionately watched another beautiful woman strip to her knickers at the poolside, the only stirring he felt below his waistline was the growing sickness in his guts.
Only hours ago, he’d shared a meal with Gabriella with lead in his underwear and every nerve ending in his body on alert to her every movement. Now he was surrounded by beautiful women and talking to a beautiful woman he’d have taken to bed if the opportunity had presented itself – ithadpresented itself, right there and then – and he felt nothing. Not for Agostina. Not for any of them.
He didn’t even want to be there.
He wanted to go home to his wife. Wanted it too damned much.
His heart thick and weighty, he dredged something he hoped looked like a smile to his face. “Gabriella isn’t feeling well.” That wasn’t a lie. His cruel words had affected her physically. He’d seen it. Couldn’t stop seeing it. Couldn’t stop the acrid churn in his guts; his body punishing him for what he’d done. What he was doing.
Hurting her.
Feeling like a boulder had replaced his heart and was pressing against his ribcage, he turned to Agostina one last time. “Do me a favour and give my apologies to Enrico. I need to get back to my wife.”
Gabriella had paced the bedroom. She’d had a hot, bubbly bath. Once the domestic staff had gone for the night, she’d paced the ground floor. She’d paced the garden. She’d flicked through the hundreds of channels on the television in the den. She’d put the juke box on and played the pinball machine in the games room, then played a game of Space Invaders she guessed was as old as her mother would have been if she were alive. Craving sweetness, she’d rifled through every cupboard in the kitchen, and now she opened the fridge and found the tiramisu that had been made for their dessert. Tommaso had left before it could be served, and Gabriella’s appetite had left with him. Her appetite was still gone, but she needed sweetness to kill the acrid taste on her tongue that no amount of toothbrushing had rid her of, so she pulled the dish out, found a spoon to eat it with, and sat at the kitchen island on the same stool Tommaso had liftedher onto when her hangover had stopped her legs from working properly.
