The Proud Wife Read Online Free Page A

betraying force of his heated response.
    As he took his own seat on the other side of the table, Marina accepted the glass that Matteo passed to her and sipped from it carefully. She was still wearing her wedding ring, Pietro noticed, seeing the glint of gold on the fingers wrapped around the glass. It was the last thing he had expected, and he was surprised by the force of his reaction to seeing his ring. It was the ring he had put on her finger after making their wedding vows, still there on the hand of the woman who hadn’t even pretended to play the role of his wife for over two years.
    â€˜Pietro…’
    The sound of his name on his estranged wife’s lips jolted him back to the present. He had heard her use his name so many times, but this was like no other time before. This time the single word was both a question and a reproach for the fact that she had said something and, lost in a dangerous blend of angry and erotic thoughts, he had not heard her.
    â€˜Cara?’ he responded, deliberately lacing the endearment with cynicism and knowing he had hit home when he saw her reaction.
    Her spine stiffened, her jaw tightened and the soft rose-tinted mouth clamped into a thin, rigid line. Green eyes flashed an uncontrolled response. Now she was letting the real Marina show, he thought with a sense of grim satisfaction. Just for a moment the controlled mask had slipped and she had let him have a glimpse of the woman underneath. This was the Marina he knew of old.
    â€˜What exactly are you doing here?’ she asked now, her tone making it clear that she wished he was a million miles away.
    He dealt her a smile across the table and felt a flare of dark satisfaction when he saw her eyes widen even more.
    â€˜We arranged to meet to discuss the terms of the divorce,’ he reminded her, calm and reasonable.
    Marina took another sip of water and put down her glass with the sort of careful precision that he knew only came when she was really trying to keep a grip on her volatile nature. She wasn’t as much in control as she wanted to appear. That made him want to watch her more closely, to see what he could read in her face, in her eyes.
    â€˜No, you summoned— ordered —me to Sicily so that I could meet with your lawyer to discuss the terms of the divorce. I did not agree to speak to you.’
    Oh, he recognised this mood. It was the one where she took everything he said, chewed it up and flung it back at him turned inside out so that it meant the opposite of what he had actually said. It was a mood he knew well. Strangely, it was also a mood that he had missed when she had left him—and before she had left him, his memory warned him, giving a nasty, uncomfortable little poke. Justhow long was it since he had seen this Marina in his life at all?
    â€˜We arranged that our lawyers would discuss the terms, yes,’ he pointed out smoothly. ‘We will leave everything to them, if that is how your prefer it. But for that we need your legal representative to be here. Where is your solicitor? He is coming later? Soon?’
    â€˜He’s not coming at all.’
    The spark in her eyes, the touch of colour in those alabaster cheeks, the way her head was tilted slightly to one side, her neat chin lifted defiantly, told him he could make what he liked of that.
    â€˜For your information, Pietro, not everyone has a lawyer at their beck and call—a man so ridiculously overpaid that he is obliged to jump and come running whenever you snap your fingers.’
    From under her lashes those green eyes went towards Matteo just once, briefly, and then came back to fix on his face again. She didn’t need to use words to tell him exactly what she thought.
    â€˜You gave me precisely one hour to pack and come to Sicily. I had no choice. But I can just imagine what my lawyer would have said if I had even tried to suggest that he do the same.’
    Let him make what he wanted of that, Marina