entirely realistic in her view—confidence in her ability to do whatever he threw at her had rubbed off, because she had done both.
And become a stepmother.
A small frown puckered the smooth skin of her brow as her thoughts turned to her stepson, whom she adored.
That might have been the biggest challenge of all if Alberto had displayed even the remotest resentment of her, his new stepmother, or if Gianfranco had made it quite clear on the one occasion she had found herself in the middle of a father-son tussle that when it came to his son he made the decisions.
She had forgotten what the minor disagreement had been about, but not his words when he had referred to the incident when they were in private.
‘There has been just Alberto and me for a long time now…what we have works.’
Dervla’s admiration was sincere. ‘I know you’re a great father. I was only—’
‘I will not have you undermining my authority with my son, Dervla.’
‘I wasn’t trying to—’
He brushed aside her protest with an impatient motion of his hand. ‘Children,’ he told her, apparently unaware of the insult he had offered her, ‘need continuity.’
‘You mean children are permanent and wives are temporary.’
His irritation was written clear in his steely stare as he retorted coldly, ‘If you wish to put it that way.’
She hid her hurt behind aggression. ‘You put it that way.’
His careless shrug made her resentment spill over into an unwise—she knew it the moment it left her lips—reference to his dead first wife.
‘I don’t suppose you told Alberto’s mother it was not for ever when you proposed to her?’
His expression iced over, making him seem austere and distant. ‘My marriage to Sara is not relevant. I did not marry you to give Alberto a mother.’
‘I sometimes wonder why you married me at all,’ she slung back childishly.
The white-hot blaze in his eyes as he grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her up against his long, lean body made her knees fold as he gave his driven response to her question.
‘I married you because you wouldn’t be my mistress, because I couldn’t think straight without you in my bed and because I will not share you with another man.’
No mention of love, but he kissed her and she told herself she didn’t care. About three seconds later she stopped thinking entirely.
Dervla sighed. It was always that way the moment Gianfranco touched her: her principles and pride vaporised. Which was why she had ended up married to a man who never even pretended he loved her, though for one split second when he had proposed her mind had made that understandable assumption.
‘But you barely know me!’ she protested. ‘It takes time to fall in love, Gianfranco and—’ She stopped, the colour seeping from her face as the truth—as she saw it then—hit her.
Time had not the first thing to do with falling in love. And for some people it actually didn’t take long at all…in her case it had taken about a second, and now it seemed that amazingly it had been the same for Gianfranco…? Only he had had the sense to recognise it.
She lifted her dazed eyes to his lean, devastatingly handsome face and thought, I really do love you. A shuddering sigh left her parted lips; a smile of wondering joy spread across her face.
Gianfranco, she saw, was smiling too, only his smile twisted his mobile lips into a cynical grimace and left his incredible eyes unusually cold.
‘I am not looking for love.’
Her face remained frozen in the smile, but the light had gone out of her eyes as he expanded on the theme.
‘If such a thing actually exists…?’
‘You don’t think so, I take it.’
One dark brow moved in the direction of his hairline and he sketched a sardonic smile. ‘Outside fairy tales? Do you know how many marriages actually last more than a few years?’
‘So how long do you propose our—our hypothetical marriage will last?’
‘You cannot fix a specific time when there are so many unknown variables.’
God, and they say romance is dead! ‘So when you say for better or worse, what you actually mean is until the gloss wears off or something better comes along?’
‘You think it’s somehow more courageous and noble to stay in a marriage because of a sense of obligation?’ Lip curled, he shook his head. ‘That’s not nobility. At best it’s habit, at worst it’s laziness and fear. I’m being a realist. You might prefer me to trot out the clichés about us being fated to be together through eternity?’
‘People are. My parents had been married thirty-five years when they were killed.’
‘An accident?’
‘The coach they were travelling in went across the central reservation of the motorway and hit a lorry coming in the opposite direction. Ten people were killed, including my parents.’
‘You were how old?’
‘Eighteen, in my first year of nurse training.”
‘I am sorry, and I am glad your parents had a happy marriage, but I cannot see into the future. I have no idea what I will feel in five, ten years’ time, but I know what I feel now.
‘Now,’ he told her, in a voice that made every single nerve ending in her body sigh, ‘I want you.’
That had been a year ago and he still wanted her, and any future plans he spoke of included her.
What are you going to do when he doesn’t and they don’t?
Fear tightened and clenched inside her and with a small cry she turned and buried her head in Gianfranco’s chest. ‘I’m happy!’ she declared defiantly.
Startled by her abrupt action, Gianfranco stared down for a moment at the top of her head before lifting a hand to stroke a fiery curl, stretching it and then letting it spring back softly into shape.
‘Happy?’
Dervla felt his hands on her shoulders and burrowed deeper into him, her eyes closed, feeling the solid warmth of his lean, hard male body seep into her as his arms folded across her ribcage.
‘Yes, I’m happy.’
Everyone had a different recipe for happiness, but she knew that hers had one vital ingredient: Gianfranco.
So things might not be perfect, the alternative was no Gianfranco. It was an alternative she could not bring herself to contemplate; it was the reason she had said yes when he proposed.
Gianfranco prised her face from his shirt. One big hand framed the side of her face, the other sliding into the lush silky curls on her nape to cradle her skull as he scanned her face.
An image superimposed itself in his head of Dervla’s face when she had told him that she couldn’t marry him because she wasn’t able to have children.
Dio mio, I’m about as sensitive as that stone, he thought, kicking a wedged rock free with the toe of his shoe.
How, he asked himself, did you expect her to feel, when you have her spend the entire weekend with a heavily pregnant woman who babbles incessantly about babies? Of course she cared more than she pretended.
Dervla had been up front about it from the beginning.
He had not been so honest in his response.
He had seen the gratitude shining in her eyes when he had promised her that her inability to conceive made no difference to