Michelle Smart - Once A Moretti Wife

Anna Moretti née Robson, the woman with the face and body of a goddess and the tongue of a viper. Clever and conniving, sweet and lovable; an enigma wrapped in a layer of mystery.

He despised her.

He missed having her in his bed.

Since his release from prison all those long years ago he’d become an expert at masking the worst of his temper and channelling it into other areas, but Anna could tap into him like no one else and make him want to punch walls while also making him ache with need to touch her.

She wasn’t a meek woman. He’d understood that at their very first meeting. All the same, he’d never have believed she would have the audacity to walk back into this building after the stunt she’d pulled.

‘I’m not drunk.’ He leaned closer and inhaled. There it was, that scent that had lingered on his bed sheets even after copious washes, enough so that he’d thrown out all his linen and bought new sets. ‘But if you’re having memory problems, I know something that will help refresh it.’

Alarm flashed in her widened eyes. He didn’t give her the chance to reply, sliding an arm around her waist and pulling her to him so he could crush her mouth with his own.

He felt her go rigid with shock and smiled as he moulded his lips to hers. If Anna wanted to play games she had to understand that he was the rule maker, not her. He could make them and break them, just as he intended to eventually break her.

The feel of her lips against his, her breasts pressed against his chest, her scent... Heat coiled in his veins, punishment turning into desire as quickly as the flick of a switch...

All at once, she jerked her face to the side, breaking the kiss, and at the same moment her open hand smacked him across the cheek.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, her tone half shocked, half furious. ‘You’re...’ Her voice tailed off.

‘I’m what?’ he drawled, fighting to control his own tone. The potency of the chemistry between them had become diluted in his memories. He’d forgotten how a single kiss could drive him as wild as an inexperienced teenager.

She blinked and when she looked at him again the fury had gone. Fear now resonated from her gaze. The little colour she’d had in her cheeks had gone too. ‘Stef...’

She swayed, her fingers extending as if reaching for him.

‘Anna?’

Then, right before his eyes, she crumpled. He only just caught her before she fell onto the floor.

CHAPTER TWO

WHEN ANNA AWOKE in the sterile hospital room, her head felt clearer than it had all day. The heavy pounding had abated but now came something far worse. Fear.

She didn’t need to open her eyes to know she was alone.

Had Stefano finally left?

The memory of their kiss flashed into her mind. In a day that had passed as surreally as if she’d been underwater, his kiss was the only memory with any real substance.

He’d kissed her. It had been almost brutal. A taunt. A mockery. The blood thumping through her at the feel of it had been the final straw for her poor, depleted body. She’d collapsed. And he’d caught her.

He seemed to think they were married. The hospital staff were under the same impression.

Swallowing back the panic clawing at her throat, Anna forced herself to think.

Her memory of the day might be blurry but she remembered snapshots of it. Stefano had carried her to his office sofa while shouting for someone to call for an ambulance. He’d travelled to the hospital with her. He’d been with her through all the prodding, probing and questioning she’d endured when she’d been awake and coherent enough to answer. He’d even come to the scan with her. If it weren’t for the dark tension radiating from him she would have been grateful for his presence, especially since Melissa hadn’t shown up.

Where on earth was she? It wasn’t possible that she could be on a flight to Australia. She wouldn’t have done that without telling her. No way. Besides, they lived together. Anna would have known!

Just what the hell was going on?

Never mind all the so-called marriage nonsense, which had to be some kind of elaborate hoax, but since when had Stefano hated her? They’d always sniped at each other and communicated through sarcasm but it had always been playful, with no sting intended. Today, despite his seemingly genuine concern for her health, it had been like having a Rottweiler guarding her with its teeth bared in her direction.

The door opened and the consultant from earlier stepped into the room, clipboard in hand. She was followed closely by Stefano.

Anna’s heart rate accelerated and she eyed them warily. They had the look of a pair of conspirators. Had they been talking about her privately?

‘What’s wrong with me?’ she asked.

The consultant perched herself on the edge of Anna’s bed and smiled reassuringly. ‘You have a concussion from your fall last night.’

‘I don’t remember the fall,’ Anna said. ‘My sister wrote it in a letter...have you got in touch with her yet?’

‘Her flight hasn’t landed.’

‘She can’t be on a flight.’

‘She is,’ Stefano chipped in. He was seated on the visitor’s chair just a foot from her bed, his stance that of a man who had every right to be there. Even if she were to ask for his removal, no one would dare touch him.

His break away from her bedside seemed to have done him good though as he’d lost the Rottweiler look he’d been carrying all day. He looked more...not relaxed, not happy exactly, but...pleased with himself.

‘Melissa’s taken a month’s leave to go to Australia and celebrate your mother’s fiftieth birthday,’ he finished.

‘That’s not possible.’ The stab of betrayal pierced her hard. ‘She couldn’t have done that. I’d know.’

‘The chances are you did know,’ the consultant said. ‘Your scan has come back clear...’

‘What does that mean?’

‘That there’s no bleeding on the brain or anything we need worry about in that regard, but all the evidence is pointing to you having retrograde amnesia.’

‘Amnesia?’ Anna clarified. ‘So I’m not going mad?’

The consultant’s smile was more like a grimace. ‘No. But it appears you have lost approximately a year of your memories.’

Anna exhaled in relief. Amnesia she could cope with. There had been moments during the day when she’d thought for certain she was losing her mind. And then she remembered Stefano’s insistence that they were married...

‘Don’t tell me I’m actually married to him?’

Now the consultant looked uncomfortable. ‘You’re on our records as Anna Louise Moretti.’

There was silence as the meaning of this sank into Anna’s fragile head.

She didn’t know what was worse. Being told Melissa had gone to Australia to see their mother or being told she was married to Stefano. Discovering that there was life on Jupiter would be easier to comprehend.

She turned her head to look at the man who claimed to be her husband. His long legs were stretched out before him, his tie removed and top button undone. He was studying her with an intensity that sent little warning tingles through her veins. It was the look he always gave when he was thinking hard, usually when he was debating to himself whether he wanted to risk his money and reputation on a particular venture.

When Stefano chose to back a business he didn’t hold back. He gave it everything. He thrived on the gamble but liked the odds to be in his favour. He liked to be certain that he wasn’t going to be throwing away his time, resources and money. It didn’t matter how many reports she produced, he would play it all out in his mind, working through it on his own mental spreadsheet.

And now that gaze was directed at her, as if she were a business venture that needed to be analysed. He was mentally dissecting something and that something had to do with her.

‘We’re really married?’ she asked him.

A slow smile spread across his face as if she’d said something amusing but the focus in his eyes sharpened. ‘Sì.’

None of this made sense. ‘Why would I have married you?’

He shifted his chair forward and leaned over to speak directly into her ear. His warm breath stirred the strands of her hair, making her pulses stir with them. ‘Because you wanted my body.’

His nearness meant she had to concentrate hard to form a response. ‘This is no time for your jokes. I wouldn’t marry you. I have self-respect.’

He sat back and spread out his hands. ‘No joke. We’re married.’

‘I don’t believe you.’ The very idea was preposterous.

‘I can give you proof.’

‘We can’t be.’

There was no way she would have married Stefano. He was gorgeous, funny when he wasn’t being brooding and impatient, and rich, but he also had a revolving door of girlfriends. She had always maintained that she wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot bargepole and had told him so on numerous occasions.

Always he’d responded with a dazzling grin and, ‘You can’t resist me for ever, bambolina.’

To which she’d always replied with her own grin turned up to full wattage, ‘Watch me.’

This time there was no comeback. He pulled out his phone and started tapping away. After a few moments he leaned over to show her the screen. Her pulse made another strange leap at his closeness and the familiar scent of his tangy cologne that had always filled their workspace. She blinked and focused her attention on what he was showing her.

It was a photograph of them standing together on a beach. Stefano was dressed in charcoal trousers and a short-sleeved open-necked white shirt. She wore a long white chiffon dress that had a distinct bridal look to it, and was clutching a posy of flowers. Oh, and they were kissing.

Anna stared at the screen for so long her eyes went dry. Her heart was pounding so hard its beats vibrated through her. When she dared look at him she found him watching her closely.

‘Did you drug me?’ She could hardly believe the evidence before her. It wasn’t possible. It had to be fake.

‘We married on the twentieth of November. Our first anniversary is in ten days.’

‘That’s impossible.’ She did some mental maths. She remembered as far back as her Spinning class, which had been the day after bonfire night, November the fifth.

He expected her to believe she’d married him two weeks later? Did he take her for a complete idiot?

But then she looked again at the photo on his screen.

‘We married in Santa Cruz,’ he supplied. ‘It was a very... I can’t think of the word, but it was quick.’

‘Spontaneous?’

‘That’s the word, sì.’

Despite the mounting evidence she still couldn’t bring herself to believe him.

‘If we’re married, why did I wake up in my own bed in mine and Melissa’s flat?’

There was only the barest flicker of his pupils. ‘We’d had a row.’

‘About what?’

‘Nothing important. You often stay the night there.’

‘Why were you so angry to see me in the office this morning? And why has Chloe taken my desk?’

‘I told you, we’d had an argument.’

‘Cheating on me already?’ she asked, only half jesting.

There was a tiny clenching of his jaw before his handsome features relaxed into the smile that had always melted her stomach. ‘I’ve never cheated on a woman in my life.’

‘You’ve never stayed with a woman long enough to cheat.’ Stefano had the attention span of a goldfish. He thrived on the chase, growing bored quickly and moving straight onto the next woman to catch his eye.