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them.’
    Zipping open the leather case, she pulled out a sheaf of papers that exactly matched the ones in front of both Pietro and Matteo, the ones from which the lawyer had been reading the list of conditions.
    â€˜I’ve seen your offer of a divorce settlement and I’ve decided to reject it—totally and completely.’
    At last Pietro moved, even if it was only his mouth that opened to speak in a voice that was deadly and low.
    â€˜Then you’ll get…’
    â€˜Then I’ll get exactly what I want, husband dear—exactly what I came here to tell you I’ll take from you—and the answer is nothing. Absolutely nothing. Because I came into this marriage with nothing and I’m going out of it with exactly the same. So you can take your divorce settlement and put it—put it wherever you like. Because I want none of it!’
    As she finished speaking, she tossed the documents down onto the table in front of Pietro where they landed with a heavy thud, the impact throwing up the loosened pages and sending them flying up into the air—straight into her husband’s icily controlled and rigid face.

CHAPTER THREE
    â€˜I WANT none of it!’
    The sound of Marina’s voice died away, to be replaced by the fluttering of the papers still settling down on the desk in front of him. Then the room was filled with silence, a silence so taut and intense that you could have cut it with a knife.
    At Pietro’s side, Matteo had dropped his pen from his grasp and seemed to have frozen into statue form. The young secretary who had been sitting at the far end of the table, keeping tactfully quiet and trying to look inconspicuous as she took notes, was staring, goggle-eyed, with her mouth wide open.
    All this Pietro took in with a single swift glance before turning his attention back to Marina. To his wife. The wife he had thought would soon be his ex.
    All she had had to do was to accept the terms of the divorce he had offered and sign on the dotted line.
    Instead of which…
    She was still not fully back under control after her outburst of just moments before. Her chest was heaving as if she had run a marathon, the generous curves of her breasts lifting and falling with each irregular, snatched gasp of air. And the effect of her loss of temper, together with the effort of getting her breathing under control, had sent a rush ofcolour into those normally pale cheeks, so that now they were delightfully flushed with pink in a way that no clever make-up, no matter how subtly used, could ever achieve.
    Above that wash of rose, the green eyes were bright with emotion, sparkling wildly under the thick, black lashes. Her hair had escaped from its fastening and was now starting to tumble down around her shoulders in casual disarray.
    This was the woman he had first met. The woman who had knocked him off-balance so that he couldn’t think straight. She looked wild. She looked defiant. She looked magnificent. If truth be told, she had never looked so damn good—not even on their wedding day, when she had been as stunningly beautiful as he had ever imagined it was possible for a woman to be.
    Perhaps later, on their wedding night—lying in their bed with that glorious hair spread out around her, bright against the creamy colour of the pillows; her mouth swollen with kisses and her green eyes deep and dark with the pleasure that came from sexual satiation?
    No!
    Furiously Pietro clamped down on the erotic thoughts that threatened to escape his control and forced himself to focus back on the situation in hand. He’d let them take charge once before, and look where that had got him.
    The silence had stretched out now almost to breaking point, neither the secretary, nor indeed Matteo, daring to make a move to break it. Marina’s still slightly ragged breathing was the only sound in the room other than the sudden lash of rain against the windows as the rainstorm outside started