What a Sicilian Husband Wants by Michelle Smart Read Free Book Online Page B

Lily’s cries lessened. The door to the makeshift nursery opened and he heard soft footsteps go past his room.
    He willed his eyes to shut but they refused, just as they had refused since he had come to bed five hours ago.
    There was too much going on in his head to sleep. This was the first time he had been alone with his thoughts since he had learned of Grace’s location. Not even the sedatives in his painkillers could switch his brain off.
    He had found her. After ten long months he had really found her. It had all happened so quickly the day held a dream-like quality to it. Or was it a nightmare?
    He was a father. That was his daughter crying in the dark. That was his wife comforting her. She was here, back under his roof. Unwillingly back under his roof.
    There were no words to describe the loathing he felt towards Grace, as if an angry nest of vipers were festering in his guts, stabbing their fangs into him.
    Nothing would give him greater pleasure than to pack her stuff and tell her to leave, to get out and never come back. But he could not. Even after everything she had put him through, he retained enough rationality to know it would be Lily who would suffer the most.
    No, Grace’s punishment would be of an entirely different nature.
    From now on, when they entertained guests or left the estate, she would damn well be deferential towards him. No longer would he tolerate having his business activities probed, his opinions contradicted or his word questioned. No longer would he tolerate a wife who neglected her appearance because her mind was too full of whatever she was currently creating on a canvas to run a brush through her hair or wear clothes that matched. No longer would he find these particular quirks endearing.
    He’d never met anyone like her before: someone who saw all the colour the world had to offer. Before Grace, the women he’d dated had always been perfectly turned out with opinions that were in line with his own. They could have been identikit. Until Grace appeared, as if by magic, casting him under her spell, he’d never realised how boring he found them all, or how predictable his life had been.
    He’d taken such pride in her talents and the freshness she’d brought to his life that the last thing he’d wanted to do was change her in any way.
    He’d loved her exactly as she was.
    Well, more fool him.
    Grace would learn to be a proper Sicilian wife.
    Sleep was not going to come any time soon. Throwing the sheets off, he climbed out of bed and pulled on his dressing gown, carefully navigating the sling.
    All the lights were off.
    Grace and Lily were nowhere to be found.
    He opened every door in the wing, his chest tightening with every empty room.
    He returned to Grace’s room. Her suitcases lay on the floor, seemingly unpacked. Her toothbrush and toothpaste had been laid on the sink of the en suite, a bulging bag of toiletries placed on the cabinet.
    Entering the adjoining room, he flipped on the light. His heart twisted at the empty cot. A pile of nappies and baby accessories he did not recognise had been neatly placed on the dresser.
    Where the hell had they gone?
    Just as he was debating waking the household and conducting a thorough search for them, Grace walked into the room, her dressing gown covering her tall, slender frame, carrying Lily and a bottle of formula.
    Immediately she switched the light off but not before he caught the glare she directed at him.
    She walked soundlessly past him and settled in the old rocking chair, curling her legs in a ball and placing the teat of the bottle in Lily’s tiny mouth. ‘I want her to go back to sleep after she’s had this,’ she whispered, nodding at the light switch.
    ‘Where have you been?’ he asked, adopting an identical whisper.
    ‘In the kitchen warming the bottle up.’
    The kitchen was on the other side of the monastery. In the early hours of winter it was always freezing down there. ‘Why didn’t you get a member of staff to