Free Castellano's Mistress of Revenge by Melanie Milburne

on the tiles of the terrace as he came to stand in a short distance in front of her. ‘I should have suggested you call them last night.’
    Ava glanced up at him. ‘I should have thought of it myself.’
    He came a step closer and gently lifted her chin with two of his fingers as his dark, fathomless gaze studied her mouth for an endless moment. ‘Your lip is swollen,’he said with a gruffness she had not heard him use before. ‘I should have brought you some ice to put on it last night.’
    Ava stepped out of his hold, frightened she would betray herself by leaning into his solid warmth. ‘I’m perfectly fine,’ she said, injecting a tart quality into her voice. ‘I need coffee, not first aid.’
    â€˜I have already instructed Celeste to bring it out to us here,’ he said. ‘You look like you could do with some sunshine. You look rather pale this morning.’
    â€˜I didn’t sleep well,’ Ava confessed, glancing up at him again as he pulled a chair out for her at the outdoor table setting.
    â€˜Not used to sleeping alone?’ he asked with a wry lift of one dark brow.
    She gave him a look that would have sliced through frozen butter. ‘You just can’t help yourself, can you, Marc?’
    He pulled out a chair for himself and sat down, waiting until Celeste had brought out a tray with coffee and fresh croissants and preserve, and left them alone again, before he spoke. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you never shared a bed with Cole the whole time you were married?’
    Ava stared at him for a moment, dumbstruck at the out-of-the-blue question. ‘How…?’ She swallowed and began again, ‘How do you know?’
    He nodded in the direction Celeste had gone. ‘The housekeeper let it slip.’
    Ava shifted in her chair. ‘I’m surprised you believed her,’ she said, throwing him a stinging look. ‘If I had told you, I am sure you would have laughed in my face.’
    A camera shutter-quick movement came and went in his gaze as it held hers. ‘I guess I should take some comfort in the knowledge you married him solely for the money,’ he said. ‘After all, you never complained about our sex life while we were together.’
    Ava felt her body quiver in remembrance and quickly shifted her gaze from the probe of his. Her shoulders went back until they met the sun-warmed wrought-iron lace of her chair, twin pools of heat burning in her cheeks.
    She watched as he poured them both a coffee, his movements so steady and sure, while her body was trembling both inside and out. She swallowed a tight knot of tension in her throat, wondering how to fill the chasm of silence that had opened up between them.
    Marc handed her a cup of steaming coffee, his eyes meeting hers across the small distance of the round table. ‘I could have given you as much, if not more than Cole, so why did you do it?’
    She took the cup from him, the slight rattle of it in its saucer betraying her outwardly cool composure. ‘You refused to give me what I wanted,’ she said. ‘If I had stayed with you I would never have been a bride. Douglas at least allowed me to experience that.’
    Marc felt the familiar punch of jealousy hit him in the midsection when he thought of her as a bride. Even knowing the marriage had not been consummated barely lessened its impact. For all he knew she could have taken any number of lovers during her marriage, after all, Cole had been very ill before he died. Perhaps his health had been impaired much longer than the public had been aware of. But when all was said anddone, Ava had still ditched Marc to enter into a paper marriage to his enemy to bring about his ruin. What other reason could she have had?
    He rested his right ankle over his left thigh, leaning back in his chair as he idly stirred his coffee with a silver-crested spoon that had been in his family for hundreds of years.