Page 115 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

Italian Wife Wanted

Lela May Wight

CHAPTER ONE

THECARMOVEDsmoothly down the road. A road that wouldn’t dare to have any imperfections. No potholes. No uneven surfaces to jar the elite residents it welcomed home.

And Emma Cappetta was coming home.

She was one of the elite in her chauffeur-driven car. In her designer black skirt suit and red-soled heels with metal tips that clattered on hard floors and sank deeply into newly turned soil.

The car stopped, and Emma stepped out into the night.

Her feet ached, her body hurt and her heart was wounded.

She paused at the bottom of the white stone steps. Her hand resting on the black metal handrail, she stared at the black door and gold knocker, at the entrance to the five-storey Edwardian building she’d called home for almost a year.

She’d only been away for fourteen days, enough to pack up her mother’s life and prepare for today, her mother’s funeral.

But oh, how easily she’d slipped back into her old life in Birmingham, how easily it had welcomed her back, how comfortable she’d felt in the childhood home she’d shared with her mum. The photos of them on the walls. The warmth. The smell. She’d slept so soundly in her old bed with the neighbour’s conversation drifting clearly through the thin walls.

The estate, the crumbling roads, the potholes, the chatter of children out too late playing in the community playground...it had embraced her as if she’d never left.

Two weeks. That’s all it had taken. Two weeks to unmask the lie of the life she’d been living for almost a year. She didn’t belong here in London, in this beautiful house.

This wasn’t...home.

The door opened and she moved through it, her throat tightening as she did.

She took the first step, and another, until she stood face-to-face with the dipped head of the butler.

‘Mrs Cappetta,’ he acknowledged. ‘Would you like some tea to be arranged for you in the sitting room?’

Emma smiled, but it was barely a twitch. ‘No, thank you, James.’ She moved past him, her heels clicking on the marble-floored reception area.

‘Is there anything else I can get for you?’

Dante?

Her nose pinched.

She still wanted him.

And that want was like a constant hunger in her stomach. Inside her. Even now, when the veil had lifted from her eyes and she knew the undeniable truth: that she meant nothing to her husband.

She was a fool.

Today had been her mother’s funeral, and he hadn’t come. Hadn’t called. Hadn’t sent a card.

The one time she’dreallyneeded him, he’d hadn’t been there.

Just like your dad.

Emma’s heart clenched.

What had she expected? Her husband was only ever there for the thrill. For the sex. For her body. Never for anything...real.

‘No, I don’t need anything,’ she told James, because she had no physical needs. What she had needed was her husband’s support. His presence. His compassion.

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