‘I want a million pounds on the day I marry you or we don’t have a deal.’
Luca’s eyes narrowed on her flushed cheeks and resolute chin. ‘I think I might have underestimated you. You’re not as sweet and innocent as you look—are you, mia bella?’
It was lucky he didn’t know that her knees had been shaking when she’d insisted that she wanted all the money upfront. It was the first time she had ever stuck up for herself, and Athena’s feeling of euphoria was only slightly tempered by the knowledge that Luca would be shocked to know just how innocent she was.
She bit her lip, remembering Charlie’s taunt. ‘Who will want to marry a twenty-five-year-old virgin with a hang-up about sex?’ It was a good thing that Luca did only want her to be his wife in name. He had a reputation as a playboy and no doubt preferred his mistresses to be sexually experienced.
His dark good looks exuded a raw sensuality that both fascinated and repelled her. Briefly she found herself imagining what it would be like if Luca’s marriage proposal was real and he wanted her to be his wife not just in name but in every way—including sharing his bed. As if that would ever happen, she mocked herself. In the unlikely event that Luca might find her attractive, she would not know how to respond to him, and she was sure he would be turned off by her lack of experience.
He should not be surprised that when it came to money Athena was as hard-nosed as every other woman he knew, Luca told himself. But he had to move fast—before she decided to up her price.
‘Fine—you’ll get all the money when we marry.’
He punched numbers into his phone and spoke in rapid Italian to his PA.
‘My plane is waiting at the airport,’ he told Athena when he’d finished the phone call. He frowned as a thought struck him. ‘Do you have your passport with you?’
‘Yes, but...’
‘The hotel manager is arranging for us to leave the hotel through the kitchens, so that we can avoid the paparazzi out the front.’
She glanced down at her wedding dress. ‘I need to buy some other clothes.’
‘There is no time for you to go on a shopping spree now.’
Luca’s jaw hardened. Nothing was going to stop him claiming the Villa De Rossi and everything that was rightfully his. All he had to do was get his ring on Athena’s finger and her signature on the marriage certificate as quickly as possible.
* * *
It was hard to believe she was on a plane, Athena thought, looking around the cabin, which was more like a room in a house, furnished with cream leather sofas, a polished wood dining table and a widescreen television. She had only ever travelled economy class to India, sitting in a cramped seat for the nine-hour flight to Delhi. Luca’s luxurious private jet belonged to another world, but she did not belong there. She belonged in his world even less than she had belonged in Charlie’s.
She stared at her reflection in a mirror. Yesterday, when she had put on her wedding dress, she could not have known that she would still be wearing it twenty-four hours later, as she flew on Luca De Rossi’s private jet to Italy so that she could marry him. Of course he only wanted her to be his wife in name, and in fact that was all Charlie had wanted, she now realised.
She had been so shocked when she’d found him in bed with Dominic. Her relationship with Charlie had been built on his lies. He hadn’t suggested that they wait until their wedding night before they had sex because he’d been mindful of her feelings... No, Charlie had never desired her or loved her. And she had not loved him, she admitted. She had tried to convince herself she did to please her parents—and because she wanted children and Charlie had said he was keen to start a family.
Her wedding dress was a mocking reminder that her life for the past year that she had been engaged to him had been an illusion.
‘The sleeves of your dress are wrong,’
Luca’s voice broke into Athena’s thoughts. Since the plane had taken off from London he had been working on his laptop, but now he stood up and came to stand behind her. He gathered a voluminous puffed sleeve in his hand.
‘There’s far too much material here,’ he told her, studying her reflection in the mirror. ‘You are not tall enough to wear big sleeves and a full skirt, and your curves need to be accentuated—not hidden by yards of material.’
‘I know I’m short and unfashionably curvy,’ she muttered. ‘You don’t need to point out my defects.’
‘I don’t consider breasts and hips to be “defects”.’
His eyes met hers in the mirror, and something in his enigmatic expression made her heart lurch.
‘The truth is that most men prefer women to have curves...’ his voice was smoky ‘...especially Italian men.’
‘Including you?’ The question sounded too intrusive, and the atmosphere in the cabin suddenly felt too intimate. Athena laughed loudly. ‘As you’re a fashion designer, I thought you would favour stick-thin women.’
Tall, rangy blondes had always been his preference, Luca mused. He did not know why Athena’s diminutive size evoked a primal masculine desire to protect her. She was tougher than she looked, and a sharp negotiator, he reminded himself. But her sapphire-blue eyes were big enough to drown in, and her waist-length chestnut-brown hair smelled of lemons and felt like silk against his skin as he pushed her hair over her shoulder.
Athena released her breath as Luca moved away from her, but moments later he returned to stand behind her.
His eyes met hers in the mirror once again as he ordered, ‘Keep still.’
She gasped when she saw a pair of scissors in his hand, but before she could protest he began to cut through the puffed sleeves of her dress. ‘Are you mad? Do you know how much this dress cost?’
She flinched as the scissors flashed near to her throat, but it soon became clear why Luca was regarded as one of the world’s top designers. Within a few minutes he had cut away the sleeves, leaving narrow shoulder straps, and he had reshaped the neckline of the dress, taking it lower, to reveal just a hint of her cleavage.
‘I need pins,’ he murmured, although he was so engrossed in what he was doing that Athena was sure he had forgotten that she was not a tailor’s dummy.
He opened a cupboard and swung out a table on wheels that held a sewing machine.
‘I’ve created some of my best designs in the air,’ he said when he noticed her startled expression. ‘I like the fact that no one can disturb me and my imagination can flow. Why did you choose a dress that could double up as a parachute?’
He pulled the skirt against her hips, gathering up the excess material at the back.
‘You see how much more flattering the dress looks when it moulds your hips? You have a beautiful body and you should make the most of your feminine figure.’
Her? Beautiful? He wasn’t serious, of course, Athena told herself, thinking of her breasts, which were too full in her opinion and usually disguised beneath baggy tops. But Luca was a playboy—no doubt flattering women was second nature to him.
‘How...how do you know what my body is like?’
Why was she asking him in that husky voice that was so unlike the way she usually spoke? she wondered. His hands were resting on her hips, and the warmth of his skin was burning through the satin dress. She was aware of him with every atom, every cell of her body, but she was confused by her reaction to him. Why didn’t she feel tense, as she usually did when a man stood too close to her? The molten sensation in her pelvis was something she had never experienced before, and yet she understood that the ache between her legs was the ache of desire: primitive, raw, and shockingly intense.
‘I took your dress off when I put you to bed last night,’ he reminded her. ‘Your underwear left little to the imagination—and I have a very good imagination.’ His amber eyes glinted with amusement when she blushed. ‘You should have been named after the Gre
ek goddess Aphrodite.’
She stiffened, and in split second the warm blood in her veins turned icy cold and a familiar feeling of revulsion churned in her stomach. ‘Don’t call me that,’ she said sharply.
Come on, Aphrodite, goddess of love. Inside her head she heard the sound of her cotton blouse ripping, and her high-pitched cry as she tried to hold the torn material across her breasts.
‘Athena!’ Luca’s deep voice dispelled the images in her mind. ‘Are you feeling ill? You’ve gone white. Do you suffer from air sickness?’ It was the only explanation he could think of for her sudden pallor, but it did not explain the haunted expression in her eyes.
She swallowed. ‘I... I feel unwell. I guess I’m still paying for drinking too many cocktails last night.’ Somehow she forced a faint smile. ‘It was my first hangover, and I’m going to make it my last,’ she said ruefully.
She was surprisingly unsophisticated, and Luca once again felt his protective instinct stir. It was that instinct that had caused all his problems, he thought darkly, remembering how he’d offered to help her run away from her wedding.
‘You’d be best to sleep it off,’ he said abruptly, pressing the buzzer to summon the stewardess. ‘Tia will show you to the bedroom, and she will bring you a drink or anything else you want.’
* * *
It was becoming a habit to wake up in a strange bedroom, Athena mused when she opened her eyes. The portholes instead of windows were a reminder that she was on Luca De Rossi’s plane and that she had agreed to marry him for one million pounds. It had seemed straightforward before she had fallen asleep, but was less so now that her hangover had cleared and her brain was functioning.
It felt like a lifetime ago that she had fled from Woodley Lodge. Guilt surged through her as she wondered what had happened about all the wedding preparations. She pictured her parents explaining to the guests as they arrived that the wedding was cancelled because their daughter had jilted the groom.
Her wedding dress hanging on the back of the door was a painful reminder that she had made a mess of everything. But it was all she had to wear—and it was unrecognisable from the over-the-top dress that had not suited her, she discovered when she put it on.
Luca must have sewn his alterations into the dress while she had been asleep, and his new design, incorporating delicate shoestring shoulder straps instead of those big sleeves, and a fitted fishtail skirt that skimmed her hips and emphasised her narrow waist, flattered her hourglass figure.
There was a knock on the door, and when she opened it Luca stepped into the bedroom. He raked his eyes over her in a brooding appraisal that made her heart beat faster.
‘I’m a genius,’ he murmured. ‘You look stunning in my redesigned dress—and very sexy.’
Athena blushed and stared at herself in the mirror. Luca was right: she did look sexy in the figure-hugging dress, with her hair tumbling around her shoulders. It was a long time since she had worn anything faintly revealing. Since the sexual assault when she was eighteen she had deliberately hidden her body beneath shapeless clothes, and she had stopped wearing make-up and experimenting with the way she looked.
She felt angry and sad that she had lost the years of her life that should have been fun. She had never flirted with boys after Uncle Peter had told her she gave off signals that she was hungry for sex.
She turned her head and found Luca was watching her. The predatory gleam in his eyes stirred something deep inside her, and suddenly she wished she was normal and didn’t feel that anxious sensation in the pit of her stomach when she was in the company of a man.
Strangely, she did not feel anxious with Luca. She couldn’t stop looking at him—as if her brain wanted to absorb every detail of his handsome face: the sharp lines of his slashing cheekbones and the sensual curve of the mouth that had once brushed across her lips when he had kissed her in the palace gardens in Zenhab.
‘I’m not sure how long I dozed, but I expect we must be landing in Italy soon,’ she said, desperate to shatter the inexplicable tension that she sensed between her and Luca.
‘I came to tell you that you will need to wear a seat belt when we land. But we’re not in Italy.’ He dropped the news casually. ‘The plane will make a brief stop-over in New York to refuel before we fly on to Las Vegas.’
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS DONE! He was legally married! Luca felt a mixture of triumph and relief as he escorted his new bride down the aisle of the wedding chapel in downtown Las Vegas. He had met the terms of his grandmother’s will and nothing could prevent him from claiming his inheritance—which included the right to live at Villa De Rossi with his daughter.
He had felt a brief moment of guilt at Athena’s shocked gasp on hearing that they were not on their way to Italy but to Las Vegas, but as soon as the plane had landed at McCarran International airport he had wasted no time and taken her to the Marriage License Bureau so that they could complete the necessary paperwork that would allow them to marry in the State of Nevada.
The next step had been to find a wedding chapel with availability to perform the wedding ceremony. Although it had been heading into the evening, many of the chapels had already been fully booked. Marriage was still a thriving industry in Vegas, Luca thought cynically.
Athena had looked increasingly tense as they had driven along the famous Las Vegas strip, and he had feared that she might change her mind at the last minute and refuse to go through with the wedding. But, although her voice had faltered during the brief ceremony, she had kept her side of the deal and married him.
The seats on either side of the aisle were empty apart from his PA, Sandro, and the stewardess from his plane, who had acted as witnesses at the wedding ceremony. The chapel was small, and its decor could only be described as tacky—the violently patterned carpet was stained and the chairs were made of plastic. At least there were flowers: white roses and lilies, whose sickly sweet perfume filled the air.
A lack of air-conditioning meant that the temperature inside the chapel was stifling—perhaps that was the reason why Athena was so pale. She looked as though she was about to faint.
As if she sensed his scrutiny, she turned her head towards him. Her eyes were huge sapphire pools and her face was white and strained. Something kicked hard in Luca’s gut—the same feeling he’d had when he had slid the cheap ring he had bought at the airport onto Athena’s finger. Her skin had been icy cold and her hand had trembled in his.
He had been unprepared for the fierce emotion that had gripped him when the wedding officiant had pronounced them man and wife. He had never expected to marry and had had good reason for his decision to remain single all his life. But he had been forced into this sham marriage.
As for his bride—tomorrow he would arrange for one million pounds to be transferred into Athena’s bank account. She was his wife in name only and there was no reason why he should feel responsible for her, he told himself.
His wife! A nerve flickered in his jaw. The marriage was simply a formality. It meant nothing to him. Athena was a means to an end, and the only thing he cared about was his daughter’s happiness and well-being.
As he led his bride towards the chapel doors, his PA stepped forward and spoke to him in a low voice. Sandro Vincenzi had worked for him for ten years, and the Vincenzi family had served the De Rossi household for generations. Luca trusted his childhood friend as completely as he trusted Sandro’s sister Maria, who was Rosalie’s nurse.
‘Luca, a problem has arisen.’
‘What kind of problem?’
‘Social media is buzzing with a story that has broken in the English newspapers. The English and European daily papers have just been issued, and several of the tabloids carry headlines about your relationship with Giselle.’
Luca shrugged. ‘I assume Giselle has done a kiss-and-tell. It’s not the first time an
ex-mistress has sold supposed details of an affair with me for cash,’ he said sardonically.
‘It’s rather more serious than that.’
Sandro showed Luca the online edition of one of the newspapers that he had downloaded onto his smartphone.
Bartered Bride!
Luca De Rossi offered me a million pounds to marry him in a cynical bid to cheat the terms of his grandmother’s will!
Luca swore beneath his breath as he read the interview Giselle had given, in which she revealed that he had asked her to agree to a sham marriage so that he could claim his inheritance.
But, in a shocking double betrayal, love rat Luca has dumped his faithful girlfriend and run off with his old school friend Charles Fairfax’s fiancée.
In a statement, French glamour-model Giselle Mercier sent a message to Luca’s latest mistress, warning Athena Howard not to be fooled if her playboy lover proposes marriage.
‘Luca isn’t looking for love. All he wants is to con the board of De Rossi Enterprises into making him chairman of the company by having a fake marriage.’
Luca thrust the phone at his PA. ‘Dio, I underestimated Giselle. But I don’t believe it is a problem. The story will be forgotten in a few days.’
He glanced at Athena. She still looked pale and vulnerable, as if she was in shock, as she twisted the wedding ring on her finger. Luca felt an uncomfortable twinge of guilt, although he reassured himself that he had done nothing to feel guilty about.
‘Miss Howard is aware of the reasons why I have married her,’ he told Sandro in Italian.
‘Giselle is only half the problem,’ Sandro advised. ‘Your great-uncle Emilio has evidently seen the media coverage and has released a statement announcing that in light of Miss Mercier’s story, the board of De Rossi Enterprises will now be suspicious if you should marry before your thirty-fifth birthday. Emilio is threatening that if you do marry the board will try to prove that the marriage is a sham, and will take legal steps to prevent you from claiming the chairmanship of the company and ownership of Villa De Rossi.’
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