Bedded and Wedded for Revenge

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  She couldn’t hold his penetrating dark gaze and instead concentrated on taking a tiny sip of her water.

  ‘You haven’t touched your wine,’ he observed after a small pause.

  Gemma looked at the crisp white wine in the glass before her and felt her stomach lurch in revolt. ‘I have no real taste for alcohol,’ she said with complete sincerity.

  ‘I seem to recall you were quite keen on it in the past.’

  Her eyes shifted away from his. ‘Yes…well, that may well have been the case, but I have no memory of it,’ she lied again.

  God, how she had behaved back then, she thought with a savage twinge of mortification. She had been totally out of control, downing whatever liquor was available in an effort to numb the inner pain of her life. It had started with the fruity vodka drinks cleverly marketed at the young, and then she had progressed to the harder stuff. She had downed shot after shot, never thinking it would lead to the destruction of her life in the way it finally had.

  ‘Tell me about your family,’ she said to shift the focus away from her guilt.

  His face relaxed in a smile that brought out the warmth of his chocolate-brown eyes. ‘I have two younger sisters, Gianna and Lucia. They are both married and expecting babies in a few weeks’ time. My mother is a wonderful woman who even after all this time is doing her best to cope with her grief. She misses my father dreadfully, more so now as the grandchildren she and he longed for are about to arrive. I would like her to meet you some time soon to take her mind off her loneliness.’

  ‘That sounds like a good idea.’ She moistened her mouth. ‘But what will you tell her about…us? I mean, won’t she be terribly shocked when you tell her you are marrying me at such short notice?’

  ‘My mother is a hopeless romantic,’ he said. ‘I have already told her of meeting you all those years ago. She will believe me when I tell her that we have found each other again.’

  ‘So…so you’ll pretend you’re really in love with me?’

  ‘But of course. How else would I explain such a hasty marriage?’

  Gemma frowned as she thought about meeting his mother some time in the future. ‘But when she meets me…she’s surely going to suspect something’s not quite right,’ she said.

  ‘How so?’

  She met his eyes again. ‘We don’t love each other, for a start, and then there’s the issue of when I will feel ready to…to…sleep with you.’

  He gave her a lengthy look. ‘We will start our marriage in the same bedroom, Gemma, in the same bed. I absolutely insist on it.’

  Gemma stiffened in her seat. ‘But I don’t want to—’

  ‘I told you yesterday that I will not force myself on you. That would indeed be despicable. We will not consummate our relationship until you are ready to make our marriage a real one. You can trust me on that, although I do not really see what your problem is. You are an experienced woman of the world. It will not be long before the physical attraction that I have always felt for you triggers a similar reaction in you.’

  Gemma hoped he couldn’t see any trace of the apprehension that she could feel in every pore of her body as she met his gaze. ‘You make it sound so…so clinical…as if desire can be turned on and off like some sort of switch.’

  ‘Sometimes it is indeed just like that,’ he said with another little cryptic smile.

  She looked away in case he saw the guilt reflected in her eyes, for she knew it must surely be there. She recalled all too well how she had flirted with him outrageously, as indeed she had with other young men. She had gone out with him several times, later laughing behind his back with her friends at how he had held doors open for her and pulled out chairs for her to sit on, gazing at her with open adoration at each of the expensive restaurants and nightclubs she’d insisted he take her. He had been nothing but a gentleman the whole time, which—in spite of what she’d told her friends—had secretly impressed her. He had been so unlike the other young men she’d normally associated with. They would have pawed at her with groping hands, but instead Andreas had seemed to respect her for who she was as a person, seeing past the overly indulged young woman to the inner core of her deepest insecurities.

  It had threatened her in the end, the way he’d looked at her with that intelligent dark brown gaze, as if he could see the persistent little demons that were gnawing insidiously at her soul while no one else was looking…

  ‘Why do you hate yourself so much, Gemma?’ he asked on her return from the powder room where she had rapidly and rather crudely dispensed with the expensive meal he had worked so hard to pay for.

  She tossed her head and affected a hard little laugh, all the time trying to ignore the flicker of concern she saw in his eyes. ‘I don’t hate myself, Andreas. I love myself. Look at me. I’m rich, I’m slim and attractive—what more could a girl want?’

  He looked at her with such pity she silently summoned up the anger that had been her armour ever since the day she had watched her mother take her last breath. She wanted no one’s pity, least of all that of an Italian bellboy who fancied himself in love with her.

  She smiled at him seductively across the table, tantalising him with the promise of her body, trailing her fingers over him in a series of seductive little touches, teasing him with her attentions. ‘You want me, don’t you, Andreas?’ she asked in a breathy whisper. ‘You really, really want me.’

  His eyes darkened and his voice came out rough and deep. ‘You know I do.’

  She smiled an inward smile of victory. See, Marcia? She felt like saying out loud. Men do find me irresistible in spite of what you think.

  ‘Well, I want you too, Andreas,’ she purred at him. ‘I want you to kiss me and touch me and make me feel like a woman.’

  Gemma took his hand and led him from the restaurant and back to the hotel to her room, closing the door and leaning back against it, her eyes glittering with purpose. ‘Why don’t you come and get me, Andreas?’ she said with a seductive tilt of one hip. ‘Show me what a man you are.’

  He stood before her, his expression sober. ‘Why are you so frightened of being yourself?’ he asked. ‘You are not the unprincipled little flirt you make yourself out to be. You are hurting, Gemma, and I will not add to that hurt like the countless others you surround yourself with. I will wait until you come to me as an equal and not before.’

  She gave him a scathing look and spluttered, ‘An equal? You and me? Are you joking?’

  ‘I am a human being the very same as you,’ he responded coolly.

  She curled her lip at him. ‘You’re a peasant boy, that’s what you are.’ She laughed, a cruelly taunting laugh. ‘I suppose you think I would have gone through with it? What a joke! I was leading you on. I was never going to sleep with you. As if! You haven’t got a dollar to your name. You are the very last man on earth I would consider sleeping with. Do you really think I would lower myself in such a way? You wouldn’t know the first thing about pleasuring a woman. You’re not even a full-blooded man. You haven’t even once tried to kiss me.’

  ‘That can easily be remedied,’ he said, stepping towards her, his hands settling on her arms like a steel vice.

  She reared backwards, a scream coming to her throat.

  ‘What’s going on?’ The door burst open and Gemma turned to see her father standing there.

  It was one of those split moment decisions, a decision she might never have made in another time, another place or another context.

  But this time she did.

  She ran to her father, throwing herself into his arms, sobbing out just the beginning of one little white lie…

  ‘He was trying to…to…to…’

  Her father’s protective hug stalled her speech momentarily. When had been the last time her father had held her this close? His arms felt almost awkward around her, as if he didn’t quite know how to hold or comfort her. How had it come to this? It seemed everyone was between her and her father…even now Andreas.

  She buried her
head into her father’s solid warmth and, desperate to prolong his embrace, sobbed out the rest of her despicable lie…

  Gemma couldn’t believe how ironic it was that Andreas was now a fully grown man, an attractive and sexually compelling man who gave every impression of being very experienced in the art of pleasuring a woman. She had ridiculed him out of fear, never once stopping to think how those words would come back to haunt her. Andreas had a brooding sexuality about him now as if he was simply biding his time, quietly confident he would succeed in his mission to bed her for his pleasure and revenge. It was impossible not to imagine what his body would look like now in the throes of passion, the sculptured muscles of his back and thighs and his maleness between them bringing immeasurable rapture to his lover.

  But she could never be that lover.

  Not unless she risked the only positive thing she had found in all of the tragedy and mistakes of her life so far.

  Her heart…

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘I WILL send a removal company for your things on Friday morning,’ Andreas said, instantly jarring Gemma out of her painful recollections. ‘We will be married later that afternoon at three p.m. As soon as it can be arranged I would like us to travel to Italy. I had thought of going to one of the Queensland Whitsunday islands for a short break. I had hoped to visit them when I was here before but was unable to at the last minute. However, my mother and sisters are very keen to meet you so that is my first priority for now.’

  Gemma had been too ashamed to ask her father what had happened to the bellboy after he had been dismissed. It had been bad enough witnessing the scene she had brought about in her room. Andreas had stood proudly and silently before her father, never once protesting his innocence. His gaze had only moved the once towards Gemma’s, briefly connecting with hers before she’d turned away, but, brief as the connection had been, there had been no mistaking the promise of revenge glittering there.

  ‘Why was your working holiday cut short?’ she asked, hoping he couldn’t see through the charade of her seemingly innocent enquiry.

  He didn’t answer immediately and again she felt the compulsion to lift her gaze to his, which she was fast learning was a clever strategy of his to get her to look at him when she most didn’t want to.

  ‘I was fired from your father’s employ,’ he said, his eyes intent on hers.

  She unconsciously moistened her dry lips. ‘Wh-what for?’

  ‘I was accused of something I did not do.’

  She swallowed. ‘I’m sure if you’d explained my father would have listened.’

  He gave her a grim smile. ‘Perhaps he would if I had thought it worthwhile defending myself, but at the time I did not.’

  ‘Why didn’t you think it worthwhile?’

  His dark eyes held hers like a powerful magnet. ‘Pride is a powerful emotion, is it not, Gemma? I had too much of it and it backfired on me in a way I had never imagined it would.’

  Gemma felt her heart tighten in her chest. ‘Wh-what happened?’

  ‘My father was relying on the money I was earning to clear some pressing debts. He had injured his back and was unable to work. I had been sending back as much money as I could while I was here, but I had planned on staying for a year at least. When I arrived home questions were asked. I had no choice but to tell him what had occurred.’ He paused for what seemed an eternity before adding, ‘He died of a massive heart attack the following week. I’ve always imagined it was from the stress of my ignominious return without the money he needed to salvage the family’s financial situation.’

  Gemma knew the shock was evident on her face, but there was nothing she could do to disguise it. ‘Why didn’t you try for another job at another hotel?’ she asked.

  ‘Your father made it clear that my name would be blacklisted throughout the industry. I had no reason to believe he would not carry out his threat if I sought work elsewhere. I decided it was better to return home before I was tempted to seek the revenge I most desperately wanted.’

  Gemma’s stomach began to clench in fear. ‘R-revenge?’

  His eyes were like black diamonds. ‘Justice is perhaps a preferable word. I wanted to clear my name, but in the end your father was the one who decided I had been telling the truth. A couple of years ago he called me out of the blue and apologised for his treatment of me. It was generous of him under the circumstances.’

  ‘Why did he change his mind?’

  ‘He no longer believed the other person’s account of what had happened,’ he answered after another momentary pause. ‘Apparently it hadn’t been the first time they had lied to him.’

  ‘So…where is your family home in Italy?’ she asked in a desperate attempt to redirect the conversation.

  ‘I spent most of my childhood living on the outskirts of Rome, but I now have a holiday property on the Amalfi Coast,’ he answered. ‘Have you ever been to Italy?’

  ‘A long time ago,’ she said, recalling with considerable shame the way she had acted on that one European trip her father had meticulously planned in an effort to get her to get along with her stepmother a couple of years after his remarriage when Gemma was fourteen. ‘I remember the Trevi Fountain and the Colosseum and Vatican City. And I remember it was hot and there was a lot of traffic and no one seemed to be obeying the road rules.’

  His mouth tilted wryly. ‘Yes, that is something that has still not changed. But then Sydney, too, is not unlike that at times.’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was another three-beat silence.

  ‘Do you drive these days?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘No. It’s probably cowardly of me, but after what I…what happened I can’t quite bring myself to take the risk. Besides, I couldn’t have afforded to keep a car on the road with petrol prices rising all the time and insurance and so on.’

  ‘Surely your father would have helped you?’

  Gemma met his eyes, bitterness reflected in their blue depths. ‘In any of your conversations with my father before he died, did he not tell you of my decision to cut all ties with him a few months after my accident?’

  ‘We did not speak often, no more than once or twice a year at the most. When I asked after you all he said was you were being your usual difficult self, not wanting to speak to him or visit him.’

  ‘I had a furious row with him,’ she said, looking away. ‘It was about my stepmother as usual. I delivered an ultimatum, which backfired. He chose my stepmother’s version of events over mine. He seemed to think that just because some parts of my memory were missing I was filling in the empty spaces with nonsense.’

  ‘What is it you do not like about your stepmother?’ he asked.

  Gemma brought her gaze back up to his, suddenly so close to telling him it surprised her back into silence.

  He wouldn’t believe her any more than her father had. He, too, would reject what she had to say as a fabrication born out of her selfish, petulant nature.

  No one would believe the truth. Sometimes she even doubted it herself, especially since the accident, wondering if her mind had conjured up images just to confuse her.

  ‘Gemma?’ he prompted.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, pushing away her barely touched meal. ‘My father is dead and because of my pride we were unable to say the things that should have been said to clear the air between us. Now it is too late.’

  ‘He must have been just as proud for he could just as easily have approached you first,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Yes…he was proud,’ she said, her forehead creasing in a resentful frown. ‘I guess that was part of the problem. He didn’t like failure. He hated it. He saw me as his biggest failure.’

  ‘I am sure you are misjudging him,’ Andreas said.

  ‘Am I?’ she asked with a glittering look cast his way. ‘Look at me, Andreas. I am hardly what one would call a successful person, am I?’

  ‘You are being very hard on yourself,’ he said. ‘There can hardly be a pers
on alive who has not made some bad choices and lived to regret them.’

  ‘I wish it had been me instead of Michael,’ she said in a tight little voice as she stared back down at her plate. ‘You have no idea how much I wish I could turn back the clock and rewrite the past.’

  ‘It is perhaps a mercy then that you do not recall a great deal of it.’

  His wry tone brought her head up, but his expression gave nothing away. ‘Yes….’ she said with a tiny, almost inaudible sigh. ‘Yes…it is…’

  The waiter cleared their plates and after Gemma declined dessert or coffee Andreas suggested they leave. He led the way out to his car, helping her get into the low-slung vehicle and stretching the seat belt for her to clip into place. His hand accidentally brushed against her breast and she jerked back as if he had burnt her.

  Her reaction surprised him. She had not been so adverse to a man touching her in the past. He had seen the way she had draped herself over her latest beau with no regard for propriety. Her clothes back then had been revealing and provocative, as had been her flirtatious manner, which at the time he had found totally captivating in the blind innocence of his calf love for her.

  It was hard to believe it was the same woman sitting there with what looked like fear tightening every muscle of her body.

  Fear or revulsion, he mused as he closed her door and came around to slip in behind the wheel.

  He frowned as he mulled over the possibility.

  Ten years ago she had rejected him in the most humiliating way possible, leading him on until he had been almost feverish with anticipation, only to slap him down as if he were an overgrown puppy that had got out of hand. He had never forgotten the total devastation of his pride, how hurt he had been. The hurt had gradually turned to anger, a simmering anger that had never quite gone away.

  It was still with him now.

  He could feel it beating in his blood every time he heard or saw a glimpse of who she had been back then. Sure, people could change over time, but certainly not that much.