She would have laughed in his face if she hadn’t felt like crying. It hurt so very much. How often on the island, when he’d assured her he loved her, had she yearned, hoped, believed she would hear those words from him? Lowering her head, hiding behind her untamed mane of hair, she struggled to contain her emotions for long enough to tell him no.
Watching her, watching her colour come and go, the way she hid behind her glorious hair, Francesco twisted his sensual mouth bitterly. Once that proposal had been burning his tongue, the ring burning a hole in his breast pocket, its pale yellow diamond chosen because it had reminded him of her hair. But a few ill-timed words from her hare-brained loser of a father had had him savagely cutting her out of his life, reminded that all women were the same—not to be trusted when a man’s wealth and status were dangled in front of their scheming eyes.
And now he was doing what he’d vowed—post-Anna—he would never do. He was asking a woman to marry him.
But it was necessary.
Discovering in himself an unsuspected depth of devotion when he’d first laid eyes on his son, he knew he could never cut him out of his life.
‘I want my son.’ He voiced his thoughts aloud into the silence, his voice husky with need. ‘Ideally, a child needs both parents. Permanently. I had thought it would be enough for me to do the responsible thing and provide financial support. Since holding him I find that it is far from enough. Hence—’ harshness now cloaked his words ‘—the need for us to marry. Because, naturally, he will need his mother, too.’
Still in shock, Anna got out unevenly, ‘No. I won’t. I couldn’t bear it!’
‘Such protestations don’t cut any ice with me,’ Francesco drawled. ‘Marriage to wealth was what you aimed for, so why bore me with spurious denials now?’
She did look at him then, green eyes flashing outrage. When she’d wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, had loved him so very much she’d felt she couldn’t live without him, she hadn’t known he was wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice! Now she knew—and she knew other things too.
‘You don’t love me—you don’t love anyone but yourself,’ she gasped, feeling colour flood her face, unprepared for the quietly spoken statement that turned her blood to ice.
‘I love my son.’
‘We don’t have to marry,’ she got out before sheer terror could claim her.
Marriage would mean sharing his bed, giving him rights over her body. It would destroy her! She knew herself far too well. Sharing the intimacies of marriage with him, she would go back to being besotted. His shattering sexual attraction was her nemesis—because not even knowing what a heartless bastard he was could cure her of that demeaning weakness.
‘If you really want to, you could see him whenever you wanted. I wouldn’t stop you,’ she offered in desperation.
He was looking at her with disturbing indifference, as if her offer was beneath his notice. Anna shivered and dredged up an argument that would hold water. ‘It would never work—marriage, I mean. How could it? We don’t love each other, and we both know you’d soon be out of my bed and into one occupied by one of those glitzy model-types you seem to favour. I do read the papers, so I know you do that macho stuff, and are rarely seen without the necessary arm candy!’ she huffed. ‘We’d end up fighting, hating each other, and I’d start throwing things and you’d probably throw them back—just think what damage that kind of marriage would do to little Sholto!’
She’d made her point—surely she had? she agonised.
But he shot her a look of what she could only describe as amused contempt as he countered, ‘I wouldn’t be in your bed. My needs in that department can be easily catered to.’ Though he hadn’t been remotely interested since—But he wasn’t going to dwell on that.
And he would want to be in her bed, he derided himself with painful honesty. The first time he’d laid eyes on her he’d been tempted, had spent the whole of that first night fantasising about losing himself in that sensationally lush body. And the reality had been beautiful beyond his dreams, putting his fantasies into deep shade.
But he would make sure he was never tempted again. He was strong enough. Hadn’t his character been likened to steel? ‘Our marriage will be on paper only. A façade to provide our son with two parents.’ A frown clefted his brow, his sculpted features hard. ‘Immediately after the ceremony—civil, naturally—we will go to my family home in Tuscany, where my son will grow up with the freedom and happiness he needs. He will have the uncomplicated childhood I never enjoyed. You, as his mother, will share my wealth and my status, enjoy the respect that that will bring, and in return you will never complain. Should you attempt to remove my son from my protection, or take a lover, you will be history.’
Raw anger flicked deep inside her. It took gold-plated heartless arrogance to lay down such punitive rules. Colour staining her cheeks, heightening the brilliance of her eyes, she flung at him, ‘So I’m to live like a nun in a gilded cage, far away from family and friends? No, thanks. I don’t rate feather-bedding that highly!’
‘You like money—you like sex. But you can’t have both. Get used to it.’ His cold intonation fuelled her anger. Who did he think he was?
She got to her feet, unable to sit still a moment longer. ‘On Ischia I thought you were the most wonderful, exciting, caring man ever to breathe—now I know you’re the dregs!’ she told him stormily. ‘I won’t marry you, and I withdraw the offer to allow you access. Ever! I won’t have my son contaminated!’
‘Sit down.’ Lean fingers fastened around her wrist, tugging her back beside him. Steely grey eyes set a collision course with hers, and her breath came feebly even though her heart was clattering like a runaway train. The force of his personality scared her silly, but she held his gaze, not willing to let him see her weakness.
‘You have a regrettable tendency to behave like a drama queen,’ he incised, his devastating features set in grim lines. ‘You once set your sights on my wealth—you can’t deny it. Now it is yours for the taking I suggest you stop behaving like a spoiled brat and face the fact that you can’t have me twisted round your pretty fingers, doting putty in your hands. Accept it. Or tell me what you do want from our marriage and I will consider it.’
Anna clamped her mouth shut. What she wanted—would have wanted when she’d thought the sun rose and set with him—she could never have. But she wasn’t telling him that. And as for denying that she wanted to get her hands on his wretched money, forget it! Let him think what he liked. She wasn’t going to lay her already bleeding heart at his feet and confess that all she’d ever wanted was his love.
‘Nothing to say? I thought not.’ He dealt her a brooding look from smoky eyes. ‘Then I will lay the full details of my proposal in front you of, and you can decide which road you wish to travel.’
Anna stared back at him, twisting her hands on her lap, dry-mouthed with tension as she wondered what he was going to come out with next. If she didn’t know better she would have sworn on oath that this wasn’t the same man as the exciting, laid-back charmer she’d fallen in love with on Ischia. Talk about Jekyll and Hyde!
‘First option: we marry—with the stipulations already spoken of. Furthermore, I have had your father’s situation examined, and find he is about to lose your mother her family home.’ He leaned back, his eyes contemptuous. ‘If we marry I will clear his debts and provide him with employment within one of my companies to help him curb his … shall we say … eccentricities? And that must not be considered an inducement—or a philanthropic gesture on my behalf,’ he drawled with cynicism. ‘It would not be good for my image were it to become known that my parents-in-law were penniless and homeless.’
She wanted to hit him. ‘I hate you!’ she said thickly. He obviously looked on her and her family as being beneath contempt—lesser beings who would fall in with his dictates with humiliating gratitude.
Ignoring her interjection, Francesco continued, almost purring now. ‘If, however, you refuse m
y proposal, then I promise you I will take my son from you. Legally. And don’t think that wouldn’t happen. It would.’
He got to his feet with the fluid grace that had once mesmerised her. ‘I’ll leave you to think it over.’ Shooting his cuff, he glanced at the face of the slim gold watch that banded his wrist. ‘You have an hour to reach a decision.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
SHE’D said she would marry him.
A bad decision? The worst one possible from her point of view! But what choice did she have?
Refuse, as every instinct she possessed counselled, and she’d see her parents lose their home and their dignity. Dad struggling to cope with a job that was far more suitable for a much younger man. Mum mourning the loss of the house that had been in her family for generations and trying not to show it. And she’d have to live with the knowledge that she could have prevented it, all the time having the dark threat of Francesco gaining sole custody of her precious little son hanging over her head, with the totally chilling knowledge that with the help of clever lawyers and a bottomless pit of money he’d do exactly that.
So. No choice at all.
Now, almost twenty-four hours following her graceless acceptance, she remembered Francesco’s chilly, ‘A wise decision,’ and the way his dark head had dipped in terse acknowledgement before he’d swung on his heels and left the room, leaving her struggling to come to terms with what the future held.
Sitting out on the terrace in the late-afternoon sunshine, with her baby on her lap, she remembered, too, waking this morning, before the baby alarm could alert her to the raucous fact that Sholto was ready for his early feed, padding to the nursery and finding Francesco already there, giving his son his bottle.
Resentment that he had denied her the only pleasure now left to her—caring for her baby—had warred with the proof that he meant to be a devoted hands-on father. She’d crept back to her room and hadn’t set eyes on him since.
On her lap, Sholto kicked his legs and gurgled, and Anna’s heart turned over, bursting with love. In agreeing to a loveless marriage she was doing the right thing. For Sholto and her parents, at least.
Her baby would grow up with all the advantages she, alone, could never hope to provide, secure in the love of both parents. And she would never, never give him the slightest hint that his parents’ marriage was nothing but an empty sham, that hatred and mistrust lay beneath the smooth surface. Surely it was a price worth paying?
Pausing at the head of the terrace, Francesco felt his heart jolt against his breastbone. He had never seen anything so beautiful. Mother and child in the dappled shade of the overhanging false acacia, her body curved protectively over the gurgling infant.
A beautiful enigma. An innocent, or a clever schemer? Since this afternoon’s conversation with his lawyer nothing was quite as clear-cut as it had been.
Intent on giving instructions for a watertight prenuptial agreement, he’d been stunned when the older man had imparted that his bride-to-be had refused to sign the now redundant maintenance contract until the amount stated had been significantly reduced—pared down until it provided just the bare essentials.
The lawyer had excused his lack of communication on the subject. Passing on that information hadn’t seemed necessary. If the young lady in question had held out for a larger amount—well, that, of course, would have been very different. His client’s instructions on the matter would have been sought at once.
So what was going on? Francesco’s brow clenched as he watched his small son grab a fistful of that glorious hair. He had never believed her when she’d protested that she didn’t want anything from him, dismissing it as so much bluster and hot air, cloaking her desire to squeeze as much as she could from him, or a forlorn attempt to convince him that when she’d vowed she loved him back on the island, she’d had no knowledge of who he really was. Which didn’t hold water. Hadn’t she let slip, only yesterday, that she’d seen articles about him—and one of his latest lovers—in the press?
He hadn’t been seen with a female since her father—on her advice?—had jumped right in, giving the impression that he recognised him from the financial papers and asking for a huge chunk of investment in some scheme or other. In his book it was clear that she’d lied about not being aware of his financial status.
So what was her long game? Pretend to be uninterested in his wealth—even to the extent of having that contract altered, knowing he would get to hear of it—while all the time banking on the astute belief that having seen his child, held him, he wouldn’t want to let him go and would offer a form of marriage as the smoothest way forward? Giving her access to everything that was his.
Clever!
Cynicism bracketing his mouth now, he strode forward, gently scooping his son from her lap, ignoring her startled intake of breath. ‘I’ll take him. There are people waiting to see you. In your room.’
‘People? Who?’ The shock of his sudden appearance left her open-mouthed, her breath gone because he was so spectacularly handsome he made her feel dizzy.
Not deigning to answer, he laid a beautifully crafted hand on his son’s tummy. ‘Ciao, bambino! Soon, when your tiny feet grow bigger, Papa will teach you to play football—the next day it will be chess!’
Despite herself, and the acid sense of exclusion, Anna felt her mouth quirk. Mental pictures of a large man and a tiny dark-haired boy kicking a ball about in an imagined Tuscan flower-strewn meadow brought a soft sheen of wistfulness to her eyes.
Venting a tiny sigh, because she wanted to stay, be included in the father and son bonding session, she rose, smoothed down her shabby old maternity dress and set out to find out for herself who the people were.
She’d just about gained the garden door at the head of the terrace when Francesco remarked, ‘By the way, I visited your parents earlier. They were delighted by the news of our marriage, and almost hysterical when they heard that their debts will be cleared. I got out before I could be drowned in tears of gratitude.’
Anna’s steps faltered only a moment on receipt of that flatly delivered statement, then she surged on. She didn’t turn to look at him, to acknowledge that she’d heard what he’d said. Her face was flaming with humiliation, and she didn’t want him to see her monumental discomfiture and gloat.
He’d sounded dismissive, bored. As if she and her parents were contemptible. Well, what did she expect? He’d said his seemingly mega-generous offer to clear their debts was being made to protect his own precious image—certainly not an altruistic gesture to get a couple of good if slightly eccentric people out of the huge hole they’d dug for themselves.
Trying to put him out of her mind and concentrate on the possible identity of her mystery visitors—Mum and Dad, perhaps?—she swiftly mounted the stairs, headed for her room, pushed open the door and was confronted by two strange women.
Painfully smart women, surrounded by a sea of classy-looking boxes. The older of the two, with the dark hair scraped so tightly back it looked painted on, rose from the chair she’d been occupying.
‘Miss Maybury?’ Dark eyes swept over her, and Anna could have sworn she heard a wince in her voice. ‘Signor Mastroianni instructed us to bring suitable clothes for you to try.’
A slight accent. French? Anna’s arched brows drew together. More charity? She didn’t want it.
‘I’m sorry—you’ve wasted your time,’ she said stiffly, half choking on this new mortification. ‘I don’t need new clothes.’
A pencil-thin eyebrow rose in repudiation of that mistaken opinion. ‘The signor was most insistent.’
‘No.’ She had stuff of her own back at Rylands. Someone could fetch it. She might be a kept woman—courtesy of darling little Sholto—but she didn’t aim to look like one. Stepping back, moving as if to show her visitors the door, she saw a look of stark apprehension flicker across the enamelled-looking face, and her soft heart immediately capitulated.
The side of Francesco’s character she hadn’t dreamt existed when
they’d said their passionate farewells on Ischia had told her that anyone who failed to deliver on instruction was in for a tough time. The uneviable situation she found herself in wasn’t this woman’s fault, so why should she suffer?
So, ‘OK. I’ll try one or two things.’ She felt gratifyingly vindicated for her volte-face when both women visibly relaxed, smiling, practically purring, as tops were pulled away from boxes, layers of tissue reverently parted, to reveal costly fabrics in a rainbow of gorgeous colours.
After all, it might be fun to try on the type of designer gear she’d only previously glimpsed on the glossy pages of swanky magazines. And Francesco could buy the lot, but that didn’t mean she would ever wear them.
Removing her dress under the pained eyes of the women—maybe they didn’t rate chainstore undies?—Anna stamped on the ignoble thought that she would be more than glad to see the back of the maternity tents she’d lived in for what felt like for ever and gradually, very gradually, began to enjoy herself.
Partly because the women made highly flattering remarks—which no way did Anna take seriously—and partly because she adored the way pure silk, cashmere and linen felt against her body, she went along with what she saw as an amusing game quite willingly. Only blushing furiously when the older of the two, her head on one side, one eyebrow raised to an impossible height remarked, ‘The signor, he knows the details of your measurements perfectly!’
Intimately! He knew her body so intimately! Her tummy quivered, heat pooling where it shouldn’t. She deplored it. She wasn’t going to go there!
And suddenly it wasn’t fun any more. Her mouth set, she reached for the one remaining garment box. Get it over with. Her eyes sparking with irritation now, over this senseless waste of time, she stood like a wooden doll while the older woman zipped her up and the younger folded away the lovely caramel-coloured linen suit and creamy camisole she’d just stepped out of.
Mistress to the Mediterranean Male (Mills & Boon By Request) Page 22