Marrying Her Enemy & Stolen by the Desert King

by Clare Connelly

  “Oh, Luca. Why did they give you up then?”

  His expression was bland. “I do not know. And I no longer care. The fact is that they did.”

  She shook her head sadly. “You are so resentful… you will only hurt yourself if you obsess over this.”

  He nodded. “I am not obsessing. I am fixing.”

  “Fixing?”

  “The man who would have been my father – Arlo Patrini – runs a large construction business. Over the years, market forces have made it less and less profitable.” He bared his teeth in an approximation of a grin. It sent shivers down her spine.

  “You… sabotaged his business?”

  “It is not unusual, Rosie. I simply ensured companies under my control enjoyed greater success than his. He is so stressed by his situation that he was very grateful to receive my offer, despite it being for substantially less than the company is worth.” He wore a mask of distaste. “He is tripping over himself to meet me now. An irony, given that he once handed me away without a backwards glance.”

  Rosie’s voice was a tremulous whisper in response to his obvious venom. “Does he know who you are?”

  “Not yet.” Luca’s smile was haunted. “I will wait until I have completed the deal before throwing the truth in his face.”

  She sat back in her chair and regarded him thoughtfully. Her sea green eyes were enormous pools in her face. He was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. Far more attractive than she thought it possible for one human to be. There was a compelling power to him, and a deep vulnerability that made her ache to pull him into her arms and offer comfort. But there was also a darkness; a hard determination to control and to win, and she wondered, briefly, if she was crazy to be sitting there with him. Could someone like her actually be involved with a man like Luca Abramo?

  Perhaps not.

  She knew only one thing for certain. She couldn’t possibly walk away from him now.

  With a feeling that she was sealing a fate and a future she couldn’t predict, she heard herself say, “I might be able to arrange someone to mind the store. For a few days. So that I can come to Rome with you.”

  Chapter 5

  “You’re really going to take off to Rome with a man you’ve just met?” Maggie’s pretty face was etched with surprise.

  “Am I completely crazy?” Rosie asked, fingering a crumb of the zucchini muffin she’d grabbed from the fridge.

  “Yes.” Maggie’s shiny red hair bobbed in agreement. “But I like it.”

  Rosie bit down on her lower lip. “I can’t explain it. I haven’t seen him in two days and I miss him.”

  Maggie nodded, her face watchful, her mouth shut. So Rosie continued. “I just don’t know if this is some weird reaction to losing dad, you know?”

  Maggie put two teabags into a couple of mugs and filled them with boiling water. She handed one to her best friend thoughtfully. Rosie had always been a knockout, but now, with an expression of total, all-consuming love, and bathed in dusk light, she was angelic looking. “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s just so out of character for me. To meet some guy and run off with him! I don’t know what came over me, agreeing to this.”

  Maggie handed a cup to the blonde. “You’ve got a crush on him.”

  Rosie thanked Maggie for the tea distractedly and took a sip. “It’s more than that, Mags. I don’t know how to explain it without sounding silly.”

  “You could never sound silly.”

  Rosie laughed. “I sound silly all the time and you know it.” She sighed heavily. “When I met him, I had the strangest sense that I’d met him before. Almost like we’d known each other in a past life or something.”

  “Have you? Met him? I mean, it’s possible, isn’t it? You both move in the same circles, more or less.”

  Rosie’s expression was sceptical. “Trust me. I would remember meeting Luca Abramo.”

  “So how do you explain it?”

  Rosie sipped her tea again. “I can’t. That’s why I was wondering if maybe losing dad has made me temporarily lose my mind.”

  Maggie knew, better than anyone, how much Bertram’s sudden death had affected Rosie. “I don’t know,” she conceded finally. “But what if it is some kind of temporary insanity? Worst case, you get to have a lot of great sex with a gorgeous billionaire. What’s the down side?”

  Rosie burst out laughing and put a hand on her friend’s arm. “Oh, Mags. You always know what to say to make me feel better.” She sobered. “Do you think it’s disrespectful to dad? That I go kick up my heels on a Roman holiday so soon after losing him?”

  Maggie pursed her bright red lips. She had always liked Bertram Darling. He had been a kind, diffident sort of man. But he’d relied heavily on Rosie. In Maggie’s opinion, he’d taken advantage of Rosie’s generous nature, and her desperate need to rescue everyone and everything. “No.”

  “No?”

  Maggie ran her hand over her friend’s fairy white hair. “No.” She spoke softly, knowing how unreceptive Rosie would be to any criticism of Bertram. “I think your dad would recognise that you put your own life on hold for a long time, so that you could make him happy.” She shook her head when Rosie opened her mouth to interject. “Your own life always played second fiddle to your dad’s, honey. You put everything aside in the hope of making up for the fact that your mum had run out on him.”

  Rosie focussed on a bus that was pulling up across the street. Maggie could never offend her. She was insightful and kind, and above all, she had Rosie’s best interests at heart. “I just wanted him to be happy again. Like he was before he lost the company. And before mum left him.”

  Maggie nodded. “That wasn’t your job though. You know that, right?”

  “Of course. But I still felt responsible. I still wanted to help.” She wiped with frustration at the tears that sprung to her eyes. “But he was never happy again. It’s like losing his business and fortune just ruined him.”

  “Have you spoken to your mum lately?”

  “No.”

  “I’m surprised she didn’t come to the funeral.”

  “I didn’t tell her.” Rosie looked away defensively. “I couldn’t bear for her to come and act all sad and broken. For her to be sympathetic when really, I wonder if she didn’t set the whole course of his life in motion, just by leaving him.”

  Maggie resisted the urge to disagree, though she had long suspected Rosie had a very narrow view of the events that had transpired to bring about the breakdown of her family.

  “Don’t think about the past, is my advice. You’re going on a fabulous adventure with a man you’re in crazy lust with. So just go and have fun!”

  Rosie nodded. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

  “Sure. I like Laura. She’s not quite as artful with a bloom as you, but she’s a good fit for the place. Take as long as you need, and don’t worry about the shop.”

  Rosie was still not convinced. “There is a florist in Rome I’ve been dying to visit. A really amazing sustainable workshop. They even do huge arrangements of edible and medicinal herbs.”

  Maggie smiled brightly. “Well, there you go then. Another reason to throw caution to the wind and go for it.”

  The shrill ringing of Rosie’s phone called her attention away from the conversation. She reached into her bag and fished it out. The number was not familiar, but then again, she often got calls from customers or suppliers. “Rosie speaking,” she answered, taking another sip of her tea.

  “Good evening.”

  Her heart leaped into her throat, and she slopped a little tea on her knee. “Luca.”

  Maggie made a little cooing noise to tease her friend, and then discreetly left the kitchen.

  “I’ve missed you.”

  His voice was gravelly, his accent mysterious and beautiful, just like him. And Rosie found words difficult to form in response. She’d missed him too much to admit.

  “I am looking forward to taking you to Rome.” All
the way across London, in his enormous penthouse, he stared out at the glittering lights of the windswept city.

  “Yes. I am too. To going, I mean. I was just telling Maggie about a florist I’ve read about in Rome, Elena. I’d love to go and have a look at their work.”

  “Then we will make it a priority.”

  “I still feel a bit strange,” she said honestly. “Like this is pure madness. It is, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps. In a way.” Luca leaned forward, pressing his forehead against the cool glass of his floor to ceiling windows. “I always follow my instincts, though.”

  Rosie didn’t. This did not, in fact, come at all naturally to her. “Do you have everything organised for the, um, negotiations?”

  It was less negotiations that a total annihilation, he thought with a small curve of his lips. “I do.” Luca Abramo was not a man who left things to chance. He was not a man who liked surprises at all. “There’s only one thing I need.”

  “What is it?” She took a bite of her muffin, feeling somehow calmer now that she heard his voice. It was as though the butterflies in her stomach had parked their wings for a moment.

  “Your full name.”

  “My name?” She furrowed her brow. Was she really in such a rush to fall into Luca’s bed that they hadn’t even got so far as formal introductions?

  “Si.”

  Her cheeks glowed with embarrassment. She couldn’t believe how unconventional their relationship was. She’d agreed to go away with a man who was only now, four days after they’d met, and three days after they’d slept together, getting around to asking her name. “You need my name for the trip.” She said aloud, still disbelieving the omission.

  “For the flight,” he confirmed, apparently not remotely alarmed by their out-of-order acquaintance.

  She hid her mortification in a wry joke. “Are you telling me we’re flying on a commercial jet? And here was I thinking you’d be more the private aeroplane kind of man.”

  His laugh was a deep rumble, and it sent her pulse skittering wildly. “You would be right. I have not flown on a regular airline for over a decade.”

  She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “Ridiculous.”

  “Perhaps. It allows me that freedom, though.”

  “I can imagine,” she drawled with amusement. Luca was impatient. She filed the knowledge away firmly in the little dossier she was making on him. It fit his character perfectly. He had wanted her. He had got her. If he wanted to go to Italy tomorrow, he was able to simply organise his plane. He was not rendered powerless by being at the whim of airlines, nor other passengers. He was in charge. The decision maker. “It is for the passenger manifest, rather than a ticket.”

  “Okay.” She licked her lips. “Darling.”

  Luca frowned. “Thanks, cara. And your last name?”

  “Is Darling,” she corrected. “I didn’t mean that as a term of endearment. I’m Rosie Darling.”

  “Rosie Darling.” He straightened. Just like that, a sharp pang of awareness intruded on the perfection of the moment. “An interesting name,” he drawled.

  He’d only heard it once before.

  The second company he’d taken over had been owned by a Bertram Darling.

  Luca had been young – just twenty one – and he’d been arrogant in his youth. He’d taken the company for a song, shamelessly exploiting the fact that the owner had been in dire financial straits, and that the company was vulnerable to someone like him. Was it possible that Rosie was connected to the business he’d assumed control of more than fifteen years in the past?

  How could she not be? He felt a sharp rush of panic – a rare emotion for Luca Abramo – run like ice down his spine. Was it possible that something he had done over a decade earlier could be about to ruin the best thing that had ever happened to him?

  The city of London was never quiet, and Luca had always liked that about it. Aeroplanes flew until late, and when they gave up, there was traffic and sirens. Despite his wealth and success, London was a city that made one feel inconsequential. That made it easy for him to believe that the anger he carried like a shield was also somehow inconsequential.

  He sat at his grand piano, a barely-touched scotch placed carelessly on the polished black wood, and stared out at the blinking lights in the distance.

  The anger, though, was not inconsequential that night.

  It was rampant in his system. Like black bile in his organs, and his blood.

  The very fact that he’d made a decision, as a twenty one year old, that had the potential to reach through the fabric of his life and undo what he’d found with Rosie, as a thirty six year old man, was infuriating.

  And fateful.

  A little boy who had never known love, had become a man unworthy of it. He had lived his whole life in fear of loving and losing, and now, he stood to lose Rosie. For surely she couldn’t forget a decade of hatred towards the faceless man who’d taken her father’s business from him? A hatred that was, in fact for Luca, though she didn’t realise it.

  He closed his eyes and lifted his hands to the black and white keys.

  It was a night for Wagner.

  The beautifully sombre sound of Parsifal filled his empty apartment, and he played with his eyes closed, as he always had, since he’d first taught himself to play many years earlier. The music was experienced by his body, not seen with his eyes.

  Bertram Darling had been a great man, at one time.

  That much had been obvious from the quietly intelligent way he had spoken. The way he had referenced works of art and music when they were speaking about business. He had introduced Luca to Rodriguez, the artist Rosie now loved so dearly. He’d played an album while they’d had their meeting, and he’d sung along to Sugarman, in his polished British accent.

  And although Luca had been high on his early success, and felt puffed full of regard for the first time in his life, he had still had the good sense to realise that he was in the presence of a far greater man. Or a man who should have been greater.

  Were it not for his obvious gambling addiction. And, Luca suspected, a predilection to over-indulge in fine whisky.

  Luca had been twenty one. Rosie must have been nine. Had she been there that night? The night he went to the Manor and convinced Bertram to sign away his company?

  Had she heard the way he’d gently coerced the older man to realise that the business would never succeed without a massive influx of cash? And that he, Luca, was probably the only person who would be willing to risk the requisite millions to turn it around?

  Had she seen the way Luca had smiled and hummed on the way back to his car, knowing he’d secured a business that he could turn into a thriving enterprise once more? And would she hate him, now, if she knew he’d never thought of the man again, until he’d met Rosie?

  Yes, Luca had unknowingly brought about a great sadness in Rosie’s life, and he couldn’t even justify it. Not in a way that Rosie would understand. How she’d spoken of her father’s sale of the business left him in little doubt that she put the entire downfall of her family onto that one single moment. That one transaction. It was a transaction Luca had engineered. He had profited from Bertram’s misfortune. And Rosie would surely never be able to accept that. Beautiful, sweet Rosie. The first person who’d welcomed him, and who had seemed to understand him… if he told her, would it all end? Would she turn her back on him as almost everyone else in his life ever had?

  Why had he chosen Bertram’s failing company ahead of so many others? He had become a billionaire virtually overnight. At that point in his life, he had had his choice of crumbling businesses with exceptional prospects. He could have invested in any one of them. But he’d been drawn to Bertram’s, and he’d followed his instincts.

  He hunched his shoulders as he played through the prelude, letting the music wash over him. And all he could see was Rosie.

  Beautiful, sweet, happy Rosie. Uncomplicated Rosie.

  He stopped playing abruptly, a
nd stood.

  At this time of night, it would only take him twenty minutes to reach her.

  He didn’t know what he would say to her, but he knew that seeing her would bring the words to him.

  He paused just long enough to pull on a shirt, and then he set off. To Rosie, and the confession he couldn’t quite articulate, but that he suspected he needed to make.

  Chapter 6

  “You’ve been crying,” he murmured, instinctively reaching for Rosie and pulling her to his chest. She was so small, so frail. He held her tight with one hand; with the other he smoothed her hair, over and over. All thoughts of his own confession evaporated. He cared only about easing her pain now.

  Rosie sobbed in muffled agreement. “What are you doing here?” How had he known that she’d been yearning for him? That she’d been wishing he were there, to tell her everything would be okay?

  “Why are you crying?” He pressed his lips against her forehead. “Rosie? What is the matter?”

  She lifted her hands and dashed away her tears, trying and failing to appear less red-eyed. “Nothing.” She shook her head. She would have taken a step backwards, but it felt so good to be in his arms.

  “Rosie,” he spoke quietly, but his tone was demanding. “Tell me what has happened, this minute.”

  “Oh.” She shook her head. “It’s… I just got a box of stuff today, from daddy’s safe. I had forgotten it was even coming. It caught me off guard, that’s all. It’s nothing.”

  Luca’s heart felt like it was in a grip of vice. “I see.” He lifted his thumb and padded away the tear that was running down her soft, pale cheek.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I’ve come to tell you I ruined your father’s life. And yours, too, I suppose. He shrugged. “I couldn’t wait until tomorrow.” That, at least, was true.

  Rosie had been miserable, only moments earlier, as she’d sifted through the small, tin box that had housed some of the more obscure items of her father’s collection. Now? Every nerve ending in her body was raw and exposed, and shaking with need.