The Marriage He Must Keep

by Dani Collins

  She swallowed, lower lip trembling against the pad of his thumb as he caressed it.

  “Our honeymoon was...” His face spasmed with a hint of pain. “You call it an affair and it was, for you. I think I knew that. You were infatuated. No, listen,” he hurried, not letting her interrupt. “I know what a sexual crush looks like. I’ve been producing them in women from an early age and yes, I did everything in my power to provoke one in you to ensure you married me, but the way I felt for you was becoming...too much. London served a lot of purposes for me,” he admitted with a humble look.

  She pulled in her bottom lip and sucked the salty tang of his thumbprint off it, one foot falling back so he had to let his hand drop away.

  “There was a part of me that needed to prove I could get by without you, that I wasn’t completely over my head,” he continued, voice raw enough to lift the hairs on her arms. “Then, after everything with Primo and the birth, I knew even what little you had felt toward me was gone. Do you think I felt good after that?” His regret was palpable, making her throat ache. “No, I felt guilty and hellish and I knew I should let you go, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I wasn’t ready to admit to myself why.”

  His eyes were dark gray, like heavy English rain, his brow furrowed, the lines at the edges of his mouth deep.

  “Especially because you weren’t being open with me,” he added. “You held a lot back, too.”

  She realized that her fingers hurt because she had them clenched together. She searched his expression, stunned to think that she might have been hurting him with her restraint all that time when she’d only been trying to deal with her own pain.

  “I’ve never really talked about myself,” she excused. “I thought you’d be bored or annoyed, think I was complaining about nothing.”

  She still felt as though her inner struggles were insignificant, but glancing up, she saw she had his full attention. She swallowed, shaken.

  “When I said I didn’t expect you to love me, it was because I didn’t think there was any reason you should,” she admitted.

  He cupped the side of her face. His expression was filled with adoration. “I don’t understand how someone who thinks as deeply as you do doesn’t see her inner value.” His thumb brushed her cheek. “When you started showing your true self, I was so proud and excited and scared that I would crush you before you were out of your shell... I like this woman you’re becoming, Octavia. I love her. In fact, that silly little word doesn’t even come close to describing the vastness of what I feel.” He stepped closer and framed her face with both hands, possessive. The way he looked at her was not soft and tender like Ysabelle’s count, but fierce and enthralled and ravenous. “I didn’t want the pain of loving, but—” He swallowed, his emotions so close to the surface his eyes gleamed. “I couldn’t stop myself from falling for you.”

  Her mouth trembled and she wanted to duck her head, but made herself hold his gaze and allow him to see all the hesitations and insecurity and joy and gratitude and love revolving inside her like the colors in a kaleidoscope. Loving wasn’t easy. It was scary and big and cost a piece of the soul. Maybe if she’d really known how powerful and potentially painful it could be, she would have fought it the way he had.

  But this, when the man she loved looked back at her with the same open, vulnerable, proud and loving gaze that filled every last shadow of her being with light and warmth...it was worth it.

  “I’m sorry I said I’d leave you. I didn’t mean it,” she said.

  “Did you see the Neanderthal who came after you? I won’t let you,” he said with a rueful twitch at the corner of his mouth.

  She smiled shakily and clasped her fingers around his wrists. “I think there’s something wrong with me because I kind of liked you going caveman like that. I needed to know you would.”

  “Don’t encourage me. I’m never proud of losing control, even if it served a higher purpose.”

  “Does that mean you don’t want to take the makeup sex onto the balcony so they can hear us?” she asked with mock innocence, shuffling closer and lifting her lips in offering to his.

  “Cara, we’re barely going to make it to the bed.”

  EPILOGUE

  “I’VE BEEN ALL over the house looking for you,” Sandro said.

  His sexy voice dragged her mind from what she held in her hand and sent a pleasurable shiver down her spine.

  “I wasn’t hiding,” she protested with a smile, turning to meet him halfway across the nursery without dropping what she held. They embraced and kissed. It was a nice surprise to have him search her out. She didn’t hesitate to interrupt him in his office if she needed him during the day, but he was usually there for most of it, running into the city once or twice a week. “What did you need?”

  “Nothing. Just I saw Lorenzo outside with Bree, showing off his steps to Nonno. I decided to take a break and visit with them, but I wasn’t out there very long when it occurred to me, if they were all busy out there...” His hands shifted from warm greeting to something more suggestive, straying very low on her back. “We might get busy in here.”

  She gave a soft, throaty laugh, leaning her hips into his as she angled back to give him a knowing look. “I’m already busy. I’m going through Lorenzo’s clothes, pulling what he’s grown out of.”

  “Bree can do that, can’t she?”

  Three guesses what he’d rather she did with her time right now.

  “I wanted to do it.” But it could wait. Sorting the piles of tiny pants and shirts made her realize how quickly their son was growing. It was exciting to see him change and develop, but made her wistful for the baby he’d been. “Look what I found.”

  She showed him the tag she held. It read Kelly—Boy but had Lorenzo’s weight and time and date of birth. Remembering that difficult time made her heart pang, but she softened, too. If that hadn’t happened, would Primo still be here, between them? Would they be like this, completely open to each other? She didn’t think so.

  “We’ve come a long way since then,” he said soberly. A shadow crossed his expression, but a warm light dispelled it as he met her eyes. “Fond as I am of Enrique, I’m glad I didn’t lose my son. Or you. I love you very much, you know.”

  “I do.” She offered a tremulous smile, lifting her free hand to the side of his face. The depth and breadth of his love amazed her daily. And despite being passionate people, they seldom argued. If they happened to disagree, they were both so shocked at not being in complete accord, they each took a step back, wanting to understand the other’s view immediately. Things always seemed to work out quickly from there. If that meant a lack of makeup sex, well, they had enough of every other kind they didn’t miss it.

  “I didn’t know I could have this much love in my life,” she told him. “I didn’t know I could feel this much for you and Lorenzo. It makes me feel greedy for thinking...”

  He lifted his brows in inquiry.

  The clothes she had pulled weren’t going to the charity bin. They were going into storage. She and Sandro had vaguely talked a while ago of his working out of the London office when she got pregnant again, so he could stay with her while the clinic monitored her, but that had been as far as they’d gone with their plans. Today, however, realizing how her son was leaving babyhood and becoming a toddler, she was feeling ready to expand their little family.

  “I was thinking it’s time to try for another,” she said shyly.

  “Another baby?” He caught her up in a surge of his big body, carrying her a few steps to brace her back against the wall, legs around his waist.

  “No, another misprinted tag,” she teased, smoothing her hand down to his shirt pocket, finding the hard shape of his phone against the flexed muscles of his pec. “Let me call Sorcha, see if she’s up to meeting us in London in nine months.”

  “Yo
u think you’re funny,” he told her, forehead against hers so they were eye to eye.

  “You think I’m funny,” she told him.

  “You’re a little bit funny,” he allowed, kissing her lightly, eyelids coming down in a smoky look of growing arousal. “Are we really going to conceive our second child in the nursery of our first?”

  “That depends. Did you lock the door?”

  He drew back to give her an arrogant quirk of his brow.

  “Silly me. Show some faith, right?” She did have faith in him. She trusted him with her heart and her children and her life. “I love you, caro,” she told him, squeezing her arms around his neck, heart so full tears came into her eyes.

  “I love you, too, bella. So much the words aren’t enough.” He carried her to the daybed and his weight came over her as he pressed her onto it.

  She sighed with pleasure, absently releasing the tag she held as they got down to the serious business of making a new baby.

  The following year, they looked at a tag that read, Ferrante—Girl. It was affixed to their newborn under Sandro’s proud gaze and went unquestioned.

  * * * * *

  Don’t miss the second story in Dani Collins’s fabulous new duet THE WRONG HEIRS

  THE CONSEQUENCE HE MUST CLAIM

  Out February 2016

  Keep reading for an excerpt from WEARING THE DE ANGELIS RING by Cathy Williams.

  We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin Presents title.

  You want alpha males, decadent glamour and jet-set lifestyles. Step into the sensational, sophisticated world of Harlequin Presents, where sinfully tempting heroes ignite a fierce and wickedly irresistible passion!

  Enjoy eight new stories from Harlequin Presents every month!

  Connect with us on Harlequin.com for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers, free online reads and much more!

  Other ways to keep in touch:

  Harlequin.com/newsletters

  Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks

  Twitter.com/HarlequinBooks

  HarlequinBlog.com

  Wearing the De Angelis Ring

  by Cathy Williams

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘YOU’RE NOT GOING to like what I’m about to say.’

  The very second Stefano had called his son and told him that he needed to speak with him as a matter of urgency, Theo had dropped everything and taken the first flight over to Italy, to his father’s enormous estate just outside Rome.

  Stefano De Angelis was not a man given to drama, and both Theo and his brother, Daniel, had spent the past five years worrying about him. He had never really recovered from the death of his wife, their mother, Rose. The power house who had built a personal fortune from scratch had collapsed into himself, retreating to the sanctuary of his den, immune to the efforts of both his sons to pull him out of his grief. He had continued to eat, sleep, talk and walk, but his soul had departed, leaving only a physical shell behind.

  What, Theo thought now, was he about to hear?

  Cold fear gripped him.

  ‘Have you asked Daniel as well?’ He prowled through the huge sitting room, idly gazing through the window to the sprawling lawns, before finally taking a seat opposite his father.

  ‘This situation does not concern your brother,’ Stefano returned, his dark eyes sidestepping his son’s piercing green ones.

  Theo breathed a sigh of relief. If Daniel hadn’t been likewise summoned, then at least a health crisis could be discounted. He had been tempted to phone his brother on the back of his father’s summons, but had resisted the impulse because he knew that Daniel was in the throes of a balancing act: trying to close a major deal and a minor love affair at the same time.

  The deal, his brother had confided several days ago, when he had called from his penthouse apartment in Sydney, was a walk in the park compared to the woman who had been making noises about taking what they had ‘one step further’, and didn’t show any promise of retreating without putting up a fight.

  ‘So tell me... What am I not going to like to hear?’ Theo encouraged.

  ‘As you are well aware, son...’ Stefano’s hooded dark eyes gazed off into the distance ‘...things have not been good with me since your mother died. When my beloved Rose went, she took a big part of me with her.’

  ‘Of us all.’

  ‘But you and your brother are young. I, on the other hand, am an old man—and you know what they say about old dogs and new tricks. Perhaps if her death hadn’t been so sudden... Perhaps if I had had time to get used to the idea of her absence...’ He sighed. ‘But this is not why I called you here, Theo. To moan and complain about something that cannot be changed. I called you here because during the time that I was...shall we say mentally not present, certain unfortunate things took place within the company.’

  Theo stilled. His keen eyes noted the nervous play of his father’s entwined fingers. His father was the least nervous man he had ever known.

  ‘Unfortunate things...?’

  ‘There has been some substantial mismanagement,’ Stefano declared bluntly. ‘And worse, I am afraid. Alfredo, my trusted co-director, has been involved in large-scale embezzlement which has only recently been drawn to my attention. It’s a wonder the press hasn’t got hold of it. The upshot, Theo, is that vast sums of money—including most of the pension funds—have been hijacked.’

  Theo sat back, his lean, handsome face revealing nothing of what was going through his mind.

  It was a problem, yes—but a serious one? Not really. At any rate nothing that he couldn’t handle.

  ‘If you’re worried about the man getting what he deserves, then you can leave that to me,’ Theo asserted with cold confidence, his sharp, analytical brain already formulating ways in which payback could be duly extracted. ‘And if you’re worried about the lost money, then likewise. It will be nothing for me to return what’s been misappropriated. No one will ever know.’

  ‘It’s not that easy, Theo.’

  And Theo knew that now they were approaching the heart of the problem—the reason why he had been summoned.

  ‘I would never ask either you or Daniel for financial assistance!’ Stefano glowered, his fighting spirit temporarily restored as he contemplated the unthinkable. ‘You boys have made your own way in the world and my pride would never allow me to run to either of you with my begging bowl...’

  Theo shook his head in frustration at his father’s pride—which, he had to concede, both he and Daniel had inherited in bucketloads. ‘It would not have been a question of—’

  ‘I’m afraid I went to Carlo Caldini,’ Stefano said abruptly. ‘There was no choice. The bank was not an option—not when there was a significant chance that they would turn down my request. If that had happened, then the business... Well, what can I say? Everything your mother and I built would have been thrown into the public arena to be picked over by hyenas! At least with Carlo we can keep this between us...’

  Theo pressed the pads of his thumbs against his eyes.

  Carlo Caldini had once been his father’s closest friend and now, for longer than he could remember, was his fiercest adversary. The fact that he had seen fit to go to Carlo for help threatened to bring on a raging headache.

  There was absolutely no doubt that whatever his father was going to tell him Theo was not going to want to hear it.

  ‘And what’s his price?’ he asked, because there was no such thing as a free lunch—and when the lunch was with a sworn enemy then it was going to be the opposite of free.

  Exorbitant was the word that sprang to mind.

  Stefano fidgeted. ‘You’re not getting any younger, Theo. You’re thirty-two years old! Your mother dearly wished that she would see one of you boys settled... It wasn’t to be...’

  ‘I’m not following you...’


  ‘All of this unravelled over eight months ago,’ Stefano said heavily. ‘During that time it proved impossible to repay the loan. It’s been an uphill struggle just picking apart the extent of the losses and dealing with Alfredo...’

  ‘And you kept it all to yourself!’

  ‘There seemed little point in worrying you or your brother.’

  ‘Just tell me what ruinous interest rates Carlo has imposed and I’ll deal with it.’

  ‘Here is the part you may not like, son...’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  When it came to money there was nothing Theo couldn’t buy, and naturally he would pay the bill without complaint—although he was furious with his father for thinking it necessary to seek help outside the direct family circle.

  Pride.

  ‘As you know, Carlo has a daughter. An only child. Sadly there were to be no sons for him.’

  Even in the thick of disclosing what he knew his son would not want to hear Stefano couldn’t quite conceal the smugness in his voice, and Theo raised his eyebrows wryly. He had never known what had caused the enmity between his father and Carlo, but he suspected that the lifelong grudge stemmed from something ridiculously insignificant.

  ‘What has that got to do with anything?’ he asked, frankly bewildered at the tangent his father had taken.

  ‘Alexa... I think you may have met her... Or perhaps not... Well, it seems that the girl is not yet married, and Carlo...’ Stefano shrugged. ‘He is saddened at that—as I would be had I had a daughter... So part of the repayment schedule—which, in fairness to that sly old fox, is more lenient than at any bank—is that you help him out of his predicament with Alexa. In other words, Theo, I have promised him your hand in marriage to the girl...’