Never Gamble With a Caffarelli

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  Angelique felt a little piqued that he didn’t instantly believe in her. She hadn’t realised until now how much she wanted him to have faith in her ability. To believe that she wasn’t just another pretty face without any substance behind it. ‘I wouldn’t dream of putting your precious money at risk.’ Her words were sharp, clipped with resentment.

  He gave her a levelling look. ‘I might love a gamble, Angelique, but at the end of the day I’m a businessman. I can’t allow emotions to get in the way of a good business decision.’

  She sent him a chilly glare. ‘You didn’t worry too much about your emotions when you tricked my father out of Tarrantloch. That wasn’t a business decision. It was a personal vendetta and I’ll never forgive you for it.’

  ‘I admit I wanted to pay him back for what he did to my grandfather. We almost lost everything because of what he did.’ His look was darkly scathing. ‘But it wasn’t just about that. I bet he didn’t tell you the details of his underhand behaviour over the Ibiza account I was about to close? He would have put a completely different spin on it for his precious little girl.’

  His precious little girl.

  Angelique had to choke back a laugh. If only Remy knew how much her father despised her. He never showed it in public. He couldn’t afford to tarnish his reputation as a devoted father. He put on a good show when the need arose but as soon as the doors were closed Henri would revert back to his autocratic, boorish, hyper-critical ways. She had always known her father had wanted a son as his firstborn but her mother had failed to deliver one.

  Angelique was a living, daily reminder of that failure.

  ‘I know my father isn’t a plaster saint but neither is your grandfather,’ she tossed back.

  ‘I never said he was. I know how difficult he can be.’

  She folded her arms across her chest. ‘I don’t want your money, Remy. I want you to give me back what is mine. That’s all I want from you.’

  ‘Not going to happen, ma chérie.’ He gave her an intractable look. ‘And, just for the record, I haven’t finished with your father. Tarrantloch is nothing compared to what he did to me in all but defaming me online. I’m not stopping until I get the justice I want.’

  Angelique curled her lip. ‘Is that why you jumped at the fiancée charade that led to this ridiculous marriage? You saw a perfect opportunity for revenge. For rough justice. Forcing my hand in a marriage neither of us wants in order to score points. That’s so...pathetic I want to throw up. ‘

  His brows jammed together. ‘Do you really think I’d go that far? Come on, Angelique, you’re not thinking straight. I don’t want to be married to anyone, let alone you. If by any remote chance I choose to settle down with someone it won’t be with someone like you.’

  She gave him a huffy scowl. ‘Like me? What does that mean? What’s wrong with me?’

  He let out a breath as he pushed a hand through his hair. ‘Nothing’s wrong with you... It’s just, I don’t see you as wife material.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Because you’re not the “marriage and babies” type.’

  Angelique raised her brows. ‘You want...babies?’

  He reared back from her as if she’d asked him if he wanted a deadly disease. ‘No! God, no. I’m just saying...’

  She gave him another scowl. ‘I’m not sure what you’re saying. Maybe you could elaborate a bit. Fill in the blanks for me.’

  He looked about as flustered as she’d ever seen him. It was a rare sight. He was normally so in control—joking around. Having a laugh at everyone else’s expense. Now he seemed to be back-pedalling as if he had stepped on a land mine and wasn’t quite sure how to step off it without an explosion. ‘It’s not that I don’t think you’d be a great mother.’

  ‘But you think I’d be rubbish at being a wife.’

  ‘I think you’d find it hard to compromise.’

  Angelique blurted out a laugh. ‘And you don’t? Oh, for God’s sake, Remy. You really are unbelievable. You’re the least compromising person I’ve ever met. If I’d make a rotten wife, then you’d make an even worse husband.’

  ‘Then thank God we’ll be able to stop being a husband and wife as soon as we get back to England.’

  ‘You really think it will be that simple?’ Angelique asked. ‘What if someone hears about this? A journalist or someone with contacts in the media? Did you see how many people were at our wedding? What if someone took a photo? What if everyone took a photo?’

  His expression locked down, leaving just one muscle moving in and out on the left side of his jaw. ‘No one is going to find out. We can annul this as soon as we land. I’ve already spoken to my lawyer in London. We can go straight to his office from the airport. It will be over and we can both move on with our lives as if it never happened.’

  Good luck with that, Angelique thought. She’d been lucky lately in keeping her face out of the gossip pages but she knew it wouldn’t last. If a journalist got a whiff of what had happened in Dharbiri she and Remy would be besieged by the media as soon as they landed. But then, anyone with a camera phone could snap a picture of them together and email or text it to a newspaper.

  Even arriving at Heathrow together was going to cause a stir because there were always people coming back from holidays from tropical locations where her body had been on yet another billboard.

  Oh joy...

  CHAPTER SIX

  REMY COULD NOT believe the sort of attention Angelique attracted. Even before they had cleared Customs people were nudging each other and pointing. Several came up and asked for autographs. Some took photos, even though the signs in the customs area strictly forbade the use of phones or cameras.

  ‘Do you have to be so damn nice to everybody?’ he said in a low, gruff tone as he ushered her through to where a driver was waiting to collect them. ‘Can’t you pretend you’re not you? Let them think they’ve got the wrong person or something. I’ve done that heaps of times. It works like a charm.’

  ‘You’ve got the wrong person if you think I’d be rude to someone who paid a lot of money for a swimsuit I’ve modelled.’ She smiled at another fan who came over with a pen and a boarding pass for her to sign.

  Remy could feel his blood pressure rising. Was she doing this on purpose? People were looking at him now, trying to figure out who he was and how he fitted into her life. How long before they recognised him and put two and two together?

  He took her firmly by the elbow. ‘We have to go. Now.’

  ‘Hold your horses.’ She winked up at him cheekily. ‘Or your camels.’

  She smiled again as yet another person came over and told her how much they admired her, and that they didn’t believe for a second all that rubbish about her and the English banker who was married, and how it wasn’t her fault the marriage had broken up because it was obviously doomed from the outset, blah, blah, blah.

  Remy had to wait until they were in the car before he asked, ‘Did you know the banker was married when you hooked up with him?’

  ‘I didn’t hook up with him.’ She flicked some imaginary lint off her clothing. ‘I was photographed next to him in a hotel lobby. I was waiting for the porter to bring out my luggage.’

  He frowned at her. ‘Are you seriously telling me you didn’t have anything to do with him? That you didn’t have a secret love tryst with him in that hotel?’

  She gave him a bored look. ‘Does every woman you speak to end up sharing your bed?’ She held up her hand and gave her eyes a little roll. ‘No, don’t answer that. I already know. If they’re under the age of thirty, they probably do.’

  ‘I don’t do married women. I might be a playboy but I do have some standards.’

  ‘Good to know.’ There was something about her tone and the exaggerated way she inspected her perfectly manicured nails that irked him.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s very reassuring, that’s all.’

  He frowned again. He could sense she was up to something. ‘W
hat is?’

  ‘That you don’t do married women.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  Her look was arch when she turned to look at him. ‘Because I’m married.’

  A surge of hot, unbridled lust rose in his loins. He could not think of a woman he wanted more than her right now. It was pounding through him like an unstoppable tide. It tapped into every thread of desire he had ever felt for her, thickening it, swelling it, reinforcing it.

  He covered it with a laugh. ‘But not for much longer.’

  She put her chin in the air and inspected her nails again. ‘That annulment can’t happen soon enough.’ She lowered her hand back down to her lap and studied it for a moment. ‘I can’t think of a worse forty-eight hours in my life.’

  ‘Hell of a short marriage,’ he said after a little pause. ‘Do you think that’s some sort of record?’

  She shrugged one of her slim shoulders a little without looking at him. ‘Maybe.’

  Another silence.

  ‘Are you heading back to Paris after this?’ Remy asked. ‘This’ being the sign-off of their brief marriage. He didn’t want to admit it but he would miss her. A bit. A niggly bit. She was incredibly annoying but vastly entertaining. He could think of worse things to do with his time than spar with her. She stimulated him physically and intellectually. Not many women did that.

  In fact, he couldn’t think of the last one that had...

  ‘I have a shoot in Barbados.’ Her shoulders went down dejectedly. ‘I have to lose at least three pounds before then.’

  ‘You’re joking, surely?’

  She gave him a resigned look. ‘No one wants to see a bloated belly in a bikini they’re going to pay a hundred and fifty pounds for, are they?’

  ‘But you’ve got an amazing belly.’ He’d been having shower fantasies about it for years. He compared other women to her. He knew it was wrong but he couldn’t help it. She was his benchmark. That billboard in New York all those years ago had nailed it for him. No one even came close.

  He suddenly found himself imagining her belly swelling...growing larger with the bloom of a child...his child...

  Whoa! What are you thinking?

  She pressed her lips together. ‘I’ve got a belly like every other woman. It has its good days and its bad days.’

  Remy studied her for a moment. ‘Is that why you don’t eat?’

  She visibly bristled. ‘I do eat.’

  He gave a disparaging grunt. ‘Not enough to keep a gnat alive.’

  She sent him a flinty glare. ‘So you keep a catalogue of all your lovers’ food intakes, do you?’

  ‘You’re not my lover.’ A fact his body was reminding him of virtually non-stop. Why wasn’t it letting up?

  ‘No.’ Her chin hitched up until she was eyeball to eyeball with him. ‘I’m just your wife.’

  Remy felt his back come up at the way she said the word. It was like she was spitting out a nasty object, something foul and distasteful. ‘Why are you so against being a wife? Your parents were happily married, weren’t they? Everyone said how devastated your father was when your mother died. He was inconsolable.’

  ‘Yes, he was...’ Her expression clouded and her teeth nipped into her bottom lip.

  He wondered if he should have mentioned her mother’s death. Suicide was a touchy subject. Kate Marchand had taken an overdose after a bout of depression, which had supposedly been accidental, and rumour had it Angelique had found her body.

  She had been ten years old.

  The same age his brother Rafe had been when their parents had been killed.

  Remy had seen first-hand what a child with an overblown sense of responsibility went through. It had only been since Rafe had met Poppy that he had let that sense of responsibility ease. Rafe had taken stock of his life and was a better and happier man for it.

  Raoul had done much the same, recognising his life would not be complete without Lily Archer, the woman who had shown him that physical wholeness was not as important as emotional wholeness.

  But what could Angelique teach Remy other than patience and self-control?

  Remy wondered if finding her mother like that was why she was such a tearaway. Losing her mother in such a way must have hit her hard. Had she blamed herself?

  He looked at her sitting with her arms folded across her middle, her gaze focused on the tote bag on her lap. A frown was pulling on her forehead and her teeth were savaging her lower lip. She looked far younger than her years. Vulnerable.

  ‘Did you blame yourself for your mother’s death?’

  ‘A bit, I suppose. What child wouldn’t?’ She started plucking at the stitches in the leather of her bag strap, tugging at the tiny threads as if to unpick them one by one. ‘If I’d got home earlier I might’ve been able to save her. But I’d stopped at a friend’s house on the way home from school. I’d never done that before.’ She stopped picking to look at him. ‘Needless to say, I never did it again.’

  There was a lot of pain in her eyes. She covered it well but it was there lurking in the depths. Remy saw it in the way she held herself, a braced posture, guarded, prepared. Vigilant. There was so much about her that annoyed him, yet how much of that was a ruse to cover her true nature? Her brash wilfulness, her impulsiveness, her refusal to obey instructions could well be a shield to hide how vulnerable and alone she felt.

  ‘Monsieur Caffarelli?’

  Remy had almost forgotten they were still in the car until it came to a halt and the driver opened the partition that separated the driver from the passengers.

  ‘There are paparazzi outside,’ his driver said. ‘Do you want me to drive another block or two?’

  ‘Yes, do that.’ Remy took out his phone. ‘I’ll give my lawyer a call to see if he can meet us somewhere else.’

  ‘How did they know we were going to your lawyer’s office?’ Angelique asked.

  ‘God knows.’ He put his phone to his ear. ‘Brad. You looked out of your window lately?’

  ‘I was just about to call you,’ Brad said. ‘I’ve just had Robert Mappleton on the line. He heard a rumour you’re married to Henri Marchand’s daughter and—’

  ‘Where the hell did he hear that?’ Remy barked.

  ‘Not sure,’ Brad said. ‘Maybe someone in Dharbiri spoke to the press. All I know is this is like winning the lottery for you right now.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Remy said.

  ‘Have you forgotten? You’ve been trying to win this guy over for months. The Bob Mappleton of Mappleton Hotels?’

  ‘That crusty old bastard who refused to even discuss a takeover bid, even though the shareholders are threatening to call in the administrators?’ Remy curled his lip. All because of that inflammatory email Henri Marchand had circulated. ‘Yeah, how could I forget? He’d rather face total bankruptcy than strike a deal with me.’

  ‘Well, here’s the thing,’ Brad said. ‘He just called and said he’s changed his mind. He wasn’t prepared to do business with a hard-partying playboy, but now you’re married to Henri Marchand’s daughter he figures that stuff Marchand said about you last year can’t have been true. He wants to set up a meeting. He’s as old-school and conservative as they come but this marriage of yours couldn’t have come at a better time.’

  Remy felt his scalp start to tingle. The biggest takeover bid of his career: a chain of run-down hotels he knew he could make into the most luxurious and popular in the world. The Ibiza development was child’s play compared to this.

  The catch?

  He had to stay married in order to nail it.

  He looked at Angelique who was giving him the evil eye. He could see the storm brewing in her grey-blue eyes. He could feel the air tightening along with her body. Every muscle in her face had turned to stone. ‘Call him and set up a meeting for the end of next week,’ he said to Brad.

  ‘Why next week? Why not this week? Why not today?’ Brad asked.

  Remy grinned. ‘Because I’m going on my honeymoon.’ A
nd then he closed his phone and started counting.

  One.

  Two...

  ‘What?’ Angelique spluttered. ‘I’m not staying married to you!’

  ‘Has anyone ever told you how cute you look when you’re angry?’

  Her eyes iced and narrowed, her voice coming out through clenched teeth. ‘Don’t try your charm on me, Remy Caffarelli. It won’t work. I’m not staying married to you, so you can just call your lawyer right back and tell him we’ll be up there in a less than a minute to sign on the dotted—’

  ‘What if you were to get something out of it?’

  Her head slanted at a suspicious angle. ‘Such as?’

  ‘I’ll back your label,’ Remy said. ‘With my connections and guaranteed finance you could really take your designs places. You’ll become a global brand overnight.’

  She wavered like a wary dog being offered a treat from someone it didn’t quite trust. ‘How long would we have to stay married?’

  He gave a shrug. ‘A couple of months tops. We can get the wheels rolling on our business ventures and then call it quits. Easy.’

  ‘It’s still going to be a paper marriage, right?’

  Remy found himself wondering if he could tweak the rules a tad. Just a tad, mind. A couple of months with Angelique in his bed could certainly make the temporary sacrifice of his freedom worthwhile.

  Besides, it wasn’t as if he could sleep with anyone else while he was officially married to her. It went against everything he believed in.

  ‘That would depend.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On whether you wanted to be celibate for two months or whether you wanted a paper marriage with benefits,’ he said.

  An insolent spark lit her gaze. ‘Is that the only choice I have? Celibacy or you?’

  Remy gave her a winning smile. ‘I know; it’s a tough one. But wait. There’s more. I’ll set up a business plan and employ accounting staff to see to the details while you get on with designing and sourcing fabrics.’ It was like reeling a fish on the line. He could practically see her mouth watering. He was going to win this.