The butler beamed. ‘The rolls are freshly baked but we have some gluten-free ones if you would prefer.’
‘I’m not gluten-intolerant,’ she said with a smile. ‘But I thank you for the offer.’
Eva was the only woman Daniele had been on a date with in at least three years who hadn’t been gluten-intolerant or on a particular fad diet. It had been refreshing, yet another difference between herself and the other women he’d dated. It showed on her physically. She had curves for a start and heavy breasts that just begged to have a head rested upon them. Eva Bergen was one sexy lady and he couldn’t wait to see what she looked like when wearing feminine clothes. No clothes at all would be even better.
When they were alone again, she helped herself to a bread roll and broke it open with her fingers. ‘What is it you wished to discuss?’
‘Let’s eat first and then talk.’
She put the roll down. ‘No, let’s talk while we eat or I’ll think you’ve brought me here under false pretences again.’
‘There were no false pretences on our last date,’ he countered smoothly.
‘I was very specific that it wasn’t to be a date. You made it one. The questions you asked me about the hospital could have been dealt with over a five-minute coffee.’
‘Where would the fun have been with that?’
‘My work isn’t fun, Mr Pellegrini—’
‘Daniele.’ He must have told her a dozen times not to address him so formally during their date that, according to Eva, wasn’t a date. It hadn’t occurred to him that she would be anything but delighted with his attention. His family name and looks had always been a magnet for the ladies. Once the architectural accolades and money had started rolling in he couldn’t think of a single woman who hadn’t looked at him with fluttering eyelashes, not until he’d met Eva. There had been a spark of interest there, though, a moment when their eyes had locked together for the first time and a zing of electricity had passed between them.
It had been the first real hit of desire he’d experienced since his brother had died. In the two months since Pieta’s death, Daniele had lost all interest in women. The opposite sex had flown so far off his radar that the electricity between him and Eva had been a welcome reminder that he was alive.
After that initial zing her manner had been nothing but calm and professional towards him, which he’d assumed had been a product of the environment they’d been in. He’d also assumed that getting her out of the pit of hell that was Caballeros and into the more picturesque setting of Aguadilla would remove the straitjacket she’d put around herself. He’d certainly got that wrong.
Despite the zings of electricity that had flown between them that evening, she’d remained cool and poker-faced, his usually winning attempts at flattery being met with stony silence. She’d outright rejected his offer of a nightcap. Not only that, but there had been contempt in her rejection too.
There had been no denying it—Eva Bergen had been looking down her pretty little nose at him. At him.
No one had ever looked at him like that before. It had felt bitter and ugly in his guts and he’d dismissed her without a second thought. Rejection he could deal with but contempt?
It had been too much like the expression he’d seen on his father’s face when the media reported on one or another of Daniele’s dalliances with the opposite sex. His parents had been desperate for him to marry. Pieta had found a woman to settle down with—even though it had taken him six years to actually exchange vows with her—which meant it had been time for Daniele to settle down too.
Daniele had had no intention of ever settling down. His life was fun. He pleased himself, not answerable to anyone. If he wanted a weekend in Vegas, all he had to do was jump on his jet and off he would go, collecting some friends on the way to share the fun with. His perfect brother had never behaved anything but...perfectly, and he’d been held up as the shining beacon for Daniele to emulate. He’d been held up as the shining beacon before Daniele had even been out of nappies.
Well, Daniele had had the last laugh. He’d earned himself a fortune worth more than Pieta’s personal wealth and the estate Pieta would inherit combined.
And then the last laugh had stopped being funny. Pieta had died in a helicopter crash and the man he’d loved and loathed in equal measure, his brother, his rival, was no longer there. He was dead. Gone. Passed. All the terms used to convey a person’s death but none with the true weight of how the loss felt in Daniele’s heart.
‘I take my job very seriously, Mr Pellegrini. I’m not here to have fun.’ Eva said it as if it were a dirty concept. ‘Your flirting was inappropriate and your offer of a nightcap doubly so.’
No doubt his sister would call him a masochist for choosing to marry a woman who openly despised him. Francesca wouldn’t understand how refreshing it was to be with a woman without artifice. She wouldn’t understand the challenge Eva posed, like an experienced mountaineer peering up from the base of Everest, the peak so high it was hidden in the clouds. To reach the top would be dangerous but the thrills would make every minute of danger worthwhile.
The only danger Eva posed was to his ego and he would be the first to admit that his ego could use some knocks. He despised thin-skinned men and looking back to his reaction when Eva had rejected his offer of a nightcap, he could see he’d been as thin-skinned as the worst of them.
‘I would have thought an intimate meal for two in a Michelin-starred restaurant was the most appropriate place to flirt with a beautiful woman.’
The faintest trace of colour appeared on her cheeks. ‘If you flirt with me again I’ll leave.’
‘Without hearing what I wish to discuss first?’
‘That’s up to you. If you can control your natural tendency to flirt and actually get to the point, it won’t be an issue.’ She put a spoonful of soup into her wide, full-lipped mouth.
Daniele took hold of his spoon. ‘In that case I shall get straight to the point. I need a wife and want you to take the role.’
A groove appeared in her forehead, crystal-clear blue eyes flashing at him. ‘That is not funny. What do you really want?’
He sipped at his soup. Eva was right. It was delicious. ‘What I want is to get on my jet and fly away from here, but what I need is a wife, and you, tesoro, are the perfect woman for the job.’
There was a moment of stunned silence before she pushed her chair back and rose to her feet. ‘You are despicable, do you know that? You can keep your mind games to yourself. I don’t want to play. And for the record, I am not your darling.’
Snatching her canvas bag from the foot of her chair, Eva turned to stalk away from the terrace, out of the suite, and far away from this arrogant man who she had no intention of ever seeing again.
She hadn’t taken two paces when the sound of clicking echoed in the air and Daniele said, ‘Before you leave, I have something to show you.’
‘You have nothing I want to see.’
‘Not even a million dollars in cash?’
Against her better judgement—again—Eva turned her head.
There on the table, beside his bowl of soup, lay an open briefcase.
She blinked. How had he moved so fast? What was he? Some kind of magician?
The briefcase was neatly crammed with wads of money.
She blinked again and met his eyes.
‘Do I have your attention now?’ he asked. All his previous good humour, which she had already suspected of being a façade, had been stripped away.
She nodded. Yes. He had her attention, but there was a part of her that thought she had to be dreaming. A briefcase stuffed with cash only existed in dreams or the movies. Not in real life.
Daniele Pellegrini didn’t exist in real life either. He was a billionaire from an old and noble family. His life couldn’t be more different from her reality than if he’d been beamed in from the moon.
‘If you agree to marry me, this money, all one million dollars of it, will be handed to the B
lue Train Aid Agency tomorrow morning. And this is only the start.’
‘The start?’ she asked faintly, looking back at all that lovely money.
‘If you sit back down I will explain everything.’
Eva inched her way back to her seat, resting her bottom carefully while she kept her gaze fixed on Daniele so he couldn’t pull another rabbit out of a hat that wasn’t even there.
He downed his Scotch, poured another three fingers into the glass and pushed it to her.
She didn’t hesitate, tipping the amber liquid down her throat in one swallow, not caring that his lips had pressed against the same surface just moments before. It was the smoothest Scotch she’d ever tasted and she had no doubt the bottle cost more than her weekly salary.
‘Agree to marry me and this money goes directly to your charity. On the day of our marriage I will transfer another two million into their account and a further three million dollars for every year of our marriage. I will give you a personal allowance of a quarter of a million dollars a month to spend on whatever you wish—you can donate the whole lot for all I care, it won’t matter as I will also give you an unlimited credit card to spend on travel and clothing and whatever else you require for the duration of our marriage.’
Eva’s head spun. Had she slipped into some kind of vortex that distorted reality?
‘Can I have some more of that Scotch?’ she mumbled.
He took a drink himself then passed the glass back.
Drinking it didn’t make his words any more comprehensible.
She shook her head and took a breath. ‘You want to pay me to be your wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why would you want to marry me?’
‘It’s nothing to do with want. It’s to do with need. I need a wife.’
‘You’ve already said that, but why would you choose me for the role when there are hundreds of women out there who would take the job without having to be bribed into it? Why marry someone who doesn’t even like you?’ There was no point in pretending. She didn’t like him and he damn well knew it.
‘That is the exact reason why I want you to take the role.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
A tight smile played on his lips. ‘I don’t want to marry someone who’s going to fall in love with me.’
CHAPTER THREE
HE WAS MAD. He had to be. No sane person could make such a suggestion.
And then she looked into those green-brown eyes and thought them the eyes of a man who was perfectly sane and knew exactly what he was doing. Far from reassuring her, the expression in them frightened her, and Eva was not a woman who scared easily. She’d learned to hide it. She hid it now.
‘There’s no chance of that,’ she said, hoping Daniele couldn’t hear the beats of her hammering heart in her words.
He shrugged and took the glass back, pouring himself another hefty measure. ‘Good. I don’t want a wife with romantic dreams. I’m not marrying for love. I’m marrying to inherit my family estate.’ He must have read her blank expression for he added, ‘My brother died without children. I’m the spare son. I can only inherit if I’m married.’
‘What do you need the estate for? You’re worth a fortune as you are.’
‘To keep it in the family.’ He swirled his Scotch in his glass before drinking it. ‘Duty has finally come calling for me.’
‘You need a wife to inherit?’
‘Sí. The estate is...’ She could see him struggle to find the correct English. ‘It is bound by an old trust that states only a married heir can inherit.’
‘Is that legal?’
He nodded grimly. ‘To unravel the trust and make it fit for the modern age will take years. I don’t have years. I need to act now.’
‘Then find someone else.’
‘I don’t want anyone else. Everyone else is too needy. You’re tough.’
‘You don’t even know me,’ she protested darkly. ‘Twenty minutes ago you thought I was English.’
If she was tough it was because she’d had to be. To turn her back on her family when it had made her heart bleed, then to lose Johann and find that same heart torn apart had put a shell around her. It had been an organic process, not something she had consciously built, a shell she’d only become aware of four years ago, back when she’d been living and working in The Hague and a drunk colleague had accused her of being an unfeeling, ball-breaking bitch. She’d returned home to the small apartment she’d once shared with Johann and looked in the mirror and realised there was truth in what her colleague had said. Not the part about being a ball-breaking bitch. She wasn’t those things, she knew that. But unfeeling...? Yes. That, she had been forced to accept when she’d looked in that mirror and realised she no longer felt anything at all. She was empty inside.
‘I know all I need to know, tesoro,’ he countered. ‘I don’t need to know anything else. I have no interest in your past. I don’t want to exchange pillow talk and hear about your dreams. This will be a partnership, not a romance. I want someone practical and cool under pressure.’
And he thought that person was her?
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Had she become so cold that someone could think she would be agreeable to such an emotionless proposition?
Once she had been warm. She had felt the sun in her heart as well as on her skin.
And what did his proposal say about him? What had made him this way? she wondered. How could someone be so cynical about marriage?
‘Marriage is not a game,’ she said slowly, thinking hard, her eyes continually drawn between the wads of cash and Daniele’s smouldering gaze. That money would make an incredible difference at the camp. The Blue Train Aid Agency was fully dependent on donations and there never seemed to be enough of it to go around all its different projects.
Those eyes...
She pulled her gaze away and stared into the distance at the sea, unable to believe she was even entertaining this ludicrous proposal.
‘I’m not playing games,’ he said, his words soaking through her. ‘Marry me and we all win. Your charity gets a guaranteed income to spend as it sees fit, you get unlimited funds to spend on yourself, my family get the knowledge the family estate is secure for another generation and I get my inheritance. You’re a practical person, Eva. You know what I’m suggesting makes excellent sense.’
She hadn’t always been a practical person. She’d been a dreamer once. She’d had so many hopes but they’d all been flattened into the dust.
‘I don’t know...’ She tightened her ponytail. ‘You say it isn’t a game but then you say everyone’s going to be a winner out of it. Marriage is a commitment by two people who love each other, not two people who don’t even like each other.’
He raised his hefty shoulders and leaned forward. ‘My family’s ancestry goes back as far as there are written records. The most successful marriages were arranged for practical reasons; to build alliances, not for love. I’ve never wished to commit my life to one particular person but I am prepared to commit myself to you. It won’t be a marriage built on love and romance, but I can promise you a marriage built on respect.’
‘How can you respect me if you’re trying to buy me?’
‘I won’t be buying you, tesoro. Consider the cash an inducement.’
‘I won’t be your property.’ She’d never be someone’s property again. She’d run away from her family the moment she’d turned eighteen, the day she’d stopped belonging to her parents, no longer subject to their stringently enforced rules. She flexed her left hand and felt the phantom ache in the tendons of her fingers. The fingers had long since healed but the ache in them remained, a ghost of the past, a reminder of everything she had run from.
‘If I wanted a woman I could own, I wouldn’t choose you.’
Before she could think of a response to this, the butler came in to clear away their soup. Eva was surprised to find her bowl empty. She couldn’t remember eating it.
She wa
ited until their next course was brought in, a beef Wellington that was sliced and plated before them, before asking her next question.
‘If I say yes, what’s to stop me taking the cash you give me and running off with it?’
‘You won’t receive any money for yourself until we’re legally married. Under Italian law, you won’t be allowed to divorce me for three years but that wouldn’t stop you leaving me. I have to trust that you wouldn’t leave without discussing it with me first.’
He would have to trust her. But the question, she supposed, was whether she could trust him.
The beef Wellington really was superb. Having never eaten it before, Eva had always assumed it consisted of an old boot baked to within an inch of its life. Instead she cut into the pinkest beef wrapped in a mushroom pâté, parsley pancakes and delicate layers of puff pastry.
‘If you don’t want a traditional marriage, what kind of marriage do you have in mind for us?’ she asked after she’d taken her second mouth-watering bite. She couldn’t entertain a traditional marriage either, not with Daniele or anyone. But a marriage of convenience where pots of cash were given to the charity she held so close to her heart...that, she found to her surprise, she could entertain.
Daniele Pellegrini was an exceptionally handsome man. He had an innate sex appeal that poor Johann would have given both his skinny arms for. But that was all on the surface. Her body might respond to him but her heart would be safe. She would be safe. Daniele didn’t want romance or pillow talk, the things that drew a couple together and forged intimacy and left a person vulnerable to heartbreak.
She would never put herself in a vulnerable position again. She couldn’t. Her heart had been fractured so many times that the next blow to it could be permanent.
‘The outside world will see us as a couple,’ he replied. A slight breeze had lifted a lock of his thick dark hair on the top of his head so it stuck up and swayed. ‘We will live together. We will visit family and friends as a couple and entertain as a couple.’
‘We will be each other’s primary escorts?’
He nodded. ‘That’s an excellent way of putting it. And one day we may be parents...’
Buying His Bride of Convenience Page 3