‘Get used to it.’
He fixed her with a stare. ‘I do not expect you take pleasure in my company but when we are in the company of others I expect you to treat me with respect and adoration. That will begin immediately.’
‘Adoration?’ she snorted, taking the seat opposite him and crossing her legs.
‘Have you read through the contract? It details it quite clearly.’
She met his eyes.
Colour flooded her cheeks and he knew that she knew what he had seen.
She snapped her gaze away and cleared her throat. ‘As long as you only expect adoration in public. In private you can sing for it.’
‘I wouldn’t expect anything else,’ he replied sardonically. ‘Do you have any questions about the contract?’
‘The sleeping arrangements...’
‘Are non-negotiable,’ he supplied before she could go any further. ‘For as long as our marriage lasts, it will be a traditional marriage, one in which we make a child.’
‘We can use insemination.’ Elena knew she sounded desperate but she didn’t care. How could she sleep with him? He might be a walking pack of gorgeous testosterone but she hated him.
He laughed. For once it sounded genuine. ‘No. We will make a baby in the traditional way. The world will believe our marriage is for real. Given the history between our families, our marriage will generate media scrutiny like nothing you will have ever experienced. Our staff will be besieged and offered money which would tempt even the saintliest person. We sleep together and that’s the end of the matter.’
Elena squeezed her eyes closed and wished herself away from this nightmare she had fallen into.
The contract had been as concise as Gabriele had promised but seeing the terms written so bluntly made her wish there had been some superfluous words to take the edge off.
Divorce proceedings shall be initiated by Party 2, Elena Ricci, only when conception has been achieved and subject to that Party 1, Gabriele Mantegna, shall initiate divorce proceedings without any encumbrances.
There were even long clauses regarding the custody of their mythical child, clauses that, while splitting custody evenly, gave Gabriele all rights with regards to education and ‘moral upbringing’ whatever that meant. He’d included her demands but had also stipulated his stance that her family must not be allowed any contact with their child or else all custody rights would be revoked and he would become sole guardian.
That he would use an innocent child as a pawn in his game of vengeance made her blood fire with fury. What kind of despicable monster would do such a thing?
Yet a different kind of heat suffused her as she imagined sharing a bed with him.
She’d never shared a bed with anyone in her life. To think of sharing one with a man as overtly masculine as Gabriele, of being burrowed under the same sheets...
‘The evidence against my father. I want it destroyed now, not when we divorce.’
He shook his head. ‘If I destroy it now there will be nothing to stop you from backing out of our deal.’
‘Isn’t my word good enough?’
‘You’re a Ricci. Your word is as useful as a chocolate teapot.’
A choked laugh razed her throat and she coughed.
One day she would learn not to laugh at inappropriate moments. Unfortunately it wasn’t something she had any control over and completely involuntary.
Finally daring to look at him, she found his quizzical gaze upon her.
‘You’re amused?’ he asked with an arched eyebrow.
‘I have a warped funny bone.’
A glimmer of light flashed in his eyes but it vanished as quickly as it came.
‘Do you have any other issues with the contract?’ he said.
‘Other than the entire document itself?’
‘Anything specific,’ he clarified drily.
‘I have issues with everything but no, not anything specific.’
‘Excellent. Then let’s get it signed and we can start our new life together.’
* * *
The helicopter took them straight to the airport where Gabriele’s flight crew were waiting for them in his private jet. Before long they were in the air and on their way to New York.
‘Why New York?’ she asked. She’d assumed they would go straight to his home in Italy, what with them both being Italian.
‘Because we can marry in a couple of days there.’
‘That soon?’
‘We’ll get the paperwork sorted on Monday and marry on Tuesday.’
She swallowed.
Everything was moving so quickly it felt as if she’d filled up on rocket fuel.
‘After we’ve married we’ll go to Florence. I’m launching a new car at my headquarters there in a month’s time so I need to be on site.’
‘I thought Mantegna Cars were based in the US?’ Despite herself, her curiosity was piqued. As a child she’d loved it when her father had taken her out for a drive in one of his new Mantegna Cars. They’d always been so glamorous and powerful, ahead of their time in the gadget department. She’d always been proud that so many of those gadgets had come from her father’s factories.
‘Florence is Mantegna Car’s birthplace and it’s always been our European headquarters.’ There was a hardness in his face. ‘My parents loved their time in America but with retirement around the corner, they wanted to go home. As you know, my father died before he could make it back. Being incarcerated solidified the decision for me. Florence is my main home now, and it’s back to being the headquarters of our entire company.’
A gleam came into his eyes, dispelling the hardness. ‘Just think, come the launch, you might have the seed of life growing inside you.’
‘But the nightmare won’t be over, will it?’ She crossed her legs as an unexpected ripple of heat pulsed low in her. ‘A child will tie me to you for the rest of my life.’
‘As long as you keep to the contractual obligations you signed, there will be minimal contact between us when we part.’
‘Zero contact would be preferable.’
Ignoring his low, mocking laughter, Elena clamped her lips together and turned her head to look out of the window, staring at the pillowy clouds beneath them.
To her chagrin, when she next looked at him, Gabriele had fallen asleep.
She was surprised his conscience allowed him to sleep.
But then, she supposed one must have a conscience in the first place, which he absolutely did not.
She ran her hand over her face then tilted her chair back and curled into it, breathing deeply to quell the rising nausea in her belly.
She could go and have a sleep in the bedroom as Gabriele had offered when they’d boarded but she wasn’t yet prepared to get under the covers of any bed belonging to him. Not voluntarily. Not until she had to.
With the cabin crew undertaking their duties quietly, bringing her a fresh supply of coffee and a plate of delicious sandwiches, the most her ragged stomach could handle, she couldn’t stop her gaze flitting to the sleeping form opposite her.
It was the first time she’d really had the chance to study him unobserved.
They said the devil took beguiling forms to trap people. In Gabriele’s case this was true. He really was handsome. Sinfully handsome.
Sleeping, arms crossed loosely over his chest, his head tilted to the right, his dark hair touching his shoulder, his top lip covering the bottom, he looked as if he should be in a Caravaggio picture; a chiselled, handsome man emerging from an impenetrable darkness that not only surrounded him but lived within him.
* * *
Gabriele stepped into the penthouse apartment he’d bought a year ago on his release from prison. Spacious—for Manhattan proportions—and full of light, it was the pe
rfect antidote to the cramped cell he’d slept in for two years. He considered himself lucky that Milo and his legal team had managed to get him into the minimum security camp and that his roommate had been an elderly ‘white collar’ criminal. Like himself.
But it had still been a prison. He’d still been locked away, his liberty taken from him.
Elena followed him inside, through the galley and into the living room, her head turning in all directions. She stood at the walled window that overlooked Central Park. ‘This must have cost you a fortune.’
‘It did.’ Manhattan prices were extortionate by anyone’s standards. Of all his properties this had cost him the most. He would pay it tenfold. New York had an energy to it he’d never found anywhere else, and here he was only an hour from his mother.
‘Come, I’ll show you around.’
With obvious reluctance, she stepped away from the window and followed him back into the galley.
‘Kitchen,’ he said, throwing open the door on the other side of the elevator. ‘My housekeepers have the weekend off so you’ll be able to settle in with privacy, but this is normally Michael and Lisa’s domain. That room through there is their staff room.’
‘You cook?’ she asked.
‘Badly. You?’
‘Badly.’
Their eyes met and for a moment he was certain her lips were trying to smile.
‘I’ve made reservations at Ramones for us, so we won’t starve in their absence.’
‘We’re eating out tonight?’
‘The sooner we’re seen in public, the better. Ramones is the perfect place—there’s always a paparazzo camped there.’
‘I should call my father.’
‘Call him tomorrow.’
‘I don’t want him to see the pictures before I’ve told him about...us.’
‘You decided to take a last-minute trip to New York. We bumped into each other and decided to go for a meal to bury the hatchet,’ he said, reminding her of the agreed script they had come to after signing the contract. ‘You can tell him this tomorrow.’
‘I can’t believe I’m going to lie to my own father.’
‘This has to be believable, Elena. Any hint that what we have isn’t real then the deal is off and I take the evidence to the FBI.’
He led her out of the kitchen and back into the galley, ignoring the laser burn of her glare in his back.
‘Guest room, guest room, guest room...our room.’ He stepped inside and opened a door. ‘En suite.’ He opened another. ‘My dressing room.’ And another. ‘Your dressing room.’
Elena peered inside and nodded, but didn’t say anything.
‘I’m going to take a shower. All the guest rooms have their own en suites if you want to freshen up. I’m afraid when I bought this property it wasn’t with a future wife in mind or I would have had adjoining en suites put in. Can you be ready to leave in a couple of hours?’
She nodded curtly.
‘Good. If you need anything, let me know.’
Her green eyes met his. ‘The only thing I need is for you to admit you were wrong about me and wrong about my father and let me go.’
‘You were right—you do have a warped sense of humour.’
* * *
Elena got ready in the guest room the furthest from the master suite, trying not to imagine that Gabriele was, at that very moment, naked in the shower.
Surely, any minute now, she would awake on her Oslo office sofa and find the past couple of days had been nothing but a bad dream.
She’d been tied up and threatened with kidnapping and, worse, rescued by the man who hated her entire family. She’d been forced to sign a contract for a marriage that would save her father from prison but would result in a baby, and been installed in a luxury Manhattan apartment. All in twenty-four hours.
Who knew what tomorrow would bring? Maybe she would wake up on the moon.
She was ready before Gabriele and took the opportunity to explore his apartment further.
Having grown up with wealth, she wasn’t fazed by its opulence but had to admit he had exquisite taste. The high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows cried out for majestic furniture to match and he had stepped up to the mark. White walls, thick cream carpets her toes sank into and plush soft brown leather sofas that managed to be exquisite and comfortable all at the same time...it was like being in a homely art gallery with some very surreal paintings.
One particular framed painting caught her eye, a portrait of a man whose features were, upon closer inspection, painted entirely with fruits and vegetables; a pear for a nose, mange tout for the upper eyelids...and was that a husk of corn used as an ear...?
‘Do you like it?’
So absorbed had she been in the painting that she hadn’t heard Gabriele enter the room.
‘It’s brilliant. Is it a Giuseppe Arcimboldo?’
‘You recognise it?’ There was an approving tone in his voice.
She nodded. ‘I love his work. It’s mad and witty and so clever. I could look at it for hours.’
‘This is only a reproduction but my home in Florence has a couple of his original pieces.’
A tiny shiver traced up her spine at the mention of Florence. Italy was her home. It was where Gabriele was from. Their respective families’ lives had been turned into a soap opera there and she dreaded the reception that news of their marriage would bring in their home country.
‘Are you going to change?’ he asked. ‘We need to leave soon.’
‘I have changed.’
‘You’re not intending to go out like that?’ The approval had gone.
Turning her gaze from the painting, she looked at him and saw disbelief on his face.
‘What’s wrong with it?’ Having only packed for the weekend, she’d opted for the clothes she’d intended to travel back to Europe in: a navy-blue trouser suit with a high-necked white blouse and a pair of flat black shoes.
‘You look like you’re going to a business meeting. Have you anything else to wear? Anything remotely feminine?’
Bristling, she scowled. ‘This is what I feel comfortable in. All my clothes are the same—trouser suits.’
‘And when you’re not working?’
She shrugged. ‘Clothes don’t interest me.’
‘They do now,’ he stated grimly. ‘Stand still a minute.’
Burning under the weight of his scrutiny, she nonetheless held her head high, wondering what the big deal was. Clothes were clothes. They were worn to protect you from the elements and, in a business environment, to convey a professional approach. Everything else was superfluous.
‘Untuck your blouse,’ he ordered.
She did as he said, wondering what he was thinking.
‘Now tie it into a knot around your waist.’
At her puzzled look, he sighed and reached for the base of her blouse, undoing the bottom two buttons.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded, stepping back, unnerved.
‘Unsmartening you. Now tie it into a knot and undo the top three buttons—unless you want me to do it for you?’
‘Touch me again and I’ll punch you in the nose.’
He raised his eyebrows but his tone remained civil. ‘We’re going out in public in a few minutes. You have to be comfortable with my touch if we’re going to convince your father and the world that we’ve fallen madly in love.’
‘I doubt a decade of marriage would make me comfortable with a man who wants to destroy my family.’ And he absolutely could destroy them. It was the only reason she stood there taking this humiliation.
‘Fake it.’
As he was looming so threateningly over her, she quickly did as he bid. Feeling like a complete fool, she unbuttoned her blouse. ‘Anything else you want me t
o do? Get a face transplant?’
‘You could do with a damn good haircut but seeing as we don’t have time for that either tie it into a knot or wear it down. Ponytails are for schoolgirls. And tug your trousers down so they sit on your hips and not around your belly button.’
When she was done and had retied her hair into his requested knot, she put her hands on her hips. ‘Am I presentable now?’
‘Roll your trousers up a couple of inches.’
If she glared at him any more there was a good chance the wind would change direction and her face would stay that way.
Crouching down, she rolled her trousers up so they hung above her ankles.
‘Have you any other shoes?’ he asked when she was upright again.
‘I have a pair of running shoes.’
He pulled a face. ‘Then you will have to do as you are but first thing in the morning, we’re going clothes shopping.’
‘You do not get to choose my wardrobe.’
‘I wouldn’t think it necessary if you didn’t have such dire taste. You dress like a straitjacketed man.’
‘I do not.’
‘You don’t dress like a woman. Personally I couldn’t care less what you wear,’ he continued, speaking over her indignant yelp of protest, ‘but the fact is you’re supposed to be a woman in love. Women in love take pride in their appearance and the clothes they wear.’
‘Do they?’
‘They do.’ A look of suspicion crossed his features. When he next spoke, it was with a hint of hesitation. ‘You have been in a relationship before?’
‘I’m twenty-five,’ she scoffed, evading the question, damned if she was going to admit she hadn’t even been on a date before. It was none of his business.
Even if she had been so inclined, there hadn’t been any chance of boyfriends growing up, what with a solo education and three ready-made chaperones in the form of her brothers. By the time she was old enough to ditch the chaperones, she’d sworn off men for life. She knew everything there was to know about them and how they and their friends treated the women in their lives and spoke behind their backs. They were pigs. All men were.
Wedded, Bedded, Betrayed Page 5