Cipriani's Innocent Captive

by Cathy Williams

  ‘You don’t mean that.’

  ‘Yes. I do.’

  Her voice was cold and composed but she was a mess inside. She badly wanted her body to do what her brain was urgently telling it to do, but like a runaway train it was veering out of control, responding to him with frightening ferocity. More than anything in the world, she wanted to creep into his arms, rest her head against his chest and pretend that her life wasn’t cracking up underneath her; she hated herself for that weakness and hated him for showing up and exposing her to it.

  She glanced anxiously over her shoulder. In a minute, she knew her father would probably appear behind her, curious as to who had rung the doorbell. Lucas followed her gaze and knew exactly what she was thinking. He was here and he was going to say what he had come to say and, if forcing his way in and flagrantly taking advantage of the fact that she wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it because it would create a scene in front of her parents was what it took, then so be it.

  What was the point of an opportunity presenting itself if you didn’t take advantage of it?

  So he did just that. Hand flat against the door, he stepped forward and pushed it open and, caught unawares, Katy fell back with a look that was part surprise, part horror and part incandescent rage.

  ‘I need to talk to you, Katy. I need you to listen to me.’

  ‘And you think that gives you the right to barge into my house?’

  ‘If it’s the only way of getting you to listen to me...’

  ‘I told you, I’m not interested in anything you have to say, and if you think that you can sweet talk your way back into my bed then you can forget it!’ Her voice was a low, angry hiss and her colour was high.

  His body was so familiar to her that she was responding to him like an engine that had been turned on and was idling, ready to accelerate.

  From behind, Katy heard her mother calling out to her and she furiously stepped aside as Lucas entered the house, her sanctuary, with his blasted red roses, on a mission to wreck her life all over again. No way was she going to allow her parents to think that a bunch of flowers meant anything, and she took them from him and unceremoniously dumped them in an umbrella stand that was empty of umbrellas.

  ‘I should have bought you the sports car,’ Lucas murmured and Katy glared at him. ‘That wouldn’t have fitted into an umbrella stand.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have dared.’

  ‘When it comes to getting what I want, there’s nothing I won’t do.’

  Katy didn’t have the opportunity to rebut that contentious statement because her mother appeared, and then shortly after her father, and there they stood in the doorway of the kitchen, mouths round with surprise, eyes like saucers and brains conjuring up heaven only knew what. Katy shuddered to think.

  And, if she had anticipated Lucas being on the back foot, the wretched man managed, in the space of forty-five minutes, to achieve the impossible.

  After everything she had told her parents—after she had filled them in on her hopeless situation, told them that she was in love with a man who could never return her love, a man whose only loyal companion would ever be his work—she seethed and fumed from the sidelines as her parents were won over by a display of charm worthy of an acting award.

  Why had Lucas come? Shouldn’t he have been in China working on the deal that had ended up changing her life more than it had changed his?

  He didn’t love her and, by a process of common sense and elimination, she worked out the only thing that could possibly have brought him to her parents’ house would be an offer to continue their fling. Lucas was motivated by sex, so sex had to be the reason he was here.

  The more Katy thought about that, the angrier she became, and by the time her parents began making noises about going out for supper so that she and Lucas could talk she was fit to explode.

  ‘How dare you?’ That was the first thing she said as soon as they were on their own in the comfortable sitting room, with its worn flowered sofas, framed family photos on the mantelpiece and low coffee table groaning under the weight of the magazines her mother was addicted to. ‘How dare you waltz into my life here and try and take over? Do you think for a moment that if you manage to get to my parents that you’ll get to me as well?’

  She was standing on the opposite side of the room to him, her arms folded, the blood running hot in her veins as she tried her hardest not to be moved by the dark, sinful beauty that could get to her every time.

  It infuriated her that he could just stand there, watching her with eyes that cloaked his thoughts, leaning indolently against the wall and not saying anything, which had the effect of propelling her into hysterical, attacking speech. She was being precisely the sort of person she didn’t want to be. If she wasn’t careful, she would start throwing things in a minute, and she definitely wasn’t going to sink to that level.

  Lucas watched her and genuinely wasn’t sure how to proceed. Where did you start when it came to talking about feelings? He didn’t know because he’d never been there before. But she was furious, and he didn’t blame her, and standing in silence wasn’t going to progress anything.

  ‘I really like your parents,’ Lucas said, a propos of nothing, and she glared at him as though he had taken leave of his senses.

  ‘You’ve wasted your time,’ she told him flatly. ‘I’m not interested in having another fling with you, Lucas. I don’t care whether my parents fell in love with you. I want you to leave and I don’t want to see you ever again. I just want to be left in peace to get on with my life.’

  ‘How can you get on with your life when you’re in love with me?’

  Mortification and anger coursed through her, because just like that he had cut her down at the knees. He had taken her confession and used it against her.

  ‘How can I get on with my life when I’m in love with you?’ Lucas realised that he was perspiring. Sealing multi-million-pound deals were a walk in the park compared to this.

  Thrown into instant confusion, Katy gaped, unwilling to believe him. If he’d loved her, he wouldn’t have let her go, she thought painfully. He would have tried to stop her. He wouldn’t have offered her money to compensate for all the other things he couldn’t provide.

  Lucas noted the rampant disbelief on her face, and again he couldn’t blame her.

  ‘You don’t believe me and I understand that.’ His voice was unsteady and he raked his fingers through his hair in an unusually clumsy gesture. ‘I’d made it clear that I could never be interested in having the sort of relationship I knew you wanted. You were so...so different that I couldn’t get my head around ever falling for you. I’ll be honest—I could never get my head around falling for anyone. I’d always equated love with vulnerability, and vulnerability with being hurt.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ Katy cried jerkily. ‘Don’t you think I don’t know all that?’ But the uncertainty on his face was throwing her off-balance, and hope was unfurling and blossoming fast, yanking the ground from under her feet and setting up a drumbeat inside her that was stronger than all the caution she was desperate to impose on herself.

  ‘What you don’t know is that you came along and everything changed for me. You made me feel...different. When I was around you, life was in Technicolor. I put it down to the incredible sex. I put it down to the fact that I was in a state of suspended animation, far from the daily demands of my office. I never put it down to the truth, which was that I was falling for you. I was blind, but then I’d never expected to fall in love. Not with you, not with any woman.’

  ‘You mean it? Please don’t say anything you don’t mean. I couldn’t bear it.’ Was this some ploy to try and talk her into bed? He was right, the sex had been incredible. Was he working up to an encore by flattering her? But, when she looked at him, the discomfort on his face was palpable and it made her breathing shallow and laborious.

  ‘You confused me. There were times when I felt disorientated, as though the world had suddenly been turn
ed upside down, and when that happened I just told myself that it was because you were a novelty, nothing like what I was used to. But I behaved differently when I was around you. You made me say things I’ve never said to anyone else and I felt comfortable doing it.’

  ‘But you didn’t try and stop me,’ Katy whispered. ‘I told you how I felt and you...you let me walk away. No, worse than that, you offered me money.’

  ‘Please don’t remind me,’ Lucas said quietly. Somehow, he had closed the gap between them, but he was still hesitant to reach out and touch her even though he badly wanted to do just that.

  ‘You have to understand that money is the currency I’m familiar with, not love. My father was derailed after my mother’s death. I grew up watching him get carried along on emotional riptides that stripped him of his ability to function, and that taught me about the importance of self-control and the need to focus on things that were constant. Relationships, in my head, were associated with frightening inconsistency and I wanted no part of that. The only relationship I would ever consider would be one that didn’t impact on the quality of my life. A relationship with a woman who wanted the same sort of thing that I did.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Not an emotional, outspoken and utterly adorable firebrand like you.’

  Katy liked all of those descriptions. She liked the expression on his face even more, and just like that her caution faded away and her heart leapt and danced and made her want to grin stupidly at him.

  ‘Keep talking,’ she whispered, and he raised his eyebrows and smiled at her.

  ‘So here I am,’ Lucas said simply. ‘I’d worked like the devil for a deal that, in the end, won’t mean anything if you aren’t by my side. I think that was when I was forced to accept that the only thing that mattered to me was you. I should have guessed when I realised how protective you made me feel and how possessive. You make me the best person I could be, and that means someone who can be hurt, who has feelings, who’s willing to wear his heart on his sleeve.’ He pulled her towards him and Katy sighed as she was enveloped in a hug that was so fierce that she could feel the beating of his heart. He curled his fingers into her hair and tilted her face to deliver a gentle kiss on her lips.

  ‘I never expected to fall in love with you either,’ she admitted softly. ‘I was so certain that I knew the sort of guy I should end up with, and it wasn’t a guy like you. But it’s like you fill in the missing pieces of me and make me complete. It’s weird, but when I met Duncan I was looking for love, looking for that something else, but I wasn’t looking for anything at all when I met you—yet love found me.’

  ‘I know what you mean. I was comfortable wanting you because I understood the dynamics of desire. Strangely, loving you has made me understand how my father ended up becoming entangled in a series of inappropriate relationships. He was deeply in love with my mother and he wanted to replicate that. Before I met you, I just didn’t get it, but then I never understood how powerful love could be and how it can turn a black-and-white life into something filled with colour and light.’

  ‘And when I returned home,’ Katy admitted, ‘And I saw the interaction between my parents, I knew that I could never settle for anything less than what they have. I was so upset when you showed up because I thought you’d come to try and persuade me into carrying on with what we had. Maybe because of the deal, or maybe because you still fancied me, even though you didn’t love me.’

  ‘Now you know the real reason I turned up with those flowers that you dumped out of sight—you want the fairy-tale romance and I want to be the lucky person who gives it to you. Will you do me the honour of marrying me, my darling? For real and for ever?’

  ‘Just try and stop me...’

  EPILOGUE

  KATY PAUSED AND looked at Lucas, who was standing staring out to the sea, half-naked because he enjoyed swimming at night, something he had yet to convince her to try.

  There was a full moon and the light threw his magnificent body into shadow. To think that a little over a year ago she had come aboard this very yacht, kicking and screaming and accusing him of kidnapping her.

  She smiled because that felt like a lifetime ago and so much had happened since then. The engagement that wasn’t an engagement had turned into the real thing and they had been married, not once, but twice. There was a lavish affair, held a week after the actual wedding, where reporters had jostled for prime position and celebrities had emerged from limos dressed to kill for the event of the century. But first had come something altogether smaller, in her home village, where they had married at a ceremony officiated by her father at the picturesque local church. The reception there had been warm, small and cosy.

  Lavish or cosy, Katy just knew that she was the happiest person in the world.

  They had had their honeymoon in Italy, where they had stayed with Lucas’s father for a few days. Katy knew that she would be seeing a great deal more of Marco Cipriani, because he had got along with her parents like a house on fire, and plans were already afoot for him to discover the joys of the northern countryside at its finest at Christmas.

  And she knew that during the festive season there would certainly be reason for a great deal of celebration.

  ‘Lucas...’

  Lucas turned, and his heart stopped just for a second as he watched the woman who had so taken over his life that contemplating an existence without her was unthinkable. He smiled, held his hand out and watched her walk towards him, glorious in a casual, long dress which he knew he would be removing later.

  Katy walked straight into his open arms and then looked up at him with a smile. ‘I have something to say... We both have eight months to start thinking of some names...’

  ‘Names?’

  ‘For our baby, my darling. I’m pregnant.’ She tiptoed to plant a kiss on his very sexy mouth.

  ‘My darling, perfect wife.’ Lucas closed his eyes and allowed himself to be swept away in the moment before looking down at her with love. ‘I never thought that life could get any better, but I do believe it has...’

  * * * * *

  EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT

  Charlotte Adair has spent her life locked away – but once freed, she finds the one man she’s ever loved, billionaire Rafe Costa, is now blind, believes she betrayed him, and is bent on a vengeful seduction! Weeks after their scorching encounter he learns she’s pregnant—with twins! Rafe steals Charlotte away, but she is a far from biddable prisoner. She is irresistible, defiant—and Rafe must seduce her into compliance!

  Read on for a sneak preview of Maisey Yates’s book

  THE ITALIAN’S PREGNANT PRISONER

  The final part of her Once Upon a Seduction… trilogy

  Charlotte hadn’t touched a man since Rafe. She’d had no interest.

  She needed to find some interest. Because she was going to have a normal life. Whatever she did, it would be her choice. And that was the point.

  She didn’t know what answers she had expected to find here. Right now, the only clear answer seemed to be that her body, her heart, was still affected by him.

  He excused himself from the group, and suddenly, he was walking her way. And she froze. Like a deer caught in the headlights. Or rather, like a woman staring at Rafe Costa.

  She certainly wasn’t the only woman staring. He moved with fluid grace, and if she didn’t know better, she would never have known his sight was impaired at all.

  He was coming closer, and as he did her heart tripped over itself, her hands beginning to shake. She wished she could touch him.

  Oh, she wanted it more than anything. In that moment, she wanted it more than her next breath. To put her hands on Rafe Costa’s face one more time. To kiss those lips again. To place her hand over his chest and see if she could still make his heart race.

  It was easy to forget that her stepmother had told her how Rafe had left, taking an incentive offered by her father to end his tenure there earlier. It was easy to forget that and remember instead the way it had felt when he had kissed her. To
uched her. The way she had pleaded with him to take her virginity, to make her his in every way.

  Really, he had never wanted her. He had simply been toying with her.

  She should remember that. Her treacherous, traitorous body should remember that well. But it didn’t. Instead, it was fluttering. As if a host butterflies had been set loose inside her.

  Suddenly, he was there. So close that if she wanted to she could reach out and touch the edge of his sleeve with her fingertips.

  Could bump into him accidentally, just to make contact. He wouldn’t know it was her. He couldn’t.

  Suddenly, he turned. He was looking past her, his dark eyes unseeing, unfocused. But then, he reached out and unerringly grabbed hold of her wrist, dragging her toward his muscular body.

  “Charlotte.”

  Don’t miss

  THE ITALIAN’S PREGNANT PRISONER

  By Maisey Yates

  Available October 2017

  www.millsandboon.co.uk

  Copyright ©2017 Maisey Yates

  ISBN: 978-1-474-05283-2

  CIPRIANI’S INNOCENT CAPTIVE

  © 2017 Cathy Williams

  Published in Great Britain 2017

  by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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