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The Italian Billionaire’s Scandalous Marriage
Book Two in the Gemstone Billionaires series—available November 30.
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Three women. Three lives. And the lies that bind them. Why is everyone afraid of the truth?
When a lonely young American woman inherits a painting she discovers her whole life was a lie. Desperate for the truth, she goes in search of her true identity. The painting is her only clue. But everyone is determined to keep its secret past repressed, including Vitaliano Rossi, the Italian gold tycoon, unnaturally suspicious of her motives, who wants the painting vanquished. How can she discover who she really is and convince him that his love means more to her than gold?
CHAPTER ONE
‘You should never have responded to that email. I don’t understand you, Alexandra.’
‘Okay, so an email arrives out of the blue telling me the man who I thought was my father isn’t, only my real father is dead and he’s left me some valuable paintings—and I’m supposed to ignore that?’
‘Why do you insist on digging up the past? I’ve told you no good will come of it.’ Bitterness bled from her mother’s words.
Alex Spencer pressed her lips together, momentarily fixing her gaze on the desolate New York sky as snow began to fall, before continuing to shovel summer clothes into a well-travelled leopard print suitcase.
They would never agree. She wanted to say, ‘Mother, why are you making everything so difficult? Why won’t you talk to me about him? Why did you never tell me the truth?’ But she’d already asked and every time her mother evaded answering. Despite what her mother had done, for the sake of their tie of blood, which was the only thing left between them, she had to keep the peace.
‘Why do you have to go back to New Zealand? What do you hope to achieve that you didn’t six months ago? What point is there?’ Elizabeth Spencer pressed, fixing disapproving eyes on her errant daughter.
‘You know why I need to go back, Mother,’ Alex said quietly, careful to stop exasperation creeping into her voice.
Her mother’s blue eyes turned a chilly shade of grey. ‘After all Charles and I have done for you. He’s been more of a father to you than that man ever was.’ The accusation whistled through her pursed lips. Why would you want to do something so selfish?
Alex forced herself to count to ten. It was as if her mother thought keeping something so important a secret from her own daughter all these years was no big deal. As though replacing a real dad with a surrogate father gave her a new identity.
How could Alex possibly explain without severing their relationship for good that finally she knew why she never felt understood, never felt accepted, never felt she belonged. That she could never find peace until she understood her past.
‘I told you when I came back to New York for Christmas that I’d only be here for a few weeks. Please don’t let us spend our last moments arguing.’ Alex forced, an uncertain smile and didn’t know if it would melt her mother’s iciness. Why should she feel so guilty?
Her boutique travel business meant she was never home for long. She was like those dandelions; settling for a spell then blowing away. And she was no longer a child. Yet in this matter she longed for her mother’s approval.
‘Why can’t you let go of this thing you’ve got about your father?’ Her mother fired. ‘What more do you have to know, for heaven’s sake? He was an artist. He left you a painting. End of story.’
It wasn’t the end of the story. It was far from it. In fact of the six paintings her biological father had left her in his will, one, she knew with gut-churning clarity, would unlock buried secrets. Secrets her mother seemed resolute never to divulge
‘I want to know everything. I want to know about the man whose blood courses through my veins. I want to know why my hair is red. I want to know who I am and where I came from. Why can’t you understand that?’
‘There’s nothing more to say. I was young. Impulsive. He was a mistake.’
Alex’s stomach clenched. She was a mistake. Her mother didn’t have to say it but her tone made it clear. She was the child nobody wanted.
Tension held Alex’s body rigid as she continued packing. She had become skilled at masking her emotions: grief, loneliness, anger—especially anger. It flared inside her now but she held it in check. Up until six months ago Alex had known nothing of Ted Carr. If the email hadn’t come from a solicitor in New Zealand notifying her of the unusual inheritance she would still think Charles Spencer was her real father.
The news had been devastating. She felt betrayed. Everything she thought was real—gone, her whole identity—a lie. At least now she knew why she had never felt loved. She was a painful reminder of a past everyone wished had never happened and they were determined to forget.
Alex gazed at her mother imploringly, hoping she’d explain. All she had to do was tell her about her past and Alex wouldn’t be left to reassemble the shattered fragments of her identity alone. But Elizabeth turned her head briskly as though she couldn’t bear to be confronted by the truth after all these years. She stared down at the heavy snow flurries blanketing the exclusive streets of Manhattan, freezing her daughter in a fortress of silence. Why was her mother so determined to keep everything about her past a secret?
‘Alexandra, you’re twenty-six years old for goodness’ sake. Wandering the world like a gypsy, living in strange places as though you have no place to call home,’ her mother complained, spinning around to face her daughter. ‘You’re just like your father,’ she inadvertently let slip. She twisted her wedding ring between her fingers. ‘It’s just not normal. If you’re not careful you’ll wind up a lonely, old spinster.’
Alex flinched at her mother’s criticism. ‘I don’t need a man,’ she said solemnly, achingly aware of the hollowness of her tone. It was true. She didn’t need a man—at least not the kind of men her mother constantly threw at her.
Elizabeth shook her head and heaved a defeated sigh. She marched to the bed and perched, her back rigid, on the steel-grey silk throw and glared at her headstrong daughter. ‘Now there’s a girl who made a good marriage,’ she said tossing the December edition of Vanity Fair on the bed. “George’s First Christmas” trumpeted the headlines beneath the chocolate box perfect family photo. ‘When am I going to get some grandchildren?’ her mother pouted.
‘I’d rather be on my own than locked in a loveless marriage. I came close to that sentence—I won’t be trying it again. Besides, you’ve told me yourself, where relationships are concerned I’m just one big failure.’
‘Why do you keep dragging up the past?’
‘Sometimes it’s better not to run from the truth. Besides, let’s face it, I don’t have an A+ in relationships.’
‘What are you looking for, Alexandra?’ her mother asked tiredly. ‘What do you want?’
I’d like to know that my father didn’t abandon me. I need to know that I was loved. I want to feel good enough.’ Alex’s lips quivered and she forced a bright smile. ‘I’ll let you know when I find it.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper as her thoughts trailed away, then, sensing her mother’s impatient stare, plummeted back to the present. ‘What I do know is that I don’t want Jeremy Poot,
or any of the other men you keep thrusting at me. I don’t want to live the kind of life they’d want me to lead, trotting beside them like a show horse, a trophy to their careers.’
‘You’d want for nothing.’
Alex bit her lip. Her mother was wrong. She’d tried going out with the sort of men her mother approved of and it didn’t work. Devoid of passion, they cared more about their careers than their wives. And while her mother was prepared to settle for that, Alex never would. She wasn’t after money and status; she still hoped for love.
To Elizabeth Spencer New York and its exclusive set of people was the only world worth knowing. Nothing could be better. But to Alex, the very notion of conforming to her wishes and masquerading in twin set and pearls, confined in a career as a high-society wife with zero autonomy was abhorrent. If there wasn’t something better, then life wasn’t worth living. She may as well be a vegetable, a cauliflower, for all the good it would do her.
Her gaze drifted out the window—the sky and streets a complete whiteout, masking everything that held any semblance of beauty.
‘Oh, you’re still here.’ Charles Spencer’s powerful frame dressed immaculately in a fine wool tuxedo filled the doorway. ‘Come on Elizabeth,’ he growled. ‘We’ll be late.’
Her mother hesitated then smiled tightly and rose to her feet.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll make my own way to the airport.’ Alex said, hoping her voice sounded sufficiently bright and nonchalant. She hadn’t seriously thought she mattered enough to be taken to the airport. They would say their goodbyes here. Clearly she’d be doing everyone a favour. Out of sight, out of mind.
Ignoring Charles’ disapproving glare she packed her Canon SLR and two extra lenses in her orange Photo Hatchpack, placed it in the suitcase and jammed layers of clothing around it for protection. They could get on with their lives and she could make peace with hers.
‘You and that camera, and don’t get me started on that leopard print suitcase! Can’t you at least take something more respectable?’ Elizabeth Spencer rolled her eyes as she crossed the room and stood dutifully at her husband’s side.
‘I’m not like you, Mother. I’m used to being different.’
In fact I’m nothing like you at all, Alex thought, glancing at her. The blonde strands of her mother’s hair immaculately lacquered into a sleek bob, contrasted dramatically with her own unruly birds nest of jet-black curls. Her mother’s tiny, slender figure was elegantly yet conservatively clothed to match her husband’s. She was indeed the ultimate accessory to her husband’s political ambitions—kilometres apart from Alex’s generous curves hidden beneath layers of comfort. Her mother’s skin looked untouched by the forty-five years of her life. No lines. No worry. No stress. She was capable of leaving that behind her, even when she was upset—unlike Alex who was continually criticized for being too sensitive and worried about everything.
But while they were worlds apart—and always would be—Alex could understand the drive that had taken her mother from poverty to become one of New York's top socialites. The determined, obsessive streak in her mother’s nature was also in her own. Surely her mother realized that the more she kept the truth from Alex the more she needed to know.
‘This is your home. Why can’t you be happy here?’
Alex looked around the room, her gaze bouncing off the bleak white walls, then sweeping over the sterile glass and chrome designer pieces, and humorless white chintz drapes and bed linen. It had always felt like a museum to New York design than a home where she felt comfortable.
Perhaps as a child if, instead of telling her animals were too messy, she’d been allowed the luxury of the pet cat or dog she’d so desperately yearned for she might have felt less lonely. If, instead of being surrounded by kilometres of soulless concrete, she’d lived in a house where she could have had all sorts of pets, even chickens and horses, surrounded by space and nature, she would have felt more herself. Why was she so different? Why couldn’t she be happy?
She looked up, fighting the sinking sensation in her stomach at the disappointment in her mother’s eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m really sorry I can’t be the daughter you want. But what’s right for you is not right for me. I have to create my own life.’
Elizabeth shook her head, ‘I’ve tried so hard—and you can’t say Charles hasn’t been a good father. We’ve done everything we could for you.’
Alex’s shoulders stiffened as Charles scowled in moody silence. He had always made her feel especially unwanted, shutting her out in a wall of disinterest, as though she never existed. ‘Please don’t think I’m not grateful.’ Alex said quickly, feeling her mother’s pain. ‘It’s just that—’ She lifted her hands helplessly. It would be impossible to explain without sounding cruel. Despite everything her mother had done for her, every opportunity she had been given, how could she ever be happy knowing half of her DNA was a black void.
‘Mother, you made your choices,’ she said flatly. ‘Let me make mine.’
A brooding disapproval settled on her mother’s brow. ‘He gave you up,’ she shot bitterly. ‘Then he throws a painting at you and you’re all over him. What makes you think he wants you to know him now?’
Alex swallowed words of anger she knew would only harm, curling her fingers around the photo hidden in her pocket. The strange painting he had bequeathed to her held the key to the mystery. Alex was certain of it. Why else would he have left it to her?
‘Why didn’t he just disappear forever?’ she asked, careful to keep any hint of challenge from her voice.
‘That’s the point—he did disappear,’ Charles said tersely. The blood vessel in his forehead pulsed as he braced his arms across his chest. ‘Quite frankly the whole sordid affair is better dead and buried.’
Alex could well imagine how Ted Carr could have been frozen out of the marriage, left without a leg to balance on as far as custody was concerned. Or perhaps her father thought Alex was better off without him in her life. Undoubtedly Charles Spencer would have made that clear.
But Ted Carr hadn’t forgotten his daughter. And Alex couldn’t explain to her mother the strange affinity she now felt with him, even though he was no longer alive. The fact was that he’d left her something that was deeply meaningful to him. Hopefully by exhibiting the painting in New Zealand, someone somewhere might know what it meant.
‘If you do this thing, Alexandra—well, I may as well never have had a daughter.’
‘Please don’t—please don’t make me choose.’
‘Hurry up, Elizabeth. We’ve done this thing to death. Let her go and make her own mistakes. Maybe then, like most women, she’ll realize when she’s onto a good thing,’ Charles thundered.
‘Well, it’s clear you’ve made up your mind, Alexandra,’ her mother said turning to leave. ‘You always were a willful child. Perhaps one day you’ll realize your mother was right.’
As they bristled from the room without so much as a kiss or a hug Alex slumped on her bed and exhaled a bellyful of tension. Her temples pulsed, and her chest felt as though it had been twisted and squeezed like a tube of toothpaste. She flung her legs over the side of the bed and padded to the ensuite. She rattled through the drawer containing the three-dozen or so bottles of her most trusty essential oils and, selecting cinnamon, black pepper and lavender, dabbed several drops of each on a tissue. She inhaled the sweet empowering warmth of nature’s magic elixir and glanced at her reflection in the mirror.
Who am I? Why am I the way I am? Why can’t I settle? Staring back with dark rings under her eyes was a stranger, in a foreign body, in an environment that had never felt so alien. Were her dark chocolate eyes those of a man who broke her mother’s heart, or a rake, a seducer, an uncaring man unable to keep his commitment? All she knew was she wasn’t her anymore.
She had to return. She needed to know. Until then she could never be herself. Whoever she was. Maybe she would finally put her own ghosts to rest. Twin rivers of trepidation and the thrill of
excitement surged through her. In less than 24 hours she would be 14369 kilometres closer to discovering who she really was and with this new understanding maybe life would get better.
It would be an adventure if nothing else. She had cast the dice and would live with how they fell.
*
Alex pressed against a pillar beneath the cavernous ceiling of the Auckland art gallery, suppressing a yawn as she fought a wave of jet lag. Clutching the exhibition catalogue to her chest she swept her gaze over the crowd gathered for the opening of the dazzling retrospective exhibition of her father’s lifeworks. Only yesterday she had been in icy New York and now here she was in the heat of the New Zealand summer, surrounded by Veuve Clicquot, popping corks and intoxicating works of art. At the centre of the gallery stood Clive Gacos, the art dealer who had discovered the man she now knew was her father, exchanging air kisses and handshakes. Impeccably armoured in a steel-grey designer suit that complemented his trademark helmet of silver hair he looked in his element as he enthusiastically greeted a procession of collectors and socialites.
Alex crossed her arms protectively over her chest as women flashed him far too-enthusiastic smiles, and fluttered acrylic nails in shallow waves. She hated crowds at the best of times and tonight, surrounded by so much pretence, she felt doubly out of her comfort zone. Nausea crawled through her stomach as she wondered if Clive’s insistence she exhibit the painting had been one giant mistake. Would tonight flush out someone intimately connected to the powerful, yet haunting image? Someone who would help her unearth the past her mother and Charles wanted kept buried?
Her gaze drifted to the vast landscape her father had painted running the length of the far wall. “Lost Love”. Two words that tore her heart apart. Looking at the painting now, she wondered if the name she’d given it still fitted. For some inexplicable reason, unlike all her father’s other paintings, he’d left this one unnamed. Why did he leave so few clues to its meaning?
The Italian Billionaire’s Christmas Bride Page 17