by Annie West
THE ITALIAN’S MARRIAGE BARGAIN
* * *
Book 7, Hot Italian Nights
By
ANNIE WEST
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events, businesses, companies, institutions or locations is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2018 by Annie West
Cover Design by The Killion Group
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means whatsoever, including information storage and or retrieval systems, without the express written permission from the author, Annie West, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Licence notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away. If you would like to share this book with someone else, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
ABOUT ANNIE
PROLOGUE
* * *
Massimo Conti sipped his coffee and let his eyes rove the panorama from his hotel balcony. But the picture perfect view of Venice’s Grand Canal didn’t hold his attention. He had no interest in antique churches and crumbling palazzi. He was here for one reason only, and it wasn’t the scenery.
He breathed deep, inhaling the scents of fresh-ground coffee and recent rain on old stone.
For years he’d avoided the problem, buried it under the mountain of work required to save his family’s ailing business. Driven himself to recoup and transform what his father had almost lost, not just to restore the old man’s pride as he slowly recovered his health, but so Massimo’s younger siblings could have the future they deserved.
He’d told himself the problem didn’t matter anymore. That one day he’d deal with it. Tidy up that single loose end.
Except it was far more than a loose end, wasn’t it?
His jaw firmed as he remembered the party in Milan last week. Valentina’s warm, curvaceous body pressing against his side, her hand light on the sleeve of his jacket. The invitation clear in her soft voice and glowing eyes.
Massimo had wanted to accept her invitation. Had wanted to end the evening in her bed. He’d craved the mindless bliss and the comfort of a woman’s body cradling his, slim arms around him, silky skin warm to the touch. Craved it so badly even now he wondered how he’d found the strength to kiss her hand and walk away.
But he had.
Because Valentina wasn’t Gina.
The air squeezed from his lungs.
Even after all this time he couldn’t move on from her. Despite the pain Gina had caused. Despite her fecklessness and her shallow promises that in the cold light of reality meant nothing.
Heat licked his belly as fury and desperation rose. And sexual frustration. Seven years of it.
All because of one woman. One woman who’d promised him the world then spurned him. Who’d torn his heart from his body and kept it. His jaw clenched so hard it ached.
Gina made it impossible for him to find pleasure or solace with any other woman. She’d damned him to a purgatory of torment where he could neither move on nor forget. She drove him crazy.
Because, God help him, he still wanted her. Still needed her.
What sort of fool did that make him?
His gaze flicked to the tiny table where the maid had placed his breakfast tray. To the pages of the newspaper fluttering in the brisk breeze off the canal.
He didn’t need to turn to the headline page to recall the text. Lovers off screen too? And the picture that took up most of the page. Of Gina Moretti, the glamorous actress, in the arms of her co-star, Matteo De Laurentis. Ostensibly they were here in Venice shooting a film, but the photo showed them on the small balcony of a hotel bedroom, with no camera crew in sight. Their body language was that of lovers.
Massimo grimaced and slammed the tiny cup down. The coffee had turned sour.
Was she having an affair with De Laurentis, despite the fact he was married? The notion curdled Massimo’s belly. He had to swallow to keep down bile. The woman he’d known, or thought he’d known, would never consider it.
But then Massimo hadn’t known her as well as he’d thought, had he?
He braced himself on the balcony railing, fingers biting into stone.
The hell of it was that, even if it were true, even if she were having an affair with a married man, Massimo still wanted her.
He refused to dwell on what that said about his male pride. He’d spent seven years trying to eradicate her from his heart and it hadn’t worked.
He glanced at the newspaper. That article gave him the leverage to ensure he got what he’d come for.
Massimo’s mouth turned up in a grim smile.
It was time to get his wife back.
CHAPTER ONE
* * *
She was as gorgeous as ever.
The realisation shouldn’t have rocked him but it did. Massimo’s pulse slammed to a faltering stop then gathered itself into a sprint that played havoc with his breathing.
In his business Massimo knew exactly how well sympathetic lighting, and where necessary, airbrushing, could hide flaws and enhance appearance. Gina needed neither. She was seated in the full glare of light streaming through the dining room windows of her hotel. The purity of her profile, the soft magnolia of her skin, not to mention the tumble of bright coppery red curls, needed no enhancement.
With a professional eye Massimo took in her dark purple dress with its large poppy print. In the old days Gina had favoured more neutral shades. The pop of strong colour suited her.
He’d avoided, as much as possible, viewing her films or media reports about her since they separated. Seeing her in the flesh, as alluring and vibrant as ever, slammed a fist to his solar plexus.
For a second Massimo was thrown back to the first time he’d seen her. She’d been just twenty-two, eager and nervous about her part in a stage production. He, at twenty-five, with several years’ experience in set design, had strolled into the theatre with the cocky self-confidence of youth. Till she’d looked up at him and the world had eclipsed to just one bright, beautiful woman.
He’d looked back later and known he’d begun falling for her then.
They’d been married less than six months later.
Massimo paused in the entrance to the almost-empty room. Beauty is as beauty does. Had this particular beauty been playing with another woman’s husband? Ice carved a hole right through him, frosting his veins as he remembered that incriminating photo.
Or had the pair, as another article claimed, merely been rehearsing?
It didn’t matter. Soon he’d have Gina where he wanted her. She wouldn’t have the time, energy or inclination even to look at another man.
*
‘Gina.’
She froze, the hairs on her nape and bare arms prickling to attention. The peppermint tea she’d just sipped rose in her throat and she had to swallow hard to keep it down.
The lines of the script she
was reading blurred and she blinked, horrified to find that the prickling wasn’t confined to her flesh. It was at the back of her eyes too.
Because that voice was the voice of her past. The voice of her faded dreams.
He still had the power to affect her after all this time.
Which was why she’d refused to respond to the invitation she’d received yesterday, no, the command, that she meet him at his hotel.
Just knowing Massimo was in Venice too was enough of a shock. But they’d long passed the stage of having anything to discuss. Their relationship had been over so soon after it began.
Slowly she lifted her head. In the process she realised, to her horror, that her hotel’s dining room was empty but for them. Even the crew had gone. Filming had almost wrapped up and everyone was eager to get it finished, but she had a late call today.
She was alone with Massimo Conti.
Her husband.
A thrill of...no, not fear, but perhaps trepidation, skated down her spine.
He wanted something and she had a horrible premonition that didn’t bode well. She’d barely slept last night, thrown into a state of near-panic after receiving his message. Now, even without looking, she sensed trouble in the air.
Finally, when she could delay no longer, she met his eyes, more grey than green and as sharp as ever under slashing black brows. Instantly her wariness increased. Adrenalin overloaded her bloodstream and she was torn between wanting to scream at him to stop looming over her and wanting to run for her room.
One glance was all it took to realise he was as potently attractive as ever. More so, with an air of almost lazy authority and latent physical power in that tall, lean frame. His dark hair still threatened to flop over his forehead and the line of his mouth was so familiar something wrenched inside her at the sight of it.
How she’d missed him.
No! Not him! She’d missed the illusion of what she’d believed him to be. But when the going got tough the real Massimo Conti had been nothing but disappointment and cold, distant disapproval. As selfish in his own way as the father she’d never known, who’d taken what he wanted from her mother then disappeared when she got pregnant.
For a second Gina wondered again how different things might have been if she’d got pregnant. But their situation had been fraught enough without a baby.
She ignored the great lump in her throat and raised her eyebrows.
‘Massimo. Fancy seeing you here. I thought you were staying on the Grand Canal.’ Only the best for the head of the Conti fashion house.
When they’d met and married she hadn’t suspected he was the scion of one of Italy’s wealthiest families. It had come as a belated shock to discover he was one of the Contis who’d made a fortune manufacturing silks and fabric then clothes and now high-end fashion.
He inclined his head, his expression unreadable. ‘I am. But as you refused my invitation I decided to meet you here.’
‘It didn’t occur to you that I said no because I had no intention of meeting you, there or anywhere?’
Because she was old enough and cautious enough, now, not to inflict unnecessary pain on herself. Because she’d learned the hard way that Massimo Conti could only bring her disappointment and heartache.
‘Why? What have you got to lose?’
Too much. Far, far too much.
Just sitting here, looking up into a face that had once been so dear to her, hurt. The pain wound through her like a ribbon, drawing tight around her vital organs.
But Gina wasn’t the heart-on-her-sleeve girl she’d once been. She hid her feelings behind a calm façade, as if her pulse wasn’t thudding like a marathon runner’s.
‘We have nothing to say to each other anymore, Massimo.’ As soon as she spoke she regretted it. Because it was the first time she’d said his name aloud in years and something inside, something buried in the darkest, most secret part of her soul, stirred at the sound.
She read the inevitable glint in his eyes. Massimo had never been able to resist a challenge.
That, she guessed now, was one of the reasons he’d begun dating her, the naïve young actress who’d refused the advances of every other single man in the stage production, and a few of the married ones too. No doubt it had been fun parading his success where others had failed.
Without asking, he pulled a chair out from her table and took a seat. One knee brushed hers and she swung her legs away, feeling a rush of sensation up her thigh that slowed to a warm eddy between her legs.
Gina blinked and made a show of closing her script while all the time she fought panic. One inadvertent touch. Just one, and she was melting.
She needed to get rid of him fast.
‘What are you doing in Venice, Massimo?’ Her chest felt tight and she had to work to project the words.
‘I’m here to see you.’
Gina sat back abruptly, astonished. ‘Me?’
Since when had Massimo travelled anywhere to see her? Even when they were ostensibly together, which wasn’t long, he’d demanded that she follow him, give up her job and probably her whole career, for his convenience.
There was only one possible reason for him to go to so much trouble. He wanted a divorce.
It was long overdue. One of them should have done something about it ages ago, but there had always seemed a reason for not bothering to formalise their separation. Work, travel, the desire not to face the disaster they’d made of their short marriage.
‘You have divorce papers you want signed?’ She had to call on all her acting skill to keep her voice even.
His hands were empty so he must have them in the inner pocket of his jacket.
‘You want a divorce?’ His voice was sharp, almost discordant.
‘Don’t you?’ Just because she hadn’t pursued one didn’t mean she was opposed. It was the logical next step. Yet Gina felt her stomach drop like a heavy rock thrown into water, plummeting so fast it made her nauseous.
‘Why?’ Massimo planted his hands on the table and leaned towards her, his jaw set at a decidedly aggressive angle. ‘You have another partner in mind? You’d like to legalise a love affair?’ Contempt dripped from each word and Gina recoiled.
‘You’ve been reading the press reports about Matteo De Laurentis.’
Massimo folded his arms, the movement drawing attention to the power in his upper body. One sable eyebrow flicked up.
‘They’re hard to miss.’ His tone was even but his expression was disapproving.
With anyone else Gina might have defended herself and said there was nothing between her and Matteo but work and mutual respect. And the fact that Gina had become friends with Matteo’s wife Angela, who’d written the screenplay for the film they were making.
Instead she looked straight back into Massimo’s brooding dark features and waited. They were long past the stage where she had to explain herself to him.
‘Nothing to say?’ The tendons in his neck drew tight and his tone was whiplash sharp.
‘No.’ Gina crossed her arms. ‘Nothing.’
She heard a low sound that she couldn’t identify. It sounded like...surely he wasn’t grinding his teeth?
‘Just tell me why you’re here, Massimo.’
‘It’s a private matter. I’d prefer to discuss it somewhere else. Your room perhaps.’
Instantly Gina shook her head. There was no way on earth she’d invite this man into her bedroom.
Even if he did visit her there sometimes in those frustrating dreams that left her wound too tight and aching for a man’s touch.
‘This is as private as it gets.’ She cast a look around the large room. The staff had cleared the other tables and were obviously leaving them alone to chat in peace. As if talking with Massimo could be described as peaceful! Her heart still drummed too fast and she felt flushed and off balance.
‘Very well. There’s something I want you to do for me.’
Gina stared across at that handsome, determined face and couldn’t con
jure words to express her outrage.
He wanted her to help him?
‘Why?’
His mouth tipped up at one side and a wicked gleam shone in those narrowed eyes. ‘Well, you are my wife and you’re perfect for what I have in mind.’
Gina’s core temperature soared as she imagined what he was thinking of. Except it couldn’t be that. Not after all this time. Even though their sex life had been phenomenal. Massimo had proved beyond doubt that he didn’t need her anymore, even for her body.
Which was a dismal fact, given that her body was blatantly primed for him.
‘What did you have in mind?’ She crossed her arms, not caring that he’d read her defensiveness.
‘I want you to come and live with me in Milan.’
CHAPTER TWO
* * *
After years in the entertainment industry Gina was quick with a riposte and not easily shocked, but Massimo’s words stunned her into silence.
Live with him. In Milan.
She felt the breath shiver out of her mouth, then the quick, desperate inhale when her brain finally realised she needed air.
Massimo wanted her to live with him?
She studied his features, looking for some softening, something other than adamantine resolve. Some hint of attraction, desire, even liking.
There was nothing. Just those shrewd eyes, narrowed on her as if reading every thought.
Her mind was blank with shock. Until the one emotion she’d forbidden herself to feel unfurled and blossomed low behind her ribs.
Hope.
In the first year of their separation hope had kept the pain fresh and alive, for surely the man she loved would see reason and come to her? As the years went on and there was no contact from him at all, much less an attempt to bridge the gulf between them, hope had faded. Yet still it sprang up from time to time, making her miserable when the futility of it hit her. That’s when she’d squashed it underfoot once and for all, telling herself her marriage to Massimo was over. Dead. Never to be resurrected.