by Lynne Graham
Pippa nodded again, tears of regret clogging up her vocal cords.
‘Even though I’d asked you to marry me…’
The tears overflowed and streamed in a silent river down her cheeks.
‘But all that is absolutely OK!’ Andreo insisted in panic at the sight of those tears. ‘Honestly, I have no idea why I’m so full of complaints. I’m crazy about you and I’ll be crazy about our baby too. I can forgive you for anything. Please don’t cry, amore.’
‘I can’t help it…my emotions are all over the place and you only have to touch my heart a little at the minute and I could flood the sea with tears. I think it’s my hormones, something to do with being pregnant.’ Pippa loosed an embarrassed laugh. ‘But I’m just so happy!’
Andreo caught her to him with two possessive hands and claimed her ripe mouth with hungry, demanding urgency and it was the best cure for tears imaginable.
‘Happy…happy…happy,’ she repeated, wicked, wanton excitement sending tiny little shivers through her as she stayed melded to his lean, powerful frame.
‘And I think you need to lie down,’ Andreo informed her huskily, vibrant amusement lighting his keen appraisal as he swept her up into his arms and began to mount the stairs to the master bedroom. ‘I know I do…’
Pippa felt incredibly warm and safe: he loved her. All her fears had been empty fears born of her insecurity.
‘Am I allowed to ask what changed your mind about babies?’ Andreo prompted, lowering her down onto the bed with immense care.
‘I think I was most scared of the responsibility. My parents had a bad marriage and my childhood suffered because of it,’ Pippa confided awkwardly. ‘I was afraid that if I had a child I would make him or her unhappy too.’
‘I can understand that, amore. But if you valued yourself as I do, you would already know that you are far too sensitive to behave as your parents did.’
At that vote of confidence, her discomfiture melted. ‘I felt different once I knew I was pregnant,’ she admitted softly. ‘I realised the baby would be part of both of us and all of a sudden our baby was this fascinating little person in his own right. I still worried about how I would measure up as a parent but I felt excited too.’
‘You’re such a perfectionist and so hard on yourself. I promise that I will never let you down,’ Andreo swore with tender force. ‘I was too impatient with you. In time, you will learn to trust me.’
‘I trust you now but I’ll still watch you like a hawk,’ Pippa warned him cheerfully. ‘There are desperate women out there.’
An appreciative grin slanted his wide, sensual mouth. ‘Will you marry me now?’
‘I’ll think it over,’ she dared, confident enough to tease him while still marvelling that he could have fallen in love with someone as ordinary as she believed herself to be.
Halfway out of his shirt, a virile wedge of bronzed muscular chest revealed, Andreo froze and groaned, ‘If you want me in your bed again, you have to marry me.’
With a sense of joy and freedom entirely new to her, Pippa burst out laughing and feasted her eyes on his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘If I agree to marry you as soon as it can be arranged, can I have something on account?’
All male provocation at that request, Andreo let his shirt drop to the floor with a flourish. ‘So you want to marry me?’
Pippa arched her toes so that her sandals fell off and heaved a blissful sigh of agreement. ‘Definitely…do you mind if I ask you how much you love me?’ she muttered more shyly.
Andreo rested adoring eyes on her. ‘Head over heels and crazy about you. Enough to last two lifetimes at least, amore.’
Reassured, Pippa stretched up her arms and linked them round him to draw him down to her, all the while maintaining her loving connection with his appreciative gaze. ‘I love you every bit as much…’
Four weeks later, Pippa married her Italian boss.
The run-up to the wedding was an incredibly busy time for her. She spent almost two weeks flitting about Italy getting to know Andreo’s family: his fashionable and friendly mother, Giulietta, his six-foot-two-inch teenage brother, Marco, and his three older sisters and their respective husbands and children. The D’Alessio clan made an enormous fuss of Pippa and she went from feeling rather intimidated by the sheer number of Andreo’s gregarious relatives to feeling warmed by their affectionate acceptance of her as Andreo’s chosen bride.
Giulietta D’Alessio persuaded Pippa to allow her to organise the wedding and having little taste for that kind of thing, Pippa was delighted to hand over the responsibility for what was already promising to be a major social event.
Andreo and Pippa were married in Rome. Tabby and Hilary had gone shopping with Pippa to help her choose her wedding outfit. She selected a sleeveless bodice made of duchess satin and a long swirling skirt of Thai silk and a detachable embroidered train. Wearing it on the day with the superb diamond tiara that was a gift from her bridegroom and a short delicate veil, she was much admired as a stunningly elegant bride.
Tabby acted as matron of honour and Hilary was to be a bridesmaid but had to surrender the honour to Andreo’s eldest niece a week before the ceremony when her little sister, Emma, was rushed into hospital for emergency surgery. Andreo’s boyhood friend, Sal Rissone, was best man. In his speech the best man confessed that he had first suspected that Andreo was in love the minute he’d begun clock-watching at the office and seeking privacy to make his phone calls.
‘You look so beautiful you take my breath away, bella mia,’ Andreo told his bride when they finally got a moment alone together on the dance floor at their reception.
Pippa’s heart had not stopped racing since she’d seen Andreo waiting for her at the altar. As befitted the occasion, his lean, dark, devastating features were serious but his proud, possessive gaze had remained welded to her with intoxicating intensity. Over the past frantic month, Andreo’s need to catch up with work and clear the space in his busy schedule for a honeymoon had ensured that they had had little time together. When he drew her close, she shivered at the contact with his lean, powerful body, ultra sensitive to his raw, virile masculinity and the wicked promise of the sensual smile curving his beautiful mouth.
‘I want to be alone with you so badly I ache,’ Andreo admitted with such feeling force that she blushed to the roots of her hair and struggled to damp down her own wanton response to his unashamed hunger for her.
Only a minute later, Marco cut in on Andreo to dance with her. His youthful features held all the promise of the same good looks that distinguished her bridegroom. Having cheerfully ignored his older brother’s protests, he sighed with mock reproach, ‘It’s not cool to cling to each other the way you two do.’
Pippa laughed. ‘We don’t,’ she said and angled her head round to try and spot where Andreo had gone.
‘Don’t worry…he hasn’t gone far.’ It was Marco’s turn to laugh for his older brother was poised on the edge of the floor, his attention exclusively pinned to his beautiful bride. ‘I can see I’m going to get a lot of mileage out of teasing you.’
For their honeymoon, Andreo took Pippa to his birthplace on the island of Ischia in the Gulf of Naples. There she was carried over the threshold of the magnificent villa that Andreo regarded as his home. He and his siblings had been born on Ischia but his widowed mother had moved her family to Rome after her husband’s death.
After breakfast the next morning, Pippa walked out of their bedroom onto the sun-drenched marble terrace. She was enchanted by the glorious views. The chalk white houses were set against a landscape of old stone walls, silvery olive groves and lush green vineyards and backed by the deep sparkling blue of the sea.
‘So this is where we’re going to live,’ she murmured, resting back against Andreo with the perfect trust of a woman who knew she was loved. ‘Have you always spent most of your time here?’
Andreo closed gentle arms round her and spread lean fingers in a tender speaking gesture across the fain
t protuberance of her tummy. ‘No, but now that I’m to become a father I shall need to cut down on my trips abroad, cara. Off the tourist track, the pace of life is slower here. It’s a wonderful place to raise a child.’
Contentment filled Pippa to overflowing. Turning within his embrace, she gazed up into his darkly handsome features with her heart in her eyes, but there was still one tiny nagging concern to be faced. Breathing in deep, she worried at her lower lip before saying shyly, ‘I’m probably being very silly, but are you going to end up getting bored with me?’
‘Dio mio! What are you talking about?’ Andreo demanded in frowning disconcertion. ‘I could never become bored with you or what we have together. It is more than I ever hoped to have with any woman—’
‘Even though I’ll never be in the diamond-studded handcuffs line?’ Pippa prompted in an effort to be more specific about what he might or might not miss in the future.
Andreo tensed and wondered which he was going to put first: his rampant reputation as a living legend in the bedroom or his bride’s peace of mind? The only diamond-studded handcuffs he had ever purchased had been of the miniaturised variety, quite literally a gold charm for a bracelet, the most casual of gifts. A kiss-and-tell story sold by the same lady who had briefly shared his bed had first employed the outrageous lie presumably to make her revelations seem more newsworthy.
‘All that’s behind me…’ But as he looked down into Pippa’s anxious blue eyes Andreo’s conscience stirred and he released his breath in a sudden hiss. He confessed the truth about the diamond-studded handcuffs.
Pippa looked up at him for a long, timeless moment and then she just crumpled into helpless giggles. Every time she tried to stop laughing, she would recall the rueful look on his face as he chose to make that lowering admission and it would set her off into whoops again.
‘But now that I’ve found the woman of my dreams, I can at last live out my every sexual fantasy,’ Andreo drawled in a super-fast recovery, bending down and scooping her up to carry her back into the bedroom.
Hot-cheeked, eyes startled, Pippa gazed up at him. ‘Are you serious?’
He came down on the bed with her and covered her soft pink mouth with the passionate demand of his. Erotic heat sizzled along her every nerve ending and she quivered.
‘How serious would you like me to be, amore?’ Andreo teased and then he told her all over again how much he loved her and she smiled, buoyant with joy and trust.
Seven months later, Pippa gave birth to their first child. She enjoyed an easy pregnancy and delivery. They called their infant daughter Lucia. She was an exceptionally pretty baby with her father’s eyes and her mother’s cinnamon curls and both her parents were besotted with her.
They took Lucia to France with them when they attended the christening of Tabby and Christien’s second son, Fabien. The two couples had become fast friends and distance did not get in the way of their socialising. Andreo even asked Tabby to paint a miniature portrait of Lucia to mark the occasion of the first anniversary of his marriage.
The week in which their wedding anniversary fell, Andreo and Pippa left their beloved daughter in the care of her grandmother, Giulietta, and went to stay at the idyllic priory in the Dordogne, which held a special place in both their hearts.
‘Would you marry me again if you had a choice?’ Pippa asked daringly the night they arrived.
‘Faster than the speed of the light, bella mia. I love you and I love having you and Lucia in my life,’ Andreo intoned huskily.
Pippa looked up into his stunning golden eyes and linked both arms round him tight. ‘I love you too,’ she whispered, her heartbeat racing as he claimed her mouth with his.
The Banker’s Convenient Wife
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ONE
‘NATURALLY you will not renew his contract. The Sabatino Bank has no place for inadequate fund managers.’ Lean, dark, handsome face stern, Roel Sabatino was frowning. An international banker and a very busy man, he considered this conversation a waste of his valuable time.
His HR director, Stefan, cleared his throat. ‘I thought…perhaps a little chat might put Rawlinson back on track—’
‘I don’t believe in little chats and I don’t give second chances,’ Roel incised with glacial effect. ‘Neither—you should note—do our clients. The bank’s reputation rests on profit performance.’
Stefan Weber reflected that Roel’s own world-class renown as an expert in the global economy and the field of wealth preservation carried even greater impact. A Swiss billionaire, Roel Sabatino was the descendant of nine unbroken generations of private bankers and acknowledged by all as the most brilliant. Strikingly intelligent and hugely successful as he was, however, Roel was not known for his compassion towards employees with personal problems. In fact he was as much feared as he was admired for his ruthless lack of sentimentality.
Even so, Stefan made one last effort to intervene on the unfortunate member of staff’s behalf. ‘Last month, Rawlinson’s wife walked out on him…’
‘I am his employer, not his counsellor,’ Roel countered in brusque dismissal. ‘His private life is not my concern.’
That point clarified for the benefit of his HR director, Roel left his palatial office by his private lift to travel down to the underground car park. As he swung into his Ferrari his shapely masculine mouth was still set in a grim line of disdain. What kind of a man allowed the loss of a woman to interfere with his work performance to the extent of destroying a once promising career? A weak character guilty of a shameful lack of self-discipline, Roel decided with a contemptuous shake of his proud dark head.
A male who whined about his personal problems and expected special treatment on that basis was complete anathema to Roel. After all, by its very nature life was challenging and, thanks to a childhood of austere joylessness, Roel knew that better than most. His mother had walked out on her son and her marriage when he was a toddler and any suspicion of tender loving care had vanished overnight from his upbringing. Placed in a boarding-school at the age of five, he had been allowed home visits only when his academic results had matched his father’s high expectations. Raised to be tough and unemotional, Roel had learnt when he was very young neither to ask for nor hope for favours in any form.
His car phone rang while he was stuck in Geneva’s lunchtime traffic jam and regretting his decision not to utilise his chauffeur-driven limo. The call was from his lawyer, Paul Correro. When it came to more confidential matters, he preferred to utilise Paul’s discreet services rather than those of the family legal firm.
‘I think it’s my duty as your legal representative to point out that the time has arrived for a certain connection to be quietly terminated.’ Paul’s tone was almost playful.
Roel had gone to university with Paul and he usually enjoyed the other man’s lively sense of humour for nobody else would have dared that level of familiarity with him. However, he was not in the mood to engage in a guessing game.
‘Cut to the chase, Paul,’ he urged.
‘I’ve been thinking of mentioning this for a while…’ Unusually, Paul hesitated. ‘But I was waiting for you to raise the topic first. It’s almost four years now. Isn’t it time to have your marriage of convenience dissolved?’
Taken aback by that reminder, and just when the traffic flow was finally beginning to move again, Roel lifted his foot off the clutch of his car. The Ferrari lurched to a sudden choking halt as the engine cut out and provoked a hail of impatient car horns that outraged Roel’s masculine pride. But he did not utter a single one of the vituperative curses on the tip of his tongue.
From the car speakers Paul’s well-modulated speaking voice continued in happy i
gnorance of the effect he had induced. ‘I was hoping we could set up an appointment some time this week because I’ll be on vacation from the following Monday.’
‘This week is impossible for me,’ Roel heard himself counter instantaneously.
‘I hope I haven’t overreached my remit in raising the issue,’ Paul remarked with a hint of discomfiture.
‘Dio mio! I had forgotten about the matter. You took me by surprise!’ Roel proclaimed with a dismissive laugh.
‘I didn’t think it was possible to do that,’ Paul commented.
‘I’ll have to call you back…the traffic’s unbelievable,’ Roel asserted and he concluded the dialogue without engaging in the usual chit-chat.
His handsome mouth was set in a taut line. Paul had been right to bring up the subject of the marriage, which Roel had felt he had little choice but to enter into almost four years earlier. How could he possibly have overlooked the necessity of breaking that slender link again with a divorce? He reminded himself that he led an incredibly busy life and thought back instead to the ridiculous situation that had persuaded him to circumvent the terms of his late grandfather’s will with a fake wife.
His grandfather, Clemente, had been a rigid workaholic well into his sixties, in every way a chip off the rock like Sabatino banker block. But after his retirement Clemente had fallen in love with a woman less than half his age and had suffered a rebellious sea change in outlook. Throwing off all restraint, he had embraced New Age philosophies and had even briefly married the youthful gold-digger. His undignified behaviour had led to years of estrangement between Clemente and his son, Roel’s conservative father. Roel himself, however, had retained his fondness for the older man and maintained contact with him.
Four years ago, Clemente had died and Roel had been incredulous when the terms of his grandfather’s will had been spelt out to him. In that most eccentric document, Clemente had stated that in the event of his grandson failing to marry within a specified time frame, Castello Sabatino, the family’s ancestral home, should devolve to the state rather than to his own flesh and blood. Certainly, Roel had lived to regret telling his grandfather that, as the chances of a happy marriage were in his own considered opinion slim to none, he would not be addressing the need to wed and father an heir until he was, at the very least, in late middle age.