Deserving of His Diamonds?

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  The elevator stopped and Emilio held the doors back for her with an outstretched arm. Gisele moved past him, determined not to show how unsettled she was. Her stomach was twitching with nerves. Everything about him unsettled her. He seemed to see much more than she wanted him to see. What if he sensed she was hiding something from him? How long before he guessed the pain in her eyes had been put there, not just by him, but also by the loss of their child? The child whose soft pink bunny blanket that still held a faint trace of her sweet baby smell was folded inside her suitcase? She hadn’t been able to leave that final link with Lily behind. Her mother … Hilary, she quickly amended, had said it was unhealthy to keep holding on. She had said Gisele should put it all behind her, pack the blanket away so she could finally move on.

  Gisele wasn’t ready to move on.

  She didn’t think she would ever be ready to move on. What would Hilary know anyway? She hadn’t physically given birth to a child only to have that child’s life snatched away. She didn’t know, couldn’t possibly know what it felt like.

  ‘Relax, cara,’ Emilio said as he opened the door to his suite. ‘You look like you’re about to be devoured by a wild beast.’

  Gisele stalked past him. ‘I have a headache,’ she said and it wasn’t a lie. The pain behind her eyeballs had gone from a dull ache to a pounding that felt as if a team of jackhammers on steroids had taken up residence inside her skull.

  His brows moved together. ‘Why didn’t you say something earlier?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, licking her lips to give them some much-needed moisture. ‘I probably shouldn’t have had that second drink. I don’t have a good head for alcohol.’

  ‘When was the last time you ate?’ he asked.

  The fact that she had to think about it didn’t go unnoticed by him, Gisele thought as she saw that dark frown deepen across his brow. ‘I can’t remember,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t a priority. I had to get things sorted at my flat and at the shop.’ She threw him a resentful scowl. ‘You didn’t give me much time.’

  ‘I’m sorry but I have to get back to Rome for a project I’m working on,’ he said. ‘The client is a big one. I had to work hard to get the contract. It’s worth several million.’

  Gisele thought of all the money he earned from his designs. She suspected he hadn’t come by it easily. He was a prime example of the adage that anyone could do anything if they had enough determination. And the one thing Emilio had in spades was determination. She could see it in the glittering depths of his dark eyes and the strong lines of his jaw, both hinting at the implacability of his nature. In the days and weeks ahead she would be going head to head with that intransigent personality. Who would eventually come out on top? She gave a little involuntary shiver. It was a nerve-jangling thought.

  ‘I’ll have dinner sent up immediately,’ he said. ‘The porter brought up your things earlier,’ he said. ‘Would you like me to get a housemaid to unpack it for you? I should have thought of it before.’

  ‘No,’ Gisele said, perhaps a little too quickly. She saw his eyebrows lift. Yes, definitely too quickly. ‘We’re … um … leaving tomorrow, in any case.’

  He held her gaze for an infinitesimal moment. ‘Would you prefer the guest suite tonight?’ he asked.

  Gisele gave him a flinty look. ‘Where else did you expect me to sleep?’

  He came up close and brushed her hot cheek with the backs of his bent knuckles. ‘Do you really think you’ll be sleeping in the spare room for the entire month?’ he asked.

  She brushed his hand away as if it were an annoying fly. ‘I haven’t signed anything that requires me to sleep with you.’

  ‘That reminds me.’ He moved away from her and opened a briefcase that was lying on a table near the window. He took out a document and brought it over. ‘You should read it before you sign it,’ he said, his expression now inscrutable. ‘The full amount we agreed on will be transferred to your account on the completion of your stay.’

  Gisele looked at the sheaf of papers, wishing she could walk away. But two million dollars was not the sort of money she could turn her back on right now. She took pride in her success so far; it had helped her cope. How much better would she feel if her baby wear became even more successful? What else did she have in her life other than her shop? It wasn’t as if she was ever going to get married and have a family now. That dream was long gone.

  She took the papers and sank to the nearest chair, casting her eyes over the words printed there. She read it in detail but it was as straightforward as he had said. After the month was up she would be two million dollars richer and would owe him nothing. She signed it with a hand that wasn’t quite steady. ‘There,’ she said, shoving the papers at his chest.

  He put them to one side before he faced her again. ‘So, it looks like we have a deal.’

  She lifted her chin. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You just signed away two million dollars.’ For nothing.

  His lips moved up in a curl that had a hint of mockery about it. ‘How long do you think you will hold out, mmm? A week? Two?’

  She glared at him fiercely. ‘If you want a bedmate then you’ll have to look elsewhere. I’m not interested.’

  ‘You’re planning your own little payback, aren’t you?’ he asked, still with that sardonic half smile.

  Gisele felt a betraying flush stain her cheeks. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said.

  ‘You think I don’t know how your mind works?’ he asked. ‘You plan to make me suffer every minute of the time we spend together. But do you really think that by snipping and snarling at me it will make me want you less? Don’t fool yourself, Gisele. You will sleep with me again, not because I paid you, but because you just can’t help yourself.’

  Gisele thought she couldn’t hate him more than at that moment. She wanted to slap his arrogant face for assuming she had no self-control, no discipline and no self-respect. ‘I hate you with every cell in my body,’ she snarled at him like a cornered cat, all claws and bared teeth. ‘Do you realise that? I hate you.’

  Emilio’s calmness riled her even further. ‘The fact that you feel something for me is good,’ he said. ‘I can handle anger. It is far better than cold indifference.’

  Gisele was determined she would show him just how cold and indifferent she could be. ‘OK then.’ She kicked off her heels and began to unzip her dress. ‘You want me to sleep with you? Then let’s get it out of the way right here and now.’

  He stood there watching her silently, hardly a muscle moving, apart from his eyes. She saw the flare of his pupils, the primal signal of male attraction as she stepped out of her dress, leaving it in a puddle of fabric on the floor. She was standing in just her bra and knickers before him. She had stood in a whole lot less before him two years ago. But suddenly she felt naked in a way she had never felt before. A shiver broke out over her skin and her stomach curdled at the thought of going any further with this.

  She put her hands behind her back to unhook her bra but her fingers were suddenly fumbling and useless. She felt as if she was going to cry. The emotions were like a fountain inside her that had been blocked. The pressure was building and building. She could feel it behind her eyes; she could feel it inside her chest, a tight ache that burned like fire.

  ‘Get dressed,’ Emilio said curtly as he turned away.

  Gisele felt as if he had ripped the ankle-deep carpet out from under her feet. She had been prepared to play him at his own game but he had somehow turned the tables on her. He wanted her but on his terms, not hers.

  She felt foolish.

  She felt uncertain.

  She felt rejected.

  She watched as he walked over to the bar and poured himself a drink. He tipped back his head and drained his glass and then set in down on the bar with a thump. His shoulders looked tense; the muscles were bunched beneath the fine cotton of his shirt. She remembered how those muscles felt under the soft pads of her fingertips, how she use
d to massage away those tight knots, how she used to press her mouth to that hot, salty male skin …

  Gisele ran the tip of her tongue over her bone-dry lips. ‘So,’ she said, summoning up what was left of her paltry attempt at cold indifference, ‘I take it you no longer require my services this evening?’

  Emilio turned to look at her but his expression was difficult to read. ‘I will have a meal sent up to you presently,’ he said. ‘Please make yourself at home. I’m going out.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ The question was out before she could stop it and, to her shame, it sounded scarily close to one a jealous wife might have asked.

  He turned from the door and raked her with his cold indifferent gaze. ‘Don’t wait up,’ he said and then he was gone.

  Gisele picked up one of her shoes and threw it at the door, angry tears spilling from her eyes. ‘Damn you,’ she said. ‘Damn you to hell.’

  Emilio entered the penthouse at two in the morning. He had walked the streets of Sydney for hours, determined not to return until Gisele was safely out of his range. His body had ached to take what she was offering so defiantly but he was not going to give her any more reasons to hate him. He would bide his time, waiting for her to come to him, as he knew she would. One night would not be enough for either of them. He was counting on that. He knew as soon as she gave in to the sexual chemistry that sizzled between them she would want more. She was bitter and angry but he knew she would get over it. Time was a great healer and a month was surely long enough to see if what they had shared together before could be resurrected.

  The meal he had sent up to the suite looked as if it had been barely touched. He frowned as he looked at the selection of dishes and the undrunk wine sitting on the dining table. Her lack of appetite could have been because of her headache, but he suspected it was more to do with her current I’ll-show-you attitude.

  He admired her for standing up to him. Not many people did. He had learned on the filthy backstreets of Rome how to intimidate people. Those skills had come in handy in his professional life. What he said went. People didn’t argue with him. They didn’t challenge or defy him. The women in his life—and there had been plenty—never argued with him. They played by his rules. He always made sure of that. And Gisele had been no different during their time together. She had been biddable and gracious, the perfect companion, the perfect hostess, the perfect woman to be his wife.

  Emilio frowned as he wandered over to the windows to look at the harbour view below. Some would say he had selected a trophy wife but he had never thought of Gisele like that. He had genuinely liked having her around. She had been easy company, at ease with him and with others. He was proud to have her on his arm. She moved with such poise and grace, with such natural elegance.

  He let out a sigh that pulled on something deep inside his chest. If it hadn’t been for the scandal they would have celebrated their second wedding anniversary a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps they might have even had a child by now. They had talked about it. That was another of the reasons he had wanted her as his wife. She had been keen to have a large family, having grown up as an only child. And he had been just as keen. All those years in and out of ill-run foster homes or begging on the streets had made him envious of all those warm, well-lit homes he had wandered past, with their close-knit family units inside.

  His envy of other people’s homes had been his primary motivation to become an architect. He had been barely ten years old when he had made the decision. He had thought by designing hundreds of dream homes that he would be satisfied, but it hadn’t had the effect he’d imagined. He suspected that having his own family would be the only thing that would truly satisfy him. That and that alone would be able to soothe the raw sore of loneliness that constantly oozed deep inside his soul.

  He felt it now, the never-ending sense of something missing from his life, of being incomplete. Was that why he had been drawn to Gisele, because of her own previously unspoken of loneliness?

  Emilio turned from the window when he heard a sound behind him. ‘You didn’t eat your dinner,’ he said, just as Gisele was searching for the light switch.

  She put a hand up to her throat, her eyes wide with shock. ‘I didn’t see you there,’ she gasped. ‘You scared me half to death. Why didn’t you put the lights on?’

  ‘Maybe I prefer the dark.’

  She clutched the edges of her wrap together close to her chest. ‘You could have said something,’ she said with an accusing glare.

  ‘I did,’ he said. ‘I said you didn’t eat your dinner.’

  She gave him a testy look. ‘Maybe I wasn’t hungry.’

  ‘You need to eat,’ he said. ‘You’re too thin.’

  ‘You need to keep your opinions to yourself,’ she shot back.

  Emilio came over to where she was standing. ‘Weren’t you able to sleep?’ he asked.

  She flicked some hair back off her face and gave him a defiant stare. ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘I’m concerned about you,’ he said. ‘You look like you haven’t slept properly in months.’

  ‘Concerned, are you?’ She flashed her eyes at him like blue lightning. ‘What a pity you weren’t so concerned about my welfare when you tossed me out on the street two years ago.’

  Emilio ground his teeth together to stop himself saying something he might regret later. He had always prided himself on his self-control but Gisele’s stubborn refusal to meet him halfway was testing his limits. How long was she going to persist with this game of payback? He had made amends. Wasn’t it time to move on? ‘Would you like me to make you a hot milk drink?’ he asked.

  She gave a choked bubble of laughter that sounded almost hysterical. ‘Yeah, why not?’ she said. ‘Maybe put a shot of whisky in it for good measure. Two shots. That should knock me out.’

  Emilio poured milk into a mug and placed it in the microwave set near the bar. He leant back against the counter as he studied her. ‘I know from experience that running a business, even a successful one, is stressful,’ he said. ‘I’ve had plenty of sleepless nights myself.’

  She curled her lip at him. ‘I’m sure you’ve found plenty of women to distract you from your spreadsheets.’

  ‘Not as many as you might think,’ he said.

  She gave him a cynical look. ‘Well, just for the record, I’m not opening my legs like one of your cheap gold-digging whores.’

  ‘You didn’t seem to have any problem with it in the past,’ he said. ‘And at a cool two million, cara, you are certainly not cheap.’

  Gisele raised a hand to slap him but he intercepted it, holding her slim wrist with the steel handcuffs of his fingers. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ he warned. ‘You might not like the consequences.’

  She fought against his hold, clawing at him, but it was like a kitten trying to fight off a panther. He was too strong. He was too close. He was too everything.

  ‘What consequences?’ she asked. ‘What are you going to do? Hit me right back? Is that what rough, tough Italian guys do?’

  His expression tightened. ‘I would never lay a finger on you and you damn well know it.’

  She gave him a challenging glare. ‘You’ve got five fingers on me right now.’

  ‘And they’re staying on you until you stop behaving like a wilful child.’

  ‘I hate you,’ she spat at him furiously.

  ‘So you’ve said.’

  ‘I mean it.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  ‘I want you to die and rot in hell.’

  ‘I believe that too,’ he said. ‘But trading insults isn’t going to make this go away.’

  Gisele felt his thighs way too close to hers. She felt the warmth of his body, a radiating heat that her colder flesh craved. She felt his warm brandy-scented breath move like a teasing feather over her face. She felt her breasts go to hard aching peaks as the hard wall of his muscular chest loomed closer. Her lashes lowered as she looked at the line of his mouth. That mouth had kissed
her so many times she had lost count. It could be hard and yet so soft, so demanding and yet so giving. ‘I hate you,’ she said again, but she wasn’t sure if she was saying it for herself or for him.

  She needed her anger.

  She needed her rage and fury to keep herself in one piece. It was all she had. The only armour left that she could rely on. It had carried her through for so long.

  Emilio cupped the side of her face with the broad span of his hand, his thumb moving over the hollow of her cheek, back and forth in a mesmerising rhythm that sent every thought flying out of her head. His eyes moved over her face, taking their time before they finally meshed with hers. ‘Stop fighting me, Gisele,’ he said. ‘Don’t give up on us before we’ve had a chance to set things right.’

  ‘Some things can’t be fixed,’ she said. ‘It’s too late. Too much time has passed.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’ he asked.

  Gisele didn’t know what to believe when he was holding her against him, his hard body fitting against her softer one as if no time had passed at all. She felt the hardened ridge of him, the surge of blood that lengthened him in the primal preparation to mate. It was so earthy and real. No amount of denying it could make it go away. Her body was responding to him in its own secret way. The silky moisture of her inner core was reminding her that she was no less immune to him than she had ever been. It didn’t matter how much she hated him. It didn’t matter how much she told him she wanted nothing more to do with him. Her body had its own needs and wants and they were overriding every other rational thought she tried to cling to.

  ‘I believe you’re only doing this because you’re worried what the press and your precious business colleagues will think if you don’t try to make amends,’ she said, looking at him defiantly. ‘It’s all for show. The one-month reconciliation. You’ll appear to do the right thing by me but it will all be for nothing because I won’t come back to you for good. No amount of money will ever induce me to do that.’