The Italian’s Bride On Paper by Kim Lawrence

CHAPTER NINE

ITWASTWOWEEKS and the bruise on her cheek had almost faded. She had woken the next day to find she had a black eye and her face had gone through some lurid colour changes since then; now a light touch of concealer and you wouldn’t know it was there.

If only other things that had happened that day had faded so easily...though a part of her didn’t actually want them to. Samuele had been right: her encounter with the wild boars had made her a bit of a local celebrity.

She had a lot of sympathy and was repeatedly told how lucky she was. It seemed everyone had a story of someone who hadn’t been as lucky: the hiker who had nearly lost an eye and had been massively disfigured; the farmhand who had fallen and been trampled coming out of his encounter with several broken ribs and a smashed leg...he still walked with a limp, she was told darkly.

Maya had made a point of going out to the gardens to search out the gardener and offer her thanks and apologies. She took Rosa with her to translate and showed Santino the app on her phone she would use to translate for herself in future.

She stayed and won a friend by asking about the gardens that he and his team kept so beautifully, and he was eager to tell her about the years when he had been the only one left to tend them and how it had simply broken his heart to see the historically important landscapes being taken over by Mother Nature.

‘Now,’ he proudly explained, ‘I have every resource I ask for and a team.’ He spoke at length about last summer and the massive party with famous people and the filmmaker who had wanted to make a documentary about the gardens. ‘The son,’ he finished, cryptically tapping his nose. ‘He is nothing like the father...’

It was the first time she’d heard this opinion actually voiced, but it was implied in so many other conversations she had had. Samuele was more than simply well regarded; he was flat-out adored by the people of the estate.

She wondered what the high-flying financiers in their smart suits—not that any of them filled out a suit like Samuele—would make of the man she had seen last week?

Her thoughts drifted back to her solo walk she’d fitted into her daily routine, which no longer involved intimate dinners with Samuele. Sometimes Rosa, who had become her official helper with Mattio, stayed to eat with her, which involved far less tension.

Maya’s walk that particular morning last week had taken her past the stables. She was a bit nervous of horses, or at least the height they were from the ground, so she had been far enough away to stay unseen, or at least that was what she had thought until that final moment when Samuele had turned and looked directly at her. To her eternal shame she had ducked down behind a hedge, a bit like a child who covered his eyes and thought no one could see him.

Only she wasn’t a child and she had sat there and sworn under her breath, waiting for her humiliation to be complete when he came over—but he hadn’t.

While it had lasted, the show she’d seen had been quite a masterclass in horsemanship; if anyone had filmed it on their phone it would have gone viral in hours!

How could it not? It had everything: a tall, gorgeously handsome man radiating authority standing there, seemingly oblivious to the slashing hooves of the young horse he was trying to tame.

Maya’s initial gut-chilling fear had given way to fascination as she’d watched him. It had been like a ballet really, the horse advancing and retreating and Samuele standing there completely unfazed, radiating the sort of confidence that you couldn’t learn or fake or buy, and gradually, almost by osmosis, it had seemed to infiltrate the animal’s panic.

She hadn’t been the only one watching the show, the fence had been lined with stable hands who had seemed as fascinated as she’d been.

Samuele hadn’t appeared to do anything except talk softly. Nothing had happened fast but by imperceptible inches he’d won the horse’s trust until he was able to stroke his silky face, after which he’d trotted around the exercise ring quite happily.

That was when he’d turned and looked at her; that was when she should have walked calmly over to him and said something bland, talked about the weather, anything but what she’d done.

She still cringed when she thought about what she must have looked like.

Would he comment on it this morning?she wondered, gathering up the folder containing the nannies’ CVs and sticking it into her shoulder bag. She assumed that that was why he had requested her presence this morning, via email, which had been the form of communication he had favoured since they’d had their...sexual collision. It was how she’d decided to think of it, like a traffic accident that had happened because you hadn’t been paying attention to the road, or because you’d allowed yourself to think about something else instead, like him, standing naked in front of you... Which wasn’t going to happen today, she told herself firmly.

It would be their first meeting that wasn’t accidental in two weeks. They’d occasionally passed one another in one or other of the maze of corridors and once she had been going into the magnificent leisure suite when he’d been coming out, his hair wet... She’d felt dizzy for quite a while after that. A few minutes earlier and she would have seen him sleek and semi-naked in the pool, maybe even joined him there...? Then who knew what might have happened? Her vivid imagination had supplied several possibilities in glorious Technicolor.

She had not ventured back there since.

Their paths had almost crossed a few times when he’d come to see Mattio, but each time he had she’d been taking her walk and Rosa had been in charge. The girl had given her chapter and verse of how good he was with the baby and how interested he was in Mattio’s progress.

Maya couldn’t decide what was worse: the possibility he was avoiding her, or he’d forgotten she existed and moved on.

Another one of his personal secretaries, the woman, appeared as Maya approached the office door. Maya suspected that being psychic was probably a required qualification for working closely for Samuele—that and an inbuilt immunity to his intellect-dampening aura of raw masculinity.

That disqualified her on both counts. She was almost as miscast as an employee as she was a lover, even though technically she wasn’t either. She’d just been a steamy one-afternoon stand for him, and, far from feeling as if she worked for him, she was actually treated more like a guest by everyone she encountered here. Everyone except the boss, who acted as though she were invisible. Yes, it suited her too, but she didn’t have to be happy about it, did she?

‘Just give him a minute and then go right in.’

She probably hadn’t meant it literally, but Maya got her phone out to time it anyway, and saw she had a missed call from Beatrice. She felt a pang of guilt.

Beatrice and her mum knew she was in Italy but not where or why. When she’d initially told her sister her destination, Bea had immediately concluded that Maya was there in connection with the embryonic design business that had once been their joint project.

‘Oh, so that supplier you were talking about, they lowered the costs, did they? That’s marvellous! The samples you sent me, the colours of that wool are just perfect. The offer of the start-up money still stands, you know, it’s not charity. Dante and I, we believe in you.’

The opportunity had been there for Maya to put her right, but she’d been afraid that if she started talking about Samuele and Mattio and Violetta, it would all spill out, and then the moment had passed. She had allowed the misunderstanding to go on, and the longer it had lasted the more difficult the idea of coming clean had become, and now it weighed heavily on her conscience. She would tell Bea and Mum soon, but it seemed easiest to wait until she could explain the situation in person.

Then perhaps they could explain it to me, she thought. Because when she lay awake at night wondering how she’d got herself into this situation, the answer was no more clear-cut than her feelings for Samuele were.

She was sitting with her back to him and the doorway, unaware of his presence as she slid her phone back into the big leather bag with a file sticking out that she wore slung over her shoulder.

Samuele couldn’t see her face, but he’d spotted the tension in her narrow back and he found himself wondering about the person on the other end of the line who had put it there.

‘Good morning, Maya.’

She got to her feet as though shot and spun around, her colour-clash statement relatively sedate today. She had on an acid-green shirt tucked into a pair of black pedal pushers, and she wore flat black pumps embellished with embroidery on her narrow feet. Her glorious hair was confined at the nape of her slender neck by a leather lace.

Samuele could almost see the boundaries that he had spent the last two weeks constructing dissolve. In his mind he was immediately unfastening the tie and spreading out her hair down her back—which in this fantasy was naked.

She was naked quite a lot in his mind. Actually, she was in his mind far too much, full stop.

‘H-hello,’ she stammered out. ‘She said to come in but I...wasn’t sure.’

He had not been sure either, but he was now.

You did not need to have second sight to see what was coming down the line. Violetta was already hinting—taunting might be more accurate—the fact that she felt she held the winning card. But her inability to resist turning the knife in his back had actually worked in his favour this time.

He had given himself time to stall by paying her latest thinly disguised blackmail demand, but he had no illusions that it would be the last one. And when she got bored with taking money off him, she would move in for the kill.

It was not really about money or maternal feelings for Violetta; it was all about revenge and power plays.

The money didn’t matter to him, but Mattio did, and he was prepared to go to any length to fulfill his promise to his brother—including marriage.

He’d sworn to Cristiano that he would always do what was best for Mattio, and he was ashamed that he’d been willing to deprive the baby of the sort of mother he deserved just because Samuele hadn’t looked beyond his own fears of becoming like his father or brother.

But he wasn’t either of them, and he could see now that it had been ridiculous to compare his situation with theirs. For starters, poor Cristiano had not been able to see a single fault in his toxic bride and his deluded father’s obsession had made him similarly blinkered. While he was perfectly aware of Maya’s flaws—it was hard not to be when she was the most challenging female he had ever met!—he was certain she would make the best mother to Mattio, and the fact that there was already a blood tie between the two could be an important factor in securing her agreement to his plan.

‘Do you want to come through...?’

Maya’s heart flipped at the sound of his voice, but before she could respond he was already moving towards the door, taking her agreement as a given. And who could blame him? She hadn’t been resisting much of late; maybe once a people-pleaser, always a people-pleaser.

Taking a deep breath, and hating the idea she might be a pushover, she clutched her bag containing the folder and followed him through to his inner sanctum.

As with three quarters of the sprawling castle, this was a room she had never entered—it was probably the first and last time.

She hadn’t been sure what to expect, but it was actually pretty modern and utilitarian, dominated by a massive desk with several computer screens. One wall was book-lined, and there was a stack of free weights on a purpose-built stand. She pushed away the mental picture of a sweaty Samuele taking a break from the stress of moving around billions by stretching his muscles to the limit, and focused on the only decorative touch, which was a black and white framed drawing of the castello.

He saw her looking at it. ‘The artist is disputed but it shows the place before the more contemporary additions, as in sixteenth-century contemporary.’

‘It’s very striking.’

He had moved to stand in front of the full-length window, and she tried hard not to sigh wistfully. He was wearing a beautifully tailored dark suit, making him looking formal, exclusive, distant and quite incredibly gorgeous.

‘Th...This is a very nice room...’

He cut across her stuttering opening and nodded to one of the leather chairs set on the opposite side of the desk from him. ‘Have a seat.’ He took his own seat behind the massive desk, which occupied a large section of the pretty large room.

Right...so far, so formal—very formal, Maya thought uncertainly, feeling as though she had been sent to the headmaster’s office, though the analogy had some major flaws.

She had never felt this sexually wound up in her school days or for that matter her adult days until the day she’d met Samuele. In her head, her life was pretty much divided into the pre-and post-Samuele days, and now his presence and the knock-on effects seemed to have altered every aspect of herself.

She kept pushing away the intense feelings he aroused in her, but they just kept pushing right back. It felt like an emotional tug of war and, as much as she might call for a referee’s intervention, she had already been pulled well and truly over that red line, she thought with a despairing surge of self-realisation.

Well, it was done now; she had finally allowed herself to care enough for someone and had been rejected...and she’d survived the experience. Well, for an entire fortnight she had... She took a deep, steadying breath. See, she was still breathing so it wasn’t terminal! So long as he never discovered that she lay in bed every night longing for him, she could cope.

At a distance he’d sent her nervous system into meltdown; this close to him there was no possibility she could pretend, to herself at least. But although she might have lost the ability to lie to herself, she could still fake it with the best of them in front of him.

‘Would you like coffee?’

‘No.’ She took out the file and put it on his desk. ‘I’ve made some notes,’ she offered.

He looked at her blankly.

‘The applications for the nanny,’ she said, all business. ‘Your message didn’t say, but I assumed this was what we were going to discuss?’

‘Ah, yes...I thought I might go and see Mattio later, take him for walk maybe?’

‘It’s Rosa’s afternoon off, I’m afraid,’ she said, unable to resist the dig.

Did he get it or had she been too subtle? It was hard to tell. The planes and angles of his face were designed to be inscrutable, though on anyone else she would have called the dark bands along the slashing angles of his cheekbones a blush.

‘You could come too.’

‘Come where?’ She regarded him warily, thinking that this encounter was all as tense and awkward as she’d imagined. Maybe he was working up to some sarcastic remark about her ducking out of sight at the stables the other week?

‘You like the rose gardens, I understand.’

Understand...understand from who? ‘What, have you got a spy network watching my every move?’ She was only half joking. ‘Fine, you really don’t have to ask my permission to take Mattio for a walk. Tomorrow?’ She raised a cool brow. The significance of his suit, beside the fact it made him look even more exclusive and unattainable, had not been lost on her.

‘I’ve obviously caught you on your way to...’

It could have been just about any place; he seemed to commute to many of the world’s capitals the way some people took a bus to the next town, only for him it was a private jet.

‘I just got back actually.’ Samuele reached for his tie, loosening the constriction at his neck. ‘I’d like to know how you think Mattio is getting on. If there are any changes you think should be made...any improvements...?’

He was delaying bringing up the real reason he wanted to talk to her, and he knew it. Finding the right words was not something that he normally struggled with but, in his defence, these particular words were of the life-changing variety. ‘Is there anything you need?’

‘Wouldn’t that be something better discussed with the new nanny? There are some very good candidates here, several with rave reviews.’ She was glad, of course, she told herself fiercely, that Mattio would be in the care of someone who came highly recommended by satisfied previous parents, who knew a lot more about child development than she did. She’d always known she had been a brief stopgap in a desperate situation, but the knowledge that her time left with Mattio was coming to a swift end felt like a heavy weight pressing on her chest.

‘I have...a...’ He paused and dragged a hand down his cleanly shaven cheek before clenching his long fingers into a fist. It was so unlike his normal cool, articulate self that she stared. Perhaps his thoughts were still on whatever high-powered business had taken him away from home this time.

The tension in the room was almost a physical presence; suddenly she couldn’t stand it any more and surged to her feet.

‘Look, shall I come back if you’re...busy,’ she hastily substituted, thinking distracted was nearer the mark.

He watched silently as she turned and moved towards the door, offering no opinion on what she’d just said... She stopped and swung back, the feelings that she had been suppressing suddenly bubbling to the surface and spilling out into hasty speech.

‘Look, I know it was just meaningless sex and I know that it’s not going to happen again, so treating me with simple basic civility is not going to raise my expectations for a repeat performance.’ Her dark angry eyes raked his face. ‘Are you punishing me for sleeping with you by ignoring me? I wasn’t stalking you the other morning, you know—I was just passing by. How was I to know you were some sort of horse whisperer? Oh, God!’ She finally ran out of breath but not nearly soon enough.

Her horror-filled eyes met his momentarily before she squeezed them closed, and with nothing to duck down behind this time, she covered her face with her hands instead.

She kept them there as his hands on her shoulders guided her back to the chair and then pushed her into it again.

‘It was the best meaningless sex I have ever had—you were the best meaningless sex I have ever had.’ Maybe meaningless sex was all he was capable of, Samuele thought bleakly. Not that he envied his father or his brother, but at least they had been capable of feeling a deep unselfish love for someone else, even if it had been based on lies.

Her hands fell away. ‘Am I meant to be flattered—?’ She broke off when she registered the expression on his face.

His eyes were filled with emotions too intense and complex for her to even begin to guess the cause and his grin lacked its normal voltage.

‘I could have phrased that better,’ he admitted, but that was clearly as much as he was prepared to admit.

‘It’s always nice to be good at something. I could put it on my next CV. Good with children and great at meaningless sex...’

He didn’t smile, but then she didn’t smile either; it had been a very bad joke.

The look in his eyes was really worrying her—he’d probably reject her concern, but what the hell? ‘What’s wrong?’

She didn’t really expect a response to her blunt question, not one so unambiguous, or immediate, or sad.

‘It would have been my brother’s twenty-ninth birthday today.’

The last vestiges of her animosity and resentment shrivelled away and her tender heart ached with empathy for the pain etched on his face.

‘Hearing people here talk about him, he sounded as if he was a good person.’

He nodded. ‘He would have been a wonderful father and I think he would think you are acting like a wonderful mother—’

Was this his subtle way of saying she had overstepped her authority?

‘I know I’m not Mattio’s mother.’

‘You’re more of a mother to him than the one he’s had,’ he pushed out in a bitter voice. ‘I’ve never previously thought that a mother figure was essential for a child’s well-being and development, but I think I was wrong.’

‘You’re not going to give him back to Violetta!’ she cried in horror. ‘I know that legally she is his mother but—’

‘No, I’m not letting him go back to Violetta,’ he promised, the metallic glint in his eyes as hard as his voice.

Some of the tension left her shoulders but Maya, who had surged to her feet, stayed standing. Samuele moved around the desk and sat on the edge facing her, now at eye level, his long legs stretched out in front of him.

‘And apparently, we are to expect a wedding invitation from her soon.’

‘So what does that mean? Do you think that she’ll try to take Mattio back?’

‘I would say that’s inevitable.’

‘But she doesn’t love him!’

‘You know how convincing she can be, Maya.’

Her eyes fell as she remembered how easily her half-sister had fooled her. ‘Oh, God! But this Charlie she’s marrying...didn’t you say he doesn’t want children?’ she cried, clinging to this straw of hope, not wanting to contemplate Mattio being caught up in a toxic tug of war.

‘I have no doubt that before long Charlie will do anything she asks just to keep her happy. It’s what Cristiano did.’

‘But she’ll abandon Mattio again! And this time, you might not find him.’ Her face creased in anguish at the thought. ‘You can’t let her do that to him,’ she declared fiercely.

‘I have no intention of allowing her to do that. I intend to make a full custody claim. In the meantime I will keep paying up just to keep her quiet. It’s better for now if she thinks she is winning.’

‘Paying up?’ Comprehension hit her. ‘She is blackmailing you?’

He shrugged and gave a dry smile. ‘Very carefully worded blackmail, but essentially yes.’

‘But isn’t her Charlie disgustingly rich...?’

‘It’s not about the money for Violetta—this is about her wreaking revenge on me for thwarting her claim to half the Agosti estate. And it’s about power. Remember, she does hold a trump card, actually more than one. You said it to me yourself back at your flat, didn’t you? Any court will initially favour a mother over other family members, and Mattio needs a mother in his life at least for the early years.’

She fixed him with an unwavering gaze and wondered at what age he imagined that you stopped needing your mother.

‘The obvious solution is for me to marry.’

‘So have you changed your mind about marriage?’ she asked, taken aback.

‘Not about marriage as an institution, no, but about being married, yes.’

‘Is there a difference?’

‘I think if true love,’he drawled contemptuously, ‘really existed, then marriage would be redundant. Two people wouldn’t need a legal framework to trap them together.’

‘Trap...?’

‘Oh, I know divorce is relatively simple nowadays, but so many hang on in there when it’s obvious it’s beyond hope of saving. Marriage is just a contract, not some sort of magical spell that grants eternal happiness and joy. If it’s drawn up with both parties’ interests in mind, the duration of the contract is flexible and there are no unreasonable expectations like monogamy, then I see no reason why it couldn’t be successful.’

‘Successful maybe, but it’s not really marriage, is it?’ This cold-blooded description horrified her.

‘An open marriage.’

‘So not really marriage at all, then! Because marriage is about faith, trust...’ She couldn’t bring herself to say love or even think the word while she was in the same room as Samuele.

‘Marriage in this case is about securing the future security and happiness of my brother’s child.’

‘Of course, but—’ Her thoughts skidded to an abrupt stop and she had to try and conceal a gasp of shock. She had been hanging onto a rock wall of denial by her fingernails for weeks and she’d finally lost her grip.

Not being able to say the word in a man’s presence wasn’t exactly one of the most recognised symptoms of being in love, but, nevertheless, she was.

She had fallen in love with a man who was capable of giving his love and loyalty to a child that carried the bloodline he was so proud of, and to the land that was his heritage. A man who thought marriage might work, but only if you took love out of the equation. There was no room in his life for a woman, no room for her.

She wasn’t sure if it was a bitter laugh or a despairing sob that was locked in her throat, but it hurt as she remembered that she’d always believed not falling in love with the wrong man was a matter of choice. She marvelled now at her own arrogance and was suddenly deeply fearful for her future.

‘So you see that I didn’t ask you here to talk about nannies, because I am very much hoping that there will be no need for one.’

She had started shaking her head. ‘You want me to stay on here until you’ve found a suitable wife?’

‘I want you to stay on here—but as my wife.’

He watched her drop down into the chair she had recently vacated. Luckily it was still there, though he doubted she would have noticed if she’d landed on the floor.

‘That is insane!’ Her laugh was edged with hysteria. ‘The only thing we have in common is Mattio.’

‘Isn’t that enough?’ His shoulders lifted as his dark eyes moved over her face, lingering on the plump curve of her lips. ‘But actually it’s not true. We also have a similar sexual appetite, don’t we? What we have, between us—that kind of chemistry is rare, cara, and exceptional sex is even rarer.’ Two years of enjoying the pleasures of Maya’s body and exhausting his hunger for her would surely compensate for any temporary loss of freedom.

Breathing hard by the time he finished speaking, Maya shook her head in an effort to free her mind from the spell of his smoky voice and the erotic images his words had evoked.

‘Yes, we do have Mattio.’ His delivery was now flat and cool. ‘And he deserves the very best. You are the best for him, and there is the blood connection between you, which, given the circumstances, could be a significant factor.’ He paused, his crazily long lashes veiling his eyes momentarily.

‘I know he’s the last bit of your brother you have left and the heir to—’

‘He is the heir to the Agosti name,’ Samuele cut in. ‘And the responsibility that goes with it. But he is not Cristiano’s child.’

The blood left her face and her heart went into high gear. She could hardly hear past the dull thud in her own chest; whatever she had expected to hear, this was definitely not it. ‘What are you saying?’ she whispered, her eyes trained on his face.

‘That, unlike you, I have no blood connection with Mattio,’ he said roughly, in a voice that cracked with the effort to keep it free of emotion.

‘This is the thing that Violetta is blackmailing you about.’

He shrugged. ‘It’s her trump card.’

‘How long have you known?’

‘Cristiano told me before he died, when he asked me to keep Mattio safe, to take care of him.’

‘Your brother knew that the baby wasn’t his?’ Her thoughts raced to process the flow of information.

‘Violetta couldn’t hide it—the dates made it utterly impossible. Cristiano told me he was out of the country for a significant amount of time when Mattio was conceived. If my brother had lived he would have been the child’s father and that is all that mattered to him...’

Would he have been as big a man as his brother? It was a question Samuele had asked himself many times. How could any man know the answer until he was faced with the situation himself?

‘Mattio is an Agosti, he is my heir and I will do anything it takes to keep him safe and keep my promise to my brother.’

Including marrying me.

‘Who else knows about this?’ she asked.

‘I have told no one but you.’

His trust and giving her joint responsibility for the secret he had shared with her changed things in a way she could not put words to—it altered the dynamic between them.

Samuele trained his gaze on her face. ‘I’m asking for two years of your life... You would still be young enough later to go on and have a family of your own,’ he pointed out, conscious of an odd ache in his chest at the thought of her holding children she’d created with another man. ‘There would, of course, be the option to extend that period should both parties be agreeable, and the golden handshake you’ll receive at the termination of the marriage would obviously mean that you’d be able to maintain the living standards you’d have become accustomed to.’

‘I don’t give a damn about money!’ she snapped. She wanted his love and he was offering her a soulless marriage.

He watched as she covered her face with her hands again and felt a tug of guilt.

‘We have nothing in common... Look at this place,’ she said, spreading her hands wide to encompass the room and everything beyond.

‘We do. We both love Mattio.’

The response cut right through her defences and directly into her weakness. Love... She did love Mattio, but she loved Samuele too. Only what the heart wants the heart can’t always have... But isn’t it better to enjoy what the heart can have while it lasts? that insidious voice tempted.

Halfway through the internal dialogue she realised that she was actually considering it. Maybe he read the self-revelation on her face because he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a small box.

He opened the box, flicking the catch up with his finger to reveal a velvet lining that was old and worn. Maya wasn’t looking at the box, but the prize it contained, a prize that would be a great big fat lie on her finger.

‘This was my grandmother’s, with a few greats added, who was Russian originally. I repurchased it quite recently.’ Along with several other items with a similar Russian royal family provenance. He could already see in his mind’s eye the emerald necklace in the stunning enamelled setting sitting comfortably between Maya’s lovely breasts... The image came with a distracting rush of that mix of painful yet pleasurable heat.

With a tiny gasp she put her hand to her mouth, her big eyes going from the ring to his face and back again. Even he could see that the square-cut emerald surrounded with clusters of brilliant diamonds, set on a wide gold band etched with a scroll pattern and inlaid with yet more precious stones, was stunningly beautiful.

She shook her head.

‘People often marry because there is a baby,’ he pressed. ‘The baby might not be ours, but is this situation so very different? The principle is the same, securing the welfare of a vulnerable child.’

Maya looked up at him, loving every line, every carved angle and patrician hollow of his face... She also loved Mattio and she knew her heart would break if she left him. She had so much love to give, so wasn’t it genuinely better to give it even knowing that, in this case, it would never be returned?

It was as if all her secret dreams of love and her worst nightmares about abandonment had collided. She couldn’t possibly see how this would end well for her, but Samuele was right about one thing: Mattio had to be protected.

Her hand shook as he slid the ring on her finger. It was a perfect fit.

‘I have one stipulation. I don’t think that monogamy is an unrealistic expectation.’ She could stand many things, but that was the one betrayal that she knew would totally crush her.

There was a pause, then he said slowly, ‘I think I can accommodate that.’

She immediately started tugging the ring off her finger. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked sharply.

‘Taking it off. I can’t walk round with a fortune on my finger. We can wait until things are official and I’ve told my family.’ Oh, God, my family! she groaned inside.

‘Things are already official, so I see no reason to wait. It is the formal opening of the Villa Agosti gallery in Florence in two weeks, so your first official role as my bride-to-be will be to act as hostess.’

‘I’m not really a front-of-house sort of girl, Samuele. I am more backstage, prop moving, that sort of thing. I thought I’d just be doing nursery things.’

‘You will be doing all the things that would be expected of my fiancée,’ he said flatly.

The emphasis on all made her sensitive tummy muscles quiver. ‘What,’ she asked, her alarm shifting up a gear as he framed her face with his hands, ‘are you doing?’ Silly question—it was pretty obvious what he was doing.

The kiss was long and hard and depleted her of any final remnants of resistance. ‘I am making it official,’ he rasped throatily, before picking her up and sitting her on the desk, then slowly pushing her back until she lay there watching through half-closed eyes as he threw his tie across the room.

‘What if someone comes in?’ As resistance went it was pretty half-hearted.

‘If you even notice, cara, I will be deeply insulted.’

Her breath quickened. ‘You make a lot of assumptions...’

He gave a wolfish grin, oozing arrogance from every perfect pore as he planted a hand flat on the wooden surface either side of her face. ‘I don’t think it is an assumption—’ she whimpered low in her throat as his scorching lips moved up the column of her neck ‘—to say that we definitely do not need a rule book in our bedroom.’