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He still didn’t smile. ‘I don’t need you to remind me who you are, Katie.’
‘I wasn’t sure you’d remember—’
‘How could I possibly forget?’ Displeasure and disapproval flashed in his eyes.
Faltering at his unfriendly demeanour, Katie licked her dry lips. She’d done nothing to him. Certainly she’d meant nothing to him.
Alessandro Zetticci had stalked into Katie’s life when he was a sullen fifteen and she a very shy ten. His father, famed Italian chef Aldo Zetticci, had just married Brian’s sister Naomi. Brian and Naomi were close, so Aldo and Alessandro had joined the extended Fielding family for holidays at White Oaks—much to Alessandro’s obvious resentment.
Only a couple of years later Aldo had died. Alessandro and Naomi had then clashed on the future of his father’s food empire. Brian had backed Naomi. Petulant and fiery, Alessandro had fought hard, flaring up at Brian’s interference.
‘If you go now, you’ll never be welcome back here.’
Brian’s banishment of Alessandro had terrified her at the time.
‘Don’t mention him again.’
Brian had whirled on her when she’d fearfully asked where Alessandro had gone. She’d been too young to understand everything, but had known that in no way had it all been Alessandro’s fault. In any case, Alessandro’s ideas for his father’s company couldn’t have been that bad, given he’d gone on to build his own business with such success.
He’d always been determined and strong. But from the look in his eyes now he was also unforgiving.
Katie cleared her throat and forced herself to speak anyway. ‘I have a proposition for you.’
One jet-black eyebrow arched. ‘How intriguing.’
His tone couldn’t have sounded less intrigued or any more dismissive.
Irritation stiffened her. She was too desperate to cope with casual dismissal. ‘I work at White Oaks,’ she carried on. ‘I’ve developed some sauces made from our produce. They sell very well.’
She paused, because so far he was bored-looking. Her desperation swiftly blew up to all-out pain.
‘Cut to the chase, Katie,’ he drawled. ‘What do you want from me?’
She was so thrown by the reality of Alessandro in the flesh, so intimidated by that look in his eyes, that she forgot the little speech she’d carefully prepared to try to convince him. It just tumbled out with no further preamble.
‘I want you to marry me.’
His eyes widened, the black heart of his pupils all but swallowed the fiery brilliant blue. The rest of him didn’t move. He didn’t even seem to be breathing.
‘Not for real of course,’ she hastened to add awkwardly. ‘In name only. And not for long.’
‘You want me to marry you?’ he repeated slowly. ‘That was not what I expected you to say.’
Katie tensed, unable to read his expression, but then he threw back his unfairly handsome head and laughed. It seemed he’d not heard anything as entertaining in eons. And it was utterly insulting.
Scalding emotion curdled the raw acid in Katie’s stomach. All her life she’d strived to meet everyone else’s requests and demands as she’d desperately tried to fit in and stay safe. But in this instance she was sick of staying silent and being good. Because almost no one ever asked what she wanted.
Fury filled her, fuelled by total humiliation. ‘I’m so glad I could give you a joke for the day,’ she spat sarcastically. ‘Forget I ever said anything.’
‘I’m unlikely to ever forget that.’
He strolled around his desk with deceptively casual strides, swiftly moving to where she stood, only three feet into his office.
‘What are you doing?’ Her voice veered up in an embarrassing squawk as he stepped deep into her personal space.
He didn’t reply. Instead he surveyed her dispassionately, rather as if she was a curiosity in a natural history museum. Then he leaned closer still.
‘Are you sniffing me?’ Outraged, she flinched away from him.
‘Yes. Have you been drinking?’ He reached out and grasped her chin.
Katie stilled, attempting to fix him with a furious gaze.
Unconcerned, he turned her face to one side then the other, intently studying her features. ‘On drugs?’
‘What? No.’ She jerked free of his hold. ‘Look, I’m perfectly sane.’ The truth slipped out, and so did all the hurt and hopelessness. ‘I’m just in trouble, and you’re the only person I could think of who might be able to help me. Obviously you can’t, so I’ll leave now.’
She turned sharply as emotions whacked her with a one-two punch. She’d never been as embarrassed or as violently angry. She suddenly spun back, slamming her fury into his face.
‘I don’t know why I thought you’d understand the desire to protect the person you love most—to prevent her losing the thing she loves more than anything,’ she yelled at him. ‘I don’t know why I thought you’d ever understand that!’
He stared at her for a long second, his mouth compressed. Sudden emotion flared in his eyes and he stepped forward. ‘Katie—’
She shoved past him, rage giving her strength, but just as she reached the door he slammed his hand high above hers to hold it shut, stopping her from storming out. She tugged, but couldn’t beat his weight or strength and the door remained sealed. She tugged harder.
‘Katie, stop,’ he said eventually.
Belatedly she stilled, realising too late what an exhibition she was making of herself. She breathed hard, trying to block the sensations caused by his invasion of her personal space. He was right behind her, leaning so close she could feel his heat. Something insidious shifted inside her. Something deep…something tempting. Something she intuitively knew she needed to ignore.
She closed her eyes in embarrassment.
‘You can’t just storm in, demand something so outrageous and then flounce off without an explanation. You need to speak,’ he added firmly. ‘Sit down and start from the beginning.’
She remained locked in place for another mortified moment. He was right. And she’d been so wrong. She should never have come—what had she been thinking?
But he wasn’t going to let her leave without a proper explanation. And didn’t she owe him that at least? Hell, she was every bit the useless idiot Brian had called her…
Slowly she released the door handle and pivoted awkwardly on the spot. Because Alessandro didn’t stand back to give her room to move. He still had his palm pressed on the door, as if he didn’t trust her not to try to escape again. He was still so close she almost felt giddy.
Breathe, Katie, breathe.
But she was looking into his eyes and all kinds of confusion clouded her mind. She’d been such a fool to think she could handle him.
He gazed at her, his clear blue eyes compelling and uncharacteristically serious. ‘Take a seat and talk to me.’
He suddenly swung aside so she could walk back into the room.
She quickly bypassed him and sank into the nearest chair, her knees strangely wobbly. ‘White Oaks is in debt,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Apparently we’re about to lose it. Susan doesn’t know.’
‘But isn’t it Susan’s estate?’ Alessandro folded his arms and leaned back against the door, still blocking the exit.
‘Yes.’
Her foster mother had lived there all her life—had inherited it upon her parents’ death. And now, as she faced the disease that was slowly killing her, it was her sanctuary. Katie couldn’t sit back and watch Susan lose it.
‘But she left the business side of it to Brian when her health began to deteriorate. She focused on the gardens—you know she loves them. All these years…’
She shook her head. She’d had no idea that the estate finances were so dire—that Brian had mismanaged everything so badly and hidden it, to boot. His betrayal hurt.
‘He only told me the depth of the trouble we’re in yesterday.’
Katie couldn’t let Susan lose all that was her love and her life. She’d thought the garden tours she’d organised and the sauce business she’d started would be enough to keep the books she’d seen balanced, but she’d been wrong.
‘Brian says he’s made a deal. If I marry Carl Westin, Carl will absorb our debt and Susan and Brian can stay at White Oaks.’
‘If you marry Carl Westin?’ Alessandro pushed away from the door and walked towards her, his gaze narrowing. ‘Of Westin Processing?’
‘You know him?’
Alessandro looked shocked. ‘He’s only a little younger than Brian—’
‘And a lot older than me, yes.’
‘Not to mention unreliable and—’
‘Creepy,’ she interrupted fiercely. ‘I can’t marry him.’
Alessandro rubbed his hand across his mouth, hiding the smile that felled a thousand women. ‘This is twenty-first-century London, Katie. I don’t think Brian can bully you into a marriage you don’t want.’
Discomfort clawed at her innards. Alessandro didn’t know the subtle ways in which her foster father had undermined her over the years. How did she explain something so complex? Explain that something so important had been shredded by stealth over time? By subtle comments and control?
‘There’s physical force, but then there’s the more emotional kind…’ Her throat tightened, shame silencing her. She hated her powerlessness, her lack of real strength.
The remnants of his smile faded as he watched her struggle to finish her sentence. ‘Your supposed debt to Susan?’
It wasn’t ‘supposed’. Susan had cared for Katie. She was the first—the only—person to have done that.
Katie had gone to them when she was almost two, when Susan had finally got Brian to agree to fostering after they’d spent years trying for children of their own. But Brian had never agreed to adoption, and there’d always been the threat that Katie could be sent back into the care system.
In truth, Brian was as controlling of Susan as he was of Katie. It was only that Susan seemed mostly blind to it.
‘She’s vulnerable.’ She glanced at Alessandro. ‘She’s in a wheelchair now. She can’t be left alone for long.’
As Susan’s neurological disease progressed, she lived in her own world, safe in the grounds of the estate. A world Katie cared for with her.
‘It would kill her to have to leave White Oaks.’ Katie had to keep it secure for Susan until the end. ‘It’s her life.’
She loved her gentle foster mother dearly. Susan had welcomed her, and they’d spent so much time together sheltered on the estate… Though over the last decade their roles had slowly reversed. Katie now read to Susan, kept her company and comfortable. She’d do almost anything for her.
But Katie couldn’t talk to Susan about how bad things had become financially, or about Brian’s insane plan—she was too fragile to be burdened with that. For a while now Katie had been shielding Susan from several problems Brian had wrought.
‘So, if Carl gets you, White Oaks stays safe for Susan.’ Alessandro summed it up bluntly. ‘But why does Carl want you?’
She flinched, hit by a hot flash of embarrassment. Yeah, she was hardly catch of the day. ‘You don’t think he finds me attractive?’ she mumbled, knowing her face was blushing beetroot.
He had the grace to shoot her a rueful look. ‘If he actually wanted you he wouldn’t woo you with an ultimatum like this.’
‘Maybe he can’t get anyone else to say yes to him? Maybe he thinks he’ll get an obedient wife?’ she said bitterly. ‘This way he’ll be able to control me. He’s used to getting what he wants, however he has to do it.’
Alessandro stepped towards her, the whisker of a smile in his eyes. ‘And you think I’m different?’
A hot fury built within her. ‘I’m sure you’re used to getting what you want. Fortunately you don’t want me.’
He blinked and that smile fully resurfaced. ‘How do you know I don’t want you?’
She laughed bitterly. ‘You never so much as looked at me.’
‘If I recall, the last time we met you were little more than a child. It would have been unacceptable in every way if I’d looked at you then.’ He angled his head. ‘But I’m looking at you now.’
As if that was going to make any difference!
‘Don’t bother,’ she snapped. ‘You have hundreds of gorgeous women you really want. All of them. At once—’ She broke off, realising she’d got herself into a quagmire of excruciating embarrassment.
‘Hundreds at once?’ he echoed with mild incredulity.
‘Oh, whatever.’ She shook off his amusement. ‘You know you don’t need to threaten a woman to get your way with her. You don’t need to use blackmail—emotional or otherwise.’
‘But that’s what Brian does to you.’ All amusement had dropped from his expression.
She drew in a deep breath and sighed. ‘He’s used to me doing what he says.’
Because she’d always worked to keep the peace, for Susan. But in asking this of her Brian had gone too far. It wasn’t a business deal he’d arranged, it was marriage—intimate and personal. And Brian’s brutal response to her refusal had horrified her. So she’d decided to figure out a deal of her own with the one man Brian despised. The only man she’d been able to think of.
‘But you’re not his daughter,’ Alessandro said.
‘Thank you for that reminder,’ she said stiffly, swallowing back the burn of pain.
It was stupid how much it hurt. There’d always been those little comments from Brian—constantly reminding her that she wasn’t family, that she had to be grateful and good, keep her on her best behaviour… The few times she’d tried to fight back, he’d squashed her.
‘I’m no blood relative to any of them.’
And that was what gave Brian even more power over her.
‘You don’t think of me as family?’ Alessandro asked.
She glanced up at him. ‘You weren’t there. How could you be?’
Alessandro had only appeared from boarding school during holidays and formal occasions. Her aloof ‘step-cousin’ couldn’t have been less interested in forming a relationship with his new family.
