скачать книгу бесплатно
‘And thank you for that reminder,’ he echoed with a soft jeer. An arrogant smile curved his lips for a fleeting second. ‘I chose to leave—why can’t you?’
‘I’m not like you,’ she said. ‘I can’t just walk out. I can’t talk to Susan about it—she doesn’t know about any of this.’ Katie was protecting her on several levels. ‘I’d buy out the debt myself, if I could, but I have hardly any money.’
His gaze narrowed. ‘You said your sauces sell well?’
She bristled at his belittling tone. ‘They do okay. They’re even stocked in Sybarite, here in London.’
She’d been so delighted when the gourmet deli had put in a repeat order only a week ago, taking almost all her stock.
‘Sybarite? Wonderful.’ He said with light mockery. ‘Then why aren’t you paid accordingly?’
‘I put all the profit back into the business… I don’t need a lot personally.’
His eyebrows shot up.
‘I live in,’ she explained irritably. ‘I have accommodation and food. I don’t need fancy things.’
He skimmed a glance over her outfit and she shrank at the hint of disdain in his eyes.
But then she fought back. ‘I knew things weren’t good—that’s why I started the garden tours as well. I owe it to them to work hard…to help Susan.’
She’d heard that phrase so many times and Brian was right, she did owe them. They’d plucked her from a life of poverty and neglect… Who knew what her life would have been like if it hadn’t been for their generosity?
‘You don’t owe them the rest of your life,’ Alessandro said bluntly.
‘No, but I love Susan,’ she said fiercely. ‘And she needs me now.’
‘There’s no one else? Not her husband?’ he said dryly.
Katie froze at the disparagement in his tone. ‘All the times I’ve tried to stand up to Brian… In the end I’ve given in…’
‘Because of Susan?’
‘Yes.’
But Alessandro was right, wasn’t he? She didn’t have to sacrifice her whole life.
‘I guess because of her…he has a hold over me,’ she said lamely.
‘And I don’t?’
‘Of course not.’
But she couldn’t meet Alessandro’s eyes. He had a hold over her in a way that she could never admit to herself, let alone to him.
‘So you think that if you marry someone else then you won’t have to marry Carl?’
‘Yes.’
But when he put it as baldly as that it sounded crazy.
‘Why me?’ he asked.
‘Because you’re outrageous enough to actually do it,’ she said bluntly.
No one would expect the infamous playboy to settle, and somehow she thought he might enjoy that unpredictability.
‘And, according to the rich list, you have more money than you know what to do with.’
‘Now, that’s what I originally expected.’ His twisting smile held little mirth. ‘You want me to rescue White Oaks financially? Why not just ask me for the money? Why do we have to marry?’
‘Because it’s a language Brian understands. If I’m not married—without the protection of a man,’ she spat sarcastically, ‘I’ll still be controllable. If I’m married, he’ll back off. I don’t want just to be out of reach. I want to be repulsive.’
‘Repulsive?’ Alessandro echoed awfully. ‘And there’s no better way to do that than by marrying me? Wow.’ He leaned forward. ‘You make it sound so eighteenth-century… Will you be sullied for ever if you’re with me?’
‘Married to you, yes.’
She’d never forgotten the look of anger on Brian’s face when he’d seen an article featuring Alessandro in the newspapers.
‘Brian will hate that I’ve come to you.’
He drew in a sharp breath.
Katie suddenly realised what she’s said and sent him a contrite look. ‘I’m sorry—’
‘Don’t apologise for being honest.’ He watched her for a moment. ‘You’ll do anything to look after Susan?’
‘Almost anything.’ A welter of guilt swamped Katie.
His sympathetic glance was laced with sarcasm. ‘You’d rather sell yourself to a wealthy tyrant of your own choosing?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So, between Carl and me, I’m the lesser of two evils? The more attractive?’
A frisson of danger lent steel to his light query. She suddenly felt afraid of something, felt fear slicing through her too sensitive, too thin skin.
‘You’re temporary,’ she said bravely. ‘You like temporary. You never hold on to anything for long. Not women or companies. You take what you want and move on.’
‘You really think you’ve done your research on me, don’t you?’ He looked down at her, grimly thoughtful. ‘How can you go back there if you defy Brian so overtly?’
‘I think he’ll accept it when he realises his financial problems are resolved. And he’ll see he can’t reach me any more.’ She’d finally be free of his hold over her.
‘But what will Susan say about you marrying me for my money? Me, the spurned step-nephew, cast out all those years ago? Won’t she be disappointed in you?’
A flush of heat singed her skin. ‘I wouldn’t tell her… I’d have to…’
‘Fake it?’ he jeered softly. ‘Pretend you’re in love with me?’
‘It wouldn’t be for long. Then White Oaks will be safe and Susan can stay there for as long as she has left. Brian can’t bully us into anything. He can’t send either of us away if I own it. I’ll have the power.’
Alessandro regarded her steadily. ‘Sounds like a fine plan when you put it like that.’ He hunched down in front of her and whispered. ‘But what’s in it for me?’
She stared into his gleaming eyes, wondering how to convince him—playing to his sympathetic side seemed unlikely to succeed. ‘I thought you might enjoy it…’ she muttered.
‘What—being married to you?’ That tantalising smile curved his lips, all arrogance.
She blushed furiously. ‘Having revenge on them.’
He pressed his hand to his heart in mock distress. ‘You really don’t think much of me, do you?’ he said slowly, but that edge was still in his eyes.
‘You don’t want to take something from them when they took something from you?’
That glint sharpened. ‘What do you think they took?’
‘Your father’s company.’ She swallowed, remembering that fight and the fury with which Alessandro had stormed out of White Oaks.
There was a moment of pure stillness. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking behind those fiercely burning eyes. She only knew that he was thinking rapidly—but what he was thinking was clear only to him.
‘Hasn’t all your research told you I’m more successful than they are now?’ he asked sharply, standing up and stepping back from her. ‘I don’t waste my time thinking about the past. I don’t need their business. I don’t need your sauces. And I certainly don’t need your insane proposal.’
His rejection hit her in a low, dulling blow. Of course he didn’t. Of course she couldn’t convince him. She was a fool for having thought this could work, but it had been her only plan. She’d been desperate. She still was desperate.
But in the face of his displeasure she fell back into her automatic safety mode. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered tonelessly. She’d been conditioned for years to apologise when confronted with conflict. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Angrily, he muttered something in Italian. Something that sounded viciously impolite. ‘What did you think was going to happen here today?’
She had no clue. She’d not really thought at all. The mad idea had come to her in the middle of the night. He was the only man she knew with the resources, maybe the motivation, and truthfully he had been her only hope. So she’d sneaked out early in the morning and caught the first train to London.
‘What does Carl say about it?’ Alessandro almost snarled. ‘Does he know the bride he’s buying is so unwilling? Can’t you bargain a better deal with him?’
‘He came to see me last night.’ Her skin crawled at the thought of Carl and what he’d said to her. ‘I’d hoped he meant for us to be married in name only, but…’
‘He wants you to have his babies?’ Alessandro’s whole demeanour seemed to sharpen.
It wasn’t funny, it was foul, and it made her escape all the more imperative. ‘He said he’ll take what he wants.’
And apparently he did want her…like that.
Alessandro swiftly strode further away from her. ‘But you don’t want him?’
‘Of course I don’t!’ The thought repulsed her.
Alessandro stood on the other side of his desk, leaning on it. There was a moment as he studied her. She saw him take a careful breath.
‘What if you were to marry me?’ His expression turned speculative. ‘You wouldn’t want to—?’
‘No!’ she interrupted vehemently.
‘No?’ He smiled at the interruption, and that crooked curve to his mouth was sinful. ‘What if I wanted to?’
It was horrendous how attractive his smile was—and that lightness to his eyes…
‘Really? Does your ego need to get any bigger?’ She glared at him.
He’d already said no to her. She already knew he wasn’t interested. He was just teasing her now—his amusement was audible.
‘We both know you have millions of other options,’ she said, completely flustered. ‘I wouldn’t get in your way.’
His eyebrows shot up. ‘Wouldn’t you?’ he asked dryly, before a soft laugh escaped him. ‘You as my wife would be willing to just stand by and watch me with other women?’
She flushed, her brain sending her that one image she’d successfully blocked for years—until today. Because she had watched him with another woman once.
She’d come across them accidentally. She’d been walking through the orchards, alone as always, when she’d spotted them lying in a grassy patch beneath a heavily flowering apricot tree. He had been shirtless and his jeans had been undone, slipping down his thighs. The muscles of his broad, bronzed back had moved powerfully as he’d bent over the pretty student who’d been arched beneath him.
Her sighing whispers had been too soft for Katie to decipher from that distance. But she’d heard the wickedness in the tone of his low, murmured reply and the breathless, rapid response of the woman he was bestowing carnal pleasure upon. He’d literally been devouring her.
Katie had frozen—not even hiding—fascinated and appalled at the sight of such complete intimacy—at his raw masculinity. She’d been an extremely sheltered young teen, still figuring things out and not really understanding what she was seeing.
To be honest, she still didn’t understand it. She’d never met a man who’d made her want to act so wantonly despite the threat of exposure. To be that hedonistic, that caught up in a moment that she wouldn’t care who was around to watch…
After only seconds she’d fled, with the sounds of that woman’s delight echoing in her ears.
She’d told herself it wasn’t her fault. If he was going to pleasure his girlfriend in the orchard—where anyone could have seen them—well, that was his problem. But she’d flushed almost purple that night, when he’d finally graced them with his presence at dinner that evening, almost half an hour late.
‘Got held up,’ he’d offered—not an apology, just a careless fact.
She’d seen him again in the village a few days later—with a different girl hungrily kissing him in an alleyway. His apparent infidelity to that first girl had shocked her. There’d been another girl only a couple of days later.
It had taken the young and naive Katie a while to realise he wasn’t actually in a relationship with any of them. No commitment, no mess—only fun. Alessandro had been incredibly popular and he hadn’t been afraid to make the most of it.
And it seemed every woman who’d crossed his path since was as eager to slide her legs apart and let him do whatever he liked between them… He hadn’t slowed down any in the decade since that last summer he’d come to the estate.
Katie’s quick Internet search on the train this morning had thrown up a billion pictures of him with a billion different women. All beautiful. All as enthusiastic as anything, judging by the look in their eyes. Alessandro Zetticci was an insatiable, arrogant playboy. Which actually made him perfect.
But he wasn’t having her. She wasn’t interested in any of that.
Only now he’d rounded his desk again. He gripped the armrests of her chair, bending so that his nose was only inches from her own. Dawning brilliance lit his eyes.
‘Would you watch, Katie?’ he asked.
Did he somehow know about that awful, embarrassing secret of her past?
‘You’re trying to intimidate me,’ she squeaked. ‘It’s not going to work. I’m not afraid of you.’
He laughed. ‘Perhaps you should be. But perhaps I’m not trying to intimidate you. Perhaps I’m testing you.’
‘For what?’
