The Parenti Marriage: The Reluctant Surrender

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‘I shall never be that woman,’ she told him passionately. ‘I shall never have a child. Never! And as for…for what happened, I wish with all my heart that it had not.’

She meant it, Saul recognized, and he nodded his head and informed her crisply, ‘That makes two of us. For once it seems we are in accord.’

As he strode past her to the door Giselle turned her back to him and pretended to be engrossed in the plans laid out on the large desk beside her.

Back in his own office, though, Saul discovered that neither Giselle nor their kiss was easy to put out of his mind. Last night in his impressively elegant Chelsea townhouse Saul hadn’t been able to sleep, despite the comfort of his bed with its stratospherically expensive Egyptian cotton sheets, changed and smoothed to perfection every day by the small and discreet army of service staff provided by the agency he used, because Giselle had got under his skin as effectively as a handful of grit placed under those sheets to deliberately irritate him. And now he couldn’t erase her from his thoughts.

In fact her presence in his thoughts had gone way beyond mere irritation, Saul acknowledged, remembering how he had watched the dawn breaking, its grey light coming in through the bedroom window that he preferred to keep open to the light, etching smudged lines across the glass. That dull dawn light would have suited Giselle Freeman, he thought unkindly, with her too-often-washed black suit and her pale hair and skin.

Too late Saul realised his mistake, as the image that immediately formed inside his head was not one that focused on the shabbiness of Giselle’s clothes but instead on the way her shirt pulled against her breasts.

His head might be willing to create an unflattering image of her, but his memory was not being anything as like as co-operative—and as for his body!

Against his will he remembered what it had felt like to hold her. If he closed his eyes now he would almost be able to feel her body trembling against his own, inciting within him the desire to cover her mouth with his and take the sweet, soft movement of her lips hostage. He could imagine the weight of her slender body leaning against his, producing an effect on him as erotic as if she had physically and deliberately placed her hand on his sex and openly caressed him. He could visualise her breasts, naked and revealed for his pleasure. As a young man one of his first sexual experiences had been with an older woman who had liked him to fill his mouth with ice before emptying it to take her hot, swollen nipple into the icy chill of his mouth. She loved the sensuality of his ice-cold mouth against her sex-hot breast. He thought of Giselle, shuddering wildly under such an embrace, her fingers entwined with his as he pinioned her hands back and suckled on her nipples until she was writhing with the pleasure of his caress.

Abruptly Saul dragged his thoughts back under the control of his mind. He’d never been a fan of cold showers, but right now that was exactly what he needed—and being forced to acknowledge that didn’t please him one little bit.

Saul wasn’t used to anything whatsoever in his life not being under his control, never mind his own body.

It was as though for some reason his own flesh was rebelling against him. What other logical explanation could there be for its maddening insistence on telling him that it found Giselle desirable when he had strictly forbidden it to do any such thing?

Swiftly Saul mentally reviewed the women he had taken to bed over the last five years. He’d never felt any need to prove himself as a man via a list of sexual conquests, but his sexual appetite had been sharpened on and satisfied by some very beautiful women—women who were skilled and adept at appealing to a man’s ego, women who did not steal car park spaces nor fill him with an irrational sense of guilt mixed with compassion which was then laced with anger because they wore shabby clothes that made them stand out from their peers in all the wrong ways.

That was it, Saul decided grimly. Put Giselle Freeman in the kind of clothes the other women in his employ wore and, instead of standing out from them, thus forcing him to focus on her, she would fade into the wallpaper, so to speak. Problem solved!

Impatiently Saul buzzed through to his PA and gave her his instructions. He heard her indrawn breath and demanded, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Saul, if I may say so, I don’t think that being told to present herself at Harvey Nichols’ personal shopping suite in order to be provided with some new work clothes so that her appearance fits with that of your other female employees will go down very well with Giselle.’

‘If she argues, tell her that she doesn’t have any choice,’ Saul commanded, before ending the call.

He was pleased—not just because he had solved his problem, but because, even more importantly, he felt that he had found the cause for it. He was focusing on Giselle because she stood out from the other women. Once she ceased to do that he would cease to notice her and when he ceased to notice he would cease to…To want her? He did not want her, Saul assured himself. Not really.

Wanting a woman—any woman—was the first dangerous step down a road he had no intentions of travelling. His father had almost worshipped his mother, and look where that had got him. Dead because his mother had refused to give up her aid work and his father had not been able to bear being apart from her. He never wanted to risk loving a woman to that extent. Better by far not to love at all—and that was exactly what he intended to do. He never intended to love and he never intended to have a child. Children were vulnerable—helpless hostages to fate, their emotions so tender that a parent could with the smallest sentence, the briefest gesture, accidentally scar them. He did not want the burden of carrying that responsibility.

His mother, in particular, had been burdened by the responsibility of having him. He could vividly remember how, after a wonderful fortnight spent with his parents, the first summer after he had gone to boarding school, he had begged his mother to allow him to stay with them all the time.

‘I could learn from books,’ he had told her. ‘You could teach me like you teach other kids—you and Papa.’

‘No, Saul,’ his mother had refused, quietly but firmly. ‘If your papa and I were to devote our time to you, then how could we do the work that is so important for helping all the thousands of children who do not have the advantages you have? They have so little and need so much.’

They have you. Saul remembered his eight-year-old self wanting to protest. But of course he had not done so, knowing how much such a comment would have displeased his mother, to whom it had been so important that he understood the needs of the children she worked with from war torn and disaster-struck parts of the world. Children so much more deserving of her time and her love than he himself.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_a04e6ab2-b360-5596-a75e-f56e20cbd85b)

‘SAUL has done what?’

Moira sighed silently to herself as she heard the note of outrage in Giselle’s voice.

‘He’s instructed me to arrange an appointment for you at Harvey Nichols for four this afternoon with one of their personal shoppers. He feels…’ The PA paused, trying to find the right words. ‘Saul has explained that because of the expense of your great-aunt’s healthcare you can’t afford to…’

‘To what?’ Giselle stopped her angrily. ‘To buy my own clothes?’

‘He simply felt it would be easier for you to fit in if you were provided with some suitable business outfits to wear whilst you are working here. He thought it would help you if—’

‘Help me? By embarrassing me like this?’

‘I don’t think for one minute that that was his intention, Giselle.’ Moira tried to comfort and placate her. ‘In fact I gained the impression that he rather admires you for what you are doing—as indeed I do myself. It can’t be easy for you.’

Giselle’s body stiffened as she heard the pity in the older woman’s voice.

‘What can’t be easy for me? Wearing cheap clothes? I can think of plenty of things that would be far harder to bear.’

Moira tried another tack.

‘A large part of Saul’s business comes from the international high finance set, and it is all about convincing them that becoming partners with him and investing in his construction projects will bring them good returns. For that reason he believes that it is important to maintain the right kind of image. We have a mainly young staff, and their standards of grooming tend to be high.’

‘So it isn’t for my benefit that he has given instructions that I am to be shamed and patronised, then,’ Giselle challenged her, ‘but for his own?’

‘For his own and for yours,’ Moira insisted.

‘I won’t do it,’ Giselle told her fiercely. ‘He can get someone else from the firm—in fact I wish he would.’

‘Do you? That would mean being sent back to your employers in disgrace. Saul is their most important client. I can understand how you feel, but you have your CV and your future to think of. And with your greataunt’s care to provide, taking any kind of risk with your earning potential might not be a good idea.’

What Moira was saying made good sense, Giselle knew. But that did not mean that she had to welcome hearing it.

The initial surge of adrenalin-boosted fury Moira’s announcement had brought subsided now, leaving Giselle feeling emotionally raw and shaky.

Moira put her hand on Giselle’s arm. They were in Giselle’s office, where she had come to pass on Saul’s instructions.

‘I do understand how you must feel, and indeed how I would feel myself, were I you,’ she told her calmly.

No, she didn’t, Giselle thought inwardly. How could she? How could anyone? She was the one who had been subjected to the humiliation Saul was heaping on her. She was the one who had been mocked and taunted and…and kissed by him until she was reduced to a molten aching longing.

‘I cannot and will not allow Saul to buy my clothes. And since I cannot afford to buy the kind of clothes for myself he seems to deem necessary for those who work for him—’

‘It is not Saul who will be paying for them; it is the company. If as an employee you were required to wear a uniform you would not object to your employer providing that uniform for you, would you?’ Moira challenged briskly, and continued without giving her time to respond. ‘This is just the same. Saul requires you to wear the same “uniform” as his other employees.’

‘I won’t do it,’ Giselle repeated. ‘And I shall go and tell him so.’

‘You can’t,’ Moira told her, stepping in front of her as Giselle made to head for the door. ‘He isn’t here. He’s flying to New York this morning. Don’t make your mind up right now, Giselle. The appointment isn’t until four o’clock.’

This was her punishment for last night, Giselle decided after Moira had gone. She was sure of it.

Her mobile rang whilst she was still brooding on her situation. Her caller was Emma.

‘You’ll never guess what,’ Emma told her without preamble as soon as Giselle had answered the call. ‘Bill Jeffries has been called in from annual leave and suspended from work until further notice because Saul Parenti has queried some of his costings. And I should warn you, Giselle, that Bill is blaming you—and gunning for you as well. You’re lucky you’re working at Parenti’s and not over here, I can tell you.’

Listening to Emma, Giselle gripped her mobile more tightly, torn between disbelief that Saul had actually taken her disclosures seriously enough to report them to the partnership for further investigations, the realisation that she must after all have been wrong about him trying to trick her, and the recognition that the door to her escape route from Parenti had just swung closed on her.

An hour later, on her way to the communal coffee machine, one of the other girls smiled at her and asked her if she was settling in okay. Giselle couldn’t help but notice how smart Aimee looked. Her black suit wasn’t shiny from being over-washed—but then it had probably never been anywhere near a washing machine Giselle reflected ruefully. It looked far too expensive for that.

‘Saul’s gorgeous, isn’t he?’ Aimee chatted whilst she got her coffee and Giselle queued next to her. ‘Pity he’s so anti-commitment and settling down. Mind you, if he wasn’t I dare say we’d all be trying our best to become the future Mrs Saul Parenti. There’s no chance of that, though. Not with him having said so often and so publicly that he intends to remain single and family-free. Oh, it’s my birthday at the end of the month—you’re welcome to join us for drinks after work if you’re free.’

The other girls here did seem to be welcoming and friendly, Giselle acknowledged, and the drinks invitation was one she would have liked to take up if…

If what? If she could afford to dress like they did?

Some of the coffee she had just made herself slopped over onto the counter as her hand shook betrayingly. It wasn’t just expensive clothes that separated her from her co-workers, Giselle reminded herself. There was their differing attitudes to Saul as well. The reason he didn’t want to commit and settle down was probably because he couldn’t imagine any woman ever being good enough for him, Giselle thought cynically as she made her way back to her office, with her coffee. They seemed eager and ready to adore him, whilst she loathed him.

By three o’clock she had made up her mind what she had to do over the issue of Saul providing her with new work clothes—or rather she had had that decision made for her as a result of Emma’s telephone call.

As angry and resentful as it made her, she would have to accept Saul’s diktat.

When she went to inform Moira of her decision she couldn’t bring herself to meet the older woman’s gaze.

Right now there was nothing she longed for more than the financial independence to refuse both this secondment and the clothes he deemed good enough to go with it. But of course she couldn’t. Not whilst her great-aunt was so financially dependent on her. She owed her elderly relative so much, and nothing—not even her own pride—could be allowed to stand in the way of doing everything she could to repay the debt of loyalty and love she owed her.

Without her great-aunt she would have ended up in a children’s home—or worse. Giselle felt the old familiar sickness and fear rising up inside her. It was Saul’s fault that she was feeling like this, with her old fears being dragged up from their burial ground to torment her.

Giselle could feel Moira’s pity for her in the silence surrounding them.

‘It will make your working life here much easier if you can accept that Saul is a law unto himself,’ she told Giselle, breaking that silence. ‘And that he does not like having his decisions questioned.’

Half an hour later, stepping out into the street, Giselle witnessed a young couple stopping to exchange a tender kiss and her heart turned over inside her chest.

A dangerous emotion was filling her—a sharp, searing feeling of pain and regret because she would never be kissed like that, because for her there would never be a time when she was held in a man’s arms in an intimate moment of trust and love between them.

That emotion was still worrying her over an hour later, as she sat in the private fitting room of Harvey Nichols’ personal shopping suite with a cup of coffee in her hand whilst she waited for the shopper and her assistants to return with a selection of clothes for her to try on.

Why, after so many years of managing perfectly well not to think about all that she would be missing because of her vow to remain single, had her emotions and her body betrayed her now, by reacting in the way that they had done to Saul, of all men?

Her hand shook, spilling coffee onto the skirt of her cheap suit.

What was happening to her? She had always known that there was no escape for her from the burden she must carry. She had known that and accepted it, thankful for the fact that no one else other than her great-aunt knew of the terrible secret she had to conceal. Surely she had been tormented enough by her own guilt? She didn’t need the added cruelty of what she had felt yesterday, held against Saul’s body.

There was no place in her life and never would be for the age-old instinctive female need for the support of a man strong enough to carry her troubles should she herself grow too weary to carry them. No place either for the white-hot spear of female desire so strong that the ache of it was still pulsing within her.

The problem was that she had grown so accustomed to shutting herself off from what most women would consider ‘normal’ reactions to the male sex that she had grown complacent, she tried to reassure herself as she drank her coffee. Saul Parenti did not have any special magical powers that made her more vulnerable to him than she was to other men. She had simply allowed her protective guard to slip a little, that was all. Nothing more than that.

The squeak of the wheels of a garment rail being moved alerted her to the fact that the personal shopper was returning. Quickly finishing her coffee, Giselle smoothed down the dark material of her skirt and tried to mask her embarrassment at even being there.

‘We often notice with customers who have lost weight that they find it hard to judge what will be the right fit for them,’ the personal shopper informed Giselle with an encouraging smile half an hour later, after she had coaxed her into a black suit, apparently from a designer popular with many working women.