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Her lashes dipped over her troubled eyes. ‘I have no intention of trying to deny anything that he has done.’
‘Why else are you requesting this interview? But then, perhaps you expect the same special treatment that your father enjoyed when he worked here.’
Her uneasiness escalated. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘John Ridge treated your father more as a friend than an employee and he could never understand why improved productivity consistently failed to deliver more profits. That’s why he finally sold up.’ Angelo watched her lose colour and duck her head at that news. He was grimly amused by a sensitivity that he knew he would use against her. It was second nature to him to pick up on other people’s weak points and utilise them for his own benefit. ‘He’s gutted now that he understands how his trust was betrayed.’
‘Dad is very ashamed. I know that doesn’t change anything—’
‘You’re living in your own little world, Miss Hamilton. Right now my staff are trying to find a way for this business to survive without massive redundancies.’
Her tummy executed a sick flip of alarm. Already cringing at the reminder of how John Ridge had been deceived, she was even more dismayed to learn what a precarious position the company had been left in. Angelo Riccardi’s rebuke struck her as horribly well deserved; she had failed to consider the wider repercussions that might arise from her father’s embezzlement. In fact she had naively assumed that the future of Furnridge Leather would be more secure as a part of a much larger organisation like Rialto. The risk of redundancies appalled her since the furniture company was the main local employer.
‘I didn’t know…I genuinely had no idea matters were so serious.’
‘How could you not know? A large amount of money has been misappropriated.’ Angelo was discovering that the anger roused by the disclosure of her identity had gone to be replaced by a growing buzz of satisfaction. Why not? She was Hamilton’s daughter. He now had two people to play with, instead of only one, and as he was already discovering she was a very beautiful plaything with an entire repertoire of responses that he had not seen in a long time. ‘No business of this size could weather such a financial loss without shedding staff.’
A gleam of optimism lightened her anxious gaze and she lifted her head. ‘But that’s why I’m here…to talk about how that money could be repaid.’
‘Repaid?’ Angelo queried, his narrowed gaze skimming over her with renewed intensity. The upward tilt of her eyes and the sprinkling of freckles across her nose had an appeal he could not define. The trouser suit might be drab and un-flattering to her frame, but it was outshone by a radiant beauty that continually drew his attention back to her.
‘My father has property interests that could be sold and the proceeds put towards repayment.’ Eager to put that point across, Gwenna partially evaded his gaze as she became aware of the force of his scrutiny. Not for the first time she wondered why he made her feel so uncomfortable. Her throat was tight, her muscles clenched taut. Was it fear?
‘If any of those property interests were purchased with stolen funds and your father is found guilty in court, those assets could be seized and sold to provide compensation.’
That smooth assurance sliced through Gwenna’s hopes like a blade and she felt the full force of her own ignorance. ‘I wasn’t aware of that.’
His agile intellect was already engaged in wondering what favour she had intended to ask in return for the repayment of the stolen funds. In spite of what he had said to her, he was aware that the courts were often reluctant to seize and sell private assets, particularly where there was a wife involved. It would not be the first time that a con man had served his sentence only to emerge from prison and enjoy the ill-gotten gains of his crime. That was a galling prospect to Angelo, who was determined to see Donald Hamilton punished on every possible level. Stripping the offender of his worldly goods would add savour to that process.
‘However, bringing a case such as this takes time, and this business is almost out of time.’ Angelo offered up that piece of encouragement to draw her out again.
‘Dad has already admitted his guilt,’ Gwenna reminded him readily. ‘He would be happy to agree to the properties being put up for sale and to the proceeds being used to repay his debt—’
‘He’s a thief, not a debtor,’ Angelo cut in drily. ‘What is more, although I hate to rain on your parade, property can take a very long time to sell.’
Her teeth worried anxiously at her full lower lip. Although she too had thought of that angle there was no getting round that potential hiccup that she could see. ‘Yes, I appreciate that…’
Ebony eyes of extraordinary power sought and held hers in a grip as strong as forged steel. ‘Of course, if I was prepared to consider such an arrangement, a valuation could be done and the properties concerned could simply be signed over. That could be achieved very quickly.’
Ready to grasp at any prospect of agreement, Gwenna nodded eagerly at that suggestion. She snatched in a ragged breath, wildly aware of his gaze and the insidious unsettling pulse of awareness at the secret heart of her body. Her lovely face suddenly flaming at that acknowledgement, she tore her attention from him and walked over to the window. She could not credit that he could have such an effect on her. He was a stranger and alien in every way to her. How could he rouse the physical consciousness that she had suppressed and buried? She refused to believe that he could. It was a long time since she had decided that she would never give her body without her heart.
‘It would also lessen the risk of anyone suffering last-minute regrets,’ Angelo pointed out, gaze glinting with triumph at his success in finally raising a reaction from her. He had seen the flare of surprise in her eyes. Not quite the ice maiden after all, it seemed. ‘Obviously your objective is to free your father from the threat of prosecution.’
Not knowing whether to be relieved or threatened by the ease with which he had deduced that fact, Gwenna spun back to face him. She lifted her chin and knotted her hands together tightly as if she was bracing herself. ‘Yes.’
‘No can do, cara. It is my personal conviction that all wrongdoers should be punished by the full weight of the law.’
‘But if that money was replaced it would benefit this business and all the people who work here!’ Gwenna protested feverishly. ‘Don’t you care about that?’
‘My heart rarely bleeds, Miss Hamilton.’
Angelo watched her brush a fine strand of honey-blonde hair back from the peach soft curve of her cheek. She was exquisite, delectable, he acknowledged, his usually disciplined body reacting with painful immediacy to the sexual charge of her presence. She was trembling almost infinitesimally. He liked the idea that he might be responsible for that potent effect. He had an almost overpowering desire to see her long hair falling loose round her shoulders in a tumbling mass of waves. She made him think of a Victorian painting he had once seen of a naked woman on horseback—Lady Godiva. That whimsical reflection surprised him but that image gave him a distinctly erotic kick.
‘But in this particular case…’ she dared to prompt.
‘Business is all about the art of profit and the bottom line here is that there’s not enough in your offer to tempt me.’
Disappointment at his refusal flooded Gwenna. She had never felt so nervous or out of her depth. At her most happy when she was working outdoors, she had acquired a host of horticultural qualifications while still regarding herself as only a keen gardener. Now, for the first time, she was uneasily conscious of her lack of sophistication. She genuinely did not know how to appeal to such a man. He had the cold, hard glitter of a very expensive and elegant diamond and he showed no emotion. It was a combination that she found utterly intimidating.
‘What would it take to…er, tempt you?’
Angelo studied her with unnerving calm. ‘You.’
Gwenna blinked. ‘I’m sorry…I don’t follow.’
‘I want you.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Her Delft-blue eyes widened and she dragged in a ragged breath. She felt incredibly stupid because of course he could not mean what she had thought he might mean. True, he had asked her out, but it had been very casual, hadn’t it?
‘Are you always this slow on the uptake?’
‘Are you talking about…sex?’ Gwenna was furious that embarrassment made her mangle that last word into an almost incomprehensible mumble.
Dense black lashes lifted over his brilliant dark tawny eyes and he managed to look very bored. ‘What else?’
Gwenna surveyed him with as much unrestrained amazement as she would have shown a zebra that suddenly appeared out of nowhere to walk across the office. She had always had a problem seeing herself as a sexual being. The passes that came her way were usually pretty half-hearted because she was much better at being sympathetic and sensible than sexy. That a guy of such immense wealth and supposed sophistication should target her as if she were a provocative siren struck her as unbelievable.
‘Is this some kind of a wind-up?’ she asked tautly.
‘I don’t do wind-ups.’
Gwenna studied him, poised there so straight and tall in his sharply tailored black designer business suit. He was devastatingly handsome but she crushed that thought as soon as it entered her mind. ‘But are you really suggesting that if I sleep with you you might reconsider prosecuting my father?’
‘Yes.’ Angelo made that confirmation.
Gwenna was stunned by that unhesitating agreement. ‘But that’s morally wrong.’
‘We’re consenting adults and you have a choice.’
Gwenna flung her head high, furious that she was dying of embarrassment like a schoolgirl, while he was behaving as though nothing untoward was happening. ‘Do you get a thrill out of insulting me like this?’
‘One woman’s insult is another woman’s compliment.’ Angelo sent her a dark smile of challenge. ‘It’s not my ego talking, but fact, when I tell you that a score of women would kill to have the same opportunity.’
Gwenna, who rarely lost her temper, learned now that she could want to kill another human being. His insouciance, his sheer arrogance, his silken insolence, indeed the whole glossy patina of his rich and rarefied existence, which he wore like armour, made her teeth grit. Absolute hatred hurtled through her in an acrid flow. ‘Well, I’m not one of them! I have higher self-esteem.’
‘Which makes you infinitely more desirable.’
‘So, you’re one of those men who always wants most what he can’t have?’
Angelo held her outraged blue gaze, more intrigued than ever by her resistance and the anger that had unexpectedly cut through her tranquil surface. ‘I have never met with a “can’t have”,’ he told her truthfully.
‘You just have,’ Gwenna told him grittily and turned on her heel. ‘My body isn’t something I’m prepared to barter, Mr Riccardi.’
‘Then your father will have to pay the piper and go to prison,’ Angelo murmured and she stopped halfway to the door and turned back, her raw pain at that likelihood etched in her candid gaze.
Torn between stalking out in angry mortification and the sinking conviction that she could not afford such a demonstration of disdain, Gwenna hovered. The very idea of her father going to prison appalled her. He had already lost so much: his job, his reputation, his friends, his financial security. His marriage might well soon slip into that same category of loss. She knew and she accepted that he had done wrong. But what dominated her thoughts was the debt she had owed to her father since the day that he had opened the doors of his home to her after her mother’s sudden death.
When her mother, Isabel, had fallen pregnant during her long-term affair with Donald Hamilton, she’d expected her lover to leave his childless wife, Marisa. Instead Isabel had learnt that she had not been his only extra-marital interest. Heartbroken and bitter, Gwenna’s mother had become a less than enthusiastic single parent.
When Gwenna was eight years old, Isabel had died in a car crash. Donald, still married to his first wife, had come to his illegitimate daughter’s rescue at a time when Gwenna had had nobody else whom she could call her own. Even though he had been almost a stranger, her father had made her feel as if she truly mattered to him. Even when his long-suffering wife, Marisa, forced him to choose between his daughter and his marriage, he had refused to put Gwenna up for adoption. Not long afterwards, Marisa had demanded a divorce. The older man had never reminded Gwenna of the price he had had to pay for choosing to raise his daughter. But in spite of her father’s subsequent remarriage to Eva, Gwenna had always felt very guilty. And the passage of time and the arrival of maturity had not altered her belief that she would always be in her father’s debt for the loving sacrifice he had made on her behalf.
‘Before you leave, hear me out,’ Angelo drawled softly, playing on Gwenna’s hesitation with skill and cool.
Blinking, Gwenna focused on him again.
‘If sufficient assets are signed over to set against the empty coffers here at Furnridge Leather and you agree to be my mistress, I will withdraw the current charges against your father,’ Angelo spelt out.
A long shiver ran through her taut, slender body. He wanted a lot, he wanted everything. Mistress? What was that fancy term for? A one-night stand? Was conquest that important to him? Could he really want to have sex with her that much? The extent of her own sexual ignorance annoyed her.
‘What does being a mistress encompass?’ she pressed without looking at him.
‘Pleasing me…’ Angelo trailed out the word with exquisite enjoyment.
She gritted her teeth. ‘I don’t think I’d be very good at that.’
‘I’m willing to give lessons at no extra cost.’
Furious resentment burned like lava inside her. ‘I think you just can’t stand being turned down…’
‘I don’t think you’re going to turn me down twice.’
Gwenna sucked in a jerky breath. Unable even to imagine taking her clothes off in front of a man without cringing, she blanked out all thought of the nitty-gritty details of actual intimacy. She was aware that lots of people had sex without making a big issue of it. It would be physical, not emotional. There was no need for her to make a major fuss about something that really wasn’t that important, she told herself urgently. She was a pragmatist. She might not be into sex but presumably she could put up with it. ‘Well, as far as I’m concerned it’s senseless and crazy, but if my sleeping with you one night will help my family—’
‘One night won’t suffice.’
Gwenna was as flattened by that unexpected comeback as if a giant rock had been dropped on her. He wanted more than one night? The silence pulsed. Newly discovered defiance made her tilt her chin. She collided with brilliant dark eyes enhanced by spiky black lashes. If eyes were truly the windows of the soul, she thought helplessly, he lacked one. ‘Only hell has no time limit,’ she told him prosaically.
Disconcerted by that comment, Angelo studied her and then flung back his dark head and laughed with grim appreciation. ‘I like your sense of humour, cara.’
‘But I wasn’t trying to be funny. I need to know how long you envisage me filling such a strange role in your life.’
Angelo lifted a broad shoulder in a fluid shrug. But in a lightning-fast change of mood unfamiliar to him he was discovering that he had gone from amusement to an emotion very much akin to anger. He was a proud man and her parade of reluctance, which he refused to believe in, was fast becoming more insulting than intriguing. Long before they parted, she would sing a different tune, he swore inwardly. She would love him as his mother had once fruitlessly loved her con artist of a father.
‘I’ll want you for as long as you provide me with entertainment.’
‘You find it entertaining when a woman hates you?’ Gwenna asked fiercely.
Liquid gold flared in Angelo’s intense gaze and it was as if all the oxygen burned up in the atmosphere between them. ‘I promise you that hatred won’t be what you feel.’
Gwenna compressed her generous mouth and recalled that she was supposed to feel honoured by his interest, like some maidservant of old catching the eye of the lord of the manor. Loathing roared through her to such an extent that she felt dizzy. But then reality penetrated and she thought of her father and of how much she loved him. Angelo Riccardi was giving her the chance and the power to protect her father from prosecution and gaol. How could she say no? How many years of freedom would her father lose if she said no? How would he endure years of being shut away from the world? He would not be the same man when he emerged from such an ordeal, whereas if she kept him out of prison he would find it much easier to embark on a fresh start. What right did she have to deny him that chance of redemption?
‘I want your answer now,’ Angelo told her flatly.
‘Yes…you’ve made me an offer I can’t refuse,’ Gwenna breathed shakily.
Angelo extended his hand.
‘But let’s not pretend that it’s a civilised offer,’ Gwenna heard herself add as she took a step back from him.
Angelo took a step forward and before she had the slightest idea of his intention he framed her cheek with long brown fingers and brought his beautiful insolent mouth down in a mocking taunt on hers. Shock held her paralysed for the first ten seconds and then a wild surge of heat flamed up between her thighs, stretching every feminine muscle wickedly taut. It was like flame in freezing temperatures, shocking and sudden and shatteringly sweet. He lifted his arrogant dark head again, his scorching dark golden gaze raking in an assessing arc over her dazed expression.
‘Being civilised can be overrated, cara. My lawyers will be in touch. If everything is in order, I’ll contact you next week.’
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_ed34f649-08ad-57cd-ab35-3b7d35da1f9a)
DONALD HAMILTON slowly shook his distinguished head. ‘I’ll have nothing left, not even my independence.’
‘The valuations aren’t what you hoped? Even for the city apartment?’ Gwenna questioned anxiously.
‘I would say that the figures are anything but generous.’
Gwenna frowned. ‘Of course property prices have fallen in some areas. How did the Massey garden and nursery fare in the valuation stakes?’
‘The estate is listed and protected by law,’ Donald reminded her. ‘That keeps its value low because there are too many rules preventing more profitable types of development. The nursery is a small enterprise. You’ve worked wonders there but…’
‘It’s hardly big business,’ Gwenna filled in heavily.
‘Even so, if selling up protects me from having to make a court appearance, how can I possibly complain?’ her father asked her in a more upbeat tone. ‘As for what you told me about you and the owner of Rialto, that’s made all this even more amazing.’
Amazing? It seemed an odd choice of word. Gwenna coloured, her lashes concealing her bemused eyes. She was still wondering if the older man had quite grasped what she had delicately endeavoured to tell him with regard to her future association with Angelo Riccardi. In an effort to conceal her confusion, she bent down to pet Piglet, who was slumped at her feet.
‘You’re a beautiful woman and all grown up now.’ Donald Hamilton treated his daughter to a distinctly misty-eyed appraisal. ‘I mustn’t forget that. I’m not at all surprised that a man of Angelo Riccardi’s calibre should notice you and go for you in a big way.’
‘Well…he did notice me,’ his daughter muttered half under her breath, reckoning that her father could not possibly have registered the sort of liaison that she was being offered. No doubt that was a mercy, for she had worried about him kicking up a fuss even though she had packaged the unlovely truth with the pretence that she had been similarly impressed by Angelo Riccardi.
‘Perhaps you could have a little word with him about the valuations,’ the older man murmured casually. ‘Not right now, necessarily, but possibly in a week or two.’
Having tensed, Gwenna slowly lifted her head. ‘Have a word with him?’
‘You can’t be that naïve,’ Donald Hamilton said with a chuckle. ‘Obviously you’ve got influence with the man in the seat of power.’
‘I don’t think you can say that—’
‘This is not the time for false modesty,’ her father told her a touch irritably. ‘Choose your moment to speak to him about how unhappy you are over the treatment of your family. My word, do I have to paint pictures for you? Have you any idea what my life is going to be like when I don’t have a penny to call my own? When I’m forced to live off your stepmother like some ghastly ageing gigolo?’ But Gwenna was both taken aback and dismayed by his assumption that she would be able to persuade Angelo Riccardi to offer the older man a better price for his properties. She was very pale. ‘Look, I’m sorry…I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. All I’ve been thinking about is keeping you out of prison.’
Donald Hamilton winced as though she had been guilty of a gross lack of tact. ‘I think that risk has been safely laid to rest now and life does go on,’ he declared. ‘It is going to be very difficult for me to find another job.’
‘Yes, I suppose it will be. But how are you expecting me to help out by speaking to Angelo Riccardi?’ Gwenna asked apprehensively.
