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Nico and his friend had been about to sign a lucrative deal with one of Naples’s biggest entrepreneurs, but his girlfriend had believed his friend to be the one instrumental in the deal and so had seduced him in a bid to feather her nest.
She’d begged forgiveness when she’d realised her mistake, but Nico had cut her out of his life and embraced that cold focus ever since.
Chiara Caruso was not the kind of woman who would arouse disturbing emotions or passions. She was perfect.
He said, ‘As much as I’m restoring the Santo Domenico name to where it belongs, I’m also proposing this for sound business reasons. This region of Sicily has been woefully neglected and is full of potential. My plans go far beyond this estate. I’ve already bought all the neighbouring land. I see you as an asset to this estate, Chiara. You’ll be invested in it and in its success in a way that no other woman could be.’
Chiara looked at the man and realised the extent of his ruthlessness. Even if she didn’t agree to marry him—and of course she wasn’t going to marry him!—she had no doubt he would do everything he’d just said. Including marrying someone for convenience and heirs. All she represented to him was a means to get to his destination faster.
She stood up. ‘I don’t understand why it has to be marriage—you could offer me a deal to buy the castello before the bank gets involved.’
‘That was my plan originally. But since coming here...meeting you...it’s changed. Now the stakes are higher, and I’m offering you an opportunity to stay in your home.’
As your chattel, thought Chiara, shocked at the lengths to which he would go, the depth of his need for vengeance.
She refused to let him see how intimidated she was. ‘Well, as of this moment, I’m still the owner of the castello, Signor Santo Domenico, and quite frankly you’re the last man on this earth I’d ever think about marrying.’
He looked completely unperturbed. ‘So you’re willing to walk away and never see the castello again? You strike me as the kind of woman who dreamed of getting married and having a family here.’
Chiara flushed all over. Was her innermost fantasy of dispelling the loneliness of this place with a large and loving family so painfully obvious? But in her fantasy she’d meet the love of her life, go travelling, and then return to the castello to live out the life she’d never had here, filling the place with happy sounds and not the echoing silence of her youth.
Feeling exposed, she said tightly, ‘You have no idea what kind of woman I am, signor. Now, if you’ve said your piece, please leave.’
* * *
Once again Nico’s conscience struck when he thought of the freshly dug graves he’d seen in the newer graveyard just a short while before. Perhaps this was evidence of what a life denying your emotions did to you. You became numb to everything except the goal. And the goal was almost in sight.
But something about the shadows under Chiara Caruso’s eyes and the way she held herself made him feel uncomfortable. She looked delicate all of a sudden. Very alone in this huge room, with only an ancient dog for company.
Maybe she was a recluse?
He ignored the spark of curiosity—she was perfect for what he needed in his life, and that was all that mattered.
He took a business card out of his pocket and held it out. With palpable reluctance she reached out and took it from him. Nico noticed that she had small graceful hands. Unvarnished practical nails. His body stirred against his will, an image of those hands reaching out to touch his naked flesh surprising him with its vividness.
He gritted his jaw. ‘Those are all my numbers, including my private one. I’m staying at a villa not far from here till tomorrow lunchtime. You have until then to consider my offer. If I don’t receive a call I’ll assume you’re not interested.’
Chiara’s head was bent down over the card as if she was studying it intently. A lock of long hair trailed over one shoulder and it gleamed a light mahogany in the light. His eye was drawn to her waist. Once again he could sense that her clothes were disguising a very classic feminine shape. The kind of shape that had been out of fashion for years but which was proving to be potent enough to snare his interest.
For a moment he hesitated, wondering if he was crazy to seek commitment with this woman. She intrigued him now, but could she sustain his interest for the length of a marriage? His sexual interest?
If the strength of his attraction was anything to go by, his body was telling him yes. And he was reminded of how little had sparked his interest in recent months. Certainly none of the tall, angular women he’d favoured before.
His wife would also be the mother of his children, and Nico surprised himself with a surge of conviction that he wanted a woman who would care for her children and not abandon them as he had been abandoned.
He couldn’t trust any woman not to abandon her children, but at least Chiara Caruso knew about legacy—even if it hadn’t been rightfully hers. She understood it. And evidently, if the state of the castello was any kind of indication, she was a woman who had been deprived of the better things in life. In Nico’s experience it wouldn’t take much to accustom her to the kind of luxuries he could provide.
But she was refusing to meet his eye now. Nico was used to women gazing at him with naked adoration and a lust that barely masked their instant summing up of his net worth. It was a silent dialogue he knew well and which he welcomed—because there was no game-playing or pretence of emotions that weren’t there.
He wasn’t used to this...this uninterest. Or antipathy. And he found that, refreshing as it was, it irritated him.
‘Chiara.’ His voice sounded tight.
Eventually she looked up and he saw fire in the depths of her eyes, making them glow. ‘I did not give you leave to call me by my name.’
His pulse throbbed. A sizzle of something deeper than arousal infused his blood. Nico had to admire her spirit. Not many had the confidence to speak back to him and he realised that he’d underestimated her.
He dipped his head slightly. ‘Scusami. Signorina Caruso. I am offering you an opportunity to stay in your family home, which is more than anyone in your family ever did for anyone in mine. Think about it.’
Chiara desperately wanted to look away from those deep-set dark eyes but she couldn’t. It was as if his gaze was winding a spell around her, holding her captive. The air vibrated with a kind of electricity between them.
She wanted him gone, so she could try and process everything that had just happened, so she said the only thing she knew that would make him leave. ‘Fine. I will consider your offer.’
Nicolo Santo Domenico inclined his head and then he walked out.
Spiro trotted after him, as if to make sure he really was leaving.
Only when Chiara heard the powerful throttle of his car’s engine did she move and go back over to the window, catching a flash of silver as it disappeared down the drive. She shivered, as if a cold finger had just danced down her spine.
The first thing Chiara did was to ring her solicitor and ask him for the deeds of the castello.
His sharp response—‘Why do you want to see them?’—merely heightened the churning in her gut.
She asked him bluntly, ‘Is it true that this castello once belonged to another family?’
The man was silent for a long moment and then Chiara heard muffled sounds, as if he was instructing someone to close a door.
He asked again, ‘Why are you asking for this information now, Signorina Caruso? All you need to know is that the castello belongs to you until such time as the bank takes possession.’
‘Please tell me the truth.’ Her hand was gripping the phone receiver.
He sighed. ‘Yes, I believe so—the castello did belong to another family, but they lost it around the time of the Second World War. The deeds have been in the Caruso name for decades... I really don’t see how this has anything to do with—’
Chiara let the phone drop back into its cradle.
It was true.
When she was small she’d been fascinated by history and she’d used to beg her Papa to tell her stories about the castello and who had built it centuries ago. She’d wanted to know all about her ancestors—had they been Arab Moors? Or maybe marauding Greeks? Her father had used to laugh off her questions, telling her that her imagination would get her into trouble one day... She saw now how he’d neatly avoided telling her anything about the history of the castello.
Because he hadn’t known? Or hadn’t he wanted to admit the truth—that it didn’t really belong to them?
Chiara felt the castello closing in on her, as if now that she knew, it was silently condemning her.
She walked outside, needing to shake off that uncomfortable feeling, Spiro loyally following at her heels. It was cool in the January sunshine and she drew in deep breaths of air infused with the evocative scents of the earth and sea. She’d often thought that if she could bottle this scent she would wear it for ever. It was home.
A home she was about to lose.
She’d spent so long yearning to see the world, but she’d never expected to be thrust out into it so precipitately. She didn’t feel ready.
Chiara avoided the area near the small chapel and the graveyard and went down to her private place by the shore. It was a tiny sandy cove, sheltered on all sides by rocks. She sat on the rough sand and pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. Spiro sank down beside her.
It was only now that she could let the tears flow—for her parents and for the shock of learning just how precarious her position was. She cried for a few minutes, until her face started to feel puffy, and then she forced herself to stop, wiping at her cheeks with the sleeves of her dress. She never usually indulged in self-pity.
She thought of Nicolo Santo Domenico in his bespoke suit, oozing sophistication and success. Arrogance. Retribution. Threat and a kind of redemption all at once. She’d never met anyone so ruthlessly compelling.
Giving in to an urge to find out more about the man who had just blown apart what little security she’d felt she had left, Chiara went back into the castello and fired up her father’s ancient desktop computer.
Eventually it came to life, and she sat down in a worn leather chair to search for information on the Santo Domenicos.
The first thing to come up were pictures of him, looking even more astoundingly handsome than she remembered, dressed in a tuxedo at glittering functions. And in each one there was a stunning woman on his arm. Blondes, brunettes, redheads. He didn’t appear to have a preference. They were all tall, slim and intimidatingly beautiful.
He wasn’t smiling in any of the pictures. He looked driven. Stern.
Chiara quickly clicked on some other links that told the fabled story of how Nicolo Santo Domenico had displayed his entrepreneurial skills from an early age in Naples. He’d honed those skills and at the tender age of twenty-one had gone to New York and become a millionaire. Within five years he’d become a billionaire and a legend.
She unearthed a very old article from an Italian newspaper, asking what had happened to the once all-powerful Santo Domenico family from Sicily. There was no mention of the castello, just a general reference to the fact that they’d once owned huge tracts of land in Sicily but had lost it all. The implication was that perhaps the Santo Domenicos had run foul of the mafia.
Chiara shivered again, absorbing the information. Of course all this didn’t mean that Nicolo Santo Domenico would have a leg to stand on if he was to challenge ownership of the castello in a court, but the fact was that the bank now owned the castello—or as good as. Nicolo Santo Domenico was merely capitalising on the fact that the castello was now available to him in a way it had never been before.
She stood up and walked slowly through the castello, noting how many of the rooms had long been shut up, with their furniture covered in dustsheets. Everywhere was crumbling and falling apart. It had been in disrepair for as long as Chiara could remember. The truth was that they’d never really been able to afford it—even when their crops had been providing an income.
The castello deserved to have new life breathed into it. Chiara’s heart squeezed to think that she wouldn’t be here to see it. And then she realised she also wouldn’t be here to tend her parents’ grave. Or her grandparents’.
It was unutterably cruel to think of the castello being shut to her when her own family were laid to rest here.
As Nicolo Santo Domenico’s were.
But, reminded a small inner voice, Nicolo Santo Domenico is offering you a chance to stay.
Through marriage.
The thought of marrying a man like him left her breathless with a number of conflicting emotions.
She’d never in a million years imagined that the faceless man she’d fantasised about all her life would actually appear on her doorstep, but as soon as she’d seen Nicolo Santo Domenico’s hard and beautiful features she’d felt a pull of recognition deep inside, as if finally she had a face to put to the handsome prince of her dreams.
She felt disgusted at herself now. At the years of naive dreaming in a home that hadn’t even been rightly hers.
And Nicolo Santo Domenico hadn’t come for her. He’d come for the property, she reminded herself soberly. She was just a convenient by-product. Or a bonus. She shivered again, but this time it was in reaction to imagining what sharing intimacies with Nicolo Santo Domenico would be like.
Chiara saw her reflection in the window. She knew how she looked—plain and boring. Unvarnished. She’d inherited her large breasts from her paternal grandmother, along with her average height and the hourglass shape which had gone out of fashion about fifty years ago.
One day Chiara had heard her father say to her mother, ‘Our daughter won’t turn heads, but she’ll make some man a fertile wife.’
Her cheeks burned again as the humiliation came back. And then she crushed the thought. She shouldn’t be thinking ill of her father. But he had grown bitter after his wife hadn’t been able to have any more children and he’d been denied the son he’d desperately wanted. Chiara wondered now how much of that had had to do with his knowledge of the provenance of the castello.
Had he wanted a son to ensure the Caruso name stayed alive within the castello because he’d known of the history?
Chiara let herself consider Nicolo Santo Domenico’s...proposition. Surely he couldn’t really mean to marry her? Was he really ruthless enough to convince himself that marriage to an unsophisticated Sicilian woman was worth the price of regaining his family inheritance?
Anger rose inside Chiara at the thought that he could treat her like a pawn. And that he’d assumed to know her, based on what he had judged of her appearance and demeanour. The fact that he hadn’t been completely wrong made her pride smart. But there was so much more to her than a mere dream to marry and love in this place.
No matter what he’d said here today, he couldn’t truly mean to go through with a marriage to a complete stranger.
Chiara thought of Nicolo Santo Domenico’s expression when he’d left—almost smug. As if he’d achieved exactly the outcome he’d expected and knew she’d come around in the end, in spite of her refusal.
She wanted to dent that smugness. She wanted to shock him as he’d shocked her. She wanted to see him look as surprised as she must have looked this afternoon. She wanted to call his bluff and witness his panic when he really thought through the repercussions of his arrogant assumptions and demands.
CHAPTER THREE (#u448440e3-b127-54e5-8983-825a6e5f8194)
NICO DIDN’T LIKE the sense of anticipation he felt as he waited for his driver to return with Chiara Caruso. When she’d rung him earlier that morning he’d offered to meet her at the castello, but she’d told him she’d prefer to meet him at his villa, so he’d sent someone to fetch her.
He paced back and forth on the terrace that wrapped around the side of the modern villa with its stunning view of the sparkling sea. From here he could see the land around the castello but not the actual building, which was a mix of architectural styles dating all the way back to his early ancestors, who had been Spanish. There were elements of Moorish architecture, and then more classical bits had been added over the years.
The effect was a snapshot of Sicilian history—a potent symbol of longevity and survival which had withstood the ages on its dramatic promontory overlooking the sea.
The emotional punch from his first view of the castello and his visit to the graveyard yesterday still lingered. The sense of urgency to reclaim what was his was even stronger now. As was his urge to claim Chiara Caruso. Last night he’d found her image stealing into his brain with a vividness that had unnerved him. He’d told himself it was only due to the fact that he’d decided to include her in his plans. Not because he hungered to know the secrets she hid under her shapeless outfit. Not because base instincts he hadn’t indulged since he was a teenager had resurfaced. He was more than that now.
He heard a noise behind him and turned around to see the uniformed housekeeper leading Chiara out to meet him. He settled back against the wall and watched her walk towards him, unconsciously tensing himself against those base instincts she’d ignited so effortlessly within him.
But it was no use. In spite of the fact that she looked as if she belonged to another era, wearing a starchy white shirt with a big collar and a boxy dark jacket, arousal hummed in his blood. It was almost galling. A calf-length skirt did nothing to enhance her figure, and nor did practical flat shoes. Her hair was pulled back from her face and left loose and wavy around her shoulders.
It had been a long time since Nico had had any woman presented to him who wasn’t coiffed to within an inch of her life. If he hadn’t been so unnerved by the strength of his attraction to her he might have found it refreshing.
She walked out into the sunshine and he saw she was pale. The vivid green of her eyes stood out, unusual and arresting. He fought not to let his gaze drop to the full line of her breasts and straightened up, indicating for her to take a seat at a table nearby set with coffee and tea and small cakes.
She looked at the table, and then back at him. ‘I’d prefer to stand.’ She held a capacious black bag in front of her like a shield.
He faced her. ‘Very well. Have you thought about what I said?’
Chiara could hardly breathe. Nicolo Santo Domenico was—unbelievably—even more gorgeous than she remembered. With his back to the astounding view, dressed in a white shirt with its top button open and sleeves rolled up and dark trousers, he could have stepped directly from the pages of a fashion magazine for men.
The villa was breathtaking too, in its modern simplicity, built into a cliff overlooking the sea. A total contrast to the castello and its ancient crumbling history. She’d never seen so much pristine white furniture.
It hurt to look directly at the man, but she forced herself to meet his dark gaze. She’d felt full of bravado yesterday, but right now that was in short supply. Why had she thought it was a good idea to come here? What had she wanted to prove? She couldn’t turn back now—he expected her to say something...
And then she remembered. The shock and humiliation. The desire to see him lose some of that cool sense of entitlement.
She took a breath. ‘I have thought about what you said, Signor Santo Domenico, and I’ve decided that I’ll accept your offer.’
Chiara’s heart was beating so hard she felt light-headed. She waited for Nicolo Santo Domenico to register what she’d said and then panic. Except he didn’t look like a man who would ever panic about anything. He looked supremely assured. Not a flicker of reaction crossed his face. Had he heard her?
She felt panicky. ‘I said—’
‘I heard you,’ he said. ‘Are you sure about this?’
Chiara had a sickening sensation that she’d misjudged how to handle this situation badly. She forced herself to nod. ‘Yes. I’m sure. I want to marry you.’
‘Va bene.’
