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‘Are you out of your mind?’
She leaped to her feet, stood toe to toe with him. ‘What sort of stupid condition is that? Like I’d ever marry you, like I’d agree to’
‘The idea didn’t seem so distasteful ten years ago. As I recall, you used to love talking about marrying me.’
Heat flooded her cheeks and she clenched her hands to stop from reaching out and strangling him.
‘Come off it, I was young and stupid then.’
‘So you’re old and wise now?’
His mouth twitched and the itch to strangle him intensified tenfold.
‘In that case, you’ll see how much sense this makes.’
‘None of this makes sense!’
Her temper, which she’d learned to control over the years, exploded like a tinder-dry bush touched by a match. ‘You’re insane! You’ve been playing some warped game ever since I saw you this morning and I have no idea why. You pretend you’re still working on the farm, you hide your new job from me, then you come out with this ridiculous proposal.’
She paused, dragged in several breaths and released her hands before her nails sliced into her palms.
‘I came to you in good faith, to try and put a simple deal forward, and what do I get in return? A bunch of patooey!’
‘Patooey?’
This time, his mouth creased into a wide grin and she almost committed murder on the spot.
‘Is that London speak for bullsh’
‘It sure is and you’re full of it.’
Hands on hips, she leaned into him, shoving her face in his.
‘When did you become such a jerk, Mancini?’
While Nick’s smile didn’t slip, his cool composure cracked a little. The woman he once loved thought he was a jerk and while it shouldn’t matter, it did.
But he wouldn’t dwell on that. The old Britt was still there, under the fancy business suit and blonde-streaked hair; she’d just shown him with that magnificent temper bursting like a tropical thunderstorm.
The old Britt wouldn’t agree to his proposal, while the career-focused woman in sky-high stilettos and a designer suit would if he presented it the right way.
‘Consider this a business transaction, a win-win situation for us both. Nothing more, nothing less.’
He saw a flicker of interest flash across her face at his mention of business before her temper flared again.
‘You’re crazy! Stark raving mad!’
She raked her hands through her immaculately blow-dried hair, sending it into the frizz he remembered. ‘What’s that expression Papa used to say? Sei pazzo, you’re crazy, that’s what you are.’
His heart griped as it always did at the mention of his father.
‘You remember that?’
All the fight drained out of her and she slumped back into the chair, deliciously defeated, and he yearned to sweep her into his arms and show her this deal was the perfect solution for them both.
Raising wide blue eyes to stare at him in capitulation, she nodded.
‘I remember a lot of things.’
He waited, captured by the deepening blue, by the emotions shifting like jacaranda blossoms floating on a spring breeze.
He didn’t want to feel, certainly didn’t want to feel like this, damn it, but when she looked at him with remembrance clouding her eyes and a softening around her lush mouth all he could think about was how incredible she used to feel in his arms.
He didn’t want to rehash the past, to taint this deal with emotion, but he couldn’t resist asking, ‘What do you remember?’
Her tongue darted out to moisten her bottom lip, a simple, unaffected gesture that shot straight to his groin, nothing unaffected about his visceral reaction.
‘Like how we used to lie under that jacaranda tree down by the creek and stare up at the clouds and see who could make the craziest shape.’
Her mouth softened some more and he stiffened, shocked by how much he wanted to ravage those lips.
‘Like the times you took me into Noosa on the back of your Harley and how we’d choose to picnic down in Noosaville rather than mix with the hobknobs on Hasting Street.’
She gave up moistening her bottom lip in favour of worrying it and he clamped down on a groan.
‘Like how you’d look at me with stars in your eyes, as if I was the only woman for you.’
She didn’t glance away as he expected her to, didn’t push him away when he swept her into his arms and crushed his mouth on hers.
She tasted of lime and sugar, tart and sweet, and he knew she’d been guzzling sugar-cane juice as she used to. She’d been addicted to the stuff back then, just as he’d been addicted to her.
He could never get enough of her and it looked as if nothing had changed as his tongue swept into her mouth, taunting, challenging, savouring her passionate response as she clung to him, her fingers tangling in his buttons as he pulled her flush against him.
This deal was supposed to be purely business but as their kiss deepened to the point of no return he knew he was kidding himself.
What he felt around Britt, how his blood fired when she was in his arms, had nothing to do with business and everything to do with earth-shattering pleasure.
The moment Nick eased off the pressure to kiss his way across her cheek, Brittany froze.
This was where taking a trip down memory lane got her: in the arms of the devil himself.
He’d proposed the most ludicrous deal she’d ever heard in her life and what had she done?
Let him kiss her. Again.
Had responded to him. Again.
She didn’t get this, any of it. Business was business but what he’d proposed was…was…well, it was just plain nuts.
Marriage to Nick Mancini in exchange for her dream?
She couldn’t entertain the thought for a second, let alone acknowledge the tiny voice that reminded her she’d do anything to achieve her goal.
Well, marriage to Nick didn’t fall into the category of anything. It fell into the category of certifiable lunacy.
He set her away from him, his glib smile at odds with the surprising tenderness in his eyes.
‘Well, I guess that proves being my wife wouldn’t be all bad.’
She summoned her temper, needing it to anchor her threadbare control, that wavered the moment he mentioned the physical benefits to a possible marriage.
‘If you think I’d ever agree to your proposal, you’re mad.’
He shrugged, stepped away.
‘Hey, I’m not the one who wants a promotion. Ball’s in your court, Red.’
She hated hearing the nickname only he had ever called her trip from his tongue with familiarity. She hated the blunt truth of his casual statement even more.
She did need this promotion. It was the only way to get closure on a past she’d rather forget.
Studying him through narrowed eyes, she said, ‘Not that I’d contemplate your crazy scheme for one second, but if I did, what’s in it for you?’
Something furtive, mysterious, shifted behind his steady stare before he blinked, eradicating the enigmatic emotion in an instant.
‘It’s time I married.’
‘Why?’
Why now? Why me? was what she really wanted to ask, but she clamped down on the urge to blurt her questions.
Why he was doing this? Why would he suggest something so outlandish when they shared nothing these days but a residual attraction based on old times’ sake?
He shrugged and she hated his nonchalance in the face of something so important. She would’ve given everything she owned to be married to him once and now he’d reduced it to a cold, calculating business proposition that hurt way more than it should.
‘I’m expanding the business, building more hotels in key cities around the world, but overseas investors won’t take me seriously because of my age. They see a young, wealthy single guy and immediately think I’m a playboy dabbling in business for fun.’
He rolled his shoulders, tilted his head from side to side to stretch his neck and she stifled the urge to massage it as she used to. He’d always had tense muscles after a hard day’s farm work, had relaxed under her soothing hands.
Her palms tingled with the urge to reach out, stroke his tension away. So she balled her hands into fists and swallowed the unexpected lump in her throat. Damn memories.
He rubbed the back of his neck absent-mindedly, oblivious to her irrational craving to do the same. ‘Marriage will give me respectability in their eyes, solidify my entry into wider business circles and open up a whole new investment pool.’
She stared at him, so cool, so confident, admiring the powerful businessman he’d become, lamenting the loss of the bad boy who hadn’t given a toss what people thought of him.
‘That’s it?’
He nodded, showed her his hands palm up as if he wasn’t hiding anything.
‘That’s it.’
‘Why me?’
It had been bugging her since he’d first laid out his outlandish proposal, why a guy like him with charm to burn would choose her for his crazy scheme. ‘Surely the legendary Nick Mancini would have a bevy of babes around here eager to tie you down?’
His eyes glittered as she inwardly cursed her choice of words and rushed on. ‘I mean, why me in particular? What have I got to offer?’
‘Do you really want me to answer that?’
Her breath hitched at the clear intent in his loaded stare and she took a step back. ‘Yes.’
To her relief, he shrugged, the heat fading from his eyes. ‘You’re a motivated businesswoman. You wouldn’t have flown halfway around the world to make your pitch the best if you weren’t. And I need that. Someone with a clear vision in mind, a business goal.’
He pinned her with a firm glare. ‘Someone who won’t cloud the issue with emotion, which is exactly what would happen if I chose a local wife.’
His hand wavered between them. ‘This marriage between us is a straightforward business proposal, a win-win for us both. What do you think?’
She thought he was mad, but most of all she thought she was a fool for wishing his preposterous proposal held even the slightest hint of emotion she still meant something to him other than as a means to gaining respectability.
Summoning what was left of her dignity, she nodded. ‘I’ll get back to you.’
‘You do that.’
His confident grin grated. He knew she was buying time to contemplate his marital equivalent of a pie chart.
With her mind spinning, she stalked across the room, head held high, his soft, taunting chuckles following her out of the door.
Chapter Four
‘SO, THE prodigal daughter returns.’
From the moment Brittany knew she’d be returning home she’d been bracing for this confrontation.
However, no matter that she told herself it was ridiculous, no amount of deep breathing, or steeling her nerves, or trying to remember how far in the past it all was could calm her in any way as she faced her father for the first time in ten years. She could feel her hands shaking.
She paused at the entrance to his apartment, one of the few in the exclusive Jacaranda special accommodation home for the elderly.
Not that Darby Lloyd would ever admit to his seventy-two years. He’d had work done on his face several times, had hair plugs to arrest a threatening bald patch and continued to wear designer clothes better suited to a man half his age.
But pots of money or cosmetic work or fancy clothes couldn’t buy health and that was one thing he didn’t have these days.
Five years ago, he’d tried to guilt her into quitting her job and returning to look after him as he grew older and more bitter. He’d nearly succeeded. However, some deep part of her had resisted his pressure. He had been a cruel tyrant who’d controlled her life until she’d come into a small inheritance from her mum when she’d turned eighteen and fled as far from him as she could get. She simply couldn’t go back to the hell she’d left behind.
In her heart, she desperately wanted to be anywhere but in front of the man who would have ruined her life if she’d let him, but her pride wouldn’t let her pay a visit to her hometown and not see him. She was older and strongersurely she could stand to face him now? She had come here today to prove to herself she’d finally set the past to rest. Working harder, longer, than everyone else might keep the memory demons at bay, but she knew if she stopped, slowed down her frenetic pace, the old fears could come crowding back to fling her right back to the dim, dark place ten years earlier.
And she’d be damned if she let that happen. In a way, she should thank dear old Dad for shaping her into the woman she was today: strong, capable and successful, everything he’d said she’d never be.
But there was more to this visit and she knew it, no matter all her self talk to the contrary.
