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Penniless Virgin To Sicilian's Bride
MELANIE MILBURNE
“Marry me this weekend. ” He will wed his Cinderella! Sicilian billionaire Gabriel Salvetti offers a simple exchange— for her hand in marriage he’ll save Francesca Mancini’s ancestral home. Penniless Frankie has the aristocratic name Gabriel needs to redeem his family’s notorious reputation. And their blatant physical attraction can only sweeten the deal. But when he discovers his convenient bride is a secret virgin, one taste is enough to make Gabriel crave his wife—forever!
“Marry me this weekend.”
He will wed his Cinderella!
Sicilian billionaire Gabriel Salvetti offers a simple exchange—for her hand in marriage, he’ll save Francesca Mancini’s ancestral home. Penniless Frankie has the aristocratic name Gabriel needs to redeem his family’s notorious reputation. And their blatant physical attraction can only sweeten the deal. But when he discovers his convenient bride is a secret virgin, one taste is enough to make Gabriel crave his wife—forever!
Lose yourself in this tale of innocence and desire...
MELANIE MILBURNE read her first Mills & Boon novel at the age of seventeen, in between studying for her final exams. After completing a master’s degree in education she decided to write a novel, and thus her career as a romance author was born. Melanie is an ambassador for the Australian Childhood Foundation and a keen dog lover and trainer. She enjoys long walks in the Tasmanian bush. In 2015 Melanie won the HOLT Medallion, a prestigious award honouring outstanding literary talent.
Also by Melanie Milburne (#u974d4e78-6e8b-56f5-a1cc-0497d7751b23)
The Temporary Mrs Marchetti
Wedding Night with Her Enemy
A Ring for the Greek’s Baby
The Tycoon’s Marriage Deal
A Virgin for a Vow
Blackmailed into the Marriage Bed
The Tycoon’s Forbidden Cinderella
Bound by a One-Night Vow
The Scandal Before the Wedding miniseries
Claimed for the Billionaire’s Convenience
The Venetian One-Night Baby
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).
Penniless Virgin to Sicilian’s Bride
Melanie Milburne
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-08772-8
PENNILESS VIRGIN TO SICILIAN’S BRIDE
© 2019 Melanie Milburne
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Emily Payne.
You are such a lovely person
and I love that you love my books.
This one is for you. xxxx
A special thank-you to Franca Poli,
who kindly helped me with the Italian translations.
Grazie!
Contents
Cover (#u8336fd5a-ee14-5c17-995d-46b45f518c16)
Back Cover Text (#u296db083-2b3c-5ced-9a2a-2068e615bc32)
About the Author (#u7af2839f-3aa2-5fd4-861e-6c1b7739dc2d)
Booklist (#uac73e897-ddab-5167-a911-028c83e947f1)
Title Page (#ufeb9aca7-fe9d-55a0-b0bd-afcb289772ab)
Copyright (#ufd1d476d-1669-534f-8845-eebf71dff2ac)
Dedication (#u03ce5471-7a01-53b2-8dd9-2b72d0b2f302)
CHAPTER ONE (#ubfa1fc29-c743-5189-8c16-c01baa871d47)
CHAPTER TWO (#uc02762ee-7a59-585b-88cd-5754e6a0556c)
CHAPTER THREE (#u19ec51a9-0579-583c-94ea-667f24766f0c)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u974d4e78-6e8b-56f5-a1cc-0497d7751b23)
FRANKIE HAD COME back one last time to her ancestral home at Lake Como to say goodbye in private. The grand estate with its beautifully manicured gardens would be someone else’s home now. Someone else’s heritage. Someone else’s sanctuary.
She stood at the base of the grand scissor staircase in front of Villa Mancini. The shocking blood-red slash of the SOLD banner across the ‘For Sale’ sign made something in her stomach grip tight, as if her intestines were caught up in a strangling knot of fishing line. Would the new owner change the villa’s name? Turn it into a hotel or a casino? It had been in Frankie’s family for four hundred years. Four hundred years of family—generation after generation.
So many relatives.
So many memories.
How could it be possible to lose four hundred years of family history in a game of Blackjack?
Frankie drew in a breath and slowly released it. You have to survive this. Now was not the time for a panic attack. Now was not the time for tears and tantrums, because nothing was going to change the fact it was too late to save herself from this shame. It would soon become public. Excruciatingly, humiliatingly public. So far, the press knew very little of her desperate financial situation. She had let it be known she was selling the villa only because she would be moving back to London after two months of nursing her father during his terminal illness. She had called in every favour she could to keep the press away from the truth. But how long could she hope to keep her father’s dirty little secret?
She pictured tomorrow’s headlines—Aristocrat heiress Francesca Mancini left penniless by late father’s secret gambling debts.
Frankie had drained her own bank account trying to keep her father’s problem a secret for as long as she could. There was nothing left in her trust fund. All the money left to her from her late mother was gone. She had sold her London apartment. How could she let her father’s memory be tainted by a gambling addiction he had only acquired in the last few months of his life? His aggressive treatment for brain cancer had changed him. Made him desperate and reckless. She’d foolishly, naively thought her savings would be enough to cover his indiscretions. But her income as a special needs teacher was hardly going to cover debts that ran into the millions.
It was hopeless.
Utterly, heartbreakingly hopeless.
Frankie walked up the left side of the staircase to the front door. She still had her key—the real estate agent hadn’t requested it because the new owner would not be moving in until the final paperwork was completed. She unlocked the door and stepped inside the marble foyer but something about the atmosphere told her she wasn’t alone. There was a different energy in the air, the villa was no longer cold and empty but alive and breathing.
It had a pulse.
The door to the library on the ground floor was slightly ajar, and from inside she could hear the rustling of papers and the sound of a frustrated male sigh. For a moment, she thought she must have dreamed her father’s death and funeral and the debt debacle. A short blissful tide of relief rushed through her, but then she heard footsteps crossing the floor. Strong, purposeful footsteps. She would have recognised that stride even if she were blindfolded. Possibly even if she was deaf.
Gabriel Salvetti opened the library door wide and looked down at her from his superior height advantage. Why hadn’t she put on a pair of heels? Ballet flats didn’t quite cut it when she was in the company of the suave and sophisticated Gabriel Salvetti. Not that she ever sought his company—she actively avoided it if she could. Six foot four to her four foot six, he made her feel like My Little Pony facing off a thoroughbred stallion.
His were-they-black-or-were-they-brown? eyes met hers. ‘Francesca.’ He inclined his head in a brief nod that was somehow both polite and patronising at the same time.
‘What are you doing here?’ Frankie couldn’t read his expression. She’d always thought he’d make a good spy or undercover agent. Not that his criminal father, brothers and cousins would appreciate that. Gabriel was known as the white sheep in the super-wealthy Salvetti family. The only good apple in a rotten orchard. An orchard so big with deep roots and long limbs and twisted and craggy branches reaching into places no decent person would ever want to go.
But why was he in her house? He hadn’t even come to her father’s funeral, even though he had done business with him in the past and her father had considered him a friend.
But then she noticed the sheaf of papers in Gabriel’s hand and her gut clenched and her heart slipped from its moorings. No. No. No. The words were hammer blows in her head. Surely, he wasn’t the new owner? How could she bear it? To have the man whose advances she’d spurned four years ago take up residence in her family’s home?
Gabriel held the library door open. ‘Come in. We need to talk.’
Frankie raised her chin and stood her ground, her mind whirling with what he might want to talk about. ‘We do not need to talk. But you need to leave.’ Her arm shot out to point to the front door. ‘Now.’
‘I’m not leaving until we talk. It’s in your interests to hear me out.’ His expression was enviably calm. As calm as his adult-talking-to-a-wilful-child tone. As calm as the silver-surfaced Lake Como outside. Some men took control of a situation by force but not Gabriel Salvetti. He used words economically and curtly. He used stillness and silence as a weapon. He carried with him an aura of command he wore like a second skin.
But the less she thought about his skin the better. She had seen a little too much of it recently. Particularly, a press photo of him at South American beach resort with his latest lover—a blonde model type, whose slim body had made Frankie throb with jealousy. Frankie had inherited her English aristocrat mother’s curvy figure and her Italian father’s uncontrollable dark brown hair. It wasn’t exactly what she’d call winning the genetic lottery.
Gabriel, on the other hand, might not have inherited his family’s penchant for criminal activity but he had inherited every one of the Salvetti traffic-stopping good looks. His jet-black hair, chocolate brown eyes, sculpted nose and mouth and tanned and toned athletic build left him with no shortage of female adoration, and consequently, the arrogance to think no woman could resist him.
Which was why Frankie had made such a point of rejecting his offer of a dinner date the night of her twenty-first birthday party. To prove she was immune to him. If not to prove it to him, then to prove it to herself. He’d assumed she would say yes, so she’d said an emphatic don’t-ask-me-again no, even though a part of her wondered if she had been wise to try and score points with such a worldly man.
And the odd time she had run into him since, she had given him the cold shoulder and hot tongue routine, because, he of all people, was the one person she did not trust herself around. He stirred in her feelings she didn’t want to feel. Physical feelings. Feelings and desires and impulses that burned and scorched her inside and out.
Gabriel crossed the foyer to where she was standing and Frankie forced herself to hold his penetrating gaze. Could he see how threatened she was by his presence? His potent, far too attractive presence? So much for her immunity. Her body was reacting to his closeness like an ice sculpture in front of a blowtorch. Her skin tightened, tingled, tensed as if anticipating his touch. Even her breasts, hidden behind the layers of her clothes, prickled and shifted in the lace cage of her bra like something too long restrained.
‘I can think of nothing you could say that would be of the remotest interest to me.’ She injected her tone with a generous dose of scorn. Eat your heart out, Miss Elizabeth Bennet. No one but no one could do a cold put-down better than Frankie. She wasn’t called an ice princess for nothing.
A half-smile lifted one edge of his mouth, making something in her stomach flip and flop and flap like a torn sail in a stiff breeze. He tapped the paperwork he was holding against his other hand. ‘I have a solution to your current dilemma.’
‘A...solution?’ Frankie affected a laugh. ‘I can’t imagine how any solution you’ve come up with would be in any way agreeable to me.’
He shrugged one broad shoulder, his spy face back in place. ‘It’s an offer. Take it or leave it.’
Frankie could see why he was lethally successful at brokering high-stakes property deals. No wonder he had become one of the wealthiest businessmen in Italy. Even wealthier than his own family, which was saying something. They weren’t called the silver-tailed Salvettis for nothing.
She licked her suddenly paper-dry lips. ‘Are you offering to...to lend me money?’
‘Not lend. Give.’
His eyes held hers in a lock that pulsed with something she didn’t want to name. Stubbornly refused to name or acknowledge. But she felt it all the same. Her body betraying her with a slow-moving heat spreading like warm treacle to all her secret places. His deep mellifluous voice with its rich Italian accent always did that to her—made her aware of every inch of her skin, aware of its traitorous desire to get closer to him, even though her rational brain told her, Danger. Keep away.
‘Give?’ Frankie raised her eyebrows. ‘Free? No strings?’
The half-smile was back and was even more devastating to her resolve to resist him. She couldn’t stop thinking about his mouth and how it would feel to have it pressed to hers. They had not touched each other than a handshake on their first introduction when she was seventeen and a handful of times since, most notably the night of her twenty-first birthday. But it hadn’t stopped her wondering what his touch would be like on other parts of her body. Polite nods and handshakes. That’s all he had done and yet her body had reacted, still reacted as if he had some strange sensual power over her.
