Buying His Bride Of Convenience

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His eyes didn’t flicker. ‘It will form part of our prenuptial agreement.’

‘I will have my own lawyer approve it.’

‘Naturally.’

‘I need to give a month’s notice and—’

‘No.’ His refutation was sharp. ‘That is too long. There are many things that need to be arranged and it can’t wait. I want us to be married in Italy as soon as possible and there is much to organise. You will hand your notice in tomorrow and tell your bosses you’ll be leaving with immediate effect or this suitcase of cash stays with me and I find another wife.’

He must have noticed her mutinous expression at his non-subtle warning that he could easily find another woman to be his wife, and likely one who was a hundred times more malleable, for he added, ‘I will arrange for someone suitable to take your place until the charity can find a permanent replacement for you.’

‘And if you can’t find a suitable replacement?’

‘I will.’ He looked so smugly confident in his assertion that she longed to smack him. ‘But the second I hand over the cash tomorrow you are committed to marrying me. There will be no going back on your word.’

‘Providing my lawyer agrees that the prenuptial agreement is unbreakable, I will not go back on my word.’

‘Then do we have a deal? You will marry me? You will quit your job and come to Italy with me tomorrow?’

‘Only if the agency agrees that your “suitable replacement” is suitable.’

‘They will,’ he said in that same smugly confident tone.

‘I’ll need to go home before I go to Italy.’

Now he drummed his fingers on the table with his impatience. ‘What’s your excuse for that?’

‘You’re an Italian national but I’ll be considered an alien. I used to work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs so I know what I’m talking about. I need to go to my home in The Hague to collect the papers your officials will require from me.’

‘I’ll send someone to get them.’

‘I’m not having a stranger go through my possessions.’

He studied her for a moment before giving a sharp nod. ‘Okay, I will take you to the Netherlands first. But that is it. I will agree to no further delays. Does this mean we have a deal? Do I instruct my lawyers to draft the prenuptial agreement?’

Her throat suddenly running dry, Eva cleared it, trying to ignore the chorus of rebuttals ringing in her head.

What did it matter if she was agreeing to a cold, emotionless marriage when her life had been cold and emotionless for six years? Marrying Daniele meant the Blue Train Aid Agency would have the wonderful benefit of his money, which would be of far more value to it than she was as a lowly employee.

As Daniele himself had said only minutes ago, marrying him meant everyone was a winner.

But still the chorus in her head warned that for there to be a winner someone had to be the loser.

How could she be the loser in the deal? She wasn’t giving Daniele her heart, only her physical presence. She wasn’t giving him anything of herself so how could she be the loser?

So she ignored the chorus and met his gaze, her cold heart battering her ribs. ‘Yes. We have a deal.’

‘You will marry me?’

Closing her mind to the image of Johann that had fluttered to its forefront, she nodded.

‘Say it,’ Daniele commanded.

‘Yes. I will marry you.’

His firm lips turned at the corners, more grimace than smile. ‘Then I suggest we have a drink to drown our sorrows in.’

* * *

Daniele, looked at his watch and sighed. The money had been handed over to the astounded Blue Train Aid Agency bosses, his temporary replacement for Eva approved with only the most cursory of glances at the replacement’s CV, and the prenuptial agreement was in the hands of his lawyers and expected to be completed by the time they landed in Europe. Her canvas backpack had been put in the boot of his car by his driver, all the paperwork for the termination of her employment done. They should be long gone from this godforsaken camp by now but Eva had disappeared, muttering something about needing to say some goodbyes. He’d imagined it would take only a few minutes but she’d been gone for almost an hour.

He accepted another sludge-like coffee from a female employee who turned the colour of beetroot every time he looked at her and forced a smile. All he wanted was to be gone and away from this place that made him hate himself for the privileges he’d been born to. Although he would never admit this to Eva, he would have donated the million dollars cash to the charity that morning even if she’d turned his proposal down.

Just as he drained the last of the disgusting liquid—he’d have to add a lifetime supply of decent coffee for all staff and refugees to his donation, he decided—Eva appeared in the dilapidated building he’d been hiding in.

‘Ready to go?’ he asked in a tone that left no room for doubt that she’d better be ready to go or he’d chuck her over his shoulder and carry her out.

She nodded. She’d hardly exchanged a word with him since his arrival at the camp mid-morning and hadn’t met his eyes once.

‘Come on then.’

It was only a short walk to his car. His driver spotted their approach and opened the passenger door.

‘Eva!’

They both turned their heads to the sound and saw three teenage boys come flying over to them, jabbering and calling out in Spanish.

Eva’s face lit up to see them.

She embraced them all tightly in turn and, much to their pretend disgust, kissed their cheeks and ruffled their hair. Only after she’d embraced them all for a second time did she get in the car.

Daniele hurried in behind her so she couldn’t use another excuse to delay, and tapped the partition screen so his driver knew to get going.

The boys ran alongside the car as they left the camp, waving, hollering, blowing kisses, which were all returned by Eva.

Only when they were on the open road with the camp far behind them did Daniele see the solitary tear trickle down her face.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ud9a1c7ce-ae91-55a7-8593-20efb6e66f41)

EVA STEPPED INTO the small one-bedroom apartment she’d shared with Johann with a weight sitting heavily in her chest.

As she walked slowly through the living room, dust dislodged and filtered through the air. She hadn’t set foot in it for over a year. She hadn’t lived in it properly in four years. Intellectually she knew she should sell it or at the very least rent it out, but she couldn’t bring herself to.

All the old photos were where she’d left them. She picked up one on the windowsill, dislodging more dust. The picture was of her and Johann in the snow. Not even the thick winter clothing he’d been bundled up in could disguise Johann’s skinny frame. They both looked so young. They’d been so young, only nineteen when the picture had been taken.

She kissed the cold glass and put the frame back where it had been, pushing the old memories clamouring in her head aside and ignoring the urge to get the duster and vacuum cleaner out. She’d promised Daniele she would only be ten minutes.

He hadn’t been happy at her insistence he wait in the car. She didn’t want him in her apartment. This was the place she and Johann had made into a home when they’d been little more than children playacting at being grown-ups, neither having any real idea of what it entailed, learning as they went along, right down to when she’d put a nail in the kitchen wall to hang a picture, not having any idea that electric cables were nestled behind it and that she’d drilled right into them until they started receiving electric shocks every time they touched the tap or fridge. The electrician they’d had to scrape all their loose change together to afford had sternly told them they’d had a lucky escape—if either of them had touched the nail they would have been electrocuted. Even today, she couldn’t believe she’d been so lucky. What had been the odds that she could hang the picture without touching that live nail? At the time she’d considered it as evidence of their good luck; vindication that running away with him had been right.

But their luck had run out.

With a sigh, she pulled the suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe and quickly filled it with her meagre number of warm clothes. Snow was settling on the streets outside, the weather a complete contrast to the glorious sunshine she’d left in Caballeros.

She didn’t take anything else. She’d known when she’d accepted Daniele’s proposal that what she was agreeing to would not be permanent. But she could manage a few years, of that she was certain.

* * *

Daniele’s castello was almost identical to how Eva had imagined it, sitting high in the rolling Tuscan hills. Evening was falling and the few lights on gave it an ethereal, gothic quality. Thinking of how it would look with all the lights blazing in the total darkness, she could easily see where it got its name. Castello Miniato, the illuminated castle, would have shone for miles in medieval times.

What had once been a castle of majesty and splendour in a bright salmon pink was now on the verge of being a crumbling relic.

‘Are you renovating it?’ she asked as she got out of the car, which the driver had brought to a stop in an enormous courtyard. She could just make out scaffolding poles along a far wall.

‘My brother started on a renovation programme. He finished the south wing and now I need to think about what I want to do with the rest of it.’ There was a distinct lack of enthusiasm in his voice.

‘You don’t like it here?’

He shrugged. ‘I prefer modern architecture. If I could get away with it, I would pull it down and start again.’

She followed him through a wide solid oak door and found herself standing in a high-ceilinged room that, despite its size and grandeur, had a dank, cold feel to it.

The temperature change from what she’d been used to in the Caribbean hadn’t bothered her until that point. The cold weather front had engulfed the whole of Europe, with Tuscany expecting its own share of the white stuff over the coming days, but it wasn’t until she stepped into the castello’s reception room that Eva felt the cold in her bones.

‘The chef has prepared a meal for us,’ Daniele said, rubbing his hands briskly together. ‘I’ll show you to our living quarters.’

She trailed him for a good few minutes before he opened a door into a wide corridor lined with high, wide windows.

‘This is the family quarters,’ he said, then pointed to a door. ‘That is my room, which will be our room once we’re married.’ He threw the glimmer of a smile. ‘Of course, if you wish for it to be our room before then, you’re welcome to join me in it.’

She threw back a smile that quite clearly showed hell would freeze over first. ‘Which is my room?’

‘Take your pick. Serena, who runs the place, got the staff to put fresh bedding in all the rooms. The only one off limits is Francesca’s.’ He indicated another door, this time his smile indulgent. ‘If you want to make yourself a widow, just tell my sister I let you sleep in her room. She would kill me.’

‘Does Francesca live here?’ She’d assumed not but only now she was here did she realise she knew next to nothing about Daniele or his family, not on a personal, familiar level. All her dealings with them had been in Caballeros where medieval castellos and family trees had never cropped up in conversation.