by Lynne Graham
“I told you before. I’m saying it again. Our marriage is not a farce to me.”
“I’m not asking you for a happily-ever-after, V.” She cut him off, that tough mask in place again. “That’s kind of lost its shine for me.
“I’m asking, since we’re inconveniently tied together legally already, if you’ll help me secure the happiness of a small boy who’s just lost his parents and has been thrust into a battle between greedy adults who care only about the bottom line.
“If you were really once that boy who fought against overwhelming odds to survive, you will understand that a child’s well-being is at stake here.”
* * *
After the almost soap-opera-ish drama that had been his life recently, Vincenzo hadn’t thought he’d ever be shocked again. But the fire that burned in Alessandra’s eyes, the fighting stance of her body as she faced him, achieved that effect quite thoroughly.
This was the woman he’d lost his head over.
Vulnerable yet fierce.
Fragile and yet with a steely core.
In her, he’d seen a woman that would get behind him. A woman who’d have fought against all the injustices that had been done him. A woman who’d understand his lifelong fight, his ambition, his need to even out the scales. A woman—his wife—whom he’d thought would take his side against people who were not even her blood relations.
But he refused to be taken in by her again. Refused to let his heart rule over the little sense his head spouted. Refused to forget that, for all her determination now, she’d walked out on him, on their marriage, without even a word.
Worse, she wouldn’t have returned if she hadn’t been forced into it by a cruel twist of fate.
But for all his reservations, he couldn’t remain untouched by the very real grief in her eyes, the guilt whenever she mentioned her mother, the hopelessness when she recounted how Charlie was being fought over.
All feelings he was too familiar with.
“Do you comprehend what an enormous responsibility you’re taking on by seeking custody of Charlie?” he asked softly.
Her gaze jerked to meet his. “Yes.” Calm. Steady.
“This is not an impulsive decision, is it? Because apparently you’re the queen of impulsive behavior.”
She fidgeted with the strap of her bag, bringing his gaze to her breasts, before weakly refuting, “That’s not fair.”
“I’ve gained a broader picture of you in the weeks you’ve been hiding, cara. Apparently, you have a history of making major, life-changing decisions on a whim.”
A stiffness imbued her movements as she approached his desk and poured herself a glass of water. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Signing up to a modeling career—just because you knew your mother would disapprove.
“Walking out on a two-million-dollar contract with a cosmetics company because you discovered that their practices were not entirely ethical. Hiding from the fallout of that in Bali, which was when I found you. Then there’s your decision to quit modeling altogether—for reasons unknown.
“And finally, marrying me on the rebound…because you got dumped by your ex,” he said, giving voice to the thing that had bothered him the most.
Her almond-shaped eyes widened. “Javier again?”
“Oh no, this is all according to Massimo. He’s been quite voluble in your absence, volunteering information about you at regular intervals. Exacting his own version of revenge on me, I’d say.”
“Revenge?”
“He knew how…angry I was by your middle-of-the-night flight. So he dealt me a few punches and got some laughs out of it.” Massimo, Vincenzo had realized in the past few weeks, found him endlessly fascinating, as if he were a puzzle the tech genius was determined to solve.
It was damned hard to hate a man who kept dropping down into his office for little chats as if they were childhood friends. Or, God forbid, long-lost brothers. Not even on pain of death would Vincenzo admit, however, that he was just as curious about the cyber tech genius.
“So, is it true?”
“Is what true?” she asked.
Vincenzo had a feeling she was playing with him. And yet he couldn’t help gritting out the question that had been gouging a hole in him for nine excruciatingly long weeks. “Did you marry me on the rebound, Princess?”
The little minx fluttered her eyes at him, sweetly pretending to consider the question while his insides tightened into a knot. “You know, there might be some truth to that after all. How else can I explain the temporary madness that took hold of me in Bali? Javi and I…had such grand plans together and then it all fell apart so spectacularly. My relationship had failed. My career held no thrill any longer.
“I found myself hiding in Bali, devastated by everything that had shifted beneath my feet and then there you were… Prince Charming, running to my rescue.
“Except you’re more like the slimy, cold-blooded frog than the prince.”
His jaw tightened and Alex knew she’d landed a solid hit.
She straightened as he came to her, his voice deceptively soft when he spoke. “You’ve just been through a terrible loss. Grief and guilt should not be the motivators to involve yourself in a child’s life. He’s not something you can return to a shop when the fancy wears off.”
The sudden change to this most serious of topics, and offering his sensible opinion stole the ground from underneath her. The complex facets to this man amazed her, and the surprises kept hitting her just when she thought she had the measure of him.
He smiled thinly. “You’re shocked that a man like me—ruthless, cold, cruel even—can think of a child’s well-being in this situation, can see beyond our petty differences, si?”
“No. Yes, I mean… I didn’t think you’d be quite so rational about it.” She shrugged. “It gives me hope that I’m not pushing Charlie from one horrible situation to another. Even if it is only temporary.”
“You have considered that I might be a different but just as horrible situation for him then?”
“Of course I have. You lied to me. You’ve lost my trust. I thought long and hard over that before I came back to you today.”
“And what did you conclude?”
“My first step is to get custody of Charlie. Once I achieve that goal, once this marriage becomes nothing but a liability to me, I’ll—”
“You’ll do away with me?” he said, a glint of wicked humor gleaming in his eyes.
Alex shrugged, a small smile playing around her own mouth. “Something like that, yes.”
His gaze turned thoughtful, as he stood there caging her with his body. She could almost hear the gears turning in that Machiavellian mind of his. “Bene, I’ll play along for the world. But I have a price for my cooperation.”
“Of course you do.” She glared at him. “It seems you’re nothing if not predictable.”
“You’re asking me to take on an important role in the life of a child—”
“I’m not asking you to be a permanent parent to him—”
“Ah…how do you see this playing out, then?” he asked, parodying the question she’d asked of him. “We pretend to be an adoring couple, you get custody of your half brother and then you run off to some quiet corner of the world with him in tow, never to be seen again and forget all about your poor husband?”
There was no place in the world she could go to where she could outrun her feelings for him. “What’s your price, V?” she demanded, facing him, refusing to back down even though everything inside her was building to an unbearably heightened sense of unwanted anticipation.
He tucked his finger under her chin and looked her straight in the eye. “The same as always, Alessandra.”
“Spell it out for me.”
“I’ve only ever wanted what was mine. No more, no less.
“I want the wife you promised me you’d be. I want the marriage that this was supposed to be. I want you to stand by my side while I achieve the goal I’ve worked toward all my life.”
“Those promises were made based on false assumptions. You’re not the man I thought you were. And nothing will make me betray Leo and Massimo.”
Impatience glittered in his eyes. “You do them a disservice, cara. Leonardo and Massimo can look after themselves. Charlie can’t. Why don’t you focus your energies on him?”
“You make it sound so simple. As if everything sits in a different compartment—”
“You don’t seem to grasp one crucial thing. Whether I had seen you in Bali or not, whether or not I had thrown all my own rules out the window and married you when I’ve never even had a girlfriend for more than two months, this was always going to be my path in life, Alessandra.
“I would still have done everything I could to ruin all that bears the name Brunetti.”
“And I’ll be damned before I let you use me against them,” she threw back at him.
Vincenzo took her in, reluctant admiration and pride building up in his chest.
From the portrait Massimo had drawn of her, from her own actions in the last nine weeks, he’d wondered at the sanity of what he’d done. If he’d been taken in by her beauty and his lust. But now, he knew he’d made the right decision.
He wanted this Alessandra that fought for the people she loved in her life so ferociously. He wanted that loyalty all for himself.
And whether cruel or not, fate had given him another chance with her. Alessandra’s resolve to do the right thing by her half brother was his chance, his opportunity to set things straight between them.
An opportunity to get her to spend time with him, to make her see his side of the story. To turn this temporary arrangement she’d suggested into the permanent marriage he still wanted.
“Fine, I’ll give you what you’re asking for. We will pretend to be a happy, blissfully in love couple for the world. I will help you win custody of Charlie. After a trial period of say three months.”
“Trial period of what exactly?”
“Of you behaving yourself.”
“Behaving myself? How dare you—”
“Hear me out, Alessandra. You say I’ve broken your trust? You have done exactly the same to me. Believe me, Princess, you’re the first person I gave that to and you threw it back in my face without a single moment’s doubt.”
* * *
The thin thread of resentment in those words killed Alex’s ready argument. Words fell away from her lips as she stared at him, a simple truth emerging from all of it.
Their marriage had meant something to him. Maybe not the same thing as it had to her. But something. And her walking out on it, on him, he saw as…what? Abandonment? A betrayal? Had this marriage, his vows, really been sacred to him?
“I won’t… I can’t let you bring a child into this thing between us without ensuring it is truly what you want. That you’ll see all this through—these huge decisions and being a parent—without running away from it. For three months, don’t make any more life-changing decisions. Deal with your grief over your mother’s loss. Decide what you want to do with your career.”
She hated that he was being the sensible one here. “There’s nothing to deal with, V.”
“You’ve just lost your mother, Princess. You—”
“I never really had my mother in the first place to lose her.”
He reached for her hand but Alex instinctively jerked away from him. Because she didn’t trust herself. Not with him.
He exhaled roughly. “Don’t run away. Don’t… Just stay still, with me. Show the world that you’re settling down. Show me that you’re committed to this arrangement over the next three months. And then we’ll start the custody proceedings.”
“But that’s three months that Charlie’s…”
“Visit with him in the meantime. Wrap up your other obligations. Three months is a small drop in the ocean when you consider the fact that you’ll give him a stable home for the rest of his life.”
“Three months is a long time to a child who’s just lost everything, who’s living with family members who see him as nothing but a meal ticket to a better life. You’re doing this just to punish me. Because I walked out on you.”
“No, Alessandra. I’m doing this to make sure we both know what we’re getting into this time. To make sure we’re not compounding the first mistake by bringing an innocent into this mess.”
“Both you and I know how much damage could be done to a child by the smallest thoughtless action. We can’t…” Her throat caught on the words. “I can’t leave him there alone, unprotected.”
“Fine, Princess,” Vincenzo offered in a soothing tone. His brow furrowed into a thoughtful frown while he stared at her with that same intensity he brought to everything he did. “Did your mother have any friends that Charlie knows well?”
“Yes.” Alex nodded.
“People you trust?”
“Yep. They have a little boy Charlie’s age. I met them when I visited him for his last birthday party.”
“You said you and your mother were estranged.”
Alex shrugged. “Yes, we were. But that doesn’t mean I was going to completely shut Charlie out of my life. I never missed a birthday of his, and as soon as he learned to read, I regularly sent him little cards and letters.”
“I’ll make some calls. Maybe we can arrange for him to stay with that family until the custody hearing is done. He can go to the same school as their son, keep the same routine and have familiar people around him while you and I figure this out.”
Alex nodded, gratitude cutting away any words that could rise up and ruin this temporary détente. At least in this matter, her trust in him hadn’t been misplaced. And he was right.
She’d run away from her problems in the past. More than once. But not anymore.
This time, she was going to face them, and him, head-on.
She was going to stay by his side and do everything she could to stop this destruction of the Brunettis that he was bent on, using every weapon available to her. But never again was she going to forget that there was a bone-deep ruthlessness inside him; never again was she going to foolishly believe that he was capable of love.
“I have a condition of my own too,” she threw at him impulsively, the idea of three months living in close quarters with him seeming like a lifetime. A lifetime of intimacy, of awareness and desire, of shattered dreams and naive hopes.
“What?” he said smoothly, even as he uncoiled himself and sauntered toward her. It was like watching a predator emerge from stalking, ready to pounce.
She stood rooted in place, refusing to reveal how much his nearness affected her. How much the heat of his body called to her. “I’m not sleeping with you. This is not a real marriage. Not anymore.”
“Ah… Massimo was right.”
Her breath stuttered in her throat as he lifted his hand and gently pushed away a strand of her hair from her shoulder. “About what?”
“That I don’t know you well at all. But even he doesn’t know how cruel you can be, does he, Princess?”
Alex compulsively licked her lips just as his gaze zeroed in there. “It muddies everything for me. That’s how you trapped me in the first place. You’re too damned good in bed.”
A wicked light came into his eyes, making them magnetic. “I think that’s just the connection between us, bella. A connection that you’re doing everything to run away from.”
“Hot sex, however tempting, can’t be the only bedrock of a marriage.”
“Unfortunately for my body, I agree.” He pursed his lips and leveled a thoughtful look at her. “Shall I suggest an amendment to your condition?”
“What?”
“We shou
ld each be allowed to try to seduce the other, si? If I try and you give in, you can’t hold that against me.”
“I won’t give in. And I definitely don’t want to seduce you.”
He tilted his head to the side, his gaze holding hers captive. “Then there’s no harm in the challenge then, is there?” She had somehow managed to nod when he bent his head and whispered in her ear. “I do wish you’d change your mind about seducing me, Princess.”
Her heart raced, sensation zinging across her skin. “Why?”
“There’s nothing more arousing, nothing sexier in the world than a beautiful, powerhouse of a woman who goes after what she wants with a single-minded determination.
“In fact, I’d say that’s how you trapped me, Princess.” His lips never really grazed the sensitive skin beneath her ear, but Alex felt the touch nevertheless, like a searing burn. “Being so thoroughly wanted like that by you is an incredible high unlike any other in the entire world.”
CHAPTER FIVE
ALESSANDRA HATED TO admit it, even during the most peaceful moments while she’d been hiding out in Bali, but there had been a kernel of doubt in her mind as to whether she’d done the right thing in deciding to quit modeling.
Show after high stakes frantic show for top designers around the world, running from city to city, country to country like a nomad, working close to eighty hours a week, with no time for a personal life or the deep commitments she’d wanted—the stress of it had taken its toll on her.
Of course, she’d partied in the beginning—partied hard with the heady freedom of a sixteen-year-old who’d found the world at her feet—but over the years the vacuous, often cutthroat glamor of it all had paled and she’d become more and more unhappy.
Photographers who’d once loved working with her had started calling her fractious, restless, the second she hadn’t been performing to perfection. She’d been turning up late for fitting appointments, finding a myriad of excuses. Once she’d arrived late and covered in glitter and hair spray from a previous show, minutes before she was due to walk, the stress of running across the city during fashion week making her nauseous. Making her want to run away from the sea of frantic strangers surrounding her.
