Blackmailed into the Marriage Bed

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  Ailsa had never seen Vinn so out of sorts. Nothing ever seemed to faze him. Even when she’d told him she was leaving two years ago, he’d been as emotionless as a robot. It intrigued her to see him feeling something. Was there actually a heart beating inside that impossibly broad chest? She bent down to pick up the scattered papers and, tidying them into a neat pile, silently handed them to him. He took them from her and tossed them on the desk, where a couple of pages fluttered back to the floor.

  ‘I can’t let him down,’ he said in a low mumble, as if talking to himself. ‘Not now. Not like this.’

  ‘Would you like me to go with you?’ The offer was out before Ailsa could stop it. ‘My flight doesn’t leave for a few hours so...’

  His expression snapped out of its distracted mode and got straight back to cold, hard business. ‘If you come with me, you come as my wife. Deal or no deal.’

  Ailsa was torn between wanting to tell him where to put his deal and wanting to see more of this vulnerable side of him. She could agree to the charade verbally but he could hardly hold her to anything without having her sign something.

  ‘I’ll go with you to the hospital because I’ve always liked your grandfather. That’s if you think he’d like to see me?’

  ‘He would like to see you,’ Vinn said and searched through the papers on his desk for something, muttering a curse word in the process.

  ‘Is this what you’re looking for?’ Ailsa handed him the pages that had fallen the second time.

  He took them from her and, reaching for a pen, slid them in front of her on the desk. ‘Sign here.’

  She ignored the pen and met his steely gaze. ‘Do we have to do it now? Your grandfather is—’

  ‘Sign it.’

  Ailsa could feel her will preparing for battle. Her spine stiffened to concrete, her jaw set to stone and her gaze sent a round of fire at his. ‘I’m not signing it unless you give me time to read it.’

  ‘Damn it, Ailsa, there isn’t time,’ Vinn said, slamming his hand down on the desk. ‘I need to see my grandfather. Trust me, okay? Just for once in your life trust me. I can’t let Nonno down. I can’t fail him. He’s depending on me to get him through this. Along with Isaac’s sponsorship, I’ll pay you a lump sum of ten million.’

  Ailsa’s eyebrows shot up so high she thought they might hit the light fitting above her head. ‘Ten...million?’

  The line of his mouth was white-tight. ‘If you don’t sign in the next five seconds the deal is off. Permanently.’

  Ailsa took the pen from him, his fingers brushing hers in the exchange, sending a riot of fiery sensations from her fingertips to her feminine core. The pen was still warm from where he’d been holding it. She remembered all too well his warmth. The way it lit the wick of her desire like a match on dry tinder. She could feel the smouldering of his touch moving through her body, awakening sensual memories.

  Memories she had tried so hard to suppress.

  She took a shaky breath and ran her gaze over the document. It was reasonably straightforward: three years of sponsorship for Isaac and giving her a lump sum of ten million on signing. While it annoyed her he’d used money as a lure, she realised it was the primary language he spoke. Money was his mother tongue, not Italian. Well, she could learn to speak Money too. Ten million was a lot of money. She was successful in her business but with ten million in her bank account she could expand her studio to Europe.

  But then she realised how trapped she would be once she signed that agreement. She would have to spend three months with Vinn. She needed time to think about this. She had rushed into marriage with him in the past. How foolish would it be to rush into this without proper and careful consideration? She left the document unsigned and pushed it and the pen back to him. ‘I need a couple of days to think about this. It’s a lot of money and... I need more time.’

  He showed no emotion on his face, which surprised her given how insistent he had been moments earlier. But maybe behind that masked expression he was already planning another tactic to force her to comply with his will. ‘We will discuss this further after we’ve been to the hospital.’ He put the paper under a paperweight and, picking up her overnight bag, ushered her out of his office.

  He spoke a few quick words to his receptionist Claudia, explaining what was happening, and Claudia expressed her concern and assured him she would take care of everything back here at the office. Ailsa felt a twinge of jealousy at the way the young woman seemed to be such an integral part of the business. She wondered what had happened to the receptionist who had worked for him during their marriage. Vinn liked surrounding himself with beautiful women and they didn’t come more beautiful than Claudia, who looked as if she’d just stepped out of a photo shoot.

  Ailsa waited until they were in Vinn’s car and on their way to the hospital before she brought up the subject. ‘What happened to your other receptionist, Rosa?’

  ‘I fired her.’

  She rounded her eyes in surprise. She’d thought his relationship with the middle-aged Rosa had been excellent. She’d often heard him describe Rosa as the backbone of the business and how he would be lost without her. Why on earth would he have fired her? ‘Really? Why?’

  He worked his way through the gears with an almost savage intensity. ‘She overstepped the mark. I fired her. End of story.’

  ‘Overstepped it in what way?’

  He sent her a speaking glance. ‘Could we leave this until another time?’

  Ailsa bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry... I know you’re feeling stressed and this must be so upsetting for you with your grandfather so desperately ill...’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘He’s all I have,’ Vinn said in the same hollow-sounding voice he’d used back in his office. ‘I’m not ready to lose him.’

  She wanted to reach for his hand or to put her hand on his thigh the way she used to do, but instead she kept to her side of the car. He probably wouldn’t welcome her comfort or he might push her away, which would be even worse. ‘You still have your dad, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘No.’ He made another gear change. ‘He died. Car crash. He was driving under the influence and killed himself and his new girlfriend and seriously injured a couple and their two children travelling in the other car.’

  ‘I’m so sorry...’ Ailsa said. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  It pained her to think Vinn had gone through such a tragic loss since she’d left and she’d known nothing about it. She hadn’t even sent a card or flowers. Had he kept his dad’s death out of the press? Not that she went looking for news about Vinn and his family...well, not unless she’d had one too many glasses of wine late at night when she was feeling particularly lonely and miserable.

  He shrugged off her sympathy. ‘He was on a fast track to disaster from the moment my mother died when I was a child. Without her steadying influence he was a train wreck waiting to happen.’

  Ailsa had rarely heard Vinn mention his mother’s death. It was something he never spoke of, even in passing. But she knew his relationship with his father had never truly recovered after his father was charged with fraud when Vinn was barely out of his teens. The shame on the family’s name and the reputation of the bespoke furniture business had been hard to come back from, but coming back from it had been Vinn’s blood, sweat and tears mission and he had done it, building the company into a global success.

  ‘I guess not everyone gets to have a father-of-the-year dad,’ she said, sighing as he turned into the entrance of the hospital. ‘Both of us lucked out on that one.’

  Vinn had pulled into a parking spot and glanced at her again with a frown. ‘What do you mean? You’ve got a great dad. Michael’s one of the most decent, hardworking men I’ve ever met.’

  Ailsa wanted to kick herself. She even lifted one foot to do it, welcoming the stab of pain from her high heel because she was a fo
ol to let her guard slip. A damn fool.

  ‘Yes...yes, I know. He’s wonderful...even since the divorce he still makes an effort to—’

  ‘Then why say something like that? He’ll always be your dad even though he’s divorced from your mother.’

  ‘Forget I said it. I... I wasn’t thinking.’ Ailsa hated that she sounded so flustered and hoped he’d put it down to the emotion of seeing his grandfather under such tense and potentially tragic circumstances. She had a feeling if he hadn’t been in such a rush to see his grandfather before the surgery he might well have pushed her to explain herself a little more. It was a reprieve, but how long before he came back to it with his dog-with-a-bone determination?

  It was a timely reminder she would have to be careful around Vinn. He knew her in a way few people did. Her knew her body like a maestro did an instrument. He knew her moods, her likes and dislikes, her tendency to use her sharp tongue as a weapon when she got cornered.

  He didn’t know her shameful secret, but how soon before he made it his business to find out?

  CHAPTER TWO

  VINN DIDN’T KNOW what was worse—seeing Ailsa again without a little more notice or walking into the hospital to see his grandfather, possibly for the last time. But, in a way, he’d been expecting to lose his grandfather...eventually. But two years ago when Ailsa called time on their marriage it had not only blindsided him but hit him in the chest like a freight train. Sure, they argued a bit now and again. What newly married couple didn’t?

  But he’d never thought she’d leave him.

  They hadn’t even made it to the first anniversary. For some reason that annoyed him more than anything else. He had given her everything money could buy. He had showered her with gifts and jewellery. Surrounded her with luxury and comfort, as was fitting for the wife of a successful man. He might not have loved her the way most wives expected to be loved, but she hadn’t married him for love either. Lust was what brought them together and he’d been perfectly fine with that and so had she, or so he’d thought. She had never said the words and he hadn’t fished for them. He’d just assumed she would be happy with the arrangement because most women wanted security over everything else and the one thing he was good at was providing financial security. Financial security was what you could bank on—pardon the pun—because emotions were fickle. People were fickle.

  But Ailsa had been unwilling to even discuss the subject of having a child. He knew her career was important to her, as was his to him, but surely she could have been mature enough to sit down and discuss it like an adult? He’d told her he wasn’t all that interested in having a family when they’d first got together because back then he wasn’t. But after a few months of marriage, his grandfather had his first health scare with his liver and had spoken to Vinn privately about his desire for a grandchild to hold in his arms before he died. He had made it sound like Vinn would be letting down the family name by not providing an heir. That it would be a failure on Vinn’s part not to secure the family business for future generations.

  Letting the family down.

  Failure.

  With his father already the Gagliardi family’s big failure, those words haunted Vinn. They stalked him in quiet moments. It reminded him of how close to losing everything he had been when his father had jeopardised everything with his fraudulent behaviour. Vinn couldn’t allow himself to fail at anything. Being an only child had never really bothered him before then, but with his father acting like a born-again teenager at that time and his grandfather rapidly ageing, it had made Vinn think more and more about the future. Who would he leave his vast wealth to? What was the point of working so hard if you had no one to pass on your legacy to when you left this mortal coil?

  But no, practically as soon as he’d brought up the topic, Ailsa had stormed out of his life like a petulant child, refusing to communicate with him except through their respective lawyers. She had dropped another failure on him—their marriage. He would give her the divorce when it suited him and not a moment before. He had far more pressing priorities and top of that list was getting his grandfather through this surgery.

  Vinn was banking on Ailsa’s love for her younger brother Isaac to get her to agree to his plan for the next three months. But her turning up unannounced at his office was a reminder of how careful he had to be around her.

  Careful. Guarded. Controlled.

  He’d assumed she would call and make an appointment, but the one thing he knew he should never do with Ailsa was assume anything. She had an unnerving ability to catch him off guard. Like when she’d point blank refused to sign his agreement even though he’d dangled ten million pounds in front of her. He hadn’t expected her to ask for time to think about it. He’d expected her to sign it then and there. But with the pressure of getting to the hospital in time to see his grandfather before the surgery, Vinn had allowed her to get away without signing. He had never allowed anyone to do that to him before. Push him around. Manipulate him. He had always put measures in place to avoid being exploited or fooled or thwarted.

  All through his life he had aced everything he had ever set out to do, but his marriage to Ailsa was a failure. A big fat failure. How he hated that word—failure. Hated. Hated. Hated it. It made him feel out of control, incompetent.

  But it wasn’t just him who had been affected by Ailsa walking out on him. The breakup of their marriage had shattered his grandfather and it was no surprise the old man’s health had gone into a steep decline shortly after Ailsa had left. The death of Vinn’s father so soon after her leaving certainly hadn’t helped. But in some ways his grandfather had coped better with Vinn’s father’s death than the breakup of Vinn’s marriage. His marriage to Ailsa had been the hope his grandfather had clung to for the future—a future ripe with promise of a new generation, new beginnings and new success. But that hope had been snatched away when Ailsa left.

  But just lately, as the two-year mark of the separation crept closer, he’d noticed his grandfather becoming more and more stressed and his health suffering as a result. His grandfather had always been a devoted family man and had stayed faithful and true to Vinn’s grandmother, Maria, until her death five years ago. If Vinn could do this one thing—make his grandfather believe he and Ailsa were back together—then at least the old man’s recovery wouldn’t be compromised by the stress and worry about their imminent divorce.

  Besides, this time around, Vinn would be the one in control of their relationship and he would stay in control. He wouldn’t allow Ailsa to throw him over again. He had put a time limit on their ‘reunion’ and he’d mentioned the no-sex rule just to be on the safe side. When he’d seen her walk into his office unannounced, his loins had pulsed with a drumbeat of primal lust so powerful it nearly knocked him off his feet. And if he hadn’t been talking to one of his senior staff on the phone about a tricky problem in one of his workshops, he might well have taken Ailsa into his arms then and there and challenged her to deny the spark that arced between them. The spark that had always arced between them from the first time they’d met at a furniture exhibition in Paris. He was attracted to her natural beauty—her long silky curtain of ash-blonde hair and creamy complexion and coltish model-like figure, and the way her bewitching grey-blue eyes seemed to change with her mood.

  The other thing he’d liked about her back then was she hadn’t been easy to pick up. With his sort of wealth and profile it had been a new experience meeting a woman who didn’t dive head first into bed with him. She had taken playing hard to get to a whole new level. The thrill of the chase had been the biggest turn-on of his adult life. He had seen it as a challenge to get her to finally capitulate and, if he were honest, he would have to admit it was one of the reasons he’d married her instead of offering her an affair like anyone else. Maybe even the major reason. Because nothing shouted I won more than getting that wedding ring on her finger.

  But that iron-strong determinati
on of hers that had so attracted him in the first place was the same thing that had ultimately destroyed their marriage. She refused to back down over a position she adopted. It was her way or the highway and to hell with you if you didn’t agree.

  But Vinn was equally determined, and this next three months would prove it.

  * * *

  Ailsa followed Vinn into the private room where Domenico was being monitored prior to the transplant. Strict sterilisation procedures were being conducted and, according to the nurse, they would be a hundred times more stringent once the surgery was over.

  The old man was lying in a bed with medical apparatus tethering him seemingly from every limb. He opened his eyes when Vinn approached the bed and gave a weak smile. ‘You made it in time.’

  Vinn gently took his grandfather’s hand in his and Ailsa was touched to see the warmth and tenderness in Vinn’s gaze. Had he ever looked at her like that? As if she mattered more than anything at that moment? She felt guilty for thinking such thoughts at such a time with his grandfather so desperately ill, but how could she not wish Vinn had felt something more than just earthy lust for her?

  ‘I made it,’ Vinn said. ‘And I brought someone with me to see you.’

  Domenico looked to where Ailsa was standing and his weary bloodshot eyes lit up like stadium lights. ‘Ailsa? Is it really you?’

  She stepped forward and put her hand on the old man’s forearm, so close to where Vinn’s hand was resting she felt a little electric tingle shoot up her arm. ‘Hello, Dom.’

  Dom’s eyes began to water and he blinked a few times as if trying to control his emotions. ‘My dear girl... You have no idea how much it thrills me to see you back with Vinn. I’ve prayed for this day. Prayed and prayed and prayed.’

  Back with Vinn.

  Those three words sent a wave of heat through her body and two hot pools of it firing in her cheeks. Had Vinn already told his grandfather they were back together? Had he been so arrogantly confident she would sign the agreement? She was glad now she hadn’t signed it. Fervently glad. He had given her ten million very good reasons to sign it, but still, it rankled that he thought he could so easily buy her acquiescence by waving indecent amounts of money in front of her.