Her words seemed to come from a long way away, and took even longer to process. ‘What?’ he said eventually. And though his English was perfect, he presumed he must have misunderstood something in the translation.
‘You want me to have an abortion? How dare you? I came here as a courtesy, to tell you that you’re going to be a father and that I will allow you to be some part of our child’s life and you actually try to bully me into getting rid of our baby?’
She sent one final glare in his direction and then strode purposefully towards the door. She grabbed her bag from a chair as she went and it took Antonio vital seconds to process both her accusation and the certainty that she was about to walk away from him.
He moved quickly, reaching the door first and putting his back against it.
‘Move,’ she demanded, not meeting his eyes.
And, heaven help him, he knew tears weren’t far away for Amelia and he fought a ridiculous urge to comfort her. That was not who or what they were.
‘I was not talking about an abortion,’ he said in a tone that was carefully wiped clear of emotion.
‘Then what exactly did you mean? What “solution” is there to this?’
‘We’ll get married.’
The relief that had glanced across her features was swallowed by another look of abject panic.
‘You’re kidding?’
‘Do I look like I am kidding?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘but you must be crazy if you think I would ever marry you.’
‘It was not a suggestion,’ he said, moving away from the door and returning to his desk.
It was a calculated risk—she would either leave, now he’d given her the opportunity, or she would stay.
And Antonio’s instincts, finely honed through his experience in business and trade, told him that she would stay and fight. Because Amelia was not a coward, and she was also not a fool. She might be pregnant with his baby but he held all the trump cards. The perfect bargaining chip to get everything he wanted. Not just their baby, his heir, but Prim’Aqua as well. A primal sense of accomplishment made him want to roar like an animal in the jungle. He pictured his father, pictured all he’d lost, the grief he’d known, and he swept his eyes shut for a moment and simply breathed it in: the certainty that all was about to be righted, once and for all.
‘And why is that?’ she asked: he’d been right. She wasn’t running. She was staying, because she knew as well as he did that this marriage was inevitable.
He took his time, savouring the moment, and then delivered the final blow to her insistence that marriage was a bad idea. ‘Because if you don’t marry me you know I will destroy your brother once and for all.’
She drew in a sharp breath but then seemed to rally. ‘You wish you could do that. But you forget, Antonio, I’ve had time since that night to think, and I’ve told Carlo about you. He knows what you’re up to, and he’s not worried.’
‘No, he doesn’t,’ Antonio said simply.
Amelia’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Come and see.’
She glared at him, as though moving close to him was the last thing she wanted.
But Antonio simply loaded up a spreadsheet on his computer and waited with a veneer of patience. Sure enough, a moment later, accompanied by a heavy sigh, Amelia closed the distance between them, pausing just behind him.
‘What am I looking at?’ she demanded.
‘How much of your family’s portfolio I have absorbed over the years,’ he said, running his own eyes over the spreadsheet with a sense of triumph.
It was all laid out in simple black and white and it painted a stark picture. Several of the companies, if he clicked on them, would show dramatically declining stock prices.
He heard her breathing change, grow faster, and he closed his eyes for a moment before flicking off the computer screen.
In the reflection, his eyes met hers.
‘You’re saying,’ she asked quietly, ‘that you’ll leave Carlo alone if I marry you?’
Antonio was at a fork in the road. The anger he had felt for a long time was balanced against a child he was determined to raise, and he found he couldn’t turn his back on either. ‘No,’ he said, standing and surprising her by being right there, so close they were almost touching. ‘I’m saying that if you marry me and hand over your Prim’Aqua shares, I will leave his remaining businesses alone.’
Indignation shaped her features as the full force of his words sunk in. ‘You’re blackmailing me?’
He made a sound of disagreement. ‘I am offering you a chance to potentially save your brother from financial ruin,’ he corrected. ‘And I am offering us both a chance to raise our baby as a family, which is, surely, your preference?’
‘My preference is never to see you again.’
He arched a thick dark brow. ‘Let us stick to the realm of reality, hmm?’
She turned away from him and he fought an urge to lift his fingers to her chin and angle her face back to his. He didn’t like it when she hid her expressive face. ‘I will never give you those shares.’
Determination flashed in the depths of his black eyes. ‘Then I will continue to destroy your brother in other ways. And believe me, Amelia, I do nothing by half measures.’ He slashed his hand through the air to emphasise his point. ‘Already I have wiped half a billion dollars off the value of his business interests—in a little over a month. What do you think I will have achieved by the year’s end?’
She drew in a sharp gasp and lifted her face to his. ‘You can’t be serious?’
‘Does it look as though I am joking?’
He was a study in humourless, dark intent.
‘But...why?’
‘Because I hate him,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘And because he deserves this.’
She swept her eyes shut and his gut fired with adrenalin.
‘A week after I turned eighteen, I came home from college to discover my father crying.’ Sympathy clouded Amelia’s expression. ‘He’d lost everything—because of your father and your brother. A liquidator had been approached to step in. I honestly believe he wanted to end his life rather than live with the shame of his bankruptcy.’
Pink bloomed in her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry he experienced that.’
His eyes lifted to hers, firing with the same strength that had led him then. ‘I took over the company that same day. Bit by bit I rebuilt it. It was not easy, querida, and it did not happen fast. Every day when I woke up and stared down the barrel of uncertainty and doubt, when I knew my father’s life and pride were riding on my success, I swore that I would win. And that I would make your brother pay for what he’d almost done.’
Amelia drew in a sharp breath.
‘I hate him.’
‘I can see that,’ she whispered unevenly. ‘But that doesn’t give you the right to ruin his life...’
‘He gave me the right.’ Antonio closed his eyes for a moment and he was back in the past, remembering the bleakness in his father’s eyes that night, many years earlier.
‘He made an enemy of me long ago, and nothing will change that.’
‘You talk like this about my brother,’ she said stiffly, ‘yet you actually expect me to marry you?’
‘Yes.’ His answer was instantaneous.
‘And you’d be happy with the fact you’re blackmailing me into it?’ she countered, her eyes narrowed. ‘You haven’t even asked how I’m feeling. You haven’t asked about the baby, the due date, nothing! You are heartless and selfish and so damned focused on revenge against my family that you don’t even see me as a flesh and blood woman, do you?’
At that, his eyes flared and every cell in his body that was noticing only her womanly self pushed him forward. ‘You ask if I see you as a woman?’ he demanded fiercely, and now he cupped her cheeks and hel
d her mesmerised face still. His voice was gravelly when he spoke. ‘You think I don’t want you even now, in the midst of all this?’
Her eyes lowered and he could feel the rushing of her blood; he could see the way she was as affected by this as he.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ she whispered after a moment, but his words were turning her blood into lava. ‘You don’t see me as a person with my own desires and wants, as someone who deserves to be able to steer her own fate; to make her own decisions.’
‘Of course you can decide,’ he contradicted gently. ‘But one of those choices is better for everyone.’
‘Another ultimatum,’ she grunted.
He sighed and dropped his hands, walking a few paces clear of her, to where the air was less thick with Amelia-ness and he could think a little straighter.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Let us look at this differently. The circumstances of our meeting were unfortunate.’
She snorted her agreement.
‘But I am not actually a bad person.’
Her eyes rolled heavenwards and when she spoke her words dripped with scathing sarcasm. ‘You’re determined to ruin the only family I have.’
‘I am determined,’ he corrected coldly, ‘to be a father to this baby. Why can’t we create a new family? Yes, I’m a Herrera and you’re a diSalvo, but we are also a mother and a father now. I want us to live together and to raise this baby side by side, giving it everything we can in life. Tell me this is not what you want, Amelia. Tell me you don’t want our child to grow up with a loving mother and father always at hand.’
* * *
The words were dangerous because they were so, so achingly true.
Her own childhood flashed before her eyes. The absence of any kind of family structure or regular home, the absence of time and love and affection. A mother who saw Amelia at times as an inconvenience and at others as a pet, and eventually an accessory, when Amelia was old enough, at eleven, to be dragged to parties that were, in hindsight, woefully inappropriate for a girl on the cusp of womanhood.
The things Amelia saw at her mother’s side! The drugged-out state of various guests, the orgies, spectacular fist fights. More than once she’d had to call an ambulance when someone had become so high they were a danger to themselves or others. Then there were the nightclubs, when Penny would park Amelia with the bouncers and she’d listen to them swearing and ogling women all night—it was a wonder she’d reached adulthood with any semblance of normality.
In the midst of it all, she had desperately wanted someone who would just be average. Boring. Someone who would read her books and make her pasta for dinner, who would take her to the playground or on long walks, who would ask her about her life, her hopes, her dreams.
She had wanted a mother—and not a mother like Penny.
And oh, how she’d craved a father. In her mind, she’d probably idealised what role a father might take. Her knowledge had been fleshed out from the pages of her books, but she’d imagined a sort of Mr Bennet type figure, benevolent and kindly, strict when necessary.
And Antonio? What kind of father would he be to their baby?
‘We hate each other,’ she said quietly, trying to remind herself of all the reasons this marriage was a stupid idea. ‘No child should grow up in a house where two parents can’t stand one another.’
‘We have more than seven months to find a way to co-exist,’ he said sensibly. ‘I think we can achieve that.’
‘And if we can’t?’
His eyes glittered with determination. ‘I do not see failure as an option here, hermosa.’
Frustration curdled inside her. ‘It would never work.’
‘You cannot say that with any certainty.’
‘Oh, yes, I can,’ she insisted. ‘You’re the last man on earth I would ever choose to marry, and it’s quite clear the feeling is mutual.’
‘This marriage wouldn’t be about us, though,’ he said simply. ‘It’s about giving our child a family from the moment of his birth...’
Something else occurred to Amelia and it had her fixing Antonio with a stone-cold stare. ‘You just want him to have your name, don’t you?’ she demanded.
‘Of course that matters to me.’ Antonio shrugged, and she was torn between despising his motivation and admiring his honesty. ‘But I would insist on his taking my name, married or not.’
She let out a sigh of exasperation. ‘God, you’re an old-fashioned, patriarchal jerk.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said with a lift of his shoulders. ‘But I am also a man who wants to marry you, and I think you should think very carefully about the situation you find yourself in.’
‘No way.’ She shook her head but the words lacked conviction.
He moved towards the door and wrenched it inwards, his eyes holding hers with steely determination. ‘Think about it,’ he said simply, as though he was asking what she’d like for dinner, or which was her favourite song.
‘I don’t need to think about it,’ she insisted, walking towards the door and pausing when she drew level with him. ‘I know my answer.’
‘Then think about what happens if you don’t marry me.’ He moved closer. ‘Think about what happens if you make an enemy of me.’ And, because he couldn’t help himself, he leaned down and whispered into her ear, ‘And think about the silver lining of a marriage between us, querida. Night after night in my bed as my wife...’
His words chased her all the way home, rattling around inside her shocked head. In a million years, and not for a million pounds, would she have thought Antonio Herrera would suggest marriage. He wasn’t the marrying kind! And he clearly had major issues with her family! Surely it was the last thing he wanted.
Him? What about her?
She’d run as fast as she could from the kind of life he lived and she didn’t regret that decision. Not for a moment. To marry a man like him and be swept up in his world—she’d regret it.
And yet...this baby! Their baby. This baby was as much his as it was hers. She had no interest in trying to pretend that wasn’t the case.
This baby wasn’t hypothetical. It was an actual being, a little person who would be a part of her life before she knew it. And she didn’t want to look back on her baby’s childhood and wish she’d done more, given him or her more. She didn’t want him to feel lonely, as she had. Scared, abandoned, worried—she wanted this baby to have everything!
She wanted perfection—she wanted a fairy tale, but that was never going to be her future.
Her thoughts became a screaming choir in the background of her life. Every morning she woke with visions of Antonio filling her mind, and she heard him all day—his suggestion of marriage, his insistence that it would be best for their baby.
But she remembered his rage too. His hatred for her brother and father. His insistence that their families’ feud was still very much an ongoing affair.
So when Carlo called one evening, clearly drunk and upset, she knew what it would be about even before he’d spoken.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he spat down the line, and then hurled several more expletives in fiery Italian. ‘That bastard’s done a number on me, Amelia. He’s got his hands on everything! He’s going to absolutely ruin me! Why didn’t I realise?’
Because Antonio is very, very good at what he does, Amelia responded inwardly, her eyes swept shut as, for the millionth time since leaving Madrid, she conjured an image of the Spaniard in her mind’s eye, and her body reacted predictably.
Night after night in my bed as my wife...
His words made her pulse speed up and her heart race, even now, a week after he’d whispered them like a sexy caress against her ear.
‘How am I going to tell Dad I let this happen?’
Her heart sank because the plaintive note in his voice was the only thing that could have brought her to her knees. For twelve years s
he hadn’t known she had a brother or a father, but then she’d turned up on their doorstep and they’d taken her in. They’d loved her, accepted her, and been the closest thing to a ‘normal’ family she’d ever known. What wouldn’t she do to repay them that kindness? What wouldn’t she do to protect them from this kind of grief and worry?
She soothed Carlo as best she could, placating him with hollow promises, and all the while her own future sharpened before her eyes.
When she disconnected the call some time later, Carlo was calmer but her own insides were quivering with emotion.
There was also a kernel of strength. She was resolute.
Because the answer to all her concerns was staring her in the face and she could—and would—be brave enough to admit that.
She could marry Antonio and she could give their child a family and a home, and the stability she’d never, ever had. She could give their baby the start in life she wanted, and that he or she deserved.
And she could solve Carlo’s worries for good. At least she thought she could.
She would marry Antonio, but only if he agreed to her rules. Because Amelia diSalvo wasn’t a fool, and Antonio was going to learn that the hard way...
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘TWICE IN ONE WEEK—lucky me,’ he murmured, crossing the marble floor of the foyer, his eyes fixed on Amelia diSalvo. As with the last time she’d come to his office in Madrid, she’d dressed to impress, this time in a pair of white trousers and a simple silk camisole top, pale blue in colour. Gold bangles covered one wrist, so many that they ran towards her elbows. Her skin had the hint of a tan and her face was sparingly made-up. He took his time studying her appearance, not least because he sensed her impatience and enjoyed provoking that reaction in her.
‘Antonio—’ her voice was clipped, her eyes cold with a silent warning ‘—can we speak?’
He tilted his head in silent agreement and gestured with his hand towards his office. She shot him one last look, a wary appraisal and a warning all wrapped into one, and then she walked ahead of him, just like the last time she’d been here.
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