Natalie felt the claws of guilt clutch her by the throat. She still remembered the tiny white coffin with her baby brother’s body in it being loaded on the tarmac. She had seen it from her window seat. She had sat there staring at it, with an empty, aching, hollow feeling in her chest.
It had been her fault he had been found floating face-down in that pool.
‘I have to go,’ Lachlan said. ‘I’m being transferred.’
Her attention snapped back to Lachlan’s dire situation. ‘Transferred where?’ she asked.
‘Just do what Angelo says, please?’ he said. ‘Nat, I need you to do what he wants. He’s promised to keep this out of the press. I have to accept his help. My life is over if I don’t. Please?’
Natalie pinched the bridge of her nose until her eyes smarted with bitter angry tears. The cage of her conscience came down with a snap.
She was trapped.
* * *
Angelo was finalising some details on a project in Malaysia when his receptionist announced he had a visitor. ‘It’s Natalie Armitage,’ Fiona said.
He leaned back in his chair and smiled a victor’s smile. He had waited a long time for this opportunity. He wanted her to beg, to plead and to grovel. It was payback time for the misery she had put him through by walking out on him so heartlessly.
‘Tell her to wait,’ he said. ‘I have half an hour of paperwork to get through that can’t be put off.’
There was a quick muffled exchange of words and Fiona came back on the intercom. ‘Miss Armitage said she’s not going to wait. She said if you don’t see her now she is going to get back on the train to Edinburgh and you’ll never see her again.’
Angelo slowly drummed his fingers on the desk. He was used to Natalie’s obstinacy. She was a stubborn, headstrong little thing. Her independence had been one of the first things he had admired about her, and yet in the end it had been the thing that had frustrated him the most. She’d absolutely refused to bend to his will. She’d stood up to him as no one else had ever dared.
He was used to people doing as he said. From a very young age he had given orders and people had obeyed them. It was part of the territory. Coming from enormous wealth, you had power. You had privilege and people respected that.
But not his little Tatty.
He leaned forward and pressed the button. ‘Tell her I’ll see her in fifteen minutes.’
He had not even sat back in his chair when the door slammed open and Natalie came storming in. Her brown hair with its natural highlights was in disarray about her flushed-with-fury face. Her hands were clenched into combative fists by her sides, and her slate-blue eyes were flashing like the heart of a gas flame. He could see the outline of her beautiful breasts as they rose and fell beneath her top.
His groin tightened and jammed with lust.
‘You … you bastard!’ she said.
Angelo rocked back in his chair. ‘Cara,’ he said. ‘I’m absolutely delighted to see you, too. How long has it been? Four hours?’
She glowered at him. ‘Where have you taken him?’
He elevated one brow. ‘Where have I taken whom?’
Her eyes narrowed to needle-thin slits. ‘My brother,’ she said. ‘I can’t contact him. He’s not answering his phone any more. How do I know you’re doing the right thing by him?’
‘Your brother is in good hands,’ he said. ‘That is as long as you do what is required.’
Her eyes blazed with venomous hatred. ‘How can I trust you to uphold your side of the bargain?’ she asked.
‘You can trust me, Natalie.’
She made a scoffing sound. ‘I’d rather take my chances with a death adder.’
Angelo smiled a thin-lipped smile. ‘I’m afraid a death adder is not going to hold any sway with an Italian magistrate,’ he said. ‘I can get your brother out of harm’s way with the scrawl of my signature.’ He picked up a pen for effect. ‘What’s it going to be?’
He saw her eyes go to his pen. He saw the way her jaw locked as she clenched her teeth. Her saw the way her slim throat rose and fell. He saw the battle on her face as her will locked horns with his. He felt the energy of her anger like a high-voltage current in the air.
‘You can’t force me to sleep with you,’ she bit out. ‘You might be able to force me to wear your stupid ring, but you can’t force me to do anything else.’
‘You will be my wife in every sense of the word,’ he said. ‘In public and in private. Otherwise the deal is off.’
Her jaw worked some more. He could even hear her teeth grinding together. Her eyes were like twin blasts from a roaring furnace.
‘I didn’t think you could ever go so low as this,’ she said. ‘You can have anyone you want. You have women queuing up to be with you. Why on earth do you want an unwilling wife? Is this some sort of sick obsession? What can you possibly hope to achieve out of this?’
Angelo slowly swung his ergonomic chair from side to side as he surveyed her outraged features. ‘I quite fancy the idea of taming you,’ he said. ‘You’re like a beautiful wild brumby that bucks and kicks and bites because it doesn’t want anyone to get too close.’
Her cheeks flushed a fiery red and her eyes kept on shooting sparks of ire at him. ‘So you thought you’d slip a lasso around my neck and whip me into submission, did you?’ she said, with a curl of her bee-stung top lip. ‘Good luck with that.’
Angelo smiled a lazy smile. ‘You know me, Tatty. I just love a challenge—and the bigger the better.’
Her brows shot together in a furious frown. ‘Don’t call me that.’
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘I always used to call you that.’
She stalked to the other side of the room, her arms across her body in a keep-away-from-me pose. ‘I don’t want you to call me that now,’ she said, her gaze determinedly averted from his.
‘I will call you what I damn well want,’ he said, feeling his anger and frustration rising. ‘Look at me.’
She gave her head a toss and kept her eyes fixed on the painting on the wall. ‘Go to hell.’
Angelo got to his feet and walked over to where she was standing. He put a hand on her shoulder, but she spun around and slapped at his hand as if it was a nasty insect.
‘Don’t you dare touch me,’ she snarled at him, like a wildcat.
He felt the fizzing of his fingers where his hand had briefly come into contact with her slim shoulder. The sensation travelled all the way to his groin. He looked at her mouth—that gorgeous, full-lipped mouth that had kissed him with such passion and fire in the past. He had felt those soft lips around him, drawing the essence from him until he had been legless with ecstasy. She had lit fires of need over his whole body with her hot little tongue. Her fingers had danced over every inch of his flesh, caressing and stroking him, branding him with the memory of her touch.
Ever since she had left him he had waited for this moment—for a chance to prove to her how much she wanted him in spite of her protestations. His rage at being cut from her life had festered inside him. It had soured every other relationship since. He could not seem to find what he was looking for with anyone else. He had gone from relationship to relationship, some lasting only a date or two, none of them lasting more than a month. Lately he had even started to wonder if he had imagined how perfectly physically in tune he had been with her. But seeing her again, being in the same room as her, sensing her reaction to him and his to her, proved to him it wasn’t his imagination.
She wouldn’t be the one who walked out on him without notice this time around. She would stay with him until he decided he’d had enough. It might take a month or two, maybe even up to a year, but he would not give her the chance to rip his heart open again. He would not allow her that close again. He had been a passionate fool five years ago. From the moment he had met her he had fallen—and fallen hard. He had envisaged their future together, how they would build on the empire of his grandparents and parents, how they would be the next generation of Bellandinis
But then she had ripped the rug from under his feet by betraying him.
She might hate him for what he was doing, but right now he didn’t give a damn. He wanted her and he was going to have her. She would come to him willingly. He would make sure of that. There would be no forcing, no coercing. Behind that ice-maiden façade was a fiercely passionate young woman. He had unleashed that passion five years ago and he would do so again.
‘In time you will be begging for my touch, cara,’ he said. ‘Just like you did in the past.’
Her expression shot more daggers at him. ‘Can’t you see how much I hate you?’ she said.
‘I can see passion, not hate,’ he said. ‘That is promising, si?’
She let out a breath and put more distance between them, her look guarded and defensive. ‘How soon do you expect to get this ridiculous plan of yours off the ground?’ she asked.
‘We will marry at the end of next week,’ he said. ‘There’s no point dilly-dallying.’
‘Next week?’ she asked, eyes widening. ‘Why so soon?’
Angelo held her gaze. ‘I know how your mind works, Natalie. I’m not leaving anything up to chance. The sooner we are married, the sooner your brother gets out of trouble.’
‘Can I see him?’
‘No.’
She frowned. ‘Why not?’
‘He’s not allowed visitors,’ Angelo said.
‘But that’s ridiculous!’ she said. ‘Of course he’s allowed visitors. It’s a basic human right.’
‘Not where he is currently staying,’ he said. ‘You’ll see him soon enough. In the meantime, I think it’s time I met the rest of your family—don’t you agree?’
Something shifted behind her gaze. ‘Why do you want to meet my family?’ she said. ‘Anyway, apart from Lachlan there is only my parents.’
‘Most married couples meet their respective families,’ Angelo said. ‘My parents will want to meet you. And my grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins.’
She gave him a worried look. ‘They’re not all coming to the ceremony, are they?’
‘But of course,’ he said. ‘We will fly to Rome on Tuesday. The wedding will be on Saturday, at my grandparents’ villa, in the private chapel that was built especially for their wedding day sixty years ago.’
Her eyes looked like a startled fawn’s. ‘F-fly?’
‘Si, cara,’ he said dryly. ‘On an aeroplane. You know—those big things that take off at the airport and take you where you want to go? I have a private one—a Lear jet that my family use to get around.’
Her mouth flattened obstinately. ‘I’m not flying.’
Angelo frowned. ‘What do you mean, you’re not flying?’
She shifted her gaze, her arms tightening across her body. ‘I’m not flying.’
It took Angelo a moment or two to figure it out. It shocked him that he hadn’t picked it up before. It all made sense now that he thought about it.
‘That’s why you caught the train down from Edinburgh yesterday,’ he said. ‘That’s why, when I suggested five years ago that we take that cut-price trip to Malta, you said you couldn’t afford it and refused to let me pay for you. We had a huge fight over it. You wouldn’t speak to me for days. It wasn’t about your independence, was it? You’re frightened of flying.’
She turned her back on him and stood looking out of his office window, the set of her spine as rigid as a plank. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Call me a nut job. You wouldn’t be the first.’
Angelo released a long breath. ‘Natalie … Why didn’t you tell me?’
She still stood looking out of the window with her back to him. ‘Hi, my name’s Natalie Armitage and I’m terrified of flying. Yeah, that would have really got your notice that night in the bar.’
‘What got my notice in that bar was your incredible eyes,’ he said. ‘And the fact that you stood up to that creep who was trying it on with you.’
He saw the slight softening of her spine and shoulders, as if the memory of that night had touched something deep inside her, unravelling one of the tight cords of resolve she had knotted in place. ‘You didn’t have to rescue me like some big macho caveman,’ she said after a short pause. ‘I could’ve taken care of it myself.’
‘I was brought up to respect and protect women,’ Angelo said. ‘That guy was a drunken fool. I enjoyed hauling him out to the street. He was lucky I didn’t rearrange his teeth for him. God knows I was tempted.’
She turned and looked at him, her expression still intractable. ‘I don’t want to fly, Angelo,’ she said. ‘It’s easy enough to drive. It’ll only take a couple of days. I’ll make my own way there if you can’t spare the time.’
Angelo studied her dark blue gaze. He saw the usual obstinacy glittering there, but behind that was a flicker of fear—like a stagehand peeping out from behind the curtains to check on the audience. It made him wonder if he had truly known her five years ago. He had thought he had her all figured out, but this was a facet to her personality he had never even suspected. He had always prided himself on his perspicuity, on his ability to read people and situations. But he could see now that reading Natalie was like reading a complex multilayered book.
‘I’ll be with you the whole time,’ he said. ‘I won’t let anything happen to you.’
‘That’s hardly reassuring,’ she said with a cynical look, ‘considering this whole marriage thing you’ve set up is a plot for revenge.’
‘My intention is not for you to suffer,’ he said.
Her chin came up and her eyes flashed again. ‘Oh, really?’
Angelo drew in a breath and released it forcefully as he went back behind his desk. He gripped the back of his chair as he faced her. ‘Why must you search for nefarious motives in everything I do or say?’
She gave a little scoffing laugh. ‘Pardon me for being a little suspicious, but you’re surely not going to tell me you still care about me after all this time?’
Angelo’s fingers dug deeper into the leather of his chair until his knuckles whitened. He didn’t love her. He refused to love her. She had betrayed him. He was not going to forgive and forget that in a hurry. But he would have her. That was different. That had nothing to do with emotions.
He deliberately relaxed his grasp and sat down. ‘We have unfinished business,’ he said. ‘I knew that the minute you walked in that door yesterday.’
‘You’re imagining things,’ she said.
He put up one brow. ‘Am I?’
She held his gaze for a beat, before she lowered it to focus on the glass paperweight on his desk. ‘How long do you think this marriage will last?’ she asked.
‘It can last as long as we want it to,’ Angelo said.
Her gaze met his again. ‘Don’t you mean as long as you want it to?’ she asked.
He gave a little up and down movement of his right shoulder. ‘You ended things the last time,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it fair that I be the one to do so this time around?’
Her mouth tightened. ‘I ended things because it was time to move on,’ she said. ‘We were fighting all the time. It wasn’t a love match. It was a battlefield.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Angelo said. ‘What are you talking about, Natalie? All couples fight. It’s part and parcel of being in a relationship. There are always little power struggles. It’s what makes life interesting.’
‘That might have been the way you were brought up, but it certainly wasn’t the way I was,’ she said.
He studied her expression again, noting all the little nuances of her face: the way she chewed at the inside of her mouth but tried to hide it, the way her eyes flickered away from his but then kept tracking back, as if they were being pulled by a magnetic force, and the way her finely boned jaw tightened when she was feeling cornered.
‘How were you brought up to resolve conflict?’ he asked.
She reached for her bag and got to her feet. ‘Look, I have a train to catch,’ she said. ‘I have a hundred and one things to see to.’
‘Why didn’t you drive down from Edinburgh?’ he asked. ‘You haven’t suddenly developed a fear of driving too, have you?’
Her eyes hardened resentfully. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I like travelling by train. I can read or sketch or listen to music. I find driving requires too much concentration—especially in a city as crowded as London. Besides, it’s better for the environment. I want to reduce my carbon footprint.’
Angelo rose to his feet and joined her at the door, placing his hand on the doorknob to stop her escaping. ‘I’ll need you to sign some papers in the next day or two.’
Her chin came up. The hard glitter was back in her gaze. ‘A prenuptial agreement?’
He glanced at her mouth. He ached to feel it move under the pressure of his. He could feel the surge of his blood filling him with urgent, ferocious need.
‘Yes,’ he said, meeting her gaze again. ‘Do you have a problem with that?’
‘No,’ she said, eyeballing him right back. ‘I’ll have one of my own drawn up. I’m not letting you take away everything I’ve worked so hard for.’
He smiled and tapped her gently on the end of her nose. ‘Touché,’ he said.
She blinked at him, looking flustered and disorientated. ‘I—I have to go,’ she said, and made a grab for the doorknob.
Angelo captured her hand within his. Her small, delicate fingers were dwarfed by the thickness and length and strength of his. He watched her eyes widen as he slowly brought her hand up to his mouth. He stopped before making contact with his lips, just a hair’s breadth from touching. He watched as her throat rose and fell. He felt the jerky little gust of her cinnamon-scented breath. He saw her glance at his mouth, saw too the quick nervous dart of her tongue as she swept it out over her lips.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said, dropping her hand and opening the door for her. ‘Ciao.’
She brushed past him in the doorway and without a single word of farewell she left.
CHAPTER THREE
‘CONGRATULATIONS,’ said Linda, Natalie’s assistant, the following morning when she arrived at work.
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