by Penny Jordan
‘I’m really grateful to you for what you’ve done,’ she told Falcon emotionally as she sat opposite him on the comfortable U-shaped arrangement of leather sofas. A coffee table on which she had placed her now-empty cup of restorative coffee was between them, whilst Ollie lay fast asleep on the middle sofa.
Falcon inclined his head in acknowledgement of her words. Her voice was still tremulous with the shadow of the fear she had been through. He couldn’t trust himself to speak as yet. His anger was still churning savagely inside him, twisting his guts and locking his heart against his father.
‘I’m so glad you came back when you did, earlier than you had planned. I was so afraid.’
‘I completed the business I’d gone to Florence to do earlier than I expected,’ Falcon told Annie brusquely.
It was a lie. He had been sitting in a café in the square next to his apartment when out of nowhere he had been filled, driven by a sudden conviction that he had to be with her. He’d tried to ignore it at first, but it had refused to be ignored and he had been forced to give in to it.
He’d telephoned his second brother Alessandro from the square, demanding and insisting that Alessandro organise a private jet to fly him back to Sicily, then driving as recklessly as though he had been Antonio and not his normal conservative self from the airport to the castello, shocking Maria with his unexpected arrival and learning from her not just where Annie was but also about the two men who were with his father.
After he had rescued her, Maria had fussed over Annie, bringing her the coffee he had ordered for her and staying with her behind the safely locked doors of his apartment while he had gone to speak with his father, demanding an explanation of his behaviour and piecing together what had happened.
Now they were on their own, just the three of them in the peace of his apartment. His suit jacket was flung across the back of the sofa, the top button of his shirt was unfastened.
This was how he wanted his life to be, Falcon realised; with Annie and Oliver, in the love he bore them both.
‘I have spoken with my father,’ he told Annie. ‘And I have demanded from him an explanation of his unforgivable behaviour. It seems that your stepbrother and he made contact with one another—and very quickly both of them realised that the other had a purpose that fitted in well with their own. My father wanted to gain control of Oliver’s life, and your stepbrother wanted to gain control of you.
‘I doubt that my father believed for a second that you intended any harm towards Oliver. However, it suited him to pretend that he did—just as it suited your stepbrother to claim that you were mentally unstable and therefore unfit to have control of your child.’
‘Colin tried to do that before. That was part of the reason why I tried to hide from him,’ Annie told Falcon. ‘He threatened to tell Social Services that I wasn’t fit to look after Ollie. It wasn’t true, but I was afraid that they’d believe him. That’s why I moved flats.’
Falcon nodded his head.
He’d already informed Colin that he would be taken to the airport in the morning and put on a flight. He had also told him that he, Falcon, would be taking legal steps to ensure that Colin was forbidden to make any future contact with Annie or Oliver, and that he would never again be allowed to put so much as a foot on Sicilian soil.
He would never tell Annie about the filth and innuendo that her stepbrother had come out with, or the accusations he had made against her: that she was a wanton flirt who enjoyed encouraging men and had done since her early teens, when she had first begun flaunting her body in unsuitable clothes and encouraging boys to take liberties with her; that Antonio had merely been one of a string of men she had led on; that he, Colin, had been asked by her distraught and shamed mother to do everything he could to put a stop to her promiscuous lifestyle. All were accusations Falcon would have known to be untrue even if the intimacy he had shared with her hadn’t already proved to him how innocent she was.
‘I expect you’ve told your father that he needn’t worry and that you aren’t really going to marry me?’
Annie had spent the last hour, whilst she waited for Falcon to come back from seeing his father, picking over and discarding a wide variety of ways in which she could bring up the subject of his statement about marrying her in a way that would let him know immediately that she fully understood his words had simply been a means of protecting her, and that they had not been intended to be taken as a genuine proposition on his part.
‘No. I haven’t told him that.’
Annie had sworn to herself that she would not look directly at Falcon, no matter what—because she was so afraid that if she did he would see in her eyes how much she loved him. But now she could feel her gaze being pulled towards his as though it was being moved by powerful magnets. Or as though he was somehow compelling her to look at him.
‘Well, I dare say he’ll find out anyway in time—once we don’t. That is to say, when he sees that we aren’t...’
Falcon briskly cut across her floundering. ‘I haven’t told him for the simple reason that I believe it would make very good sense for us to marry.’
Now Annie couldn’t have dragged her gaze from his, no matter what power had been put at her disposal—because she simply had to look at him and go on looking at him, just to make sure she wasn’t imagining things.
‘You think that we should get married—to one another?’ she questioned Falcon feebly.
‘Yes. It’s the best and simplest way of both protecting you from your stepbrother and securing Oliver’s future within your guardianship. Once you are my wife no one, least of all my father, can make any claim to usurp your role in Oliver’s life.’
‘But one day you will succeed your father. You are his eldest son. You will be Prince and head of the Leopardi family. You can’t marry someone like me.’
‘I can marry whoever I choose to marry,’ Falcon corrected her arrogantly. ‘And if you are worrying that some people might choose not to accept you as my wife, let me reassure you they will accept you—or risk losing their relationship with me.’
‘I can’t let you make such a sacrifice,’ Annie protested. ‘You should marry someone you love.’
Falcon hesitated. Should he tell her? Should he admit to her that he loved her? No! He had no right to burden her with his feelings—especially when she was still so vulnerable and upset by her confrontation with her stepbrother.
‘Doing my duty is more important to me than love,’ he lied firmly. ‘And it is my duty to protect both you and Oliver. I can think of no better way to fulfil that duty than to marry you. That does not mean that you have to say yes, though.’
He had at the very least to say that—offer her an escape route. He couldn’t leave her trapped and forced to accept him with no way out. His honour and the love he felt for her demanded that much.
Not say yes! When she loved him so much? But perhaps for his sake she should refuse. He might say that love wasn’t important to him, and she might have taken into herself in silence the pain that careless statement had caused her, but what if one day he did fall in love? How could she allow him to be trapped in a marriage with her when he loved someone else?
But if she left him where would she go? How would she ever be safe? Colin would hunt her down—she just knew he would. And Ollie—how could she protect her son from her stepbrother’s dangerous malice if she was on her own?
‘It does seem to be the sensible thing to do,’ she agreed.
Falcon felt his heart slam into his ribs in a mixture of relief and longing. Relief because she had said yes, and longing because right now more than anything else he wanted to take her in his arms and tell her how he felt about her—tell her how happy he wanted to make her.
Instead he forced himself to agree coolly, ‘It is the sensible thing to do.’
He started to stand up, and Annie’s
gaze slid helplessly to the movement of the muscles in his thighs. Like sand washed clean by the tide, everything she had felt over the last few hours was suddenly swept away, leaving only that now familiar deep inner ache that told her how much she wanted him.
‘From now on you and Oliver will live and sleep here, in this apartment. I’ll give you a key, so that if for any reason I’m not here and you feel the need to do so you can lock yourselves in. Although you have my word that my father will not attempt a repeat performance of today’s events.’
She was going to share Falcon’s apartment. Her whole body quivered in something that was far more sensual than mere relief.
‘There is a spare guest suite,’ Falcon continued.
A guest suite!
‘Does that mean...?’ Annie stopped, her face going pink.
‘Does it mean what?’ Falcon invited.
‘If we are to be married, does that mean that we’ll be...erm...sleeping together?’
‘It is customary for married couples to sleep together,’ Falcon told her. ‘But if what you are really asking me is if our marriage will include a shared sexual relationship, as well as our shared love for Oliver, then the answer is that I would certainly like it to do so. But that decision must be yours.’
Hers? Well, she knew what she really wanted to say, of course. She loved him, and there was nothing she wanted more than for them to be lovers in every way there was.
She was hesitating—reluctant to give up her freedom of choice to share her life and her body with a man of her own choosing, Falcon recognised grimly. Well, what had he expected? That she would fling herself into his arms now, as she had done earlier, and this time tell him that she loved and wanted him?
‘There is no need to make a decision on that right now,’ he told her, as casually as he could.
‘Has...has Colin left yet?’ Annie asked, deliberately changing the subject just in case she burst out with what she was really thinking and feeling and embarrassed them both.
Falcon frowned as he was reminded of an issue that had irritated him.
‘No. The first flight I can get him on is not until tomorrow morning. I’m reluctant to allow him the freedom of the island in the meantime, for obvious reasons. Plus there is the matter of my lawyers applying to the courts for an emergency restraining order, to ensure that he is stopped from coming anywhere near you or Oliver ever again. Unfortunately he will have to stay here in the castello for now. You need not worry, though. You and Oliver will be safe in here, whilst he will remain in my father’s quarters. A fitting extra punishment for both of them, I think, that they should be forced to endure one another’s company.’
Falcon wanted to keep Colin here at the castello prior to his flight back to the United Kingdom in case Colin went to ground and was then free to hound her and threaten Ollie, Annie knew, so she nodded her head in understanding.
Could he win her love? Falcon wondered. Was it truly fair of him to even try? In marrying her, was he protecting her or imprisoning her just as surely as her stepbrother had done? Was he doing his duty or was he simply greedily and selfishly seizing what he wanted more than anything else?
He looked at Annie, who had leaned across the sofa to check on Oliver. The look of tender maternal love warming her face made his heart turn over in his chest.
He had to put her first.
‘It is my view that for Oliver’s sake it is necessary that we marry now. However, if our marriage doesn’t work out,’ he told her curtly, ‘or if at some future date one of us were to fall in love, then we can and will be divorced.’
Annie’s heart contracted with fiercely sharp pain. Only one of them could fall in love outside their marriage, and it wasn’t her. How would she be able to bear it if Falcon did fall in love with someone else? Was he perhaps already regretting his decision to marry her?
‘We don’t have to get married,’ she forced herself to say.
‘Yes, we do,’ Falcon corrected her. ‘Apart from anything else, there is also the chance that we may already have created a child together.’
Annie swallowed hard against the tight knot of guilt blocking her throat. That had been her fault. He had wanted to take precautions but she hadn’t let him. Even more guilt-inducing was the knowledge that she was glad she had been able to enjoy the precious and wonderful sensation of his body filling her own without any barriers between them, however reckless that intimacy might have been.
‘I’m going to go and tell Maria that you’re moving into the guest suite here, so that she can get the maids organised.’
Annie nodded her head, but as soon as Falcon reached the door the knowledge that she was going to be left on her own filled her with so much panic that she stood up.
‘Could that wait until tomorrow?’ she begged. ‘I know that you said I could lock myself in here, but... But I don’t want to be on my own whilst Colin’s still here. He makes me feel so afraid.’ She tried to laugh and make a joke about her fear, adding, ‘I don’t even think I could sleep on my own.’
The minute she realised what she had said, her face burned.
‘I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I just meant...’
‘I know what you meant,’ Falcon assured her. ‘And there’s no need for you to sleep alone. I am perfectly happy to share my bed with you.’
His bed, his body, his life, his heart and his love—everything he had to give, all of it. But of course, he couldn’t tell her that. It would only add another burden to those she already had to carry.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHY WAS BEING in Falcon’s bed tonight so very different from last night? Annie wondered miserably, as she lay alone. It was over an hour since Falcon had suggested that she must be tired—only to tell her that he had some work to finish the minute she had agreed that she was, but that she should go ahead and go to bed. In that time she had showered and dried herself and curled up in the large bed, her heart pounding with excitement and love, her body on fire with intoxicated longing and desire, but Falcon had not come to join her.
Now he was in the bathroom, where he had been for what seemed like for ever, and the unwelcome and unwanted thought was creeping over her that Falcon might be delaying coming to bed because he was hoping that she would be asleep when he joined her. After all, she was the one who had asked to sleep with him, not the other way round.
But the last time he had been in bed with her he had wanted her.
Had he? Or had he simply been doing what he had promised and showing her what it was like to be wanted?
He was going to marry her.
To protect her and Ollie and because he thought it was his duty. Not for any other reason.
The joyful anticipation that had filled her began to drain away. Annie turned on her side, to face away from the middle of the bed. If Falcon didn’t want her then she wasn’t going to embarrass them both by making it look as though she wanted him.
Falcon pushed his hand through his damp hair, having wrapped a towel around his hips. He had just spent an hour desperately trying to pretend that he was working when the only place his thoughts were was in his bedroom and in his bed—with Annie. Now he had been forced to endure the supposedly arousal-dousing ritual of a cold shower to ensure that when he got into bed with her he would have no reason to be tempted into waking her up to take her in his arms.
His body was quite obviously not aware of the purpose of a cold shower, since it was showing every evidence of its physical desire for Annie not having abated one iota. As for his emotional desire for her—his love for her seemed to be increasing with every second he spent with her.
Falcon had believed that he had put in place within himself emotional and mental back-up systems for dealing with every situation that life could throw at him. But he had neglected to prepare for anything like this. Love was someth
ing that wasn’t going to happen for him, he had decided. It was something he could not allow to happen.
Everyone assumed that in due course he would marry and produce an heir, as countless eldest Leopardi sons had done before him. Deep down inside himself, though, Falcon had questioned the whole concept that being the eldest son meant he must marry and provide an heir. He had two brothers, after all. Then there had been the conflicting natures of the kind of traditional marriage entered into by his parents and a modern twenty-first-century marriage. One thing they shared, though, was that neither of them guaranteed a mutual commitment to a shared lifetime of marital happiness.
He had grown to manhood loathing the thought of making a woman as unhappy as his father had made his mother—the result of their traditional dynastic marriage—but neither had he felt able to trust the longevity of a modern marriage. Especially one that would have to endure the pressures that came with his position as head of the Leopardi family, custodian of its present and future good name, as well as the history of its past. Falcon took those responsibilities very seriously.
Without a really strong, enduring love he doubted that it would be possible to give any children of his marriage the inner emotional security and strength his own eldest son would ultimately need if he was not to feel burdened, as Falcon had from a very young age, with the knowledge of what lay ahead of him. It was, he had decided, better—and easier—to stay single.
When his brothers had married for love their happiness had reinforced his private decision. But that had been before Annie had come into his life and he had fallen in love with her.
Even if they had met ‘normally’, and fallen mutually in love, he would not have wanted to burden her with the life that must be his. Hand in hand with Falcon’s strong sense of duty went an equally strong awareness that his life involved making sacrifices. There was no way that he would have wanted the woman he loved to share those sacrifices.
He believed passionately in Annie’s right to her personal freedom of choice—in her right to define her own boundaries and live her own life. The actions of those who had deprived her of those rights filled him with contempt, and an almost missionary zeal to counter them.
