Besides, the more he thought about it, the more certain he felt that he was doing the right thing. His baby—the baby he and Alessia had created—deserved a father.
And the woman he was marrying was a joy. She was beautiful. Bright. She could make him laugh. She could make him feel a tenderness he’d never known he possessed. The marriage was sudden, yes. But it would work out. It would be successful.
In fact, after the initial shock of trying to visualize himself as a married man, the idea had become, well, it had become kind of pleasant. He liked the idea of greeting the day with Alessia in his arms and ending it the same way.
Marriages had been built on less.
Still, this one needed a little time, a little space. Bottom line? The wedding first, followed by a honeymoon. After that, he’d contact his brothers, break the news, ask them to tell his mother and sisters. When all that was done, he’d take Alessia to New York to meet his family.
Right now, the only person he had to inform was her father. The prince probably knew everyone in Florence; he’d surely hear the news and Nick wanted it to come from him, not secondhand.
He disliked Antoninni. He’d run a centuries-old vineyard to the point of ruin. Far worse, he’d left his daughter alone to deal with Cesare Orsini, and he seemed to have little affection for her.
But he was Alessia’s father.
That night, while she prepared for bed, Nick phoned him, reached his voice mail and left a brief message.
“This is Nicolo Orsini. Your daughter has done me the honor of agreeing to become my wife. The wedding is tomorrow, ten in the morning, in the Sala Rossa of the Palazzo Vecchio. You are, of course, welcome to attend.”
It was not a warm message but it was the right one.
And Nick, in fact all the Orsini brothers, had always been big on doing that which was right.
The next day dawned bright and sunny.
A few minutes before ten, Alessia clung tightly to Nicolo’s hand as they walked into the palazzo.
Nicolo had reassured her as she lay in his arms. “This will be a good marriage,” he’d said softly.
She wanted to believe him, but she was marrying him for love—and he was marrying her only because he was a responsible, decent man.
He was the opposite of her father…. And suddenly, she realized she had no idea if her father had kept the promise he’d made about her mother’s care. Had he? Was Mama still safely in the sanitarium she had come to think of as home?
The mayor, who would perform the ceremony, was strolling toward them with her father a few steps behind. Alessia turned to Nicolo, put her hand lightly on his arm.
“The mayor will surely want to speak with you,” she said quickly. “While he does that, I must talk to my father.”
Nicolo put his hand over hers. “Can it wait until after the ceremony, sweetheart?”
Her heart felt as if it were going to overflow at the tenderness in his voice.
“This is important, Nicolo. I only need a moment, sì?”
Her bridegroom tipped her face to his and brushed his lips over hers.
“You don’t need my permission, princess. A last private word between father and daughter? Sure. Go ahead.” He smiled. “Just remember to get back here in time to become my wife.”
She smiled, rose on her toes to kiss his cheek. Then she hurried to the prince and motioned toward an alcove.
The prince’s smile was sly.
“Congratulations, daughter. What a coup! The wife of an Orsini. Eccellente!”
Alessia ignored the comment. “Tell me about my mother,” she said in a low voice.
“Tell you what? She is fine.”
“Have you kept her at the sanitarium, as you promised? We had an agreement. I would be your hostess, take your place entertaining Cesare Orsini, and you—”
“And I would repay you for your actions.” Antoninni smiled. “And what a hostess you were, Alessia!” He chuckled. “I knew you would do far better with the man than I ever could!”
“You mean, you always intended to have me step in?”
“Of course. Once Orsini told me he would send his son instead of coming to Florence himself…” The prince laughed softly. “Do not look so shocked, Alessia. You did a fine job. You not only secured my loan, you doubled it.”
“It was Nicolo, not me. He is the one who decided to give you ten million euros.”
“Ten million euros, and now I am to have one of New York’s wealthiest, most powerful men as my son-in-law.” Antoninni arched one eyebrow. “Are you carrying his child? Is that the reason for this swift marriage?”
“None of that concerns you,” Alessia said sharply. “Our understanding was about my mother. Have you kept your word?”
A dramatic sigh. “I will.”
Would he? Alessia doubted it. He’d pay for her mother’s care for a while. Then he’d stop. She did a quick mental calculation of what it cost to care for her mother, what it might cost over the next years, and then she looked her father in the eye.
“You will deposit three million euros to my account immediately.”
“Three mill— You joke, daughter. That is too much, even for your role in securing ten million euros, marriage to an Orsini and becoming pregnant with his—”
“Go on,” Nicolo said coldly. “Let’s hear the rest.”
Alessia and her father spun around. Her father paled. “Signore Orsini! I did not see you standing—”
“No. Obviously, you did not.”
Alessia blanched. Nicolo had overheard…and, all at once, she was glad that he had. Why hadn’t she shared her concerns with her lover sooner? There was nothing she couldn’t tell him, not even when it was humiliating. Her father was a cold, unfeeling man; Nicolo was just the opposite. She could trust him to see to it that her father did as he had promised.
She could trust him with everything, for the rest of her life.
“Nicolo.” She smiled tremulously. “I am glad you overheard our conversation. I should have told you that my father and I had an agreement—”
“I heard.”
His voice was frigid, his eyes black as coal. He looked cruel and hard and dangerous, and she couldn’t understand the reason…. Until, with terrible suddenness, she realized how easily he might have misconstrued her father’s words, and hers.
“No! Oh, no, you don’t understand—”
She gasped as his hand closed painfully around her wrist.
“I understand everything, principessa.” His gaze dropped to her belly, then rose to her face. “Especially your touching story about being on the pill.”
Her face went white. “You’re wrong! I swear it, you are—”
“Say goodbye to Daddy, sweetheart. You won’t be seeing him for a long time.”
“Nicolo, Nicolo, per favore—”
“Don’t look so stricken, baby.” Nick’s mouth twisted. “You still won the prize. I’m going to marry you. Hell, you’re carrying my child. If you think I’d leave him to the tender mercies of you and Papa, you can think again.”
“Nicolo.” Alessia’s voice trembled. “I know what you think you heard, but—”
“Get out of my sight,” Nick told Antoninni. The prince, eyes wide with shock, took a step back. “If I ever see you again, so help me, I’ll do what your kind has feared for the past six hundred years and use you to wipe the floor.”
Antoninni scurried away like a rat. Alessia reached out her hand to Nicolo. She had never seen him like this, so furious, so vengeful, so cold. It terrified her.
“Nicolo, please, listen to—”
“I’m done listening, princess. We’re here so you can finalize the deal you made with Daddy by becoming my wife.”
“No! I never made such a deal!”
“Sorry. I should have said, we’re here so you can improve the deal by becoming my wife.”
“Oh, Dio, oh, God, please—”
“I’ll pull the loan money,” Nick said softly. “And then I’ll use e
very ounce of that Orsini power you find so disgusting and I promise, I’ll take my child away from you. What happens to you then, principessa?”
Alessia stared at him in horror. A muscle ticked in his jaw. He waited. Then, he held out his hand. Slowly, she put hers into it and he led her across the room, to where the mayor was waiting.
“No,” Alessia said in a desperate whisper, “no, not like this!”
“Exactly like this,” Nick said.
Five minutes later, they were man and wife.
He had planned to surprise his bride.
A honeymoon in Venice, at the Gritti Palace. Five days in a suite the concierge had assured him was as romantic as a newly married couple could wish, then a two-day stop in Milan so he could buy his bride a new wardrobe, and, finally a flight to New York in a chartered plane, a bottle of rare Krug Brut Multi-Vintage Rosé waiting in a silver bucket in the craft’s private bedroom, the room itself filled with orchids and roses.
There would be none of that now.
Nick made quick adjustments to his plans. A stop at the villa outside Florence to pick up his things. A phone call to the charter service so he could change the arrangements he’d made, a drive to the airport where a plane awaited them without champagne or flowers.
But it had a private bedroom, he thought coldly as he kept a hard hand on his wife’s elbow and climbed the steps into the cabin, because no way was he giving up the one thing Alessia Antoninni Orsini could provide him…until, of course, she delivered his child.
After that, after his son or daughter was born, he’d decide if he wanted his wife in his bed anymore or if her usefulness to him was at an end.
“Nicolo,” Alessia said now, as the door to the plane slid shut behind them, “Nicolo, if you would only listen—”
It was what she’d been saying ever since he’d stumbled into what he’d stupidly assumed was a last conversation between a father before he gave his daughter into the care of the man who was now her husband. And, as he had done each time she’d asked him to listen, Nick ignored her.
Listen to what? More lies? He’d heard enough from that soft, sweet-tasting mouth to last a lifetime.
That she was sexually inexperienced.
That she had “forgotten” to take her birth control pills.
That he was her lover. Of it all, those two whispered words, mio amante, infuriated him the most. He’d known she hadn’t meant it, that she’d said it in a haze of sexual heat. Hell, who cared what she’d called him? Still, honesty demanded he admit the truth to himself. All he was to her, all he’d ever been, was a ticket to a fat bank account.
He’d let her make a fool of him, he thought grimly as he drew her down next to him in a leather seat. He hated himself for having let even a part of his heart feel the impact of her sighs, her whispers, her caresses.
Sex, Nicolo thought coldly. That was all it had been. For him. For her. And he had every intention of making the most of it.
The plane’s jet engines came to life. The aircraft moved slowly forward. And his lying, deceitful wife leaned toward him. “Nicolo,” she said in a frantic whisper, “please…”
Nick shot to his feet, grasped her wrist and brought her up beside him. He walked purposefully toward the rear of the cabin, slid open the bedroom door and pushed her inside.
Then he shut the door and locked it.
“Take off your clothes,” he growled.
She stared at him. Her eyes glittered, pools of darkest blue in her pale face. “No. Nicolo—”
“Take them off. Or I’ll do it for you.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks. “You are not this kind of man,” she whispered. “You are good. You are kind. You are—”
“I am Nick Orsini.” His hands went to his jacket. Undid the buttons. He shrugged it off, unbuttoned his shirt, shrugged that off, too. “As far as you’re concerned, I am exactly the man you expected me to be. I see what I want and I take it.” A cruel smile twisted across his lips. “We suit each other, principessa. A man who takes what he wants. A woman who does the same.”
He closed the distance between them, put his hand in the V of the pale pink silk dress that, only hours before, he had thought the most perfect thing a bride could wear. One hard tug, one gasp from her, and the dress tore and fell to her feet.
“Oh, God,” she said, weeping, “Nicolo, don’t—”
“I told you,” he said grimly. “The name is Nick.”
And he swept his wife into his arms and took her to bed.
He’d meant to take her coldly.
Pin her arms above her head if she fought him. Thrust his knee between her thighs. Take her hard, ride her hard, get himself off without giving a damn if she was ready or not.
Except, she didn’t fight him.
She lay still, her face turned away from him. And she wept. Silently. Agonizingly. Her tears soaked the linen pillowcase; her teeth caught and held her bottom lip.
All his rage drained away. In its place was despair so terrible, so deep, that Nick felt his throat constrict.
He got to his feet. Put on his shirt. Tossed his jacket on a chair. She could use it to hide what he had done to her dress.
Then he walked out of the cabin, went to the front of the plane and sank into a seat.
And knew that he had touched his wife, his achingly beautiful, heartbreakingly dishonest wife, for the very last time.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE marriage had been a mistake.
Nick sat in his leather swivel chair, his back to a massive oak desk, staring out his office windows at the narrow streets of Soho four stories below. He’d endured another day of meetings and phone calls just as he’d done for the past couple of weeks by deliberately blanking his mind to anything but business.
Now, in the waning hours of the long day, he had the one thing he didn’t want.
Time to think.
It was the same every day. Work kept him busy. Busier than ever. He’d taken on meetings and calls that should have been his brothers’ responsibilities. They were happy to let him do it. Things were happening in their lives. Rafe and Chiara were eagerly preparing for the arrival of their first child. Dante and Gabriella had their hands full with their cute toddler. Falco and Elle were looking for a weekend home in Connecticut.
“You sure you don’t mind?” they’d say, when he offered to take a meeting in their place.
“Hey,” he’d say lightly, “what are brothers for?” Or he’d flash a smile and say he’d get even some day and payback would be hell.
What he didn’t say, had not said, had no intention of saying, was that he was as married as they were. His marriage, his wife, the child she carried…
Secrets, known only to him.
There was no way he could keep secrets like those from his family forever.
“Dammit,” he said wearily.
Nick turned toward his desk, propped his elbows on its paper-strewn surface and put his face in his hands.
He wasn’t as married as his brothers. He knew damned well that neither Rafe or Dante or Falco went home to silence at the end of the day, or to a meal eaten alone, or that any of them slept alone as he did, while his wife slept in a bedroom at the end of the hall. And he’d have bet everything that he was the only one who cursed himself a dozen times a day for having been used and trapped into marriage because he’d let himself be played for a fool.
Nick sat back and dragged air deep into his lungs.
Most of all, he was damned sure that none of his brothers lay awake at night, staring into the darkness and fighting the almost overpowering need to say to hell with all this, go to his wife’s room, fling open the door or break the freaking thing down if he had to, strip away the duvet that covered her and take her again and again even if she begged him not to do it, take her mercilessly until he’d worked her out of his system forever.
Or until she sobbed his name, wound her arms around his neck and told him that he was her lover, that he was more than that,
that he was her love….
“Merda!”
Nick shot to his feet, jammed his hands into his pockets and paced the big room.
What he needed was sex. Not with his wife. Sex with a woman who would respond to him with honesty rather than calculated pretense.
As for his unborn child… He loved that small life already, from the second he’d seen the sonogram of it, lying safely cocooned within his wife’s womb.
A week after they’d reached New York, he’d broken the silence between them to announce that he’d made an appointment for her with an ob-gyn recommended to him by his personal physician. Normally, he’d have asked one of his sisters-in-law to suggest a doctor but considering that none of them knew he even had a wife, much less a pregnant one, that had been out of the question.
He’d expected Alessia to argue but she hadn’t. Despite everything he knew her to be, he had to admit she seemed to have maternal instincts. She’d given up wine, ate carefully and, a couple of times, he’d seen her with one hand lying lightly over her belly.
Like the day he’d taken her for her ob-gyn appointment.
He’d stood by dutifully while she was examined, his eyes straight ahead, but his air of removal had vanished when the ultrasound technician appeared.
“Let’s see what we can see,” the woman had said cheerfully, and Nick’s gaze had been inexorably drawn to his wife, lying on the examining table, eyes wide, her left hand forming what could only have been a protective cover over her belly.
“Move your hand, please,” the tech had said and, without thinking, Nick had reached for Alessia’s hand and clutched it in his.
And there it was. A black speck that was their baby.
“Excellent picture,” the tech had said happily, pointing out features only she could see, and Nick had squeezed his wife’s hand and she had squeezed his, and then their eyes had met and he had remembered everything, how she had lied to him with her hands, her mouth, her body…
“Hell,” he growled.
Nicolo: The Powerful Sicilian Page 15
