A Deal for the Di Sione Ring

by Jennifer Hayward

  The tabloids. Nate nodded and beckoned to Mina. “I’d like you to meet my grandfather Giovanni. Giovanni, it was Mina’s family who owned the ring.”

  Giovanni sat up straighter. Gestured for Mina to come closer, then pressed a kiss against her cheek. “I thought I must be hallucinating when I read the newspaper story. Although I knew Nate would fall hard when he met the right one.”

  Mina smiled. “It all happened rather quickly.”

  “Did you really leave your fiancé at the altar?”

  “Sì. Nate and I...it was love at first sight.”

  “As it should be,” said Giovanni, a distant look in his eyes. “It’s the way of great love.”

  Mina’s smile faltered. His grandfather didn’t notice, his eyes trained on the box she held. “May I see the ring?”

  She handed it to him. Giovanni removed the spectacular sapphire from the box. “Exactly as I remembered,” he murmured, setting it on his palm and staring at it. “Funny how something precious can be lost to you through the passage of time, but a stone like this? It will be with us always.”

  Nate wanted desperately to ask his grandfather what the ring meant to him. But Giovanni had already made it clear he wasn’t willing to share that information.

  “Can I keep it for a few days?” his grandfather asked.

  Mina nodded. “I cannot sell it to you until a year is up, as I’m sure Nate has told you. It was a condition my father made when he bequeathed it to me.”

  His grandfather nodded, shut the box and blinked rapidly. Nate stared hard at him as a tear rolled down Giovanni’s weathered face. A fist reached in and clenched his heart. He had never seen Giovanni cry. Not once.

  “I am very tired,” said his grandfather. “I hope you will forgive me if I keep our visit short today?”

  Nate nodded, his throat tight. “Of course.”

  His grandfather clasped his hand around his wrist and drew him close. “She’s lovely. Be happy, Nate.”

  He opened his mouth to tell him he would visit again during the week, but the emotion clogging his throat made it impossible.

  He rested his forehead against his grandfather’s. “I love you,” he whispered.

  Giovanni’s fingers tightened around his. Something ripped loose in Nate’s chest, casting him adrift in a stormy sea that threatened to swallow him whole. He turned and walked out of the room before it did.

  * * *

  Nate delivered Mina to his penthouse on the fifty-fifth floor of the Grand New York, a marquee space with sweeping vistas of the city. “Let Rosa know if you need anything,” he said, showing her the suite he’d allocated for her.

  They were the first words he’d issued since he’d walked out of his grandfather’s house, his emotions too big for his heart to hold.

  Leaving her to unpack, he went into his study and stood staring out the window at a gray Manhattan. The rage that rose inside of him was so swift and all-encompassing it blurred his vision. Blinded him to anything but the need to strike back. To escape the pain tearing his insides apart.

  A sweep of his hand across his desk sent papers flying: contracts, letters of intent, reports on how much money he was worth. When that wasn’t satisfying enough he picked up his CEO of the Year award and hurled it at the wall. A hand-carved glass paperweight followed it.

  Chest heaving, he rested his palms on his desk, hung his head and cursed himself for taking everything for granted. For assuming this charmed life of his, which was in fact a hollow, poor excuse for an existence, could make up for wanting things that had never been his. For keeping his grandfather at a distance when Giovanni had offered him everything his pride would not allow him to take.

  The love his father had refused to give him. The chance to belong to something bigger than the lonely existence he had led.

  Except even the all-powerful Giovanni could not wipe away the wounds a tragedy had left behind. The dysfunction his father and Anna’s volatile relationship had wreaked. He and his Di Sione siblings were proof of that.

  “Nate.”

  He levered himself away from the desk to find Mina standing in the doorway, eyes wide, hands clenched at her sides.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Nate—”

  “Leave me the hell alone.”

  Her face paled. She turned on her heel and left.

  * * *

  Mina finished unpacking in the suite Nate had appointed her, eyes burning, heart thumping. The verbal slap he’d administered stung. He was hurting. Hadn’t said two words since they’d left Long Island. Then that display just now...the loss of his supreme control. The animallike pain in his eyes.

  She wanted to help him, to comfort him. But Nate was a solitary animal. He didn’t want her in his head. He didn’t want her sharing his pain. He wanted to bury it until he went off like a time bomb.

  The last of her suits hung up, she scooped her lacy underwear into a drawer. He’d made that part of their arrangement clear. Don’t expect intimacy from me. It was just sex.

  But she couldn’t deny it hurt. Couldn’t deny it stung after three nights of sleeping in his arms. Of sensing an emotional connection between them that was, perhaps, only in her own head.

  Leaning against the exquisite hand-carved cherrywood dresser, she raked a hand through her hair. Breathed past the painful squeeze of her chest. What was she doing? Allowing herself to get pulled in even deeper with feelings for a man she couldn’t have. Shouldn’t want to have.

  An affair was all it was supposed to have been. To experience everything she’d missed with a worldly, exciting man who made her toes curl. Allowing herself to develop feelings for Nate when he would walk away from her when his attention span waned was setting herself up for a fall. To have something she so desperately wanted and to once again be left alone was too much of a threat to the fragile sense of worth she’d acquired.

  It would prove she was not lovable enough to keep. Not good enough. And she was never going there again. Ever.

  Pushing away from the dresser, she walked past Nate’s study. It was empty, the penthouse silent. He must have gone out, his usual pattern of walking when his emotions grew too great to bear.

  Finding her way back to the gleaming stainless steel showpiece of a kitchen, she poured herself a glass of water and took it out to the terrace. The vast concrete and steel metropolis that spread out in front of her was gray and forbidding. A hazy layer of smog sat over the buildings like an embrace; the air felt gritty, harsh in her lungs; and beeping horns, whistles and sirens blended together in a chaotic symphony that would surely keep her up all night.

  A wave of longing descended over her. For the vibrant blue sea and sky. The taste of salt air on her lips...

  “Not a very good introduction.” Strong hands slid around her waist and drew her back against Nate’s hard body. “But it can be very beautiful and alive. Give it a day and it will pass.”

  Her spine remained rigid. He drew her closer, his lips nuzzling her nape. “I shouldn’t have taken my anger out on you. I’m sorry.”

  She softened. “You were hurting.”

  “Yes. I thought I had dealt with my emotions, but clearly I hadn’t.”

  “You love him. This isn’t going to be easy for you.”

  Silence stretched. “I hadn’t told him I loved him until today. It hit me that I could have lost him and he would never have known.”

  She twisted around in his arms. “He knows. You only have to see you two together to know that.”

  His mouth flattened, pain darkening his eyes. “I’ve wasted so much time.”

  “Then make the most of what you have left. Forge a deeper connection with your siblings.”

  “We’ve been through this,” he said abruptly. “There is too much baggage there. Too much history to make that
happen.”

  “Says who? Who doesn’t want a relationship? You or them?”

  His body stiffened. She thought she might have pushed it too far, her muscles tensing for an explosion. A long, silent moment passed. Then he expelled a breath and raked a hand through his hair.

  “My mother was my father’s secretary. She had an affair with him during a rough patch in his marriage, thinking he loved her, that he would leave his family for her. But that was the way of my father and his wife Anna’s relationship. They were big partyers, volatile personalities. They repaired their marriage and my father ended things with my mother. She is a very proud woman. She left her job with Benito and found another. Then she discovered she was pregnant. She couldn’t keep the job she’d taken—it was too demanding. She found another but it didn’t pay much. My father had made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her. She waited until we were nearly broke before she went to his house one night with me to ask for financial assistance. He shut the door in our faces.”

  Her breath caught in her throat.

  “My father and Anna argued after my mother and I left. They were supposed to attend a party that night, one of those drug-infused affairs of the day where the wealthy blew all their money playing far too hard. My father was notorious for his love of illicit drugs and drink. After their argument, he wrapped their car around a tree and killed himself and Anna.”

  Oh, mio Dio. “What happened to your siblings?”

  “Giovanni took them in.”

  “But he didn’t find out about you until later,” she said, remembering. “When Alex found you. How did he know about you?”

  “He was watching from the window that night. He put two and two together.”

  She tilted her head to one side and asked the question that had been on her mind since Hong Kong. “Why didn’t you bond with your siblings then? That must have been an incredibly emotional experience giving your grandfather his life back.”

  “Because I didn’t want a relationship with them,” he said roughly. “I wanted nothing to do with the Di Siones. I couldn’t refuse Giovanni’s offer to put me through school, to give me a start in business, but that didn’t mean I wanted anything to do with a family who’d never acknowledged my existence. Who didn’t think I was good enough to be a part of it.”

  “That wasn’t your siblings’ fault. It was your father’s.”

  “I made overtures. Overtures which were rebuffed. I knew where I stood.”

  “Perhaps your siblings have gained a different perspective now.” She bit her lip, then plunged into the deep end. “You will regret it if you don’t make another attempt. Do you know how much I wish I had brothers and sisters? Yes, maybe they would have come with baggage, but at least they would have been there for me. I would have had somebody to lean on.”

  “This is different.” His eyes flashed a warning. “There is no point rehashing a past that can’t be changed. Leave it alone, Mina.”

  She shook her head. “You can’t run from your emotions, Nate. Throw away something so valuable. Or what happened today will happen again. Only worse. And then maybe it will be too late.”

  “Mina,” he growled, snaking an arm around her waist and dragging her to him. “I said no more.”

  Fury pulsed in his gaze like a living, breathing entity. The hands that held her were full of leashed aggression. Intensity surrounded him like a black cloud. He was seconds away from another explosion.

  “Bene,” she breathed. “Bene.”

  Her heart tattooed itself against her chest as he slid an arm underneath her knees and picked her up.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Shutting you up.”

  * * *

  Nate carried his wife into his bedroom, a maelstrom of emotion coursing through him. Big emotions, intense emotions Mina managed to pull out of him with that caring, empathetic side of her that never judged, only validated, making him want things he’d long ago decided were impossible.

  It was like walking in a minefield, allowing his feelings to surface. To acknowledge just how much his grandfather meant to him. Just how angry he was at himself. Too viciously painful to venture any further into, so he retreated by turning his intensity on the woman he couldn’t seem to get enough of. The woman who blanked his brain of anything but her when he came within a five-foot radius of her.

  He set Mina down on the floor. “Take off your clothes.”

  She gave him one of those wide-eyed looks as he started to strip. He thought she might refuse given the mood he was in. Then heat took hold in her beautiful eyes, the attraction she couldn’t fight. The trust she reserved for him no matter what he asked of her.

  Her hands moved to the top button of her blouse. She undid the buttons slowly, clumsily, until the last was undone. He watched her the whole time, holding her gaze with his. She unzipped her skirt, pushing it off her hips with a wriggle that turned him hard as stone. Clad in her lacy underwear, her eyes drank him in. Fell to the last piece of clothing he wore. His boxers did nothing to disguise his arousal.

  “Come here.”

  She blinked. Hesitated. Then walked toward him, stopping a couple of inches away. She was so beautiful standing there, so perfectly formed, so highly desirable, his throat went dry.

  He nodded his head toward his boxers. “Take them off.”

  She swallowed convulsively. A silence followed, then she stepped forward, slid her fingers beneath the elastic of his underwear and pushed them down so his pulsing arousal sprang free.

  He stepped out of them and kicked them to the side. Gave in to the fantasy that had been raging in his head ever since she’d offered it to him that night in the Maldives. “I have an edge that needs to be taken off,” he drawled in a gravelly voice full of need. “If you are so inclined.”

  A flush spread across her cheeks. His heart pounded painfully in his chest. When she sank to her knees, her dark eyes liquid with desire, the blood roared in his head. “Sì,” she murmured. “I am. But you need to tell me if I’m doing it all wrong.”

  He would have told her that every time she touched him was right if his brain had been working. But it had ceased functioning when she’d dropped to her knees.

  She took him in her hands and closed her fingers around his shaft. Her tentative, exploratory movements as she worked her way up and down the length of him fired his blood like no practiced touch had ever done. The pleasure that wrote itself across her face as he thickened, lengthened, for her inflamed him. And that was before she took him into the heat of her mouth and just about destroyed him.

  He buried his hands in her hair and told her how good it felt. How he wanted it. Where he wanted it. Mina indulged him, seemingly as intoxicated as he was. And then he was there, too fast.

  He manacled his fingers around her wrist. “You take more of an edge off,” he muttered roughly, in response to the dismayed look on her face, “and it’ll be all over.”

  He bent, picked her up and carried her to the bed. She watched as he rolled on a condom, so much bolder than she’d been that first night. Everything was on display in that face of hers, her open lust for him almost pushing him over the edge.

  The mattress depressed as he joined her on the bed. Sinking his palms into her waist he lifted her atop him, his aroused body brushing against her in the most potent of caresses. Mina closed her eyes, allowing him to control the contact. “Nate,” she breathed.

  Her slick arousal admitted him easily. He brought her down on him, slowly, so she felt every bit of him fill her. Her low moan sent his blood pressure skyrocketing. He wanted, needed, her too much. Needed her to anesthetize his brain as he knew she could.

  He flexed his hips and filled her completely. Her gasp split the air. “Okay?” he gritted.

  “Sì.” Her eyes were glued to his, glazed with pleasure. “It’s so good
like this.”

  A muttered oath escaped him. He lifted her up and brought her down on him again. Again and again, driving deeper into her slick, tight body with every thrust.

  “Nate,” Mina cried, her body tightening around his, “Dio mio, Nate...”

  He wrapped his fingers around her nape and brought her forward until he could see the pleasure exploding in her eyes. “That’s it, beautiful,” he murmured. “Come for me.”

  Her eyes went a molten espresso as she contracted around him. The sensation sent him into a mind-blowing climax that made the room rock.

  It was long moments before his brain returned to earth, his hands sliding over Mina’s ample curves. She arched like a kitten into his touch, her eyes heavy-lidded. “Do you want me to go to my own room?”

  His heart lurched at the question. He should take her there. Establish some boundaries from the start so they both had their space. But he’d gotten used to having her in his arms. And since when had resisting Mina gotten him anywhere?

  “Stay,” he murmured, brushing his lips against her temple. “I’m going to turn out the lights and I’ll be back.”

  She curled into his warmth when he returned, already drifting into unconsciousness as he wrapped himself around her. He tuned out the fact he’d never let another female stay the night in this bed along with the premonition this dangerous game he was playing with his wife was on a course for disaster.

  The time for turning back had long passed.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IF MINA HAD THOUGHT her first few weeks working for Nate had been tough, her first couple at the Brunswick Developments head office were an exercise in survival. Nate’s marketing director came exactly as advertised. A tough, native New Yorker, she had little time to pander to the CEO’s wife. Not that Mina wanted her to—she wanted exactly the opposite, to stand on her own two feet.

  And stand on her own two feet she did, as Carole put her to work immediately with a get-busy-ask-questions-as-you-need-to approach.

  After floundering through one project, afraid to appeal to her intimidating new boss for help, Mina started asking questions. She tapped her boss when she needed to and winged it when she could, learning more in those two weeks than she was sure she would have in a year at school.