A Sicilian Seduction

by Michelle Reid

  The tab went fizz. Her water hissed as it hit the glass. He walked over to stand staring out of the darkened window while she sat staring down at her glass. His arm lifted as he took a drink from his can. She took a sip of the sparkling water. Other than for those two relatively innocent actions nothing else stirred in the room if you didn’t include the roaring speed with which two like-minded brains were working.

  He began the battle. ‘Will you marry me, Natalia?’ he asked…

  No answer, he noted. Did you really expect one? he then wryly asked himself. Only to wince when she suddenly started laughing, not loudly or hysterically but disdainfully.

  ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ she said.

  Oh, I don’t know, he silently countered, staring grimly down at his can. It is a lack of nerve that made me ask the question. I am in dire straits here or the shrewd gambler in me would not be putting my last card on the table first.

  ‘You can’t even bring yourself to ask me that to my face,’ she added scathingly.

  The jeer spun him round to face her. She was sitting there glaring an evil spell at him like the beautiful blue-eyed witch he always saw, and on a grunt of rueful surrender he threw himself in at the deep end.

  ‘I fell in love with you at first glance across a packed company dining room,’ he informed her. ‘Is that in your face enough for you?’

  He could see that it most definitely was not. She had turned white again, very white, and the eyes had gone grey, permeating the air with a frost of cold disbelief. ‘You fell in lust with me, you mean,’ she denounced in disgust.

  ‘That too,’ he agreed, adding a wry shrug because it was the truth, and he was determined that they would only deal with the truth from here on in. ‘But at the time I believed you were my brother-in-law’s mistress and the woman who was threatening to ruin his marriage.’

  ‘Oh, that makes it all okay, then,’ she mocked him bitterly.

  ‘What else was I supposed to think?’ He sighed out impatiently. ‘Have you any idea what such a belief did to me?’

  ‘I know what it did to you!’ she threw back angrily. ‘It turned you into a rat, and a deceiver!’

  ‘That’s great,’ he derided. ‘Coming from the woman who has been lying to me from day one.’

  ‘At least I lied to protect someone I loved.’

  ‘So did I,’ he reminded her. ‘Alegra is just as important to me as Edward is to you.’

  ‘Only your way of protecting those you love was deliberately geared towards a bit of good old-fashioned Sicilian revenge at the same time,’ she pointed out. ‘My reasons for being with you were honest, Giancarlo. Whereas yours were only ever intended to cause me pain.’

  He said nothing. The silence hung like a cloud between them because there really was no answer to her last bitter claim. So on a heavy sigh he changed tack, by ridding himself of his can and coming to pull out the chair beside her. Swinging it around, he then straddled it and sat down while she watched all of this with a distinctly wary look in her eye.

  That was okay, he told himself. He could deal with wary better than he could deal with bitterness and pain. So he folded his arms along the chair back, placed his chin on the top of them, and, with her gaze held captive by her own wariness of what was coming, he repeated gently:

  ‘Marry me,’ and he smiled…

  The smile hit dead centre, the proposal sent her head dizzy. And his wretched eyes were warming her right through! It was like being in the company of the world’s most accomplished beguiler! It just wasn’t fair—none of it! Did he honestly think she didn’t know what he was trying to do?

  ‘Listen to me,’ she said, having to push the words up through a thickened throat because, really, she had no defence worth mentioning against this man, and she was beginning to weaken, she could feel it happening. ‘Let’s get a few things straight before this gets entirely out of hand, she suggested. ‘In the unlikely event that I am pregnant, I do not expect or even want an offer of marriage from you. It is neither necessary nor expected in this day and age. And I’ve been there,’ she reminded him. ‘I know what it’s like to be a child of a single parent. There’s no stigma in that label any more. If or when I need to do so, I will cope as my mother coped. I don’t even mind!’ she added in the hope that it would be of some help to him. ‘So don’t cut yourself up thinking you have to offer marriage to Edward’s bastard daughter because you made a few mistakes about her. Especially when we both know we were never so much as heading in that direction before tonight’s—mess came to light. What we had here was never very real, but just a window in time we both used to enjoy each other. But tomorrow or next week or—whenever, you can go back to Milan or Sicily or—wherever, and that window will close, as it should do. So don’t try to keep it open out of some misguided sense of honour you feel you need to redress,’ she begged. ‘Nothing in this life is absolutely certain. We all make mistakes, change, move on. Let’s not further clutter up the baggage we take with us, with a set of marriage vows neither of us wanted to make in the first place!’

  To give him his due, he listened. He listened without comment and without expression as she rambled through her wise little speech. His forearms remained folded across the chair back, his eyes didn’t move from her beautiful face. When she finally fell into an empty little silence, he simply allowed a small pause to hover after it, then repeated quietly:

  ‘Marry me…’

  Natalia erupted out of nowhere. ‘Oh, stop it!’ she cried, wondering just what it took to get through to this man! ‘Why are you doing this? You know it isn’t what you really want!’

  ‘You don’t know what I want,’ he shot right back. ‘Try asking me instead of telling me!’

  ‘No,’ she refused, because she felt she had already covered it as far as she was concerned.

  She went to get up. His hand closing around her wrist stopped her. Electricity sizzled along her veins and she felt a wild rush of sheer excitement. Angrily she pulled free. She had to get out of here, she decided urgently, before he really started getting to her! And she jumped to her feet, then immediately wished she hadn’t done that when old dizziness dropped over her.

  Seeing it happen, Giancarlo uttered a choice curse as he leapt up himself, then was impatiently kicking his chair aside so he could pull her against him. ‘Don’t go faint on me again,’ he commanded harshly. ‘This is no time for passing out. We need to deal with this!’

  ‘I thought I was dealing with it!’ she snapped, feeling so light-headed that she had to lean against him.

  ‘No, you were talking utter rubbish,’ he arrogantly opined. ‘I just let you get it off your chest because you seemed to need to.’

  Well, thanks, she thought grimly. ‘Let me go, please.’

  Instead he bent to hook his arm beneath her knees and the next thing she knew she was being cradled against his chest and he was striding out of the kitchen and down the hallway to the only room she expected him to take her to.

  The bedroom. The bed, where he settled her down on the top of the covers then came to lie beside her. ‘Sex isn’t the way to solve this particular problem,’ she drawled in acid derision.

  ‘Sex isn’t what I’m after,’ he said, coming up on one elbow so he could look directly into her angry blue eyes. ‘I simply wanted you safely horizontal just in case you decided to do something else stupid.’

  I’m stupid. I talk rubbish, Natalia grimly listed. I can’t be relied upon to take care of my own safety. And, he no longer wants sex from me.

  ‘Now,’ he said firmly. ‘Ask me.’

  ‘Ask you what?’ she flashed, wishing she didn’t just love having him this close to her.

  ‘What I want from this relationship,’ he provided, bringing the whole darn thing back to the last place she wanted it.

  Oh, play the game and get it over with! she told herself frantically because he was too close and she was beginning to feel… ‘What is it you want from this relationship, Giancarlo?’ she enquired very wea
rily.

  His eyes went black. It was like looking into some terrible place where her fate lay waiting. ‘You,’ he murmured huskily. ‘I want you. I adore you. You are my life. So—will you marry me?’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ she breathed, closing her eyes on a sigh of burning frustration. ‘You just don’t listen.’ The eyes flew back open. ‘You didn’t even know who I really was until a couple of hours ago! So how can you know you want to marry this person?’

  ‘Because she is the mother of my child,’ he answered smoothly.

  ‘I might not be pregnant!’ she reminded him. ‘Aren’t you jumping the gun a bit?’

  ‘That is not the point.’ He smiled that electrifying smile again. ‘In believing you could be pregnant, I discovered how much I loved the idea. So the rest does not really matter. You are the woman I want as the mother of my children. So—will you marry me?’

  It was easier to close her eyes again and pretend he just wasn’t there, she decided. A stupid idea when the man was lying right here beside her on a bed they had been sharing for weeks now, she mocked her own idiocy.

  And to further mock the whole thing, his hand came up to brush a feather-light finger across the arch of her eyelashes where they lay flickering against her cheeks. ‘I will cherish and adore you all of your life,’ he promised huskily.

  ‘Last week you were still plotting my ruin,’ she replied.

  He touched his lips to her stubborn mouth. ‘I loved you even when I was plotting your ruin. Does that not count for anything?’ he asked, moving on to nibble at one of her earlobes.

  She had to move her shoulder in an effort to dislodge him—or start quivering. ‘Is this the Sicilian way of being diplomatic?’ she asked. ‘If so, I have to tell you it doesn’t work very well.’

  He just laughed softly in his throat, which brought on the quiver anyway. ‘I loved you even when I knew you were lying through your lovely white teeth to me,’ he pointed out. ‘Like the cool-headed denial you gave about not knowing the combination to Edward’s safe, for instance…’

  Her eyes flicked open. ‘How do you know that I knew it?’ she demanded.

  His eyes were taunting, like his voice when he said, ‘Because I listened in to the message Edward had left you on your voice-mail.’

  ‘Is that why you asked me for the combination?’ she gasped. ‘Just to see what I would say?’

  He nodded. ‘It is also the reason why you have been working from here ever since,’ he added. ‘When you wouldn’t give up the combination I decided I had to get you away from the safe. So I set up this place.’ He glanced around them. ‘So quickly you won’t believe how much trouble I took.’

  ‘But why?’ she cried. ‘Why should my father’s private papers be so important to you?’

  ‘Ah,’ he drawled. ‘But you are thinking like a daughter instead of a mistress,’ he pointed out. ‘I saw whatever was in that safe as your—payment let’s say, for services rendered. And I enjoyed very much making sure you couldn’t get your sticky hands on that payment.’

  ‘Money, you mean,’ she realised angrily. ‘How cynical a mind do you actually have, Giancarlo?’

  ‘Worse than you think,’ he freely admitted. ‘I had the safe opened by a locksmith the day after you came here to work. I found nothing inside it but Edward’s private stock portfolio. And since I put that together for him, I presumed that whatever it was he didn’t want me to see had already been taken—by his lovely accomplice—along with a genuine Fabergé watch, for instance.’

  ‘You believed I’d actually stolen my great-grandmother’s watch?’ Natalia just stared at him, stunned by the depths his mind had her wallowing! ‘Edward kept details of my birth in there,’ she explained because she could see no reason not to now. ‘I managed to get them out before you arrived in the next morning.’ She now felt rather pleased with herself for doing that. ‘Though I did so because Edward was so sure you had the safe combination somewhere—not because I expected you to resort to using a locksmith to get into it!’

  ‘Machiavellian, that’s me.’ He smiled. ‘You know I had mislaid the piece of paper he had written the combination on, so I had to resort to other methods.’

  ‘Nothing is too low for you, is it?’ she breathed.

  ‘Will you still marry me knowing that?’

  ‘I never said I was ever going to marry you,’ she pointed out.

  His answer was to swoop on her mouth. It just wasn’t fair, Natalia complained helplessly. He was applying unfair tactics and she couldn’t resist him and the fact that he knew that only made it all the more unfair!

  ‘You said no sex,’ she mumbled against his mouth.

  ‘This is not sex,’ he denied, moving his lips to her cheek then back to let them hover a hair’s breadth away from hers again. ‘It is showing my adoration for the woman who belongs to me.’

  And to give his claim substance he began gently rotating the hand he had lying against her abdomen. Silk began to move sensually against her skin, the heat from his hand making it all the more pleasurable. She liked it, and didn’t want to like it. And worst of all, his eyes were so dark and warm and incredibly tender that she felt herself starting to sink into them.

  ‘Marry me,’ he urged with husky softness. ‘Let me be your husband, your lover and your devoted soul mate.’

  ‘You’re just hedging your bets in case I am pregnant,’ she derided, but she made sure her lips made fleeting contact with his as she spoke. ‘Come tomorrow when you find I am not, you’ll be straining at the leash to escape.’

  ‘Our child is growing in here,’ he murmured softly. ‘Just think of it. Or think of all the passionate nights we will have trying to put the seed there if it has not made it already.’ And to punctuate his point his hand began to slowly ruche up her dress. She gasped in response; he rewarded the revealing little sound with another kiss.

  ‘So, marry me,’ he repeated.

  ‘I can’t marry you,’ she breathed. ‘I know you’re only offering it because you feel some misguided need to redress an error.’

  ‘Or because you don’t love me…?’ he softly suggested.

  ‘Oh,’ she choked, and brought up her fingers to place them against his mouth. ‘Stop it,’ she pleaded.

  His eyes went so black she thought she could see right inside him, down as far as his pulsing heart. And he kissed the fingers, then reached up to remove them. ‘Marry me,’ he repeated.

  Could she do it? she asked her weaker side. Could she dare to marry this man who had used her so appallingly…? She was wavering; Giancarlo could feel her need to give in to him throbbing beneath his caressing hand.

  ‘Marry me,’ he said again, and felt that throbbing beat of desire pulse through him like an extra heartbeat.

  She was his, he could feel it. The warmth of her lips told him, the tremor of her body. All she needed to do was whisper yes and the rest would take care of itself for now. ‘What can be so wrong in marrying this man who wants you so badly, hmm? Marry me, amore,’ he urged yet again, ‘and I will promise to love you for ever.’

  Love, the keyword, he noted as her blue eyes turned warm and dark and sultry. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  Triumph filled his head, followed almost immediately by a different sensation entirely that lost them both the will to think at all for the next few exquisite minutes while he paid homage to that tiny ‘yes’.

  Then the telephone began to ring, bringing them both screeching back to reality with a jolt. He lifted his head, frowning in irritation because it was gone three in the morning and who the hell rang anyone at—?

  ‘Edward,’ Natalia said jerkily, and was trying to stretch over him to pick up the phone even as he snatched it up.

  His arm wrapped around her, keeping her close. ‘Yes?’ he prompted, Natalia’s fear becoming his fear when he heard his sister’s voice coming back at him.

  ‘Edward will not settle down and rest because he’s worrying about his daughter,’ Alegra snapped at him with failing patien
ce with the man she loved. ‘If Natalia is with you will you please put her on this telephone so she can reassure her father that you are not seducing her—again!’

  ‘But I am seducing her,’ Giancarlo drawled lazily, settling back onto the pillows and taking Natalia with him. ‘You interrupted us, in fact,’ he added, then coolly held the receiver to Natalia’s ear so she could receive the full blast of his sister’s anger instead of him.

  From being white-faced with fear she was suddenly blushing. He began to grin, all wicked white teeth and Italian devilry. ‘He—he isn’t bullying me,’ she replied to whatever Alegra had said. ‘We were—talking,’ she tagged on not very convincingly. Then— ‘Edward!’ she sighed out. ‘Will you listen to me?’

  Edward? The grin altered to a frown and he snatched the phone back from her ear. ‘Edward,’ he said, cutting the older man off mid angry flood. ‘I would formally like to ask for the hand of your daughter in marriage.’

  ‘No!’ Natalia choked. ‘Don’t tell him that!’

  ‘Yes, of course she has accepted me. Do you honestly think I am going to allow her to look elsewhere now?’

  At which point Natalia sank back against the pillow and closed her eyes in an act of surrender. Seeing it happen, Giancarlo smiled to himself, and settled back to convince his angry brother-in-law that the woman in his arms was going to be so cherished that her papa had no need at all to worry.

  ‘Okay?’ he questioned when eventually he was allowed to replace the receiver.

  ‘No,’ Natalia replied. ‘I feel like a hostile takeover. No trick too mean, no bribe too low. He did give you his blessing, I am presuming?’

  ‘With the promise that he will be well enough to give you away at our wedding next week.’

  ‘Next week,’ she repeated as his arms looped round her and he pulled her into the crook of his body.

  ‘You smell of woman,’ he growled, nuzzling her earlobe.

  ‘You said no sex.’

  ‘I changed my mind.’