Enemies at the Altar

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  ‘I’ll leave you to shower and change,’ Elena said. ‘I will set up the dinner before I leave.’

  ‘You don’t live here?’ Sienna asked.

  ‘I live in the farmhouse next to the olive grove,’ Elena said. ‘My husband, Franco, works for Signor Ferrante too. If you want anything we are only a phone call away. I will be back in the morning around ten. Signor Ferrante likes a bit of privacy. He has lived with servants all his life. I understand he wants his space.’

  Sienna hadn’t factored in actually being alone with Andreas. Alone with servants was a whole lot different than alone. It put a completely different spin on things. Could she trust him to keep his distance? The chemistry between them was volatile, to say the least. She knew it wouldn’t take much to set things off. If that tense little moment in his boardroom was anything to go by, things could get pretty intense in a flash and what would she be able to do about it? It wasn’t as if she had any immunity, not really. She put on a good front but how long was that going to last? He had only to look at her a certain way and her insides coiled with lust.

  It was ironic because sex was something she had never really taken to with any great enthusiasm. Although she had partied, and partied hard after Andreas’s rejection, it had been months and months before she had even thought about dating, and even when she had finally gone out with a couple of young men her age, the intimate encounters had left her cold. She had felt nothing for either of her partners and they clearly had felt nothing for her. And then, after the shameful night that had found her in a stranger’s bed, she had locked herself away in a sex-less and safe marriage of convenience. Before that night, whenever the press had portrayed her as a sleep-around-slut, she had laughed it off, pleased that she was getting some attention, even if it wasn’t positive. She had known the truth about herself and that had been all that mattered. But now the label had a ring of truth to it she dearly wished she could remove.

  After she had unpacked and showered and changed, Sienna came downstairs. The villa seemed rather empty without the warm and friendly chatter of the housekeeper. She picked at some food and poured herself a glass of wine, feeling restless and irritable.

  Maybe she should have thought about this a little more before she went any further. It wasn’t the first time her impulsive nature had got her into trouble. Was it too late to back out?

  The money stopped her thoughts of escape in their tracks. What was she thinking? It was like any other unpleasant job that had to be done. A six-month contract that would be over before she knew it. She would receive a handsome pay-out for her trouble.

  There was that T word again. Trouble.

  She had a habit of attracting it, no matter what she did. Was she forever destined to be at the mercy of circumstances she couldn’t control? Was it her fault her mother had kept her and given away her sister?

  Jealousy was something Sienna didn’t want to feel around her twin, but she couldn’t help feeling a little cheated by how things had panned out. Gisele had grown up well provided for. She’d had a private education and gone on fabulous exotic holidays. She had lived in the same gorgeous house all of her childhood. She hadn’t had to pack up her things every few months or so when someone got tired of her mother’s laziness or cheek. She’d had a father to watch out for her, to provide for her and protect her from those who preyed upon the vulnerable.

  Sienna, on the other hand, had grown up a whole lot faster than her peers. She’d learnt early on that there were few people you could trust. Everyone was out for his or her own gain.

  And now she was no different.

  She would get what she could out of this and move on. She would milk Andreas for every penny she could before she walked out of his life.

  For good.

  Sienna was on to her second glass of wine when she heard Andreas’s car. The deep throaty roar of the engine made her stomach clench unexpectedly. His fast car, fast-living lifestyle was something that had always attracted her even as it annoyed her. He had probably never had to push start a car in his life. He had never had to make his own bed or butter his own toast. He hadn’t been born with just a silver spoon in his mouth, but an entire dinner service. He ate from fine bone china and drank from crystal glasses. He had everything that money could buy and then some.

  How she hated him for it.

  Andreas came in to find Sienna lying on her stomach on his leather sofa with a half drunk glass of wine in her hand and the remote control to his big screen television in the other. Her hair was pulled back in a high ponytail and she was wearing close-fitting black yoga pants and a loose hot-pink top that had slipped off one of her sun-kissed shoulders. Her feet were bare as she swung her lower legs back and forth in a slow motion kicking action. She looked young and nubile and so damned sexy he felt a tight ache deep in his groin.

  ‘Hard day at the office?’ she asked without even looking his way as she flicked through the channels.

  He tugged at his tie to loosen it. ‘You could say that.’ He shrugged off his jacket and tossed it over the end of the other sofa. ‘Making ourselves at home, are we?’

  She took a sip of her wine before she answered. ‘Having a blast,’ she said. ‘You make great wine, by the way. I like your housekeeper too. We’re already best friends.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to make friends with the servants,’ he said, frowning.

  She muted the television and swung her legs down to sit up. ‘Why’s that?’ she asked. ‘Because they might forget their place and get too close to you?’

  Andreas let out a carefully controlled breath. ‘They’re employees, not friends,’ he said. ‘They do the work and they get paid. There’s nothing else that’s required of them.’

  She got off the sofa and padded over to where he was standing with her loose-limbed sensual gait. She looked up at him with those big sparkling-with-mischief grey-blue eyes of hers and he felt his groin tighten another excruciating notch. It was all he could do to stand there without hauling her against him to show her how much he lusted after her. But he had decided he would have her when he said so, not because she thought she could manipulate him at will.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ she asked.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked with a mocking look. ‘Wifely duties 101?’

  She lifted that deliciously bare shoulder of hers in a little shrug, her mouth going to a resentful pout. ‘Just trying to be helpful,’ she said. ‘I thought you looked tired.’

  ‘Maybe that’s because I haven’t slept a wink since I heard about my father’s will,’ Andreas said, rubbing a hand over his face, which was in need of a shave.

  He walked over to the bar and poured himself a glass of the wine Sienna had opened. He took a couple of sips before swinging his gaze back to her. ‘I’ve got the licence. I pulled a few strings. We can get married next Friday.’

  Her eyes widened a fraction but her voice when she spoke was all sass. ‘You move fast when you want something, don’t you, Rich Boy?’

  ‘No point in dragging things out,’ he said. ‘The sooner we marry, the sooner we can get a divorce.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan.’

  Andreas narrowed his gaze in sharp focus. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Her slim brows lifted archly. ‘Exactly what I said,’ she said. ‘You seem to have it all figured out.’

  ‘I do,’ he said. ‘We marry and then at the end of six months we end it. Simple.’

  ‘What did you tell Elena about us?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing, other than we’re getting married as soon as possible.’

  ‘You must have said more than that,’ she said, toying with the end of her ponytail.

  ‘Why do you think that?’ he asked.

  She lifted her golden shoulder up and down again. ‘She seems to think we’re madly in love,’ she said.

  ‘Most people are when they marry,’ Andreas said, taking another mouthful of wine.

  A beat of silence ticked past.

  ‘We
re you in love with Portia Briscoe?’ Sienna asked.

  Andreas’s brows shot together. ‘What sort of question is that?’ he asked.

  She tilted her head on one side, her finger tapping against her lips. ‘No, I don’t think you loved her,’ she said. ‘I think you liked her well enough. She ticked all the boxes for you. She comes from money, she knows what cutlery to use and she dresses well and never has a hair out of place. She never says the wrong thing or rubs people up the wrong way. But grab-you-in-the-guts love? Nope. I don’t think so.’

  ‘You’re a fine one to harp on about true love,’ he said. ‘You weren’t in love with Brian Littlemore. You barely knew him when you waltzed him down the aisle before his wife was even cold in her grave.’

  ‘Actually, I did know him,’ she said with an imperious air. ‘I’d met him well before his wife died.’

  Andreas gave her a disgusted look. ‘And no doubt you opened your legs for him then too. Did he pay you? Or did you give him one for free to get him so hot and hungry the poor old fool couldn’t help himself?’

  Sienna’s eyes flashed at him with undiluted venom. ‘You have a mind like a sewer,’ she said. ‘You sit up there in your diamond-encrusted, gold-inlaid ivory tower of yours, passing judgement on people you don’t even know from a bar of soap. Brian was a decent man with a big heart. You haven’t even got a heart. All you’ve got inside your chest is a lump of cold, hard stone.’

  Andreas took a measured sip of his wine. ‘Your loyalty to your late husband is touching, ma chérie,’ he said. ‘But I wonder if you would be so loyal if you knew he had another lover the whole time he was with you.’

  Her eyes flickered before moving away from his. He watched as she moved back to where she had left her glass of wine. She picked it up and cradled it in her hands without drinking any of it. ‘We had an open marriage,’ she said, still not looking at him. ‘It gave us both the freedom to do what we wanted as long as we were both discreet about it.’

  Andreas wondered if he should have been quite so blunt with her. There had been nothing in the press about her late husband’s affair. He had heard it secondhand and not from a particularly reliable source. But if she was hurt or upset by the news she was doing a good job of concealing it. Admittedly, she was standing stiffly, almost guardedly, but neither her expression nor her tone showed any sign of emotional carnage.

  ‘You knew about his mistress?’ he asked.

  She turned to look at him, a little puzzled frown pulling at her brow. ‘His … mistress?’

  ‘The woman he was seeing,’ he said. ‘His lover.’

  She gave a little laugh that seemed totally out of place. It sounded almost … relieved. ‘Oh, her …’ she said. ‘Yes, I knew about her right from the start.’

  ‘And you married Littlemore anyway?’ he asked, frowning deeply.

  She met his gaze with a directness he found jarring. ‘I did it for the money,’ she said. ‘The same reason I’m marrying you. It’s only for the money.’

  Andreas felt his jaw clamp down in anger. She was so brazen about her gold-digging motives. Had she no shame? No self-respect? What sort of laughing stock would she try and make of him during their six-month marriage? She had no sense of propriety. She was as selfish and self-serving as she had been as a teenager. She would do anything to get as much out of this situation as she could. He could practically see the dollar signs flashing in her eyes. ‘While we’re on the subject of money,’ he said, ‘I want to make a few things clear, right from the start. Throughout the duration of our marriage, I will not tolerate any behaviour on your part that leads to speculation in the press that this is not a normal relationship. If you don’t behave yourself there will be consequences. Do I make myself clear?’

  She gave him one of her insolent schoolgirl looks. ‘Perfectly.’

  He drew in a breath for patience and slowly released it. ‘Secondly, I will not be made a fool of by your practice of leaping in and out of bed with a host of unsavoury men,’ he said. ‘That means no boudoir photos and no seedy little sex tapes uploaded to the Internet or social networking sites. Got it?’

  Her cheeks turned a cherry-red, he presumed from anger at being reminded of the sex tape incident that had occurred a little over two years ago, for which her twin sister had inadvertently taken the rap. He’d missed the scandal as he had been abroad at the time, but, after reading about her twin’s recent reconciliation with her fiancé, the thing that had struck him most was that Sienna hadn’t come forward at the time. To be fair, she hadn’t known she even had a twin then, but it was just typical of Sienna’s inability or unwillingness to take responsibility for her actions. She didn’t give a toss what anyone else suffered because of her reprehensible behaviour. She just barrelled her way through life with no thought or care for what anyone else was feeling.

  ‘There won’t be any slip-ups,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘There had better not be,’ he warned.

  She turned away from him and drained her glass, putting it down with a little rattle against the coffee table. ‘Will that be all?’ she asked.

  Andreas pressed his lips together. Her subdued tone was a new one. He hadn’t heard her use it before. How did she do it? How did she switch things so deftly to make him feel as if he had overstepped the mark? ‘If it is any consolation to you, I will also refrain from any behaviour that could compromise our arrangement,’ he said, ploughing a hand through his hair. ‘It’s only for six months. A bout of celibacy is supposed to re-energise the soul and sharpen the intellect, or so I’ve heard.’

  She gave him a little smile, that old familiar spark back in her gaze. ‘Do you think you’ll last the distance?’ she asked.

  Andreas wasn’t prepared to put any money on it. Not with her looking so damned hot and gorgeous without even trying. ‘I’ll take it one day at a time,’ he said, deliberately running his gaze over her from head to toe and back again.

  She held his look but he noticed one of her shoulders rolling as if she suddenly found her clothes prickly against her skin. ‘Good luck with that,’ she said in an airy tone.

  He refilled his wine glass and took a couple of mouthfuls before he turned to look at her again. ‘By the way, I’d appreciate you making an effort to buy something suitable to wear to the wedding. I’m not sure yoga pants or tattered jeans are going to set a new trend in bridal gear, no matter how good you look in them.’

  Sienna raised her brows at him. ‘My, oh, my, a compliment from the impossible-to-impress Signor Ferrante,’ she said. ‘Wonders will never cease.’

  Andreas frowned at her in irritation. ‘What are you talking about? I’ve complimented you plenty of times.’

  ‘Remind me of one,’ she said, folding her arms across her chest as she tilted one hip forwards in a pose of youthful scepticism. ‘My memory seems to have completely failed me.’

  He rubbed at the back of his neck. ‘What about the time you were going to that school dance when you were sixteen or thereabouts,’ he said. ‘You were wearing a crinkly candy-pink and white dress. I said you looked pretty.’

  She gave him a resentful look. ‘You said I looked like a cupcake.’

  Andreas felt a smile tug at his mouth. ‘Did I really say that?’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Well, then, what I probably meant to say was you looked good enough to eat,’ he said.

  The air seemed to thicken in the ensuing silence.

  ‘You probably should take a little more care with your diet,’ Sienna said. ‘Too much sugar is bad for you.’

  ‘Yes, but once in a while it’s good to have a little of what you fancy, don’t you think?’ Andreas said.

  ‘Only if you can keep control,’ she said, holding his look with a haughty air he found incredibly arousing. ‘For some people, one taste is never going to be enough. They can’t just have one square of chocolate. They have to have the whole bar.’

  His gaze swept over her slim figure again. ‘You’re obviously not speaking from
personal experience,’ he said. ‘I could just about span your waist with my hands.’

  ‘Lucky genes, I guess.’

  Andreas saw a flicker of something move through her gaze. ‘What are you going to tell your sister about this arrangement between us?’ he asked.

  She rolled her lips together for a moment. ‘I feel uncomfortable about lying to her, but I don’t want her to worry about me either,’ she said. ‘I think it’s best if I stick to the script for now.’

  ‘We should probably tidy up a few details then,’ Andreas said. ‘Like how we came to fall in love so quickly.’

  Sienna gave him one of her worldly looks. ‘Do you really think people are going to believe you fell in love with me? We have nothing in common. I’m a cleaning lady’s kid from the wrong side of the tracks. You’ve had more silver spoons in your mouth than most people have had hot dinners. Men with your sort of heritage don’t marry trailer trash. It’s just in fairy tales where that sort of thing happens. Not in real life.’

  Andreas frowned. ‘That’s rather a harsh way to speak of your background,’ he said. ‘I have never once referred to you as trailer trash.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ she said. ‘I see it in your eyes every time you look at me.’

  He felt a little stab of guilt. He had called her plenty of other things in the past and none of them were any less disparaging. ‘Look, Sienna,’ he said. ‘I realise we have some ill feeling because of our history. But I’m prepared to put that aside for the moment in order to get through this period.’

  She chewed at her lower lip in a childlike manner he found at odds with what he knew of her. ‘Are you saying you forgive me?’ she asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t go as far as saying that,’ he said. ‘What you did was unforgivable.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, biting down on her lip again. ‘I know …’

  Andreas ratcheted up his resolve. She was toying with him, trying to appeal to his better side to get herself off the hook. He wasn’t buying it for a moment. Behind that forgive-me-I-was-too-young-to-know-what-I-was-doing façade was a conniving little social-climbing trollop who was on a mission to land herself a fortune. She might have fooled his father into writing her into the will, but it wasn’t going to work on him.