by Annie West
‘This isn’t about me. It’s about you. You need to be prepared. I don’t understand why you want to do business with my dad but you deserve to know he’ll cheat and lie and use you any way he can. If I were you...’ She looked away. ‘If I were you I wouldn’t do business with him at all.’ The hoarse conviction in her voice told its own story.
‘Why are you sharing this?’
She frowned. ‘Don’t you want to know what you’re dealing with?’
What. As if Reg Sanderson were a thing not a person. Donato’s pulse quickened. ‘Has he hurt you?’ He wrapped his arms around her, lashing her naked body to him.
‘You think I’m telling you this out of spite?’
‘Of course not.’ He just wanted to know what else to add to Sanderson’s account. He was sure there was something, probably many somethings. His jaw tightened. ‘But I’d give a lot to know why you are telling me.’
Her brow wrinkled. ‘You’re not the man I believed. You’re decent and real and... I care for you.’
It felt as if an unseen fist smashed through his ribs to pummel his lungs and heart.
How long since anyone had cared about him?
How long since anyone had looked out for him?
The rarity of it had to explain this overfull sensation.
‘Can you give me an example?’ He didn’t need one but he wanted to know what Sanderson had done to Ella.
Her eyes when they locked with his were the colour of a stormy sky, her features pared back as if her flesh shrank on her bones. ‘He stole from my brother. Rob inherited money from our grandfather which Reg invested for him. Now Rob needs his money for a project he’s co-financing. But most of the funds have disappeared, stolen by our father. He says he can’t pay it back till his deal with you is finalised.’
‘Which is why you didn’t tell me about this sooner.’ Now the pieces fell into place. This explained Ella’s willingness to play along with the wedding scheme, albeit under sufferance. ‘He was holding it over your head.’
Ella shifted, trying to roll off him, but Donato held her close. Skin to skin, eye to eye, this was his chance to discover all he needed to know.
‘At first I thought it didn’t matter. I thought you were like him.’
Donato grimaced at the idea and Ella brushed her fingers across his mouth in a caress that made his heart leap.
‘But you’re not, are you?’
Before he could think of a response she went on. ‘It’s been eating at me. I’ve seen another side to you. The way you are with me, the things you do for other people.’
Donato frowned, wondering what she’d found out. Mostly he kept his charitable activities out of the limelight.
‘I felt guilty, not telling you what he’s really like. Today, when you told me about your mother...’ Her mouth turned down. ‘How could I ask you to share that and not warn you?’
‘So this is quid pro quo?’ His grating tone hid confusion. He’d been unsettled all day. Unsettled by Ella’s sympathy and how, despite what he said, it warmed the dark places in his soul.
Ella stiffened, her chin jutting at a familiar angle. ‘If you like.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ He ran the backs of his fingers down her peach-soft cheek. ‘I appreciate you telling me. But it makes no difference. I knew already.’
He knew more about her father than he suspected Ella did. For the first time it hit him that revealing the enormity of Sanderson’s crimes would have repercussions for Ella. How would she react?
‘You’re still going to do business with him?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Familiar satisfaction stirred. ‘But with one change.’ He palmed her hair from her face, feeling an unaccustomed protectiveness at the idea of Ella growing up under Sanderson’s roof. He thought of her prickly defensiveness, her difficulty in believing she was attractive and knew he could lay that and more at Sanderson’s door.
‘What change?’ Her eyes were wary, and why not? She’d been an unwilling pawn in his tactics.
Donato rolled over till she was beneath him, all that delicious femininity and warm silky skin.
‘I’ll make sure your brother gets his money.’
Watching the light in Ella’s eyes was like watching dawn break over the ocean, except the warmth he felt was far more than skin-deep. She made him feel like a different man. A man who might believe in things he’d learned never to expect.
He felt her jolt of surprise. ‘You will? But it’s not your responsibility.’ A smile hovered on her mouth but didn’t quite settle, as if she feared to believe. It struck him how much stress she’d been under. From her father, and from him.
Something heavy dragged at his gut. Regret? Guilt?
‘I’m making it my responsibility.’
Her smile broke wide then and its brilliance set off little tremors inside. Of pleasure, and relief.
See? He could make things okay for her. He could make her happy and still get the revenge he needed from her father.
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Don’t say anything.’
‘Thank you, Donato.’ Her hands cupped his jaw, her gaze met his. ‘That means so much.’
‘Good. Perhaps you can show me how much.’ He basked in her approval, thrusting aside the knowledge he’d used Ella for his own ends. That she deserved to know the whole truth. He’d make it up to her. As for the truth, that would come soon enough. Probably too soon for Ella and her siblings.
He swept his hand down the sleek curve of her spine, desperation rising as he deliberately pushed aside the hovering shadow cast by his conscience.
It was far easier to lose himself in passion than to analyse these new troubling feelings.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ELLA REREAD THE NOTE, not recognising her father’s writing. He’d never written her birthday or Christmas cards, yet the slashing scribble could only be his.
Urgent...designer insists you meet for a fitting but has sent this...only agreeing to work because of Salazar’s high profile...demand you be there Friday three p.m...everything rides on this...no time for selfish games...
The missive turned into a tirade and her empty stomach churned. She screwed up the paper and let it fall. Thanks to Donato’s intervention she’d had no contact with her father for weeks and had almost forgotten how he made her feel. Now her flesh crawled as if someone had dropped a bucket of spiders onto her back.
Ella turned to the oversized garment bag the housekeeper had hung in Donato’s dressing room. She didn’t want to look. She knew it would be a mistake. There would be no wedding. Yet...how could she resist peeking at the dress created for her by one of the country’s top designers?
She pulled off the protective covers and stood back.
This was the dress the renowned Aurelio had designed? He’d conceived this based on the clothes she’d left at her father’s the night of his party?
Ella cringed when she thought of her uniform trousers and shirt being measured and assessed by someone who worked only with the finest materials, the most glamorous women.
This had to be a joke.
Yet the full-length, full-skirted wedding dress mesmerised her. Strapless, it was ruched to a point at one hip and fitted to reveal an hourglass figure. Feminine contours were accentuated by a dusting of glitter from breast to knee on one side. Despite being fitted, the dress featured a ballooning froth of satin skirt that turned the gown from sultry into sultry fairy tale princess.
Ella’s breath sucked in, air lodging like a weight in her lungs.
This dress was not her. It was ostentatiously feminine and graceful. Alluring.
True, you’d need height to carry off a dress like this. She definitely had height, but that was all.
She’d never wear such a dress. Eve
n if she were getting married, which she wasn’t. Severely she squashed the what if in her head, the daydream of her and Donato as a real couple, not just short-term.
Atavistic warning flared as she lifted a hand. Surely it was unlucky to try on a bridal gown for a wedding that wouldn’t take place?
Curiosity won out. She’d never again get to try a designer original.
Ten minutes later she stood, her hair pinned up off her shoulders, her arms extended from her body so as not to mar the lustrous satin, soft as butter, that draped her. The fabric was slippery and fine and if she didn’t know better she’d think that was a starburst of diamonds, not rhinestones, rippling down from her breast.
The dress was too long when worn barefoot and a little big. She hitched it up to cover her breasts as it sagged, but still... Ella shook her head, disbelieving. She looked—
‘You’re gorgeous, cariño. Stunning.’ The low voice wrapped around her, liquefying her knees.
In the mirror her eyes met Donato’s and shock reverberated. The floor moved. Surely there was a seismic shift, not simply the impact of that fathomless indigo gaze.
Ella’s pulse became a thud, her breathing shallow as her mouth dried and her mind struggled to believe her eyes.
She didn’t want to turn because she knew in reality that look would be surprise and lust. Yet as she watched him in the mirror, her stupid heart imagined more than desire on Donato’s face. It imagined tenderness, possessiveness and something yet more profound. Something that made her tremble from her knees to her knocking heart. Something like what she felt.
She’d fought it for weeks, the knowledge that she wanted far more than sex and companionship from Donato. That she cared for him more deeply than she should.
That she’d fallen head over heels for him.
Donato advanced slowly, his eyes eating her up. She didn’t turn. Here, away from the window’s bright light, the fantasy lingered that he felt the same as she did.
‘It’s just the dress,’ she croaked.
She felt more vulnerable in this wedding dress than she ever had naked. The white satin, the embodiment of all those little-girl dreams she’d never allowed herself to harbour, had undone her. Her emotions were too close to the surface. It grew harder to hide her feelings.
Yet the way he treated her, the tenderness and joy, the way he’d begun to open himself to her...all had made her hope.
Donato stopped behind her. Had he read the yearning in her eyes? Her shiver of excitement?
‘It’s not the dress. It’s you. You’re beautiful.’
Finally Ella tore her gaze away. Enough was enough. ‘I shouldn’t have put it on. I don’t want to damage it, but I was curious. I’ll send it straight back.’
‘No! Leave it.’
Ella’s head jerked up, her gaze snagging on his in the mirror. ‘Why? I can’t keep it.’ She brushed her palm down the petal-soft fabric. The dress was ridiculously unsuitable for her, even without the fact she had no occasion to wear it. ‘I’ll tell my father.’
‘Don’t.’ Donato frowned, his expression so forbidding she swung around to face him, layers of material swishing and swaying around her. The soft, unfamiliar weight of it reminded her she had no business playing pretend.
Face to face she read tension in his features. Far more tension than the sight of her in a wedding gown warranted.
‘I have to, Donato. Don’t you see? He’s still going ahead with these ridiculous wedding plans. Someone has to stop him.’ She breathed deep. ‘I will if you won’t.’
But Donato shook his head. ‘The wedding plans go ahead. Nothing is to be cancelled.’
Ella stared. Surely they’d got beyond this. Donato was going to help Rob. There was nothing to fear now. Surely there was no need to pretend any more.
Unless it wasn’t pretend.
What if he really wanted marriage?
What if, like her, Donato had fallen in love?
The thought no sooner surfaced than she dashed it, telling herself flights of fancy wouldn’t help, no matter how much she wanted them to be true.
Yet, peering up into Donato’s shadowed face, Ella couldn’t help but wonder.
A knock sounded at the bedroom door. ‘Excuse me, sir.’ It was Donato’s housekeeper. ‘There’s an urgent call for you.’
‘I’ll be there in a moment.’ Donato’s eyes didn’t leave Ella’s. When the footsteps retreated he spoke again, his eyes pinning her to the spot. ‘The marriage goes ahead, Ella. Don’t say anything to your father.’
* * *
Donato paced the study, the phone to his ear. He should feel triumph at this latest news. Soon Sanderson’s business, his finances and his reputation would be non-existent.
‘Excellent. You’ve done well bringing it together.’ Yet the words ground hoarsely from Donato’s constricted larynx. He felt winded, like that time in prison when he’d been ambushed and only just deflected a lethal punch to the throat.
Gone was his laser-sharp focus on retribution and Sanderson’s downfall. Only dimly did he hear the rest of his manager’s report. Donato’s mind was on Ella.
Beautiful, glowing Ella, breathtaking in that fairy tale dress. Like a princess waiting at the altar for Prince Charming to sweep her away to their happily ever after.
Donato yanked open another button on his shirt, trying to ease the tightness in his throat.
Seeing Ella in her finery, he’d been torn between wanting to claim her and the knowledge he couldn’t be the man for her. The chasm between them had never been more obvious.
He’d never contemplated taking a bride. Those everyday dreams most of the population shared—someone to love, to build a life and family with—those had never been his. They had always been the stuff of fiction, far beyond the reach of someone like him. He’d never let himself expect anything so temptingly, wonderfully ordinary.
Oh, he could have taken a wife. But the women he’d known hadn’t been the sort to spend a lifetime with.
Not like Ella.
His mind blurred as realisation hit.
With Ella he wanted things he’d never allowed himself to dream of.
He might have wealth and power and a driving purpose that had kept him focused for years. But for the first time, on the brink of achieving the one goal that had kept him alive through prison and through every setback since, he wanted what he could never have.
Ella.
He scrubbed his hand over his face.
He could have her body.
He could have her company and her laughter and her smiles for a short time. But blood would out.
He was a loner, born not even of a dysfunctional relationship but of a commercial transaction. He knew more about the ways people hurt each other than anything else.
And Ella...she wanted him now. Wanted their passion. But eventually she’d also want marriage. The white dress. The family. The settled life. The loving husband.
Love.
All the things that were foreign to him. All the things his birth, breeding and experience cut him off from.
He huffed out a hollow laugh that scraped his ribs. The ex-con as the ideal husband? Hardly.
And when she found out what he was really doing to her father...
She disliked Sanderson but he was still her dad. She’d never forgive the man who took him down. And as for the fact he’d used her to further his revenge scheme...
‘Sorry, Donato?’ It was his second in charge on the other end of the line. ‘I missed that.’
Donato stopped before the glass doors to the terrace, his jaw locked, his eyes on the horizon. Yet it was Ella’s face he saw in his mind’s eye.
‘The plans have changed. We’re bringing the date forward. Forget about waiting till the end of the month.’ He inhaled slowly. O
nce he would have savoured the moment. Now he simply needed to get it over. ‘I want everything finalised today. Yes, that’s right. Today. I’ll call later.’ He ended the call.
Was this restlessness because triumph was so near? Surely he should feel satisfaction instead of this sense of anticlimax?
As for feeling empty—he could fix that with some new project. He’d driven himself so hard and long over this that it was just the prospect of having no purpose that was foreign.
Donato grimaced. Who was he fooling? The joke was on him. He’d always been the one on the outside, looking in.
He hadn’t let it bother him—the raised brows and sudden silence when he walked into a room. The people who were scared by his past. The ones titillated by it.
It hadn’t mattered because he’d never wanted to belong.
Until now. When finally, in the worst possible circumstances, he’d glimpsed the real thing—real passion with a woman who, for the first time in his life, made him feel whole.
‘Donato!’ He swung around to find Ella in the doorway, breathtaking in her finery. The sight of her punched emotion hard and low into his belly.
She was flushed and unhappy. One hand gripped the top of the low-cut dress that threatened to reveal too much pale honey flesh. The other held up the wide skirt as she negotiated her way into the room, past clustering sofas.
With her hair beginning to fall about her shoulders and her diamond eyes glittering, she looked like a bride who’d just been thoroughly, satisfyingly debauched.
Donato’s body tightened as he fought the knowledge that he wanted to be the man to claim her. To scandalise the wedding guests by sweeping her away from the ceremony and making her his in the most intimate way he knew. He wanted to keep her with him, not just while he concluded his schemes for her father, but into a future he couldn’t even imagine. A future where they were together and he’d never be alone again.
He breathed deep and reminded himself there’d never been a place for fantasy in his world.
‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Sorry?’ She stared at him as if he’d sprouted horns. ‘Is that all you can say? This is beyond a joke. You calmly announce that the wedding is going ahead and then stalk off to take a call.’ She gestured wide with one hand and her dress slipped lower. Donato’s gaze followed, the part of him that was primitive, unthinking male delighted. Another inch or two and—
