Her threat was empty. She wouldn’t do it. She didn’t want to marry him, and nor would she do anything to hurt Audenzia.
But she wanted to hurt him like he’d hurt her, and this was the only way she could think to do it.
His face hardened and the look in his eyes made her want to weep.
‘I thought your father was a monster, but you...you are something else.’
And she had thought Vicenzu was the kind of man who crossed any number of boundaries, but not ruthlessly or with wanton cruelty.
Jabbing his phone into his chest, she met his gaze head-on. ‘Yes, I am. I’m your nemesis, Vicenzu.’
Her face was aching with the effort of blanking out the beauty of his high cheekbones and full mouth... the mouth that had so recently kissed her into a state of feverish rapture.
His eyes narrowed. ‘You really are Daddy’s little girl, aren’t you? Except that he uses threats and then violence to get what he wants.’
Smiling bitterly, she shook her head. ‘What happened to “what they can’t find out, they make up”?’
He stared at her incredulously. ‘I wasn’t talking about your father.’
‘Well, you couldn’t have been talking about yourself. Nobody in their right mind could make this up.’ Her voice rose. ‘How could you do this to me? How could you be so cruel?’
‘You think I’m cruel?’ He took a rough breath, his face hardening. ‘Me? No, I’m just an amateur, cara.’ He typed something into his phone, scrolled down the screen. ‘This is the real deal. Here—’ Letting his contempt show, he pressed the phone into her hand. ‘You like reading my messages? Read these and then tell me who the bad guy is.’
She stared at him. Her lungs felt as if they were on fire. ‘I don’t need to. You are the bad guy, Vicenzu.’
And, sidestepping past him, she walked quickly away—going nowhere, just wanting, needing, to get as far away as possible from his cold-eyed distaste and the wreckage of her romantic dreams.
She half expected him to come after her, as he had last night. But of course last night he’d been playing her. Last night he’d only come after her because he’d been playing his part, doing whatever it took to get the family business back.
Whatever it took.
Like having sex with her.
The thought that having sex with her had been one step en route to the bigger prize, a means to trap and manipulate her, made her feel sick.
She had wanted her first time to be perfect. To be her choice and not just an expected consequence of her marriage vows. Had wanted it to be with Vicè, because in her naivety—idiot that she’d been—she had liked and trusted him.
And when he’d walked towards her at the wedding, his dancing eyes and teasing laughter trailing promises of happiness, she’d fallen in love with him.
As she reached the terrace tears began to fill her eyes and she brushed them away angrily.
She had been stubborn and vain. Ignoring and defying her father’s words of warning and letting herself be flattered by Vicè’s lies. Her pain was deserved. But Claudia’s...
Her eyes filled with tears again, and this time she let them roll down her cheeks. She had let her sister down. Worse, she had broken her word.
She had been eight years old when she made that promise—too young to understand that her mother was dying, but old enough to understand the promise she was making. A promise to take care of her younger sister, to protect her and keep her safe in the kind of cruel, unjust world that would leave two young children motherless.
She had always kept her word. Protecting Claudia at school, and at home too. Shielding her from the full force of Cesare’s outbursts and trying to boost her confidence by encouraging her love of cooking and gardening.
Only now she had broken that promise.
Remembering her sister’s stunned, tearful call, she felt another stab of guilt. Claudia was her priority. She would do whatever her sister wanted—help in any way she needed. Then she would face her father.
But first...
Her fingers tightened around the phone in her hand—Vicè’s phone.
She found what she was looking for easily—an email from the family lawyer, Vito Neglia, to Ciro and Vicenzu, plus further emails between Alessandro and Neglia.
She scrolled down the screen, her eyes following the lines of text.
It made difficult reading.
Alessandro Trapani had been unlucky—machinery had broken and mistakes had been made. He had taken out a loan with the bank and then his troubles had begun to escalate. There had been accidents at work, then more problems with machinery, and he had started to struggle to meet the repayments.
Her heart jolted as her father’s name leapt out from the screen. But she had been right, she thought with a rush of relief. Cesare had offered cash for the business with the proviso that the sale would include the family estate. She took a steadying breath. It was just as her father had told her. Papà had only been trying to help.
She glanced back down at the screen and some of her relief began to ooze away.
Alessandro had refused her father’s offer. But then he hadn’t been able to pay one of his suppliers—and, with the bank putting increasing pressure on him over the repayments, he’d gone back to Cesare.
This time her father had offered twenty percent less.
With no other options left, Alessandro had had no choice but to accept.
But that was just business, she told herself, trying to push back against the leaden feeling in her stomach. Probably if the circumstances had been reversed Alessandro would have done exactly the same.
Clearly Neglia didn’t agree with her.
He had done some digging around and, although he had found no direct link to her father, there was clearly no doubt in the lawyer’s mind that Trapani employees had been bribed to sabotage the machinery.
And her father had been behind it.
Imma’s throat worked as she struggled to swallow her shock. She felt sick on the inside. Her skin was cold and clammy and her head was spinning.
She didn’t want it to be true.
But the facts were stark and unforgiving.
Cesare had used bribery and intimidation to ruin a man’s business and steal it away from him. The fact that he had also demanded Alessandro’s home made her heart break into pieces.
Hot tears stung the back of her eyes. No wonder Ciro and Vicè hated him. But, whatever her father had done, it didn’t give them the right to punish her and Claudia, and she hated both of them for that.
Only despite everything she had read, she couldn’t bring herself to hate her father. It wasn’t an excuse, but she knew he would have done it for her and for Claudia.
Cesare was not stupid. He’d heard the rumours about his ‘friends’ and his shady dealings. And she knew that he wanted something different for his daughters. That was why they had been educated at the convent. That was why they’d been raised like princesses in a tower.
And that was why he had used every trick in the book to acquire a ‘clean’ business and a beautiful family estate—as gifts for his beloved girls.
The world suddenly felt very fragile.
She forced air into her lungs, tried to focus.
She couldn’t hate her father, but she couldn’t face moving back home either. She needed space, and time to think about all of this—about her part in it and her future.
Her future.
She sank down in one of the chairs, wrapping her arms around her stomach. She felt incredibly, brutally tired. Tired of not knowing who she was or what she wanted.
Her heart pounded. She had thought she wanted Vicè—that he had wanted her. She had been wrong about that too. And yet on one level she didn’t regret what had happened. Having sex with him had unlocked a part of herself she hadn’t known existed.
/> She had discovered a woman who was wild and alive and demanding, and she liked that woman. She wanted to find out more about her, and that was another reason she needed time and space.
Time and space—those words again.
She wouldn’t have either living at home with Papà. But sooner or later she was going to have to tell him that she had slept with Vicè, and then he would insist on her marrying someone of his choosing.
Her pulse slowed and she sat up straight, biting her lip, listening to the distant sound of the waves.
Maybe, though, there was another option...
* * *
Clenching his jaw, Vicè stared around the empty bedroom.
He was still in shock. The script he’d planned for today had unravelled so fast, so dramatically, and in a way he could hardly believe possible.
Just when everything had been falling into place so beautifully.
Everything.
She’d even agreed to marry him.
So how come he was standing here with his face still stinging and her ultimatum ringing in his ears?
Behind him the tangled bed sheets were like a rebuke or a taunt and, feeling as if the walls were starting to shrink around him, he crossed the room, yanking open the door and stepping through it in time with his pounding heartbeat.
It was his fault.
Actually, no, it was hers.
If she had told him the truth about being a virgin in the first place he might not have been so distracted, so caught off balance.
He might even have locked his phone.
His chest tightened. How could he have been so unforgivably stupid and careless? When Ciro found out he was going to go ballistic. He might never speak to him again.
The one consolation in this whole mess was that Ciro had already managed to get the house back. He knew his brother: Ciro was a fast worker. Claudia had agreed to sign over the house before she’d learned the truth, and those documents would be signed and witnessed by now.
But what did he have to show for himself?
Niente, that was what!
He had nothing.
He gave a humourless smile. He was trapped on an island with a woman who basically wanted to cut off his palle and fry them up for brunch.
Glancing back into the bedroom, he ran a hand over his face, wishing he could as easily smooth over the last few hours of his life.
The shock of being unmasked had shaken him more than he cared to admit—as had Imma’s threat to speak to his mother. Although now he’d had a chance to cool off he knew she’d been bluffing.
But what had really got under his skin was the sudden devastating loss of the woman who had melted into him just hours earlier.
Gone was the passion, the inhibition of the night, when she had arched against him, her body moving like a flame in the darkness. Now in her eyes he might as well be something that had crawled out from under a particularly dank and slimy rock.
And, even though he knew logically that it shouldn’t matter what Imma thought about him, he didn’t like how it made him feel. Didn’t like being made to feel like he was the bad guy.
There was only one bad guy and that was her father.
From somewhere nearby a phone buzzed twice. Glancing down, he saw that it was his.
It was sitting on a small table and he felt his stomach tense. Imma must have left it for him. Feeling a sharp stab of guilt and misery, he picked it up, swearing under his breath.
His stomach dipped. It was Ciro.
His brother’s message was short and to the point.
I can’t talk now, but it’s all gone belly-up here so you need to pull your finger out.
For a moment he let his finger hover over his brother’s number, and then, swearing loudly this time, he pocketed the phone.
He couldn’t deal with his brother right now. He had to get his head straight first.
He was clenching his jaw so tightly that it ached.
Nine weeks ago he would have walked away.
But nine weeks ago he still had a father.
Tilting his head back, he closed his eyes. He still couldn’t believe that he would never see Alessandro again. His father had been his mentor, his defender—more than that, he had been his hero. He had been the best of men...fair, kind, generous and loving.
Opening his eyes, he breathed out unevenly. He’d given up any hope of ever being his father’s equal a long time ago, but he could do this one thing and do it right.
He had let down Papà in life; he would not do so now.
Imma was not going to have everything her own way.
He’d sat around listening to his father and Ciro talk business enough to know that she had overplayed her hand with him, and let her emotions get the better of her. In her anger, she had threatened the very thing he had wanted all along.
He would be her husband—but he was not going to walk away empty-handed. He was going to take back the Trapani Olive Oil Company and there would be nothing his future ‘wife’ could do about it.
* * *
He found her out by the pool, staring down at the smooth turquoise surface of the water. In her white dress, and with her long dark hair flowing over her shoulders, she looked as young and untested as her name suggested, and her slender body reminded him of the delicate honey-scented sweet peas that were his mother’s favourite flowers.
It was hard to believe she was the same woman who had threatened to tell Audenzia the truth about everything he and Ciro had been doing. He gritted his teeth. Hard, but not impossible.
She turned towards him, folding her arms high across her ribs. But even without the defensive gesture he would have known that she had looked at the emails on his phone.
Her eyes were slightly swollen and she looked pale, more delicate. He felt a pang of guilt, but pushed it away. The truth hurt—so what? His mother had been widowed and forced to leave her home. That was real suffering.
‘I read the emails,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t know what to say except that I’m sorry for how my father acted, and for what I said earlier about talking to your mother.’ She took a breath. ‘I was angry, and upset, but I want you to know that I would never do anything to hurt her. I know she had nothing to do with this.’ Her eyes met his, steady, accusatory. ‘I would never punish an innocent bystander.’
Her words stung. No doubt she’d intended they should. But he was surprised by her apology. He hadn’t expected that—not from anyone bearing the Buscetta surname. Only if she thought that was somehow going to be enough...
He took a step towards her. ‘And the marriage proposal?’ he said softly.
Her green eyes narrowed. ‘Yours or mine?’ she shot back.
‘Does it matter?’
‘I suppose not.’
He heard the catch in her voice, and before he could stop himself he said, ‘So tell me, Imma, if you’re not looking for revenge then why exactly do you want to marry me?’
Her arms clenched and, watching the fabric of her dress tighten over her nipples, he felt his pulse snake, remembering how just hours earlier they had hardened against his tongue.
She shrugged. ‘My father is a traditional Sicilian male. Very traditional. Now that you and I have had sex he’ll expect us to marry, and if we don’t he’ll find another husband for me.’ Lifting her chin, she twisted her mouth into a small, tight smile. ‘Essentially you’re the lesser of two evils, Vicè.’
Chewing her words over inside his head, he felt his gut tense. Wow! That was a backhander. It certainly wasn’t something he’d ever been called before.
She took a quick breath. ‘If we marry, then obviously I’ll be your wife legally. But in reality you’ll just be there. In the background.’
In the background.
He wasn’t sure if it was her disparaging description of his upcoming r
ole or her haughty manner, but he felt a pulse of anger beat across his skin.
‘Sounds relaxing. Will I need to get dressed?’
That got to her. She wanted him still. He could see it in the flush of her cheeks and the restless pulse in her throat. Watching her pupils flare, he felt his own anger shift into desire.
Ignoring his question, she said coolly, ‘Before we go any further, you should know that I have a condition.’
A condition?
‘Is that so?’ Taking a step towards her, he held her gaze.
She nodded. ‘The marriage will last a year. That’s long enough for it to look real. If we manage our diaries, then we shouldn’t have to intrude into one another’s lives beyond what’s necessary.’
He stared at her in silence. All his life women had fawned over him, flattered and chased him. But now Imma was basically treating him like a footstool.
‘I have a condition too,’ he said silkily.
Seeing her swallow, he felt a flicker of satisfaction.
‘I will stay married to you for a year. But I want it in writing now that you will sign the Trapani Olive Oil Company over to me at the end of that year.’
She searched his face. Probably she thought he was joking. When she realised he was being serious, she started shaking her head. ‘You can’t expect me to—’ she began.
He cut her off. ‘Oh, but I do. I find managing my diary very dull, so I’ll need some incentive.’
He enjoyed the flash of outrage in her eyes almost as much as the way she bit down on her lip—presumably to stop herself from saying something she’d regret.
‘Is that going to be a problem? Maybe you’d rather go back to bed and thrash all this out there instead.’
Silence followed his deliberately provocative remark, and he waited to see how she would respond, his body tensing painfully in anticipation of her accepting his challenge.
Two spots of colour flared on her cheeks and he saw her hands curl into fists. She wanted to thump him. Or kiss him. Or maybe both.
And, actually, either would be preferable to this tight-lipped disdain.
The Terms of the Sicilian's Marriage Page 7
