Chapter Two
Angelica had gone very still. She looked up at Leo, unblinking, her face pale and set in an expression of…utter disbelief. He might have enjoyed it if the effect of her calling him Leo didn’t still run through his blood like an electric current. No one else had ever called him that. Not even Aldo.
And then she blinked, long dark luxurious lashes screening those world-famous almond-shaped eyes for a second. Her mouth opened and she said, ‘Have you gone quite mad?’
‘I’ve never been more sane.’
‘This is the day of my husband’s funeral.’
Leo let his mouth quirk up on one side even though he wasn’t feeling remotely humorous. ‘I can’t deny that I do find that quite satisfying.’
‘It’s not possible.’
There were two spots of colour high in her cheeks now.
‘Oh, trust me, it’s possible. Once you have the right connections and the funds with which to pay. As you were on your way to the airport you have your passport. That’s all the documentation you need. And your hand, to sign the registrar’s form.’
Leo knew on a rational level that what he was doing was unorthodox.
And ill-advised even. But he was acting on an instinct too strong to ignore.
Bring this woman to justice. His justice.
Make her pay for what she had done. He’d been tortured by nightmares for three years where this woman and a faceless man stood on the other side of the bars and taunted him, before kissing and starting to make love.
He always woke up, his body rigid with rejection, pumping with adrenalin, nausea in his gut and a renewed vow that she would pay.
Yet now, she stood before him and he was enacting his revenge and she looked somehow less robust than she had in his nightmares.
There was a fragility to her that he didn’t remember from before.
Dark shadows under her eyes. She looked…
somehow older, even though she was still luminously beautiful.
As if she carried another layer of…something he couldn’t quite define.
Maybe they’d both been shaped by the previous three years except she’d had her freedom and he hadn’t.
Angelica took a step back. ‘This is crazy. OK, you’ve had your fun, Leo, I need to get to the airport so can we please leave?
’ She turned as if to open the car door again but Leo reached out and wrapped his hand around her arm.
It felt slim and fragile under his hand, reinforcing a sense of vulnerability.
She turned back to face him and he took his arm away and pushed down any such notions.
This woman had gone from his bed to his business partner’s and had watched him be hauled off to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. She was about as vulnerable as a rhinoceros.
He shook his head, ‘You’re not going anywhere until you’ve paid your dues.’
The touch of Leo’s hand to her arm lingered, like a brand. She wondered if she was hallucinating. The fact that she was free must have gone to her head and she’d fallen asleep in the back of the car and she would wake up at the airport at any moment…
But no, the sun was still beating down and Leo Falzone was looking at her. Feeling a level of emotion that surprised her, she said, ‘I wish we’d never met.’
Leo made a tsk’ing sound. ‘And lose all those happy memories? We had some good moments, Angel. Unless, of course, you were playacting the whole time, setting the ground for your lover, Aldo.’
Angelica’s emotion turned to nausea. ‘It wasn’t like that.
’ And much as she hated to admit it now, because everything felt tainted, she and Leo had had good times.
The best. Enough to make her believe he was falling in love with her.
The anger spiked again and she welcomed it. ‘Why on earth would I marry you?’
‘You told me you loved me once.’
Angelica’s face got hot but before she could respond to that Leo was adding, ‘Tell me, were you in league with Aldo for long before we broke up? Or was it the fact that you knew you weren’t going to get a commitment from me that drove you into his arms?’
Angelica shuddered inwardly at that image. She’d never been in that man’s arms. One saving grace of the last three years.
‘I was not in league with anyone.’
‘Yet you were married within a month of our break-up.’
Angelica lifted her chin. ‘A break-up you insisted upon.’
Leo’s voice was mocking, ‘Are you trying to tell me now that you meant it when you said you loved me?’
Angelica’s insides twisted. She had. Not that she’d ever admit that now. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘So why say it, then? We could have continued as we were, but obviously you were gambling for more.’
She’d said it because it had burst out of her like an unstoppable force. And she’d learnt her lesson. Her heart was cold and hard now. It wouldn’t melt again until she saw her family.
‘Leo, we have nothing to say to each other, it’s all over. Aldo is gone, you’re out of jail.’
‘And you’re still here. Do you really think it’ll be so easy to walk away and not face the consequences?’
Angelica went cold inside. ‘I’ve done nothing.’
‘Except warm the bed of the man who put me in jail, not to mention colluding with him.’
She got colder. ‘There was no collusion.’
‘You were married. You inherited his share of my company.’
Something eased inside her. Now she knew what the stakes were.
‘You can have it. I have no interest in owning any part of your company.’
But he dashed her hope that she could see an end in sight when he said, ‘It’s not that simple. It would be a long and legally laborious process to transfer your inheritance of his estate to me, but if we were married…it would be a lot simpler.’
‘I’ve had my fill of marriage, I’ve no intention of getting married again.’
‘Sorry to hear that. It wasn’t the idyll it appeared to be?’
He didn’t sound sorry at all. Angelica clamped her lips together.
She’d fallen so hard and so fast for this man that it had taken her totally unawares and she’d almost lost herself entirely, but not before he’d shown her how he really felt.
She could never trust him again. They’d spent a heady few weeks together, indulging mostly in the insane chemistry that had sparked between them, she needed to remind herself of that, and that there hadn’t been much time for getting to really know one another.
It had all been surface level—which she’d subsequently found out was all he had wanted.
‘Come to think of it,’ he ruminated now, ‘you did seem to spend a lot of time apart, so maybe all really wasn’t well. Did Aldo’s sheen wear off once you realised what a snake he really was?’
Angelica hid behind attack to disguise any hint of just how flimsy the marriage had been. She raised a brow. ‘Reading the gossip columns in jail, were you?’
Now his face flushed but Angelica was too agitated to enjoy it. Her flight would have gone by now. She had to contact her family.
‘Look—’
‘No, you look.’ He cut her off. ‘We are not leaving this place until we are man and wife. I want my rightful share of the company back and I need a wife to rehabilitate my image.’
Angelica had heard that steely tone before.
She’d heard him speak to adversaries in that tone when they’d been together.
And he’d used that tone the day he’d told her to leave, because the relationship was over.
Because he had no intention of embarking on a long-term commitment.
He hadn’t elaborated on that, but Angelica had surmised at the time that the trauma of watching his family be slaughtered had marked him for life.
Not that that knowledge had helped her broken heart.
It had only made it ache for him and that reminder was like a thorn now.
Worse had been the prospect that it wasn’t even trauma holding him back from loving her, but that it was because he just hadn’t been that into her.
This man didn’t deserve her sympathy. ‘You told me the day you kicked me out that you weren’t into long-term commitment. What’s changed?’
His mouth thinned. ‘Unsurprisingly spending time in a prison affords one time to think. But nothing has changed in that regard. This will not be a long-term thing. It’ll be marriage in name only—to take back what’s mine and to show people that I am settling down, to promote an image of stability and respectability.
I can see the merit in that. The business thrived under the image of Aldo’s supposed respectability. ’
Angelica felt like snorting. Her husband had been anything but respectable.
It occurred to her that perhaps this was all a bluster to demonstrate that Leo was serious about getting his due—and Angelica had meant what she’d said, she had no desire to keep Aldo’s half of the business. She’d happily sign it over to Leo.
He didn’t want to marry her. He couldn’t wait to see the back of her three years ago.
Maybe if she called his bluff he’d realise how ridiculous this all was.
And she couldn’t deny the appeal to shake him up a bit—after all, he’d hurt her badly in the past. But that was gone. He didn’t affect her any more.
Angelica angled her face up. ‘You’re right, you know. You didn’t deserve what Aldo did and you do deserve to have your life and business back. I have no desire to stand in your way. If that means getting married, then let’s do it.’
He tensed visibly and inwardly Angelica breathed a sigh of relief. He had been bluffing. But then his demeanor changed and he took her arm and led her over to where the men were standing outside the church building.
‘Let’s get going.’
Angelica’s blood went cold. She resisted Leo’s attempt to urge her into the dark interior of the chapel. ‘No, wait.’