Chapter Two #2
The other men had gone in ahead of them.
Leo looked down at her. For a second, Angelica felt dizzy.
Was she really standing here with Aldo just buried, still in her funeral clothes, and with Leo expecting her to walk down an aisle?
In spite of how he’d rejected her before, she couldn’t deny that she’d still had dreams…
She shook her head to dislodge the humiliating reminder of the pull he’d had over her.
‘Wait…’
He arched a dark brow. ‘You thought I didn’t mean it? Don’t you remember that I don’t bluff?’
A memory flashed back of this man taking off his shoes and socks by the Trevi fountain in central Rome, with Angelica looking on in horror saying, ‘You wouldn’t dare…
’ only to watch as he’d calmly rolled up his trousers to his knees and climbed over the fence around the fountain and stepped down into the blue/green water, beneath which shimmered all the coins thrown in by tourists making their wishes.
A cheer had gone up and he’d smiled at her and turned around, arms in the air, a moment that had gone viral.
She couldn’t even remember what they’d been talking about but clearly he’d called her bluff.
He’d had to pay a fine for that act but the authorities had let him off any other charges, as charmed by him as she had been…
So, no, he didn’t bluff. He obviously meant to go through with this outrageous act.
And suddenly Angelica was somewhere between past and present, her body humming to be close to this man again, humming in a way that told her she hadn’t got over him at all.
Physically, she told herself desperately.
Emotionally, he could never hurt her again.
She pulled her arm free of his loose grip. ‘Are you kidnapping me all the way to the altar, Leo?’
He took a step back. ‘You’re free to go. But I can assure you that marrying me will be so much easier and efficient in the long term.’
‘Because if I don’t you’ll drag me through the courts to get what’s yours?’
‘Something like that. Even if you were to sign over Aldo’s shares to me, it wouldn’t be that simple. It’s your inheritance from him and it’s bound up by all those legalities. Probate et cetera. But through marrying me, it will become my property too.’
She frowned. ‘Won’t probate still take time?’
He said, ‘Yes, but marriage to you will expedite the process, helped by the fact that I’ve been proved innocent and have a right back to my company. It was your choice to marry Aldo, and to collude with him and to let me rot in jail. Now you face the consequences.’
Angelica’s brain was racing. Leo had a point but he didn’t know the truth of it.
She’d had no choice. She couldn’t tell Leo about the blackmail without revealing the truth about her family, and she couldn’t trust what he would do with that information.
He’d probably use it as Aldo had, to make her comply.
She couldn’t go through that again. They were safe now and she wasn’t going to jeopardise their safety.
He’d also just assured her that if she walked away, he’d come after her and he’d end up finding out about them anyway.
‘How long?’ she blurted out.
‘How long what?’
‘How long would you want to be married?’ She wasn’t going to even contemplate this without a get-out date.
‘Six months minimum.’
‘One month.’
He shook his head. ‘Not long enough.’
‘Two months.’
He cocked his head on one side. ‘Four months. That’s about enough time to work out the legalities and establish myself on the scene.’
‘Three months. That’s the most I’ll agree to.’ Three months she could do. There was an end in sight. It wasn’t insurmountable. And then she’d be free of this debt owed to Leo and she could finally move on with her life.
‘OK.’
She blinked. ‘OK?’
‘Yes. But we get married right now and you’re mine for the next three months.’
Angelica shivered delicately. He’d said those words, you’re mine, to her before, sounding desperate. It was why she’d hoped that when she told him she loved him, he would feel the same. Surely he’d had to have felt it too…the intensity between them.
But he hadn’t. And now she was in a bind with the man who had crushed her heart to pieces. But that was OK because she had no illusions any more. She was as cynical as he was. Probably even more.
‘I will marry you, Leo, but I belong to no one, not now, not ever. I also have work commitments that I’m not prepared to renege on.
I have a professional reputation to consider.
’ She wasn’t going to tell him about her jadedness with her job, and how she wanted to move on and do something more meaningful with her life.
‘As long as you’re available when I need you we won’t have a problem. If there are conflicting interests we’ll discuss it.’
How could he sound so reasonable when he’d just kidnapped her from her husband’s funeral and was now about to march her down the aisle?
Because he had been reasonable once. Kind, even.
Part of what had made her fall in love with him was how he’d treated others and how he’d always had an air of being able to handle anything.
Any veneer of civility was well and truly gone though, and in that moment she said with feeling, ‘I truly wish we’d never met.’
His jaw tightened and then he said, ‘Too late for regrets.’
‘You’ll wish you never married me. Do you really think I’ll make this easy for you?’ She’d locked herself away mentally and emotionally from Aldo and she would utilise those skills again. Three months. She could do it.
He huffed an unamused laugh as he took her arm again. ‘Believe me, after what I’ve been through, marriage to you will be a cakewalk. Time to start paying your dues, cara.’
He urged her in through the door into the gloomy interior and when her eyes adjusted to the light, Angelica could see the men waiting for them near the altar.
There was a priest, presumably to bless this non-wedding of a wedding.
It was a farce, and yet, as Leo walked her down the aisle, it galled her to acknowledge that anger at the fact that her life was being derailed again wasn’t her uppermost emotion, it was a mixture of far more conflicting things that she’d never expected to be feeling again.
And actually, it was fear she was feeling, fear that she might forget just how badly this man had hurt her, because seeing him again was reviving far too much and she was fast being hurtled into a future she’d never expected before she had time to catch up with herself. Or, worse, protect herself.
The hum of the aeroplane was the only sound. They were on their way to New York where Leo had a life and business to reclaim, with the help of his new wife. Angelica hadn’t reacted when she’d been told of their destination.
Why didn’t he feel more triumphant? Leo brooded as he sat in a sprawl across the aisle from his new wife.
He’d achieved exactly what he’d set out to achieve.
A swift and comprehensive lesson delivered to the woman who had betrayed him with her lover/husband, his ex-business partner.
But instead of triumph all he felt was a certain level of frustration.
She’d barely looked at him during the short and businesslike marriage ceremony.
The most emotion she’d shown had been when they’d had to exchange rings and Leo had held up a gold band only for her to lift her hand where Aldo’s ring had still sat.
She’d said, ‘I already have one. It seems a waste to use another one.’
A red tide of emotion had made Leo bite out, ‘Take it off.’
She’d just looked at him, face pale and set. Eventually she’d removed it and handed it to him, and he’d slipped the ring he’d bought onto her finger, very aware of the distaste deep inside him in that moment for what he was doing and yet he couldn’t not.
The urge to cleave her to him even like this was too strong. He told himself he welcomed her hatred and resentment. Her reluctance. The more she hated this whole situation, the more it would salve his bruised soul. But…it wasn’t.
She was sitting on the cream leather couch opposite him, shoes off, legs pulled up and to the side. Hair down and over her shoulders, in waves of dark brown silk. She was on her phone, intensely absorbed, fingers moving fast as she communicated with someone.
An unsavoury thought occurred to him. ‘Do you have a lover?’
She looked up and those unusual green eyes caught him right in the gut, much as they had when he’d first seen her.
‘That’s none of your business.’
His insides tightened at the thought that she was communicating with someone. ‘I won’t tolerate infidelity.’
She put her phone down on the seat beside her. Face down, Leo noticed. He had to curb the urge to reach across and pick it up. He’d never been jealous over a woman. Until this one.
She sighed. ‘No, I don’t have a lover.’
Leo didn’t believe her. He knew who she was now. A liar and a cheat.
‘Do you?’ She looked at him.
Leo felt like laughing, but didn’t. He shook his head. ‘No, I don’t.’
A slightly panicked expression crossed her face. ‘We aren’t sharing a bed.’
Leo’s blood spiked as if rejecting that assertion, every cell humming with awareness, his body telling him that as much as he wanted to deny it, he still wanted her. But he said, ‘Don’t worry, I have no intention of sleeping with Aldo’s leftovers. This will be purely an exercise in appearances.’
Everything within Angelica demanded that she defend herself against Leo’s low opinion—leftovers—but she bit her tongue. He had no right to know the truth of her existence. He’d got her where he wanted her for the next three months and then she would walk away.
She told herself it was a good thing that he no longer wanted her. You still want him. Even now her skin felt sensitive and the blood too close to the surface. She couldn’t stop her gaze from getting caught on his jaw, his shoulders, his chest and down…that lean waist, those formidable thighs.