The Italian Millionaire's Virgin Wife

‘Still working, Howard?’ Should he broach the subject now? Perhaps not. She looked tired and not what he’d call receptive. The morning would be better.

There was a wealth of warm concern in those honeyed tones but Mercy ignored it. She wished he wouldn’t call her by her surname. It made her feel completely sexless, light years away from the blonde sprawled out on that sinfully opulent bed, waiting for him.

‘Just finishing, sir.’ Mercy gathered her senses. What did it matter what he called her? As far as he was concerned she was sexless. An object hired to keep his home clean and his laundry under control. Then, discounting Trisha’s final cutting remark because the woman was plainly upset and nervous, she descended the final steps and confided, ‘Your girlfriend arrived a short while ago.’ And, greatly daring, ‘She’s in your bedroom and very upset over your falling out,’ and watched his dark eyes fill with outrage.

‘Trisha?’ Anger flamed in the look he trained on her.

‘Of course.’ Unable to keep the censure from her voice—how many girlfriends did he have?—she advised, ‘It’s no use getting cross. I don’t know what caused the lovers’ tiff and I don’t want to, but you should talk it through calmly then kiss and make up. She’s still the woman you wanted to marry and she’s crazy about you and—’

‘Just shut up!’ Lean fingers fastened around her slender wrist. ‘Upstairs. I need a witness.’

Hauled back upstairs at what felt like the speed of light, Mercy gasped, ‘Have you gone crazy?’ fell over her feet and gasped some more as a strong supporting arm whipped round her, forcing her on.

‘No,’ he gritted. ‘Just furious! You will never let that woman into my home again, and that’s an order.’

No reply was possible. The effect of being held against that lean hard body had taken her breath away, turned her legs to water and brought on that peculiar and rather shaming squirmy feeling deep inside her.

This was what being caught in a hurricane must feel like, Mercy decided wildly as she was abandoned just inside his bedroom door, staring at the inviting tableau on the bed. Trisha’s big hair was artfully arranged against the pillows, the hem of her dress hiked indecently high. Her reaction when Andreo loomed over her was one of a purring kitten having its tummy tickled, turning to spitting fury as her sultry eyes landed on Mercy, who was still breathless and oddly shaky.

The hurricane had now been transformed into an iceberg. The chillingly sculpted features looked merciless as he used his mobile phone, his voice an arctic blast as he informed, ‘A cab will be here in five minutes to take you home. I suggest you wait for it outside. The affair is dead, as you very well know. It could have ended amicably. You know the rules. As it is, if you try to contact me, come within a hundred yards, I shall slap a restraining order on you so fast you won’t know what hit you.’

As the other woman headed for the door, her lovely face a mask of vindictive anger, Mercy plopped down on the linen press at the foot of the bed, not trusting her legs to hold her upright a moment longer. ‘That was so cruel!’ she gasped, her huge eyes wide with pained condemnation.

His frown pleating his brow, he turned glinting, incredulous pewter eyes on her as if, Mercy thought edgily, a speck of dust beneath his feet had suddenly flown up and bitten him on the nose. But she soldiered on regardless because she had never been able to abide injustice. ‘The poor woman is plainly in love with you. She didn’t deserve that sort of treatment.’

Bang went her job, she decided sickly as icy silence fell around her, making her skin prickle. Her castigation might have been excused had she been an old and valued retainer, looking after him since he’d been two days old.

She’d been with him two days and already she was lecturing him on his bad behaviour! Why couldn’t she learn to keep her thoughts to herself? Her hands twisted nervously in her lap.

Santo cielo! How dared she call his actions into question, moralise, spout such nonsense? Andreo questioned with grim incredulity. Opening his mouth to tell her to get out of his sight and watch her tongue in future if she wanted to hang on to her cushy job, he reminded himself of the favour he wanted of her and smartly closed it again.

A woman of her strait-laced and probably sheltered background wouldn’t have a clue, he told himself tersely, relaxing his shoulders. He wouldn’t have involved her in this unpleasantness but he’d needed a witness in case he had to go for a restraining order.

‘I’m sorry you think that,’ he ground out. He never explained himself to anyone but now, in fairness, he supposed he had to bite the bullet. The righteous fire had left her eyes—stunning eyes, he noted with a stab of surprise—and she was now looking downtrodden and dejected.

Smothering a huff of impatience, he wheeled away. He had no reason to feel sorry for her. She was more than capable of standing up for herself. He’d been on the receiving end of more lectures in the short time she’d been working for him than he’d had to endure during the whole of his thirty-one years!

Pouring wine into the unused glass—clearly part of the kiss and make up scenario Trisha had had in mind—he handed it to her and said with a gentleness that further surprised him, ‘Don’t tell me that alcohol never passes your lips, Howard. It will help you recover from the unpleasant scene I forced you to witness.’

Stung, her fingers closed around the stem of the glass. What did he think she was? Some kind of hopelessly pious prude? Just because her father had been a man of the cloth!

‘I do take the occasional drink, signor.’ A barefaced lie. She had never been able to afford the stuff. ‘And I don’t wear a hair shirt, either!’

‘Touché!’ Andreo’s sensual mouth quirked as he watched her drain the glass in two reckless gulps. ‘And to put the record straight, I never had any intention of marrying Trisha Lomax—or tying myself down to any woman, come to that. She knew it. She knew exactly what to expect, I promise you. While the affair lasted—and it turned out to be of short duration—she would enjoy my complete fidelity, and when it was over there would be no hard feelings and a handsome gift as a token of my regard and respect.’

Wondering if she had the remotest idea of how these things worked, and further wondering why he should care, Andreo sat beside her on the press, prising the empty glass from her fingers and setting it on the floor, informing her drily, ‘Such arrangements aren’t unheard of.’

Mercy’s head was swimming. This close to him she felt light-headed, hot and bothered all over. ‘It sounds immoral to me,’ she muttered. Her mouth felt numb and peculiar. She really should have fought the nervous tension that had led her to swallow all that wine like that. ‘Have you thought that the poor woman might have fallen in love with you?’ As any woman with eyes to see and a spark of life left in her body would.

Dio mio! Give me patience! Andreo stemmed the impulse to tell her not to talk such juvenile rubbish. For the time being he needed her on side. ‘A woman whose feelings were deeply engaged would have returned the suite of diamonds—the parting gift, remember?’ he enforced through gritted teeth. ‘Neither would she have hung on to the numerous costly trinkets she batted her eyes at during our time together. The only thing Trisha Lomax loved, apart from herself, was the size of my bank account, which goes a long way to explaining why she was misguided enough to believe she could change my mind about marriage.’

About to inform him that that was a highly selfish and jaundiced view, Mercy fell silent when he went on to tell her without a hint of self-pity, ‘Since I reached my late teens women have been throwing themselves at me. As a testosterone-fired young man I thought I was in heaven until my grandfather, the wisest man I have ever known, warned me. The hearts that beat within those delightful breasts are full of avarice, he advised—from experience—pointing out that the size of the Pascali family fortune was well known. Enjoy the lovely creatures by all means, but never commit, he said to me. Marry when the need for an heir becomes paramount but choose a bride with wealth of her own, even if she has a face like a dustbin—glamorous mistresses are ten a penny.’

‘I’ve shocked you,’ Andreo commiserated, misconstruing his housekeeper’s appalled expression. Springing to his feet, he paced across the room to refill her wineglass. ‘But I wanted you to know where I’m coming from and to stop you accusing me of breaking that woman’s heart. The only difference between her and the rest is that she didn’t stick by the rules. She decided she could persuade me to marry her. As if!’

His brow suddenly clenching, Andreo vented an impatient sigh. He never explained himself, as he’d reminded himself once before this evening. So why break the habit of a lifetime now? Howard was his housekeeper, hired to iron his socks—or whatever was done to them—not to be privy to his lifestyle.

Handing her the glass, his brow cleared. Those amazingly big blue eyes were drenched with sympathy—maybe something could be done about them—mud-coloured contact lenses, perhaps?

Lowering himself beside her, he congratulated himself that at last she was on side. After what he’d told her she would be seeing through whatever sob story Trisha had come out with. No more righteous and misguided accusations of cruelty to make her prim her mouth and categorically refuse to do as he wanted.

Her heart swelling with pity and something else entirely as the devastating Italian again joined her on the press, Mercy stared at the glass in her hands. She hadn’t asked for it and didn’t want it—already her head was feeling peculiar. But she felt so achingly sorry for him she just couldn’t bring herself to thrust it back at him. Poor, poor thing!

He was so gorgeous, so vital, how could he believe no woman could love him for himself and not his bank balance? She could throttle his cynical old grandfather for planting the idea in his head! He must feel so lonely!

‘Howard…’

‘Yes, sir?’ Mercy glanced up at his low-pitched murmur then hurriedly transferred her gaze back to the glass she was holding. His eyes were a gleam of pure silver beneath the heavy dark fringe of his lashes and the long line of his mouth had softened with outrageous sensuality. Like a man looking at an object of desire.

Her cheeks blossoming with wild colour, she berated herself for thinking like a lunatic and buried her nose in her glass for something to do with herself just as he said, ‘Cut out the ‘‘sirs’’. We’re friends, right?’

He’d angled himself so that he was looking directly at her and here, in the intimacy of his bedroom, with him so close, close enough to smell the faint lemony drift of his aftershave, feel his body heat, it made her insides curl up with tension, her breath come in strange little gasps, her entire body tingle in a way she had never experienced before.

‘Er—right,’ she gulped strainedly and frantically tried to pull herself together. ‘Friends’ was okay. Normal, really. And with his track record he’d be used to looking at a woman—any woman from one-year-old to a hundred—that way. Just a habit. She was busy blaming her silliness on her unaccustomed intake of alcohol until he said, his dark velvet voice liberally smeared with honey, ‘I have a proposition to put to you.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘AND that is?’ Mercy tried her best to sound bright and interested. Difficult when her tongue felt three feet thick. If this was what being tiddly was like she hated it. Cursing her foolishness in so innocently drinking that first glass as if it were as innocuous as fruit juice and then taking polite sips of the unwanted second, she did her best to concentrate on what he was saying.

‘I want you to model for me.’

For a moment she could only gape at him. Had the alcohol affected her hearing too? Messed with her brain? Mercy’s poleaxed eyes clung to his. Big mistake, she groaned inwardly. He was looking at her that way again, soft silver lights in those stunning eyes as they held her own confused gaze, his bewitching lips parted in a sensual half smile. She swallowed thickly and shook her head, trying to clear it of the muddle inside.

‘What did you say?’

‘That you’d be perfect for a project I’m currently working on.’

To her intense amazement and quivering delight his lean long-fingered hands softly cupped her face, lifting it to his openly assessing gaze. Mercy shook with inner tremors as her whole body seemed to catch fire, burn and shiver at the same time.

He looked as if he were about to kiss her, she thought wildly as her veins pulsed with dangerous excitement. Unbidden, her soft mouth parted with yearning anticipation as his eyes roamed over every feature then slowly dropped to what he could see of her body—mainly and shamingly the way her regrettably generous breasts were pushing against the now rather grubby grey fabric of her overall.

‘You’d have the small but absolutely pivotal role in the commercial we’re about to film…Just a few hours of your time…Coronet…You’d be so perfect…’

There was a strange buzzing sound inside her head. Mercy simply couldn’t process what he was saying. It all sounded so incredible she didn’t have a clue to how she could begin to understand it. She only knew she deeply mourned the loss of the sizzling, paralysing effect of his cool skin against her burning cheeks when he dropped his hands and took the dangerously tilting wineglass from hers, then mentioned a payment that sounded so crazily huge she could only gulp in frantic disbelief.

‘Think it over,’ he advised, still employing the silky-soft seductive tone that made every muscle, bone and nerve-ending she possessed go into meltdown. Elevating his lean frame with effortless ease, he took her hands and drew her to her feet, her body brushing against his as she rose, making her need, quite desperately, to sit straight back down again because her legs had gone.

But he was crossing the floor, long energetic strides taking him to the door. Holding it open for her, he gave her the benefit of that totally charismatic smile. ‘If you agree you’d be doing me a big favour. Sleep on it, and we’ll iron out the details in the morning.’