His Virgin Bride: The Fiorenza Forced Marriage / Bought: For His Convenience or Pleasure? / A Night With Consequences

‘He only changed his will once you had come into his life,’ he said. ‘How did you do it, Emma? How many times did you have to crawl into his bed to sweeten him up a bit?’

‘That’s a disgusting thing to say,’ she said.

His top lip curled. ‘My father always had a thing for women young enough to be his daughter,’ he said. ‘He liked to show them off like a trophy. It used to sicken me to see them fawning all over him. None of them had any time for my brother and I. They were after my father’s money just like you.’

Emma got to her feet. ‘I don’t have to listen to this.’

His flashing dark eyes raked her mercilessly. ‘So how did you manage it, Emma? Could he still get it up towards the end or did you have to give him a bit of encouragement with that pretty little mouth of yours?’ he asked.

Emma lifted her hand to his face, but he blocked it with one of his, the grip of his strong fingers almost brutal around her slender wrist.

‘I don’t think so, poco moglie di miniera,’ he said. ‘Not unless you want to face the consequences.’

She ground her teeth as she pulled at his hold. ‘It’s no wonder your father stripped this house of every single photograph of you,’ she said with uncharacteristic spite. ‘He must have hated being reminded of the sort of person you turned out to be. I have never met a more hateful despicable man.’

His fingers tightened even further. ‘Perhaps I should give you an even better reason to hate me,’ he said and tugged her towards him, her breasts pressed tight to his chest. ‘After all, that is what you really want me to do, is it not? You have wanted it from the start. My father cannot have been much use to a young nubile woman like you. How long has it been since you had a real man in your bed?’

Emma threw him a heated glare. ‘I wouldn’t dream of demeaning myself by spending even a second in yours.’

His mouth tilted mockingly. ‘Now that is very interesting you should say so, for you spent a whole lot longer than that on it this afternoon, did you not, Emma?’ he asked.

Her eyes widened, her voice sticking at the back of her throat. ‘I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

He picked up a lock of her hair and slowly wound it round one of his fingers. ‘Little liar,’ he said. ‘Guess what I found lying on my pillow? A couple of chestnut-brown hairs that look to me as if they came from that clever little calculating head of yours.’

Emma knew she had no real way to defend herself, but it didn’t stop her trying. ‘I went in there to check if you needed any washing done,’ she said. ‘There was nothing else to it.’

He slowly unwound her hair, his eyes holding hers like a mesmerised rabbit. ‘I know what you are doing, Emma,’ he said. ‘You are turning up the heat, bit by bit, just like you did with my father.’

‘I am doing no such thing!’

‘Can you feel what you are doing to me?’ he asked, pressing her closer to where his lower body was thickening. ‘Feel it, Emma.’

Emma felt it and it secretly terrified her. She had never felt the overwhelming power of physical attraction quite like this before, it smouldered like red-hot coals deep inside her, making her a slave to the senses he had awakened. She wanted to feel his commanding lips on hers again; she had been dreaming of it for days. She wanted to feel the hot brand of his mouth suckling on her breasts, her stomach, her thighs and the secret heart of her that throbbed and pulsed with longing for him even now.

‘Damn you, Emma,’ he growled, putting her away from him roughly. ‘I want you but I hate myself for it. I swore I would never touch a woman my father had slaked his lust on first.’

‘I didn’t have that sort of relationship with your father,’ Emma said in frustration. ‘Why won’t you believe me?’

‘Do you expect me to believe he handed over half of his estate just because you smoothed the sheets on his deathbed?’ he asked. ‘I am not that much of a fool.’

‘There’s nothing I can say to convince you otherwise, is there?’ she said. ‘You want to believe your father set out to deliberately thwart you, but I don’t believe he did.’

His mouth twisted with scorn. ‘Oh, come on now, Emma. You’re surely not going to tell me he had a last-minute change of mind and told you how much he really loved me, are you?’

‘Why did you hate him so much?’ Emma asked.

His expression became stony and the seconds ticked by before he answered. ‘I didn’t like him for many reasons,’ he said. ‘For the first few years of my life he was everything a father should be, but after my mother died he changed. It was like living at a perpetual funeral. He would snap at my younger brother and I for the most inconsequential things. In his opinion we were meant to grieve indefinitely, but Giovanni was too young to remember much about our mother. He was just a little child who was forced to walk around on tiptoe. I could not always protect him from one of my father’s outbursts.’

Emma swallowed. ‘Did he…did he physically abuse your brother or you?’ she asked in a hollow whisper.

His lips tightened to a thin white line. ‘Oh, he was far too clever to leave marks and bruises that could raise suspicion if noticed by others,’ he said. ‘He liked to use other, more subtle means of control. His modus operandi was more along the lines of emotional abuse, such as the systematic erosion of self-esteem and stripping away of confidence.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, biting her lip momentarily. ‘It must have been very painful for you growing up like that.’

‘It is ironic that I have achieved the sort of success I have,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I would not have gone so far without the harsh lessons my father subjected me to, but in spite of that I can never find it in myself to forgive him.’

‘He’s dead, Rafaele,’ Emma said. ‘What point is there in hating him now? What will it achieve? You’ll only end up bitter and twisted, not to mention desperately unhappy.’

‘Is that what you told him in his last days?’ he asked with a mocking set to his mouth. ‘Forgive and forget? Perhaps there is a little of the grey-haired Sunday-school teacher in you after all.’

‘From the very first day I went to his palazzo in Milan to look after him I felt he was struggling with some issues to do with his family,’ Emma said. ‘Over the months I gently encouraged him to make his peace with whoever he needed to. I tell all my terminally ill clients that. I think it’s very important they leave this world with some sense of closure.’

‘What was his reaction?’ Rafaele asked.

She gave a soft sigh, a small frown creasing her smooth brow. ‘He didn’t say much, but I got the impression he was thinking about it a great deal. I think he found it very painful, you know…confronting the past, but then a lot of people feel that way. I felt sorry for him. I found him crying one day not long before he died. He was inconsolable but he wouldn’t tell me what had upset him.’

‘Were you there the day he contacted his lawyer?’

‘No, but I think it must have happened one afternoon when I had taken a couple of hours off,’ she answered. ‘He never mentioned anything to me about a visitor coming and neither did Lucia, the housekeeper, who often kept an eye on him for me while I was doing errands.’

Rafaele wondered whether or not to believe her. She was certainly very convincing with her soft grey-blue eyes misting slightly as if she had genuinely been fond of his father. But how could he be sure? She had made all but a token protest about marrying him in order to gain her share of the estate, and even more damning was the scandal over her previous client back in Australia. He had looked up the newspaper articles on the Internet and read the various interviews with the family members, who had each painted Emma March as an opportunist who had inveigled her way into their senile mother’s affections before stealing from her. That the charges were later dropped hadn’t satisfied the family, who still staunchly believed Emma to have used the old woman’s dementia to throw doubt on the case.

As he saw it, Emma was either a genuinely caring person who had become the unfortunate victim of a hate campaign by jealous relatives, or she was indeed a conniving con-artist with greed as her motive.

It sickened him to think of her playing up to his father to manipulate him into changing his will in her favour at the last hour. The thought of her firm young body being pawed over by a ruthless old man like his father churned his stomach. But then he already knew how far a woman would go for money. The mistress his father had kept after Giovanni had died, Sondra Henning, was a case in point. Thirty-odd years his father’s junior she had made no effort to hide her intentions. She had been a spiteful bitch when his father wasn’t looking. She had subjected Rafaele to the lash of her tongue and the slap of her hand. He couldn’t bear the thought of that home-wrecker taking anything else away from him.

Emma March might be a ruthless little gold-digger, but she had a sensual aura about her that was potently seductive. She wasn’t classically beautiful by any means, but there was something about her girl-next-door vitality that drew him in like a magnet. Every time he touched her he felt the electrifying voltage of her body charging into his. Her slim but femininely curvy body made him ache to feel her writhing beneath him in the throes of passion. He wanted to feel his hard, thickened body driving into the yielding softness of hers until they both exploded. He wanted to feel her primly pursed mouth sucking on him until he burst with pleasure. He wanted to taste her, to explore her tender contours and bring her to the pinnacle of fulfilment he knew she craved. He had seen it in her eyes almost from the first moment they had met. That hungry, yearning look was unmistakable.

‘It has all worked out rather brilliantly for you, has it not, Emma?’ he asked. ‘All your hard work has paid off. Either way you win.’

She looked at him hesitantly. ‘I’m not sure what you mean…’

He smiled a cynical smile. ‘You have a roof over your head for the duration of our marriage and a guaranteed income at the end of it, a windfall most people would not dream of seeing in a lifetime.’

‘I keep telling you I was never interested in your father’s money,’ she said. ‘As far as I can make out he apparently wanted you to spend some time at The Villa Fiorenza and the only way he thought he could bring it about was to tie you here with me.’

Rafaele snapped his brows together. ‘This villa has been in the Fiorenza family for several generations. I spent some of the happiest years of my life in this place before my mother and brother died. I will be damned if I will let one of my father’s whores take even a single pebble from the driveway without my permission.’

‘I’m not planning on making things unpleasant or difficult for you,’ she said. ‘You can live your life and I’ll live mine. We don’t even have to communicate with each other if we don’t want to.’

‘Your very presence here makes things difficult,’ Rafaele muttered as he set his glass down with a loud thwack. ‘But perhaps that is what you and my father planned.’

She frowned at him. ‘I’m not sure what you’re suggesting, but I can assure you I am finding this as difficult if not more so than you. The sooner we end this farce, the better, as far as I am concerned.’ With one last searing glance, she stalked out, leaving him with just his empty glass for company.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_d0039fb3-7365-5445-9d08-b02283ad7bd8)

AFTER their exchange Emma did her best to avoid Rafaele, although at one point she watched him from her upstairs window as he swam lap after lap in the pool, his strong, leanly muscled body carving through the water with effortless ease. She felt a little guilty drinking in the sight of him, but she couldn’t seem to drag her eyes away. His body was so wonderfully built; lean but powerful, muscular without being over-bulky. His olive skin was a deep even brown as if he had recently spent some time somewhere tropical. His black hair was like wet silk as he vaulted out of the water, the water droplets on his body glistening in the afternoon sun. As he reached for his towel he looked up and locked gazes with her, the lazy smile he sent her seeming to suggest he had known all along she was up there staring down at him.