Blackmailed Into The Marriage Bed

And wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Not a couple of minutes. Not ten or fifteen or even twenty, but a whole stomach-knotting, nerve-jangling hour that crawled by like a wet century.

Ailsa pretended to read every glossy magazine Vinn’s young and impossibly glamorous receptionist had artfully fanned on the handcrafted coffee table in front of her. She drank the perfectly brewed coffee and then the sparkling lemon-infused mineral water. She ignored the bowl of breath mints and chewed her nails instead. Right down to her elbow, and if Vinn didn’t open his office door soon her shoulder would be next.

Of course he was doing it deliberately. She could picture him sitting behind his acre of French polished desk, idly passing the time sketching new furniture designs, a lazy smile tilting his mouth as he enjoyed every excruciating minute of the torture she was enduring out here at the prospect of seeing him again.

Ailsa squeezed her eyes shut, trying to rid her mind of the image of his smiling mouth. Oh, dear God, his mouth. The things his mouth had made her feel. The places on her body his mouth had kissed and caressed and left tingling for hours after.

No. No. No. Must not think about his mouth. She repeated the mantra she had been saying for the last twenty-two months. She was over him. Over. Him. There was a thick black line through her relationship with Vinn Gagliardi, and she had been the one to put it there.

‘Mr Gagliardi will see you now.’ The receptionist’s voice made Ailsa’s eyes spring open and her heart stutter like a lawnmower running over rocks. She shouldn’t be feeling so...so nervous. What did she have to be nervous about? She had a perfect right to demand an audience with him, especially when it involved her younger brother.

Although...maybe she shouldn’t have flown to Milan without making an appointment first, but she’d been in Florence for an appointment with some new clients when she got the call from her brother Isaac, informing her Vinn was going to sponsor his professional sporting career. She wasn’t going to leave the country without confronting Vinn about his motive in investing in her brother’s dream of becoming a pro golfer. She’d made up her mind if Vinn wouldn’t see her today then she would damn well camp in his office building until he did. She had her overnight bag with her from her short trip to Florence so at least she had a change of clothes if it came to that.

Ailsa rose from the butter-soft leather sofa, but she’d been sitting for so long her legs gave a credible impression of belonging to a newborn foal. A premature newborn foal. She smoothed her damp hands down the front of her skirt, hitched her tote bag more securely over her shoulder and wheeled her overnight bag with the other hand, approaching the still closed office door with resentment bubbling like a boiling pot in her belly. Why didn’t Vinn come and greet her out here in Reception? Why make her walk all the way to his door and knock on it like she was some servile little nobody? Damn it. She’d been his wife. Slept in his bed. Shared everything with him.

Not quite everything...

Ailsa ignored the prod of her conscience. Who said husbands and wives had to share every single detail of their background? Especially with the sort of marriage she’d had with Vinn. It had been a lust match, not a love match. She’d married him knowing he didn’t love her, but she’d convinced herself his desire for her more than made up for that. She’d convinced herself it would be enough. That she would be enough. But he’d wanted more than a trophy wife. Much more. More than she was prepared to give.

Ailsa was pretty sure Vinn hadn’t told her everything about his background. He’d always been reluctant to talk about the time his father went to jail for fraud and how it impacted on his family’s business. She’d soon got tired of pushing him to talk to her about it and let it slide, figuring she would hate it if he, or anyone for that matter, kept on at her to slide back the doors on her family’s closet. She didn’t have too many skeletons in there, just one big, stinking rotten carcass.

Ailsa stood in front of his office door and aligned her shoulders as if she were preparing for battle. No way was she going to knock on his door and wait for his permission to enter.

No flipping way.

She switched her tote bag to the other shoulder and, grasping her overnight bag with her other clammy hand, took a deep breath and turned the knob and stepped over the threshold to find him standing with his back to her at the window overlooking the bustling streets of Milan. If that wasn’t insult enough, he was seemingly engrossed in a conversation on his phone. He barely gave her a glance over his shoulder, just cursorily waved his hand towards one of the chairs opposite his desk and turned back to the view and continued his conversation as if she were some anonymous blow-in whom he had graciously shoehorned into his incredibly busy day.

A sharp pain seized her in the chest, his casual dismissal piercing the protective I’m over him membrane around her heart like a carelessly flung dart. How could he ignore her after not seeing her for so long? Hadn’t she meant anything to him?

Anything at all?

The conversation was in Italian and Ailsa tried not to listen because listening to Vinn speak in his mother tongue always did strange things to her. Even when he talked in English it did strange things to her. She suspected even if he talked gibberish her spine would still go all mushy and every inch of her skin would tighten and tingle.

While he was talking she took a moment to surreptitiously study him...or at least she hoped it was surreptitious. Every now and again he would move slightly so she could see a little bit more of his face. It was as if he was rationing her vision of him, which was annoying in itself. She wanted to look him in the eye, to see if he carried any scars from their doomed relationship.

He changed the phone to his other hand and turned to the computer on his desk, his brow frowning in concentration as he clicked on the mouse. Why wasn’t he looking at her? Surely he could show a bit more interest? She wasn’t vain but she knew she looked good. Damn it, she paid a lot of money to look this good. She’d bought a new designer outfit for her meeting with her clients and had her hair done and had spent extra time on her make-up. Looking good on the outside made up for feeling rubbish and worthless on the inside.

Vinn moved something on the computer screen and then continued with his conversation. Ailsa was starting to wonder if she should have worn something with a little more cleavage to show him what he’d been missing. He was still as jaw-droppingly gorgeous as the last time she’d seen him. And if she hadn’t been grinding her teeth to powder her jaw would be embedded in the plush ankle-deep carpet right then and there. His jet-black hair was neither long nor short nor straight nor curly, but somewhere sexily in the middle, reminding her of all the times she had trailed her fingers through those thick glossy strands, or fisted her hands in them during earth-shattering, planet-dislodging sex. He was clean-shaven but the rich dark stubble surrounding his nose and mouth and along his chiselled jaw was a heady reminder of all the times he’d left stubble rash on her softer skin. It had been like a sexy brand on her face, on her breasts, between her thighs...

Ailsa suppressed a shudder and, ignoring the chair he’d offered, threw him a look that would have frozen lava. In mid-flow. ‘I want a word with you. Now.’ She leaned on the word ‘now’ like a schoolmistress dressing down a disrespectful pupil.

The corners of Vinn’s mouth flickered as if he were trying to stop a smile...or one of his trademark lip curls. He ended his phone call after another few moments and placed the phone on his desk with unnerving precision. ‘If you’d made an appointment like everyone else then I would have plenty of time to talk to you.’

‘I’m not everyone else.’ Ailsa flashed him another glare. ‘I’m your wife.’

A dark light gleamed in his espresso-brown gaze like the flick of a dangerous match. ‘Don’t you mean soon-to-be ex-wife?’

Did that mean he was finally going to sign off on their divorce? Because they’d married in England they were subject to English divorce law, which stated a couple had to be legally separated for two years. It was strange to think if they had married in Italy they would have been granted a divorce by now because Italian divorce law only required one year of separation.

‘This may surprise you, Vinn, but I’m not here about our imminent divorce.’

‘Let me guess.’ He glanced at the overnight bag by her side and his eyes glinted again. ‘You want to come back to me.’

Ailsa curled her hand around the handle of her bag so tightly her bitten-down nail beds stung. ‘No. I do not want to come back to you. I’m here about my brother. Isaac told me you’re offering to sponsor him for the international golfing circuit next year.’

‘That’s correct.’

She disguised a swallow. ‘But...but why?’

‘Why?’ One dark eyebrow rose as if he found her question ludicrous and her imbecilic to have asked it. ‘He asked me, that’s why.’

‘He...asked you?’ Ailsa’s mouth dropped open so wide she could have parked one of her brother’s golf buggies inside. ‘He didn’t tell me that...’ She took a much-needed breath and, letting go of her bag, gripped the back of the chair opposite his desk instead and swallowed again. ‘He said you told him you would sponsor him but there were conditions on the deal. Conditions that involved me.’

Vinn’s expression changed from mocking to masked. ‘Sit down and we’ll discuss them.’

Ailsa sat, not because he told her but because her legs were threatening to go from under her like damp drinking straws. Why had Isaac led her to believe Vinn had approached him over sponsorship? Why had her brother been so...so insensitive to invite her soon-to-be ex-husband back into her orbit? Vinn’s involvement with her brother’s golfing career would mean she wouldn’t be able to avoid him the way she’d been doing for the last two years.

She had to avoid him.

She had to.

She didn’t trust herself around him. She turned into someone else when she was with him. Someone who had all the hopes and dreams of a normal person—someone who didn’t have a horrible secret in her background. A secret not even her brother knew about.

Her half-brother.

Ailsa was fifteen years old when she stumbled upon the truth about her biological father. For all that time she’d believed, along with everyone else, that her stepfather Michael was her dad. For fifteen years that lie had kept her family knitted together...well, knitted together was maybe stretching it a bit, because there were a few dropped stitches here and there. Her parents, while individually decent and respectable people, hadn’t been happy in their relationship, but she had always blamed them for not trying hard enough to get on.

She hadn’t thought it was her fault.

That the lie about her was the thing that made their lives so wretchedly miserable. But after finding out the truth about her biological father and the circumstances surrounding her conception, she could understand why.

Ailsa straightened her skirt over her thighs and took a calming breath, but then her gaze spied a silver photograph frame on Vinn’s desk and her heart stumbled like a foot missing a rung on a ladder. Why had he kept that? She had given him that frame after their wedding, with her favourite photo of them smiling at each other with the sun setting in the background. Giving him that photo had been her way of deluding herself she was in a real marriage and not one that was simply convenient for Vinn because he wanted a beautiful and accomplished wife to grace his home. She couldn’t see the photo from her side of the desk. Perhaps he had someone else’s image in there now. The thought of it churned her belly into a cauldron of caustic jealousy. She knew it was missish of her since she was the one to walk out on their marriage, but it hurt her pride to think he could so easily move on with his life.

And not just her pride was hurt...

Ailsa had always held a thread of hope that Vinn would fall in love with her. What bride didn’t want her handsome husband to love her? She had fooled herself it would be enough to be his bride, to be in his bed. To be in his life.

But she had longed to be in his heart. To be the first person he thought of in the morning and the last he thought of at night. To be the person he valued over everyone else or anything else. But Vinn didn’t value her. He didn’t prioritise her. He didn’t love her. Never had. Never would. He was incapable of it.

Vinn leaned back in his chair with one ankle crossed over his muscle-packed thigh, his dark unreadable gaze moving over her body like a minesweeper. ‘You’re looking good, cara.’

Ailsa stiffened. ‘Don’t call me that.’