Surrendering All But Her Heart

‘You could do a desensitising programme for that,’ he said.

‘I don’t have time.’

‘It’s because of what happened to Liam, isn’t it?’ Lachlan said. ‘You haven’t been on a plane since he drowned in Spain all those years ago.’

Natalie felt the claws of guilt clutch her by the throat. She still remembered the tiny white coffin with her baby brother’s body in it being loaded on the tarmac. She had seen it from her window seat. She had sat there staring at it, with an empty, aching, hollow feeling in her chest.

It had been her fault he had been found floating face-down in that pool.

‘I have to go,’ Lachlan said. ‘I’m being transferred.’

Her attention snapped back to Lachlan’s dire situation. ‘Transferred where?’ she asked.

‘Just do what Angelo says, please?’ he said. ‘Nat, I need you to do what he wants. He’s promised to keep this out of the press. I have to accept his help. My life is over if I don’t. Please?’

Natalie pinched the bridge of her nose until her eyes smarted with bitter angry tears. The cage of her conscience came down with a snap.

She was trapped.

* * *

Angelo was finalising some details on a project in Malaysia when his receptionist announced he had a visitor. ‘It’s Natalie Armitage,’ Fiona said.

He leaned back in his chair and smiled a victor’s smile. He had waited a long time for this opportunity. He wanted her to beg, to plead and to grovel. It was payback time for the misery she had put him through by walking out on him so heartlessly.

‘Tell her to wait,’ he said. ‘I have half an hour of paperwork to get through that can’t be put off.’

There was a quick muffled exchange of words and Fiona came back on the intercom. ‘Miss Armitage said she’s not going to wait. She said if you don’t see her now she is going to get back on the train to Edinburgh and you’ll never see her again.’

Angelo slowly drummed his fingers on the desk. He was used to Natalie’s obstinacy. She was a stubborn, headstrong little thing. Her independence had been one of the first things he had admired about her, and yet in the end it had been the thing that had frustrated him the most. She’d absolutely refused to bend to his will. She’d stood up to him as no one else had ever dared.

He was used to people doing as he said. From a very young age he had given orders and people had obeyed them. It was part of the territory. Coming from enormous wealth, you had power. You had privilege and people respected that.

But not his little Tatty.

He leaned forward and pressed the button. ‘Tell her I’ll see her in fifteen minutes.’

He had not even sat back in his chair when the door slammed open and Natalie came storming in. Her brown hair with its natural highlights was in disarray about her flushed-with-fury face. Her hands were clenched into combative fists by her sides, and her slate-blue eyes were flashing like the heart of a gas flame. He could see the outline of her beautiful breasts as they rose and fell beneath her top.

His groin tightened and jammed with lust.

‘You … you bastard!’ she said.

Angelo rocked back in his chair. ‘Cara,’ he said. ‘I’m absolutely delighted to see you, too. How long has it been? Four hours?’

She glowered at him. ‘Where have you taken him?’

He elevated one brow. ‘Where have I taken whom?’

Her eyes narrowed to needle-thin slits. ‘My brother,’ she said. ‘I can’t contact him. He’s not answering his phone any more. How do I know you’re doing the right thing by him?’

‘Your brother is in good hands,’ he said. ‘That is as long as you do what is required.’

Her eyes blazed with venomous hatred. ‘How can I trust you to uphold your side of the bargain?’ she asked.

‘You can trust me, Natalie.’

She made a scoffing sound. ‘I’d rather take my chances with a death adder.’

Angelo smiled a thin-lipped smile. ‘I’m afraid a death adder is not going to hold any sway with an Italian magistrate,’ he said. ‘I can get your brother out of harm’s way with the scrawl of my signature.’ He picked up a pen for effect. ‘What’s it going to be?’

He saw her eyes go to his pen. He saw the way her jaw locked as she clenched her teeth. Her saw the way her slim throat rose and fell. He saw the battle on her face as her will locked horns with his. He felt the energy of her anger like a high-voltage current in the air.

‘You can’t force me to sleep with you,’ she bit out. ‘You might be able to force me to wear your stupid ring, but you can’t force me to do anything else.’

‘You will be my wife in every sense of the word,’ he said. ‘In public and in private. Otherwise the deal is off.’

Her jaw worked some more. He could even hear her teeth grinding together. Her eyes were like twin blasts from a roaring furnace.

‘I didn’t think you could ever go so low as this,’ she said. ‘You can have anyone you want. You have women queuing up to be with you. Why on earth do you want an unwilling wife? Is this some sort of sick obsession? What can you possibly hope to achieve out of this?’

Angelo slowly swung his ergonomic chair from side to side as he surveyed her outraged features. ‘I quite fancy the idea of taming you,’ he said. ‘You’re like a beautiful wild brumby that bucks and kicks and bites because it doesn’t want anyone to get too close.’

Her cheeks flushed a fiery red and her eyes kept on shooting sparks of ire at him. ‘So you thought you’d slip a lasso around my neck and whip me into submission, did you?’ she said, with a curl of her bee-stung top lip. ‘Good luck with that.’

Angelo smiled a lazy smile. ‘You know me, Tatty. I just love a challenge—and the bigger the better.’

Her brows shot together in a furious frown. ‘Don’t call me that.’

‘Why not?’ he said. ‘I always used to call you that.’

She stalked to the other side of the room, her arms across her body in a keep-away-from-me pose. ‘I don’t want you to call me that now,’ she said, her gaze determinedly averted from his.

‘I will call you what I damn well want,’ he said, feeling his anger and frustration rising. ‘Look at me.’

She gave her head a toss and kept her eyes fixed on the painting on the wall. ‘Go to hell.’

Angelo got to his feet and walked over to where she was standing. He put a hand on her shoulder, but she spun around and slapped at his hand as if it was a nasty insect.

‘Don’t you dare touch me,’ she snarled at him, like a wildcat.

He felt the fizzing of his fingers where his hand had briefly come into contact with her slim shoulder. The sensation travelled all the way to his groin. He looked at her mouth—that gorgeous, full-lipped mouth that had kissed him with such passion and fire in the past. He had felt those soft lips around him, drawing the essence from him until he had been legless with ecstasy. She had lit fires of need over his whole body with her hot little tongue. Her fingers had danced over every inch of his flesh, caressing and stroking him, branding him with the memory of her touch.

Ever since she had left him he had waited for this moment—for a chance to prove to her how much she wanted him in spite of her protestations. His rage at being cut from her life had festered inside him. It had soured every other relationship since. He could not seem to find what he was looking for with anyone else. He had gone from relationship to relationship, some lasting only a date or two, none of them lasting more than a month. Lately he had even started to wonder if he had imagined how perfectly physically in tune he had been with her. But seeing her again, being in the same room as her, sensing her reaction to him and his to her, proved to him it wasn’t his imagination.

She wouldn’t be the one who walked out on him without notice this time around. She would stay with him until he decided he’d had enough. It might take a month or two, maybe even up to a year, but he would not give her the chance to rip his heart open again. He would not allow her that close again. He had been a passionate fool five years ago. From the moment he had met her he had fallen—and fallen hard. He had envisaged their future together, how they would build on the empire of his grandparents and parents, how they would be the next generation of Bellandinis.

But then she had ripped the rug from under his feet by betraying him.