Her Passionate Italian: The Passion Bargain / A Sicilian Husband / The Italian's Marriage Bargain

The answer hit her like a blow. Her breasts heaved behind her crossed arms, and for a moment she felt dizzy again. Then she pulled herself together and asked the next wretched question burning a hole inside her head. ‘And—everyone else out there?’

She heard the fresh chink of glass on glass before the words came, felt the angry tension in him as he poured another drink. ‘Your true identity became an open secret within days of you meeting Angelo,’ he told her. ‘The fact that you were not announcing that you are the heiress to the huge Gianni fortune only helped to fuel the fires of intrigue and speculation as to why you wanted to play the ordinary working girl and keep your identity such a closed secret.’

‘I’m not the Gianni heiress,’ she denied. ‘There is no fortune to be had.’

He laughed like a cynic. ‘You are worth so much money, Francesca, cara, that the figure can make Rome’s wealthiest blanch.’

Which was all so much rubbish her brows snapped together. ‘Stupid rumour and speculation,’ she dismissed. ‘Bruno Gianni lives in a ruin. He has no money to leave to anyone, never mind a great-niece he won’t even see!’

‘Well, you’re right about Bruno’s money,’ Carlo drawled as he strode back into view. ‘But we’re not talking about Bruno Gianni’s money. We are talking about Rinaldo Gianni’s money. Your grandfather,’ he extended as if she needed that clarified, and bent to prise a set of cold fingers away from her arm so he could slot a fresh glass of brandy between them. ‘The fortune is his,’ he continued. ‘Rinaldo left everything to you. Bruno only lives in the palazzo at your behest because it, like everything else, belongs to you—or it will do when you marry,’ he then amended, ‘a man from a good Italian family, I think is near as damn it to the official working of his will. The lot to be held in a trust to be solely administered by his surviving brother until you comply. Angelo thought he’d hit gold when he seduced you into falling in love with him,’ he added. ‘He’s the real hero of the party tonight, cara. The man who pulled off the perfect coup.’

She was beginning to think she was dreaming all of this. ‘I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,’ she said.

‘I know.’ He used that laugh again. ‘And that is the real irony of it.’

He went to lean a shoulder against the mantel, pushed his hands into his trouser pockets then studied her ashen face as he continued.

‘While everyone else thinks you’re being intriguingly clever and infuriatingly devious, you are merely oblivious to it all. It took me weeks to suss you out,’ he confessed as if that was some kind of shock in itself. ‘You are not pretending to be the wide-eyed and beautiful, naïve innocent—you are her. And Bruno Gianni has a lot to answer for—which he will do when I get my hands round his wicked old throat.’

‘You won’t go near my uncle Bruno,’ she muttered dimly, feeling swamped by words that didn’t make any sense.

‘What—protecting the hand that robs you, Francesca?’ he mocked. ‘What were you—ten years old when your grandfather died? For the last fourteen years he’s been sitting on your inheritance and probably praying that you never show your face in Rome.’

‘Stop it,’ she jerked out. ‘There’s just been a dreadful misunderstanding, that’s all!’ she cried. ‘Angelo knows the truth. He knows I’m—’

His hiss of impatience snapped her lips shut. ‘Get real, Francesca,’ he derided. ‘You heard what that mercenary bastard said out there! To start trying to defend him is bloody pathetic! He wants your money,’ he lanced down at her. ‘He needs your money! Get that into your lovesick head and deal with it!’

He was angry—why was he angry? That was her prerogative! She was the one being used and abused and talked about as if she was some kind of juicy commodity!

‘There is no money!’ She launched herself to her feet to spit the denial at him. ‘And what makes you any better than Angelo when you actually believe all that stuff you just threw at me?’

There was a glinting flash behind narrowed eyelids, a glimpse of angry white teeth. A hand snaked out and she released a choked cry as he clamped his fingers round her wrist.

‘Don’t compare me with Batiste—ever,’ he bit out from between those white teeth.

‘I w-wasn’t…’ The confused words disintegrated when she began trembling all over again, shocked by the sudden eruption of violence in him. His dark face had changed out of all recognition, the clenched bones, the narrowed eyes glinting with a danger she could actually taste. Her heart was pounding, her wrist hurting where he held it in a vice-like grip.

He hated Angelo, she realised—despised him with a ferocity that had turned him primitive.

She tugged at her wrist. He held it fast. The next thing she was drawing in a sharp breath when the other hand came up. She thought he was going to slap her. Her eyes widened as the cold sweat of fear broke out on her skin. ‘No…’ she husked.

And was dragged even deeper into the mud of confusion when he began carefully easing the brandy glass she had forgotten she was holding out of her clenched fingers and she realised with new horror that it was aimed to empty its contents into his face.

Not just his violence but her violence. Her head began to swim. She wasn’t a violent person, so how had she reached the point of wanting to throw brandy into someone’s face?

The glass was removed. The wrist released. She took it in her other hand and began absently rubbing it while her insides were so shaken up she had the hysterical impression she was going to fall into little pieces any minute.

‘There is no money,’ she repeated, trying desperately to cling to this one safe thread.

The hard angles in his face didn’t soften, the eyes still glittered in the chiselled set of his face. And his voice when it came was like cold steel slicing through silk. ‘Whether there is or there isn’t money, is not actually the important issue—not when you manage to remember what your friend and Batiste were doing out there, that is…’

And just like that she was devastated, the steel-like thrust of his point cutting right to the core of everything because she had been concentrating on the money thing instead of what really mattered here.

She’d been used and betrayed by two people she loved most. Duped like a fool because she’d been too blinded by trust to see what was happening beneath her nose.

It all came crashing down again, coiling like a tight band around her aching chest, and fresh tears began to build in her throat.

The rows, the passion it required to generate so much hostility. Sonya’s guilty looks, the lies that had tripped so defiantly from her tongue. Money had nothing to do with Sonya’s part in her betrayal. She’d just wanted Angelo with a fever that had raged out of control. So she’d had him, because the wanting had been more powerful than her loyalty to a close friend!

And the money had nothing to do with the sexual part of Angelo’s betrayal because he must have known he was putting everything at risk when he gave in to his desire for Sonya. For who else was more likely to confess all in a fit of conscience than the closest friend to his future wife?

His future wife. The one he would take to bed only when he had to.

Oh, dear God… ‘I’ve got to get away from here,’ she whispered on a sudden burst of panic and reeled away to take a couple of shaky steps towards the terrace doors.

Everything happened so fast then that she was thrown into shock. There was a muttered curse followed by two hands arriving at her waist and she was being lifted bodily off the floor, turned and dumped unceremoniously back to the floor then clamped to a hard male chest.

‘What are you—?’

‘Shut up,’ he ground out furiously. ‘Someone is coming.’

And she froze like a statue as she heard the sound of Angelo’s voice calling her name from the terrace just outside their door. The door handle rattled. Her heart withered in her chest and her fingers went up to clutch at the lapels to Carlo Carlucci’s dinner jacket.

‘I don’t want to see him,’ she choked. And she didn’t. She never wanted to set eyes on Angelo again!

‘I locked the door,’ his grim voice reminded her.

‘He will see us through the glass.’ She moved even closer to his superior framework as if trying to blend right into him.

His arms accommodated her, a hand gently curving round her slender nape, the other splaying across the low part of her back. ‘He can’t see you,’ he murmured in husky reassurance. ‘It’s dark in here. I am wearing black and my back is to the window. If he sees anything it will be the dark outline of one of his male guests enjoying a snatched moment in his father’s study with one of his female guests.’

‘M-me,’ she pointed out.

There was a short silence. Then he said cynically, ‘Did you tell him about our two meetings, cara? How very loyal of you.’

The cold taunt brought her eyes up to clash with his. The guilty flush that mounted her cheeks said all she needed to say.

‘Well—well,’ he murmured. ‘It seems to me that your whole life is built on dangerous secrets, mi amore.’

‘I don’t have any secrets,’ she snapped. ‘And there was nothing dangerous about our two brief meetings!’ she added, frowning at the sudden quickening she felt in her pulse.

‘Liar,’ he drawled. ‘We connected sexually. I don’t know how you kept your hands off me.’

‘How did you ever get to be so arrogant?’ she gasped, staring at him.

‘It took practice,’ he replied, and the weird thing about this conversation was that it was so deadly serious without a hint of mockery to be heard! In fact she could see that frightening anger simmering in his eyes. ‘You want to be thankful that I am attracted to you or you would be languishing somewhere in the Batiste garden, slowly dying from a broken heart by now.’

It was like being kicked when she was already lying in a battered heap on the ground. On a stifled choke she went to step away from him. Once again he showed his superior strength to keep her still.