Italian Deception: The Salvatore Marriage / A Sicilian Seduction / The Passion Bargain

One part of him was searching for words that would put right the ugliness of what had just happened, but another part—the angry part—was telling him to let it drop because the truth was the truth, even when it was a bitter-tasting truth.

He had been thinking of himself with the risk thing. She did have a sexual history he could not afford to ignore. How many different ‘boyfriends’ names had Keira dotted into conversations in her stubborn, stubborn determination to keep Shannon’s name alive in his head? Had Keira really believed that it made him feel great to know that Shannon was getting on with her life while his own stagnated?

Keira … He’d allowed himself to forget about Keira and his brother Angelo in this madness. He released a sigh, closing his eyes on a picture of his beautiful but slightly obsessive sister-in-law who used to remind him of a fragile spark of electricity travelling along an endless loop of wire supported by the strong, patient, loving Angelo. That spark had been snuffed out now along with its support, leaving behind a shattered family, an orphaned baby girl and Shannon, who had been knocked about enough by this tragedy without him knocking her about some more.

Dio, he thought. It was not supposed to be like this. Hurting Shannon had not been part of his plan. His sole objective when they’d set out this afternoon had been to remind her how good it used to be between them, not how ugly it could be. He’d wanted her receptive to what they could have again if they both wanted it badly enough—before he’d meant to hit her with his big proposition.

On the bed, after the loving, while sharing a chocolate-coated truffle. His planning had been meticulous. He even had a bottle of champagne and two glasses chilling in the fridge ready to help them celebrate after she’d said yes to his carefully rehearsed speech.

Now all he had was a block of ice standing somewhere behind him hating his guts, which left him wondering heavily what the hell was he supposed to do now to rescue the situation?

Then—Dio, he thought again. Where was his head? Nothing had changed here except the mood in which the next part took place and the main thrust of his argument!

Lowering his hand from his neck, he turned to face her. She was still standing in the bathroom doorway looking about as receptive to reason as a cat would be to the mouse it held in its teeth.

Was he a mouse? The hell that he was, he thought grimly and braced himself in readiness for what he was going to say next. ‘Marry me,’ he announced, reducing his well rehearsed and reasoned speech to the basic bottom line of it. ‘Then all of this stops being a problem.’

A cold stone block of silence followed. Shannon continued to stare at him through those sapphire eyes and he received a very, very erotic sensation across his neck that made him think of cats and mice and—teeth.

Then she moved, and the erotic sensation slithered down his body to pool around his sex. ‘Well, it must have hurt you to say that,’ she drawled deridingly.

‘No,’ he denied.

Shannon felt her mouth flick out a cold little smile in response. Did he think she hadn’t noticed the way he’d had to brace himself before making that outrageous suggestion?

And outrageous it was after what they’d just exchanged. He still hated and resented her beneath all of that throbbing desire she could see pounding at his magnificent chest. She was sure of it now—how could she not be?

‘I am not having your baby.’ She stated it firmly, grabbing the crux of this proposal and crushing the life out of it before it became a terrifying monster in her head. ‘And even if I was unfortunate enough to be pregnant, I only have to think about Keira to gauge my chances of carrying a baby full term.’

‘Don’t say that.’ He frowned. ‘You are not your sister. You—’

‘So for us to consider marriage on the slimmest chance of my being pregnant is really stupid,’ she interrupted him. ‘But, even if I am pregnant and did manage to carry the baby full term, I would not marry a man who thinks that not only am I promiscuous but I’m irresponsible with it!’

‘I don’t think you are promiscuous!’ he denied. ‘And we are not getting back into that.’

As far as Shannon was concerned they’d never left it! ‘Can’t trust me to stay faithful, then!’

He thrust out his chin. ‘I can trust,’ he insisted.

Her own chin went up, blue eyes defying the lying swine to prove that statement. ‘Who was I planning to be with the night you came to my London flat?’ she challenged.

His frown dragged the two black bars of his eyebrows together. ‘How should I know?’

‘You heard me make two telephone calls—both of which were to men—and drew some pretty quick assumptions that both of them were my lovers! That makes me pretty sluttish and untrustworthy wife material, don’t you think? Add those two lovers to my irresponsible behaviour regarding sex and either one of them could be the father of this fictitious child!’

He dismissed that line of argument with an impatient flick of one long-fingered hand. ‘One of those calls was to a woman.’

Surprise widened her eyes. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Joshua Soames,’ he replied. ‘He called here the other day to talk to you while you were at the hospital. I asked the question, he set the record straight.’

He’d actually pumped her business partner for information about Alex? ‘And you call that trusting me?’

The frown darkened. ‘Stop this,’ he grated. ‘Do you think I am an idiot? If you are not on the pill then you are not in a relationship. And don’t start going on about slutting,’ he dismissed with another flick of that hand when she opened her mouth to answer him. ‘This is too serious an issue to be bouncing insults off each other. If you are pregnant it will be because I made you so, in which case I want to be there for you. If you have to go through what Keira went through, then I want to be there to support you as Angelo supported Keira. So I am offering you a serious commitment here.’ He began walking towards her, closing a gap Shannon did not want closed. ‘I am offering marriage—now—before the timing of conception can become an issue. I am offering it without any prejudice from the past getting in the way. And I would appreciate an honest and unprejudiced answer from you instead of razor sarcasm.’

Shannon stood through it all, watching his face and his expressive hands in fascination while listening to the slick dynamics of his clever brain as he put together his offer outlining all the positives for marriage and ignoring the negatives such as—no love, no respect, no emotional commitment, no mention of his family’s horrified response.

She felt like a business he was trying to take over. He was being very cool and practical and even a little arrogant, though the arrogance was rather an attractive feature of his sales pitch. His ulterior motive? For the moment she couldn’t think of one, she was too engrossed in the seductive power this man possessed when he turned himself into a trouble-shooter. She’d always liked it, been an absolute sucker for it once upon a time. Get him in professional mode discussing the rudiments of corporate management and she would be stripping him naked as he talked.

She’d seen him work this kind of magic on a room full of hard headed women while giving a talk at a businesswomen’s convention. By the time he’d stepped off the podium to rapturous applause there had not been a woman in the place who had not been fantasising about him. She had been the lucky one to get him alone, though, and tap into the fantasy.

She could feel the same charismatic pull now trying to draw her towards him like a magnet. The voice was seductive, the beautiful accent was seductive, the expressive way he used his hands made you visualise them moving over your skin. The serious mouth that pretended he did not know it was happening was seductive; the serious eyes that waited politely for her to offer her response were seducing her into uttering the response he wanted to hear.

He was lethal, she acknowledged. But she’d also come up with the answer to his ulterior motive.

Sex.

He might be able to keep the mask of his face under control but he was not having the same luck with the rest of his body. He’d said at much before as he lay on the bed watching her as she went to get the box of truffles. ‘I cannot look at you without wanting to be inside you,’ he’d confessed. What they could do for each other was still jumping all over his senses with a desire to do it all again and again.

He was hooked, on the slut who always did have the instinctive sensual expertise to turn him inside out. So—why not marry her? was his very male answer to a nagging problem. If her betrayal with another man had not got in the way two years ago, he would have committed himself to her body and soul then and without a single regret for his lost single status. He was still prepared to do that because, despite all that had happened, the sex was still mindlessly good. And the irresistible little sweetener to his outrageous proposal was that he could have it all without all the old emotional stuff getting in the way.

She called it thinking on his feet, seeing a chance to have his cake and eat it at the same time. Somewhere in the last hour she had been elevated to his idea of the perfect woman. A woman, in other words, who would be absolutely great to have as a permanent fixture in his bed but would not expect or get anything else from him once they were out of that bed.

The bastard, she thought. He hadn’t bothered to mention his darling family or the fact that they had all just lived through the worst seven days of all of their lives and still had the worst day to come. This was a window of opportunity and he was not going to let the chance pass by.

She felt cold—iced over by his calculation, the speed with which he could assess and decide. He had done it to her before—two years ago in this very apartment when he’d walked in on a frankly suspicious scene, assessed and come to a decision with the blinding speed of light. That was the moment that she’d become a slut in his eyes and nothing she said afterwards could change that belief.

She shivered, she felt so cold. Inside—outside—and found herself fighting a battle with her tongue that wanted her to blurt out the truth. What would he do if she brought it all out into the open again? she wondered. Would he respond as he had done the last time by accusing her of daring to soil her sister with her own sins?

And what had Keira done? she then recalled painfully. Her sister had begged her to say nothing. Begged her to understand why she could never confess the truth to Luca, not even for Shannon’s sake. ‘He will tell Angelo. How could he not? If it was the other way round I would have to tell you or I could not live with myself!’

Those words were emblazoned on her heart for ever now. Because despite everything Keira had said she had told Luca, she had tried to save herself at the expense of Keira’s marriage to Angelo.

But Luca had refused to believe.

Keira had been everyone’s vision of the perfect woman, therefore Shannon had to be the sinner.

His opinion was not about to change because he’d discovered he could not keep his hands off her. He was still going to go on resenting her presence in his life and never trusting her alone with any man and probably using the sex as a darn great way of exacting punishment for betraying him.

So, did she say—Believe me about Keira and I might consider your proposition, or did she say—?

‘My answer is no,’ she announced, then turned and walked back into the bathroom, having the sense to shoot home the bolt this time before she sank down onto the toilet seat to bury her face in her trembling hands and silently cried her eyes out.

Because she knew that despite the long, hard lecture she had been a tongue tip away from tarnishing her poor sister’s image in his eyes for ever by insisting he listen to the truth. She even had proof to back her story up, though not here, but back in London.

Luca stood with the sound of that bolt sliding home ringing in his ears and was damned hellish angry for opening himself up to that cold little no.

Who did she think she was, turning down his frankly very generous offer? She was lucky to be getting one. Did she think he wanted to attach himself to a natural-born siren with eyes constantly on the lookout for the next man?