It Started With A Proposition: Blackmailed into the Italian's Bed / Contract with Consequences / The Passion Price

She had a choice. She could pine over a relationship which had been doomed from the start. Or she could choose a new relationship which had everything going for it.

Okay, not quite everything. But everything that mattered. Great sex was not the be all and end all, she reasoned. Besides, it wasn’t that Chad was a hopeless lover. He certainly wasn’t. The problem—if there was one—lay in her own responses. Gino had somehow programmed her not to respond totally to any other man. He, and he alone, could make her lose her head and lose control. Last night had proved that.

But this phenomenon only occurred when he was around. He wasn’t around now. He would never be around again.

The time had come to stop hiding behind her illogical passion for a man who, by his own admission, would never marry her. Next year she would be thirty. In ten years she’d be forty.

Time to make a decision.

‘Yes, Chad,’ she said firmly. ‘I will marry you.’

CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_462b3d98-710b-5398-8a42-7f7ae2c048a1)

GINO was on the top floor of his latest skyscraper construction-in-progress, making his way carefully along a not-too-wide girder, when his cellphone rang. He waited till he reached the relative safety of a corner before fishing it out of his pocket.

‘Gino Bortelli,’ he said, one arm wrapped securely around a post. The breeze was quite strong up that high.

‘What is this I hear about you breaking up with Claudia?’ came his mother’s highly accented voice.

Gino smothered a sigh. The grapevine in the Italian community was very fast and usually accurate.

‘It’s no big deal, Mum. She wasn’t right for me, and I wasn’t right for her. We agreed to go our separate ways.’

‘That is not the way I hear it, Gino. Claudia is very upset with you.’

Very upset that she wasn’t marrying into the Bortelli money would be more like it.

Gino had been astounded at how vicious Claudia had become when he’d told her it was over between them. Suddenly she’d shown her true colours, using quite obscene language which everyone in the restaurant had heard. There’d been no hint of a broken heart, just ambition thwarted. After she’d flounced out all the other patrons in the place had stared at him, making Gino wish he’d chosen to break up with her in a more discreet and private place.

That had been last Sunday—two days ago. In hindsight, he was surprised it had taken his mother this long to find out. Maybe he should have told her himself. But since returning to Melbourne on Saturday he hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with his family.

It was because of them that he’d had to leave Jordan in the first place. And he’d not been able to go back for her. They’d sucked him emotionally dry till he no longer wanted get married and have children. The last ten years had been filled with nothing but unending responsibility and pressure, with him putting his mother’s and sisters’ needs first, never his own.

But enough was enough.

‘Claudia was more in love with my money than she was with me, Mum,’ he said firmly. ‘Trust me on that. Look, I can’t stay and chat. I’m working.’

His mother sighed. ‘You work too hard, Gino. You should take some time off.’

‘Maybe I will. But not today.’

‘Before you go, did you decide what you were going to do with that derelict site in Sydney? The one Papa bought all those years ago?’

‘Everything’s underway. It’s going to be a twenty-storey tower with apartments on the top ten floors, office space on the lower ten, shops on the ground floor, and parking underneath. I signed the contract with the architect last Friday.’

‘That is good, Gino. Papa would be pleased.’

‘How can he be pleased about anything, Mum, when he’s dead?’

‘Gino! How can you say such a wicked thing? Have you no faith? Your papa is watching over us from heaven. He would be very proud of you.’

Gino shook his head. There was no arguing with his mother’s faith. So he didn’t bother.

‘He would be even prouder,’ she added, ‘if you married and carried on the Bortelli name.’

‘I am still only thirty-six, Mum. I have plenty of time for that yet. Look, I have to go.’

‘Will you be coming to dinner next Sunday?’

His mother held a big family get-together on the last Sunday of every month. Gino usually attended. He liked playing with his nieces and nephews. But he hated the thought of being bombarded by questions over why Claudia wasn’t with him.

‘I can’t, Mum. Sorry. I have to go to Sydney to meet up with this architect. He wants to show me some preliminary plans.’

Not true. But his mother wasn’t to know that. Still, he would have to go somewhere. Maybe to the snow? He liked skiing, and there was still some good snow in the ski-fields. He’d tire himself out every day and make sure he fell asleep each night the moment his head hit the pillow.

He hadn’t slept well since returning from Sydney, his mind constantly tormented with what ifs.

What if he hadn’t made that foolish promise to his father?

What if he’d been able to go back for Jordan without feeling lousy?

What if he’d told her the truth about himself before they’d gone up to his hotel room last Friday night?

This last what if was easily answered: he’d been too aroused to delay, or to risk Jordan rejecting him after his explanations.

His need for her had transcended common-sense.

Was he still in love with her? he wondered. Or did he just want to escape with her again, as he had all those years ago?

She’d claimed she’d never forgotten him.

Gino believed her.

How could either of them forget the fantasy life they’d lived together, such an erotically charged existence, full of passion and pleasure? But underneath all the sex had been true affection. He hadn’t just used Jordan, he’d truly cared for her—and she for him.

But they were different people now. She was more cynical and less trusting. And he was…well, he was trapped by his previous deceptions.

And yet he would give anything, do anything, to be with her like that again.

‘You should spend more time with your family, Gino,’ his mother chided.

Gino’s teeth clenched down hard in his jaw, the cords in his neck standing out. ‘I have to go, Mum. Ciao.’

He grimaced as he hung up, the Italian word for goodbye reminding him of the last time he’d heard it. On Jordan’s lips, as she swept out of the hotel room. And out of his life.

His life…

Gino glanced down at the city spread out below him. He was on top of the world so to speak. On top of the world financially as well as professionally. He had more money than he would ever need, a fancy penthouse and a fancy car: a Ferrari, no less.