The Parenti Marriage: The Reluctant Surrender

Seven! A thought, a fleeting memory of himself at that age, hazy and shadowed: his mother laughing as she stroked a smear of dirt from his cheek, how as that child he had felt his love for her and his happiness because she was there spill out of him to mix with the sunshine.

Saul felt the sour taste of his own revulsion against whatever it was that allowed children to be deprived of the love of their parents. He had been eighteen and he had found it hard enough to cope, even though by then he had thought himself independent and adult.

More memories were surging through the barriers Giselle wanted to put up against them. The other children at the new school she had gone to when her great-aunt had taken her in, feeling sorry for her because she didn’t have parents. They had meant to be kind, of course, but then they hadn’t known the truth.

In her desperation to close the door on those memories, Giselle made a small agonised sound of protest. She wished desperately that her car was here. If it had been she could have stepped past him and got into it and escaped, putting an end to her present humiliation.

Saul, hearing that sound and recognising the pain it contained—a pain he himself had felt and knew—heard himself saying before he could stop himself, ‘I lost my parents when I was eighteen. You think at that age that everyone is immortal.’

Silently they looked at one another.

What was he doing? Saul derided himself. This wasn’t the sort of conversation he had with anyone, never mind a woman who rubbed him up the wrong way and whom he’d already decided he didn’t particularly like. It had been that word orphaned that had done it. Seven years old and taken in by a great-aunt she now had to help support. That explained the cheap suit, Saul reflected.

She’d implied that there wasn’t currently a man in her life, but she must have had lovers. She might not be his type, but he’d be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that physically she had the kind of looks that turned male heads, and that mix of stitched-up coldness allied to the suppressed passion that flashed in her eyes when she couldn’t quite control it would have plenty of members of his sex keen to pursue her.

Fire and ice—that was what she was. How many lovers had she had? he wondered, the question sneaking up on him before he could stop it. Two? Three? Certainly no more than could be counted on the fingers of one hand, he suspected. What was he thinking? Whatever it was he must stop now—must not allow it to get hold and take root.

‘What happened to your parents? Mine died carrying out aid work at the site of an earthquake, when a huge aftershock destroyed the building they were in.’

Giselle’s muscles clenched—both against what he was saying and against the shock of his question.

‘After my parents’ death I wanted to talk about it, but no one would let me. I suppose they thought it would be too…’ he stopped.

‘Too painful for you.’ Giselle supplied, her voice cracking slightly, like an unhealed scab over a still raw wound.

What had been a hostile confrontation between them had somehow or other veered sharply into something else and somewhere else—a territory that was both familiar to her and yet at the same time unexplored by her. Because she was too afraid? Because it hurt too much?

She spoke slowly at first, the effort of speaking about something so deeply traumatic and personal making her throat feel raw.

‘My mother and…and my baby brother were killed in a road accident. My father died from a heart attack eleven months after the accident.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He was, Saul recognised. Sorry for the child she had been, sorry for her loss, sorry he had asked now that he knew the full extent of the tragedy.

‘Life is so fragile,’ Giselle heard herself telling him. ‘My baby brother was only six months old.’ She shuddered. “I can’t imagine how parents must feel when they lose a child—especially one so young—or how they cope with the responsibility of protecting such vulnerability. I’d never have a second’s peace. I could never…I would never want that responsibility.’

There was a finality in her words that found an echo within him.

She had said too much, revealed and betrayed too much, Giselle recognised. Not that she had told him everything. She would never and could never tell anyone everything. Some things were so painful, so shocking and so dark that they could never be shared—had to be kept hidden away from everyone. She could just imagine how people would treat her if they knew the truth, how suspicious of her they would be—and with good reason. No, she could never speak openly about her guilt or her fear. They were burdens she must carry alone.

But she must not dwell on the past, but instead live in the present, with her duty to her great-aunt. Determinedly she focused her thoughts on the issue that had led to this unexpected and far too intimate conversation, telling Saul, ‘If you want to cancel the secondment now that you have the answer to your question…’

She wanted him to cancel the secondment, Saul recognised, ignoring the fact that he had wanted to cancel it himself as he let his male drive to win take over.

‘You wouldn’t have been my choice. However, I don’t have the time to interview other applicants. Of course if you want to withdraw…’ He let the offer hang there.

‘You already know that I can’t,’ Giselle said stiffly. Saul shrugged.

‘I doubt that either of us is happy with the situation, but for different reasons it seems that we shall have to endure it and make the best of it.’

Giselle exhaled. Talking about her past had drained her emotionally and physically, and now she felt dreadfully weak and shaky—but there was still something she needed to know.

‘My car—’ she began, and then stopped when she realised how thin and thready her voice sounded. She was perilously close to the limits of her self-control, she knew. Her head was beginning to ache from the stress of their confrontation. Her lips felt dry. She moistened them with the tip of her tongue.

Saul watched the telltale movement of her tonguetip, his gaze sliding unwillingly down to the small movement of her throat as she swallowed. Her upswept hair revealed the length of her neck and the neat shape of her ears. Mauve shadows lay beneath her eyes like small bruises; her face was drained of any other colour. Something inside him ached and twisted, an emotion he didn’t recognise giving birth to an impulse to reach out and touch her, hold her.

Hold her? Why?

Why? He was a man, wasn’t he? And the way she had just drawn attention to her own mouth had had its obvious effect on his body. That was why he felt impelled to touch her. Right now, if he leaned forward and pressed his thumb to that special place behind her ear, if he stroked his fingertips the length of her throat, if he ran his tongue over the soft pillows of flesh that were her lips, he could make her pale skin flush softly with the warmth of arousal. He could make the pulse beat in her throat with desire for him. He could make those green eyes darken to jade and the breath shudder from her lungs. Saul took a step towards her.

Immediately Giselle stepped back from him, with a gasp of sound that brought him back to reality. What the hell was the matter with him? Saul castigated himself. The last thing he felt for her was desire, and the second last thing he wanted was her desire for him. Stepping back from her, he reached for his mobile and spoke into it, announcing, ‘You can bring the car back now.’

Less than five minutes later Giselle watched as her car was driven into the car park towards her. A uniformed driver got out and handed over the keys to Saul before heading for Saul’s own gleaming car.

Without a word Giselle got into her car. She had no idea how they had acquired keys for it, and she wasn’t going to ask. She was beginning to suspect that for a man like Saul Parenti anything and everything was achievable.

Saul watched her drive away. Fire and ice—a dangerous combination, designed to tempt the strongest-willed man when combined in a woman. He, though, could and would resist that temptation.

CHAPTER THREE (#u935075c7-d8a9-5842-a5d5-fcaa5b0e7f97)

IT WAS nearly two weeks now since Giselle had begun her new duties in the impressive modern office building that was the headquarters of Saul Parenti’s business empire, and of course she wasn’t in the least bit disappointed that not once during those two very busy weeks had she seen Saul himself and that the glass-fronted office his PA had pointed out to her as his had remained empty. Far from it. She was delighted that he wasn’t in evidence, and that she had been able to take up her new role without having to contend with his presence.

Or at least she had been until something had come to light this morning, whilst she had been checking over the latest batch of reworked plans couriered over to her.

Was what she had picked up a simple mistake? Was it a trick to try and catch her out, instituted by Saul himself? Or was it—and her stomach tensed at the thought of this—a deliberate attempt to defraud the Parenti Organisation, put in place by one of her own colleagues?

Whichever of the three options she chose to believe, the initial outcome was the same, and that was that she would have to report what she had seen to Saul Parenti. Giselle looked towards the office of Saul’s PA, Moira Wilson, wondering if she should discuss her concern with her.

She liked the older woman, who had gone out of her way to make her feel at home in her new environment. On her first morning here, Moira had gone through everything with her, informing her with a smile, ‘I’ll just run through a few things with you. First, we are all on first-name terms here—Saul insists on it. But don’t mistake that for a lack of discipline or respect. He demands and gets both. I’ve got some forms here from HR for you to fill in—personal details, that kind of thing. Whilst you’re here your salary will be increased in accordance with the levels Saul pays those who work for him, and you will be eligible for an annual bonus, medical insurance, and a car allowance. Any expenses you incur in the course of your work should be submitted to the accounts department on a monthly basis, and I should warn you that here we do not have a culture of fudging such expenses—if you take my meaning.’

This last piece of information had been accompanied by a grim look which had ensured that Giselle knew exactly what she meant.

‘I never fudge my expenses. It would go against my principles to do so,’ Giselle had responded truthfully.

‘Excellent. I am sure you will fit in very well here,’ had been Moira’s response, before she had added, ‘Oh, and when you complete your personal details form I shall need your passport details.’

‘My passport?’

‘Yes. You do have one, don’t you? If not we must sort one out for you, just in case you are required to travel abroad on behalf of the company with Saul—to site meetings and that kind of thing. Saul takes a very personal and keen interest in all his projects, and is very hands-on about checking their progress.’

‘Yes,’ she had a passport, Giselle had confirmed. She was also used to travelling abroad to conferences and site meetings with clients—so why on earth had that tingle of something she refused to name zipped down her spine? It was doing so now, at the memory—as though someone had feathered a touch against her bare skin. What was happening to her? Nothing, Giselle assured herself fiercely. Nothing was happening to her and nothing was going to happen to her. Normally she enjoyed visiting the various sites she worked on, especially when they were abroad. It made up for the fact that she had missed out on the kind of foreign trips enjoyed by most of her peers when they had been growing up.

Her great-aunt simply hadn’t had the money for that kind of luxury. Additionally, the circumstances of her life—the dreadful tragedy that still haunted her and filled her with guilt—meant that she had always been wary of allowing others to get close to her even as friends, so she hadn’t joined in the group holidays abroad enjoyed by her peers during her early twenties, even when she could have financed them herself. Instead she had concentrated on getting the very best qualifications she could. Then, when she had started to think about taking solo holidays to explore the architecture of other countries, her great-aunt had needed to move into residential care, and once again there simply hadn’t been the money for such unnecessary expenses.

Giselle judged Moira to be somewhere in her early fifties, which had surprised her. From Emma’s comments about Saul’s lifestyle she had imagined that his PA would be glamorous and nubile, not a woman of Moira’s age, even if she was a very smart and elegant fifty-something. Her appearance was much like that of the other women Giselle had seen in the offices, making her acutely conscious of the shabbiness of her own clothes. There was nothing she could do about that, though. Only two days ago she had received a letter informing her that regrettably the fees for her great-aunt’s care and accommodation were to be increased by twenty per cent—not far short of the unexpected increase in her salary. There were cheaper care homes, but Giselle was determined that her great-aunt would go on enjoying the level of comfort she had where she was—even if that did mean she herself would have to go without the new clothes she had been tempted to buy, having seen how smart the other women working here were.

Now, as she looked round her spacious office, Giselle admitted that in many ways she preferred her new working environment—even if she would rather have worked for the devil himself than Saul Parenti. She doubted that she would be missed by her old colleagues. The men she worked with had shown quite plainly prior to her departure that they resented the fact that she had been selected over them for what they considered to be a prestigious and career-boosting opportunity, and of course her own pride had not allowed her to tell them that she would have preferred not to be chosen. However, it was the well-meaning Emma’s words that were still sending scalding waves of humiliation burning painfully through Giselle’s emotions.

She had spoken to her in private. ‘It’s just as well that it’s you who’s been seconded to go and work for Saul Parenti. If it was anyone else then all the other girls would be seething with jealousy at the thought of someone getting the opportunity to work closely with such a fabulously sexy man. But of course they won’t be jealous of you, because they all know that there’s no danger of you attracting him—not with your attitude to men and the way you give them the cold shoulder. Especially not with a man like Saul, who can have any woman he wants.’