Mediterranean Millionaires

The diamond watch that swam without a lifebelt. Maybe she would take a hammer to it next, Angelo mused, his handsome mouth set in a bloodless line as his limo ferried him across the city. She didn’t want anything he gave her. Nor did she appreciate anything. Not the house, the garden, the clothes, the fabulous lifestyle that he had created for her benefit. Yet when had he ever made so much effort? Where, one might have wondered, was the punishment factor in his acquisition of his enemy’s daughter?

Eyes hot as a bonfire, Angelo knocked back a brandy and savoured his misfortunes. Indifferent to the luxury that he offered, she preferred dressing like a tramp and grubbing through the soil in all weathers. He was the cruel bastard who had marooned her in a city mansion to be waited on hand and foot. That distance he had sensed within her? Oh, yes, there was very good reason for that distance. Although she was sleeping in his bed, it was in body rather than spirit because she loved another man. That struck Angelo as a deeply unnatural, distasteful and indeed outrageous state of affairs.

He was astonished at how bitter, affronted and cheated he felt. No woman had ever had that effect on him. But then no woman had ever regarded him as less than the main event. Revenge was threatening to take on a twist and rebound on him. He should ditch her, forget about her. What man would accept the role of second best in a woman’s bed? Angelo wanted very badly to smash something. Maybe a whole lot of somethings. In an implacable rage he told his chauffeur to head for a nightclub. There was a hell of a lot of other women available…

The following morning, Angelo attended a board meeting. He had had very little sleep. He had got drunk the night before, something he had not done since he was a teenager. Once he had learnt that his father had had a problem with alcohol, he had been ultra careful to monitor his consumption and he was annoyed and disturbed by his lack of discipline.

Gwenna was out in the garden when Angelo called her at noon.

The dark timbre of his deep voice vibrated down her spine and her tummy clenched. Sensual imagery threatened to engulf her and she tensed as though she had been slapped. No matter how hard she policed her mind he continually forged a bold passage into her thoughts. ‘Yes?’ she prompted tightly.

‘I’m planning to take you somewhere special tonight,’ Angelo told her smoothly.

Her bright blue eyes widened in dismay. ‘But I can’t see you tonight—’

‘Why not?’

Gwenna had no intention of cancelling her night out with Toby. ‘I’m already going out. I organised it yesterday.’

‘Un-organise it.’ With difficulty Angelo haltered his temper that was on a short fuse after the events of the past twenty-four hours. ‘I want to see you this evening.’

‘But I can’t alter the arrangement—this particular friend won’t be available another time.’

‘What gender is the friend?’

She stiffened. ‘I don’t have to answer that—’

‘You just did.’

‘He’s a friend…okay?’ Gwenna fired back, sudden guilt coming at her out of nowhere, which she fiercely fought off. How much honesty did she really owe Angelo Riccardi?

‘I’ll meet up with you, then. Give me a time, a place.’

She was aghast at that suggestion. ‘No way! I’m sorry, but I didn’t know you were planning to see me tonight. You can’t expect me to be available twenty-four hours a day!’

‘I do.’

‘I’ll start tomorrow…please be reasonable.’

Unhappily, Angelo was not in a reasonable mood. Refusal rarely came his way. Refusal in the face of his expressed displeasure had never come his way. He called Franco and instructed him to ensure that Gwenna was watched over from a discreet distance. He thought he should know where she was, what she was doing, who she was with. He did, however, have complete trust in her. After all, she had been a virgin, which suggested that the object of her affections was, for whatever reasons, unattainable. On that basis, Angelo decided that there was no reason why he should even think about the matter.

The bottom line for Angelo was that he still wanted Gwenna Hamilton. Even angry with her, he had fallen asleep aching for her and woken up in a worse state. He didn’t like that. But the more she held back and refused to play by his rules, the more determined he became to hold onto her. Was he suffering from some knee-jerk primal reaction to the challenge she set? Whatever, he was becoming increasingly eager for the moment when cool reason would be reinstated and he would find her more tiresome than desirable.

CHAPTER SIX

‘I’VE been doing some research on your boyfriend,’ Toby confided with a disapproving shake of his head over drinks in a fashionable bar. ‘You’re seriously out of your league.’

Gwenna wrinkled her nose in reproof. ‘What happened to tact?’

‘Your friends are supposed to be honest. From what I can understand, Angelo Riccardi makes it a mission to live up to his bad reputation.’ Toby pushed his tobacco-brown hair off his brow in a rueful gesture.

An unexpected current of irritation darting through her in response to that criticism of Angelo, Gwenna folded her lips. ‘In what way?’

‘In every way. He’s a shark in business and he runs through women like a knife through butter. I mean, what are you playing at? You’re a softy—’

‘Perhaps Angelo brings out the concrete in me. I don’t know why we’re talking about him—’

‘How about he’s a billionaire? You only met him a few weeks back? He’s an urban predator and you’re a country mouse? You have nothing in common with him. Of course I’m concerned about you.’

‘But when I spoke to you yesterday you talked like you approved,’ Gwenna reminded him in bewilderment. ‘You said I needed passion in my life.’

‘Where were you last night?’

‘Why?’

Toby grimaced. ‘I didn’t want to be the one to tell you but—according to the newspaper I read over my breakfast—Angelo Riccardi was partying very publicly with three fashion models last night.’

In shock, Gwenna went very still. So awful was the pain she couldn’t immediately speak or breathe. She wanted to argue that Angelo had been with her the previous evening but he had left early. In the mood he had been in, it was very possible that he had sought out the sort of women who would tell him how fantastic he was and swoon over a diamond watch. Whereas she had locked herself in the bathroom, wept, told a sad story and served him with a large bitter dollop of home truths. No comparison, was there?

‘Don’t you read the newspapers?’ Toby sighed.

It took effort but she made a stumbling recovery. ‘Not the sort that devote space to rumours like that.’

‘I don’t think it’s a rumour, Gwenna.’

Gwenna struggled hard to blank out what Toby had just told her. Why should she care? Why should the news hurt so much? And how could she be shocked when Angelo had slickly sidestepped an opportunity to promise fidelity? Nor could she understand her almost overwhelming urge to track Angelo down and confront him. Indeed the incomprehensible power of her reactions frankly appalled her.

‘You’re honest and loyal and you deserve better than him,’ Toby declared bracingly.

‘It’s not important. Do you think I don’t know that Angelo and I won’t last five minutes?’ Gwenna fixed a bright smile on her mouth, but her facial muscles felt as if they were set in solid cement. ‘But, hey, I’m twenty-six and I felt it was time to take a few risks.’

But the gloss went off her evening at that point and she couldn’t recapture it. She loved talking to Toby and she found she would get lost in an interesting dialogue about his work, only to have enjoyment vanish when a stab of memory pierced her afresh. She couldn’t really think of anything but Angelo for longer than five minutes. Her imagination kept on flashing up horribly creative pictures of Angelo playing around with a group of dazzling women. Time and time again she rearranged her thoughts.

‘I’ll always be here for you,’ Toby swore earnestly, holding her hand. ‘Even if I’m abroad, you can call me any time.’

Across London, Angelo was working late. He couldn’t settle, though. He paced round his office and finally phoned Franco to find out exactly where Gwenna was. After all, she had spent the whole evening with her friend. An hour later, he strolled into the chill-out room of the same club and saw Gwenna standing with a rangy guy with floppy brown hair. Honey-blonde waves rippling down her back, she was simply dressed in jeans and a blue vest top. He was torn between satisfaction and annoyance; satisfaction that she hadn’t bothered dressing up for her male companion’s benefit and annoyance that she had totally ignored her vast new collection of designer clothes.

An unwilling smile playing round the edges of his handsome mouth, Angelo headed towards Gwenna and her escort. Franco was organising a table and drinks and the club manager was hovering at a respectful distance. In his readiness to play host, Angelo felt that he was being very civilised, very liberal. The dark mood that had powered him throughout the day was lifting, lightening. But as his attention lingered on Gwenna he caught the expression on her face as she glanced up at her companion. To Angelo’s razor-sharp gaze the loving warmth of that look was indisputable. His lean powerful frame went rigid. It was as if something vital tore asunder inside him and savage anger flooded into the dangerous gap that opened up.

Gwenna only realised that Angelo had arrived when he closed an arm round her to say flatly, ‘Time for you to say goodnight.’

She twisted round and met scorching dark eyes and her heart jumped as if someone had pushed a panic button somewhere inside her. Resentment and excitement melded into an indistinguishable whole. ‘How the heck did you know where I was?’

Angelo shifted her to one side and nodded to the older man, who was awaiting instruction nearby. ‘Franco will see you out to the limo. I want a word with your…friend in private, bellezza mia.’

The deliberate hesitation in his reference to Toby made Gwenna stiffen. Mental alarm bells ringing, she picked up on the current of primitive masculine aggression Angelo exuded. Consternation gripped her but she could not quite credit her suspicions. ‘Angelo, for goodness’ sake—’

‘Go with Franco.’

‘Don’t you dare touch Toby!’ Gwenna gasped in a panic, hastily stepping in front of the younger man, for the dark menace in Angelo’s lean, strong features was unmistakable.

A savage wave of anger gripped Angelo. That she should oppose him and put herself at risk in a ridiculous effort to protect another man only heightened his antagonism. But a glimpse of the apprehension in her expressive eyes snapped him straight back into control.

‘Come home with me, then,’ he breathed tautly.

‘I’m not going any place with you.’ Yet, Gwenna still couldn’t take her eyes off Angelo. There was a light in his brilliant, brooding dark eyes that held her tighter than any chain. Slowly her attention stretched to encompass the impressive whole. In tailored black chinos worn with a striped designer shirt open at the neck, he looked absolutely gorgeous. As usual she was full of wildly conflicting responses. When she had believed he was about to thump Toby she had been terrified and then madly relieved by his withdrawal. Now her anger escalated in direct response to the fierce emotions she had been suppressing all evening.

‘I’m Toby James…just by the way, in case anyone’s interested in knowing that,’ Toby remarked wryly, hovering and much intrigued by the proceedings.

‘I’m not,’ Angelo imparted without looking in his direction.

‘You’re just so rude…you’ve got no manners!’ Gwenna simply exploded into speech, startling herself with that outburst as much as she startled Angelo.

‘One model is infidelity, two models is greed, three is hopelessly decadent,’ Toby extended in obliging explanation for Angelo’s benefit.

Pale as milk, Gwenna refused to even look in Angelo’s direction. ‘Let’s dance, Toby.’

‘I think you should have this out with Angelo…only not here because we’re attracting attention,’ Toby spelt out in a suggestive whisper.

Still ignoring him, Angelo strode forward and closed a hand like a cast-iron anchor to Gwenna’s narrow wrist. Long, lean fingers smoothed her delicate bones, but when she tried to pull free he retained his hold. ‘We’re going.’

Furious pink flushed her cheeks. Had Toby not reminded her that she was in a public place she would have screeched back at Angelo like a harpy. But she was keen to leave and say what she wanted to say with dignity. Chin at a pugnacious angle, she bade Toby goodbye and told him she’d phone him.

‘Not if I’ve got anything to do with it,’ Angelo contradicted in a raw undertone as he walked her away. ‘You told me you were out with a friend. I believed you—’

‘I was out with a friend.’

‘Where did you get the idea that you could fool me?’ Angelo shot her a chilling glance. ‘Now I know you can’t be trusted, you’ll have company everywhere you go.’

‘I can’t believe you have the nerve to talk like this to me. You just ignored what Toby said about the models you were with last night!’

‘I have nothing to say on that score,’ Angelo delivered with the lethal hard-nosed cool that always silenced female pretensions.

‘But I’ve got plenty to say,’ Gwenna hissed on the pavement outside. ‘No, I’m not getting into your limo. I have no need of a lift—’

Angelo shot her a warning glance from glittering dark eyes. ‘I won’t tolerate a scene.’

‘Well, I’ll keep it short and sweet.’ Gwenna squared her narrow shoulders and wondered why Franco was staring at her as if she had suddenly sprouted angel wings and a halo. ‘Just two little words…it’s over.’

Sizzling gold burnished the darkness of Angelo’s sceptical gaze. ‘What the hell are you talking about? What’s over?’

‘Angelo Riccardi…you are dumped!’ Gwenna launched back at him full volume. ‘Do you want it in writing?’

Angelo slung her an exasperated appraisal. Espying a man with a camera moving rapidly in their direction, he scooped her up and settled her bodily into the rear seat of the limo. He slid in beside her. ‘We’ll discuss this in private.’

‘I thought you had nothing more to say on that score!’ Gwenna reminded him irately as the car moved off.

Angelo reached for her, knotting a lean brown hand into the honey-blonde luxuriance of her hair to hold her fast. Breathing in short, shallow spurts, she focused on him in surprise and a second later he claimed her luscious pink lips with ravenous driving heat. Her head swam and her body clenched tight. She quivered violently in the circle of his arms.

‘I hate you,’ she whispered fiercely.

Smouldering dark eyes held hers. ‘So? It’s far from over.’

Gwenna raked trembling fingers through her wildly tumbled hair and twisted away from him into the far corner of the seat. Shame over her surrender threatened to choke her and she fought it by keeping her next move on track. ‘I haven’t got time for this and we’ve got nothing to discuss. I have to pack and pick up Piglet.’

Angelo wanted to drag her down horizontal and finish what he had started. He was painfully aroused and hugely angry and the last thing he wanted to do was talk. That word, ‘pack’. It was another challenge. He couldn’t believe she was still doggedly fighting him. Men feared his anger, his power, his opposition. Women, however, loved his power, his arrogance, his strength. Why didn’t she? He remembered her in the sunlight outside that church: serene and beautiful and gentle. He filed that soothing image away again. She had a core of steel, he acknowledged grimly.

Only when Gwenna stalked out of the car and into a porticoed entrance did she appreciate that she was not where she had expected to be. She rounded on Angelo. ‘Whose house is this? Where have you brought me?’

‘My place.’ Angelo dismissed the hovering staff with a practised inclination of his handsome dark head and ensured that the front door was locked behind him. ‘You’re honoured. My house is a very private space.’

Refusing to be impressed by that claim or intimidated by the soaring ceiling and marble pillars, Gwenna flung her head back. ‘You’re wasting your breath. You’re a total bastard and you have no standards. I refuse to have anything more to do with you!’

‘And where were your standards tonight?’ Angelo derided, strolling forward, which had the immediate effect of making her back away. ‘You set up a meeting with the guy you love behind my back!’

The colour drained from Gwenna’s face leaving her eyes looking a more vivid blue than ever against her pallor. How had he guessed? How on earth had he worked that out?

‘When you agreed to be with me you never mentioned him,’ Angelo continued in attack mode. ‘How truthful was that?’

‘I didn’t think you’d be interested—’

‘Che idea! No, that’s the sort of information every man wants up front and you know it.’ Glittering dark eyes slashed over her with punitive force and she quailed. ‘And when you went sneaking off to see him tonight—’

‘I did not sneak!’ Anger surged to Gwenna’s aid again.

‘Yes, you did. It was much more than an innocent night out with a friend. How fair and decent was your behaviour?’

‘According to some newspaper, you were out on the town with three other women last night, so what’s your problem? You can’t expect me to be truthful and decent when you’re out cavorting with a bunch of tarts!’ Gwenna shot back at him full volume.

‘You’re getting hysterical—’

‘No, I’m giving you the truth you said you wanted and I don’t think you like it much!’

‘Our agreement doesn’t give you the right to question my every move or make new rules,’ Angelo delivered with icy conviction.

‘That’s okay. I don’t care.’ Gwenna walked past him, a tight, hard knot in her tummy, her eyes hot and gritty with stinging tears. ‘I’m not staying here one minute longer, though. No agreement is capable of forcing me to share a bed with a guy who sleeps around—’

‘Dio mio…I don’t sleep around!’

‘There’s no point you arguing with me. My mother may have chosen to accept a relationship of that sort—’

‘Accidenti—do you dare to compare me to your father?’ Angelo thundered in raw disbelief.

‘All I’m saying is that I won’t let any man make a fool of me like that. It’s me and only me, or you can’t have me at all and not all the money in the world is going to change that,’ Gwenna swore shakily, her slender back ramrod-straight. But she was doubly mortified by his palpable distaste for her father. ‘So, open that door and let me out.’

Angelo swore in vicious frustrated Italian.

‘You virtually kidnapped me. I didn’t agree to come here,’ she reminded him steadfastly, only the nervous clenching and unclenching of her slim hands by her sides betraying the level of her agitation. ‘Keeping me here against my will is just not on, Angelo.’

Lean, powerful face rigid, Angelo studied her with seething intensity. The silence pounded and stretched. And then he dragged in a slow deep breath and said grittily, ‘Nothing happened last night.’

Gwenna studied him fixedly. A flood of relief washed over her and left her dizzy and more hopelessly confused than ever. It was not only her pride and sense of decency that had been offended by his apparent faithlessness, she registered in dismay. She had been downright tormented by the idea that he might have been with someone else. She had been jealous, hurt and furious.

Lean, angular features taut, Angelo set his perfect white teeth together. ‘I didn’t touch them…the models…they were company. That’s all.’

‘Did the company stay clothed?’

‘Sì,’ Angelo ground out as if he were being tortured, and that was very much how he felt. Why wasn’t he throwing her out of his house and his life? But the closer she got to the door, the more urgent became his desire to haul her back from it. It was lust, total overpowering lust, and one taste of her had set up one very powerful craving. He loathed the very suspicion that he was no longer one hundred per cent in control, but need was overriding principle.

Gwenna realised that her legs were quaking beneath her. Slowly she turned back to face him fully. ‘Okay…do you think you can do faithful now?’ she asked with sincerity. ‘There’s no point me hanging around if you can’t.’

Angelo dug potent fists of naked outrage and aggression into the pockets of his well-cut trousers. He could not believe what she was doing to him. What did it take to satisfy her? She was as persistent as water dripping on stone. Plain questions left no room for prevarication. He felt like a wild bear being chained up and forced to learn demeaning tricks. ‘Per meraviglia—’

‘Just yes or no will do,’ she whispered in helpful interruption.

Stubborn jaw line set at a most forbidding slant, Angelo was set on categorical resistance when he first rested his hard gaze on her. He did not respond to demands. He guarded his freedom. But with her honey-blonde curls tangled by his fingers and her pink pouting mouth slightly puffy from the imprint of his, she made a picture capable of enticing him over a cliff edge. She looked impossibly sexy. Later he did not recall the moment when he decided to surrender. ‘Sì…yes.’ He closed the distance between them in two graceful strides and closed his hands over hers. ‘You’ll stay?’

Unprepared for the immediacy of that demand, Gwenna blinked and mumbled, ‘But—’

‘But nothing, bellezza mia. I’ve agreed. I’ve given you what you want.’

With that resolute reminder, Angelo angled her head back and drew her close before she could think up any further refinements. He let his provocative mouth glide down the extended length of her neck. A sensation like hot wires tightening sent a frisson of delicious heat darting through her pelvis and she shivered and moaned. He pushed open a door into a dimly lit room and pressed her back against the wall. The heavy pressure of his lean, hard, muscular body against hers sparked a tantalising tingle of delicious warmth and awareness in her erogenous zones. In the midst of an exchange of hot, driving kisses, she found herself pushing back against him, maddeningly conscious of the engorged sensitivity of her breasts and the hollow ache stirring between her thighs. She squirmed against him, her fingers roving over his broad shoulders, delving into his black hair and finally forcing a path between their bodies to rip at the buttons of his shirt.

With a roughened laugh of satisfaction, Angelo lifted his head and let his hand close over the pouting curve of her breasts, teasing at the prominent peaks. The barrier set up by her clothes impelled a low moan of frustration from her. She wanted to touch him so badly she could hardly bear it and splayed her fingers across his hard, flat stomach, revelling in the feel of his warm bare skin.

‘Don’t do that,’ Angelo groaned, pushing away her hand and lifting her into abrasive connection with his fierce erection. He crushed her full, soft lips below his and plundered the damp interior of her mouth with an explicit sensual force that left her trembling.

‘Angelo—’

‘Later…all that you want but not now, cara,’ he growled, hauling her up into his arms and tipping her down onto the arm of a sofa to yank at the zip on her jeans and wrench them off with more impatience than cool.

She tumbled back into the cushions, passion-glazed china-blue eyes locked to him in surprise as he stripped her of her jeans and her panties just at the point when she had naively assumed he would take her upstairs. Her cheeks flamed red as fire but her entire body was hot and throbbing and desperately on edge and she made no complaint. Indeed she locked her arms round his neck for support while he discovered the moist, soft welcome between her thighs. With a guttural sound of uninhibited masculine pleasure, he buried himself to the hilt inside her.

Her back arching at the shockingly erotic impact of his entrance, Gwenna cried out. Smouldering tawny eyes welded to her, Angelo withdrew, slowly rotated his hips and then slammed back into her. Pleasure exploded along her nerve-endings in a blinding wave. She lost any sense of time, all ability to reason. Wicked excitement controlled her. He pushed her vest and her bra out of his path and stroked the painfully beaded tips of her breasts until she was whimpering she knew not what. From that point there wasn’t a moment where she regained control or even came close. She was squirming, writhing, begging him not to stop, possessed by a greedy blaze of elemental need. At an intoxicating high of delirious pleasure she was gripped by wild convulsions of ecstatic release. Shell-shocked by the jolting, all-encompassing power of that experience, she clung to him in the aftermath.