Taken for Revenge: Bedded for Revenge / Bought by a Billionaire / The Bejewelled Bride

He had known Maceo since they were both five—when their two very different worlds had collided at a weekly judo class. Maceo had won a scholarship to study it, and it had been one of Cesare’s many afterschool activities, designed to keep him out of the house.

Maceo had risen from the slums and had had to claw his way up from the very bottom—perhaps that was what had helped give him his unique talent for seeing behind the masks that people presented. He had photographed models and princesses, queens and criminals—and then grown bored with it.

With the money he had earned, Maceo had bought an ailing fashion magazine and discovered that he had a talent for breathing new life into media ventures. These days he owned a TV station, several more magazines, and was proprietor of one of Italy’s top-selling newspapers. He rarely took photos—only when the fancy took him. This favour to Cesare had amused him and been gladly given—so why the hell was Cesare now wishing that he had gone the more conventional route and employed someone that the ad agency had recommended?

And why was he feeling jealous of Maceo when Sorcha was a woman he was merely having sex with in order to finally get her out of his system?

Maceo smiled at her. ‘You are ready, bellezza?’

Sorcha nodded—even though her heart was racing with nerves—feeling like a lamb headed for the slaughterhouse as she stood in front of the charismatic photographer. ‘Ready as I’ll ever be,’ she gulped.

‘Then come over here. Just here—you see? Just ignore the stylist—she paints the tomato with oil to make it look shiny. Relax, Sorcha. Just relax. Si, that is better. Now, put your finger in your mouth. Yes. That is perfect. Ah, si! You are perfect. Bellezza!’

A nerve flickered in Cesare’s cheek.

He knew that in order to get the very best out of a subject Maceo was photographing it was necessary for the subject to relax. So why shouldn’t Maceo call Sorcha beautiful, when that was nothing but the truth?

And why the hell was it eating him up?

Sorcha could feel her heart hammering. This was a nightmare—especially with Cesare standing in the shadows of the room, his silhouette looking so darkly forbidding. All she could see was the glitter of his eyes, but she could sense his disapproval as surely as if it were radiating in waves from his hard, lean body. And who was the one who had set this whole thing up?

Defiantly, she licked her lips and pouted.

‘Now, look at me as you would look at your lover,’ demanded Maceo.

This was harder, and stupidly Sorcha blushed. Was that because her lover was standing on the other side of the room, glowering at her? She heard a door slam, and when Sorcha looked up Cesare had gone.

‘No, cara,’ Maceo urged, as he followed the direction of her gaze. ‘Not that look. Not the shy in-love smile, but the grown-up foxy smile. The look of a confident woman. Comfortable in her own skin—knowing that she gives pleasure as well as receives it.’

In a way it was better that Cesare had gone, because at least now Sorcha felt more able to deliver—if only to prove to herself and to Maceo that his assessment had been completely wrong. It had not been a shy in-love smile at all. Not at all. Because she wasn’t in love with anyone.

She put her finger into her mouth, widened her eyes at the camera, and thought of Cesare, naked and luminous.

‘Perfetto!’ applauded Maceo.

She tilted her head coquettishly, looking as if she had just been told a delicious secret as she remembered the things he had whispered last night as he had thrust long and hard and deep inside her.

‘Meravigliosa!’ murmured Maceo.

Sorcha really started getting into it—tossing her head like a filly and meeting Maceo’s enigmatic black eyes.

‘Now you see why the models toss their heads …so?’ he observed wryly.

He shot roll after roll of film, and by the time he’d finished Sorcha felt exhausted. She picked up her bag and jacket. Maybe modelling wasn’t quite as easy as it appeared on the surface.

‘Ah, there is Cesare,’ murmured Maceo sardonically as they walked out into the reception area. ‘With the sunny smile.’

Cesare was pacing the floor like a dark, caged tiger. He barely flicked her a glance, but directed his attention to Maceo.

‘What the hell was that all about?’ he questioned in Italian.

‘Could you be a little more specific?’ answered Maceo, in the same language.

‘I asked you to take her photograph—not to try it on!’

‘If I had been trying it on, then she’d be leaving with me,’ boasted Maceo. ‘If you can’t hang on to your women, di Arcangelo—then don’t take it out on me.’

The two men stood glaring at one another, and Sorcha had had quite enough. She marched out of the foyer and left them to it. Let Cesare travel back on his own—she would get the train!

She was halfway down Marylebone High Street when she heard a distinctive voice calling out her name and the sound of footsteps behind her. When she turned round, there was Cesare—his dark face a picture of barely repressed rage.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he demanded.

‘To the station! I wasn’t going to hang around while you and Maceo had your Italian conversation class—I’d already had an exhausting morning.’

His mouth twisted. ‘Yes, I could see that.’

The undertone of accusation in his voice was unmistakable. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Do you think I am blind, Sorcha?’ he asked hotly. ‘I saw what was going on between you and Maceo.’

‘Going on?’ she choked. ‘You mean the flirting, which I assume he does as automatically as breathing with every woman he photographs?’

‘I know what kind of a man he is!’ he declared. ‘And the reputation he has with women. He does not know that there is anything between us, so why wouldn’t he make a pass at you?’

‘But there is nothing between us!’ she flared. And didn’t part of her just long for him to reject that assumption?

But Cesare didn’t seem remotely interested in defining relationships—he was not letting up on the subject which interested him far more. ‘You are saying that you didn’t find him attractive?’

Sorcha sighed. This was difficult—but keeping her own emotions in check to lessen the risk of getting hurt did not mean that she couldn’t be in some way honest about the way she felt.

‘Under different circumstances, I suppose I might have done,’ she said carefully.

His eyes narrowed. ‘What kind of circumstances?’

If she had been a child, she would have stamped her foot. ‘Oh, you can be so dense, Cesare! I thought I’d made it clear to you that just because I wasn’t a virgin when I slept with you it doesn’t necessarily follow that no man is safe from my advances! I don’t deal with a multitude of partners at the same time.’ She stared at him. ‘Do you?’

‘No.’ There was a long silence while he stared at her, and suddenly some of the tension left him. Some, but not all. ‘Am I going crazy?’ he questioned softly.

‘I don’t know—are you?’

‘Yes,’ he groaned as he pulled her into his arms. He wanted to tell her that it wasn’t supposed to be like this—he had thought he was going along in a straight line, yet he was encountering twists and turns all along the way.

‘I find myself wanting to kiss green-eyed women in the middle of a busy street,’ he murmured.

‘Cesare—you can’t.’

‘Can’t I?’

‘Think of your reputation.’

‘What about yours?’

Sorcha couldn’t remember the last time she had been kissed in public. It didn’t last long, and it wasn’t one of those awful kisses which made other people feel sick—with the couple looking as if they were enjoying a threecourse meal.

No, it was brief and hard and intense—in effect, it was a powerful stamp and a demonstration of Cesare’s mastery, and when she drew back from it she was breathless, oblivious to the red double-decker bus which trundled by and the people who were turning to look at them.

‘Now what?’ she questioned.

‘Let’s find a hotel,’ he said unsteadily.

CHAPTER EIGHT

SUNLIGHT streamed in through the windows and Sorcha sleepily opened her eyes and yawned. She had often wondered what kind of people spent the afternoon in bed in a hotel, and now she had discovered the answer.

People like her.

She glanced at the figure in the bed beside her. Cesare was sleeping, his magnificent body stretched out like an artist’s model, the olive skin glowing against the rumpled tangle of white sheets. But while his muscular body was hard and lean, his face in repose had a curious softness about it. Thick black lashes formed two shadowy arcs, and the luscious mouth was curved into a sensual little pout.

How many beds had he lain in like this? she wondered. Had he spent anonymous afternoons in luxury hotels in all the major cities around the world? For this was a very different venue from the Urlin Arms, with its faded carpets and temperamental staff. Here the drapes were pure lined silk, the chandelier French, and the writing desk antique.

How many women? Did they all blur into one eager and giving body? In a year’s time would he have to frown to remember just where it was he had stayed with her?

There was a glint from between his half-closed eyes, and a hand reached out to rest with easy familiarity on her thigh. How well sex could mock real intimacy, thought Sorcha with a pang.

‘You look lost in thought,’ he murmured.

‘I was.’

‘Are you going to share it?’

What an emotive word share could be—did he know that? Did women leap on it like hungry little puppies because it hinted at something beyond the communion of bodies which had just taken place?

‘You won’t want to hear.’

‘Try me,’ he murmured, stretching his legs and making no attempt to hide his renewed stirring of desire.

‘I was wondering if you made a habit of this.’

‘This?’

There he was—already playing for time! ‘Having sex with women in anonymous hotel rooms.’

He studied her thoughtfully. ‘What do you think? That every time I visit a city I pick up a beautiful woman and take her to bed?’

‘Do you?’

He laughed. ‘Once—a long time ago—I went through a stage of doing exactly that.’ It had been when he had left her, when he had been hurting—not expecting to hurt, nor wanting to, as if he had a divine right to somehow be immune from the pain of relationships.

There had always been willing women—and at that time it had seemed that the supply of them was endless. It was almost as if his icy indifference had turned them on, providing them with the challenge that they might be the one to break through that cold heart to find the warmth of the man beneath. They never had, of course—and Cesare had turned away more than he had slept with. He had felt like a gorged child who had been given permission to spend the night in a sweetshop.

‘It sounds like every man’s idea of heaven,’ said Sorcha, hoping that her voice didn’t sound sour—because how he lived his life was his business, not hers.

‘It wasn’t,’ he said flatly. ‘Predictability is boring, and when something is so easy to get, it doesn’t have the same value.’

Sorcha went very still. ‘You didn’t have to fight very hard to get me into bed,’ she said in a small voice.

His voice was cool and mocking. ‘You don’t think so? This seduction actually started seven years ago—and, using those sums, I’d say that you were actually the hardest of all.’ Black eyes hardened, became watchful. ‘And what about you, Sorcha, since this seems to be true confession time?’

‘What do you want to know? Actual numbers, like in that film—where I go through my conquests one by one and make you laugh?’

Laugh? He winced, knowing that the fierce stab of jealousy which shot through him was unreasonable—but then, he had never been accused of being a reasonable man.

‘No,’ he grated, and, unfolding his big, lean body, he got out of bed. ‘Let’s have a drink.’

Had he suggested that to distance himself? Because the conversation had taken a distinctly confessional turn? She watched while he went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of champagne, efficiently disposing of foil and cork before handing her a fizzing glassful.

Sorcha sat up in bed, sipping at the cool champagne while Cesare climbed back in beside her, thinking that she really ought to be enjoying this moment. Imagine if she wrote about it in a postcard home. In bed, overlooking Regent’s Park. Fabulous sex. Fabulous man. Fabulous wine.

So why was there this terrible ache of emptiness inside her?

‘It wouldn’t take very long,’ she said.

Cesare frowned as he took a long draught—he who never drank in the middle of the day, but who suddenly wanted something to take the edge off his heightened senses. ‘What wouldn’t?’

‘To list my lovers.’

‘I don’t want to hear about them, Sorcha,’ he clipped out.

‘Him.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘What?’

‘Him, not them. Singular, not plural. Just one. Before you, that is.’ She wondered why she was bothering to defend herself—because that was really what it amounted to. Why his opinion should be so important to her. Was it just that she needed him to know that she had acted in an extraordinary way with him—or rather reacted? And didn’t she run the risk of looking rather pathetic—like someone who was setting out her stall, saying, Look how relatively untouched I am?

‘One?’ he repeated incredulously.

‘That surprises you?’

‘Of course it does. It isn’t many for a woman your age.’

‘I didn’t realise I was defying some kind of national average.’

‘Why did you tell me?’ he demanded suddenly.

‘Why do you think?’ She clutched her glass in two hands in case she spilled wine all over the bed. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you imagined that I did…well, what I did with you…with lots of men.’

There was a pause, and he knew that in light of her honesty he had to be honest in return. ‘I didn’t think that, Sorcha,’ he said slowly. ‘There was such a…’ He shrugged. ‘That kind of combustive sexual chemistry is rare, believe me—I know.’

He put his glass down, took hers from her hands and placed it beside his, and then drew her into his arms and down onto the bed.

His mouth was cool and tasted of wine, and his body was warm, and Sorcha felt a sudden and overwhelming wave of real yearning which transcended mere sexual desire. She kissed him back, long and deep, and then she rolled out from beneath him, kneeling beside him as she bent her tongue to his nipple.

‘Sorcha,’ he groaned. ‘What do you do to me?’

She let her tongue slide all the way down his belly, along the thin line of hair which arrowed towards where he was hard, and she licked him tentatively, so that he groaned again.

His hands tangled in the silk of her hair as she took him into her mouth, and never had he felt more helpless and vulnerable as she rocked her head up and down. He could feel his climax building and building, and part of him wanted to stop her, to take control away from her and to thrust all that pent-up desire deep into her body.

But it was too late.

She felt the shudder which began to convulse the powerful body, heard an expression of disbelief torn from his lips and closed her eyes as she tasted him. Afterwards he pulled her back up the bed and cradled her in his arms—and that did feel like real intimacy.

But she mustn’t do that—perhaps that was where she went wrong? Thinking that it was more than it was—as if some fantastic orgasm would suddenly give him a complete personality change and he’d start opening his heart to her. But it was in her nature to try, and she wanted him to let her share more than just his body.

She pulled at his shoulder, knowing that it was the wrong thing to do but unable to stop herself. As if she needed to have it written in giant letters for her to finally get the message that he wasn’t interested in anything deeper than this.

‘Cesare?’

He sighed, knowing just from the tone of her voice what was coming. ‘What?’

‘Why did you come back?’ She met his eyes as he turned back to face her. ‘Oh, I know that you’re friends with Rupert, and you wanted to do him a favour, and you’ll probably make lots of money—but why was it so important for you to seduce me?’

There was silence for a moment.

‘Because you were the best sex I never had.’ He smiled, but it was a cold and thoughtful smile. ‘For years the thought of what I had missed out on ate away at me like a disease, so I wanted to do this—no, I needed to—just to lay the ghost of what has haunted me ever since.’

There was a pause. ‘I see.’ Sorcha let her eyelids close so that he would not detect the wavering hurt which was making her eyes shimmer with tears. ‘And now you have.’

But that was the trouble. Cesare narrowed his eyes.

He hadn’t.

‘We’d better get dressed,’ he said abrasively. ‘I have a flight to catch.’

‘A flight?’ she echoed blankly.

‘I’m meeting Rupert—we’re flying up to the North. The new factory is about to go into production. Remember?’

‘Yes, of course.’ What an idiot he must think her—they had talked of nothing else for weeks. Yet business couldn’t have been further from her mind—all her thoughts were full of him, and it was time she pulled herself together. One day soon Cesare would be gone, and she did not need her career to be left in tatters as a consequence of his going.

She stared up at the ceiling. ‘It’s such a gamble,’ she moaned. ‘Starting production before you know whether the new campaign will be a success. What if we manufacture loads of extra bottles of sauce and nobody buys them?’

‘Life is a gamble, Sorcha—and sometimes you just have to go out on a limb and take a risk.’ He stroked his finger over her face. ‘I’ll only be gone a few days. Will you miss me?’

Sorcha began to get dressed without answering—because what did he expect? Adoring compliments or declarations of affection? How egotistical was that? Especially as he had been so brutally honest about what she meant to him.

She bit her lip.

It wasn’t the most glowing testament in the world, was it?

She was the best sex he’d never had.

CHAPTER NINE

‘THERE’S a journalist outside,’ said Rupert. ‘And he says he wants to speak to Sorcha.’

All eyes around the table looked at her. The boardroom was packed with accountants, operations managers and sales reps, but all Sorcha was aware of was the piercing black gaze which seemed to be stripping her bare—or was that simply wishful thinking on her part? Oh, but she had missed him.

Cesare had been away for weeks. He’d flown straight from the new factory over to the States, and then back to Italy for the centenary celebrations of one of the di Arcangelo department stores. He’d been in regular contact—but you never really knew what was going on behind the scenes when you dealt in phone calls and e-mails.

He had arrived back to discover that a lot of the press interest seemed to be focussed more on the fiery-haired model than on the product—which was every marketing man’s idea of a nightmare. He had only calmed down when he had seen the sales figures, which had gone through the roof.

Across the boardroom he met Sorcha’s green eyes with soft fire—because even the supremely confident Cesare had been unprepared for the ripple effect of his original idea.

Nobody could have predicted the outrageous success of his revamped advertising campaign. As Rupert had said, products hadn’t just been flying off the shelves—they had been leaving them in whole squadrons!

‘So, are you going to talk to this journalist, Sorcha?’ Cesare questioned, his voice underpinned with silken sarcasm. ‘Or perhaps we should think about hiring a PR person especially for you, who could cope with all the interview requests!’

‘There’s no need to make it sound like something I’ve done, when this whole campaign idea was your suggestion,’ she retorted. ‘If you start rubbishing it now, then it doesn’t really reflect well on your judgement, does it, Cesare?’

They glared at each other across the room. Had he thought that his absence might bring him immunity from desire? He wanted her, he realised. He still wanted her. He had missed her like crazy. Crazy. His scowl deepened. ‘So, are you going to talk to him?’

She looked around the table. ‘I’m happy to take advice on it.’

Rupert shrugged. ‘Well, you know what they say—there’s no such thing as bad publicity.’

‘It’s certainly been good for Maceo!’ piped up one of the secretaries, who had been completely smitten by the Italian photographer.

The campaign had given Maceo’s retrospective exhibition an extra boost of publicity. The photos he had taken of Sorcha were absolutely brilliant, causing one of the broadsheet newspapers to wonder why he had given up taking photos professionally.

‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about,’ said Sorcha, wishing that some of it might die down.

‘Are you being disingenuous?’ Cesare’s voice was withering as his gaze flickered over the giant poster of Sorcha sucking on a digit. ‘It looks like soft porn!’

‘Thanks!’ she snapped. ‘I can’t believe you just said that. You approved the original concept—remember?’

‘I was not expecting it to look like…like…!’ But that was not strictly true. He had known exactly what it would look like. He had underestimated the interest it would provoke, true—and he had also failed to take into account the fact that he would still be feeling this frustrating and pointless jealousy. Because none of this was working out as he had wanted.

He had planned to have cast her aside by now—instead of which, he had flown back hungry for more of her. And—damn it—he didn’t want to want her—not any more! Looking for something to focus his rage on, he looked again at the poster. ‘What was Maceo thinking of?’

‘Sales, presumably,’ she said sarcastically.

Now they faced one another.

‘The journalist is waiting, Sorcha,’ Rupert reminded her quietly.

Part of her wanted to go out and do an interview just to rile Cesare. But she knew that wouldn’t be the act of a mature person, and so she shook her head. ‘Well, I don’t want to talk to anyone. Rupes, would you mind referring them to our PR people? Say that my contribution to the campaign was a one-off and that I shan’t be doing any more photo-shoots?’

Rupert pulled a face. ‘Crikey—are you sure, sis? Don’t you want to capitalise on this?’

‘There’s nothing to capitalise on.’ Sorcha met the mockery in Cesare’s eyes and hesitated. She wanted to say how much she had given up to go to college—but wouldn’t that be a revelation too far, especially now, here, in front of all these people? And especially in front of him. But there were other ways of saying that her education had been both important and necessary to her.

‘I didn’t work hard at university to see my entire career culminating in being the face on the front of a sauce bottle.’

Black eyes burned into her.

‘Yeah,’ said Rupert, nodding. ‘And we kept that other photo for over fifty years—so there’s probably no need!’

‘Rupert!’ said Sorcha indignantly. ‘That wasn’t why I said it! It’s a bit much to have my magnanimous gesture thrown back in my face!’

But to her astonishment everyone started clapping, and even Cesare was giving a grim kind of smile—and, oh, why should that feel like a far greater achievement than quadrupling sales?

Because she had missed him like mad, in spite of all the things he’d said to her in bed that afternoon in the hotel? Because she couldn’t sleep at nights for thinking about him and he was still obsessing her waking hours, no matter how much she tried?