‘Daddy, wouldn’t it be wonderful if something good could come out of that tragedy?’ She looked up at him appealingly, slightly ashamed of herself for using such feminine wiles on her father—he never had been able to resist the appeal in her violet-coloured eyes—but ultimately knowing it was for the best.

Better that her father should voice his reservations about her relationship with Cesare now, and have those reservations allayed, than he should learn the real reason she was seeing the other man and then absolutely refuse to let her comply with Cesare’s demands.

‘Well, yes, of course it would …’ Charles acknowledged distractedly. ‘But I wrote to the man after the accident, you know. The letter came back inside another envelope a week later—ripped into four pieces!’ He grimaced. ‘I had the distinct feeling he would rather have plunged a knife into my throat!’ he added with a shudder.

So, Cesare had received her father’s letter of condolence, and had obviously read it—before returning it in a way that could only be perceived as a threat.

No wonder her father had warned her to stay away from Cesare!

She gave a rueful smile. ‘Cesare can be a little … dramatic, can’t he?’ She forced the sound of affection into her voice. ‘It’s all that Latin blood,’ she continued brightly. ‘But I can assure you that he’s no longer angry about what happened.’

Her father looked sceptical. ‘Are you absolutely sure about that?’

‘Positive.’ She beamed reassuringly, putting her cup down to stand up and give him a hug. ‘Now, take that frown off your face and be happy for me. I’m hoping to introduce Cesare to you as your future son-in-law some day soon!’ she told him gaily.

‘You’re going to marry the man?’ her father said disbelievingly.

‘If he asks me.’ Robin nodded. ‘And I think he will.’

‘But you said you were never going to marry again! That no man would want you because you can’t give him children—though I’ve never believed that,’ he told her firmly.

‘But that’s the wonderful thing about Cesare,’ Robin came back brightly. ‘He already has a male heir to inherit, so it isn’t going to matter that I can’t give him children of his own,’ she dismissed, not inclined to get into a discussion of exactly who Cesare’s heir was.

In fact, it might be better if she changed the subject altogether! ‘Keep your fingers crossed for me, hmm, Daddy?’ she encouraged happily.

Her father still looked as if he would prefer to lock her in her bedroom and keep her there until Cesare Gambrelli had disappeared from London altogether. But, as he really wasn’t about to do that, he had no choice but to accept what she told him.

‘Just take care, Robin?’ he said gruffly, and he laid his hand on her cheek affectionately. ‘I’m not sure I altogether trust Gambrelli’s motives.’

‘Don’t be silly.’ She smiled confidently. ‘And of course I’ll be careful,’ she assured him, feeling her heart aching at the deception she was practicing on her father, but knowing it would ache even more if he were to discover the truth and forbid her to marry Cesare, and so force Cesare into carrying out his threat against Ingram Publishing.

No, it was much better this way, she reassured herself.

She had no intention of showing Cesare any of that compliance when she met him at Gregori’s restaurant later that evening, as they had arranged during a very brief telephone call earlier in the day. Had no intention of making this any easier for Cesare than she already had with her response to him the previous evening.

‘Did you sleep well last night?’ Cesare prompted tersely, once the ordering of champagne and food was of the way.

‘Very, thank you,’ she came back briskly. ‘You?’

Little wildcat, Cesare fumed inwardly. He knew damn well she only had to look at him to see the dark shadows beneath his eyes and the lines of strain beside his nose and mouth and know that he hadn’t slept. At all. Instead he had prowled his hotel suite until the early hours of this morning, going down to the gym when it opened at six o’clock to work off some of his excess energy, if not his sexual frustration, on the rowing machine for an hour.

Robin, on the other hand, looked fresh and alert this evening; the deep purple dress she wore was the same colour as her eyes, her hair hung loose about her shoulders, and she had huge gold hoops in her earlobes, her deep peach lip gloss silkily inviting on those sensually pouting lips.

An invitation that made Cesare want to wipe everything from the table between them, lay Robin upon its surface, and bury himself deep inside her!

‘Do not play with me, Robin,’ he warned icily. ‘I am not in the mood for games.’

‘Dear me—sexual frustration hasn’t improved your demeanour, has it?’ she saucily pointed out, before turning to give the wine waiter a glowing smile as he poured some champagne into a glass for Cesare to taste.

Cesare took a sip of the wine before placing the glass back on the table. ‘It is corked,’ he said coldly. ‘Bring me a sixty-three. Chilled to the correct temperature this time.’

‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’ The startled wine waiter grabbed the bottle and two glasses and hastily back away.

‘That wasn’t kind,’ Robin reproved softly once they were alone.

His eyes glittered darkly as he scowled across the table at her. ‘I thought we were both agreed that I am not a kind man.’

Robin didn’t remember them ever agreeing on that, but Cesare certainly hadn’t been very polite to the wine waiter. The poor man was probably a gibbering wreck in his wine cellar at this moment, as he desperately checked the temperature of the second bottle of champagne before serving it!

‘I will leave him a large tip at the end of the meal, if that will make you feel better, Robin,’ Cesare compromised.

‘Well, no, it isn’t really a question of making me feel better, now, is it?’ she reasoned lightly, very aware of the fine edge to Cesare’s control. ‘I’m not the one you were rude to.’

‘I was not rude—’ He broke off as the man once again appeared beside their table, sighing deeply at his flustered removal of the champagne cork. ‘It is not your fault that the previous bottle of wine was … unacceptable,’ he assured the waiter smoothly, very aware that there had been nothing wrong with the first bottle of champagne at all, that he had only verbally bit out at the other man because Robin had smiled at him so warmly.

Her smiles, and everything else about her, belonged to him!

Not that she had given many smiles in his direction, but Cesare found he deeply resented her bestowing her good humour on anyone else, either.

He had never been possessive where his lovers were concerned. His previous relationships had always been brief, never lasting longer than a month or two, and at the first sign of any serious intent on the woman’s behalf he would end the affair and move on.

This slight possessiveness he felt where Robin was concerned had to be because she was to be his wife, and as such he would require exclusivity, he assured himself.

‘There, now.’ Robin smiled at him mischievously once the wine waiter had left their table, the bottle of wine completely satisfactory this time. ‘That didn’t hurt too much, did it?’

‘I did not apologise because you thought that I should,’ he told her haughtily. ‘I merely realised I was not … polite to him earlier,’ he accepted curtly.

No, he hadn’t been, Robin acknowledged—but she doubted that too many other people had ever told this man when he was being impolite, let alone reproved him for it as she had.

She sat back as their first course was placed on the table—pâté for Cesare, smoked salmon for herself—very aware that several other women in the restaurant had looked at Cesare admiringly when they’d arrived together a short time ago, and that several of those women were still eyeing him covetously.

He did look rather tall, dark, and handsome tonight, she allowed ruefully, with that overlong dark hair curling silkily onto the collar of the pale grey shirt he wore beneath a charcoal grey suit. His dark good looks and those dark brown eyes were riveting, to say the least, and the expert tailoring of his suit showed his wide shoulders, tapered waist and thighs to their advantage.

Something that at least half a dozen other women in the restaurant seemed just as aware of!

‘This marriage you’re proposing between the two of us, Cesar—’ she kept her gaze lowered on her smoked salmon ‘—is it to be an exclusive relationship? Or are you expecting me to ignore the odd mistress or ten?’ She looked up at him challengingly as she said the last.

Cesare had been in the process of eating some of his toast and pâté, but he put it back down on his plate as he frowned across at her. ‘Would it bother you if I was?’ he probed softly.

She pulled a face. ‘No one likes to be made to look a fool. I just thought it might be better if I was aware of the … arrangement beforehand, that’s all.’

No, it was not all, Cesare reflected darkly. If he were to take mistresses during their marriage, then no doubt Robin would consider she had the same freedom to take a lover, or lovers. But, as he had never shared a lover, neither did he intend sharing his wife.

‘There will be no mistresses, Robin,’ he vowed. ‘I have no idea why you should think there would be when I will have a perfectly desirable wife waiting for me at home. Now, do you think we could eat our meal this evening without the danger of the indigestion I am sure both of us suffered yesterday?’ he added, before she could come back at him with any of her clever replies.

Robin raised blonde mocking brows. ‘I’ve already told you—I slept perfectly well last night.’

Cesare glared at her frustratedly for several long seconds before leaning forward across the table to easily hold her startled gaze with his. ‘Perhaps I should warn you that at this moment this tabletop is looking very tempting as a place to make love to you!’ he hissed between gritted teeth.

Those purple eyes remained locked with his for several long, expectant seconds, like a deer caught in the headlights of a car, and the sexual tension between them was so strong Cesare felt as if he could almost reach out and touch it.

‘Good—I see that we understand each other.’ He finally nodded his satisfaction at her silence, his teeth showing very white as he smiled. ‘Now, could we eat our food? Please?’ he requested dryly, as he remembered her reaction to anything she construed as an instruction on his part.

Robin’s hand shook slightly as she picked up her fork and began to eat her smoked salmon, not even tasting its delicacy as she recognised the sexual awareness that was once again singing through her veins.

She had never been so aware of anyone in her life as she was Cesare, and she wondered what it meant.

If it meant anything!

She could just be one of those frustrated women who suffered from sexual starvation at the end of their marriage. Especially as she knew now exactly what a wonderfully satisfying lover Cesare was …

‘I spoke to my father about you this morning,’ she ventured, once they had eaten their first course and the plates had been taken away.

Cesare raised dark brows. ‘In what way?’ he prompted guardedly.

She grimaced. ‘I told him that you had ravished me last night and now I had to marry you! In what way do you think I spoke to him about you, Cesare?’ She sighed her impatience with his suspicion.

He shrugged wide shoulders. ‘You could have decided to tell him of my … intentions towards Ingram Publishing.’

‘Hardly likely, after all the trouble I’ve already gone to to keep it from him—’

‘Trouble?’ Cesare repeated in a dangerously quiet voice.

Robin’s cheeks flushed uncomfortably, and she knew he had to be referring to the time she had wantonly spent in his arms yesterday evening. ‘I merely told my father that we have been seeing each other since the two of us were introduced last weekend,’ she snapped. ‘And that when—if—you propose to me, I intend accepting.’

Cesare gave a humourless smile. ‘And how did Charles take to the possibility of having me as a son-in-law?’

‘Badly.’ Robin didn’t even attempt to prevaricate. ‘But he’ll come round,’ she added confidently.

‘I admire your optimism,’ Cesare drawled.

It was impossible not to admire this woman, Cesare acknowledged. She certainly hadn’t backed off from his threats, and now she had opened the subject of their relationship with her father too. Which he appreciated could not have been easy.

‘Perhaps if you hadn’t sent his letter of condolence back quite so—aggressively?’ she reminded him.

Cesare’s mouth tightened. ‘My sister had been dead a matter of months; I was not feeling … kindly disposed towards anyone, let alone a member of the Ingram family.’

In fact he had felt murderous at the time. Carla had gone for ever, and Marco had been left completely parentless—although Cesare still hadn’t given up on finding the man who had deserted Carla when she’d most needed his support; he had a private investigator looking into exactly who had been his sister’s lover fifteen months ago. Because he would find Marco’s father, and when he did—

‘My father—both of us—we were suffering too,’ Robin reminded him huskily.

Yes, he could see that now. Cesare realised that Robin and her father had still loved the reprobate that Simon Ingram had become, that they had felt his death as keenly as he had felt Carla’s.

But that realisation changed nothing.

Made absolutely no difference to his own plans to make Robin his wife.

In fact, Cesare was even more determined on that resolve since last night!

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘I’M STILL NOT absolutely convinced this is a good idea,’ Robin told Cesare later that evening, as the two of them went up to his hotel suite in the private lift.

He eyed her mockingly as he leant back nonchalantly on the other side of the lift. ‘Scared, Robin?’ he taunted.

‘Of you? No,’ she asserted, even as her fingers tightly gripped her evening bag. He wasn’t the one she was scared of—it was her own response to him that scared her. ‘I’m just not sure my father is ready for me to stay out all night, now that he will naturally assume I’m with you.’

‘You are twenty-seven years old—’

‘But I’m living in my father’s house at the moment,’ she returned swiftly.

Cesare shrugged, standing back to let her vacate the lift first once it had stopped at the penthouse floor. ‘You still have time to change your mind.’

Yes, she did, not having made the phone call to her father yet to tell him she wouldn’t be back tonight.

But, despite her uncertainty about exactly where in this spacious hotel suite Cesare would expect her to sleep—or not, as the case might be—Robin knew that she didn’t want to change her mind.

Her uncertainty about Cesare’s intentions apart, she just might see Marco again, might have the chance to hold him again as she had been aching to do since meeting him yesterday.

‘If it makes you feel better, Robin, I do not consider it … appropriate for us to share a bedroom tonight,’ Cesare rasped, impatient at her pondering silence. ‘Marco’s nursemaid is obviously also in residence, and as I intend for the two of us to be married. It is not appropriate,’ he repeated hardly. ‘And it is not flattering to me as a lover for you to look so relieved at the thought of not sharing my bed,’ he finished disgustedly.

Had she looked relieved? Robin wondered. Maybe. But not for the reason Cesare obviously thought; it just somehow seemed completely unacceptable that she responded so wantonly to a man who was forcing her into marrying him by threatening her family.

‘I was merely concerned that you might not benefit from missing another night’s sleep,’ she told him with a saccharine-sweet smile.

Cesare eyed her admiringly, not fooled for a moment by her insincerity. ‘A lot can happen before bedtime, Robin,’ he pointed out, rewarded by the delicate blush that instantly coloured her cheeks. ‘I will pour us both a glass of brandy while you call your father,’ he told her as he strode into the sitting room, deliberately giving Robin the privacy to make her call.

If he were Robin’s father—which he was not, thank goodness!—then he would have his concerns about her apparent choice of lover too.

Robin was frowning when she walked through to the sitting room several minutes later. ‘I spoke to the butler,’ she explained as she took her glass of brandy from Cesare. ‘He said my father seemed rather weary this evening and had retired early,’ she explained distractedly.

‘You think there is reason for concern?’ Cesare frowned.

Robin shook off her feelings of despondency to look up at him angrily. ‘Don’t pretend that you actually care, Cesare!’ she challenged. ‘Not when only yesterday you were quite prepared to ruin my father’s publishing company and probably kill him in the process!’ she reminded him accusingly.

Cesare’s expression darkened, a frown between those almost black eyes, his mouth a thin, disapproving line. ‘Must I remind you that I am not the one responsible for your father’s current ill health?’ he responded.

No, Robin acknowledged heavily; that had been caused by her father’s worry over Simon’s obsession with gambling, followed by his death. Although possibly her own failed marriage and then her divorce hadn’t helped the situation.

Whatever the reason, her father was still obviously under a lot of strain—which only seemed to confirm her decision to keep Cesare’s plans for Ingram Publishing from him.

She took a reviving swallow of her brandy before answering, ‘I’ve been trying to think of a way to return the shares of Ingram Publishing to my father—after we’re married, of course—without his ever becoming aware that they had gone out of the family’s possession—’

‘Do not trouble yourself, Robin,’ Cesare cut in arrogantly.

‘But I do trouble myself, Cesare,’ she retorted. ‘It will defeat the whole object of my … of my decision to marry you, if my father were ever to realise Simon had gambled his shares away.’

‘Of your sacrifice, I am sure you meant to say,’ Cesare drawled derisively.

‘Don’t attempt to put words into my mouth, Cesare!’ Robin threw back, her eyes flashing deeply purple. ‘If I had meant to say sacrifice, then I would have done so, I can assure you!’

Yes, he was sure that she would, Cesare noted. Robin’s frankness was one of the qualities he most admired about her.

‘The significant part of your previous statement concerns the fact that your father might realise,’ Cesare told her dryly. ‘But there is absolutely no reason why he should,’ he assured her. ‘Simon sold the shares to maintain his gambling obsession, I bought the shares from the casino owner, who happens to be an acquaintance, through my broker—’

‘How convenient!’ Robin couldn’t resist her sarcastic rejoinder.

Cesare’s eyes darkened warningly. ‘I bought them,’ he repeated evenly. ‘On our wedding day they will be gifted back to you. At which time you are perfectly at liberty to destroy all evidence of them ever having been out of family ownership,’ he completed with finality.

‘You really do have all of this worked out, don’t you, Cesare?’ Robin observed.

Not all of it, no—Cesare knew that he certainly had not been prepared for Robin Ingram, nor the desire he felt to make love to her every time he was with her.

As he did now!

‘Perhaps it is time we went to our respective bedrooms,’ he bit out tersely. ‘I have several business meetings to attend in the morning, and I need to read some papers tonight before going to sleep.’

Robin was surprised at the abruptness with which Cesare was bringing an end to the evening. She had been prepared for—had expected—a repeat of last night’s lovemaking before the two of them parted.

Was she just a little disappointed that Cesare felt no such inclination?

Of course she wasn’t!

Was she?

Well … maybe a little, she conceded reluctantly, as she placed her empty brandy glass firmly down on the coffee table. Which was pretty stupid of her. This wasn’t a love affair; she was being forced to accept Cesare’s marriage proposal!

‘Which bedroom would you like me to use?’ she prompted tartly.

His mouth twisted wryly. ‘I would suggest the one that adjoins my own, but I accept that might be misconstrued too!’

By whom? Herself? Or Marco’s nursemaid?

Not that it mattered. The truth was that Robin was the one in danger of spending a sleepless night this time, as she imagined a naked Cesare in the bedroom along the hallway from her own—meaning she would probably be feeling as irritable tomorrow morning as he had this evening!

‘A chaste kiss goodnight is permissible, however,’ Cesare murmured mockingly as he watched the play of emotions on Robin’s face.

The unattainable Robin Ingram most definitely wanted him physically!

He gave a satisfied smile, his own disappointment no longer as uncomfortable now that he knew Robin would be in the bedroom along the hallway from his own tonight, suffering the same sense of deflation.

‘A chaste kiss goodnight!’ she echoed. ‘No, thanks. I think I’ll pass,’ she said. ‘If you’ll just tell me which bedroom I’m to use, I’m sure I can find my own way.’

‘Do not be childish, Robin,’ Cesare chided softly as he crossed the room to her side.

Her eyes sparkled angrily as she returned, ‘I said I’ll pass on the chaste kiss, thanks!’

‘I was referring to the fact that you have pulled me up about the politeness of showing a guest to her bedroom, not your reaction to a chaste goodnight kiss,’ Cesare told her, his rebuke rewarded by the flush of embarrassment that coloured Robin’s cheeks.

‘A guest, Cesare?’ she repeated unbelievingly. ‘I would hardly call myself that.’

‘Nevertheless, for tonight that is exactly what you are,’ he insisted tautly.

‘Fine,’ she accepted tersely.

It was not fine. It was far from fine. But it was all that Cesare could do for this evening.

Marco’s nursemaid, Catriona, who came from their native Sicily, had been with Carla from the day of Marco’s birth. As Cesare expected one day to take Robin and Marco back to Sicily, if only for a visit, he considered that his wife’s reputation should be unsullied by any gossip which might take place between Catriona and her family. His sharing his bedroom with Robin before they were married, even for the night, was definitely not acceptable.

‘The goodnight kiss does not have to be completely chaste.’ Cesare offered throatily, standing very close to Robin once he had shown her to one of the four bedrooms in the suite—his room, Catriona’s and Marco’s nursery taking up the other three.

Robin’s lids narrowed as she looked up at him, slightly unnerved by his proximity, able to feel the warmth of his body so close to hers, the smell of his aftershave tantalising her senses. ‘Either a kiss is chaste or it isn’t, Cesare,’ she replied. ‘I really don’t think there can be degrees of chastity!’

His mouth twisted ruefully. ‘Perhaps I was a little hasty earlier …?’

Robin felt her earlier bad temper evaporating as she saw the way Cesare’s eyes had darkened to black, his lids slightly lowered as that gaze locked hungrily on her slightly parted lips.

He really had been serious about the necessity of not scandalising Marco’s nursemaid by the two of them sleeping together tonight! And she had thought he was just paying her back for his own feelings of frustration the night before.

‘No, you were perfectly correct, Cesare,’ she told him. ‘It really wouldn’t be appropriate for us to sleep together.’

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