Penniless Virgin To Sicilian's Bride

‘I need your answer, Francesca. Yes or no.’

Frankie removed her hand from the neck of her blouse and scooted away from him, going behind her father’s desk to keep a barrier between them. ‘I need some time to think about this...’ She disguised a gulping swallow, her thoughts in a messy fishing line tangle of fear.

Married for a year to Gabriel Salvetti? She had hoped to marry one day a man who loved her. Like her father had loved her mother. The mother she had never met since she’d died the day Frankie and her twin brother were born. Roberto had been stillborn and she had always wondered if she was responsible for both their deaths. Her father had never loved another woman since her mother’s death. He had never remarried. He’d had the occasional relationship but no one had taken her mother’s place.

That was the sort of love she wanted from a man.

Frankie gripped the back of her father’s leather chair. ‘What sort of marriage are you envisaging?’ Her voice betrayed her with its faint note of trepidation.

His gaze flicked briefly to her mouth. ‘That would be entirely up to you.’

She frowned, something in her stomach toppling from a high shelf. Something lower in her body flickering. Flaring. Flaming. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It can be a paper marriage or a normal one. Your choice.’ His expression gave her no clue as to which one he wanted her to choose. A screen had come down over his face. And yet the atmosphere subtly changed as if an invisible third party had entered the room—mutual desire. It throbbed in the air like a current, back and forth between his gaze and hers. She felt it in her body, deep in her body—a flickering pulse that drew molten heat to her core.

Frankie sent the tip of her tongue out over her lips. ‘And if I were to choose a paper one...would you get your...erm...needs met elsewhere?’

‘No.’

His answer surprised her. He was a full-blooded man of thirty-two. He was in the prime of his life. He had a new lover every few weeks. He was always being photographed with a glamorous woman on his arm. ‘You’d remain celibate for a whole year?’ She couldn’t keep the incredulity out of her voice.

‘If you agree to a paper marriage, then that’s the deal.’ His eyes contained a hint of sardonic amusement. ‘But of course, I would expect you, too, to remain celibate.’

Frankie wondered if he knew she was still a virgin. But how could he know? It wasn’t something she brandished about. She was pretty sure her father hadn’t known about her lack of a love life, especially since she’d been based in London the last four years, teaching in a special needs school. She had been unlucky with dating. A bad experience in her late teens had made her wary of dating men she didn’t know. And the ones she knew, she didn’t want to date. Like most young women her age, she dreamed of falling in love, but another part of her shied away from getting that close to someone.

To allow someone to see who she really was—the girl who had carried a curse since birth. Her birthday was her mother and brother’s death day. If that wasn’t a curse, she didn’t know what was.

Frankie tightened her hold on the chair and fashioned her features into her trademark icy hauteur. ‘I suppose you think if I agree to marry you, then I won’t be able to help myself. That I’ll beg you to make love to me or something.’

His mouth tilted in a smile so sexy the backs of her knees tingled. ‘If so, I’d be happy to be of service.’

Frankie could feel her cheeks heating hot enough to steam the wallpaper off the walls. ‘I’m not in the habit of begging so don’t hold your breath. But I still don’t understand why you of all people would go to this amount of trouble and expense to rescue me from this situation.’

Gabriel picked up a paperweight off her father’s desk and passed it from one hand to the other, his gaze focused on the trapped dandelion clock inside the glass sphere. She had given it to her father a couple of years ago because it reminded her of how she felt. Her fragile core of sensitivity shielded from the outside world. Gabriel held the sphere still for a moment, his thumb rolling over the top like he was caressing a woman’s breast.

Her breast.

Frankie could actually feel her breast tingling. Damn the man for being so dangerously attractive. He could turn her on by remote. It was as if her body was tuned in to him. Tuned to his control and it was terrifying. Terrifying and yet...and yet...tempting.

He put the paperweight down again and met her gaze. ‘Your father was a good man, Francesca. He took a chance on me early in my career. Like most people, he had his misgivings about me. But I made sure his one-off offer of help wasn’t wasted.’ He looked down to straighten the paperwork on the desk, glancing back at her to continue. ‘Sure, he made a mess of things towards the end, but that was mostly due to his illness. I don’t want his memory tainted or destroyed by what happened in the last few months of his life.’

Frankie had always been a little jealous of his relationship with her father. She hadn’t been as close to her father as she would have liked but she mostly blamed herself. She was the one who had taken the love of his life away on the day she was born as well as his much longed for son and heir. It was hard to be close to someone who reminded you of what you had lost.

It was hard to be close to anyone when you carried such a horrible curse.

‘But if you were so chummy with my father, then why didn’t you come to his funeral?’

A flicker or something passed through his gaze. A flash of pain, a lightning strike of guilt. He pushed one of his hands through the ink-black thickness of his hair, his mouth set in a grim line. ‘I was unable to get there due to circumstances beyond my control.’

Frankie folded her arms like a starchy schoolmistress. ‘Did those circumstances involve a bikini-clad blonde bombshell?’

His eyebrows drew together in a frown. ‘No. They did not.’

‘Then what kept you away?’

The shutter came back down on his face. ‘Suffice it to say it was a crisis and I was the only person who could deal with it at that time.’

She didn’t know whether to believe him or not. She had been surprised, and yes, hurt not to see him at the funeral. He had only visited her father once in the last two months of his life and she hadn’t been there at the time. She’d been out picking up more incontinence pads for her father and by the time she got back, the nurse on duty told her about Gabriel’s brief visit. She wondered now if it had been deliberate. She hadn’t realised how much she’d wanted to see him at the funeral until he didn’t show. She couldn’t explain why it had disappointed her so much other than she had felt completely overwhelmed with making all the arrangements on her own. And it was hard not to think it was her fault her mother and her twin brother Roberto hadn’t been there to help her.

Frankie came out from behind the desk and went to stand in front of the windows that overlooked the parterre garden. She had spent most of her childhood playing in the gardens of the villa. It was her magical place, a place where she had exercised her imagination in order to make up for the absence of a mother and a sibling. She’d had a series of nannies and had never felt neglected in a physical sense. But emotionally she had felt isolated. Not necessarily unloved but not adored either.

She breathed out a long sigh and turned back to face Gabriel. ‘Can I have a couple of days to think about this...proposal of yours?’

‘I need your answer today. The press is sniffing around and I can’t hold them off for ever.’

Panic beat a tattoo behind her ribcage. Hurry. Stop. Hurry. Stop. Hurry. Stop. She had never been good at decision-making under pressure. Her thoughts fired off in all directions like a box of accidentally lit fireworks. Marriage was a big step. A monumental step that should not be entered lightly—not according to her values. But what else could she do? Other people would suffer if that money was not paid back soon. Her father had borrowed money from friends and associates and it would only take one of them to sell their story to the press for her father’s reputation to be permanently soiled.

But marrying Gabriel Salvetti?

Frankie covered her nose and mouth with her steepled hands, fighting to control her breathing. Everything was happening so fast. She didn’t have time to think. To measure the risks. To escape. The room began to shift around her. The walls closing in, the furniture dark and looming and oppressive. She needed to sit down before she fell down. She reached for the chair but it was like searching through vaporous fog...

Suddenly a firm hand came down on her left arm to steady her. ‘Are you okay?’ Gabriel’s deep voice was full of concern. ‘Breathe, cara.’ He took both her hands and led her to the chair. ‘Put your head down between your knees.’ He guided her with a gentle hand pressed to the back of her head. ‘That’s it. Good girl.’

Frankie took several breaths, trying not to notice how nice it felt to have Gabriel’s hand resting against her hair. A frisson of pleasure stole down from her scalp to her spine in a long streak of tickly warmth. He was standing so close to her she could feel the denim of his jeans through the silk sleeve of her top. And the potent heat of his muscled thigh. She couldn’t remember a time when she had been so close to a man. Well, she could but it wasn’t a time she wanted to recall in any detail.

But this was different.

Gabriel was different. He was respectful and caring in a way she had never expected him to be. His touch did strange things to her. Wicked things. Forbidden things. Unleashed thoughts and desires she couldn’t suppress even though she wanted to. They were racing through her mind, triggering wanton images of him and her with entangled limbs and mouths pressed together in a passionate kiss, their bodies straining, yearning to get even closer.

Gabriel crouched down in front of her, his hand taking one of hers. ‘Feeling better now?’ His espresso-black gaze meshed with hers, making her feel dizzy all over again. Dizzy with the need to feel his mouth on hers. She moistened her lips and watched as he followed the movement of her tongue. His eyes came back to hers and it was like a switch had been flicked.

The atmosphere tightened as if every stick of furniture in the room had taken a collective breath and held it. Held it. Held it...

Frankie glanced down at her pale hand encased in his. His fingers were dusted with dark masculine hair, the nails neat and square. She couldn’t stop thinking about his hands on her body, touching her, pleasuring her. Awakening her. She tried to suppress a shiver but didn’t quite manage it. ‘I’m okay... I just felt a little faint...’

Gabriel released her hand and straightened, briefly resting a hand on her shoulder. ‘I know my proposal must have come as a shock but I give you my word my motives are exactly as I’ve told you. There is no hidden agenda.’

Frankie couldn’t hold his gaze. She didn’t want him to see the naked need that was stirring in her body. A need she hadn’t been aware of until now. She looked down at her hands resting on her thighs. ‘Marriage seems a little extreme, though. I mean, what will we do after the year is up?’

‘Get a divorce or an annulment.’ He said it so casually as if it was as simple as ticking a box.

Frankie brought her gaze up to meet his. ‘But you don’t seem to be getting much out of the deal. You’re prepared to spend millions for what? To be known as my husband?’

He moved to where she had been standing a few minutes before. His back turned to her as he too looked at the view outside. After a moment, he turned to face her but the light from outside put his face in shadow so she couldn’t read his expression. ‘You read the papers, do you not? You must have heard of my father’s latest scandal?’ The hardened tone of his voice alerted her to the shame he must feel about the criminal behaviour of his family. ‘Drugs. The recent haul one of the biggest in the history of this country. Do you need me to go on?’

Frankie shook her head and bit her lip. ‘No. It must be awful for you.’

‘Damn right it’s awful.’ He moved to stand behind her father’s desk, his hands gripping the back of the chair as she had done earlier. ‘It’s been virtually impossible to run my business lately. Deals have been cancelled at short notice. Big deals. Deals I worked on for months. Every time I turn up to a board meeting I can feel the tension, the uneasiness. Your situation is awful too, but we can fix both with a short-term marriage. It’s not as if you’re marrying a stranger. I will not treat you with anything but the utmost respect. You have my word on that.’

Put like that, it sounded a perfect plan. The trouble was the devil was in the detail. Devilish details such as her growing awareness of him. The physical awareness she could feel even now. The faint prickle of her breasts every time his gaze skated over her figure. The tingle in her lips when his eyes rested on her mouth. The hollow burning ache between her thighs when she thought about him touching her there. Frankie crossed her legs in an effort to quell the sensation but, if anything, it made it worse. It made her more aware of the secret tingling urgings of her body. ‘But if we were to marry on paper, say, won’t people expect us to be affectionate with each other, at least in public if not in private?’

His gaze drifted to her mouth for a brief moment. But then he blinked and brought his eyes back to hers, his expression an unreadable mask. ‘We will have to touch on occasion but we can agree on what’s appropriate.’

‘You’re making it sound so...so clinical,’ Frankie said.

‘The best solutions to tricky problems are formed without emotion clouding judgement.’ He tapped his fingers on the back of the leather chair and added, ‘Which brings me to the number one rule I insist on.’

‘Rule?’

His eyes were as steady and determined as a marksman’s. ‘No falling in love with me.’

Frankie rocketed out of her chair as if it had burned her. ‘Me fall in love with you?’ She pointed her index finger at her chest and then at him. ‘What about you falling in love with me?’ This time she stabbed her index finger at him before pointing it back at herself. ‘Works both ways, buddy.’

His jaw was set in an intractable line, his gaze suddenly cold and marble-hard. ‘It’s highly unlikely. No offence.’

Frankie gave a snort of laughter even though her ego was suffering a major crisis. A debilitating crisis. Was she so unlovable? Was every doubt she had about herself true? ‘Let me tell you what I find offensive. You thinking I would be so desperate as to accept your stupid proposal.’

Gabriel put his hand on the paperwork he’d placed on the desk earlier and pushed it across so she could see it. ‘The villa will be placed back in your name as soon as we’re married. It’s written in this contract. We will go on a short honeymoon to the south of France for the sake of appearances.’

A honeymoon? Frankie’s gaze went to the contract even though she hated herself for it. She didn’t want to need Gabriel’s help but who else would or could help her? Some of the people she had thought of asking had already lent her father money and were impatient to be repaid. And who else had that sort of money?

She read through the contract, wondering yet again why he was going to so much trouble to help her. But then she recalled what he’d said about his father’s latest scandal and the board position Gabriel was trying to keep. Success was important to men like Gabriel. He thrived on it. It was why her rejection of him had nettled him.

He didn’t give up on a goal.

He found ways, made ways, to achieve it.

Frankie pushed the contract back to his side of the desk. ‘It seems to me you’re paying a very high price for respectability, marrying a woman you swear you could never love.’

‘It’s best if we both keep our emotions out of this, Francesca.’ He softened it with a small on-off smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘And if we were to consummate the marriage, I absolutely insist on the use of contraception. No exceptions. Understood?’

Frankie held her hand up. ‘Whoa there. Aren’t you jumping ahead of yourself? I haven’t agreed to marry you yet and I—’

‘You will marry me, cara. You have too much at stake not to.’

Frankie wished it wasn’t true. But the thought of losing her home for the sake of her stubborn pride was an ask too big, an even bigger ask than marrying a man who claimed he would never fall in love with her. Was there any crueller blow to a feminine ego than that insulting declaration?

Frankie blew out a breath of resignation, keeping her gaze out of reach of his. ‘It looks like I’ve got no choice...’

He came from behind the desk and stood next to her. ‘Look at me, Francesca.’

She brought her gaze up to his dark inscrutable one. He searched her gaze for a long moment, then he lifted his hand to her face and gently traced the curve of her cheek from just below her ear to the base of her chin. Every nerve in her face tingled at his touch, her heart skipping a beat, her breath coming to a screeching halt.

His mouth slanted in a knowing smile. ‘I’m helping you. You’re helping me. That’s all this is. Do I make myself clear?’

Frankie pulled out of his hold and pointedly rubbed at her chin. ‘I have some rules too. You don’t get to touch me unless I say so.’

‘Sounds reasonable, although there will be occasions when we’re in public that my asking permission will look odd, sì?’

‘Okay, but I mostly meant when we’re alone.’ Frankie elevated her chin to a defiant height. ‘And it’s going to be a paper marriage.’

A glint appeared in his gaze as if the wick of an irresistible challenge had been lit. ‘Are you absolutely sure about that, cara mia?’

CHAPTER TWO

GABRIEL HELD FRANKIE’S defiant grey-blue gaze. He could see the battle playing out over her beautiful features. She reminded him of a haughty princess who had suffered an insult from a lowly stablehand. She wanted to slap him but her classy upbringing prevented her from doing so. Her small fists kept clenching and unclenching, her shoulders stiff with bottled-up emotion. It was one of the things he found so cute about her. The way she was so buttoned up like she had stepped straight out of the Regency period.

‘I told you not to call me that.’ Her eyes flashed like lightning and his groin tightened at the thought of seeing those unusual eyes shining with lust instead of loathing. Grey one minute, blue the next, her eyes reminded him of the lake outside with its shifting blue moods and smoky grey shadows.

‘People will expect me to speak to you affectionately once we’re married,’ he said, privately smiling at her tightly compressed mouth. The mouth he couldn’t stop thinking about kissing. Lush, full lips shaped like a perfect cupid’s bow. A mouth built for passion, for pleasure. A mouth he craved to taste, to explore, to tease and tantalise.

She thought him beneath her—understandable given his criminal family—but while four years ago she had rebuffed his offer of a date, now she was the one who couldn’t say no.

He liked proving people wrong. It filled an emptiness inside him. He had spent most of his life trying to avoid comparisons with his father and it satisfied him to prove he was nothing like anyone in his family.

Gabriel was a self-made man who lived by his own moral code, not by the warped and corrupt one of his family. Marrying Francesca Mancini was his way of honouring her father. Marco Mancini had put aside his prejudice about his upbringing and had given him a chance. A chance Gabriel had not wasted. Marco’s timely advice and direction had meant Gabriel had been able to expand his career, buying and selling property, and in the process had amassed huge amounts of his own wealth. Last year, Marco had invited him to an exclusive board of company directors. The networking alone was worth gazillions. He would never forget the risk Marco had been prepared to take on a young man from a notoriously disreputable family.

The decision to marry Frankie was a calculated move on Gabriel’s part. Calculated because he was not going to stand by and watch her father’s good name be sullied by an unfortunate set of circumstances during the last months of Marco Mancini’s life.

But there was more to his offer than a simple favour to a dead man.

Gabriel wanted Frankie. He’d wanted her ever since she had rejected him, because deep down, he knew she wanted him too, but she refused to acknowledge it. She was a challenge he couldn’t resist. He wasn’t an egotist. He was a man who set goals and did all he could possibly do, within reason and moral boundaries, to achieve them.

Even if—and it was a big if—she didn’t want their marriage to be consummated, once he had his ring on her finger he would have won.

Getting her to marry him would be a victory in itself.

Frankie spun away from him, her wildly curly dark brown hair pulled back into a ponytail swinging from side to side as if even her hair was annoyed with him. She had her English aristocrat mother’s colouring—creamy white skin and those beautiful eyes with their fringe of thick lashes and black eyebrows. She had curves in all the right places, curves he longed to explore in real time instead of dream time.

‘I’m afraid there isn’t time for a church wedding,’ Gabriel said.

She turned to face him, her expression so icy he could have shivered. ‘If you think I would stand in front of a priest and make promises I have no intention of keeping, then you’d better think again.’

‘People will understand given it’s only been a few weeks since your father’s death.’ He paused for a beat before adding, ‘I can only imagine how much you miss him.’

Something flickered through her gaze like a zephyr across the surface of a lake. But then she shifted her gaze and straightened one of the books on the shelves nearby. ‘Sometimes I find it hard to accept he’s no longer here...’ She glanced at him again. ‘When I came in just before and heard you in here, I thought it was him. That he wasn’t dead and this horrible nightmare of his squandered wealth was just a bad dream.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘If only, huh?’

Gabriel was no stranger to grief. His mother had died when he was nine and it had taken him years to stop missing her. For a decade he’d secretly kept one of her jumpers so he could still smell her. The fallout from her death had not just affected him but his two younger brothers Ricci and Lorenzo and most especially his baby sister Carli, who had only been two years old.

Gabriel had tried to fill in the gaps, to be a parent figure, but his younger brothers idolised their father and nothing Gabriel did or said could influence them. He’d had more of a chance with Carli. As a small child, she had hero-worshipped him and was mostly frightened of their father and his violent outbursts, not to mention the shady characters who came and went from the house. Gabriel hoped and prayed he still had a chance with his little sister, but Carli had been struggling on and off with an eating disorder since her teens.

Even now, when Gabriel saw a family group with two parents and small children, smiling, loving, belonging, razorblades would twist and churn in his gut. He hadn’t yet saved his baby sister from her inner demons but he wasn’t giving up. Not yet. Not ever.

Gabriel came to stand in front of her near the bookshelves. ‘He was a good man, Francesca. One of the best. And he loved you and only wanted what was best for you.’

The fleeting shadow was back in her gaze, making them appear more grey than blue, like troubled clouds. ‘I suppose compared to your father, mine must have seemed Father of the Year material.’

You don’t know the half of it. Gabriel kept his expression blank. He had taught himself not to reveal too much of how he felt about his father. The term ‘father’ was too nice a term to use in reference to the man who had sired him and his siblings. ‘There is no comparison.’ He glanced at his watch in an effort to change the subject. ‘It’s time for a drink to celebrate our upcoming marriage, which reminds me...’ He fished in his pocket and took out the engagement ring he’d bought for her. He took her left hand and slipped the diamond cluster over her ring finger.