His Million-Dollar Marriage Proposal

He took a sip of his espresso. Set the cup down, his gaze on her. “Your father is having trouble with the bakery?”

She frowned. “You heard that part too?”

“Sì. I had a phone call to make. I thought I’d let the lineup die down.” He cocked his head to the side. “You once said he makes the best cannoli in the Bronx. Why is business so dire?”

“The rent,” she said flatly. “The neighborhood is booming. His landlord has gotten greedy. That, along with some unexpected expenses he’s had, are killing him.”

“What about a small business loan from the government?”

“We’ve explored that. They don’t want to lend money to someone my father’s age. It’s too much of a risk.”

A flash of something she couldn’t read moved through his gaze. “In that case,” he murmured, “I have a business proposition for you.”

A business proposition?

Lazzero sat back in his chair and rested his cup on his thigh. “I am attending La Coppa Estiva in Milan next week.” He lifted a brow. “You’ve heard of it?”

“Of course.”

“Gianni Casale, the CEO of Fiammata, an Italian sportswear company I’m working on a deal with, will be there as will my ex, Carolina, who is married to Gianni. Gianni is very territorial when it comes to his wife. It’s making it difficult to convince him he should do this deal with me, because the personal is getting mixed up with the business.”

“Are you involved with his wife?” The question tumbled out of Chiara’s mouth before she could stop it.

“No.” He flashed her a dark look. “I am not Phil. It was over with Carolina when I ended it. It will, however, smooth things out considerably if I take a companion with me to Italy to convince Gianni I am of no threat to him.”

Her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth. “You’re suggesting I go to Italy with you and play your girlfriend?”

“Yes. I would, of course, compensate you accordingly.”

“How?”

“With the money to help your father.”

Her jaw dropped. “Why would you do that? Surely a man like you has dozens of women you could take to Italy.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to take any of them. It will give them the wrong idea. What I need is someone who will be discreet, charming with my business associates and treat this as the business arrangement it would be. I think it could be an advantageous arrangement for us both.”

An advantageous arrangement. A bitter taste filled her mouth. Her ex, Antonio, had proposed a convenient arrangement. Except in Antonio’s case, she had been good enough to share his bed, but not blue-blooded enough to grace his arm in public.

Her stomach curled. Never would she voluntarily walk into that world again. Suffer that kind of humiliation. Be told she didn’t belong. Not for all the money in the world.

She shook her head. “I’m not the right choice for this. Clearly I’m not after what I said earlier.”

“That makes you the perfect choice,” Lazzero countered. “This thing with Samara Jones has made my life a circus. I need someone I can trust who has no ulterior motives. Someone I don’t have to worry about babysitting while I’m negotiating a multimillion-dollar deal. I just want to know she’s going to keep up her end of the bargain.”

“No.” She waved a hand at him. “It’s ridiculous. We don’t even know each other. Not really.”

“You’ve known me for over a year. We talk every day.”

“Yes,” she agreed, skepticism lacing her tone. “I ask you how business is, or ‘What’s the weather like out there, Lazzero?’ Or, ‘How about that presidential debate?’ We spend five minutes chitchatting, then I make your espresso. End of conversation.”

His sensual mouth twisted in a mocking smile. “So we have dinner together. I’m quite sure we can master the pertinent facts over a bottle of wine.”

Her stomach muscles coiled. He was disconcerting enough in his tailored, three-piece suit. She could only imagine what it would be like if he took the jacket off, loosened his tie and focused all that intensity on the woman involved over a bottle of wine. She knew exactly how that scenario went and it was not a mistake she was repeating.

“It would be impossible,” she dismissed. “I have my shifts here. I can’t afford to lose them.”

“Trade them off.”

“No,” she said firmly. “I don’t belong in that world, Lazzero. I have no desire to put myself in that world. I would stick out like a sore thumb. Not to mention the fact that I would never be believable as your current love interest.”

“I disagree,” he murmured, setting his espresso on the table and leaning forward, arms folded in front of him, eyes on hers. “You are beautiful, smart and adept at putting people at ease. With the right wardrobe and a little added...gloss, you would easily be the most stunning woman in the room.”

Gloss? A slow curl of heat unraveled inside of her, coiling around an ancient wound that had never healed. “A diamond in the rough so to speak,” she suggested, her voice pure frost.

His brow furrowed. “I didn’t say that.”

“But you meant it.”

“You know what I mean, Chiara. I was giving you a compliment. La Coppa Estiva is a different world.”

She flicked a wrist at him. “Exactly why I have no interest in this proposal of yours. In these high-stakes games you play. I thought I’d made that clear earlier.”

His gaze narrowed. “What I heard was you on your soapbox making wild generalizations about men of a certain tax bracket.”

“Hardly generalizations,” she refuted. “You need someone to take to Italy with you because you’ve left a trail of refuse behind you, Lazzero. Because Gianni Casale doesn’t trust you with his wife. I won’t be part of aiding and abetting that kind of behavior.”

“A trail of refuse?” His gaze chilled to a cool, hard ebony. “I think you’re reading too many tabloids.”

“I think not. You’re exactly the sort of man I want nothing to do with.”

“I’m not asking you to get involved with me,” he rebutted coolly. “I’m suggesting you get over this personal bias you have against a man with a bank balance and solve your financial problems while you’re at it. I have no doubt we can pull this off if you put your mind to it.”

“No.” She slid to the edge of the chair. “Ask someone else. I’m sure one of the other baristas would jump at the chance.”

“I don’t want them,” he said evenly, “I want you.” He threw an exorbitant figure of money at her that made her eyes widen. “It would go a long way toward helping your father.”

Chiara’s head buzzed. It would pay her father’s rent for the rest of the year. Would be enough to get him back on his feet after the unexpected expenses he’d incurred having to replace some machinery at the bakery. But surely what Lazzero was proposing was insane? She could never pull this off and even if she could, it would put her smack in the middle of a world she wanted nothing to do with.

She got to her feet before she abandoned her common sense completely. “I need to get back to work.”

Lazzero pulled a card out of his wallet, scribbled something on the back and handed it to her. “My cell number if you change your mind.”

CHAPTER TWO

CHIARA’S HEAD WAS still spinning as she finished up her shift at the café and walked home on a gorgeous summer evening in Manhattan. She was too distracted, however, to take in the vibrant New York she loved, too worried about her father’s financial situation to focus.

If he couldn’t pay off the new equipment he’d purchased, he was going to lose the bakery—the only thing that seemed to get him up in the morning since her mother died. She couldn’t conceive of that prospect happening. Which left Lazzero’s shocking business proposition to consider.

She couldn’t possibly do it. Would be crazy to even consider it. But how could she not?

Her head no clearer by the time she’d picked up groceries at the corner store for a quiet night in, she carried them up the three flights of stairs of the old brick walk-up she and Kat shared in Spanish Harlem, and let herself in.

They’d done their best to make the tiny, two-bedroom apartment warm and cozy despite its distinct lack of appeal, covering the dingy walls in a cherry-colored paint, adding dark refinished furniture from the antiques store around the corner, and topping it all off with colorful throws and pillows.

It wasn’t much, but it was home.

Kat, who was busy getting ready for a date, joined her in the shoebox of a kitchen as Chiara stowed the groceries away. Possessing a much more robust social life than she, her roommate had plans to see a popular play with a new boyfriend she was crazy about. At the moment, however, lounging against the counter in a tomato-red silk dress and impossibly slender black heels, her roommate was hot on the trail of a juicy story.

“So,” she said. “What really happened with Lazzero Di Fiore today? And no blowing me off like you did earlier.”

Chiara—who thought Kat should’ve been a lawyer rather than the doctor she was training to be, she was so relentless in the pursuit of the facts—stowed the carton of milk in the fridge and stood up. “You can’t say anything to anyone.”

Kat lifted her hands. “Who am I going to tell?”

Chiara filled her in on Lazzero’s business proposition. Kat’s eyes went as big as saucers. “He’s always had the hots for you. Maybe he’s making his move.”

Chiara cut that idea off at the pass. “It is strictly a business arrangement. He made that clear.”

“And you said no? Are you crazy?” Her friend waved a red tipped hand at her. “He is offering to solve all your financial problems, Chiara, for a week in Italy. La Coppa Estiva is the celebrity event of the season. Most women would give their right arm to be in your position. Not to mention the fact that Lazzero Di Fiore is the hottest man on the face of the planet. What’s not to like?”

Chiara pressed her lips together. Kat didn’t know about her history with Antonio. Why Milan was the last place she’d want to be. It wasn’t something you casually dropped into conversation with your new roommate, despite how close she and Kat had been getting.

She pursed her lips. “I have my shifts at the café. I need that job.”

“Everyone’s looking for extra hours right now. Someone will cover for you.” Kat stuck a hand on her silk-clad hip. “When’s the last time you had a holiday? Had some fun? Your life is boring, Chiara. Booorrring. You’re a senior citizen at age twenty-six.”

A hot warmth tinged her cheeks. Her life was boring. It revolved around work and more work. When she wasn’t on at the café, she was helping out at the bakery on the weekends. There was no room for relaxation.

The downstairs buzzer went off. Kat disappeared in a cloud of perfume. Chiara cranked up the air-conditioning against the deadly heat, which wouldn’t seem to go below a certain lukewarm temperature no matter how high she turned it up, and made herself dinner.

She ate while she played with a design of a dress she’d seen a girl wearing at the café today, but hadn’t quite had the urban chic she favored. Changing the hemline to an angular cut and adding a touch of beading to the bodice, she sketched it out, getting close to what she’d envisioned, but not quite. The heat oppressive, the blaring sound of the television from the apartment below destroying her concentration, she threw the sketchbook and pencil aside.

What was the point? she thought, heart sinking. She was never going to have the time or money to pursue her career in design. Those university classes she’d taken at Parsons had been a waste of time and money. All she was doing was setting herself up for more disappointment in harboring these dreams of hers, because they were never going to happen.

Cradling her tea between her hands, she fought a bitter wave of loneliness that settled over her, a deep, low throb that never seemed to fade. This was the time she’d treasured the most—those cups of tea after dinner with her mother when the bakery was closed.

A seamstress by trade, her mother had been brilliant with a needle. They’d talked while they’d sewed—about anything and everything. About Chiara’s schoolwork, about that nasty boy in her class who was giving her trouble, about the latest design she’d sketched at the back of her notebook that day. Until life as she’d known it had ended forever on a Friday evening when she was fifteen when her mother had sat her down to talk—not about boys or clothes—but about the breast cancer she’d been diagnosed with. By the next fall, she’d been gone. There had been no more cups of tea, no more confidences, only a big, scary world to navigate as her father had descended into his grief and anger.

The heavy, pulsing weight encompassing all of her now, she rolled to her feet and walked to the window. Hugging her arms tight around herself, she stared out at the colorful graffiti on the apartment buildings across the street. Usually, she managed to keep the hollow emptiness at bay, convince herself that she liked it better this way, because to engage was to feel, and to feel hurt too much. But tonight, imagining the fun, glamorous evening Kat was having, she felt scraped raw inside.

For a brief moment in time, she’d had a taste of that life. The fun and frivolity of it. She’d met Antonio at a party full of glamorous types in Chelsea last summer when a fellow barista who traveled in those circles had invited her along. The newly minted vice president of his family’s prestigious global investment firm, Antonio Fabrizio had been gorgeous and worldly, intent on having her from the first moment he’d seen her.

She’d been seduced by the effortless glamour of his world, by the beguiling promises he’d made. By the command and authority he seemed to exert over everything around him. By how grounded he’d made her feel for the first time since her mother had died. Little had she known, she’d only been a diversion. That the woman Antonio was slated to marry was waiting for him at home in Milan. That she’d only been his American plaything, a “last fling” before he married.

Antonio had tried to placate her when she’d found out, assuring her his was a marriage of convenience, a fortuitous match for the Fabrizios. That she was the one he really wanted. In fact, he’d insisted, nothing would change. He would set her up in her own apartment and she would become his mistress.

Chiara had thrown the offer in his face, along with his penthouse key, shocked he would even think she would be interested in that kind of an arrangement. But Antonio, in his supreme arrogance, had been furious with her for walking out on him. Had pursued her relentlessly in the six months since, sending her flowers, jewelry, tickets to the opera, all of which she’d returned with a message to leave her alone, until finally he had.

Her mouth set as she stared out at the darkening night, a bitter anger sweeping through her. She had changed since him. He had made her change. She had become tougher, wiser to the world. She was not to blame for what had happened, Antonio was. Why should she be so worried about seeing him again?

If this was, as Lazzero had reasoned, a business proposition, why not turn it around to her own advantage? Use the world that had once used her? Surely she could survive a few days in Milan playing Lazzero’s love interest if it meant saving her father’s bakery? And if she were to run into Antonio at La Coppa Estiva, which was a real possibility, so what? It was crazy to let him have this power over her still.

She fell asleep on the sofa, the TV still on, roused by Kat at 2 a.m., who sent her stumbling to bed. When she woke for her early morning shift at the café, her decision was made.

* * *

Di Fiore’s was blissfully free of its contingent of fortune hunters when Lazzero met Santo for a beer on Saturday night to talk La Coppa Estiva and their strategy for Gianni Casale.

He’d been pleasantly surprised when Chiara had called him earlier that afternoon to accept his offer. Was curious to find out why she had. Thinking he could nail those details down along with his game plan for Gianni, he’d arranged to meet her here for a drink after his beer with Santo.

Ensconcing themselves at the bar so they could keep an eye on the door, he and Santo fleshed out a multilayered plan of attack, with contingencies for whatever objections the wily Italian might present. Satisfied they had it nailed, Lazzero leaned back in his stool and took a sip of his beer. Eyed his brother’s dark suit.

“Work or pleasure tonight?”

“Damion Howard and his agent are dropping by to pick up their tickets for next week. Thought I’d romance them a bit while I’m at it.”

“What?” Lazzero derided. “No beautiful blonde lined up for your pleasure?”

“Too busy.” Santo sighed. “This event is a monster. I need to keep my eye on the ball.”

Lazzero studied the lines of fatigue etching his brother’s face. “You should let Dez handle the athletes. It would free up your time.”

His brother cocked a brow. “Says the ultimate control freak?”

Lazzero shrugged. He was a self-professed workaholic. Knew the demons that drove him. It was part of the territory when your father self-destructed, leaving his business and your life in pieces. No amount of success would ever convince him it was enough.

Santo gave him an idle look. “Did Nico tell you about his conversation with Carolina?”

Lazzero nodded. Carolina Casale, an interior designer by trade, was coordinating the closing night party for La Coppa Estiva, a job perfectly suited to her extensive project management skills. Nico, who’d negotiated a reprieve from the wedding planning to attend the party with a client, had called her to request an additional couple of tickets for some VIPs, only to find himself consoling a weepy Carolina instead, who had spent the whole conversation telling him how unhappy she was. She’d finished by asking how Lazzero was.

His fingers tightened around his glass. He could not go through another of those scenes. It was not his fault Carolina had married a man old enough to be her father.

“I’m working on a solution to that,” he said grimly. “Tonight, in fact. Speaking of solutions, you aren’t giving me too much field time are you? I can feel my knee creaking as we speak.”

Santo’s mouth twitched. “I’m afraid the answer is yes. We need a solid midfielder. But it’s perfect, actually. Gianni plays midfield.”

Lazzero was about to amplify his protest when his brother’s gaze narrowed on the door. “Now she could persuade me to abandon my plans for the evening.”

Lazzero turned around. Found himself equally absorbed by the female standing in the doorway. Her slender body encased in a sheer, flowing blouse that ended at midthigh, her dark jeans tucked into knee-high boots, Chiara had left her hair loose tonight, the silky waves falling to just below her shoulder blades in a dark, shiny cloud.

It wasn’t the most provocative outfit he’d ever seen, but with Chiara’s curves, she looked amazing. The wave of lust that kicked him hard in the chest irritated the hell out of him. She had labeled him a bloody Lothario, for God’s sake. Had told him he was exactly the kind of man she’d never get involved with. He’d do well to remember this was a business arrangement they were embarking on together.

Chiara’s scan of the room halted when she found him sitting at the bar. Santo’s gaze moved from Chiara to him. “She’s the one you’re meeting?”

“My date for Italy,” Lazzero confirmed, sliding off the stool.

“Who is she?” His brother frowned. “She looks familiar.”

“Her name is Chiara. And she’s far too nice a girl for you.”

“Which means she’s definitely too nice for you,” Santo tossed after his retreating figure.

Lazzero couldn’t disagree. Which was why he was going to keep this strictly business. Pulling to a halt in front of her, he bent to press a kiss to both of her cheeks. An intoxicating scent of orange blossom mixed with a musky, sensual undertone assailed his senses. It suited her perfectly.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she murmured, stepping back. “The barista who was supposed to relieve me was sick. I had to wait until the sub came in.”

“It’s fine. I was having a beer with my brother.” Lazzero whisked her past Santo just as his brother’s clients walked in. Chiara cocked her head to the side. “You’re not going to introduce us?”

“Not now, no.”

“Because I’m a barista?” A spark of fire flared in her green eyes.

“Because my brother likes to ask too many questions,” he came back evenly. “Not to mention the fact that we don’t have our story straight yet.”

“Oh.” The heat in her eyes dissipated. “That’s true.”

“Just for the record,” he murmured, pressing a palm to the small of her back to guide her through the crowd, “Santo and I started Supersonic from nothing. We had nothing. There is no judgment here about what you do.”

Her long dark lashes swept down, dusting her cheeks like miniature black fans. “Is it true what Samara Jones said about you and your brother masterminding your business from here?”

His mouth twisted. “It’s become a bit of an urban myth, but yes, we brainstormed the idea for Supersonic at a table near the back when we were students at Columbia. We kept the table for posterity’s sake when we bought the place a few years later.” He arched a brow at her. “Would you like to sit there? It’s nothing special,” he warned.

“Yes.” She surprised him by answering in the affirmative. “I’ll need to know these things about you to make this believable.”

“Perhaps,” he suggested, his palm nearly spanning her delicate spine as he directed her around a group of people, “you’ll discover other things that surprise you. Why did you say yes, by the way?”

“Because my father needs the money. I couldn’t afford to say no.”

Direct. To the point. Just like the woman who felt so soft and feminine beneath his hand, but undoubtedly had a spine of steel. He was certain she was up to the challenge he was about to hand her.

Seating her at the old, scarred table located in a quiet alcove off the main traffic of the bar, he pushed her chair in and sat opposite her. His long legs brushed hers as he arranged them to get comfortable. Chiara shifted away as if burned. He smothered a smile at her prickly demeanor. That they would have to solve if they were going to make this believable.

She traced a finger over the deep indentation carved into the thick mahogany wood, a rough impersonation of the Supersonic logo. “Who did this?”

“I did.” A wry smile curved his mouth. “I nearly got us kicked out of here for good that night. But we were so high on the idea we had, we didn’t care.”

She sat back in her chair, a curious look on her face. “How did you make it happen, then, if you started with nothing?”

“Santo and I put ourselves through university on sports scholarships. We knew a lot of people in the industry, knew what athletes wanted in a product. Supersonic became a ‘by athletes, for athletes’ line.” He lifted a shoulder. “A solid business plan brought our godfather on board for an initial investment, some athletes we went to school with made up the rest.”

A smile played at her mouth. “And then you parlayed it into one of the world’s most successful athletic-wear companies. Impressive.”

“With some detours along the way,” he amended. “It’s a bitterly competitive industry. But we had a vision. It worked.”

“Will Santo be in Milan?”

He nodded. “He’s the chairman of the event. He’ll have his hands full massaging all of our relationships. When he isn’t busy doing that with his posse of women,” he qualified drily.

“Clearly runs in the family,” Chiara murmured.

Lazzero set a considering gaze on her. “I think you would be surprised by the actual number of relationships I engage in versus what the tabloids print. I do need some time to run a Fortune 500 company, after all.”