Androletti's Mistress
Nikki felt as if her heart was being crushed between two solid bookends. ‘Joseph would not have left me with nothing,’ she said again, dearly hoping it was true. ‘He told me I would be left well-provided for on his death.’
‘I already told you, Nikki. Were you not listening? He left you with nothing. Nothing but debts that will take you years to clear, but fortunately for you I have come up with a plan to help you offload them more or less immediately.’
Nikki moistened her lips again, panic beating like a primitive tribal drum inside her chest. ‘What p-plan would that be?’ she asked, wishing her voice didn’t sound so thin and scared.
He gave her one of his inscrutable looks. ‘I want you to be my mistress of convenience.’
She frowned as she tried to make sense of his statement. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to explain what you mean,’ she said after a heart-chugging pause. ‘I’m unfamiliar with the term.’
‘I have recently ended a relationship,’ he informed her in a dispassionate tone. ‘The woman I was involved with is not finding it easy to let go. I have always found the best way to deal with such stubbornness is to have physical evidence that I have now moved on with my life.’
‘I’m still not sure what it is you want me to do,’ she said guardedly.
‘You are being deliberately obtuse, are you not?’ he asked. ‘I want you to do everything for me that you did for my stepfather.’
Nikki couldn’t imagine Joseph revealing the unconsummated nature of their relationship, and wondered if he had told Massimo a mountain of lies instead in an effort to maintain his sense of male pride.
Massimo waved a hand towards the mansion behind him. ‘You see this house?’ he asked.
She looked past his shoulder at the huge, two-storey mock-Georgian building before bringing her gaze back to his. ‘Yes…’
‘I want you to move in with me.’
Her eyes widened. ‘I’m afraid that’s out of the question,’ she said. ‘I can’t possibly live with you.’
He gave her an ironic glance. ‘You find the position I am offering beneath you?’
She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘What’s this about, Massimo? Some petty payback scheme to make me regret our stupid little fling five years ago?’
‘I need a trophy mistress,’ he said. ‘You need a job—it is as simple as that.’
Nikki felt her stomach lurch sideways in alarm. ‘I already have a job, if you remember,’ she said, moistening her bone-dry lips again. ‘I am still the face of Ferliani Fashions. I only took off the last six months to nurse Joseph.’
His eyes were unreadable as they held hers. ‘As the new owner and CEO of Ferliani Fashions, I have decided not to renew your contract,’ he said. ‘I have other plans for you.’
She gave him a fiery glare. ‘What do you want me to do, scrub your floors and fold your socks?’
‘That, and a whole lot more.’
Her eyes narrowed into wary slits. ‘How much more?’
‘I have a busy life,’ he said. ‘I do not have time to cook proper meals or maintain an immaculate house. Joseph told me what a wonderful wife you were in that respect. He told me how you refused to have a housekeeper—that you preferred to do it yourself. I need someone running things here twenty-four-seven. I am willing to pay you generously for each month the arrangement continues.’ He named a sum that sent her brows winging upwards, and added, ‘It is twice what you were earning from the Ferliani contract.’
‘There are hundreds of women who would give anything to have this job,’ she said. ‘But I’m not interested.’
‘Ah, but you have no choice, Nikki,’ he said. ‘For if you do not agree you will have to pay back every cent of the money your husband borrowed from me in your name a month before he died. Your signature is on the documents.’
Nikki stared at him, cold fear trickling into every one of her veins like a flow of ice. She vaguely remembered Joseph pushing some papers under her nose, mumbling something about advertising expenses. It had been an astonishing amount of money, she recalled with another quake of apprehension. But she had signed her name and felt grateful that he was taking care of the business side of things while he still could, never realising it would lead to this.
‘You’ve been planning this for months, haven’t you?’ she bit out caustically. ‘You’ve been watching and waiting like a vulture circling overhead for your stepfather to die.’
‘I told you five years ago when we met that I would have my revenge on what he did. He stole my father’s money and launched the Ferliani label using it,’ he said. ‘But I must say my motivation increased even more after our brief assignation. There’s a certain irony in it, don’t you think? We have come full circle. You are the face of Ferliani Fashions only because my stepfather gave you the leg up you needed, but I now own the company. You do not have a future without me. You need me, Nikki, whether you like it or not. You need me.’
Her grey-blue eyes glittered with sparks of fury. ‘You’re asking for my degradation, that’s what you’re doing.’
He gave her a cool, composed smile in return. ‘I am not asking anything of you, Nikki. I am telling you what is going to happen.’
‘And I am telling you to go to hell!’ she said and, spinning on her heels, began to stalk down the long crushed-lime-stone driveway.
‘If you take even one step outside that gate, I will activate legal proceedings immediately to recoup the money you owe me—every last cent of it,’ Massimo said in an indomitable tone.
Nikki’s right foot hovered over the boundary line as she thought about her choices. There was so much she didn’t know. Joseph’s business affairs had always seemed to her to be a little on the complicated side. He’d had money coming in from various local and international investors to float the label, and, while she had been quite content to leave him to it, so she could do her part in fulfilling the modelling contract, she’d known it was quite possible debts had mounted up over the months before he’d finally succumbed to the cancer that he’d been valiantly fighting ever since she’d met him.
The modelling meant nothing to her; it had always been a means to an end. She had hidden behind it, enjoying the benefits of financial security in order to rise above her impoverished background. No one knew that the glamorous Nikki Ferliani was actually Nicola Jenkins, the eldest child of Kaylene and Frank Jenkins, brought up surrounded by poverty, violence and crime. And certainly no one knew her father was serving a life sentence for murder, with ‘never to be released’ stamped on his file.
Not even Joseph had known about that.
And then there was Jayden.
He was happy at Rosedale House, or at least as happy as someone with permanent and severe physical and mental disabilities could be. The level of care he received there was the best that money could buy. If she had to move him away from the dedicated staff who had grown so fond of him, she would never be able to forgive herself. After all, wasn’t it her fault he had been injured in the first place?
She slowly turned around, her expression stripped of all emotion as she faced her nemesis. ‘I need some time to think about this.’
‘You have the next ten seconds,’ he said, lifting his wrist to look at his watch, and began to count them. ‘Nine, eight, seven six, five—’
‘All right,’ she said, her stomach somersaulting in dread at what was ahead. ‘I will be your…er…trophy mistress.’
His eyes came back to hers, his inbuilt cynicism glinting in their smoky depths. ‘I knew you would see sense. You are far too mercenary to throw away a fortune such as this.’
She ran her tongue over the desert dryness of her lips. ‘When do you want me to…to start?’
He reached into the pocket of his trousers and brought out a set of keys. He walked to where she was standing, took her clenched fist and, unpeeling her stiff fingers, placed the keys in her palm. ‘You started five minutes ago,’ he said.
Nikki closed her fingers around the cold metal of the keys, wincing as they bit into the soft flesh of her palm.
Now, there’s another irony, she thought as she followed him a moment later into the Toorak mansion. Within her very own hand lay the keys to her new prison…
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS a stunningly beautiful house. It was decorated throughout in subtle tones of cream and taupe and white, offset superbly by the black wrought-iron of the balustrade on the magnificent staircase leading to the upper floor. The marbled floor of the elegant foyer led into ankle-deep caramel-brown carpet in the living areas, the large windows offering wonderful views of the lush and very private gardens outside.
It was a house built for entertaining and pleasure, every room ideally appointed for large numbers with maximum comfort.
The furniture as well as the artworks on the walls spoke of unlimited wealth and dignified taste. It was nothing like the ostentatious layout Joseph had insisted on in his house in South Yarra, and certainly nothing like the variety of rundown trailer parks where Nikki had spent most of her childhood.
‘I have taken the liberty of organising someone to collect your belongings from your previous residence.’ Massimo’s deep voice broke the silence. ‘They will be delivered here tomorrow. All you will need to do is pack your personal things. They will do the rest.’
Nikki turned to look at him. ‘Aren’t you rushing things a bit?’ she asked. ‘I have been a widow only a week, now I am supposedly your mistress. What will people think?’
He gave an indifferent shrug. ‘I do not care for what people think. This is between you and me. The press will no doubt begin to speculate, which brings me to the issue of what we will tell other people.’
‘How about the truth?’ she said with an arch look. ‘That you are blackmailing me for revenge.’
His dark eyes glinted warningly as they held hers. ‘It would be in your interests to refrain from revealing the real motivations behind our relationship—both your own and mine.’
‘I’m not going to pretend to be in love with you,’ she said with a resentful scowl.
He gave her a cynical smile. ‘That would indeed be a rather tall order, eh, Nikki? Although you did it quite convincingly in the past, I seem to recall.’
‘You’re never going to let it go, are you?’ she asked with a flash of ire in her grey-blue eyes. ‘Your stupid male pride got dented, and now five years later you’re still harping on about it.’
He came up close and took her chin between his finger and thumb, his eyes blazing with hatred as he ground out savagely, ‘I told you the day you married my stepfather that one day I would have you begging for my mercy. Do not tempt me to make it this day, the very day you buried him.’
Nikki swallowed back her fear, her heart chugging like an old engine going uphill. ‘L-let me go,’ she croaked.
His fingers tightened momentarily, the fire of his gaze raking her face for endless seconds, before he dropped his hand and stepped back from her.
Nikki felt her breath leave her chest in a ragged whoosh, her chin still tingling where his fingers had lain. She wanted to reach up and touch her skin, but knew it would give away her vulnerability, so she clenched her hands into hard little fists by her sides.
‘I will send a car for you at 10 a.m. tomorrow,’ he said. ‘The house you have been living in is going to be redecorated and sold.’
‘Removing every last trace of him, are you?’ she sniped at him bitterly. ‘Isn’t that a bit melodramatic even for someone as stuck in the Middle Ages as you?’
Twin spots of white-tipped anger were visible at both sides of his tightened mouth. ‘You will have to learn to curb that tongue of yours, Nikki. You might have wound my stepfather around your little finger, but you will not achieve the same success with me. I expect you to be polite and charming at all times, most particularly when we are entertaining guests. I have important clients, corporate investors, who will expect you to be the perfect hostess.’
‘So you’re expecting me to cook for you, are you?’
‘My stepfather informed me of your many talents, both in and out of the kitchen,’ he said with another searing look over her heaving form. ‘I am sure you will be able to handle the challenge of rustling up a few ingredients from time to time.’
‘I’m surprised you haven’t made me audition for the part,’ she said. ‘How do you know Joseph wasn’t lying about my capabilities?’
His eyes were steady on hers. ‘My stepfather was an inveterate liar and a cheat, but the one thing he had no reason to lie about was his relationship with you. He made no secret of how you gave him pleasure, catering to his every physical need in spite of the difference in your age.’
Nikki felt ill at what he was implying. Surely Joseph hadn’t taken things to that extreme in a last-ditch attempt to maintain his male pride?
‘I will leave you for a few minutes to wander around the house, to get acquainted with its layout.’ Massimo filled the silence. ‘You can choose any room you like, but it might be preferable to keep it well away from mine.’
‘Why?’ she asked with a deliberately taunting look. ‘Are you worried you might be tempted to go back on your promise?’
His gaze ran over her indolently. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I am not. For, if you recall, I did not promise anything of that nature.’
Nikki felt her face suffuse with red-hot heat as the significance of his statement began to sink in. ‘You’re surely not expecting me to sleep with you, are you? You said I was to be a trophy mistress.’
His expression was difficult to read. ‘And that is what you will be, unless one or both of us changes our mind.’
She turned away, pretending an avid interest in the view from the window overlooking the garden, her head pounding with uncertainty and fear.
He had control of everything.
How could she have not anticipated this? She had seen the hatred in his look five years ago but had foolishly deluded herself into thinking he would get over it.
He had not done so.
‘You…you have a lovely garden,’ she said, for the want of something to fill the uncomfortable silence.
‘You are at liberty to enjoy it at your leisure,’ he said. ‘I do not expect you to slave your fingers to the bone.’
She turned back to face him, cynicism sharpening her features. ‘So I won’t be chained to the house?’ she asked.
‘Not at all. You can come and go as you please, but there are some ground rules.’
She folded her arms across her chest. ‘Which are?’
‘No men.’
She twisted her mouth at him. ‘Please allow me some measure of decency. In case you have forgotten, I have just buried my husband.’
‘Good, for I will not tolerate you entertaining any of your lovers in my house.’
She straightened her spine and glared at him. ‘Anything else?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I expect you to be polite at all times to the young woman who will be replacing you as the face of Ferliani Fashions—Abriana Cavello. She may on occasion come to the house. I will try to keep such visits to a minimum, but if she should be here, I will expect you to treat her just like any other guest.’
Nikki felt her anger towards him skyrocket. She knew how this was going to work; she could feel it in her bones. No doubt this Cavello woman had slept with him to gain his favour and was now going to flounce around the house, acting like a prima donna just to needle her into breaking one of his stupid rules.
‘That shouldn’t be a problem,’ she said, grinding her teeth. ‘I am sure we will get along just fine.’
‘That will be all for now,’ he said, turning away to leaf through some papers he’d picked up from the hall table. ‘I will be in my study when you have finished looking over the house.’
‘And then?’
He put the papers to one side and met her arched-brow look. ‘And then, Nikki, we will have dinner together.’
‘Dinner?’
He smiled wryly at her anxious expression. ‘Do not worry. I do not expect you to cook tonight. We will go out this evening.’
‘Thank you for being so considerate,’ she said with heavy sarcasm. ‘But if it’s all the same to you, I would prefer to go straight home.’
His black-diamond stare clashed with hers. ‘You no longer have a home, and if I say we will have dinner together then that is what we will do, do you understand?’
Nikki felt like she was standing in front of a stranger. Gone was the gentle and loving Massimo Androletti of five years ago, and in his place was a hard, cold, determined man intent on exacting every gram of revenge he could.
She hated having to bow to his command, but there was nothing else she could do short of telling him about her reasons for marrying his stepfather. But it wasn’t just her pride that wouldn’t allow her to do it. If she told him who she really was—the daughter of a man who had committed the most heinous of crimes—how could she be sure it wouldn’t be all over the papers within hours? Massimo was after revenge, and what better revenge could he have than to bring her past to light?
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