The Italian Millionaire's Virgin Wife
Dio mio! Give me patience! Andreo stemmed the impulse to tell her not to talk such juvenile rubbish. For the time being he needed her on side. ‘A woman whose feelings were deeply engaged would have returned the suite of diamonds—the parting gift, remember?’ he enforced through gritted teeth. ‘Neither would she have hung on to the numerous costly trinkets she batted her eyes at during our time together. The only thing Trisha Lomax loved, apart from herself, was the size of my bank account, which goes a long way to explaining why she was misguided enough to believe she could change my mind about marriage.’
About to inform him that that was a highly selfish and jaundiced view, Mercy fell silent when he went on to tell her without a hint of self-pity, ‘Since I reached my late teens women have been throwing themselves at me. As a testosterone-fired young man I thought I was in heaven until my grandfather, the wisest man I have ever known, warned me. The hearts that beat within those delightful breasts are full of avarice, he advised—from experience—pointing out that the size of the Pascali family fortune was well known. Enjoy the lovely creatures by all means, but never commit, he said to me. Marry when the need for an heir becomes paramount but choose a bride with wealth of her own, even if she has a face like a dustbin—glamorous mistresses are ten a penny.’
‘I’ve shocked you,’ Andreo commiserated, misconstruing his housekeeper’s appalled expression. Springing to his feet, he paced across the room to refill her wineglass. ‘But I wanted you to know where I’m coming from and to stop you accusing me of breaking that woman’s heart. The only difference between her and the rest is that she didn’t stick by the rules. She decided she could persuade me to marry her. As if!’
His brow suddenly clenching, Andreo vented an impatient sigh. He never explained himself, as he’d reminded himself once before this evening. So why break the habit of a lifetime now? Howard was his housekeeper, hired to iron his socks—or whatever was done to them—not to be privy to his lifestyle.
Handing her the glass, his brow cleared. Those amazingly big blue eyes were drenched with sympathy—maybe something could be done about them—mud-coloured contact lenses, perhaps?
Lowering himself beside her, he congratulated himself that at last she was on side. After what he’d told her she would be seeing through whatever sob story Trisha had come out with. No more righteous and misguided accusations of cruelty to make her prim her mouth and categorically refuse to do as he wanted.
Her heart swelling with pity and something else entirely as the devastating Italian again joined her on the press, Mercy stared at the glass in her hands. She hadn’t asked for it and didn’t want it—already her head was feeling peculiar. But she felt so achingly sorry for him she just couldn’t bring herself to thrust it back at him. Poor, poor thing!
He was so gorgeous, so vital, how could he believe no woman could love him for himself and not his bank balance? She could throttle his cynical old grandfather for planting the idea in his head! He must feel so lonely!
‘Howard…’
‘Yes, sir?’ Mercy glanced up at his low-pitched murmur then hurriedly transferred her gaze back to the glass she was holding. His eyes were a gleam of pure silver beneath the heavy dark fringe of his lashes and the long line of his mouth had softened with outrageous sensuality. Like a man looking at an object of desire.
Her cheeks blossoming with wild colour, she berated herself for thinking like a lunatic and buried her nose in her glass for something to do with herself just as he said, ‘Cut out the ‘‘sirs’’. We’re friends, right?’
He’d angled himself so that he was looking directly at her and here, in the intimacy of his bedroom, with him so close, close enough to smell the faint lemony drift of his aftershave, feel his body heat, it made her insides curl up with tension, her breath come in strange little gasps, her entire body tingle in a way she had never experienced before.
‘Er—right,’ she gulped strainedly and frantically tried to pull herself together. ‘Friends’ was okay. Normal, really. And with his track record he’d be used to looking at a woman—any woman from one-year-old to a hundred—that way. Just a habit. She was busy blaming her silliness on her unaccustomed intake of alcohol until he said, his dark velvet voice liberally smeared with honey, ‘I have a proposition to put to you.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘AND that is?’ Mercy tried her best to sound bright and interested. Difficult when her tongue felt three feet thick. If this was what being tiddly was like she hated it. Cursing her foolishness in so innocently drinking that first glass as if it were as innocuous as fruit juice and then taking polite sips of the unwanted second, she did her best to concentrate on what he was saying.
‘I want you to model for me.’
For a moment she could only gape at him. Had the alcohol affected her hearing too? Messed with her brain? Mercy’s poleaxed eyes clung to his. Big mistake, she groaned inwardly. He was looking at her that way again, soft silver lights in those stunning eyes as they held her own confused gaze, his bewitching lips parted in a sensual half smile. She swallowed thickly and shook her head, trying to clear it of the muddle inside.
‘What did you say?’
‘That you’d be perfect for a project I’m currently working on.’
To her intense amazement and quivering delight his lean long-fingered hands softly cupped her face, lifting it to his openly assessing gaze. Mercy shook with inner tremors as her whole body seemed to catch fire, burn and shiver at the same time.
He looked as if he were about to kiss her, she thought wildly as her veins pulsed with dangerous excitement. Unbidden, her soft mouth parted with yearning anticipation as his eyes roamed over every feature then slowly dropped to what he could see of her body—mainly and shamingly the way her regrettably generous breasts were pushing against the now rather grubby grey fabric of her overall.
‘You’d have the small but absolutely pivotal role in the commercial we’re about to film…Just a few hours of your time…Coronet…You’d be so perfect…’
There was a strange buzzing sound inside her head. Mercy simply couldn’t process what he was saying. It all sounded so incredible she didn’t have a clue to how she could begin to understand it. She only knew she deeply mourned the loss of the sizzling, paralysing effect of his cool skin against her burning cheeks when he dropped his hands and took the dangerously tilting wineglass from hers, then mentioned a payment that sounded so crazily huge she could only gulp in frantic disbelief.
‘Think it over,’ he advised, still employing the silky-soft seductive tone that made every muscle, bone and nerve-ending she possessed go into meltdown. Elevating his lean frame with effortless ease, he took her hands and drew her to her feet, her body brushing against his as she rose, making her need, quite desperately, to sit straight back down again because her legs had gone.
But he was crossing the floor, long energetic strides taking him to the door. Holding it open for her, he gave her the benefit of that totally charismatic smile. ‘If you agree you’d be doing me a big favour. Sleep on it, and we’ll iron out the details in the morning.’
Having to call on every scrap of will-power she possessed, Mercy managed to stay upright and relatively steady as she left the room and headed for her bed, all thoughts of supper and the hot bath she’d promised herself abandoned in the pressing need to seek oblivion. All the while she shakily promised herself that she’d figure out exactly what had happened in his room this evening when her brain wasn’t in shock and fuddled with alcohol.
‘Oh, wow!’ Carly screeched.
Mercy snatched the mobile phone off her ear and shifted in one of the comfy armchairs in her private sitting room, only returning to the conversation when she judged she was in no further danger of having her eardrum split.
‘I didn’t take it in properly last evening—’ she came clean ‘—I’d had the best part of two huge glasses of wine and—’
‘You never!’ Carly groaned theatrically. ‘You know it goes straight to your head! Remember that Christmas when you got squiffy on one spoonful of rum sauce!’
‘Well, the wine was given to me with all good intentions and it seemed rude not to drink it,’ Mercy excused lamely then went on to recount what she’d thought had been said, editing out her crass stupidity in thinking for one moment that he had been about to kiss her. As if!
‘But he cleared it up this morning when I took him his breakfast.’ A warm smile lit her features. He’d looked really pained at first but he’d eaten every scrap of the kedgeree after she’d told him, very firmly—no messing—that fish was good brain food. ‘I’m to go to the studio next Monday and present myself to Make-up and Wardrobe. They’ll start filming my part some time after midday, depending on how the location shots go, apparently. And he’s paying mega bucks so I’ll really be able to make a huge difference for James. He can forget about taking out further student loans in the forseeable future.’
Carly heaved a sigh. ‘I don’t believe this!’
‘No, neither do I,’ Mercy confided. ‘How anyone could think I’d be a perfect model for a TV ad—’
‘I mean I don’t believe you wouldn’t want to spend at least some of all that dosh on nice things for yourself,’ the other woman corrected tartly. ‘For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve always put yourself and what you wanted last on your list of priorities! But I guess nagging won’t change you.’ Her tone lightened. ‘And I do believe you’d make great model material. Your brilliant boss must have taken one look at you and seen the potential. Haven’t I always told you you could be drop-dead-gorgeous if you took trouble with your appearance? Stopped buying the dreary stuff you call essentials from charity shops, had your hair done properly and let me do your make-up. He obviously looked at you and saw star material!’ she enthused as Mercy struggled not to hoot out loud at that unlikely scenario. ‘And how about inviting me over one evening? I bet his pad’s fabulous—I’m dying to see inside! And what will your ad be plugging?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Mercy confessed, feeling foolish. ‘He mentioned something about Coronet and something or other last night. And I didn’t like to ask him to repeat himself this morning. He would only have thought I hadn’t been listening to a word he’d said.’ Which she hadn’t. Only she couldn’t, for shame, further confess that she’d been too busy wondering if he was about to kiss her and coming over all silly and unnecessary!
‘Coronet,’ Carly mused. ‘I’d have heard, surely, if there was a new ultra-expensive brand of perfume or make-up about to hit the market. Whatever, it’s bound to be something eye-wateringly glamorous! Jewellery, perhaps? His agency’s famous for handling the top end of the glitz market—they don’t touch dreary stuff like washing powder and loo cleaners!’
After listening to a lot more on the same lines—like her face would become a national byword for all that was glamorous and sophisticated, not to mention her fortune—and promising to ask Andreo if she had his permission to invite Carly over one evening, Mercy ended the call, curled up more comfortably and wallowed in what her friend had said.
Could it really be possible that the super-charismatic, utterly gorgeous Italian legend had seen something that her mirror had staunchly withheld from her? That he had looked at her with desire? That he had been about to kiss her but had held back, afraid such an action might spoil their working relationship? The idea sent delicious tremors zipping down her spine.
Then, coming to her senses, obliterating the schoolgirl fantasies, which up until now she had never been prey to, she posed another question.
Could pigs fly?
In any case, she wouldn’t want him to kiss her, would she? she told herself firmly, regaining her fabled common sense. No doubt he’d be very good at it, whirling a girl off to paradise with practised ease. But what girl with any self-respect and half a brain in her head would want to be romanced by a man with the morals of a feral tom-cat and the attention span of a toddler where the females in his life were concerned?
Sitting in front of a huge mirror, dazzled by lights that were shining straight into her face, Mercy could hardly contain her excitement or the nerves that were making her bloodstream fizz and her stomach lurch.
Having delivered her, Andreo had disappeared, and Make-up and Wardrobe were in a huddle in the doorway. Several utterly lovely scantily-clad females and one blond male model type had wandered through during the time she’d been left here to stew. And wonder. If she knew what she was supposed to say and do…
Smartly switching that thought off because it only served to make her even more nervous and more convinced than ever that she couldn’t act to save her life and would be thrown off the set and lose the fat fee that would be such a help to James, she turned her mind to calmer thoughts.
Since she’d agreed to do as he’d asked, her boss had been sweetness and light, coming home for supper every evening, inviting her to join him and entrancing her with the dry humour that made for effortless conversation. He hadn’t even shown the slightest irritation with her unclued-up state when she’d broached the subject of housekeeping money, merely giving her that toe-curling smile and explaining, ‘Knox ordered whatever was needed from Harrods. All you have to do is pick the phone up, take delivery and leave me to pay the bills.’
‘Such profligacy!’ she’d scolded, quite unable to help herself. ‘I could shop much more cheaply. I have plenty of time to spare to head for the markets and find bargains! Have you never heard the saying—look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves?’
He’d thrown back his handsome head and roared with laughter, covering her with confusion and making her blush to the roots of her hair as she considered the fact that the super-wealthy would never need to bother themselves with penny-pinching trifles. In future she’d keep her mouth zipped on the subject of economy drives.
They’d rubbed along remarkably well, considering, she reflected. And she’d got over her silliness. Of course she thought he was an absolute dish—what woman wouldn’t? And she could be excused for being unable to take her eyes off him, couldn’t she? He was so exotic. Like a peacock in a flock of grey geese. So of course she would find him utterly fascinating; she wouldn’t be human if she didn’t. That didn’t mean she was interested in him in a man/woman way. As if!
No, the right man for her would be steady and reliable, faithful, good husband and father material, and it wouldn’t matter a toss what he looked like or how much money he had stashed away in the bank!
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