Notorious: Ruthlessly Bedded by the Italian Billionaire / Bound by the Marcolini Diamonds

His mouth finally broke into a wry little smile. ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said, his voice furred with emotion.

‘I’m sorry it was too late for … for my father.’ She hated speaking the deception that had to be carried through, but the sentiment was right if she’d been Bella.

‘So am I, my dear. So am I,’ he repeated sadly.

And her heart went out to him. It was sad, sadder than he knew with his grand-daughter gone, too. Tears welled into her eyes, remembering Bella’s dreadful death, and Marco Rossini reached out and took one of her hands in both of his, patting it comfortingly.

‘Your loss is even more grievous with both parents gone,’ he said in gentle sympathy. ‘I hope I can make up in some way for not being there for you.’

The tears overflowed, spilling down her cheeks. It was awful, pretending to be someone she wasn’t. This should be happening to Bella, getting a grandfather who would care for her. She shook her head, bit her lip, swallowed hard, desperate to regain some control. ‘I’m sorry,’ she choked out. ‘I didn’t mean to …’

‘It’s okay, Isabella,’ Dante soothed, quickly stepping over to a small table beside the sun-lounge, pulling some tissues out of a box and thrusting them into her hand. ‘I’m sure Nonno understands this meeting isn’t easy for you.’

‘Come and sit down, my dear,’ the old man invited, drawing her over to a bigger table shaded by a large umbrella. ‘Pour her a drink, Dante.’

The table was round, the chairs well-cushioned. Marco dismissed his caregiver as Dante poured the three of them drinks from a jug of fruit-juice, adding ice from a more expensive version of an esky. The men sat on either side of her and Jenny did her best to regain some composure, mopping her cheeks, hoping the eye-makeup she’d been taught to apply wasn’t completely messed up, taking several deep breaths to ease the tightness in her chest.

‘Where is Lucia?’ Marco asked his grandson, diverting attention from her while she recovered from her distress.

‘Re-arranging accommodation for Isabella. She had designated the furthermost suite in the guest wing for her, which I didn’t consider appropriate.’

‘Ah! So typical!’ the old man remarked ruefully. ‘I should have directed the choice.’

‘Lucia is used to being your only grand-daughter, Nonno.’ He nodded towards Jenny, a silent warning that his cousin could be spiteful towards her.

‘I’ll take that into account. But for the most part, you’ll have to be my watchdog, my boy.’ It was a reluctant admission of weakness.

‘I will,’ Dante assured him.

‘Put all business on hold. I want you here now. It won’t be for long.’

‘I’ve already done that, Nonno. I want to spend this time with you.’

The old man heaved a weary sigh. ‘I don’t have much energy these days. Thank you for bringing Isabella to me, Dante. She should not have been left alone.’

‘I’ll see that she is never without family support again.’

Jenny couldn’t let that pass. ‘I’m all right. I don’t need anything from you,’ she declared, shooting a frown at both Dante and Marco. ‘I didn’t come to get your family support. I can look after myself.’

The old man eyed her quizzically. ‘Why did you come, Isabella?’

‘Because …’ He forced me to, but she couldn’t say that. ‘Because I wanted to know where my father had come from. Dante told me why you banished him, but you know, it must have been terrible for him, too, knowing he caused his mother’s death. I think now he punished himself, taking on the hardships of living and working in the Outback. It’s a very isolated life. But he was a good man, a good husband, a good father. You could have been proud of what he made of himself.’

She barely knew where the words came from—stories Bella had told about her growing-up years on the cattle station in far west Queensland, her own instinctive spin on the tragedy that had led to Antonio Rossini’s exile, a need to resolve the bad feelings that Dante wanted resolved because that would free her in the end.

Her earnest outburst seemed to drive Marco back inside himself. He closed his eyes. His face sagged. His skin took on a greyish tinge.

Dante leaned forward, anxiously touching his arm. ‘Nonno, Isabella didn’t mean to be accusing.’

The heavy lids slowly lifted. ‘My boy, I’ve been saying the very same things to myself, ever since I read the investigator’s report.’ He turned deeply regretful eyes to Jenny. ‘What was done was done in anger and grief. I loved my wife very much. And I believe what you tell me. Antonio loved his mother very much. He gave you her name.’

Dante hadn’t mentioned that to her. It made more poignant sense of Marco’s disappointment. ‘You wanted to see her in me.’

‘Yes. Antonio looked very like her. I thought …’ He made an apologetic grimace.

‘It’s Isabella on my birth certificate but I’ve always been called Bella,’ Jenny said defensively, shying from being linked to the woman whom Marco had loved and lost. It made her feel even more of a fraud.

‘Bella …’ he repeated softly. ‘A fitting name. You’re a beautiful young woman. Your mother must have been beautiful, too.’

Jenny flushed at the compliment, knowing it wasn’t really deserved since her ‘beauty’ had been engineered by Dante. ‘I thought so,’ she answered stiffly, judging it to be the safest reply.

‘Do you have photographs of your parents you can show me?’

Jenny shook her head, answering with Bella’s own words explaining why she had none of the usual mementoes of her family. ‘The old homestead on the station burnt down when I was eighteen and in my last year at boarding school. My parents were away at the cattle sales. Nothing was saved.’

‘Another loss for you,’ Marco murmured sympathetically.

‘And you.’ Her eyes flashed understanding of his desire to see a pictorial record of the son who had lived out his life on the other side of the world.

‘Yes. But I chose to bring my loss upon myself. You didn’t.’

It was fair comment and she nodded her appreciation of it. She was beginning to like Marco Rossini. He didn’t come over as a cruel tyrant, ruthlessly wielding his wealth and power to punish or reward, more a man in the winter of his life, regretting mistakes he could not re-write.

She picked up the drink Dante had poured for her and sipped the fruit-juice, grateful for the cool moisture sliding down her throat. It tasted of pineapple and oranges. She needed the refreshment for the next round of questions.

A glance at Dante showed him watching her with an air of curious respect, as though she’d met more than his expectation in her performance so far. Which was a huge relief, since she’d been winging it with a mish-mash of her own feelings and what she’d imagined Bella’s would be.

‘Since you chose to live at the Venetian Forum, I thought Antonio must have told you some of his family history,’ Marco put to her. ‘Yet you said you knew nothing of us.’

‘He never spoke of you,’ she answered, though she had no idea of whether that was true or not. The question of why Bella had bought an apartment at the Venetian Forum had been tormenting her ever since Dante had brought it up. She had to produce a logical reason for it.

‘We had an Italian name. I asked my father where it had come from. He told me it was an old Venetian name. His family had lived there but when he’d lost them he’d emigrated to Australia, and Venice was a place in the past for him. He said I should only think about being an Australian.’ She lifted her chin proudly. ‘Which is what I am.’

The old man nodded. ‘It’s a fine country. I spent some time in Sydney, purchasing suitable property for our hotel and the forum. It’s a beautiful city.’

‘Yes. I love it,’ Jenny said strongly, wanting him to know she had no desire to leave her life for anything he could offer. Bella might have made that change but Jenny Kent couldn’t.

‘A big change for you from life in The Outback,’ he remarked, possibly thinking if she could adapt to that, she could adapt to moving to another country.

‘I had no heart for trying to run the cattle station after my parents died. There was a large mortgage on it because of the drought and …’

‘Too difficult for you in every respect,’ Marco murmured sympathetically.

‘Yes.’ She sighed over the immediate difficulty of trying to relive Bella’s life. ‘After everything was settled up, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, so I went on what you might call a journey of discovery, travelling around until I found a place that appealed to me. When I came to Sydney, I found the Venetian Forum and …’

‘And you remembered your father was originally from Venice,’ Marco supplied helpfully.

‘It felt right. Like a sense of belonging. I loved the artiness of it, the colours of the apartments, the markets around the canal. I’ve always loved drawing and I thought about signing up for an art course but I had to wait until the beginning of the new year to do that. I made a good friend who was also into art and asked her to share my apartment so I wasn’t alone. She didn’t have any family, either. We were like sisters.’

Jenny desperately hoped that covered everything. ‘But then I lost her, too,’ she finished off, her voice losing traction under the dampening weight of sorrow that Bella’s death always evoked in her.

She closed her eyes and ducked her head, fighting another rush of tears. Bella should be here, not her. Jenny Kent had no one to care if she was dead or not. And Bella had been so kind to her, so generous in her sharing, so good to be with. She had deserved more from life, and maybe she had secretly yearned for this reunion with the Rossini family.

Jenny wept for her in her mind …. I can’t do this for you. I’m not you. Yet to survive she had to take Bella’s place for Marco Rossini. Dante would not let her go until the performance was no longer needed for his grandfather.

‘You have us now, Bella,’ the old man assured her quietly.

She shook her head and lifted a bleak gaze to the man she had to satisfy. ‘You don’t feel real to me, Mr Rossini. None of this feels real. I’m apart from it.’ That was the truth.

‘Give it time, my dear. I know about the accident that killed your friend. You’ve suffered one tragedy after another and it’s taken a good part of this year for you to recover from your own injuries, delaying the career plan you’d decided upon. Let this visit to Capri be a healing time for you, in many respects. We’ll get to know each other …’

Panic churned through her again at the thought of keeping up this deception every day for months. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t … ‘But you’re going to die, too,’ she blurted out, wildly hoping he would understand she couldn’t bear it. ‘Dante wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I came to see you, but …’

There was an instant hiss of indrawn breath from Dante, a tense leaning forward.

Jenny was too scared to look at him, too scared to utter another word. Her eyes frantically pleaded with his grandfather to let her off the hook.

The old man raised a commanding hand to his grandson. ‘There’s no need to be protective of me, Dante. Why should Bella risk growing fond of a man she knows is dying?’

‘You’re her grandfather,’ he answered vehemently.

Jenny trembled at the sound of his displeasure.

‘Who has never played any part in her life, never done anything for her,’ Marco replied reasonably. With an air of sympathetic understanding, he turned to Jenny, addressing her kindly. ‘My dear, I have no doubt Dante did everything in his power to steam-roll you into this visit. I’m sure he would have played upon your natural urge to see where your father came from.’

She flushed, ashamed of the lie.

‘Antonio was my son for eighteen years,’ he went on in a tone of sad yearning. ‘He was a boy of great promise. One thing I can do is fill in those years for you, if you’ll allow me.’

Her heart sank. Bella would have wanted that. Any daughter who’d loved her father would. She could feel Dante fiercely willing her to agree, hanging the threat of prison over her head if she didn’t. There was no way out.

‘I have very little time left, Bella,’ Marco added softly. ‘Will you help me to spend it well, correcting a wrong that weighs heavily on my heart? Think of me, if you will, as a treasure chest of memories you can open now, but will be forever closed once I’m gone.’

It was too persuasive an appeal to deny. ‘All right. I’ll try it,’ she conceded, surrendering to the inevitable once again. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have thrown your … your failing health in your face. It just seems that …’

‘Death keeps cutting through your life?’

She nodded, feeling too uncomfortable to say anything more.

‘It’s different with me, Bella. My journey is simply drawing to a close. Only this business with you remains undone.’ He smiled encouragement at her. ‘Let’s finish it together.’

She managed a wobbly smile back. ‘I hope it will be good for you, Mr Rossini.’

‘Good for you, too, my dear.’

Not in a million years, Jenny thought darkly.

She threw a defiant look at Dante, not really caring about his reaction to her performance since Marco was satisfied with the end result. Besides, she was too drained of feeling by this traumatic meeting to worry about him at this point.

‘It will be all right, Isabella. I promise you,’ he said quickly, determined on soothing her fears.

He’d stand between her and any trouble. Jenny had no doubt about that. But he couldn’t promise it would be all right for her. It never could be. The deception was tearing her apart. The bitter irony was she had thought surviving a term in a women’s prison would be harder.

Bad choice.

Bad, bad choice.

Jenny Kent was more in danger of losing herself here than anywhere else.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘YOU like living dangerously?’

The angry threat in Dante’s voice was like a hammer beating on Jenny’s head, which was already aching from the stress of the meeting on the terrace. Lucia had joined them there. Lucia had shown her to this suite so her new cousin could freshen up before lunch. Dante, of course, had tagged along to ensure everything was ‘all right,’ and once they had entered the appointed room, he’d very purposefully ushered Lucia out, closing the door firmly behind her, intent on securing a private tête-à-tête with the puppet who’d done her own little dance with his grandfather.

Jenny gritted her teeth and turned to face him, determined on standing the ground she had just established with Marco Rossini—an independent person who’d make her own choices. Trapped here she might be, but she wasn’t going to bend to Dante’s will anymore. She met his blazing gaze with stubborn defiance.

‘I adapted to circumstances. Isn’t that what you wanted of me?’

‘You saw a chance to extract yourself from the situation and you took it,’ he fired at her.

‘I’m not what he wanted,’ she retorted fiercely. ‘I couldn’t be, could I? You should have foreseen that, Dante. You disappointed him.’

‘No. I have never disappointed my grandfather,’ he declared with vehement conviction. ‘One of his wishes didn’t come true. You don’t look like Antonio. That was unavoidable, but you can and will supply everything else he needs from you.’

‘I said I’d try.’

He crossed the room to where she stood at the foot of the bed, towering over her with intimidating power. ‘You were trying to twist your way out of this. Don’t try it again or I’ll make you pay for it.’ His eyes bored into hers. ‘Believe me, I’ll make you pay for it.’

She believed him.

He was as much tied to this deception as she was, and failure was unacceptable.

Dante Rossini didn’t fail.

The force of the man in such close proximity made her quake inside. It was like being blasted by an electric energy that jangled her nerves, kicked her heart into a faster beat, tore at her muscles, leaving them quivering. She stared back at him, refusing to let him see any weakness in her, silently fighting her lonely fight to survive him as well as everything else.

‘Nothing more to say?’ he mocked.

She swallowed convulsively, trying to get some control over her throat muscles. Her mouth was as dry as the Sahara Desert, making it impossible to speak, so she simply shook her head. He didn’t want to hear anything she might say, anyway.

The threatening tension on his face slowly relaxed. The laser-like heat in his eyes simmered down. His mouth actually quirked into an ironic little smile.

‘On the whole, you did quite well out there. Not the warm response I told you to give, but the emotional tears were good. Nonno was moved by them. He liked your independent stance, too.’

The approval, coming straight on the heels of his attack, turned Jenny’s mind to mush.

‘Just don’t hold that line too hard,’ he went on. ‘You’ve made your point. You’re not about to suck up to a grandfather who hasn’t been a grandfather to you. That’s okay. It’s an attitude he respects, but soften it with kindness. And courtesy.’

She nodded.

He huffed an exasperated sigh. His eyes snapped with annoyance. ‘We’re back to the silent treatment, are we?’

It goaded her into a challenging glare and reactivated her vocal chords. ‘Less grief for me if I remain a submissive doll who doesn’t buck your authority.’

‘Huh!’ he scoffed. ‘Submissive is the last word I’d apply to you! I’m not fool enough to believe something meek and mild resides in the fortress you’ve built around yourself. You can fly the white flag as much as you like but I know …’

He stepped closer, raising her tension level to screaming point. His hand gripped her chin, fingers pressing into the curve of her cheek, and his eyes were glittering with heat again, not angry heat, not threatening heat, more a very male sexual heat wanting supremacy over a woman. He was touching her, touching her aggressively, and she was paralysed with panic.

‘I know rebellion is seething behind it,’ he said with arrogant certainty. ‘And maybe the best way to quell it is to storm your defences and seduce you into wanting to stick with me.’

His fingers slid into her hair. His other arm scooped her body hard against his. She had no time to react with any physical or vocal protest. His mouth covered hers, and the shock of his kiss, of being enveloped by the heat and strength of his powerful body, completely robbed her of any resistance. He invaded her mind, possessed it with a host of sensations.

She’d never been kissed like this before, never been held by a man like him, never experienced such an explosion of excitement. His mouth ravished hers, his tongue sweeping over her palate, making it tingle with intense pleasure, driving her own tongue into a duelling response. He had read her character rightly. Submission was not in her nature. Every primitive instinct she had was suddenly triggered, dictating a need to fight back, to do to him what he was doing to her.

The self-discipline that had ruled her life for so long broke into an angry passion. He held her body by force. She flung her arms around his head, hands burrowing fiercely into his thick hair, holding him just as forcefully. Her lower body ground against his. Her breasts thrashed his chest. No control. Every action was driven by a wild urge to assert herself, not surrender to his dominance, make him feel what he was making her feel.

The arm around her back tightened, his hand pressing down, grasping the fleshy curve of her bottom, lifting her into intimate contact with the erection she had aroused. Part of her mind registered danger. The rest of it revelled in her power to seduce him out of his formidable control.

He’d taken her out of the life she knew. She wanted him to pay for that, screw up his puppet plan, storm him with crashing waves of feeling, drag the devil into the deep blue sea he’d plunged her into. Awash with incoherent emotion, she was barely aware of him moving, carrying her with him. His mouth was locked on hers, kissing with ravaging intensity. Only when he’d tumbled her backwards onto the bed, did it break away.

Her eyes snapped open. He was kneeling over her, breathing hard, a dark confusion on his face. Words flew off her tongue in a silky taunt. ‘Not what you wanted, Dante?’

His eyes blazed with the desire to crush her spirit, grind it so far down she’d be enslaved to his will. Never, she silently shot at him, exhilarated by the contest between them.

A knock on the door startled them out of the intense connection with each other. Dante cursed under his breath, backed off the bed, hauled her to her feet. ‘This will keep,’ he muttered savagely, releasing her to head for the door, putting respectable distance between them.

Jenny’s legs were too tremulous to walk anywhere. She sucked in air to get a blast of oxygen through her scattered brain and sat back down on the bed, needing recovery time and wanting to hide any crumpling of the duvet where she had lain on it. Her heart was pumping with horror at what she had almost done with Dante Rossini, horror at her own mad elation over it.

They were supposed to be cousins. She bit down on a bubble of hysterical laughter. If this deception fell apart it would be his fault. He’d started it. He’d forced it. And be damned if she’d take the blame for it!

Another knock on the door.

He opened it. ‘Anya?’ he said in a tone so cold, it automatically denied there’d been any boiling heat in this room.

Anya … the woman he usually housed in this suite for his sexual convenience … here to smooth away his travel fatigue.

The hysterical laughter bubbled up again and Jenny clamped down on it, pride insisting on an appearance of absolute decorum. She sat up straight, hands in her lap, her mind seething with curiosity over how Dante was going to handle this deception, dealing with his current girlfriend after he’d just been conducting a sexual assault on his cousin. Was he incredibly adept at switching himself on and off?

She was curious, too, about the type of woman who usually attracted him. No doubt someone as fabulous as him in the looks department, she thought cynically, determined not to feel in any way jealous. This was not her world and she wasn’t about to forget that reality.

‘Excuse me, Dante,’ Anya pleaded in a honeyed voice. ‘Some of my toiletries were left in the bathroom. I’ve come to collect them.’

She didn’t give him the chance to deny her entry, sliding into the room as she spoke, obviously keen to get a look at the cousin for whom she had been evicted from this suite. Anya Michaelson was a honey all over. Men probably flocked to her like bees. She had a glorious mass of silky blonde hair. Her figure was sensational, voluptuous curves barely encased in a bright yellow mini-dress. Perfect long legs gleamed as though they’d just been rubbed with scented oil. And the face she turned to Jenny was strikingly beautiful: flawless skin, stunning blue eyes, a full-lipped mouth with a very sexy pout.

‘Sorry to break in on you like this,’ she directed at Jenny, the blue eyes gobbling up every detail of her appearance, sharply assessing the attraction of the woman Dante was supposedly protecting. ‘I’ll only be a minute.’

She was already crossing the room, heading for a door which had to lead to an ensuite bathroom.

‘Say hello to Isabella, Anya.’

The whip-like command from Dante stopped her in her tracks. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed apologetically. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude.’ A row of perfect white teeth was flashed at Jenny. ‘Hello, Isabella. Don’t you love Capri?’

‘Not particularly,’ Jenny answered, bridling at the condescending tone.

‘Well, you’ve just arrived. I’m sure it will grow on you. Excuse me while I remove my things, won’t you? I expect we’ll be meeting properly over lunch.’ She threw an appeasing smile at Dante. ‘Pardon me, caro. A careless oversight by one of the servants, not being thorough in checking what might have been missed.’