Her Exquisite Surrender: Surrendering All But Her Heart / Innocent in the Ivory Tower / Full Surrender
‘Of course I want to keep this out of the press,’ she said. ‘But then, don’t you? What will people think of your hotel security if a guest can do the sort of damage you say my brother did? Your hotels aim for the top end of the market. What does that say about the type of clientele your hotel attracts?’
A muscle flickered like a pulse at the side of his mouth. ‘I have reason to believe your brother specifically targeted my hotel,’ he said.
She felt her stomach lurch. ‘What makes you think that?’
He opened a drawer to the left of him and took out a sheet of paper and handed it to her across the desk. She took it with a hand that wasn’t quite steady. It was a faxed copy of a note addressed to Angelo, written in her brother’s writing. It said: This is for my sister.
Natalie gulped and handed back the paper. ‘I don’t know what to say … I have never said anything to Lachlan about … about us. He was only thirteen when we were together. He was at boarding school when we shared that flat in Notting Hill. He never even met you.’
Nor had any of her family. She hadn’t wanted Angelo to be exposed to her father’s outrageous bigotry and her mother’s sickening subservience.
‘You must have said something to him,’ Angelo said. ‘Why else would he write that?’
Natalie chewed at her lip. She had said nothing to anyone other than that her short, intense and passionate affair with Angelo was over because she wanted to concentrate on her career. Not even her closest girlfriend, Isabel Astonberry, knew how much her break-up with Angelo had affected her. She had told everyone she was suffering from anxiety. Even her doctor had believed her. It had explained the rapid weight loss and agitation and sleepless nights. She had almost convinced herself it was true. She had even taken the pills the doctor had prescribed, but they hadn’t done much more than throw a thick blanket over her senses, numbing her until she felt like a zombie.
Eventually she had climbed out of the abyss of misery and got on with her life. Hard work had been her remedy. It still was. Her interior design business had taken off soon after she had qualified. Her online sales were expanding exponentially, and she had plans to set up some outlets in Europe. She employed staff who managed the business end of things while she got on with what she loved best—the designing of her linen and soft furnishings range.
And she had done it all by herself. She hadn’t used her father’s wealth and status to recruit clients. Just like Angelo, she had been adamant that she would not rely on family wealth and privilege, but do it all on her own talent and hard work.
‘Natalie?’ Angelo’s deep voice jolted her out of her reverie. ‘Why do you think your brother addressed that note to me?’
She averted her gaze as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘I don’t know.’
‘He must have known it would cause immense trouble for you,’ he said.
Natalie looked up at him again, her heart leaping to her throat. ‘A hundred thousand pounds is a lot of money, but it’s not a lot to pay for someone’s freedom,’ she said.
He gave an enigmatic half-smile. ‘Ah, yes, but whose freedom are we talking about?’
A ripple of panic moved through her as she held his unreadable gaze. ‘Can we quit it with the game-playing?’ she said. ‘Why don’t you come straight out and say what you’ve planned in terms of retribution?’
His dark eyes hardened like black ice. ‘I think you know what I want,’ he said. ‘It’s the same thing I wanted five years ago.’
She drew in a sharp little breath. ‘You can’t possibly want an affair with someone you hate. That’s so … so cold-blooded.’
He gave a disaffected smile. ‘Who said anything about an affair?’
She felt a fine layer of sweat break out above her top lip. She felt clammy and light-headed. Her legs trembled even though she had clamped them together to hide it. She unclenched her hands and put one to her throat, where her heart seemed to have lodged itself like a pigeon trapped in a narrow pipe.
‘You’re joking, of course,’ she said, in a voice that was hoarse to the point of barely being audible.
Those dark, inscrutable eyes held hers captive, making every nerve in her body acutely aware of his sensual power over her. Erotic memories of their past relationship simmered in the silence. Every passionate encounter, from their first kiss to their blistering bloodletting last, hovered in the tense atmosphere. She felt the incendiary heat and fire of his touch just by looking at him. It was all she could do to stay still and rigidly composed in her chair.
‘I want a wife,’ he said, as if stating his desire for something as prosaic as a cup of tea or coffee.
Natalie hoisted her chin. ‘Then I suggest you go about the usual way of acquiring one,’ she said.
‘I tried that and it didn’t work,’ he returned. ‘I thought I’d try this way instead.’
She threw him a scathing look. ‘Blackmail, you mean?’
He gave an indifferent shrug of one of his broad shoulders. ‘Your brother will likely spend up to four years waiting for a hearing,’ he said. ‘The legal system in Italy is expensive and time consuming. I don’t need to tell you he is unlikely to escape conviction. I have enough proof to put him away for a decade.’
Natalie shot to her feet, her control slipping like a stiletto on a slick of oil. ‘You bastard!’ she said. ‘You’re only doing this to get at me. Why don’t you admit it? You only want revenge because I am the first woman who has ever left you. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Your damned pride got bruised, so now you’re after revenge.’
His jaw locked down like a clamp, his lips barely moving as he commanded, ‘Sit down.’
She glared at him with undiluted hatred. ‘Go to hell.’
He placed his hands on the desk and slowly got to his feet. Somehow it was far more threatening than if he had shoved his chair back with aggressive force. His expression was thunderous, but when he spoke it was with icy calm.
‘We will marry as soon as I can get a licence. If you do not agree, then your brother will face the consequences of his actions. Do you have anything to say?’
She said it in unladylike coarseness. The crude words rang in the air, but rather than make her feel powerful they made her feel ashamed. He had made her lose control and she hated him for it.
Angelo’s top lip slanted in a mocking smile. ‘I am not averse to the odd moment of self-pleasuring, as you so charmingly suggest, but I would much rather share the experience with a partner. And, to be quite frank, no one does it better than you.’
She snatched up her bag and clutched it against her body so tightly she felt the gold pen inside jab her in the stomach. ‘I hope you die and rot in hell,’ she said. ‘I hope you get some horrible, excruciatingly painful pestilent disease and suffer tortuous agony for the rest of your days.’
He continued to stare her down with irritatingly cool calm. ‘I love you too, Tatty,’ he said.
Natalie felt completely and utterly ambushed by the use of his pet name for her. It was like a body-blow to hear it after all these years. Her chest gave an aching spasm. Her anger dissolved like an aspirin in a glass of water. Her fighting spirit collapsed like a warrior stung by a poison dart. Tears sprang at the back of her eyes. She could feel them burning and knew if she didn’t get out of there right now he would see them.
She spun around and groped blindly for the door, somehow getting it open and stumbling through it, leaving it open behind her like a mouth in the middle of an unfinished sentence.
She didn’t bother with the lift.
She didn’t even glance at the receptionist on her way to the fire escape.
She bolted down the stairs as if the devil and all his maniacal minions were on her heels.
CHAPTER TWO
NATALIE got back to her hotel and leant against the closed door of her suite with her chest still heaving like a pair of bellows. The ringing of her phone made her jump, and she almost dropped it when she tried to press the answer button with fingers that felt like cotton wool.
‘H-hello?’
‘Natalie, it’s me … Lachlan.’
She pushed herself away from the door and scraped a hand through her sticky hair as she paced the floor in agitation. ‘I’ve been trying to call you for the last twenty-four hours!’ she said. ‘Where are you? What’s going on? Why did you do it? For God’s sake, Lachlan, are you out of your mind?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m only allowed one call. I’ll have to make it quick.’
Natalie scrunched her eyes closed, not wanting to picture the ghastly cell he would be locked in, with vicious-looking prison guards watching his every move. ‘Tell me what to do,’ she said, opening her eyes again to look at the view of the River Thames and the London Eye. ‘Tell me what you need. I’ll get there as soon as I can.’
‘Just do what Angelo tells you to do,’ Lachlan said. ‘He’s got it all under control. He can make this go away.’
She swung away from the window. ‘Are you nuts?’ she said.
He released a sigh. ‘He’ll do the right thing by you, Nat,’ he said. ‘Just do whatever he says.’
She started pacing again—faster this time. ‘He wants to marry me,’ she said. ‘Did he happen to mention that little detail to you?’
‘You could do a whole lot worse.’
Her mouth dropped open. ‘Lachlan, you’re surely not serious? He hates me.’
‘He’s my only chance,’ he said. ‘I know I’ve stuffed up. I don’t want to go to prison. Angelo’s given me a choice. I have to take it.’
She gave a disgusted snort. ‘He’s given me a choice, not you,’ she said. ‘My freedom in exchange for yours.’
‘It doesn’t have to be for ever,’ he said. ‘You can divorce him after a few months. He can’t force you to stay with him indefinitely.’
Natalie seriously wondered about that. Rich, powerful men were particularly adept at getting and keeping what they wanted. Look at their father, for instance. He had kept their mother chained to his side in spite of years of his infidelities and emotional cruelty. She could not bear to end up in the same situation as her mother. A trophy wife, a pretty adornment, a plaything that could be picked up and put down at will. With no power of her own other than a beauty that would one day fade, leaving her with nothing but diamonds, designer clothes and drink to compensate for her loneliness.
‘Why did you do it?’ she asked. ‘Why his hotel?’
‘Remember the last time we caught up?’ Lachlan said.
Natalie remembered all too well. It had been a weekend in Paris a couple of months ago, when she had been attending a fabric show. Lachlan had been at a friend’s eighteenth birthday party just outside of the city. He had been ignominiously tossed out of his friend’s parents’ château after disgracing himself after a heavy night of drinking.
‘Yes,’ she said in stern reproach. ‘It took me weeks to get the smell of alcohol and vomit out of my coat.’
‘Yeah, well, I saw that gossip magazine open on the passenger seat,’ he said. ‘There was an article about Angelo and his latest lover. That twenty-one-year-old heiress from Texas?’
She tried to ignore the dagger of jealousy that spiked her when she recalled the article, and the stunningly gorgeous young woman who had been draped on Angelo’s arm at some highbrow function.
‘So,’ she said. ‘What of it? It wasn’t the first time he’d squired some brainless little big-boobed bimbo to an event.’
‘No,’ Lachlan said. ‘But it was the first time I’d seen you visibly upset by it.’
‘I wasn’t upset,’ she countered quickly. ‘I was disgusted.’
‘Same difference.’
Natalie blew out a breath and started pacing again. ‘So you took it upon yourself to get back at him by trashing one of the most luxurious hotel rooms in the whole of Europe just because you thought I was a little peeved?’
‘I know, I know, I know,’ Lachlan said. ‘It sounds so stupid now. I’m not sure why I did it. I guess I was just angry that he seemed to have it all together and you didn’t.’
Natalie frowned. ‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘I’m running a successful business all by myself. I’m paying for my own home. I’m happy with my life.’
‘Are you, Nat?’ he asked. ‘Are you really?’
The silence was condemning.
‘You work ridiculous hours,’ Lachlan went on. ‘You never take holidays.’
‘I hate flying, that’s why.’
‘You could do a desensitising programme for that,’ he said.
‘I don’t have time.’
‘It’s because of what happened to Liam, isn’t it?’ Lachlan said. ‘You haven’t been on a plane since he drowned in Spain all those years ago.’
Natalie felt the claws of guilt clutch her by the throat. She still remembered the tiny white coffin with her baby brother’s body in it being loaded on the tarmac. She had seen it from her window seat. She had sat there staring at it, with an empty, aching, hollow feeling in her chest.
It had been her fault he had been found floating face-down in that pool.
‘I have to go,’ Lachlan said. ‘I’m being transferred.’
Her attention snapped back to Lachlan’s dire situation. ‘Transferred where?’ she asked.
‘Just do what Angelo says, please?’ he said. ‘Nat, I need you to do what he wants. He’s promised to keep this out of the press. I have to accept his help. My life is over if I don’t. Please?’
Natalie pinched the bridge of her nose until her eyes smarted with bitter angry tears. The cage of her conscience came down with a snap.
She was trapped.
* * *
Angelo was finalising some details on a project in Malaysia when his receptionist announced he had a visitor. ‘It’s Natalie Armitage,’ Fiona said.
He leaned back in his chair and smiled a victor’s smile. He had waited a long time for this opportunity. He wanted her to beg, to plead and to grovel. It was payback time for the misery she had put him through by walking out on him so heartlessly.
‘Tell her to wait,’ he said. ‘I have half an hour of paperwork to get through that can’t be put off.’
There was a quick muffled exchange of words and Fiona came back on the intercom. ‘Miss Armitage said she’s not going to wait. She said if you don’t see her now she is going to get back on the train to Edinburgh and you’ll never see her again.’
Angelo slowly drummed his fingers on the desk. He was used to Natalie’s obstinacy. She was a stubborn, headstrong little thing. Her independence had been one of the first things he had admired about her, and yet in the end it had been the thing that had frustrated him the most. She’d absolutely refused to bend to his will. She’d stood up to him as no one else had ever dared.
He was used to people doing as he said. From a very young age he had given orders and people had obeyed them. It was part of the territory. Coming from enormous wealth, you had power. You had privilege and people respected that.
But not his little Tatty.
He leaned forward and pressed the button. ‘Tell her I’ll see her in fifteen minutes.’
He had not even sat back in his chair when the door slammed open and Natalie came storming in. Her brown hair with its natural highlights was in disarray about her flushed-with-fury face. Her hands were clenched into combative fists by her sides, and her slate-blue eyes were flashing like the heart of a gas flame. He could see the outline of her beautiful breasts as they rose and fell beneath her top.
His groin tightened and jammed with lust.
‘You … you bastard!’ she said.
Angelo rocked back in his chair. ‘Cara,’ he said. ‘I’m absolutely delighted to see you, too. How long has it been? Four hours?’
She glowered at him. ‘Where have you taken him?’
He elevated one brow. ‘Where have I taken whom?’
Her eyes narrowed to needle-thin slits. ‘My brother,’ she said. ‘I can’t contact him. He’s not answering his phone any more. How do I know you’re doing the right thing by him?’
‘Your brother is in good hands,’ he said. ‘That is as long as you do what is required.’
Her eyes blazed with venomous hatred. ‘How can I trust you to uphold your side of the bargain?’ she asked.
‘You can trust me, Natalie.’
She made a scoffing sound. ‘I’d rather take my chances with a death adder.’
Angelo smiled a thin-lipped smile. ‘I’m afraid a death adder is not going to hold any sway with an Italian magistrate,’ he said. ‘I can get your brother out of harm’s way with the scrawl of my signature.’ He picked up a pen for effect. ‘What’s it going to be?’
He saw her eyes go to his pen. He saw the way her jaw locked as she clenched her teeth. Her saw the way her slim throat rose and fell. He saw the battle on her face as her will locked horns with his. He felt the energy of her anger like a high-voltage current in the air.
‘You can’t force me to sleep with you,’ she bit out. ‘You might be able to force me to wear your stupid ring, but you can’t force me to do anything else.’
‘You will be my wife in every sense of the word,’ he said. ‘In public and in private. Otherwise the deal is off.’
Her jaw worked some more. He could even hear her teeth grinding together. Her eyes were like twin blasts from a roaring furnace.
‘I didn’t think you could ever go so low as this,’ she said. ‘You can have anyone you want. You have women queuing up to be with you. Why on earth do you want an unwilling wife? Is this some sort of sick obsession? What can you possibly hope to achieve out of this?’
Angelo slowly swung his ergonomic chair from side to side as he surveyed her outraged features. ‘I quite fancy the idea of taming you,’ he said. ‘You’re like a beautiful wild brumby that bucks and kicks and bites because it doesn’t want anyone to get too close.’
Her cheeks flushed a fiery red and her eyes kept on shooting sparks of ire at him. ‘So you thought you’d slip a lasso around my neck and whip me into submission, did you?’ she said, with a curl of her bee-stung top lip. ‘Good luck with that.’
Angelo smiled a lazy smile. ‘You know me, Tatty. I just love a challenge—and the bigger the better.’
Her brows shot together in a furious frown. ‘Don’t call me that.’
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘I always used to call you that.’
She stalked to the other side of the room, her arms across her body in a keep-away-from-me pose. ‘I don’t want you to call me that now,’ she said, her gaze determinedly averted from his.
‘I will call you what I damn well want,’ he said, feeling his anger and frustration rising. ‘Look at me.’
She gave her head a toss and kept her eyes fixed on the painting on the wall. ‘Go to hell.’
Angelo got to his feet and walked over to where she was standing. He put a hand on her shoulder, but she spun around and slapped at his hand as if it was a nasty insect.
‘Don’t you dare touch me,’ she snarled at him, like a wildcat.
He felt the fizzing of his fingers where his hand had briefly come into contact with her slim shoulder. The sensation travelled all the way to his groin. He looked at her mouth—that gorgeous, full-lipped mouth that had kissed him with such passion and fire in the past. He had felt those soft lips around him, drawing the essence from him until he had been legless with ecstasy. She had lit fires of need over his whole body with her hot little tongue. Her fingers had danced over every inch of his flesh, caressing and stroking him, branding him with the memory of her touch.
Ever since she had left him he had waited for this moment—for a chance to prove to her how much she wanted him in spite of her protestations. His rage at being cut from her life had festered inside him. It had soured every other relationship since. He could not seem to find what he was looking for with anyone else. He had gone from relationship to relationship, some lasting only a date or two, none of them lasting more than a month. Lately he had even started to wonder if he had imagined how perfectly physically in tune he had been with her. But seeing her again, being in the same room as her, sensing her reaction to him and his to her, proved to him it wasn’t his imagination.
She wouldn’t be the one who walked out on him without notice this time around. She would stay with him until he decided he’d had enough. It might take a month or two, maybe even up to a year, but he would not give her the chance to rip his heart open again. He would not allow her that close again. He had been a passionate fool five years ago. From the moment he had met her he had fallen—and fallen hard. He had envisaged their future together, how they would build on the empire of his grandparents and parents, how they would be the next generation of Bellandinis.
But then she had ripped the rug from under his feet by betraying him.
She might hate him for what he was doing, but right now he didn’t give a damn. He wanted her and he was going to have her. She would come to him willingly. He would make sure of that. There would be no forcing, no coercing. Behind that ice-maiden façade was a fiercely passionate young woman. He had unleashed that passion five years ago and he would do so again.
‘In time you will be begging for my touch, cara,’ he said. ‘Just like you did in the past.’
Her expression shot more daggers at him. ‘Can’t you see how much I hate you?’ she said.
‘I can see passion, not hate,’ he said. ‘That is promising, si?’
She let out a breath and put more distance between them, her look guarded and defensive. ‘How soon do you expect to get this ridiculous plan of yours off the ground?’ she asked.
‘We will marry at the end of next week,’ he said. ‘There’s no point dilly-dallying.’
‘Next week?’ she asked, eyes widening. ‘Why so soon?’
Angelo held her gaze. ‘I know how your mind works, Natalie. I’m not leaving anything up to chance. The sooner we are married, the sooner your brother gets out of trouble.’
‘Can I see him?’
‘No.’
She frowned. ‘Why not?’
‘He’s not allowed visitors,’ Angelo said.
‘But that’s ridiculous!’ she said. ‘Of course he’s allowed visitors. It’s a basic human right.’
‘Not where he is currently staying,’ he said. ‘You’ll see him soon enough. In the meantime, I think it’s time I met the rest of your family—don’t you agree?’
Something shifted behind her gaze. ‘Why do you want to meet my family?’ she said. ‘Anyway, apart from Lachlan there is only my parents.’
‘Most married couples meet their respective families,’ Angelo said. ‘My parents will want to meet you. And my grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins.’
She gave him a worried look. ‘They’re not all coming to the ceremony, are they?’
‘But of course,’ he said. ‘We will fly to Rome on Tuesday. The wedding will be on Saturday, at my grandparents’ villa, in the private chapel that was built especially for their wedding day sixty years ago.’
Her eyes looked like a startled fawn’s. ‘F-fly?’
‘Si, cara,’ he said dryly. ‘On an aeroplane. You know—those big things that take off at the airport and take you where you want to go? I have a private one—a Lear jet that my family use to get around.’
Her mouth flattened obstinately. ‘I’m not flying.’
Angelo frowned. ‘What do you mean, you’re not flying?’
She shifted her gaze, her arms tightening across her body. ‘I’m not flying.’
It took Angelo a moment or two to figure it out. It shocked him that he hadn’t picked it up before. It all made sense now that he thought about it.
‘That’s why you caught the train down from Edinburgh yesterday,’ he said. ‘That’s why, when I suggested five years ago that we take that cut-price trip to Malta, you said you couldn’t afford it and refused to let me pay for you. We had a huge fight over it. You wouldn’t speak to me for days. It wasn’t about your independence, was it? You’re frightened of flying.’