Mediterranean Millionaires
‘Isn’t it amazing how many women look with envy on that collar?’
‘It’s like being branded by your ownership and I don’t care how much moneys it’s worth!’ Gwenna practically spat at him. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? You think that being your playmate is some kind of honour—’
‘Santo Cielo! Move away from that door,’ Angelo instructed with chilling ferocity. ‘I need to talk to Saudan about what he said to you.’
‘I told you that he didn’t say anything—he didn’t need to! He believes I can be bought and, when he looked at me, I could see that he was wondering how soon you’d put me back on the market again. Because to him I’m just a commodity and he was thinking that he could have me too—’
Angelo lifted her bodily out of his path. ‘I’ll bloody kill him!’
‘What for?’ she demanded wildly.
‘Dannazione! He upset you,’ Angelo grated.
Afraid of a scene, she stepped in front of the door to prevent his exit. ‘Why should you care about that?’ Without the slightest warning her voice had developed a wobble and tears were drenching her eyes.
Angelo loathed female tears like poison and never, ever let himself be swayed by tantrums. But when he saw those sparkling drops on Gwenna’s lashes he felt as hugely relieved, as if she had provided him with a list of instructions on how he should respond. She was upset, crying. He could not possibly take offence at anything she had said. The raging frustration inside him immediately subsided. Suddenly everything seemed simple and his own function wonderfully clear-cut. He rested his hands on her shoulders and in a clever series of stealthy moves slowly and gently eased her shivering slender length into his arms.
A sob convulsed Gwenna’s throat and she gulped it back hurriedly. ‘I don’t cry…I don’t—’
‘I don’t hear you crying,’ Angelo breathed, wondering if he was a pervert for just wanting to kick out all his guests and drag her up to bed and keep her there for at least twenty-four hours.
She rested her brow against a broad shoulder. She felt totally bewildered by her own behaviour. How had she ended up so close to him? The angry pain that had taken her over had gone and she recognised a disconcerting change in her attitude to him. Arguing with Angelo had once made her feel stronger and more in control but this time around it had made her feel as if she were being torn in two.
‘I’m all right,’ she muttered awkwardly just as her mobile phone rang. ‘Excuse me…’
It was her stepsister, Penelope.
‘We need to talk to you urgently,’ Penelope declared in a sharp voice that made Gwenna’s heart sink like a stone and her anxiety level rise even faster. ‘It’s a family matter and I can’t discuss it on the phone. How quickly can you get down here?’
‘I’ll get on the first available train tomorrow.’
‘I have to go home for a couple of days,’ Gwenna told Angelo, anxiously wondering if the problem that her stepsister had refused to discuss related to the total breakdown of their respective parents’ marriage. ‘It’s a family crisis.’
His lean, strong face austere, Angelo frowned. ‘I’ll come with you.’
Gwenna was painfully conscious of Angelo’s attitude to her father, and could only think that Angelo’s presence would increase the strain and embarrassment for all concerned. ‘Thanks, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. This is private family stuff.’
Angelo thought that was doubtful. Most probably Donald Hamilton was in serious trouble again. When Angelo had exposed the older man’s thefts from Furnridge Leather, he had known that it would only be a matter of time until further crimes were laid at Hamilton’s door. Other people’s suspicions and worries would almost inevitably lead to an investigation of Donald Hamilton’s other financial dealings. He studied Gwenna’s pale, troubled profile and marvelled that she could still be so vulnerable and naïve. He thought it was past time that she appreciated that her parent was a greedy, lying con man without a conscience.
‘Do you think you could look after Piglet?’ Gwenna asked uncomfortably. ‘It’s just my stepmother doesn’t like dogs and I think he would be traumatised if he was put back into the pet hotel.’
Angelo felt oddly humbled by her trust in him as regards her pet, for there was no doubt that Piglet was her most precious possession. ‘Non c’è problema…no problem.’
He closed a strong, tanned hand over hers. A wave of unidentifiable emotion was washing about inside Gwenna. She wanted to lean on him but she wouldn’t let herself and could not explain why such a strange prompting should assail her.
‘When I take you home later we’ll make it a night to remember, bellezza mia,’ Angelo husked, turning her insides to a delicious jelly of shameless anticipation.
Early the following morning, she wakened and listened to Angelo moving about in the room next door. He never spent the whole night with her. He always slept alone. Yet he gave her the most unimaginable pleasure…
Angelo strode in. Fully dressed in a very snazzy designer business suit and looking devastatingly handsome, he came to a halt at the foot of the bed. Her torrent of warm honey-coloured hair was an exotic tangle that framed her heart-shaped face and accentuated her glorious blue eyes and luscious pink mouth.
‘Dio mio…I’m not sure I can let you go, cara mia,’ Angelo breathed and he was only half joking. ‘You were amazing last night.’
Although she reddened, Gwenna shifted between the sheets like a sinuous cat being stroked by silk. His purring intonation and the hot glow of his hungry gaze made her feel empowered, but she was shocked when she heard herself say, ‘You should’ve stayed…’
‘I have a meeting in an hour,’he intoned huskily. ‘It’s very important.’
The sexual buzz in the air tingled through Gwenna like a shot of adrenalin. She studied his stunning dark features from below her lashes, crystalline blue eyes limpid.
It was the first time Gwenna had given him a come-on and Angelo felt dizzy with sheer lust and triumph. He called Franco and murmured in slightly ragged Italian, ‘Inform the office that I’ve been unavoidably detained.’
He loosened the knot of his tie with an air of purpose and shed it along with his jacket. Not once did he remove his striking gaze from her perplexed face. He released the buttons on his shirt with taunting slowness.
Gwenna was paralysed by surprise and the dulled heavy sensation of warmth low in her belly. ‘What are you doing? Your meeting…’
Angelo came down on the bed beside her and reached for her with confident hands. ‘Make missing it worth my while,’he invited in erotic challenge, letting his tongue delve deep between her parted lips and ravish the sweetness from her soft mouth.
Around noon, he shook her awake. She blinked up at him like a rabbit caught in headlights, still so exhausted that her body literally felt weighted to the mattress. Angelo on the other hand looked re-energised. His black hair was still wet and spiky from the shower, his beautiful eyes brilliant as diamonds above his superb bronzed cheekbones. ‘You’ve missed your train. A driver is standing by to take you to the heliport. You can fly down to see your family. Don’t stay away too long.’
Gwenna never woke up quickly and she was as flustered by the wild passion that had exploded between them as by the prospect of being flown by helicopter to Somerset. ‘Okay…’
Angelo carried her fingers to his handsome mouth and kissed them in a mocking gesture that made her tense up even more. Straightening, he surveyed her with wolfish satisfaction. ‘Congratulations, bellezza mia.’
Gwenna gave him a bemused look. ‘For what?’
‘You finally feel like you belong to me.’
Gwenna went white.
‘That’s how I wanted it and how it has to be. There was never any way that I was going to settle for less,’ Angelo imparted silkily. ‘What price true love now? You’re more mine than you could ever be his.’
Angelo strolled out the door whistling quietly. Gwenna stared into space, a sick sense of humiliation coruscating through her. In the grip of a frantic surge of tempestuous emotion, she leapt out of bed, snatched up her dressing gown and hurtled to the door to bawl. ‘Angelo?’
Angelo came to a lazily graceful halt on the landing and swung round to regard her from below dense black lashes in mocking enquiry. ‘Yes…?’
‘Who do you think I’m thinking about whenever I’m with you?’ she hurled and even as she said it she cringed for herself. Such spite and such lying were unfamiliar to her, but every time Angelo hurt her she found herself reacting in unpredictable ways.
Angelo stared steadily back at her, eyes black as pitch, lean, strong face expressionless. She saw his loss of colour and knew her nasty retaliation had hit home. Yet she was more ashamed and troubled than pleased by her success. She felt the sudden dangerous drop in temperature and she shivered, afraid and full of regret.
Reeling back into the bedroom, she leant back against the door to close it and covered her clammy face with trembling hands. What was happening to her? What had he done to her? Since when had she been a vindictive witch who told horrible lies?
When had thoughts of Toby even entered her head in Angelo’s presence? Not once, not once had she thought of Toby. That belated realisation shocked and frightened her…
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘YOU travel in luxury: a private helicopter for your sole use and a limo and driver to deliver you right to our door?’ Donald Hamilton awarded Gwenna an admiring smile across the depth of his spacious book-lined study. ‘I’m impressed. Obviously, Angelo Riccardi thinks very highly of you.’
‘I don’t know about that. I just missed my train.’ Gwenna was already wondering if Penelope had exaggerated the family crisis because her father did not seem unduly concerned. Indeed he seemed quite relaxed. ‘Penelope made the situation here sound grave and she was very mysterious. I’ve been really worried.’
‘Then you’ll be relieved to learn that my current problem is only what you might call a footnote to that other business at Furnridge.’ The older man grimaced. ‘There I was in a hell of a bind and I did what most people in a financial crisis do—I borrowed just a little from Peter to pay Paul.’
Gwenna tensed again. ‘Meaning…er, sorry, I don’t quite understand.’
‘I’m afraid that certain irregularities in the garden committee’s accounts have been uncovered. Of course, given time I could make all good.’ Donald shrugged. ‘Unfortunately the stuffy old worrywarts on the committee are demanding instant repayment.’
‘You took money from the Massey Garden Fund…as well?’ Gwenna was appalled when she finally grasped the gravity of what she was being told. ‘What on earth were you thinking of?’
‘I don’t care for your tone, Gwenna,’ her father censured with a lofty look of reproof.
‘I just can’t believe that after all that fund-raising and all those speeches you actually helped yourself to the donations of the people who trusted you,’ she whispered painfully, shame weighing her down like a giant piece of concrete. ‘Why didn’t you mention this last month?’
‘Obviously because I hoped to be in a position to replace the money. But that’s since proved impossible. I’m unemployed, and Eva and I can barely afford to live in this house. Two members of the garden committee called yesterday. They’re threatening to call in the police.’
Her brow felt as though a tension band was tightening round it. ‘How much money are we talking about?’
Donald winced and mentioned a sum that shook her rigid.
‘Oh, my word…what are we going to do?’ she exclaimed.
‘Well, possibly you could sell a diamond necklace or something to save our skins,’ a female voice interposed with very female venom.
Gwenna looked up in dismay to see her stepsisters and her stepmother coming into the room.
‘Or, you could simply ask your fabulously rich lover to bail your father out,’ Penelope continued in the same sarcastic tone.
‘I can’t do that,’ Gwenna whispered sickly, not knowing how to explain that she did not consider herself the owner of any of the diamond jewellery that Angelo had insisted she wear.
‘Sadly, you’re the only person who can help me now,’ her father told her heavily. ‘We have no money and no hope of getting a loan.’
And with that final comment, Donald Hamilton left the room.
‘I can’t do anything,’ Gwenna said again. ‘I don’t have any money either.’
Eva spoke up for the first time. ‘If you don’t find the means to sort this out discreetly, I assure you that I will divorce your father and then he won’t even have anywhere to live. I’ve had enough. I won’t tolerate any more.’
Gwenna sighed heavily. ‘I can understand how you feel—’
‘I don’t think you do. While our lives have been crashing and burning as we struggled to pay our bills, you’ve been swanning down red carpets to film premières!’ Penelope condemned furiously. ‘I see your picture in all the top magazines and your name in the gossip columns. You’re shacked up with a Category-A billionaire!’
‘It would have been crude to present Angelo with a shopping list of demands in your very first week,’ Wanda opined, ‘but it’s time you stopped being selfish and shared your amazing good fortune with your family.’
‘That’s enough, girls,’ their mother, Eva, murmured. ‘I’m quite sure that Gwenna has got the message.’
In shock from that combined verbal attack, Gwenna was hit even harder by the pure injustice of the allegations of selfishness.
‘I don’t believe that finding the money will be a problem for you,’ Penelope remarked sweetly. ‘After all, you’re wearing a fortune on your back. That handbag alone must be worth fifteen hundred pounds!’
Gwenna stared down at her bag in horror. Did bags come that expensive? She had not a clue what any of her clothing or accessories had cost, for the simple reason that she had not shopped for them personally and they had not been delivered with price tags attached. She now deeply regretted raiding her designer wardrobe in an effort to boost her confidence in advance of an encounter with her sharp-tongued stepsisters.
‘I don’t have any money of my own and I can’t ask Angelo for it,’ she argued tautly, her mind in turmoil.
‘How can you be such a mean, selfish cow?’ Wanda demanded shrilly.
Real bitterness flooded Gwenna at that denunciation. ‘I’m not a prostitute…I won’t ask him for money.’
Her stepmother wrinkled her nose with distaste. ‘Let’s not overdo the melodrama, Gwenna. From what I’ve seen, Angelo Riccardi needs very little encouragement to spoil you rotten.’
Angry, frustrated tears blinding her, Gwenna leapt to her feet. ‘Stop talking like I’m with Angelo out of choice! Or like it was some big treat for me! I was in love with someone else, for goodness’ sake. Angelo offered me a deal—if I slept with him, he would drop the charges against Dad!’
No sooner had the words left Gwenna’s lips than she regretted an admission that she would never have made had she not been so upset and desperate to defend herself. Silence had fallen. All three women were now viewing her with dropped jaws of disbelief and she was totally mortified.
‘I had no idea,’ Eva retorted frigidly. ‘It sounds absolutely immoral and I hope you’re not blaming us for your decision. Do we need the sordid details?’
‘Angelo Riccardi had to blackmail you into bed with him?’ Wanda gasped wide-eyed. ‘I’d have knocked him flat in the rush. What’s the matter with you?’
‘That is so, so sexy.’ Penelope could not conceal her envy. ‘You are really sad, Gwenna. No normal woman would be moaning about it!’
Dumbfounded by those reactions, Gwenna walked out of the room. She was taken aback to see Toby waiting in the hall. Just as quickly she appreciated that Toby, as a member of the garden committee, would already have been informed that her father had taken money from the restoration fund.
‘I only found out about this yesterday. I volunteered to break the news to you and I couldn’t do it on the phone. I meant to make it here before you but my flight was delayed,’ Toby confided apologetically.
‘Gwenna…’ Donald Hamilton spoke from the far end of the hall in an admonishing tone.
‘Get me out of here,’ Gwenna begged her oldest friend in a frantic whisper, before turning back to address her father. ‘I don’t know what to say to you right now. I need to think things over. Please don’t expect me to pull off a miracle. I’ll be in touch.’
Ignoring the older man’s protests, Toby ushered her quickly out to his car. ‘Look, I’m booked in at the Four Crowns inn for the night. Why don’t we go there to talk?’
Her mobile phone was buzzing. It was Angelo calling. He was still talking to her, then. But her surge of guilty relief was short-lived when she contemplated telling Angelo about her parent’s latest act of embezzlement. Mentally shrinking from that ghastly challenge, she switched off her phone. When they arrived at the Four Crowns, Toby confessed that he hadn’t eaten for hours and added that, as far as he knew, starving had never solved a crisis. Neither of them mentioned the theft over a late dinner. Afterwards they went up to his comfortable room with its ancient oak beams to talk over a bottle of wine.
‘I’ll be blunt. The committee is champing at the bit to call in the police but I persuaded them to hold off for another day or so. They don’t want the scandal of this going public in case it inhibits further donations to the fund,’ Toby explained. ‘Is Angelo likely to bail your dad out?’
Gwenna swallowed hard. ‘I doubt it—Angelo won’t be sympathetic.’
‘But Angelo struck me as keen on you.’
Gwenna reddened because she didn’t feel that she could point out that her sole value in Angelo’s terms was of a highly physical nature. And that after the lie she had flung at Angelo earlier, even that low measure of her worth had probably hit rock-bottom.
‘I won’t say what I’d like to say about your father.’
‘I appreciate that…’ Gwenna flinched nervously as a knock sounded on the door.
Toby opened the door. Gwenna saw Angelo and her heart reacted as if it were jumping right out of her chest. She jumped to her feet, Delft-blue eyes locking in sudden fear to the icy black outrage flaming in Angelo’s glittering gaze. As she moved forward Angelo hit Toby, who went flying backwards to fall against the side of the bed.
‘Are you insane?’ Gwenna shrieked.
‘You were lying on his bed!’ Angelo gritted. ‘Stay out of this. This is between me and him—’
‘I’m not a coward, but I’ve just never seen the point of all that macho shouting and thumping stuff,’ Toby groaned, hugging his ribs and struggling to catch his breath.
Angelo studied him in incredulous disgust. ‘He won’t even fight for you!’
‘Why would he fight for me? He’s gay,’ Gwenna said woodenly, crouching down beside Toby to ask him if he was all right.
‘Gay?’ Angelo thundered in disbelief.
‘Gay,’ Toby confirmed, squinting at Gwenna in surprise and then back at Angelo. ‘Didn’t she mention it?’
‘It was none of Angelo’s business,’ Gwenna declared, refusing to look at either man.
Angelo strode forward and immediately extended a hand down to Toby to help the younger man up. ‘I’m sorry. I owe you a sincere apology.’He sent Gwenna a shimmering glance of challenge. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? How wasn’t it my business?’
Her cheeks flushed a discomfited pink, Gwenna folded her lips on a stinging retort. A slanging match in front of Toby in which Angelo was certain to give as good as he got would only embarrass her more. She already felt foolish, angry and guilty that Toby had got hurt. She did not want to recall that, when she first realised that Angelo had followed her down to Somerset, she had been pleased.
‘Are you coming back to my hotel with me?’ Angelo drawled softly.
Gwenna jerked her chin in grudging affirmation. ‘How could you do that?’ she snapped the minute she was alone with Angelo.
‘You’re responsible for that stupid farce,’ Angelo drawled with cutting cool, thrusting open the inn door for her to precede him into the car park.
‘And how do you make that out?’ Gwenna demanded.
‘You didn’t answer your mobile phone. You walked out of your father’s house with the man you told me you loved. You then dined alone with him and went upstairs to his hotel room. What was I supposed to think?’
‘That not everyone is as oversexed as you are!’
Gay! The guy was gay! Why hadn’t she said? Angelo’s aggressive jaw line squared. She was all sweetness and light with everyone else, but she had gone out of her way to put him through the equivalent of a meat mincer. Subtle torture of the most female kind. Naturally he had found it offensive that her main source of interest should be another man, when it was his bed she was sharing! When she had thrown that fact in his teeth earlier that day, Angelo had been dismayed by the discovery that he was struggling to restrain his temper even with his staff.
‘I still don’t understand how you knew where I was today.’
Angelo dealt her a sardonic look. ‘I always know where you are. Whenever you go out, someone on Franco’s team watches over you. I’m in the public eye. I have enemies. Even if the only threat is from the paparazzi, you need protection.’
Gwenna could hardly contain her annoyance. ‘It’s like being under police surveillance…why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Your safety is my concern. So, tell me the tale of Toby,’ Angelo invited, determined to satisfy his curiosity. ‘How did you manage to fall for someone who’s gay?’
Gwenna worried at her lower lip with her teeth before she finally answered. ‘It was a secret and I wasn’t in on it when I first knew him. By the time I found out, it was too late.’
‘How too late? Finding out that should have been a wake-up call,’ Angelo said very drily.
‘It’s not that simple—’
‘In the same scenario I would find it very simple.’
Gwenna tilted her chin. ‘When did you last fall for anyone?’
Angelo felt as if he had been dumped in conversational quicksand. He didn’t do love, didn’t believe in it, didn’t go into the building, never mind the living room. Love was a four-letter word that had never crossed his lips since childhood and not something he was prepared to talk about. His icy reserve was well known. People didn’t ask him personal questions. They didn’t have the nerve. They didn’t want to irritate him.
‘How come you can ask me but I can’t ask you?’ she prompted in the simmering silence.
‘Dio mio…I don’t fall. Okay?’
Gwenna fixed stunned china-blue eyes on him. ‘You mean…ever?’
‘So what?’ Angelo was infuriated by her compassionate look that implied he must be some kind of emotional cripple.
Gwenna wished she hadn’t asked. She felt terribly sad for him and hastened to breach the awkward silence. ‘My grand-mother used to say that it takes all sorts to make a world,’ she continued brightly. ‘I suppose that if I’d ever met anyone else worth caring about, I would’ve got over Toby. There again, he would be a hard act to follow. He’s very creative—he designs parks and gardens. We have a lot in common—’
‘Soil…plants…’ Angelo slotted in with lethal derision. ‘The wow factor.’
Her heart-shaped face tightened. ‘Toby’s really special—kind and caring.’
Worth caring about. Although he wasn’t looking for love, Angelo felt affronted. Toby was kind, caring and creative. It was not a level playing field. Possibly Toby filled in for the saints in his spare time. Angelo decided that pursuing the topic was beneath his dignity.
It was almost midnight when they arrived at the Peveril House hotel. A private lift whisked them up to an opulent suite that comprised several rooms. Gwenna had taken one step through the door when Piglet hurled himself at her in rapturous welcome.
‘My word, you brought him with you!’ Gwenna pounced happily on her pet. ‘Thank you.’
Angelo wondered how he was supposed to have left behind a dog that went on hunger strike without her. Piglet had to be the most successful attention-seeker in canine history.