Читать книгу Modern Romance April 2019 Books 5-8 - Шантель Шоу, Chantelle Shaw - Страница 15

‘I THOUGHT I heard the door.’

She appeared in the lounge and at that moment the lights flickered to life—a stutter at first and then a burst, and her expression showed bemusement.

‘You’re dressed?’ She lifted a brow, padding across the room in only a silk robe. A robe that left little to the imagination, not that he needed to use it. He could remember every single curve and delineation of her body, every indent and hollow. Though he regretted now not making love to her in the brightness of this light, so that he could see her peaches and cream complexion all over, marvel at the contrast of her nipples to her skin.

Damn it—he tightened against his trousers, unwanted desire flooding his system once more.

‘What’s the matter? You’re suddenly struck mute?’ Something like uncertainty fluttered in her expression but she covered it quickly. ‘I mean, I know that was good, but surely not enough to rob you of the ability to speak.’

His smile was tight on his face. Her easy nature was at odds with the direction of his thoughts.

‘I came here tonight to talk to you about something important.’

Confusion clouded her expression. ‘Oh. Right. I’d...forgotten. Something to do with our grandfathers?’ She blinked, her expression still one of trust, and stepped across the room. ‘Surely it can wait?’ she implored, lifting a hand to his chest, her eyes meeting his in both a challenge and an invitation.

God, he wished it could wait. But being caught up in the moment, letting passion override common sense once was one thing. It would be quite another to keep exploiting her sensual need, an appetite he had awakened without realising her innocence.

‘Not really.’ He grimaced. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

‘I’m fine.’ She shook her head as wariness crept into her expression. A wariness he couldn’t help but resent.

He nodded, a stiff movement, and lifted his hand to rub his neck. He hadn’t thought about what he would say. When he had come to Bumblebee Cottage, he’d expected this to be much like a standard business meeting.

She had something he needed, and he had something he could offer in exchange. Money, in the first instance and, failing that, a promise to bide his time with her brother’s business, not to bring him to his knees in a cataclysmic fashion. Blackmail, yes.

Would he still stoop to that, given what they’d just shared?

He straightened his shoulders, his expression tense. Sex was beside the point. It didn’t change the facts—he wanted what she had and he’d go to any lengths to acquire it.

Too much rested on his success here, and the hatred he felt for the diSalvo family went deeper than anything he’d shared with Amelia this evening.

‘I need you to sign this.’ He pulled the contract from his document wallet and placed it on the table—the coffee table they’d sat at only a couple of hours earlier, tension zipping through the room.

Well, there was tension again now, but a different kind altogether.

Her eyes showed confusion and then they skipped away from his. She crossed to the table, close enough that he could breathe in her sweet smell of lavender and vanilla, so close that he could simply reach out and pull her close, forgetting about the damned shares for a moment longer.

She pressed a finger to the contract, drawing it down the title page as she read, then silently flipped it over. She read that and then the next, and finally lifted her eyes back to his face. ‘You want to buy my shares in Prim’Aqua? Why?’

‘Because without your shares I can’t assume a majority ownership.’

She blinked, his clear sentence apparently not making any sense to her. ‘It’s one of my family’s business interests. Why would you want to assume a majority ownership?’

It was like waving a red rag in front of a charging bull.

‘Because it was my family’s company also,’ he said with deceptive calm. ‘And I will not rest until it is back in my hands.’

* * *

The words hung in the air like little daggers, but they made absolutely no sense. None of this made any sense.

He’d come to her house and, true, she hadn’t exactly interrogated him about what he’d wanted but...how could she have known anything like this had brought him to her?

‘I presumed you just wanted to talk about our grandfathers!’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘This can’t be real.’

His eyes narrowed and a burst of adrenalin fired in her gut as she recognised in this man a latent power and determination that had been absent for the rest of the evening. He’d been charming and humorous and now she could see that there was a whole other side to him.

‘I have acquired thirty-five per cent of the company,’ he said, the words soft yet laced with iron-hard determination. ‘Your father and brother will never part with their stake, but that does not matter. Not when your shares will give me the majority. I want them.’

‘Why?’ She pressed her hands to her hips, turning away from the contract, then immediately wished she hadn’t. Because he was wearing a suit and she was dressed in a silk robe and her body hadn’t quite caught up with the fact that he was there for business. That she’d slept with a man, given her virginity to a man, who only wanted her shares in a family company. God knew she didn’t want them—how often had she wished that her father hadn’t gifted such a valuable portfolio on her eighteenth birthday? She’d always felt he was making up for lost time, trying to show her with money how valued and loved she was—but money was the last thing she ever wanted.

The assets she had made her feel even more vulnerable and exposed in that superficial world. With her mother’s looks and a fortune at her fingertips—it had been a fast track to attracting all the wrong people.

It still was, apparently.

‘Our grandfathers were best friends from the time they were boys.’ He spoke slowly, as though she didn’t have a tight grasp on English. That exasperated her further.

‘I don’t need to know the history,’ she snapped. ‘I need to know why these shares matter so much to you that you were willing to come to my home and...and...seduce me, just to get your hands on them.’

At that, he had the decency to look surprised. ‘One thing had nothing to do with the other,’ he said slowly and reached a hand out for her, a hand of comfort and reassurance, but she batted it away angrily.

‘No.’ She took a step back; her hip connected with the table. ‘The part of the evening where you get to touch me is absolutely at an end.’

He compressed his lips in exasperation. ‘I didn’t come here intending to sleep with you. But you were so... It just happened,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘I didn’t plan it.’

‘Oh, yes.’ She rolled her eyes, shaking with pent-up rage and deep-down hurt. ‘It was just convenient that I happened to fall into bed with you, right before you blindsided me by asking me for something worth millions of pounds.’

‘You’ll see on the contracts that I’m prepared to pay double their value,’ he said silkily.

She put her hands on her hips then wished she hadn’t. The gesture drew the robe across her front and his attention dropped to her silk-covered breasts, and nipples that were still tight and heavy with arousal.

‘I don’t need your money,’ she spat. ‘You think any amount would induce me to sell the shares to you?’

‘Our grandfathers had a fight. No, it was more than that. It was war,’ he said, returning to the original point. ‘They’d started Prim’Aqua by joining together two shipping companies they’d inherited from their fathers, and it became the most powerful water-based logistics and transportation company in the world. Both of our families owe their prosperity to Prim’Aqua.’

‘Fine, if you say so,’ she snapped, moving towards the door. ‘But it’s my father’s company now.’

‘Your grandfather fooled my grandfather into signing it over—my grandfather trusted him implicitly and signed the deeds without reading.’

‘More fool him,’ she muttered.

His expression tightened. ‘It was a mistake on his part to trust a diSalvo—and that is a lesson I will never forget.’ His eyes glittered black when they met hers. ‘But I can rectify this, if you will only be reasonable.’

‘You dare ask me to be reasonable when you’ve just insulted my whole family? And me?’

‘You come from a family of thieves and bastards, Amelia.’

She stared at him; it felt as if he’d morphed into some kind of alien. It took her several seconds to be able to find her tongue and push it into service.

‘My God, get the hell out of this house,’ she demanded, the words only slightly shaky. ‘How dare you think I would give you anything? How can you speak of my family with such obvious disgust when you’ve literally come straight from my bed?’

‘Sleeping with you has nothing to do with why I’m here. I did not plan for that to happen, and it is not going to derail me from my course.’ His eyes narrowed warningly. ‘Nothing will, Amelia.’

The light in the house was so bright, and she could see him clearly now. His ruthless determination was a physical force in the room, a dark shape she would never be able to grapple with.

Her skin paled, her heart lurched. ‘You’re a real piece of work, aren’t you?’

He angled his head away from her and in profile his face was powerful, as if carved from stone, and a muscle jerked in his jaw, throbbing hard as he reined in his temper.

‘You have no interest in the shares I want.’

‘How do you know that?’ she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest.

He turned to face her, his eyes pinning her to the wall. Oh, God, just like the wall he’d held her against when he’d thrust inside her. Her heart gave a strange little double-beat as memories threatened to swallow her whole.

‘Since you inherited your stock portfolio, you have attended precisely zero board or shareholder meetings. You do not appear at corporate events...you do not have a bio on the website. You are absent in every way.’

‘So?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Ever heard of a silent partner?’

‘It is not the same thing. You have holed yourself up here, as far as you can get from the seat of power in diSalvo Industries. You do not want to use your shares to control the company—’

‘And is that any wonder? When getting involved in my family’s business would mean running up against vultures like you?’

His nostrils flared as he expelled a rapid breath. ‘You think I am a vulture for wanting to take back what was stolen from me? Prim’Aqua is my birthright...’

‘As much as it is mine and Carlo’s,’ she interrupted firmly, her cheeks flushing pink. ‘You have as large a stake in the company as I do. And larger than my brother’s too. So what’s your problem?’

‘I do not want your family having any part of it,’ he said with icy simplicity. ‘Your grandfather stole it and I intend to take it back.’ He softened his voice slightly. ‘Only I am not stealing it. This is a business transaction, plain and simple. You have something I want and I’m prepared to pay you for it.’

‘You’re unbelievable. Do you realise that if you’d told me this when you first arrived I might have heard you out? But how can you think, after what just happened between us, you can lay all this at my feet and I won’t be angry?’

‘Because you’re a sensible, mature woman,’ he said. ‘And I believe you capable of seeing that business is separate to the personal.’

‘There is no business here!’ she roared. ‘We just had sex! Not even an hour ago! You took my virginity and it was...just a way to soften me up towards you, so that I’d agree to anything you wanted.’

He swore in Spanish and shook his head. His face was deathly serious, his face harsh with intent. When he spoke, the words were slow and grated from him, indignation heavy in each accented syllable. ‘If you think I would ever stoop to something so low, then you have no idea who you’re dealing with.’

‘No, clearly I don’t,’ she agreed scathingly. ‘Now, please go.’

‘You do not want me to leave without those contracts,’ he said, the words softly menacing.

It took a moment for the penny to drop, to make sense of the words he’d just issued. ‘Are you threatening me?’

Something like sympathy crossed his face. ‘No. I am threatening your brother.’

Now Amelia was frozen still, her breath coming in fits and spurts, her eyes holding his as she tried to make sense of what he meant.

‘Carlo foolishly picked up our families’ rivalry some years ago.’ Antonio spoke calmly, emotions carefully blanked from his voice. ‘In truth, I’m surprised he never spoke to you of it.’

‘He knew I had no interest in that side of things.’ She wrapped her arms around her chest.

Antonio’s expression tightened. ‘He wanted to ruin my father once and for all, to destroy my family’s legacy as the final step in this feud. By the time I took over the company it was a shambles; my father was destroyed, his life’s work ruined.’ His eyes glinted with the harsh recollection, and there was something else there too. A grief that threatened to shake her sympathetic heart to the core. ‘It has taken me a long time to rebuild Herrera Incorporated, but I have done it, querida, and then some.’

And then some.

The words sat between them and a frisson of tension ran down her spine because there was a threat in that word, surely. A threat and a promise.

‘What does that mean?’

He seemed to be waging a war within himself, as though there was a part of him that wanted to spit the salient facts at her feet and a part of him that wanted to protect what they’d just shared. The former won, apparently.

‘I have invested wisely these last few years, steadily amassing shares in diSalvo business interests so that I now find I own more than half of your brother’s various companies.’

She sucked in a breath. Surely it was a lie, an exaggeration?

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said after a beat had passed, her mind working fast to keep up. ‘Carlo would never have allowed that to happen.’

‘It is easy to acquire anything if you are prepared to bide your time.’

Her stomach twisted into dozens of knots. ‘To what end, though?’ The depth of his hatred made no sense to Amelia. ‘Surely you don’t want diSalvo investments?’

‘Want them? No.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I want to destroy them. I want to take your brother’s legacy and crush it into the ground, as he did my father’s. Only I will destroy him beyond any hope of redemption. I will only rest when he is destitute and starving, so that the memory of having a wallet full of money is all he has to warm him in his old age.’

She stared at this passionate man who had only a short time earlier taught her body what it was capable of feeling, the pleasures he’d lavished her with! And now she saw the beast of hatred that moved within him and shivered, for there was such coldness there, such determination, that she didn’t doubt him capable of carrying out what he’d threatened.

‘You honestly think that’s going to fix what happened to your father?’

He stayed quiet for a moment and then shrugged his broad, powerful shoulders. Her traitorous body gave a little jerk of awareness and she wanted to slap herself for feeling anything for this man except disgust. ‘Carlo played with fire. I am simply making him feel the heat of those flames.’

She gaped. ‘That’s preposterous!’

But he was, apparently, beyond arguing. He spoke with a calm insistence. ‘There are two options here, querida. Sell me your shares in Prim’Aqua and it is over. Done. I will release the grip I have on his empire and he will be safe. Or, if you keep your shares and deny me ownership of a company that is rightfully mine, I will destroy the rest of your family’s businesses. I have the power to tank them, and I will do it. And, what’s more, I will damned well enjoy it.’

Her heart was thumping. ‘You’ll destroy a huge proportion of your wealth if you do that.’

‘I have more than enough money,’ he said carelessly.

‘You’re unbelievable.’

‘Believe it.’ His eyes locked onto hers and she shivered with the force of his power. ‘And make a decision.’

‘A decision? My decision is for you to get out of my house!’ She wrenched the door open. ‘Or I’ll call the police!’

He stared at her for several moments, towering over her, and his breathing matched her own, then he shook his head. ‘I do not want to fight with you.’

‘I don’t want to fight with you either,’ she said and she shoved at his chest. ‘Get out of my house! Right now!’

She didn’t think he was going to go. And she hated that there was a very small part of her that didn’t want him to go, that wanted him to stay and fight and plead with her. To apologise for what he’d done, or tried to do. To take it all back and say he didn’t hate her family, that he wasn’t actively working to bring down her brother and father’s commercial interests.

But that was a very, very small part. Most of Amelia diSalvo hated Antonio Ferrara with every single bone in her body in that moment and couldn’t wait to see the back of him.

‘This isn’t over,’ he said, but it was soft, almost apologetic, and then he stalked out of the door and, she hoped, out of her life.

* * *

Antonio wasn’t surprised to receive a call from Carlo diSalvo the next day, but he was surprised at the effect the call had on him.

He could not speak to Carlo without thinking of Amelia, and the way her body had responded to his. He couldn’t close his eyes without seeing her tiny cottage and the fairy lights she’d decorated almost every surface with—and there was something so her about that design choice.

‘You’re a bastard,’ Carlo snapped down the phone line. ‘Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?’

Antonio stared at the view of London he had from his penthouse, Mayfair sprawling with all its Georgian beauty before him, opening up to a verdant Hyde Park. ‘I didn’t much care,’ Antonio said, not completely honest. Because he did care about something.

Amelia.

It was ridiculous, but he hadn’t been able to get her out of his head since leaving Bumblebee Cottage the night before. Nor could he shake the feeling that, for the first time in his life, he might not have handled things in the best possible way. He hadn’t achieved his aim, and he’d made things monumentally more difficult by sleeping with the enemy.

‘So what’s your plan?’ Carlo demanded, switching to his native Italian.

Antonio followed him effortlessly. ‘To destroy you. No, to do more than destroy you. I will eviscerate you. I will take everything you care about and destroy it, just for the satisfaction of seeing you suffer. My life has become a testament to your ruination.’

Carlo cursed down the phone line. ‘You actually think you’ll be able to succeed in that?’

‘It is already done,’ Antonio said, a wolfish smile spreading across his features. He disconnected the call and pushed all thoughts of Amelia from his mind. Sleeping with her hadn’t been part of the plan, but that didn’t matter. It was beside the point, just like he’d said to her. Sex had nothing to do with business, and this business was something he’d spent long years planning for.

He scrolled to his personal lawyer’s number and held the phone to his ear.

‘Herrera,’ he spoke without preamble when the call connected. ‘I need to see you. It’s about the diSalvo situation.’ He reclined in his chair, staring straight ahead and seeing only the gleam of success. The satisfaction of long-awaited revenge.

And the pair of big blue eyes that haunted him as he told his lawyer to begin tanking diSalvo interests?

They were just eyes—he would forget them soon enough. He would forget her too. Because nothing mattered more than righting the wrongs of the past. Nothing, and no one. For his father, he would succeed.