Читать книгу A Deal For The Di Sione Ring - Jennifer Hayward - Страница 10

CHAPTER TWO

“WHAT’S THE MATTER, bella mia?”

Silvio Marchetti, Mina’s fiancé, arched a thick, dark brow at her. “You’ve been distracted ever since we sat down, and since I know it cannot be my scintillating company that is lacking, you must be worrying about something.”

Mina, also known as Lina when she was entertaining improper men in towels in luxurious hotel suites, blinked. She’d thought she’d done a good job hiding her distraction from her fiancé, but apparently her expressive face, which had been her downfall in the etiquette classes designed to attract a man just like Silvio, continued to plague her.

“Mi dispiace.” She waved a hand in the air. “I’ve had a busy day.”

Silvio’s thin lips twisted. “Exhausted ordering your team of wedding planners around? It’s a good thing I have a big staff, cara. You will have many responsibilities as my wife at Villa Marchetti. You must learn how to multitask.”

She was quite adept at multitasking! She’d cleaned a whole floor of hotel suites today in addition to surviving Signor Brunswick’s improper inquisition. The latter of which was half of the problem with her distraction tonight. She couldn’t get the sizzling connection between her and the beautiful American out of her head.

But Silvio didn’t know about any of her extracurricular activities. Her job moonlighting as a chambermaid at the Giarruso to pay off the debt her mother had incurred since her father’s death was a secret to everyone but her. It wouldn’t do for anyone to know Simona Mastrantino’s daughter, engaged to one of Italy’s wealthiest men, was cleaning toilets by the hour.

She pinned a smile on her face, the fact that her mother would have a coronary if she knew what her daughter was doing to keep things afloat of secondary importance to her bigger problem—her impending marriage to Silvio, which she could not possibly go through with.

“Maybe I’m having prewedding jitters,” she murmured. “It’s a big production this wedding. So many people will be there.”

Silvio reached for her hand and curled his fingers around it. “All you have to do is look beautiful. The rest will be taken care of.”

And then they would consummate their relationship. Her stomach dipped at the terrifying thought. She’d never slept with a man. Hadn’t had the opportunity with her mother dragging her from one social event to another husband hunting, advertising her innocence like a detail on a high-end real-estate listing. Look but don’t touch, her mother’s vibe had said. And since Mina had never agreed on any of her mother’s choices for a rich husband, her mother had chosen for her.

She studied her fiancé as he poured her more of the terrifically expensive Chianti he’d ordered for them, undoubtedly trying to loosen her up. He was classically, undeniably handsome with his chiseled features and straight Roman nose, but his eyes, which Mina did think were the windows to the soul, were hard and unyielding, dominated by thick dark brows that always seemed to frown. She had never once experienced any chemistry whatsoever when he had touched her, kissed her, which was as far as he’d managed with her mother on guard.

And yet this afternoon, she acknowledged with a shiver, all it had taken was one look from the American to send electricity coursing through her from her head to her feet. For her to wonder what it would be like to be taken to bed by him. To know it would be as good, as improper, as everything else about him.

“Mina?”

“Hmm?”

Silvio narrowed his gaze on her. “I was asking if you would like dessert or some Frangelico and coffee... Keep this up, cara, and I will start thinking it’s my company you are finding tiresome.”

The desperation that had been coursing through her veins all day with their wedding looming in just forty-eight hours picked up her pulse, sent her heart hammering in her chest.

“What’s bothering me,” she blurted out, “is that we hardly know each other, Silvio. Maybe this has all been a bit fast.”

That hard edge in his eyes deepened. “Now I am thinking you have cold feet, Mina. What more is there to know? I will provide a luxurious life for you to match the one you’re accustomed to. You will entertain me in bed and be a good mother to my children. It’s very simple.”

She pressed a palm to her flushed cheek. She had let the cat out of the bag; she might as well follow through with it.

“When is my birthday?” she asked quietly.

His mouth flattened, a scary, lethal line. “I will, of course, know that when we’re married.”

“Am I a morning person or a night owl? Can I swim or would I drown if you tossed me over the side of your yacht?”

“I’m considering it,” he growled. “Enough, Mina.”

She sunk her teeth into her bottom lip. “You asked what was wrong. I’m telling you.”

Well, not all of it. If she told him the entire truth—that her mother was marrying her off so she inherited the family heirloom, a precious ring her father had bequeathed to her upon her marriage—he might not be so impressed. Of course, she conceded miserably, it changed nothing, really. She was being sold as a possession to bear Silvio Marchetti’s bambinos, when all she had ever wanted was to go to business school and follow in her father’s footsteps.

Silvio threw his napkin on the table. “I think we should get out of here.”

Mina’s heart collided with the wall of her chest as her fiancé lifted his hand and signaled the waiter. “Perhaps we should have a liqueur,” she suggested. To give this conversation a chance to cool down before they left supervised company.

He ignored her. Bill secured and paid, he placed a hand at her elbow, brought her to her feet and walked her out of the restaurant with such haste Mina’s head swam. She had consumed more than her usual share of wine with dinner with the nerves plaguing her and now it seemed like a particularly bad idea, given she’d gone and voiced thoughts she never should have.

Her mother was going to kill her. Silvio looked like he wanted to kill her.

She was going to face the consequences.

She sat as far away from Silvio as she could in the car that took them home, his usual driver at the helm. Her fiancé sat stone-faced beside her, not uttering a word as they drove through the streets of Palermo to the posh, aristocratic neighborhood of Montepellegrino where she and her mother lived. If it was possible for a man to be utterly furious without showing any outward sign of it, her fiancé had mastered it. His anger emanated from him like a red cloud.

When the car pulled up in front of her mother’s house, she breathed a sigh of relief. Silvio got out of the car, came around and opened her door. She took his hand, swung her legs out of the car and straightened. “Silvio—”

“Wait here,” her fiancé told his driver in a low tone.

“That isn’t necessary,” she murmured, panicked because her mother was out at the opera. “I think I’m just tired. I’m sure if I—”

Silvio clamped his fingers hard around hers and propelled her toward the villa. She fumbled in her purse for her keys and found them with shaking fingers. Silvio frowned as she pushed the key into the lock. “Where is the staff?”

“It’s Manuel’s night off.” He had been off for over a year, as in permanently off, but she wasn’t about to tell Silvio they had no staff because they were penniless.

Silvio loosened his tie as he walked past her into the salon. “Pour me a drink.”

She wanted to refuse, wanted desperately for him to leave, because she didn’t like the vibe coming off him, but to reject his suggestion would only add fuel to the fire.

Crossing to the bar, she took a glass from the cabinet and poured him a Cognac, her hands trembling as she put the bottle down. Silvio watched her with a hooded gaze as she turned and carried the glass over to him.

She handed him the tumbler, flinching as his fingers brushed hers. His dark gaze turned incendiary. “We are marrying in front of hundreds of people in two days, Mina. What is behind this sudden display of nerves?”

She didn’t love him. She didn’t even like him. If the truth be known, she was afraid of him.

Dannazione! If only she could sell the ring her father had left her without marrying him. But the condition in her father’s will had been unbreakable. She had to be married to get her hands on the ring.

“It’s like I said.” She lifted her gaze to her fiancé’s. “It seems very fast and I—I wish I knew you better. I would feel more comfortable.”

He took a sip of the Cognac. “You did not go on and on about knowing me when your mother sold you off to the highest bidder. You were happy to snare Palermo’s most eligible bachelor. So don’t cry foul now, Mina. We will come to know each other.”

She lowered her gaze. He was right. It had been as much a business deal as if her mother had forked over an old-fashioned dowry for her except she had nothing and she was being traded for her looks and childbearing ability. Which, she thought hysterically, she didn’t even know if she had.

The thud of her fiancé’s glass hitting the coffee table brought her head up. “Perhaps you are nervous about us,” he suggested. “You’ve been playing the ice queen so long we haven’t had a chance to get properly acquainted.” His eyes glittered as he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and drew her to him. “Since we are very nearly married, I suggest we take some time to do that now.”

Her heart thumped in her chest. “My mother—”

“—is at the opera.” He brought his mouth down on hers. “You mentioned that earlier.”

He kissed her then, a hard, demanding press of his mouth that was about punishment, not pleasure. Her heart galloped faster at the secure hold he had on her wrist. He was tall and big and she could never get away unless he chose to let her.

He didn’t. His mouth continued to punish her, the hand he had on her waist moving down to cup her buttocks through the thin silk of her dress. He pulled her against him in an intimate hold she had never experienced before, his aroused body pressing against hers. It set off alarm bells in her head. “Silvio,” she gasped, twisting away from his mouth. “Not like this...”

His face contorted with rage. “It will be exactly as I want it, cara. Any way I want it.”

“Silvio—”

He brought the flat of his hand across her cheek so hard her head snapped to the side. Her ears rang with the force of it, her head spinning as a white-hot throb spread across her cheek.

“Refuse me again,” he bit out, “and you will discover the depths my anger can sink to. I will not hear one more word of your silly jitters, Mina. Nor will I tolerate you repeating any of them to anyone. You are going to be my wife in two days. Our union is the talk of this city. Get yourself together.”

The sound of keys in the door brought her head around. Her mother walked in, her gaze flicking from Mina to Silvio, then back again, eyes widening at the mark on Mina’s face. “I thought that was your car, Silvio.”

Silvio released her and stepped back. Sparing her mother a brief nod, he stalked past her to the door. “My driver will pick you up for the rehearsal dinner at six thirty tomorrow.”

The door slammed. Mina’s mother unwound her scarf from around her neck and walked slowly toward her, her gaze wary. “What was that?”

The moment she’d found out her fiancé was a violent man. Mina sank down on the sofa and buried her face in her hands.

“I can’t marry him.”

Her mother sat down beside her. “Let me see your face.”

She lifted her head, utterly sure when her mother saw the welt she would agree she couldn’t marry Silvio. Her mother sighed, went to the bar for ice, wrapped some in a towel and came back to sit down beside her, pressing it to her cheek. “What Sicilian man doesn’t have a temper?”

Mina froze, disbelief plummeting through her, followed by a deep rage that sent blood pumping to every inch of her skin. “Did Father ever hit you?”

Her mother’s lips pursed. “Your father was a different kind of man.”

Yes, he had been. Honorable and loving. He would no more have lifted a hand to his wife or daughter than he would have kicked a dog on a street corner, which, she was sure, Silvio Marchetti would do. She was also sure from what had just happened, her fiancé’s behavior would escalate when she was under his roof as his wife.

“I won’t do it. We can find someone else.”

Her mother shook her head, a resigned look on her face. “You have rejected every choice I’ve made for over a year now, Mina. You are marrying in front of half of Palermo in two days. Life is not all sunshine and rainbows. Sacrifices must be made and we need your sacrifice now. You know that.”

Her mother was okay with sacrificing her to a ruthless, violent man?

Dio mio. She’d always known she was heartless, but this... What kind of a monster was she?

Her mother’s gaze softened. “I suggest you find some peace with this. Men are men. You happen to be marrying a filthy rich one. Let that be your comfort.”