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Her eyes widened. ‘You put me on the board of directors?’
‘Who else would I trust to keep the place running when I had to travel? You’re an exceptional businesswoman—the whole board was behind your appointment. And not just because they’re scared of me,’ he added, before she could quip that they would back anything he said out of fear.
In hindsight he recognised that promoting Anna had been when their troubles had begun. As his PA she had travelled everywhere with him. As Vice President of Moretti’s UK, second only to the US in his burgeoning technology empire, she had needed to be on hand in the UK when he travelled to America. They’d gone from seeing each other all day every day and sleeping together every night to spending up to a week apart at a time. That was when those insecurities had set in.
But she’d been—acted—insecure from the beginning, he reminded himself. Her accelerated promotion had only given her the tools to up her campaign.
Yet the wonderment ringing out from her eyes at this moment put more doubts in his head.
Anna was clever and stubborn. She could by turn be sweet then sour. She was good cop to his bad cop but people were always aware that her being good cop did not make her a pushover. If she thought someone was being an idiot she had no qualms about telling them so, just as she had no qualms about telling him. Until she’d hit him with that ludicrous demand for a hundred million pounds of his fortune she would have been the last person he’d suspect of being a gold-digger. The last person he would have suspected of having an agenda. He’d trusted her as he hadn’t trusted anyone since his nonno had died and to discover it had all been a lie had shattered him in ways he couldn’t explain even to himself.
Her fingers gently massaged his cheek. It was such a simple sign of affection but one that made his heart expand.
‘I don’t remember everything,’ she whispered, bringing her face to his so the sweetness of her breath sighed against his skin. ‘All that I remember of us as a married couple is spending long days in the office and long nights making love. I don’t remember falling in love with you but I know that I did. I know I did. I can feel it as clearly as I can feel the bristles on your jaw where you need to shave.’
And then her eyes closed and her lips pressed against his, not moving, just breathing him in.
Stefano gripped the back of her head and held her tightly to him to deepen the kiss, his mind and heart racing.
She spoke of love? Love? That was a word neither of them had ever said before.
That was not what their marriage was about.
Then what was it about?
It had been about desire. The primal need for a mate. A partner. Someone to have bambinos with.
He had long wanted children. To have a child would be to ice the delicious cake that was his life. His hated cousins had an abundance of them, and he’d beaten them in everything except in the bambino stakes. But to have children he needed to find a woman to have them with and he hadn’t trusted any of the women in his life with a vase, never mind a child. Still, he’d looked forward to seeing miniature versions of himself running around and causing havoc one day; a bloodline to pass his wealth on to.
He’d be damned if he’d leave anything to the other members of his family.
When he’d started making waves in the world of technology, and journalists had learned of his rags-to-riches background, the shady acquaintances of his early years, the prison sentence...suddenly they had wanted to interview him and hear his story from his own lips. He’d been happy to oblige, especially if it involved having his photo taken in front of his yacht or his private plane. Stefano had become a poster boy for the kids of Lazio, an icon to look up to, the local bad boy who’d turned out good. He didn’t doubt for a minute that his family, who all still lived in the same homes in the same close-knit area he’d been dragged up in, knew everything about him. And he didn’t doubt that his success made them sick.
See? he
would say to them through the lens of the camera. This is what you threw away. If you’d treated me like the orphan boy of your blood that I was and not like some kind of wild animal, these riches would have been yours. He was Italian after all! Life and its riches were for sharing with family. But he’d decided when he was fifteen that he had no family. Everything he earned, every penny of it, was his and his alone.
When Anna had so flippantly—but trembling after that first passionate kiss they’d shared—declared that if he wanted to bed her he’d have to marry her, he’d known by the next morning that she would be the mother of his children. There was no one better suited. They worked fantastically well together, shared a chemistry that was off the charts and they already knew each other’s faults. Marriage and babies together? Well, why not? If not her then who? At least life with Anna would be fun, he’d thought. And she was straight down the line. As sexy as a nymph. He’d trusted her. But love? Love was for romantic fools who needed to put a name to their desire rather than just accepting it for what it was: chemistry.
The only person who had ever shown him love or affection was his nonno. When he’d died, Stefano had quickly learned he was not a person to inspire affection. As he’d grown older and started catching the eye of beautiful women, he’d discovered lust but had known their desire for him was based solely on his physical attributes. If they could see him without the outer shell, they would be repelled.
Anna was the only person since his nonno to see beneath that shell and still want him. He had never repelled her. He’d infuriated her—yes, he could admit to that—but seeing the real man hadn’t made her run. She was level-headed enough not to want to try to change him.
In her own way, she was a misfit like him. They’d understood each other as no one else could.
But then she’d so spectacularly accused, humiliated and dumped him and he’d realised that it had all been an act. What Anna had seen beneath his shell had repelled her but she had bided her time until she’d been in a position to go for the kill and take him for everything she could get.
Had she planned her scheme right from the beginning as he’d thought since that torrid black moment in his boardroom? Or had it formed over time...?
Things were getting confused in his head. He had to focus. He mustn’t let what was happening between them now and her words of love cloud his judgement any further.
The feelings she was now mistaking for love were its opposite: hate. Only the utmost loathing of him could have made Anna do what she had done. If she’d felt even a flicker of love for him she would never have gone through with her grand plan.
And now he loathed her. His grand plan was coming together better than he could have hoped.
Stefano pushed the disquiet in his guts aside with force and concentrated on the desire blazing in his loins. He lifted her out of the bath and carried her wrapped in an enormous towel to their bed.
They spent the day making love but, during the spent times when they dozed, he couldn’t shake the voice in his head telling him that his plan was in danger of unravelling.
