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When he broke off the kiss at last and stared into her eyes, she trembled anew, thinking she’d glimpsed something in his amber depths that gave her hope that he felt something for her. But there was no time to talk. He pulled on his crash helmet, and she did the same. The journey to the palazzo was thankfully uneventful. There were security guards at the gates, and more patrolling the grounds, Daniele explained when the butler ushered them into the house.
‘A bodyguard will drive you to Morante Group’s offices tomorrow morning,’ Daniele told her. ‘I have to go away for a couple of days. I’ll inform the police about the incident, but their investigation will take time.’
‘Does your trip have anything to do with what happened tonight?’ she asked shakily.
He nodded. ‘I have contacts from when I was in the special forces and infiltrated a Mafia gang. A couple of people I knew back then became informers, but I have to be careful that I don’t put their lives in danger.’
‘What about your life being in danger?’ Terror gripped Paloma when Daniele strode across the entrance hall towards the front door. ‘Is there any point in telling you to take care of yourself?’
He smiled briefly, but he had become an enigmatic stranger once more. ‘I suggest you focus on your job running your company,cara,and let me do mine.’
With a heavy heart, Paloma realised that first and foremost Daniele regarded her as his responsibility, and the honeymoon was over.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ITFELTSURREALto be in her grandfather’s office at Morante Group’s headquarters, sitting at his desk, in his chair. Tears pricked Paloma’s eyes when she picked up a framed photograph of herself taken at her graduation ceremony that Nonno had kept on the desk. She missed him terribly and wished with all her heart that she had moved to Italy after university and worked with him. His business experience would have been invaluable to her, but it was too late to learn from his wisdom and advice. Her grandfather was with his beloved Isabella at last, and Paloma was in charge of his billion-dollar company that employed thousands of staff worldwide.
But she had only been able to claim her position at the head of the company by entering into a marriage bargain with Daniele. For the past two days, she had met each of the board members privately and sought to win their backing for her plan to promote the chief operating officer to the role of CEO while she would be in charge of the charitable foundation. Although she had a master’s degree in business, she acknowledged that she lacked the experience to oversee the operations and logistics of the company that were the responsibilities of a CEO.
When she was twenty-five, she would become the chairwoman of Morante Group, as her grandfather had wished. But until then, she still faced a threat from her great-uncle Franco, who wanted to oust her and have himself instated as head of the company. Paloma knew she had to stay married to Daniele for the next six months, but what kind of marriage would they have? He desired her for now, but who knew how long the attraction he felt for her would last?
Her phone rang, and her heart leapt, hoping that he was calling her. ‘Laura.’ Her disappointment that it was not Daniele on the line quickly faded when she heard her friend’s cheerful voice. They had kept in contact with occasional text messages since the wedding.
‘How was the honeymoon? It was so romantic that Daniele whisked you away to a secret location. Did you go somewhere exotic?’
‘He took me to his farmhouse in Tuscany and it is very beautiful and romantic.’ Paloma bit her lip as she remembered long, lazy days when she and Daniele had laughed and talked, and he’d made slow, sensual love to her beneath the shade of the maple tree in the courtyard garden. ‘It’s no good,’ she told Laura in a choked voice. ‘I can’t keep up the pretence and let you think that my marriage is wonderful when it’s all a lie.’
‘How do you mean?’ Laura asked gently. ‘What is a lie? You love Daniele, don’t you?’
‘God,yes! I love him. I wouldn’t have agreed to marry him if I didn’t love him with all my heart.’ The truth hit Paloma with the force of a meteor. She cared about Morante Group, of course, and she was determined to be her grandfather’s successor, but she would have found another way to claim her place in the company that did not involve a loveless marriage.
‘Daniele doesn’t love me, but I hoped he would grow to care for me,’ she told Laura on a sob. ‘He suggested that we should marry to stop my great-uncle Franco from trying to seize control of the company. Daniele has the support of the board, who were happy that he and I would run Morante Group together for a transition period until my twenty-fifth birthday.’
‘But why did Daniele suggest marriage? Unless it was because he wanted to marry you,’ Laura said slowly. ‘I don’t see how a marriage bargain would benefit him. He’s very wealthy. A self-made millionaire, I’ve heard. So it can’t be that he was after your money like the weasel you married first time round,’ she reassured Paloma.
‘He wanted the increased social status that marrying the granddaughter of a marchese would give him,’ Paloma muttered through her tears.
‘Are you sure he doesn’t return your feelings?’
‘Quite sure. He made it clear that it’s just about sex for him.’
‘It’s only that I saw how he looked at you at the wedding. As if he couldn’t believe his luck that you had agreed to be his wife. Why don’t you ask him if he has feelings for you?’
Paloma sniffed and wiped her hand over her wet eyes. ‘What if he says that he doesn’t?’
‘Well, at least you’ll know where you stand,’ Laura said in her matter-of-fact manner that brought a rueful smile to Paloma’s lips despite her heartache. Her friend made it sound so simple. But if she pushed Daniele for an answer to where their relationship was going, she might lose everything.
For the rest of the day, she focused on work, as Daniele had suggested, and became so absorbed in a report on the Morante Foundation’s various charity projects that it was early evening when she stood up and stretched after sitting for hours. The work of the foundation had been important to her grandfather, and she would fight any opposition from Franco, who wanted to reduce the amount of business profits paid into the charity.
Once again, it came back to Daniele, Paloma thought despondently. She needed him if she were to have the support of the board and shareholders. But she needed him for much more than that. When they had been on their honeymoon, he had made her happy in a thousand different ways.
He really listened when she talked to him, and he’d given her confidence that she could run Morante Group successfully. He made her feel beautiful and desirable, and she had regained a sense of self-worth that Calum had destroyed. She was becoming the woman she had always wanted to be, and when she remembered how relaxed Daniele had been at the farmhouse, she was convinced that she made him happy too.
She was driven back to the palazzo by her bodyguard, Bruno, a burly ex-boxer who had served in the paratrooper regiment with Daniele. ‘The boss said that if I allow a single hair on your head to be harmed, he will take me apart limb by limb,’ Bruno told her with a grin that did not disguise his obvious respect for Daniele. ‘Tell him that Sofia still hasn’t had the baby.’ At Paloma’s questioning look, he explained, ‘My wife is a week overdue to give birth to our second child.’
‘Daniele is away at the moment.’ She felt a stab of concern that she had not heard from him since he’d left the palazzo.
‘Your husband arrived home an hour ago,’ Bruno said as he opened the door for her to climb out of the car.
