The Italian's Unwilling Wife

He watched the bright glitter of fury in her eyes. She was so very beautiful—more so than she had been at eighteen; her father had been right about that. The thought stole, unwelcome, into his mind and he found his gaze drifting down once more over her body. He could see the firm curves of her breasts through the thin silk of the gown, and because the bright lights of the lounge were behind her he could also see the long, shapely outline of her legs.

She had always been attractive, but she had matured into a stunningly desirable package. Pity about her cold, mercenary heart, he thought dryly.

Abbie noticed the way he looked at her—noticed, and bizarrely felt her body throb, as if his eyes were actually touching her. She tried to ignore the feeling, tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. How could she feel like this when her mind was racing with fear—when she hated him? ‘Maybe you just have rage issues that need to be readdressed, Damon,’ she said evenly.

He laughed. ‘Maybe you are right.’ He put his glass down on the draining board with a thud.

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Right now, I’m going to bed,’ he said calmly.

‘You can’t!’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you can’t make statements like that and just leave things! I need to know what your intentions are regarding Mario. You are not really thinking of fighting me for custody, are you?’

Damon stared at her for a moment. When John Newland had told him he was a father, he had been shocked—then he had been furious. All kinds of emotions had been racing through him ever since. Some of the feelings had come as a complete surprise to him—such as the feeling of protectiveness when he had looked down at his sleeping child.

Yes, he’d decided a long time ago that he wasn’t going to settle down and have children. But the fact was he had a child, and abandoning him wasn’t an option. He couldn’t walk away from that responsibility; he strongly believed in doing the right thing.

But what was the right thing in this situation? His eyes flicked over towards Abbie, and for a second he found himself thinking about her father’s words to him in the boardroom.

Abbie could be of use to him.

The words sizzled provocatively through his consciousness. Abruptly he tried to dismiss them. ‘I’ll sleep on the problem, and we’ll discuss terms in the morning,’ he grated tersely.

He was so arrogant! So infuriating! She watched as he walked past her towards the lounge.

‘I don’t want to discuss terms in the morning. I want to discuss terms now! And it may have escaped your notice but there are no spare beds in the house. All the rooms you looked into tonight are empty. The only other bed in the house is mine.’

He turned slowly and looked at her. ‘Is that an invitation?’

He watched the flare of heat under the creaminess of her skin with detachment.

‘You know it’s not.’

‘Do I?’ He shrugged. ‘Nothing you would stoop to would surprise me. In fact, when I faced your father in the boardroom at Newland he made me a very bizarre offer.’

‘What kind of an offer?’

‘The deal was that I help him retain his place on the board, and in return I get you.’

‘What do you mean, you get me?’ Her voice was stiff.

‘Just what I said. In return for my help getting him back on the board of directors, he said he could arrange for you to… Well, accommodate me in whatever way I saw fit, really. I’m not sure if he was selling you as a trophy wife who would have very useful business connections, or the convenient mistress there to entertain me in bed, plus play hostess when required—that kind of thing. Of course, the second option caught my interest more at first. As you know, I’m not the settling-down type. But then, I didn’t know I had a child at that point.’

He watched the colour flooding back into her cheeks. ‘Don’t worry, I turned him down. My motto has always been to cut out the middleman. Dealing direct is a much more satisfactory solution, don’t you think?’

‘What I think is that you are just as vile as my father.’ Her voice trembled alarmingly. Just when she thought her father couldn’t get any lower in her estimation, he sank to new depths. She felt degraded and humiliated by him—soiled by association.

‘Dear me, have you had a fall-out with darling Daddy?’ Damon walked back towards her and reached out to trail a finger down over the smoothness of her skin. ‘What’s the matter, are you annoyed because he can’t bankroll you anymore?’

She flinched at the touch of his hand. She didn’t know what hurt more, her father’s disgusting business proposition or Damon’s glib acceptance that she would be in any way amenable towards it!

His eyes held with her glittering gaze. ‘Never mind. Although I’ve cut your father out of the equation, I’m still weighing all the possibilities up, I assure you. Trophy wife versus convenient mistress…’ He shrugged. ‘Or should I just take custody of Mario and walk away… The choices are endless.’

‘You wouldn’t get custody of Mario,’ Abbie told him heatedly. ‘And I wouldn’t marry you if you were…if you were the last man left on the planet and lived in a gold-plated palace.’ She angled her head up proudly.

Damon laughed at that. ‘Oh, but we both know that you would.’

‘You always did have an inflated opinion of yourself.’

‘I just know how Ms Abigail Newland’s gold-digging mind works.’

‘You know nothing about me. I would rather die than go along with the idea.’

Damon smiled ‘You didn’t pass away with righteous indignation when you got involved with your father’s deals last time.’

He watched her lips part noiselessly, watched the shadows flicker across the beauty of her eyes. ‘That was different.’

Damon shook his head. She was a good actress, he’d give her that. ‘You go where the money is—your father told me that about you over two years ago.’

He watched as her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. She had such slender hands. Everything about her was so feminine; even her rage was simmering, contained—lady-like. Although, he remembered that in bed she hadn’t been quite so restrained—not once he’d taught her what he liked and how he liked it.

He wished he could stop thinking about that. But the fact was he couldn’t.

From the moment she had opened the front door to him tonight, he’d known that sexually he still wanted her.

He wanted her now. The strength of that need totally infuriated him. How could he feel like this when he knew her for what she was—disliked her, even?

He hated that. But it was a fact, and no matter how he kept telling himself to ignore it he couldn’t. So what the hell was he going to do about it?

His eyes moved up over her body slowly, appraisingly. He had no doubt in his mind that she had known about her father’s offer to him and had been hoping to play it for all it was worth.

Maybe the best thing to do here was to take control and play her at her own game. The more he thought about that idea, the more he liked it.

‘So…’ His tone was measured, his mind ticking over his options. ‘You want to talk terms? Let’s talk terms.’

The way he was looking at her was anything but clinical, yet the tone of his voice was detached, objective. What the hell was running through his mind now? Abbie wondered nervously. She moved her hands to draw her gown more tightly around her body, unaware that the instinctively protective gesture only showed her figure to clearer advantage.

She wanted to tell him to get out, that she wouldn’t talk to him after the things he had said to her—the things he had insinuated. But she forced herself to calm down and think about what was important. And that was Mario. ‘My terms are that my child stays where he belongs, and that’s with me. Let’s face it, Damon, you are a businessman who jets off around the world at a moment’s notice. You sit in meetings that run on until the small hours. That doesn’t fit with looking after a twenty-one-month-old baby. He’s a full-time commitment.’

‘Yes, he is. And that’s the one reason I’m prepared to offer you a good deal.’

‘What kind of a good deal?’ The words were out before she could consider them, and she instantly regretted them as she saw the way his lips curved in a cool smile.

‘You see? The Abigail Newland I know is never far away, is she?’ he hissed. His eyes swept over her body again with a hard gleam of male appraisal. ‘In a nutshell?’ He shrugged. ‘I guess your father’s idea isn’t completely off the wall. I suppose you would be a convenient package. You are the mother of my child and we understand each other. And, I have to admit, the whole idea of having a lady in the lounge and a whore in the bedroom does appeal.’