Fascination: The Sicilian's Ruthless Marriage Revenge

‘He called at the house to see me.’ She deliberately didn’t say he had come only yesterday. ‘To invite me out to dinner. And I accepted.’

‘He came here?’ Her father’s face was very pale.

‘Yes.’ Robin tilted her head to one side. ‘Is there some reason why he shouldn’t have?’ She kept her tone deliberately light.

Her father stood up to pace the room, still in his dressing gown as it was Saturday morning and he didn’t have to go in to work—although he had brushed his hair and shaved before coming down to breakfast.

‘Perhaps I should have talked to you about this earlier, Robin,’ he admitted, ‘but I had no idea you and Gambrelli would ever meet again after the charity dinner. Damn it, I hoped you would never meet again! You see, Robin, the other driver involved in Simon’s accident—’

‘Was Cesare’s young sister, Carla,’ she interrupted calmly. ‘Yes, I know.’

‘You know?’ her father breathed, and he stopped his pacing.

She nodded. ‘Cesare and I have talked about it—’

‘You’ve talked about it?’ he repeated.

‘Daddy, I’m sure we’ll get much further with this conversation if you stop repeating everything I say. And, yes,’ she sighed, ‘Cesare and I have talked about the accident—about Simon and Carla’s deaths. Strangely, it only encourages both of us in the belief that the two of us were meant to meet …’

She was laying it on a bit thick, Robin knew, but for his own sake she really did have to convince her father that her relationship with Cesare was a love match, and not the vendetta against the Ingram family that it really was.

Her father looked desperately upset just at the thought of her going out with Cesare Gambrelli. How much more upset would he be if he knew his beloved only daughter was being forced into a marriage with this man?

Or at least it had been coercion on Cesare’s part …

Meeting Marco, holding him in her arms, being captivated by the warm innocence of his baby smile, had changed all that.

She refused to allow that the pleasure she had found last night in Cesare’s arms might also have had something to do with her change in attitude.

‘Daddy, wouldn’t it be wonderful if something good could come out of that tragedy?’ She looked up at him appealingly, slightly ashamed of herself for using such feminine wiles on her father—he never had been able to resist the appeal in her violet-coloured eyes—but ultimately knowing it was for the best.

Better that her father should voice his reservations about her relationship with Cesare now, and have those reservations allayed, than he should learn the real reason she was seeing the other man and then absolutely refuse to let her comply with Cesare’s demands.

‘Well, yes, of course it would …’ Charles acknowledged distractedly. ‘But I wrote to the man after the accident, you know. The letter came back inside another envelope a week later—ripped into four pieces!’ He grimaced. ‘I had the distinct feeling he would rather have plunged a knife into my throat!’ he added with a shudder.

So, Cesare had received her father’s letter of condolence, and had obviously read it—before returning it in a way that could only be perceived as a threat.

No wonder her father had warned her to stay away from Cesare!

She gave a rueful smile. ‘Cesare can be a little … dramatic, can’t he?’ She forced the sound of affection into her voice. ‘It’s all that Latin blood,’ she continued brightly. ‘But I can assure you that he’s no longer angry about what happened.’

Her father looked sceptical. ‘Are you absolutely sure about that?’

‘Positive.’ She beamed reassuringly, putting her cup down to stand up and give him a hug. ‘Now, take that frown off your face and be happy for me. I’m hoping to introduce Cesare to you as your future son-in-law some day soon!’ she told him gaily.

‘You’re going to marry the man?’ her father said disbelievingly.

‘If he asks me.’ Robin nodded. ‘And I think he will.’

‘But you said you were never going to marry again! That no man would want you because you can’t give him children—though I’ve never believed that,’ he told her firmly.

‘But that’s the wonderful thing about Cesare,’ Robin came back brightly. ‘He already has a male heir to inherit, so it isn’t going to matter that I can’t give him children of his own,’ she dismissed, not inclined to get into a discussion of exactly who Cesare’s heir was.

In fact, it might be better if she changed the subject altogether! ‘Keep your fingers crossed for me, hmm, Daddy?’ she encouraged happily.

Her father still looked as if he would prefer to lock her in her bedroom and keep her there until Cesare Gambrelli had disappeared from London altogether. But, as he really wasn’t about to do that, he had no choice but to accept what she told him.

‘Just take care, Robin?’ he said gruffly, and he laid his hand on her cheek affectionately. ‘I’m not sure I altogether trust Gambrelli’s motives.’

‘Don’t be silly.’ She smiled confidently. ‘And of course I’ll be careful,’ she assured him, feeling her heart aching at the deception she was practicing on her father, but knowing it would ache even more if he were to discover the truth and forbid her to marry Cesare, and so force Cesare into carrying out his threat against Ingram Publishing.

No, it was much better this way, she reassured herself.

She had no intention of showing Cesare any of that compliance when she met him at Gregori’s restaurant later that evening, as they had arranged during a very brief telephone call earlier in the day. Had no intention of making this any easier for Cesare than she already had with her response to him the previous evening.

‘Did you sleep well last night?’ Cesare prompted tersely, once the ordering of champagne and food was of the way.

‘Very, thank you,’ she came back briskly. ‘You?’

Little wildcat, Cesare fumed inwardly. He knew damn well she only had to look at him to see the dark shadows beneath his eyes and the lines of strain beside his nose and mouth and know that he hadn’t slept. At all. Instead he had prowled his hotel suite until the early hours of this morning, going down to the gym when it opened at six o’clock to work off some of his excess energy, if not his sexual frustration, on the rowing machine for an hour.

Robin, on the other hand, looked fresh and alert this evening; the deep purple dress she wore was the same colour as her eyes, her hair hung loose about her shoulders, and she had huge gold hoops in her earlobes, her deep peach lip gloss silkily inviting on those sensually pouting lips.

An invitation that made Cesare want to wipe everything from the table between them, lay Robin upon its surface, and bury himself deep inside her!

‘Do not play with me, Robin,’ he warned icily. ‘I am not in the mood for games.’

‘Dear me—sexual frustration hasn’t improved your demeanour, has it?’ she saucily pointed out, before turning to give the wine waiter a glowing smile as he poured some champagne into a glass for Cesare to taste.

Cesare took a sip of the wine before placing the glass back on the table. ‘It is corked,’ he said coldly. ‘Bring me a sixty-three. Chilled to the correct temperature this time.’

‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’ The startled wine waiter grabbed the bottle and two glasses and hastily back away.

‘That wasn’t kind,’ Robin reproved softly once they were alone.

His eyes glittered darkly as he scowled across the table at her. ‘I thought we were both agreed that I am not a kind man.’

Robin didn’t remember them ever agreeing on that, but Cesare certainly hadn’t been very polite to the wine waiter. The poor man was probably a gibbering wreck in his wine cellar at this moment, as he desperately checked the temperature of the second bottle of champagne before serving it!

‘I will leave him a large tip at the end of the meal, if that will make you feel better, Robin,’ Cesare compromised.

‘Well, no, it isn’t really a question of making me feel better, now, is it?’ she reasoned lightly, very aware of the fine edge to Cesare’s control. ‘I’m not the one you were rude to.’

‘I was not rude—’ He broke off as the man once again appeared beside their table, sighing deeply at his flustered removal of the champagne cork. ‘It is not your fault that the previous bottle of wine was … unacceptable,’ he assured the waiter smoothly, very aware that there had been nothing wrong with the first bottle of champagne at all, that he had only verbally bit out at the other man because Robin had smiled at him so warmly.

Her smiles, and everything else about her, belonged to him!

Not that she had given many smiles in his direction, but Cesare found he deeply resented her bestowing her good humour on anyone else, either.