Sicilian Millionaire, Bought Bride. Catherine Spencer
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Название: Sicilian Millionaire, Bought Bride
Автор: Catherine Spencer
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Контркультура
Серия: Mills & Boon Modern
isbn: 9781408903414
isbn:
“You’d expect me to disrupt my son’s life and move to Sicily.”
“What is there to keep you here? Your parents?”
Hardly. Their disenchantment with her had begun when she was still in her teens.
A chef? they’d sneered, when Corinne had shared her ambitions with them. Is slaving over a hot stove all day the best you can aspire to after the kind of education we’ve given you? What will people think?
But that was nothing compared to their reaction when Joe entered the picture. Marry that fly-boy Joe Mallory, young lady, and you’re on your own, her father had threatened.
Determined to have the last word as usual, her mother had added, Your father’s right. But then, you never did use the brains God gave you, otherwise you’d have chosen that nice accountant you were dating last year, before he got tired of being strung along and ended up marrying someone else.
That they’d ultimately been proved right about Joe did nothing to lessen Corinne’s sense of abandonment. She couldn’t imagine ever turning her back on Matthew. Parents just didn’t do that to their children. But hers had, and shown not a speck of remorse about it.
“No,” she told Raffaello Orsini. “They retired to Arizona and we seldom visit.”
“You are estranged?”
“More or less,” she admitted, but didn’t elaborate.
He closed the small distance between them and with a touch to her shoulder swung her round to face him. “Then all the more reason for you to marry me. I come with instant family.”
“I don’t speak Italian.”
“You will learn, and so will your boy.”
“Your mother and aunt might resent a stranger coming into the household and taking over.”
“My mother and aunt will accede to my wishes.”
Once again, he had an answer for everything. “Stop badgering me!” she cried, desperation lending an edge of hysteria to her voice. No matter how real the obstacles she flung in his path, he steamrolled over it and confronted her with an even better reason why she, too, should accede to his wishes. And if she didn’t put a stop to him now, she’d end up surrendering to his demands from sheer battle fatigue.
“Ti prego, pardonami—forgive me. You’re in shock, as was I when I first read my wife’s letters, and for me to expect you to reach a decision at once is both unreasonable and inexcusable.”
His response, uttered with heartfelt regret, so far undermined her battered defenses that, to her horror, she heard herself say. “Exactly. I need some time to assimilate the benefits and the drawbacks, and I can’t do it with you breathing down my neck.”
“I absolutely understand.” He strode to the desk, returned with an envelope containing several photographs, which he spilled onto the coffee table. “Perhaps these will help clarify matters for you. Would you like me to leave you alone for a few minutes so that you may examine them?”
“No,” she said firmly. “I would like to go home and take my time reaching a decision, without the pressure of knowing you’re hovering in the background.”
“How much time? I must return to Sicily as soon as possible.”
“I’ll have an answer for you tomorrow.” In all truth, she had an answer for him now, but it wasn’t the one he wanted to hear, so she might as well keep it to herself and make her escape while she could. The sooner she put distance between him and her, the less likely she was to find herself agreeing to something she knew was out of the question.
“Fair enough.” He slid the photographs back into their envelope, tucked it in the inside pocket of his jacket, then retrieved her coat and, after draping it around her shoulders, picked up the phone. “Give me a moment to alert the driver that we’re ready for him.”
“You don’t need to come down with me,” she said, after he’d made the call. “I can find my own way.”
“I’m sure you can, Corinne,” he replied. “You strike me as a woman who can do just about anything she puts her mind to. But I will accompany you nevertheless.”
All the way back to her town house? She sincerely hoped not. Bad enough that his effect on her was such that she hadn’t been able to issue an outright refusal to his ludicrous proposition. The enforced intimacy of a forty-minute drive with him in the back of a dark limousine, and there was no telling what she might end up saying.
As it turned out, he had no such intention. He walked her through the lobby and out to where the limousine waited, handed her into the backseat then, at the last minute, withdrew the envelope from his pocket and dropped it in her lap. “Buena notte, Corinne,” he murmured, pinning her in his mesmerizing gaze. “I look forward to hearing from you tomorrow.”
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