LITMIR.BIZ

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never seemed to be enough of it to go around all its different projects.

      Those eyes...

      She pulled her gaze away and stared into the distance at the sea, unable to believe she was even entertaining this ludicrous proposal.

      ‘I’m not playing games,’ he said, his words soaking through her. ‘Marry me and we all win. Your charity gets a guaranteed income to spend as it sees fit, you get unlimited funds to spend on yourself, my family get the knowledge the family estate is secure for another generation and I get my inheritance. You’re a practical person, Eva. You know what I’m suggesting makes excellent sense.’

      She hadn’t always been a practical person. She’d been a dreamer once. She’d had so many hopes but they’d all been flattened into the dust.

      ‘I don’t know...’ She tightened her ponytail. ‘You say it isn’t a game but then you say everyone’s going to be a winner out of it. Marriage is a commitment by two people who love each other, not two people who don’t even like each other.’

      He raised his hefty shoulders and leaned forward. ‘My family’s ancestry goes back as far as there are written records. The most successful marriages were arranged for practical reasons; to build alliances, not for love. I’ve never wished to commit my life to one particular person but I am prepared to commit myself to you. It won’t be a marriage built on love and romance, but I can promise you a marriage built on respect.’

      ‘How can you respect me if you’re trying to buy me?’

      ‘I won’t be buying you, tesoro. Consider the cash an inducement.’

      ‘I won’t be your property.’ She’d never be someone’s property again. She’d run away from her family the moment she’d turned eighteen, the day she’d stopped belonging to her parents, no longer subject to their stringently enforced rules. She flexed her left hand and felt the phantom ache in the tendons of her fingers. The fingers had long since healed but the ache in them remained, a ghost of the past, a reminder of everything she had run from.

      ‘If I wanted a woman I could own, I wouldn’t choose you.’

      Before she could think of a response to this, the butler came in to clear away their soup. Eva was surprised to find her bowl empty. She couldn’t remember eating it.

      She waited until their next course was brought in, a beef Wellington that was sliced and plated before them, before asking her next question.

      ‘If I say yes, what’s to stop me taking the cash you give me and running off with it?’

      ‘You won’t receive any money for yourself until we’re legally married. Under Italian law, you won’t be allowed to divorce me for three years but that wouldn’t stop you leaving me. I have to trust that you wouldn’t leave without discussing it with me first.’

      He would have to trust her. But the question, she supposed, was whether she could trust him.

      The beef Wellington really was superb. Having never eaten it before, Eva had always assumed it consisted of an old boot baked to within an inch of its life. Instead she cut into the pinkest beef wrapped in a mushroom pâté, parsley pancakes and delicate layers of puff pastry.

      ‘If you don’t want a traditional marriage, what kind of marriage do you have in mind for us?’ she asked after she’d taken her second mouth-watering bite. She couldn’t entertain a traditional marriage either, not with Daniele or anyone. But a marriage of convenience where pots of cash were given to the charity she held so close to her heart...that, she found to her surprise, she could entertain.

      Daniele Pellegrini was an exceptionally handsome man. He had an innate sex appeal that poor Johann would have given both his skinny arms for. But that was all on the surface. Her body might respond to him but her heart would be safe. She would be safe. Daniele didn’t want romance or pillow talk, the things that drew a couple together and forged intimacy and left a person vulnerable to heartbreak.

      She would never put herself in a vulnerable position again. She couldn’t. Her heart had been fractured so many times that the next blow to it could be permanent.

      ‘The outside world will see us as a couple,’ he replied. A slight breeze had lifted a lock of his thick dark hair on the top of his head so it stuck up and swayed. ‘We will live together. We will visit family and friends as a couple and entertain as a couple.’

      ‘We will be each other’s primary escorts?’

      He nodded. ‘That’s an excellent way of putting it. And one day we may be parents...’

      Immediately her food stuck in her throat. Pounding on her chest, Eva coughed loudly then took a long drink straight from the bottle of water.

      ‘Are you okay?’ Daniele asked. He’d half risen from his seat, ready to go to her aid.

      ‘No.’ She laughed weakly and coughed again. ‘I thought you said something about us being parents.’

      ‘I did. If we’re going to marry, then we’re going to share a bed.’

      ‘You didn’t think to mention that?’

      ‘I didn’t think it needed spelling out. Married couples sleep together, tesoro, and I will sleep with you.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘Sharing a bed with you is the one plus point to us marrying.’

      ‘I don’t want to have sex with you.’

      Instead of offending him, he laughed. ‘That, I think, is the first lie you have told me. You cannot deny your attraction to me.’

      ‘If I was attracted to you, I wouldn’t have turned your offer of a nightcap down.’

      ‘If you weren’t attracted to me, you wouldn’t have hesitated before turning it down. You think I don’t know when a woman desires me? I can read body language well and you, my light, show all the signs of a woman fighting her desire. I understand why—it can’t be an easy thing to admit that you desire a man you dislike so much.’

      ‘Have you always been this egotistical?’

      ‘It’s taken years of practice but I got there in the end. And you still haven’t denied that you’re attracted to me.’

      ‘I’m not attracted to you.’

      ‘Two lies in two minutes? That’s bad form for a woman who’s going to be my wife.’

      ‘I haven’t agreed to anything.’

      ‘Not yet. But you will. We both know you will.’

      ‘Let me make this clear, if I agree to marry you, I will not have sex with you.’

      ‘And let me make this clear, when we marry, we will share a room and a bed. Whether we have sex in that bed will be up to you.’

      ‘You won’t insist on your conjugal rights?’

      ‘I won’t need to insist. Deny it until your face goes blue but there is a chemistry between us and lying under the same bed sheets will only deepen it.’

      ‘But will you try to force me?’

      Distaste flickered over his handsome face. ‘Never. I can’t promise that I won’t try and seduce you—Dio, tesoro, you’re a sexy woman... I’d have to be a saint not to try—but I respect the word no. The moment you say no, I will roll over and go to sleep.’

      It was on the tip of her tongue to ask if he planned to take a mistress. It stood to reason that if she wouldn’t have sex with him he would get it from someone else.

      But that was a whole new quagmire that instinct told her to leave alone. She’d been celibate for six years and had never missed sex. She had missed the cuddles but never the sex, which deep in the heart of her she had always found underwhelming. Why people made such a big deal out of it she would never understand, but they did and to expect Daniele to be celibate was like expecting a lion not to eat the lame deer that limped in

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