LITMIR.BIZ

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I was the sort of woman who could.’

      ‘Think it over,’ Cesare suggested, having registered without surprise that the suggestion of oodles of cash had finally fully engaged her in their discussion. He rose fluidly upright and tapped the business card he had left on the table top. ‘My cell number.’

      He was very big, possibly a foot taller than she was, with broad shoulders, narrow hips and long, powerful legs.

      ‘Yes, well, there’s a lot to think over,’ she muttered uneasily.

      He reached for his coat and turned back to her, dark eyes bright and shimmering as topaz in sunshine. ‘There are two options and either will bring in a profit for you.’

      ‘You definitely talk like a businessman,’ she remarked, unimpressed by the statement, ashamed of her temporary dive into a fantasy land where every sheep had a proverbial golden fleece. Could it really be that easy to go from being a decent person to a mercenary one? she was asking herself worriedly.

      ‘I am trying to negotiate a business arrangement,’ he pointed out drily.

      ‘Was it your father who once asked my mother to marry him?’ Lizzie could not stop herself from enquiring. ‘Or was that someone from another branch of your family?’

      Cesare came to a halt. ‘No, that was my father and it wasn’t a business proposal. He fell hard for your mother and they were engaged when she came over here on holiday. Having met your father, however, she preferred him,’ he advanced without any expression at all.

      But Lizzie recognised the unspoken disapproval in the hard bones of his lean, strong face and she flushed because her mother had been decidedly changeable in her affections and there was no denying the fact. Predictably, Francesca had never admitted that she had actually got engaged to their father’s predecessor. But then every man that came along had been the love of Francesca’s life until either he revealed his true character or someone else seized her interest. Her mother had always moved on without a backward glance, never once pausing to try and work on a relationship or considering the cost of such continual upheaval in the lives of her two young children.

      ‘I’m afraid I’m not a sentimental man,’ Cesare imparted. ‘I’m innately practical in every way. Why shouldn’t you make what you can of your inheritance for your family’s benefit?’

      ‘Because it just doesn’t seem right,’ Lizzie confided uncertainly. ‘It’s not what my great-grandfather intended either when he drew up that will.’

      ‘No, he wanted revenge because my grandmother’s brother jilted his daughter at the altar. My great-uncle was in the wrong but plunging the island into legal limbo simply to keep it out of my family’s hands was no more justifiable,’ Cesare countered with complete assurance. ‘It’s been that way for nearly eighty years but I believe that we have the power to change that.’

      ‘The ethics involved aren’t something I’ve ever thought about,’ Lizzie admitted, resisting the urge to confess that the island still seemed no more real to her than that fabled pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that her father had mentioned.

      Cesare smiled with sudden brilliance, amused by her honesty and her lack of pretence.

      His smile almost blinded her, illuminating his lean, darkly handsome face, and she wanted so badly to touch him for a disconcerting moment that she clenched her hands into fists to restrain herself. She was deeply disturbed by the effect he had on her. Indeed, she feared it because she recognised her reaction for the fierce physical attraction that it was. And nobody knew better than Francesca Whitaker’s daughter how dangerous giving rein to such mindless responses could be for it had propelled her mother into one disastrous relationship after another.

      In the smouldering silence, beautiful, dark golden eyes fringed with velvet black held hers and she trembled, fighting reactions she had never experienced so powerfully before.

      ‘My offer’s on the table and I’m willing to negotiate with you. Discuss it with your sister and your father but urge them to keep the matter confidential,’ Cesare advised smoothly, staring down into her upturned face, attention lingering on the lush contours of her lips as he wondered what she would taste like. ‘We could go the full distance on this... I find you appealing.’

      And with that deeply unsettling comment, Cesare Sabatino swung on his heel and strode back out to the limousine sitting ready to depart. The driver leapt out to throw open the door for his passenger and Cesare lowered his proud dark head and climbed in.

      Appealing? Lizzie pushed her hair back off her brow and caught her surprised reflection in the small age-spotted mirror on the wall. He was really saying that he could go to bed with her and conceive a child with her if she was willing: that was what he meant by the word appealing. Her face flamed. She was not willing. She also knew the difference between right and wrong. She knew that more money didn’t necessarily mean more happiness and that a child was usually better off with a mother and a father.

      Yet the image of the tiny boy she had glimpsed cradled in her former fiancé’s arms after the child’s christening in the church had pierced Lizzie with a pain greater than that inflicted by Andrew’s infidelity. Lizzie had always wanted a baby and ached at the sight of infants. When Andrew had left her for Esther, she had envied Esther for her son, not her husband. What did that say about her? That she was as cold at heart and frigid as Andrew had once accused her of being? Even remembering that hurtful indictment, Lizzie winced and felt less than other women, knowing that she had been tried and found wanting by a young man who had only wanted a warm and loving wife. Lizzie knew that, in choosing Esther, Andrew had made the right decision for them both. Yet Lizzie had loved Andrew too in her way.

      Her eyes stung with moisture, her fingers toying with the ends of the brown-tinted hair that Andrew had persuaded her to dye. The dye was growing out, a reminder of how foolish a woman could be when she tried to change herself to please a man...

      But where on earth had her strong maternal instinct come from? Certainly not from her volatile mother, who in the grip of her wild infatuations had always focused her energies on the man in her life. Lizzie had not been surprised to learn of the impetuous way Francesca had evidently ditched Cesare’s father to marry Lizzie’s father instead. Hard Yorkshire winters and life on a shoestring, however, had dimmed Brian Whitaker’s appeal for her mother and within weeks of Chrissie’s birth Francesca had run off with a man who had turned out to be a drunk. His successor had been more interested in spending Francesca’s recent legacy following the death of her Italian parents than in Francesca herself. Her third lover had been repeatedly unfaithful. And the fourth, who married her, had been violent.

      Lizzie had always found it very hard to trust men after living through her mother’s grim roll call of destructive relationships. She had struggled to protect the sister five years her junior from the constant fallout of moving home and changing schools, striving to ensure that her sibling could still enjoy her childhood and wasn’t forced to grow up as quickly as Lizzie had. Almost all the happy moments in Lizzie’s life had occurred when Chrissie was young and Lizzie had the comfort of knowing that her love and care was both wanted and needed by her sibling. When her sister left home to go to university it had opened a vast hole in Lizzie’s life. Archie had partially filled that hole, a reality that made her grin and shrug off her deep and troubled thoughts with the acknowledgement that it was time to get back to work and concentrate on what really mattered.

      * * *

      ‘Marry him and stop making such a production out of it!’ Brian Whitaker snapped at his daughter angrily. ‘We don’t have any other choice. The rent is going up and the bank’s on the brink of calling in our loan!’

      ‘It’s not that simple, Dad,’ Lizzie began to argue again.

      But the older man wasn’t listening. He hadn’t listened to a word his daughter had said since the letter from the bank had delivered its lethal warning. ‘Simple would have been you marrying Andrew. He would have taken on the tenancy. I could still have lived here. Everyone would have been happy but could you pull it off?’

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