LITMIR.BIZ

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alive with passion, intelligence and a truckload of determination, he felt a desperate urge to direct that passion into something that would give them both a lot more pleasure than arguing about her sister.

      Was he falling in love? Could it be possible? Or was he already in love? Alessandro forced a lid on the well of joy that threatened to erupt and call him a liar for wearing such a set and stony expression in response to her outburst, when all he wanted to do was to drag her into his arms and kiss the breath out of her body. Had the thunderbolt struck the first moment he saw her, commanding that gaudily decorated stage…putting the harsh spotlights to shame with her luminous beauty—a beauty that had refused to stay hidden even under what had seemed to him at the time to be half a bucket of greasepaint?

      ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and call my car for you,’ he said steadily, revealing nothing of his thoughts. ‘I can see you’re upset right now. We will discuss this tomorrow, when you are feeling calmer—’

      ‘Don’t waste your time!’ Emily snapped defensively.

      ‘With your permission,’ Alessandro said, swooping to retrieve the discarded bouquet from the floor by her feet, ‘I’ll have these couriered to your mother.’

      ‘Do what the hell you want with them!’

      But as she calmed down in the limousine taking her safely home through the damply glittering streets, Emily was forced to accept that without financial assistance Miranda would never achieve her full potential. A grant might be found to cover her lessons with the Japanese violin professor, but no one was going to stump up the funds necessary to buy her a violin of real quality.

      But how could marriage to a stranger provide the answer? She gave her head an angry shake, then began to frown as she turned Alessandro’s preposterous suggestion over in her mind. With the right controls in place it might be possible…it would certainly secure Miranda’s future.

      The ball was in Alessandro’s court. If he was serious he wouldn’t be put off by her first refusal; he would be back in touch with a firm proposition very soon…Very soon. How long was that? Emily wondered, feeling a thrill of anticipation race through her.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      EMILY’S family sat in a closely knit group on the sofa in front of her, their faces frozen with disbelief.

      ‘And so we’ll all board Alessandro’s private jet and fly out to Ferara for the wedding,’ Emily finished calmly.

      Her mother recovered first. Glancing at the vivid floral display that took up most of the front window, she turned back again to Emily, her face tense with suppressed excitement. ‘Are you quite sure about this?’

      ‘Quite sure, Mother.’

      ‘No,’ Miranda said decisively. ‘I can’t let you do this for me.’

      But as Miranda cradled the precious violin in her arms it appeared to Emily as if the wonderful old instrument had finally come home.

      ‘Believe me, you can,’ she said firmly, turning next to her father. ‘Dad? Don’t you have anything you’d like to say?’

      Her father made a sound of exasperation as he wiped a blunt-fingered hand across his forehead. ‘I’ve never understood this romance business. I just knew your mother was right for me and asked her to marry me. She accepted and that was it.’

      ‘You can’t mean you approve of this, Dad?’ Miranda burst out, distracted from her minute inspection of the violin. ‘Just because it worked for you and Mum doesn’t mean it’s right for Emily. She doesn’t even know this Alessandro Bussoni—’

      ‘Well, I only got to know your father in the first year,’ their mother pointed out. ‘And Alessandro’s a prince.’

      As Miranda groaned and rolled her eyes heavenwards, her father made his excuses.

      ‘I have work to finish if we’re all going off on this jaunt next week.’

      ‘A jaunt?’ Miranda exclaimed, watching him hurry out of the room. ‘Doesn’t Dad know how serious this is?’

      ‘Alessandro has given me a cast-iron contract,’ Emily said calmly. ‘I’ve read it through carefully and even had it double-checked in Chambers.’

      ‘And you’re sure that Miranda’s fees will be paid in full?’

      Miranda flashed a look of dismay at her mother.’ Mother, really!’

      Emily put a restraining hand on her sister’s arm. ‘Fees, as well as a grant, Mother, plus an indefinite loan of the violin.’

      ‘And the only way Alessandro’s elderly father can abdicate is if Alessandro marries you?’

      ‘That’s right, Mother. You see, we need each other.’

      In spite of her bold assurances, Emily wondered if she really was quite sane. She could recall every nuance of Alessandro’s telephone call—the call that had come through almost the moment she’d walked into her apartment after their meeting. He had signed off the deal with a generosity beyond anything she could have anticipated. At least, those were the tactics he had employed to make her change her mind, she amended silently. Tactics. She rolled the cold little word around her mind, wishing there could have been more—wishing she could have detected even the slightest tinge of warmth or enthusiasm in Alessandro’s voice when he’d upped his offer to ensure her agreement. But it had been just a list of commitments he was prepared to make in exchange for her hand in marriage. He might have been reading from a list—perhaps he had been, Emily thought, trying to concentrate on what her sister was saying.

      ‘And all you have to do is marry some stranger,’ Miranda exclaimed contemptuously.

      ‘Don’t be like that,’ Emily said softly.

      Miranda made a sound of disgust. ‘Well, I think you’ve all gone completely mad.’

      Emily might have agreed, even smiled to hear the word she had so recently flung at Alessandro echoed by her sister, but noticing how Miranda held the violin a little closer while she spoke only firmed her resolve. ‘This marriage lasts just long enough to allow Alessandro’s father to abdicate in his favour and Miranda to complete her studies with Professor Iwamoto. That’s it. Then it’s over. So don’t any of you start building castles in the air—’

      ‘Castles,’ her mother breathed, clapping her hands together as she gazed blissfully forward into the future. ‘Who’d have thought it?’

      ‘I’ll make it work. I have to,’ Emily said, when she was alone in her bedroom with Miranda later that day. ‘I’ve got nothing to lose—’

      ‘You’ve got everything to lose!’ Miranda argued passionately. ‘You might fall in love with Alessandro, and then what?’

      ‘I’m twenty-eight and have managed to avoid any serious romantic entanglements so far.’

      ‘Only because you’re a workaholic and no one remotely like Alessandro has ever crossed your path before,’ Miranda exclaimed impatiently. ‘What are you going to do if you fall in love with him? He’s one gorgeous-looking man—’

      ‘Which makes it all the easier to keep the relationship on a professional level,’ Emily cut in, seizing on the potential for disappointment. ‘He’s bound to be spoiled, selfish, inconsiderate and self-obsessed. Just the type of man I have always found so easy to resist.’

      ‘And what if you get pregnant?’ Miranda persisted.

      ‘Absolutely no chance of that.’

      ‘Now you do have to be kidding. You’ll never be able to resist him. And Alessandro looks like one fertile guy—’

      ‘It’s never going to happen without sex.’

      ‘What?’

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