Kitabı oku: «The Italian Titans»

CHAPTER ONE

‘YOU’RE NOT GOING to like what I’m about to say.’

The very second Stefano had called his son and told him that he needed to speak with him as a matter of urgency, Theo had dropped everything and taken the first flight over to Italy, to his father’s enormous estate just outside Rome.

Stefano De Angelis was not a man given to drama, and both Theo and his brother, Daniel, had spent the past five years worrying about him. He had never really recovered from the death of his wife, their mother, Rose. The power house who had built a personal fortune from scratch had collapsed into himself, retreating to the sanctuary of his den, immune to the efforts of both his sons to pull him out of his grief. He had continued to eat, sleep, talk and walk, but his soul had departed, leaving only a physical shell behind.

What, Theo thought now, was he about to hear?

Cold fear gripped him.

‘Have you asked Daniel as well?’ He prowled through the huge sitting room, idly gazing through the window to the sprawling lawns, before finally taking a seat opposite his father.

‘This situation does not concern your brother,’ Stefano returned, his dark eyes sidestepping his son’s piercing green ones.

Theo breathed a sigh of relief. If Daniel hadn’t been likewise summoned, then at least a health crisis could be discounted. He had been tempted to phone his brother on the back of his father’s summons, but had resisted the impulse because he knew that Daniel was in the throes of a balancing act: trying to close a major deal and a minor love affair at the same time.

The deal, his brother had confided several days ago, when he had called from his penthouse apartment in Sydney, was a walk in the park compared to the woman who had been making noises about taking what they had ‘one step further’, and didn’t show any promise of retreating without putting up a fight.

‘So tell me... What am I not going to like to hear?’ Theo encouraged.

‘As you are well aware, son...’ Stefano’s hooded dark eyes gazed off into the distance ‘...things have not been good with me since your mother died. When my beloved Rose went, she took a big part of me with her.’

‘Of us all.’

‘But you and your brother are young. I, on the other hand, am an old man—and you know what they say about old dogs and new tricks. Perhaps if her death hadn’t been so sudden... Perhaps if I had had time to get used to the idea of her absence...’ He sighed. ‘But this is not why I called you here, Theo. To moan and complain about something that cannot be changed. I called you here because during the time that I was...shall we say mentally not present, certain unfortunate things took place within the company.’

Theo stilled. His keen eyes noted the nervous play of his father’s entwined fingers. His father was the least nervous man he had ever known.

‘Unfortunate things...?’

‘There has been some substantial mismanagement,’ Stefano declared bluntly. ‘And worse, I am afraid. Alfredo, my trusted co-director, has been involved in large-scale embezzlement which has only recently been drawn to my attention. It’s a wonder the press hasn’t got hold of it. The upshot, Theo, is that vast sums of money—including most of the pension funds—have been hijacked.’

Theo sat back, his lean, handsome face revealing nothing of what was going through his mind.

It was a problem, yes—but a serious one? Not really. At any rate nothing that he couldn’t handle.

‘If you’re worried about the man getting what he deserves, then you can leave that to me,’ Theo asserted with cold confidence, his sharp, analytical brain already formulating ways in which payback could be duly extracted. ‘And if you’re worried about the lost money, then likewise. It will be nothing for me to return what’s been misappropriated. No one will ever know.’

‘It’s not that easy, Theo.’

And Theo knew that now they were approaching the heart of the problem—the reason why he had been summoned.

‘I would never ask either you or Daniel for financial assistance!’ Stefano glowered, his fighting spirit temporarily restored as he contemplated the unthinkable. ‘You boys have made your own way in the world and my pride would never allow me to run to either of you with my begging bowl...’

Theo shook his head in frustration at his father’s pride—which, he had to concede, both he and Daniel had inherited in bucketloads. ‘It would not have been a question of—’

‘I’m afraid I went to Carlo Caldini,’ Stefano said abruptly. ‘There was no choice. The bank was not an option—not when there was a significant chance that they would turn down my request. If that had happened, then the business... Well, what can I say? Everything your mother and I built would have been thrown into the public arena to be picked over by hyenas! At least with Carlo we can keep this between us...’

Theo pressed the pads of his thumbs against his eyes.

Carlo Caldini had once been his father’s closest friend and now, for longer than he could remember, was his fiercest adversary. The fact that he had seen fit to go to Carlo for help threatened to bring on a raging headache.

There was absolutely no doubt that whatever his father was going to tell him Theo was not going to want to hear it.

‘And what’s his price?’ he asked, because there was no such thing as a free lunch—and when the lunch was with a sworn enemy then it was going to be the opposite of free.

Exorbitant was the word that sprang to mind.

Stefano fidgeted. ‘You’re not getting any younger, Theo. You’re thirty-two years old! Your mother dearly wished that she would see one of you boys settled... It wasn’t to be...’

‘I’m not following you...’

‘All of this unravelled over eight months ago,’ Stefano said heavily. ‘During that time it proved impossible to repay the loan. It’s been an uphill struggle just picking apart the extent of the losses and dealing with Alfredo...’

‘And you kept it all to yourself!’

‘There seemed little point in worrying you or your brother.’

‘Just tell me what ruinous interest rates Carlo has imposed and I’ll deal with it.’

‘Here is the part you may not like, son...’

‘I’m all ears.’

When it came to money there was nothing Theo couldn’t buy, and naturally he would pay the bill without complaint—although he was furious with his father for thinking it necessary to seek help outside the direct family circle.

Pride.

‘As you know, Carlo has a daughter. An only child. Sadly there were to be no sons for him.’

Even in the thick of disclosing what he knew his son would not want to hear Stefano couldn’t quite conceal the smugness in his voice, and Theo raised his eyebrows wryly. He had never known what had caused the enmity between his father and Carlo, but he suspected that the lifelong grudge stemmed from something ridiculously insignificant.

‘What has that got to do with anything?’ he asked, frankly bewildered at the tangent his father had taken.

‘Alexa... I think you may have met her... Or perhaps not... Well, it seems that the girl is not yet married, and Carlo...’ Stefano shrugged. ‘He is saddened at that—as I would be had I had a daughter... So part of the repayment schedule—which, in fairness to that sly old fox, is more lenient than at any bank—is that you help him out of his predicament with Alexa. In other words, Theo, I have promised him your hand in marriage to the girl...’

* * *

Alexa glared down at the outfit her mother had laid out for her to wear.

Something ‘suitable’ to meet a man she had no wish to meet, far less marry. A wildly ridiculous frothy dress in startling blue that swept down to the ankles with a plunging neckline and an even more ridiculously plunging back.

She was to be paraded in front of Theo De Angelis like a sacrificial lamb.

She wanted to storm out of the house, head for the nearest port and take a boat to the opposite end of the world—where she would hide out for maybe ten years, until this whole ludicrous situation had been sorted out.

Without her involvement.

At first, when her father had sat her down and told her that she was to be married to a De Angelis, she had thought that he was joking.

An arranged marriage? In this day and age? To a son of the man with whom he had had a stupid, simmering feud for thirty-five years? What else could it have been but a joke?

That had been a week ago—plenty long enough for her to discover that her father had been deadly serious.

‘The poor man is in serious financial trouble.’ Carlo Caldini had opened up to her in an attempt to pull at her heartstrings. He had looked at her with a sad expression and mournful eyes. ‘True, he and I have not seen eye to eye over the years...’

‘All thirty-five of them, Papà...’

‘But in the end who else does one turn to but a friend? I would have done the same in his position...’

Alexa had been baffled at this show of seemingly heart-wrenching empathy, but if her father had deemed it fit to rush to the rescue of a man he had spent over three decades deriding, then so be it. What did it have to do with her?

Everything, as it had transpired.

She had been bartered like a...a...piece of meat!

She adored her father, but she would still have dug her heels in and point-blank refused had he not pulled out his trump card—in the shape of her mother.

Cora Caldini, recovering from a stroke, was under doctor’s orders to take it easy. No stress, her family had been warned. And, more than that, her father had confided, this last stroke had been the most serious of three... Her heart was weak and all her talk was of her mortality, of her dying before she could see her only child married and settled. What if something happened to her? her father had asked. What if she was taken away from them before her only wish could be granted?

Caught in the eye of a hurricane, Alexa had ranted and raved, had stood her ground with rousing lectures about modern times, about arranged marriages being a thing of the past. She had pointed out, arms folded, that they hadn’t had their marriage arranged so why should she? She had waxed lyrical about the importance of love, even though she didn’t know the first thing about that. She had darkly suggested that the last thing Cora Caldini would want would be a phoney marriage for all the wrong reasons...

In the end she had gained the only concession that she could. If she married the man then it would be on her terms. After a year of unhappy enforced marital misery she would be free to divorce and Stefano De Angelis would be released from his debt. Her father had quickly acquiesced.

Now, with the man due to arrive at their mansion within the hour, she gritted her teeth and returned the elaborate blue dress to the wardrobe from which it had been removed.

She wasn’t going to dress up like a doll for a man whose reputation as a commitment-phobe womaniser spanned the country and beyond. There had been no need to look him up on the Internet because she knew all about him—and his brother. Theo and Daniel De Angelis, cut from the same cloth, both ruthless tycoons, both far too good-looking for their own good.

Despite her privileged background, Alexa had made it her life’s mission to avoid men like them. She had plenty experience with the superficiality of men who had money and power. She had been surrounded with them for years. She had seen the way they always took it as their God-given right that they could do as they pleased and treat women as they liked simply because they could.

She disapproved of everything Theo De Angelis stood for. Certainly the sort of men she preferred had always been of the thoughtful and considerate variety.

When she thought about love she thought about her parents—thought about being swept off her feet by someone kind and humorous, with whom she could enjoy the sort of united happiness her parents enjoyed. When she contemplated marriage she knew that there would be no compromises made. She would marry her soulmate—the man whose hand she would want to hold for the rest of her life. She had met sufficient idle, arrogant, self-absorbed and vain rich guys—guys exactly like Theo De Angelis—to know that she would never find her soulmate amongst them.

And look at her now! So much for all her ideals!

She showered, taking her time because she certainly wasn’t going to scuttle down to the drawing room to wait for him—like an eager bride-to-be, thrilled to nab a man the tabloid press had once labelled the most eligible bachelor alive.

And she wasn’t going to wear the blue dress—or any dress, for that matter. In fact she wasn’t going to wear anything that displayed her body at all.

She chose a pair of jeans and a loose-fitting blouse that was buttoned to the neck and then, taut with suppressed anger at her situation, stared at her reflection in the mirror.

Long, wavy dark hair, pulled back into a no-nonsense bun, framed an oval face. Like her father, she was olive-skinned, with dark eyebrows and thick, dark eyelashes, but from her mother she had inherited her bright turquoise eyes. Her best feature, as far as she was concerned—because the rest did little to excite the imagination. She wasn’t long and leggy, and she had stopped being able to fit into a size eight the second she had hit adolescence. Hers, to her eternal regret, was an unfashionable five-foot-four hourglass figure—the sort that personal trainers over the years had tried and failed to whip into shape.

She heard voices before she reached the drawing room because the door was open, and was assailed by a sudden attack of nerves.

It was one thing pouring scorn on the likes of Theo De Angelis from the relative safety of her bedroom.

It was quite another holding on to her self-righteous, justifiable fury when he was perched on a chair, metres away from her, just out of sight.

She had never seen him in the flesh. He lived in London, but even if he had lived in Rome she probably wouldn’t have seen him anyway, because she made a point of avoiding society dos whenever possible.

Heart beating fast, she took a deep breath and entered the drawing room.

Drinks were being served and her parents were sitting opposite him, their body language indicating that they were delighted with whatever he happened to be saying.

Conversation came to an abrupt halt.

Alexa had never thrived on being the centre of attention. Along with her background of vast wealth, she had grown up in circles where the girls were catty and where looks counted for everything. Trapped in a figure that had always catapulted her in the direction of baggy clothes, she had learned to leave the attention-seeking to others, and once she had left school had turned her back on it completely.

Right now she found herself riveted by the long, lean man, relaxing in a deep velvet chair which he seemed to dwarf.

Photos could say so much, but they had given her very little indication of just how big and muscular he was. They had also not prepared her for the sheer outrageousness of his looks. He was drop-dead gorgeous. His hair was cropped short and black, his features perfectly chiselled, his eyes lazy and the most peculiar shade of green she had ever seen, fringed with the sort of luxurious lashes any woman would have given her eye-teeth for.

He was as beautiful as any human being had a right to be...and yet the air of ruthless power that surrounded him like an invisible cloak removed him from being just an incredible-looking man to being a man who drew stares and held on to them.

For a few seconds Alexa’s heart seemed to stop and she lost the ability to blink.

But that only lasted for a few seconds and then reality resurfaced, rescuing her from standing there like a stranded goldfish.

Her parents had stood up to make introductions. She didn’t take a step closer to him, and neither did he make any move to rush forward. In fact he remained sitting just long enough for her to wonder whether a complete lack of manners was also part of his personality.

‘Why didn’t you wear the lovely dress I laid out for you on the bed?’ her mother whispered, in clear dismay at her choice of clothes.

‘I decided that the casual approach was better than showing up in a Cinderella frock. Have you noticed that the man is wearing jeans? I wouldn’t say he dressed for the occasion, would you?’

She directed a cool smile at him as one of the staff got busy with a bottle of champagne and the business of polite conversation began.

With her parents there some of the pressure was removed, but she still found herself sitting like a rigid plank of wood, back erect, body screaming with tension. When, after half an hour, her parents rose and informed them that they were going out for dinner, she glanced up at her mother with undisguised panic.

‘You two should have some time to enjoy yourselves!’ Cora chirruped brightly. ‘Elena has prepared something, and you can dine informally in the blue room...’

Alexa wondered whether her mother had taken complete leave of her senses.

Enjoy themselves?

Didn’t she realise that this was an absolute nightmare? No, of course she didn’t. She thought that, yes, it was an arranged union—but one that had been happily accepted by both parties. And she wouldn’t have questioned that any further because it was so much what she wanted. Her daughter married and settled.

The door clicked quietly shut behind them and Alexa stared down at her half-drunk glass of champagne. She could feel those fabulous green eyes looking at her, and it infuriated her that he felt he had no need to say anything at all.

‘So...’ She finally broke the lengthening silence. She glanced quickly at him and just as fast looked away.

‘So...’ Theo drawled, stretching out his long legs and linking his fingers loosely on his stomach. ‘Here we are. I never imagined two weeks ago that I would now be sitting in the Caldini living room, gazing at the excited, radiant face of my bride-to-be...’

What had he been expecting? he asked himself. The fact that Carlo Caldini—a man with more millions than he knew what to do with—had been unable to source a husband for the daughter he clearly wanted married off had said it all.

Plain beyond belief, with an insanely boring personality—that had been the prediction his brother had made, when he had been told about the catastrophe, and Theo had privately agreed. He and Daniel might no longer live in Italy, but they were rich and powerful enough to garner invitations from everyone who mattered, and neither could remember ever meeting the girl—which, along with her failure to be married off, had also said it all.

But, finding himself locked in the jaws of a steel trap, Theo had determined to make the best of things. Because, however odious the woman was, no marriage was set in stone. There was always a window for negotiation when it came to an out clause, and Theo had already located it.

In the meanwhile he had imagined someone unappealing and terminally shy, who would make a suitable background spouse while his father’s company was patched up from the inside. All things considered, he had come to the conclusion that his life would hardly have to change at all. She would remain in Italy, dutifully keeping the home fires burning, he would visit occasionally, work permitting, and she would not complain.

When Alexa had walked into the drawing room he had been startled to discover that she was nothing like the woman he had conjured up in his head.

She was...

He still wasn’t entirely sure—and that was a first for him. For if it was one thing Theo De Angelis excelled in, it was an ability to read a woman in under five seconds.

She had sat in mute silence for most of the half hour during which laboured chit chat had been made, with both Carlo and Cora Caldini making sure to tread very carefully around the giant elephant in the room: namely the matter of an arranged marriage.

Cora, he had been told by her husband, knew that the marriage was to be an arrangement, but she knew nothing of the financial situation that had propelled it into existence and nor should she find out. She could deal with an arranged marriage... Several of her friends had children who had been diplomatically set up with suitable partners. It would be tactful not to go into more details.

Alexa’s mute silence hadn’t translated into the meek subservience he had been expecting.

And looks-wise...

He tilted his head and noted the mutinous, challenging stare she returned.

‘And I didn’t think that I would be sitting here gazing at my devoted and adoring husband-to-be!’ Alexa retorted, because there was no reason for her to pretend that this was anything but a fiasco.

Besides, the man was so good-looking that he might just be arrogant enough to think that she actually wanted to be in this position.

She felt she should rid him of any such assumption from the start.

‘So I’m assuming...’ he rose fluidly from the chair to refill her glass with more champagne before topping his up with more of the whisky he had been drinking ‘...that we’re both singing from the same song sheet?’

‘What did you expect?’ Alexa threw at him, mouth downturned.

‘I could either answer that question truthfully or else ignore it altogether. Which would you rather?’

Alexa shrugged and tore her eyes away from his long, muscular frame. ‘We might just as well lay our cards on the table,’ she said.

‘In which case,’ Theo drawled, ‘I should tell you I had reached the conclusion that you might be a little desperate...considering Carlo is prepared to throw you in as part of his financial negotiations with my father...’

Slow, furious colour crawled into her cheeks.

‘You are the most arrogant man I think I have ever met in my entire life!’ Alexa said through gritted teeth.

She gauged the level of satisfaction she would get from flinging her glass at him, but decided that the only way to handle this disaster would be not to let him get to her.

She wasn’t going to lose her cool. She never lost her cool. It was what made her so good at what she did. She worked in the offices of a group of pro bono lawyers and daily dealt with people in need of practical and emotional help. Three evenings a week she volunteered at a women’s shelter. She was calm personified!

‘Since we’re about to be joined in happily married bliss, I suggest you take that on board and don’t think of implementing any changes.’

Theo was perversely enjoying himself, and he put that down to the sort of man he was. The sort who could deal with whatever was thrown at him, however unexpected.

‘And in return,’ he continued, in the same lazy dark drawl that made her toes curl, ‘I won’t try and turn you into someone charming and well behaved...’

Alexa glared and bit down hard on the riposte stinging her lips. She had no idea how she was going to survive twelve hours with this man, never mind twelve months.

‘I’ve spoken to my father,’ she gritted, ‘and he has agreed that we only have to carry out this crazy charade for twelve months. After that we can part company and you can return to your life of— You can return to your life and I can get back to mine.’

Theo wondered what she had been about to say but let it go. He, in actual fact, had secured a far better deal—because his twelve months also included a substantial acquisition of Caldini company shares and a seat on the board. It would tie in very nicely with his current diversion into telecommunications.

After the initial shock of the catastrophe that had been presented to him, he had very quickly reached the perfectly correct conclusion that marrying his daughter off was only one benefit for Carlo Caldini in helping his father.

The other was glaringly obvious.

Carlo Caldini ran a juggernaut of a family business but there was no male family member to whom he could leave his legacy—and, like many traditional Italians, he wanted his business to remain in the family. By marrying his daughter to Theo he netted one of the most wildly respected and formidable businessmen on the globe.

And for Theo, Alexa Caldini came with a considerable dowry.

‘So no doubt we should be discussing the mechanics,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that to the outside world we must be a loved-up pair about to embark on the greatest adventure of our lives. I will not have a whiff of scandal surrounding this, because under no circumstances is my father to be subjected to any manner of rumour about a convenient match concocted to save his company.’ His green eyes had cooled. ‘Are we one hundred per cent clear on this?’

‘Or else what?’

‘That’s a road I would seriously advise you not to go down.’

His voice was icy cold, with deadly intent, and Alexa shivered. Theo De Angelis had not reached the dizzy heights by being kind and avuncular. He’d probably never helped a little old lady cross a road in his entire life. She wondered how he would react to her world when they were man and wife...

‘When we’re in public,’ he purred silkily, ‘you will withdraw your claws. You can keep them for when we’re alone together.’

‘You might find that you don’t like being scratched.’ Alexa tilted her chin mutinously and he smiled—a slow, curling smile that did all sorts of weird and unexpected things to her body.

‘And you might discover that I’m very good when it comes to subduing wild cats.’

Suddenly confused, and feeling horribly out of her depth, Alexa blinked and gulped down the remainder of her champagne.

She might talk the talk, but how good would she be at walking the walk?

She had virtually no experience when it came to the opposite sex. She had been sent off to England to an all girls’ boarding school and from there to university, where she had buried herself in books, determined to get her law degree.

Of course there had been a couple of boyfriends, but neither had excited her and she had always been determined to hold out for the Right One—never to sell herself short. They had both cleared off as soon as they’d realised that she wasn’t going to hop into bed with them.

Now, as her bright blue eyes tangled with his cool, unreadable green ones, she knew that this was a predator, born to lead and accustomed to obedience.

Obedience she would give him—but only within the parameters that suited them both. If he didn’t want anyone getting wind of the real reason for their union she, in turn, did not want to embarrass her parents, whom she dearly loved.

He wanted her to put up a public front and she would—but the second they closed the door behind them there would be no more game-playing.

And suddenly a thought rippled through her that made her breathing quicken.