Kitabı oku: «Bought By Her Italian Boss»

For my editor, Kathryn, because she ‘loved, loved, loved’ it.

Contents

COVER

INTRODUCTION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

EXTRACT

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

GWYN ELLIS LOOKED from the screen to Nadine Billaud, the public relations manager for Donatelli International, then back to the screen.

“This is you, oui?” Nadine prodded.

Gwyn couldn’t speak. Her heart had begun slamming inside her rib cage the moment she had recognized herself. Cold sweat coated her skin. Air wouldn’t squeeze past her locked throat, let alone words.

That was her. Naked. Right there on that computer, the line of her bare bottom clear as the crack of dawn, neatly framed by her hot pink thong. Everyone had a backside that looked more or less like that, but she was extremely selective about showing hers to anyone. She certainly didn’t email shots like this to men she barely knew. Or post them online.

Her whole body felt like a frozen electrical current was vibrating through her, paralyzing her.

The photo changed and that bare torso with the sheet rumpled across her upper thighs was all her, too. The way her breasts lifted as she arched her back and ran fingers through her hair bordered on deliberately erotic, coupled with that blissful, upturned expression. She looked like she’d been making love all day—as if she even knew what that felt like!

Then the final one came up again. She was adjusting the band of her hot pink undies across her cocked hip, looking like she was teasingly deciding whether to keep them on or remove them, eyes still lazily drooped and soft satisfaction painted across her lips.

The lighting was golden and her skin faintly gleamed—with oil, she realized as her brain began to function past the shock. These had been taken at the spa where she’d had a massage, trying to fix the ache between her shoulder blades that had been torturing her for weeks. She was sitting up and dressing after her appointment, relaxed and comfortable in what she had perceived as complete privacy.

The massage table had been cropped from the images, leaving muted sage-green walls and indistinct, blurred flowers in the background. It could have been a hotel room, a bedroom—whatever the viewer wanted to imagine.

Her stomach roiled. She thought she might be hyperventilating because she could hear a distant hiss. She wanted to throw up, pass out, die. Please God, take me now.

“Mademoiselle?” Nadine badgered.

“Yes,” she stammered. “It’s me.” Then, as the sheer mortification of the whole thing struck, she added a strident, “Can you close that, please?”

She glanced at Signor Fabrizio, her supervisor. He sat next to her with a supercilious expression on his middle-aged face.

“Why are you showing those like that? With him in here?” Gwyn asked. “Couldn’t we have done this privately?”

“They’re available to anyone with an online connection. I’ve seen them,” Fabrizio said pithily. “I brought them to Nadine’s attention.”

He’d already taken a long look? Gross.

Tears hit her eyes like the cut of a hard, biting wind. An equally brutal blow seemed to land in her stomach, pushing nausea higher into the back of her throat.

“Surely you knew this could happen when you took those photos and sent them to Mr. Jensen?” Nadine said.

Nadine had kept her snooty nose high in the air from the moment Gwyn had followed Fabrizio into her office. Fabrizio kept giving her darkly smug looks, like he was staring right through her perfectly respectable blue pencil skirt and matching jacket.

He made her skin crawl.

And worry for her job. Her palms were sweating.

“I didn’t take those photos,” she said as strongly as her tight throat would allow. “And you think I would send something like that to a client? They’re—oh, for the love of God.” She heard the door opening behind her and shot to her feet, reaching to push the lid of Nadine’s laptop down herself, wishing the images could be quashed that easily.

Deep in the back of her psyche, she knew she was going to cry. Soon. Pressure was building behind her collarbone, compressing her lungs, pushing behind her eyes. But for the moment she was in a type of shock. Like she’d been shot and still had the strength to run before the true depth of her injuries debilitated her.

“Signor Donatelli.” Nadine rose. “Thank you for coming.”

“You notified him?” Signor Fabrizio jerked to his feet, sounding dismayed.

Whatever remained of Gwyn’s composure went into free fall. The owner of the bank was here? She tried to gather herself to face yet another denigrating expression.

“It’s protocol with something this dangerous to the bank’s reputation,” Nadine said stiffly, adding to the weight on Gwyn’s heart.

“She’s being dismissed,” Fabrizio hurried to assure Signor Donatelli. “I was about to tell her to collect her things.”

Time stopped as Gwyn processed that she was being fired. Stupid her, she had thought she was being called in to talk about a client’s possible misappropriation of funds, not to be disgraced in front of the entire world.

Literally the entire world. This was what online bullying felt like. This was persecution. A witch hunt. Stoning. She couldn’t take in how monumentally unjust this was.

The only experience she could liken it to was when her mother had been diagnosed. Words were being said, facts stated that couldn’t be denied, but she had no real grasp of how the next minute or week or the rest of her life would play out from this moment forward.

She didn’t want to face it, but she had no choice.

And the silence around her told her they were all waiting for her to do so.

Very slowly, she turned to the man who’d just entered, but it wasn’t Paolo Donatelli, president and head of the family that owned Donatelli International. No, it was far worse.

Vittorio Donatelli. Paolo’s cousin, second-in-command as VP of operations. A man of, arguably, even more stunningly good looks, at least in her estimation. His features were as refined and handsome as his Italian heritage demanded. He was clean-shaven, excruciatingly well dressed in a tailored suit and wore an air of arrogance that came as much from his lean height as his aloof expression. His ability to dominate any situation was obvious in the way they all stood in silence, waiting for him to speak.

He didn’t know her from Adam, she knew that. She’d smiled brightly at him not long after arriving here in Milan, forgetting that secret crushes didn’t know they were the object of such yearnings. He’d looked right through her and it had stung. Quite badly, illogically.

“Nadine. Oscar,” Vittorio said with a brief flick of his gaze to the other occupants of the room before coming back to give Gwyn a piercing stare from his bronze eyes.

Her heart gave a skip between pounds, reacting to him even when she was verging on hysteria. Her mouth was so dry she couldn’t make it stretch into a smile. She doubted she would ever smile again. The strange buzz inside her intensified.

“Miss Ellis,” he said with a hostile nod of acknowledgment.

He knew her name from Nadine’s report, she supposed. The furious accusation in his eyes told her he’d seen the photos. Of course he’d seen them. That’s why he had stooped from the lofty heights of the top floor to the midlevel of the Donatelli Tower.

Gwyn’s shallow breaths halted and her knees quivered. She was weirdly shocked by how defenseless the idea of his seeing her naked made her feel, but the effect this very perfect stranger had had on her from the start was unprecedented. She’d seen him stride through the offices in Charleston once and that simple glimpse of an incredibly handsome and dynamic man had made her view the postings at the head office in Milan that much more favorably than any other branch in the organization. She had wanted to advance, would have taken whatever promotions she could land, but this was her dream location.

Because it gave her the chance to see him.

Be careful what you wish for. She mashed her lips together into a hard, steady line, heart scored, then turned her face away, trying to recover.

He was, quite obviously, nothing like the man she’d constructed in her mind. Italian men were warm and gregarious and adored women, she had thought, expecting he’d flirt with her if they ever actually spoke. She had expected him to give her a chance to intrigue him, despite the fact that she worked for him.

But the man she had been obsessing over had not only glimpsed her naked, he was completely unmoved by what he’d seen. He was repelled. Blamed her. Was privately calling her a whore and worse—

She stopped herself from spiraling. The pieces of her shattered world were being kicked around enough. She had to keep a grip.

But she wasn’t used to being rejected out of hand, seeing no interest whatsoever from a man. The reaction was usually the opposite. Her body had always pulled a certain amount of male attention. She didn’t encourage it and was pretty boring personality-wise. She worked in banking, for heaven’s sake. Her hair was the most common brown you could find and she wasn’t terribly pretty. Her face was only elevated from plain to pleasant by her mother’s exceptionally good skin and a cheery nature that usually kept a smile on her mouth. So she shouldn’t be that surprised when a man who could have his pick of women showed no interest in her.

It made her ache all the same.

Think, she ordered herself, but it was hard when she was stuck in this swamp of feeling so thoroughly scorned by a man who enthralled her.

“I want a lawyer,” she managed to say.

“Why would you need one?” Vittorio asked with a wrathful lift of his brows, so godlike.

“This is wrongful dismissal. You’re treating me like a criminal when those photos are illegal. They were taken at a spa without my knowledge. They’re not selfies, so how could I have sent them to Kevin Jensen? Or anyone? His wife is the one who recommended I go there for my shoulder!”

Vito flicked his gaze to the laptop, mentally reviewing images that would have been very titillating if they were a private communication between lovers. For long seconds as he’d reviewed the photos, he’d been captivated against his will, having to force himself to move past his transfixion with her sensual figure to the fact that this was a hydrogen bomb aimed directly at the bank that was his livelihood and the foundation that supported his entire extended family.

But the photos weren’t selfies. That was true. He had thought Jensen must have taken them.

Nadine seemed to think his shift of attention was a prompt for her to bring them up for another look. She started to open her laptop.

“Would you stop showing those to people, you freak?” Gwyn cried.

“Let’s keep this professional,” Nadine snapped.

“How would you react if you were me?” Gwyn shot back.

Gwyn Ellis was not what he had expected. There was an American wholesomeness to her that neutralized some of the femme fatale that had come across on-screen. He had expected, and received, an impact of female sexuality when he had entered the room. He’d felt the same thing the day she’d smiled at him in the lobby.

She’d already been under suspicion, so he’d pretended not to notice her, but nothing could downplay her allure. That body of hers didn’t stop, with her firm, well-rounded breasts that sat high beneath her neatly cut jacket and her waistline that begged for a man’s hands to clasp before sliding down to the flare of her hips and her gorgeously plump ass that he dreamed of kneading. Knees were not something he’d normally catalogue, but she had cute ones.

An image of cupping them as he held them apart drifted through his brain.

She was a very potent woman. Her shoulders were stiff, her frame tense and defensive, but her slight stature and smooth curves announced to the animal kingdom that she was undeniably a female of the species, of fertile age and irresistibly ripe.

She called to the male in him, quickening the blood of the beast that he suppressed at all costs.

Visceral reactions like lust were something he indulged in very controlled quantities. This was not the time and, judging by his reaction to her, Gwyn was not the woman. High-octane risk-taking was his cousin’s bailiwick. Vito controlled his bloodlust ruthlessly—even though there was a part of him that beat with excitement for the challenge of throwing himself into this perfect storm of chemistry to see if he could survive it.

What they could do to one another...

He turned his mind from speculating, hearing Nadine aim a very pointed barb at Gwyn. “I wouldn’t sleep with a married man. This wouldn’t happen to me.”

“Who said I slept with Kevin Jensen?” Gwyn challenged hotly. “Who? I want a name.”

So indignant. This was not the reaction of a woman who had posed for a lover, running the risk of exposure. She ought to be furious with Jensen or his wife, perhaps tossing her hair in defiance of judgment over her decision to pose naked for her paramour. Instead, she was a woman on the edge of her control, reacting to a catastrophe with barely contained hysteria.

“His wife said you slept with him. Or want to. Obviously,” Oscar Fabrizio interjected, “since she posted these filthy photos when she discovered them on his phone. You’ve been having lunches and dinners with him.”

Vito found that attack interesting. He had brought certain suspicions about their nonprofit accounts manager to Paolo’s attention a few weeks ago. The assumption had easily been made that the New Girl was in on the arrangement, facilitating.

“Kevin wanted to do things—have our meetings, I mean,” Gwyn quickly clarified, “away from the office.” She was visibly distraught, looking to Vito in entreaty. “He’s a client. I didn’t have a choice but to go to him if that’s what he requested.”

Vito had to accept that. Excellence of customer service was a cornerstone at Donatelli International. If a client of Jensen’s caliber wanted a house call, employees were expected to make them.

“You didn’t take those photos?” he pressed her.

“No!”

“So they’re not on that phone?” He nodded at where she clutched her device in a death grip.

Gwyn had forgotten she was holding it, but she always grabbed it out of habit when she left her desk, and had switched it to silent as she came into this meeting. Now she stared at it, surprised to see it there. At least she could say with confidence, “No. They’re not.”

“You’ll let me confirm that?” He held out his hand.

On the surface it was a very reasonable request, but, oh, dear Lord, no. She had something on here that was beyond embarrassing. It would make this situation so much worse... So much worse.

She knew her face was falling into lines of panicked guilt, but couldn’t help it.

His nostrils flared and his jaw hardened. The death rays coming out of his eyes told her she’d be lucky to merely lose her job.

“This phone is mine,” she stammered, trying not to let him intimidate her. If she hadn’t already been violated, she might not have been so vehement, but he was going to have to knock her out cold to pry this thing out of her hand if he wanted access. “I get an allowance to offset my using it for company business, but it’s mine. You don’t have any right to look at it.”

“Can it clear you of suspicion or not?” His gaze delved into her culpable one.

She couldn’t hide the turmoil and resentment coursing through her at being put on the spot. “My privacy has been invaded enough.”

She was naked. On the internet. She supposed everyone in the building was staring at her image right now. Men saying filthy, suggestive things. Women judging whether her stomach was flat enough, saying she had cellulite, calling her too bony or too tall or too something so they could feel better about their own body issues.

Gwyn wanted to hang her head and sob.

All she could think was how hard she’d worked not to be pushed around by life the way her mother had been. At every stage, she’d tried to be self-reliant, autonomous, control her future.

Breathe, she commanded herself. Don’t think about it. She would fall apart. She really would.

“I think we have our answer,” Fabrizio said pitilessly.

She was starting to hate that man. Gwyn wasn’t the type to hate. She did her best to get along with everyone. She was a happy person, always believing that life was too short for drama and conflict. Being the first to apologize made her the bigger person, she had always thought, but she doubted she would ever forgive these people for how they were treating her right now.

A muted buzz sounded and Nadine looked at her own phone. “The press is gathering. We need to make a statement.”

The press? Gwyn circled around Fabrizio to the window and looked down.

Nadine’s office was midway up the tower, but the crowd at the entrance, and the cameras they held, were like ants pouring out of a disturbed hill. It was as bad as a royal birth down there.

She swallowed, stomach turning again.

Kevin Jensen was an icon, a modern day, international superhero who flew into disaster aftermath to offer “feet on the ground” assistance. Anyone with half a brain saw that he exploited heart-wrenching situations on camera to increase donations and boost his own profile, but the bottom line was he showed up to terrible tragedies and brought aid. He did real, necessary work for the devastated.

But lately Gwyn had been questioning how he spent some of those abundant donations.

Had this been his answer? A massive discrediting that would get her fired?

She hugged herself. This sort of thing didn’t happen to real people. Did it?

Her gaze searched below for an escape route. She couldn’t even leave the building to get to her rented flat here in Milan. How would she get back to America? Even if she got that far, then what? Look to her stepfather to shelter her? Who was going to hire her with this sort of notoriety? Ever?

She’d be exactly what she’d tried so hard to avoid being: a burden. A leach.

Oh, God...oh, God. The walls were beginning to creak and buckle around her composure. The pressure behind her cheekbones built along with weight on her shoulders and upper arms.

Nadine was talking as she typed, “...say that the bank was unaware of this personal relationship and the employee has been terminated—”

“Our client has stated that the photos were not invited,” Fabrizio interjected.

Gwyn spun around. “And your employee states that she’s been targeted by a peeping tom and an online porn peddler and a vengeful wife.”

Nadine paused only long enough to send her a stern look. “I strongly advise you not to speak to the press.”

“I strongly advise you that I will be speaking to a lawyer.” It was an empty threat. Her savings were very modest. Very. Much as she would love to believe her stepbrother would help her, she couldn’t count on it. He had his own corporate image to maintain.

The way Vittorio Donatelli continued to emanate hostility made her want to crawl into a hole and die.

“How long have you been with the company?” Nadine asked.

“Two years in Charleston, four months here,” Gwyn said, trying to recall how much room her credit card balance had for plane fare and setting up house back in Charleston. Not enough.

“Two years,” Nadine snorted, adding an askance. “How did you earn a promotion like this after only that short a time?” Her gaze skimmed down Gwyn’s figure, clearly implying that Gwyn had slept her way into the position. Night school and language classes and putting in overtime counted for nothing, apparently.

Fabrizio didn’t defend her, despite signing off on her transfer and giving her a glowing review after her first three months.

Vittorio’s expression was an inscrutable mask. Was he thinking the same thing?

A disbelieving sob escaped her and she hugged herself, trying to stay this side of manic.

While Vittorio brought his own phone from his pants pocket and with a sweep and tap connected to someone. “Bruno? Vito. I need you in Nadine Billaud’s office. Bring some of your men.”

“For my walk of shame?” Gwyn presumed. Here came the tears, welling up like a tsunami with a mile of volume behind it. Her voice cracked. “Don’t worry. I plan to leave quickly and quietly. I can’t wait to not work here anymore.”

“You’ll stay right here until I tell you to leave.” His tone was implacable, making her heart sink in her hollow chest while another part of her rose in defiance, wanting to fight and rail and physically tear at him to get out of here. She was the quintessential wounded animal that needed to bolt from danger to its cave.

To Nadine, he added, “Confirm the photos belong to one of our employees. For privacy and legal reasons we have no other comment. Ask the reporters to disperse and enlist the lobby guards to help. Issue a similar statement to all employees. Add a warning that they risk termination if they speak to the press or are observed viewing the photos on corporate equipment or company grounds. Oscar, I need a full report on how these photos came to your attention.”

“Signor Jensen contacted me this morning—”

“Not here.” Vittorio moved to the door as a knock sounded. “In your office. Wait here,” he said over his shoulder to Gwyn, like she was a dog to be left at home while he went to work. He urged the other two from the room and pulled the door closed behind the three of them.

“Yeah, right,” Gwyn rasped into the silence of Nadine’s empty office, hugging herself so tightly she was suffocating.

A twisting, writhing pain moved in her like a snake, coiling around her organs to squeeze her heart and lungs, tightening her stomach and closing her throat. She covered her face, trying to hide from the terrible reality that everyone—everyone in the world—was not only staring at her naked body, but believing that she had had sex with a married man.

She could live with people staring at her body. Almost. They did it, anyway. But she was a good person. She didn’t lie or steal or come on to men, especially married ones! She was conservative in the way she lived her life, saving her craziest impulses for things like her career where she did wildly ambitious things like sign up for Mastering Spreadsheets tutorials in hopes of moving up the ladder.

The pressure in her cheekbones and nose and under her eyes became unbearable. She tried to press it back with the flats of her hands, but a moan of anguish was building from the middle of her chest. A sob bounced like a hard pinball, bashing against her inner walls, moving up from her breastbone into her throat.

She couldn’t break down, she reminded herself. Not here. Not yet. She had to get out of this place and the sooner the better. It was going to be awful. A nightmare, but she would do it, head high and under her own steam.

Gritting her teeth, she reached for the door and started to open it.

A burly man wearing a suit and a short, neat haircut was standing with his back to the door. Guarding her? He grabbed the doorknob, keeping her from pulling it open. His body angled enough she could see he also wore some kind of clear plastic earpiece. His glance at her was both indifferent and implacable.

“Attendere qui, per favore.” Wait here, please.

She was so shocked, she let him pull the door from her lax grip and close her into Nadine’s office again.

Actually, it slipped freely from her clammy hand. The room began to feel very claustrophobic. She moved to the window again, seeing the crowd of reporters had grown. She couldn’t tell if Nadine was addressing them. She could hardly see. Her vision was blurring. She sniffed, feeling the weight of all that had happened so deeply she had to move to the nearest chair and sink into it.

Her breath hitched and no amount of pressure from her hands would push back the burn behind her eyes.

The door opened again, startling her heart into lurching and her head into jerking up.

He was back.