Pursued by the Desert Prince(32)

Someone here to see you, Alice,' Meghan, her junior beauty therapist, said from the door.

Alice glanced at the time on her computer screen next to her appointment  diary and frowned. But my first client isn't until ten. Clara Overton  cancelled her facial. One of her kids is sick.'

Meghan waggled her eyebrows meaningfully and, lowering her voice to a stage whisper, said, It's a man.'

Alice had several male clients who came to her for waxing and other  treatments but something told her the man waiting to see her wasn't one  of them. She could feel it in her body. In her bones. In her blood. In  her heartbeat. The awareness of imminent danger making a prickling  sensation pass all over her flesh, as if her nerves were radar picking  up a faint but unmistakable signal. A signal she had forced herself to  forget. To wipe from her memory in case it caused her to regret the  decision she had made back then. She pushed back her chair and stood but  then decided it was better to remain seated. She didn't trust her legs.  Not if she was going to come face to face with Cristiano Marchetti  after all this time. Tell him I'll be ten minutes.'         

     



 

You can tell me yourself.'

Alice looked up to see Cristiano framed in the door, his chocolate-brown  eyes as hard as two black bolts. All she could think of was how  different it was seeing him in the flesh instead of a photograph in a  gossip magazine or newspaper. Shockingly different. Heart-stoppingly  different. I'm-not-sure-I-can-handle-this different.

For a moment she couldn't locate her voice. With him standing there,  with his towering frame and commanding air, her office seemed to shrink  to the size of a tissue box. Shoulders so broad he looked as if he'd  been bench-pressing bulldozers-two at a time. An abdomen so hard and  toned you could tap dance on it wearing stilettos and not leave a dent.  Jet-black hair, thick and currently brushed back from his forehead in  loose finger-groomed waves.

Hello, Cristiano, what brings you to Alice's Wonderland of Beauty? An eyebrow-shape? Back and leg wax? Personality makeover?'

Alice knew it was crazy of her to goad him but she did it anyway. It was  her defence mechanism. Sarcasm instead of emotion. Better to be cutting  and mocking than to show how much his brooding presence disturbed her.  It more than disturbed her. It unbalanced her. Her neatly controlled  world felt as if it had been picked up and rattled like a maraca held by  a maniac. The walls of her office were closing in on her. The floor was  shifting beneath her feet like a sailboat pitching in a wild squall.  The air was pulsing with crackling electricity that made her aware of  every inch of her skin and every hit-and-miss beat of her heart.

His bottomless eyes roved her face as if he was looking for something he  had lost and never thought to find again. His brow was etched in a deep  frown that gave him a much more intimidating air than the way he had  looked at her in the past. Back then he had looked at her with  tenderness, with gentleness. With love.

A love she had thrown back in his face.

Did you put her up to it?' he asked with a searing look that made the  backs of her knees fizz as if sand were being trickled through her  veins.

Alice placed her hands on the tops of her thighs below her desk so he  wouldn't see their traitorous shaking. I presume you're referring to  your grandmother?'

Something flashed in his gaze. Bitterness. Anger. Something else she  wasn't ready to acknowledge, but she felt it all the same. It breathed  scorching hot fire all over her body, stirring up memories. Erotic  memories that made the blood in her veins pick up speed. Have you been  in contact with her over the last seven years?' he asked in that same  terse don't-mess-with-me tone.

No. Why would I?' Alice gave him a pointed look. I rejected your proposal, remember?'

His jaw tensed so hard she could see the white tips of his clenched  muscles showing through his olive tan. Then why has she mentioned you  in her will?'

So he hadn't known about the terms of his grandmother's will until  recently? Had the old lady not told him of her plans? Interesting. No  idea,' Alice said. I only met her a couple of times when we were...back  then. I've had zero contact since.'

He glanced at the will lying in front of her on her desk. Have you read it?'

Alice gave him another speaking look. I was getting to that when you rudely barged into my office.'

His eyes nailed hers. Hard eyes. Eyes that could melt a month's supply  of salon wax with a single glare. Let me summarise it for you. You  stand to inherit a half share of my grandmother's villa in Stresa in  Italy if you agree to be my wife and live with me for a minimum of six  months. You will also receive a lump sum on the announcement of our  engagement, which is to last no longer than one month.'

Shock hit Alice like a blow to the chest. His...wife?

She fumbled for the document, the sound of the pages rustling overly loud in the silence.

Engaged to him for a month? Married for six?

She cast her gaze over the words again, her breath coming in such short  spark bursts it felt as if she were having an asthma attack. Her heart  was beating so heavily it felt as if someone were punching it from  behind. She hadn't seen any mention of marriage in her quick appraisal  earlier. She'd barely had time to read any of it before he had  gatecrashed into her day. Why hadn't she put on her make-up before work?  Why hadn't she worn her brand-new uniform instead of this one with the  eyebrow-tint stain on the right breast? Why hadn't she done her own  eyebrows, for God's sake?

But there it was in black and white.

Alice was to co-inherit Volante Marchetti's summer retreat on the shores  of Lake Maggiore if, and only if, she married and stayed married to  Cristiano for six months. Six months? Six seconds would be too long. And  there was the other clause. They must be engaged for no more than a  month before the wedding. What sort of weird time frame was that? It  shamed her that Cristiano saw the pages of the document shaking before  she put it back down on the desk. But at least he couldn't see the  tumult going on inside her stomach.         

     



 

His wife?

Live with him?

She had been to his grandmother's villa one memorable weekend with  Cristiano. Memorable because it was the first time he'd told her he  loved her. Apart from her mother, no one had ever said that to her  before. She hadn't said the words back because she hadn't trusted her  feelings. But then, she had always been a step behind him in their  relationship. She'd thought they were having a fling while she was on a  brief working holiday in Europe. He'd decided it was a relationship.  She'd thought it was temporary because she'd planned to go back to  England and set up her own beauty spa, but he had wanted it to be  permanent.

Permanent as in marriage and kids.

For as long as she could remember Alice had been against marriage-or at  least for herself. After witnessing her mother go through three of them  with exactly the same result: misery, subjugation, humiliation and  financial ruin. She had told Cristiano a little about her background,  not much, but more than she had told anyone, which made her all the more  annoyed he had still gone ahead and asked her to marry him. In a  crowded public place to boot, which had added a whole other layer of  pressure she resented him for.

His arrogance made her furiously angry. Had he really thought she would  fall upon him with a grateful squeal of Yes! just because he was  super-rich and said he loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his  life with her? How long would that love have lasted? They'd had a  passionate if a little volatile relationship. How could she be sure his  desire/love for her wouldn't burn out as fast as it had been ignited?

If he had truly loved her he would have accepted her no as final and  settled for a less formal arrangement. People lived together for years  and years without needing the formality of marriage. Why be so damn  nineteen-fifties about it? A marriage certificate didn't make a  relationship any more secure. In fact, it could do the very opposite,  forcing women into a subservient role once kids came along from which  they could never escape.

But Cristiano at heart was a traditionalist. For all of his modern male  sophistication, deep down he wanted a wife and family to come home to  while he built his empire. So he had given her an ultimatum. Tried to  control her. Tried to manipulate her into doing what he wanted.

Marriage or nothing.

Alice had called his bluff and ended their relationship then and there,  and flown back to England, never expecting to hear from him again. Well,  maybe that wasn't quite true. She had expected to hear from him with a  big apology and let's try again' but it hadn't happened. Showed how  much he'd loved' her. Not enough to fight for her. Not enough to  compromise.

Not that she had offered to compromise, but still.

Alice brought her gaze back up to his glittering one. You're surely not going to go through with this...are you?'

A smile that wasn't quite a smile courted with the edges of his mouth.  But of course. It is what Nonna wanted. Who am I to disregard her last  wishes?'