LAUREL FELT AS if she needed another shower. She paced Cristiano’s bedroom, her heart racing, her whole body tingling despite the storm of indignation raging through her. No matter what big words she’d just thrown at him, she’d been tempted—seriously tempted—and for one glorious second she’d been sure he was going to kiss her, had imagined the sensuous slide of his lips along hers...
What was happening to her? How had she fallen down this rabbit hole of manipulation, sex and greed? She lived a quiet life in a small town in Illinois, working as a nurse, possessing a handful of casual friends, and no boyfriends, ever. For a second she pictured her grandfather’s farmhouse—its floorboards of weathered, honeyed oak, the view of rolling fields from the kitchen window, the friendly glimmer of the pond in the distance. She ached to go home, for things to feel familiar and safe again. Boring, even. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want any of this—not her mother, not Bavasso, not Cristiano.
Liar.
She silenced that taunting inner voice by sheer strength of will and tried to think practically about what she should do now, since she seemed intent on burning her bridges both left and right.
She couldn’t leave Cristiano’s penthouse, not yet anyway. She took his warning about Bavasso seriously...just as she took his offer of no-strings sex seriously.
Why wouldn’t you become the man’s mistress?
Frustration bubbled inside her and she paced the room, feeling both frantic and caged. She wouldn’t become the man’s mistress because she had more self-respect than that. More pride. And more of an instinct of self-preservation. Sex with Cristiano would burn her up, leaving nothing but cinders. She felt that in her very bones, knew it from the way she’d reacted to his hand on her shoulder, the merest brush of his hips against hers...
Heat flared through her at that potent memory and she whirled away from the window, pacing the room to the bathroom and back. At this rate she’d wear out the thick pile carpet.
A knock sounded on the door and she stilled, every muscle tense, every sense on high-octane alert. ‘Yes?’
‘Your clothes have arrived.’
She couldn’t tell anything from Cristiano’s tone. Warily Laurel opened the door. He stood there, one hand outstretched with several luxury shopping bags dangling from his long, lean fingers.
‘Thank you,’ Laurel said stiffly, taking the bags. ‘You didn’t have to get so much.’
‘Who knows how long you will be here, bella?’ Cristiano answered lazily.
‘Not very long, if I can help it,’ Laurel retorted. ‘I’m going to get dressed and then we need to talk.’
‘Excellent. I’ve ordered some food, so we can talk as we eat.’
It all suddenly seemed so civilised, Laurel thought with a savage twist of humour as she closed the door. Almost as if Cristiano wasn’t keeping her captive, intending for her to be his mistress. To keep her here for sex. It seemed ridiculous, laughable, yet she felt the seriousness of the situation all the way through her body, right down to her toes.
She emptied the bags on the bed, blinking at the sight of the elegant clothes, which included several outfits, including undergarments. How on earth had he managed to know her bra size? she wondered as she picked up a push-up bra in nude lace and coffee-coloured satin. Although, on second thoughts, Cristiano no doubt could gauge a woman’s bra size from across a crowded room.
She chose the most conservative outfit, a swishy knee-length skirt in pale blue and a matching silk T-shirt top. Now that she was finally dressed in something that was neither revealing nor inappropriate, she felt a little more restored to herself. Almost as if the last seventy hours had never happened. Almost, but not quite.
In addition to the clothes, Cristiano had thoughtfully provided a bag of luxury toiletries, and Laurel took advantage of them, putting on a little discreet make-up, brushing her hair and twisting it up into a knot.
Taking a deep breath, she headed out of the bedroom. She found Cristiano in the dining area on the far side of the living room setting out food on a table that looked as if it had been carved from a single piece of ebony.
Laurel inhaled the tantalising scents of basil and lemon, and realised she hadn’t eaten anything since lunch. All evening Bavasso had plied her with cocktails she’d tried not to drink and no food.
Her stomach growled audibly and Cristiano looked up, humour glinting in those silvery eyes. Laurel managed a little laugh. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘So I hear.’ He gestured to one of the chairs, made of gleaming black wood. ‘Come sit down.’
Laurel hesitated, discomfited by this apparently new normal. Then she decided she would take what civility Cristiano offered, and she slid a chair out and sat down as he lifted the silver domes off several dishes.
‘What would you like?’ Cristiano asked as he lifted a plate. Laurel glanced at all the different dishes of Italian specialities, from fiore di zucca, a Roman dish of courgette fritters, to pasta carbonara and several delicious-looking salads.
‘It all looks good to me.’
‘Then I shall give you a bit of everything.’
Laurel watched as he ladled the different dishes onto her plate, feeling as if she’d fallen down yet another rabbit hole. Why had Cristiano changed his tune so drastically? Why was he being so nice?
‘Thank you,’ she murmured as she took her plate from him. Cristiano filled up his own and sat down on the opposite end of the table.
‘Dig in,’ he said in the same mild tone he’d been using since she’d emerged from the bedroom. ‘I’m glad the clothes fit,’ he said with a nod to her skirt and top. ‘That colour of blue was a good choice. It brings out your eyes.’
‘Um, thank you?’
He arched a dark eyebrow. ‘Can you not accept a compliment?’
‘It just sounded...’ Laurel hesitated, wondering if she was being hypersensitive. ‘Proprietary.’
‘Proprietary?’ His smile and eyes both gleamed. ‘About you or the clothes?’
‘Both.’
Cristiano sat back in his chair. ‘Stop fighting it, bella,’ he said, his tone turning lazy. ‘It would be far more pleasant for both of us if you did.’
‘Stop fighting it? Or you?’
‘Both.’
They stared at each other, a stand-off, and one that made fireworks fizz in Laurel’s middle. There could be no mistaking the, yes, proprietary gleam in Cristiano’s silvery-grey gaze. And definitely not just about the clothes. But, instead of feeling outraged and objectified as she knew she should, Laurel felt...excited.
Excited to know the heat simmering in those silvery depths was for her. She might be no more than a convenience, the expedient option, but he still wanted her. And, Bavasso’s odious groping aside, Laurel had precious little experience with being wanted.
So why was she fighting it? Her body battled with her brain, with both sense and self-preservation. The look stretched and lengthened between them and Laurel fought to hold onto all the reasons why she should not engage in some temporary, tasteless affair with Cristiano Ferrero.
Because this was his world, not hers, and she was already out of her depth. Because she had enough experience of people who loved and then left you, starting with her own parents—as well as Cristiano’s father, Lorenzo. She didn’t need another reminder. Because she was too innocent, too naïve, and too darn hopeful to survive the kind of arrangement Cristiano was suggesting.
Because he was dangerous, as dangerous as holding a firework in your hand and letting yourself be mesmerised by the fizz and spark. It wouldn’t take long for it to blow up in your face. To ruin your life.
Laurel dragged her gaze away from Cristiano’s simmering, steady one. ‘I want to ask about my mother,’ she said when she trusted her voice to sound normal. Her body was still reacting, little electric pulses going off in the strangest of places. Low in her belly. Between her thighs.
‘Your mother?’ Oh, that mild, enquiring tone. Already she knew to suspect it.
‘Yes. If Rico Bavasso is as unpleasant as you say, then I’m worried for her.’
‘Bella, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that your mother can take of herself.’
Laurel glanced up sharply. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Let’s not pretend when it comes to your mother,’ Cristiano answered. Gone was that mild tone, replaced by something far harder. Something that hinted at the unrelenting steel she knew lurked beneath his smooth urbanity. ‘We both know what she is.’
‘Which is?’ Laurel threw at him. She wasn’t under any illusions about what Cristiano Ferrero or his father thought of her mother, but some perverse, determined streak in her still wanted to hear him say it out loud.
‘She is a craven, amoral, shameless, gold-digging liar,’ Cristiano stated with flat and final authority. Laurel opened her mouth but nothing came out. She hadn’t expected him to state it quite so plainly. So coldly. ‘And,’ he continued, ‘I have no reason not to think you are the same.’
* * *
Cristiano watched the colour drain from Laurel’s face and wished he didn’t feel guilty for speaking so plainly. Aggravatingly, at every step it seemed he had to remind himself to act in the manner to which he’d become accustomed—matter-of-fact to the point of ruthlessness.
Anything else smacked of weakness or want and was completely unacceptable. He would never succumb to either option, as his mother did, or manipulation and lies, as his father did, letting himself get ensnared in a sticky web of a woman’s deceit.
No man was an island, but he was doing his damnedest to try. But Laurel didn’t have to look so wounded. As if he’d sucker-punched her when he’d been stating the obvious.
‘Well.’ Her voice was shaky as she placed her napkin next to her plate of barely touched food. ‘Don’t sugar-coat it.’
‘I see no need to sugar-coat anything,’ Cristiano replied shortly. ‘Surely we are both aware of the facts surrounding our parents’ divorce?’
‘If you mean, did Lorenzo Ferrero cut my mother and me out of his life without so much as a goodbye, then yes, I’m aware.’ A bright spot of colour appeared on each glorious cheekbone, enflaming and annoying him in turns.
‘You almost sound as if you were the one who was betrayed.’
‘I was.’ Laurel pressed her lips together, as if she’d revealed too much with that statement. She looked away, blinking hard. ‘But clearly you don’t think I have any right to that feeling. Clearly you think, even without knowing me at all, that I am one step up from a prostitute.’
For a second Cristiano paused. He could see Laurel was battling intense emotion, and he didn’t think she was faking it. ‘I accept that you were young at the time of our parents’ divorce,’ he said after a moment. ‘You might not have been aware of your mother’s actions.’
‘And yet you said you judged me as you judged her,’ Laurel returned. Her lips were white, her eyes huge, the only colour in her face those two bright spots.
‘I said I had no reason to think you were different. Prove me wrong if you can.’
‘Why should I bother?’ she flung back at him. ‘You’re...you’re disgusting.’ She rose from the table, her body taut and trembling. ‘You disgust me. You act so superior, as if you’re standing above everyone, judging their actions when you have no clue, no concept, of what our lives are really like. And meanwhile your actions are just as reprehensible as my mother’s, or even those of Rico Bavasso.’
‘Don’t compare me to that man,’ Cristiano warned in a low voice.
‘Why shouldn’t I? You trapped me here—’
‘I rescued you.’
‘You propositioned me and still you refuse to let me go. At least I managed to escape Bavasso’s clutches.’ She shook her head, her lip curling in genuine disgust. She was repulsed by him. The realisation was shocking and deeply, deeply unsettling. For the first time Cristiano didn’t wonder what game she was playing, but whether she was playing one at all. And right now he didn’t think she was. He’d been trying to get her to be honest, and it seemed he’d succeeded in that goal. It just hadn’t turned out at all as he’d expected.
‘Your mother doesn’t matter to me,’ he said swiftly. ‘We never should have talked about her in the first place. She is not relevant to our discussions.’
‘We talked about her because I’m worried for her safety, no matter what you think of her or her actions of ten years ago. Can you please see that she is all right? Regardless of what you think of her, surely you have that much honour?’
Elizabeth Forrester had always struck Cristiano as the kind of woman who knew exactly on which side her bread was buttered, but for Laurel’s sake he nodded tersely. ‘Very well.’
‘Thank you.’
A truce, then, of sorts. Laurel glanced down at her plate and then, her chin tilted at a haughty, proud angle, she sat down and started to eat again. It seemed Laurel Forrester knew on which side her bread was buttered as well.
‘How did you feel betrayed by my father?’ Cristiano asked abruptly. The remark had niggled at him.
Laurel looked up warily. ‘Because one minute we were all playing happy families, and the next my mother and I were on the plane back to Illinois, and I never even saw him again. Not so much as a text.’
‘And your mother had two million euros in her private bank account,’ Cristiano reminded her flatly.
‘Two million euros that your father got back,’ Laurel retorted. ‘Thanks to his water-tight pre-nup agreement. She didn’t see a penny of it.’
‘That makes it better, then? Just because she was caught?’
Laurel had the grace to look away. ‘Caught doing what, exactly?’ she hedged. Did she think he didn’t know?
‘Caught stealing from my father,’ he snapped, annoyed that she was practically defending her mother’s indefensible actions. ‘Taking his money and squirreling it away.’
‘Is it stealing, when they were married?’ Laurel asked quietly. ‘She took money from a joint bank account. Technically it was hers too.’
‘Technically,’ Cristiano agreed, the word bitten off and spit out. ‘Fortunately the law did not consider it a technicality.’
‘Still,’ Laurel persisted. ‘What’s yours is mine and vice versa, isn’t that right? Or do you not believe in marriage vows?’
Cristiano sat back, starting to fume. He really hadn’t wanted to rake up old memories of Elizabeth Forrester’s betrayal of his father, but Laurel was forcing his hand. ‘She was stealing from him, bella, no question.’
‘I admit it might have looked like that, but she didn’t mean it the way you—’
‘She was siphoning money from various accounts and putting it in an offshore account under a different name!’ Cristiano cut her off, his voice like the snick of a blade. ‘Are you actually defending her?’
‘Not defending,’ Laurel answered, a flush rising to her face. ‘I know she’s...’ She stopped and shook her head, clearly at a loss, because she couldn’t defend her mother even if she wanted to. Elizabeth Forrester was so clearly indefensible.
‘And what was that money for?’ Cristiano continued, relentless now. ‘The day when she left him for some toy boy? Considering her behaviour since then, it seems likely.’
Laurel’s face went pale again. ‘What do you know of my mother’s behaviour since then?’
‘Tonight was not the first time she has come into La Sirena.’ He didn’t make a point of following Elizabeth Forrester’s romantic entanglements, but he’d seen her enough times over the last ten years—usually on the arm of some puffed-up aristo, fawning, flirting and making Cristiano nauseous—to know that she lived by her wits and fading beauty. Every time he’d seen her he’d felt vindicated in telling his father about the private account he’d discovered ten years ago.
‘Tonight was the first time I came into La Sirena,’ Laurel said quietly. ‘Or had that escaped your notice?’
Cristiano stared at her, trying to decipher what she was really trying to say. That she was different from her mother? Or perhaps just more discreet. ‘So why did you?’ he asked. ‘Out of interest?’
He waited, bracing himself for some spun-out sob story about desperate times and hard circumstances. But she just pursed her lips and shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
And Cristiano told himself that was fine, because it didn’t. He wasn’t interested in getting to know Laurel, yet against his better judgment, and all common sense, he was curious. What had she been doing for the last ten years? Living the way her mother did? It was the utterly obvious assumption, and yet...
Something in him resisted that assumption, which was stupid as well as pointless. Laurel toyed with her fork and then pushed her plate away. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not hungry any more.’
‘You should eat.’ She was slender enough for a breath to blow her away. She just shook her head.
‘I... I think I’ll go to bed. It’s late and it’s been a very long day. A very long couple of days.’ She rose from the table, pausing uncertainly. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘For the clothes and the food and the place to stay.’
As if he’d given it all to her out of the goodness of his heart. As if their arrangement, the one he still most definitely wanted, didn’t remain on the table, needing to be discussed. Cristiano rose too.
‘I’ll see you to your room.’
Her pupils flared. ‘That isn’t necessary.’
‘Oh, but I assure you,’ he answered softly, ‘It is.’
Laurel stared at him for a beat longer and then wordlessly turned from the room. Cristiano followed her to the door of his bedroom, where she hesitated, her back quivering with tension.
‘Where...where am I to sleep?’
‘There is a guest bedroom across the hall.’ He pushed open the door opposite his own. She turned to glance at him, and that was her mistake. Her breath came out in a rush as heat flared between them. Cristiano put his hand on her wrist, felt the leap of her pulse beneath his fingers. Laurel pressed her lips together.
‘Don’t, Cristiano,’ she whispered.
‘Don’t what?’
‘Don’t touch me.’
‘Don’t tempt you?’ He stroked the silky skin of her inner wrist with his thumb. ‘Is that what you mean?’ He ran his thumb gently down to her palm and then up to her inner elbow. Laurel remained frozen, her pulse hammering beneath his questing fingers. ‘Why deny what is between us, bella?’
‘There’s nothing between us.’ She nearly had to gasp the words out.
‘Your body begs to differ.’
‘Ten years ago you shoved me away as if I disgusted you.’
‘Ten years ago you were a child. What was I supposed to do?’
She turned to face him, her breast brushing his arm. ‘Don’t pretend you felt anything for me then.’
‘The point is what I feel for you now. And what you feel for me. It’s real, bella, what is between us. Why shouldn’t we enjoy it?’
He could see the indecision in her fractured gaze, the desire as well as the doubt. All she needed was the tiniest bit of incentive, the merest push to tumble her into temptation...and he was more than willing to give it.
‘Stop worrying so much,’ he murmured as he dropped his head so his lips were a fraction away from hers. He could hear her breaths, uneven and ragged. ‘What are you afraid of?’ he added, his lips very nearly brushing hers.
‘This,’ she whispered, and then Cristiano kissed her.