Delucca's Marriage Contract

Now Keelin felt even more exposed. ‘Why do you want to know?’ she asked tetchily.

Gianni sounded almost weary. He ran a hand through his hair. ‘We need to get to know each other, Keelin.’

Her immediate instinct was to deny this but then something of his weariness and the futility of this whole situation crept into her system and the urge to fight seemed to dissolve away, treacherously.

She avoided Gianni’s eye and shrugged minutely. ‘It was the first time anyone gave me responsibility for something. Proper responsibility. They needed an extra pair of hands because one of their grooms was taken ill.’

She looked up, but Gianni was still expressionless. It made it easier. ‘I stayed at the stables with the grooms, in the most rudimentary of accommodation. When we weren’t working with the horses and exercising them, we helped with picking the vines for the harvest. I’d never worked so hard. I don’t think I knew what work was until then and it made me realise that I could be of use, that I had the ability to make a difference, work within a team.’

What she didn’t say was that those were the happiest days of her life, living so simply and freely. For once not thinking of some new way to make her father notice her. Even though, when he found out what she’d been doing, he hit the roof and dragged her back home. He wouldn’t let her into his world, but he also wasn’t going to see his daughter doing dirty work. Her mother had been disgusted. She’d gone conker brown and had calluses all over her hands.

Then Gianni said, ‘I spent some of my summers picking vines too.’

Keelin’s heart lurched. ‘You did?’

He nodded. ‘I used to go back to Sicily with my grandfather to help pick vines for his oldest friend. That’s where I learnt everything there is to know about wine.’

‘Oh,’ Keelin said a little lamely, finding it hard not to think of a young Gianni stripped to the waist, olive skin gleaming with sweat and muscles moving sinuously as he worked.

‘I mean it, Keelin.’ He said softly now, ‘I will build you a hacienda and fill it with horses if that’s what will make you happy.’

Before, this statement might have incited her to rage, but now she felt as if he’d soothed something inside her. Dangerous. He was just using another tactic to get her where he wanted.

‘I want to work, Gianni. I want to be counted. I want a place on the board of O’Connor’s, my rightful place. That’s what I want, and I don’t think it fits in with your idea of a dutiful wife.’

His mouth firmed. They were back to square one. ‘I have to admit that it isn’t exactly how I envisaged things but that’s not to say that we can’t discuss it. I want you to be happy, Keelin.’

She knew without pursuing it that Gianni might concede her some kind of Mickey Mouse position just to placate her. She’d been too inured by her father’s ways to trust that once they were married Gianni would give her any power at all. She realised then that she’d lost the ability to trust in any man giving her what she wanted.

She hated that she’d revealed herself to him now. She’d never told anyone about how important that time in Spain had been to her. She felt exposed.

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Her weary tone matched his. ‘I can buy my own hacienda and fill it with horses if I so wish, but I’ll do it on my terms, with my own hard-earned money. I’m still going to do everything in my power to see that this marriage falls apart.’

‘That’s the annoying thing though,’ Gianni said with deceptive mildness. ‘I’ve no intention of this falling apart.’

CHAPTER FIVE

KEELIN KNEW THAT Gianni meant what he said. He would do whatever it took to get her up that aisle and then firmly sequester her somewhere out of the way while he got on with amassing power and a fortune, exactly like her father. Even though, for a second, she’d caught a glimpse of another side of Gianni. One that she never would have expected to feel empathy with.

He unfolded his arms then and checked his watch. ‘Much as I’d love to stay and chat, I have some international calls to make.’

He was backing away, leaving, and to Keelin’s horror she felt a lurch, as if all the cells in her body wanted to go with him. She took a step back.

He stopped then as if he’d just thought of something. He said silkily, ‘Oh, and I should let you know that I’ve decided to bring our wedding forward by a week, to capitalise on the success of this evening.’

Shock took a second to reverberate through her system. Her mouth opened. She’d been a fool to consider a mutual feeling of empathy for a second. He was ruthless to the bone. ‘Can you even do that?’

Gianni smiled but it was infinitely mocking. ‘With my underground connections? I can do what I like. So by this time next week we’ll be man and wife, Keelin.’

Her arms were so tight around herself that she was almost stopping the blood flow to her upper body. She forced out sarcastically, ‘Your eagerness to marry me is truly personally flattering.’

Gianni’s smile turned enigmatic. ‘I wouldn’t be so cruel as to pretend otherwise for a second.’

And with a brief hard smile, he turned and left the garden, disappearing through overhanging foliage. In a fit of delayed anger—why was it that her reactions which were usually so crystal-sharp felt more sluggish around Gianni?—Keelin made an inarticulate sound of frustration and turned around again, the view doing little to soothe her. It mocked her, as if to say, Why can’t you just be happy with this?

She looked down then and saw Gianni emerge confidently from the main hotel entrance just below. Instinctively she moved closer to the terrace wall so she could see better. His driver jumped out to open his door for him but at the last second Gianni stopped and said something to him. He pulled off his jacket and threw it into the car and turned and walked off, hands in his pockets, broad shoulders slightly hunched, head down. Dark and formidable against the mild early-summer Roman night.

Keelin drew back a little, almost as if he might turn and look up at her, catch her staring.