His Final Bargain

‘Would you really put your plans for revenge before the interests of your daughter?’

‘This is not about revenge.’

She made a sceptical sound in her throat. ‘Then what is it about?’

His eyes roved her body in a searing sweep that made her skin prickle with heat and longing. The memory of his bruising kiss was still beating beneath the surface of her lips. The need he had awakened was secretly pulsing in the depths of her body—an intense ache that refused to go away. She felt it travel from her core to her breasts as his gaze travelled the length and breadth of her body. ‘I think you know what this is about.’

Lust.

It wasn’t a word Eliza particularly liked, but how else could she describe how he made her feel? From the very first moment she had met him he had triggered this earthy response in her. She knew he was experienced—very experienced. She had come to the relationship with much less experience, but what she had lacked in that department she had more than made up for in passion. Her response to him had shocked her then and it still shocked her now. Didn’t that kiss last night prove how dangerous it was to get too close to him? He would dismantle her emotional armour within a heartbeat. Making love with him would unpick every stitch of her carefully constructed resolve. She could not afford to let that happen. Going back to her bleak and lonely life in England would be so much harder to bear if she experienced the mind-blowing pleasure Leo offered. How would she settle for the bitter plate of what fate had dished up to her if she got a taste of such sweet paradise again?

Eliza threw him a contemptuous look born out of the fear that he would somehow see how terrifyingly vulnerable she was to him. ‘And just because you want something, you just go out and get it, do you? Well, I’ve got news for you. I’m not on the market.’

He came up close with that slow, leisurely stroll he had perfected. She refused to back away but instead gave him the full wattage of her heated glare as she steeled herself for the firm grasp of his hands on her arms.

But he didn’t.

Instead he gently brushed the back of his bent knuckles down the curve of her cheek in a barely touching caress that totally ambushed her defences. She felt her composure crack as her throat closed over. Tears formed and stung at the back of her eyes. Her chest felt like an oversized balloon was inflating inside it, taking up all the space so her lungs could no longer expand enough to breathe.

‘Why are you doing this?’ Her voice was not much more than a thread of sound. ‘Why now? Why couldn’t you have let things be?’

His expression had lost its steely edge and was now almost wistful. ‘I wanted to make sure.’

‘Sure of…of what?’

‘That I didn’t make the worst mistake of my life the night you told me you were engaged.’

Eliza swallowed a walnut-sized knot of emotion. ‘You…you had a right to be upset…’ She couldn’t look at him. She lowered her gaze again and stared at her engagement ring instead.

There was the sound of Alessandra waking in the nursery—the rustle of bedclothes and a plaintive wail.

‘I’ll go to her.’ Leo moved past and Eliza listened as he greeted his little daughter. He spoke in Italian but she could hear the love in his voice that was as clear as any translation. ‘Buongiorno, tesorina, come ti senti?’

Was it wrong to wish he could look upon her as his treasure too?

CHAPTER SIX

WHEN ELIZA CAME into the nursery Leo had Alessandra in his arms. ‘I’ll carry her downstairs for you but I won’t be able to join you for breakfast,’ he said. ‘I have an online meeting in a few minutes.’

‘Good morning, Alessandra,’ Eliza said, reaching out to touch the child’s hand that was gripping her father’s shirt. ‘It looks like we’ve got a date for breakfast.’

The little girl huddled closer to her father’s chest. ‘I want to have breakfast with Papà.’

Eliza exchanged a brief glance with Leo before addressing the child again. ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible today. But I’m sure Papà will make a special effort to have breakfast with you when he can.’

Alessandra’s thin shoulders slumped as she let out a sigh. ‘All wight.’

Once Leo had placed his daughter in her high chair in the breakfast room he kissed her on the top of the head and, with a brief unreadable glance at Eliza, he left.

Marella, the housekeeper, came bustling in, cooing to the child in Italian. ‘Buongiorno, angioletta mia, tutto bene?’ She turned to Eliza. ‘You have to feed her.’ She nodded at the food in front of the child. ‘She can’t do it herself.