His Merciless Marriage Bargain

“You accept him,” she said.

His dark head tipped as he considered her. “Accept him. What does that even mean?”

She opened her mouth to answer, and then closed it without making a sound. Her heart did an uneven thump and suddenly it hurt to breathe. Michael needed support—not just financial, but emotional. She wanted to be sure Michael wasn’t forgotten, not by her family, or Antonio’s.

It was bad enough that Michael had been left an orphan within months of his birth, but the way Juliet died… It was wrong, and it continued to eat at Rachel because she hadn’t understood how badly Juliet was doing. She’d been oblivious to the depth of Juliet’s despair. Rachel could now write an entire pamphlet on postpartum depression, but back in November and December she hadn’t understood it, and she hadn’t been properly sympathetic. Instead of getting Juliet medical help, she’d given her sister tough love, and it was absolutely the wrong thing to do.

It had only made everything so much worse. It was without exaggeration, the beginning of the end. And it was all Rachel’s fault.

Rachel had failed Juliet when her sister needed her most.

CHAPTER THREE

GIOVANNI WATCHED RACHEL’S eyes fill with tears and her lips part, then seal shut, her teeth biting down into the soft lower lip as though she was fighting to stay in control.

He didn’t buy the act, as it was an act.

Adelisa had been the same. Beautiful, bright and spirited, she’d captured his heart from the start. He’d proposed before the end of the first year, and delighted in buying her the pretty—but expensive—trinkets her heart desired.

Her heart desired many.

Diamonds and rubies, emeralds and sapphires—jewels she ended up liquidating almost as quickly as he gave them to her. Not that he knew what happened to them until much later.

His family warned him that Adelisa was using him. His mother came to him privately on three different occasions, sharing her fears, and then reporting on rumors that Adelisa had been seen with other men, but he didn’t believe it. He was sure Adelisa loved him. She wore his engagement ring. She was eagerly planning their wedding. Why would she betray him?

Six months later he heard about a pair of stunning diamond earrings for sale, a pair rumored to come from the Marcello family. He tracked down the earrings and the jeweler, and they were a pair of a set he’d given Adelisa the night of their engagement party. They were worth millions of dollars, but more than that, they were family heirlooms and something he gave with his heart.

He was stunned, and worse, humiliated. His mother had been right. He’d been duped. And everyone seemed to have known the truth but him.

It’d been ten years since that humiliation, but Gio still avoided love and emotional entanglements. Far better to enjoy a purely physical relationship than be played for a fool. And now his narrowed gaze swept over Rachel, from the classic oval shape of her pretty face to the glossy length of her ponytail with the windswept tendrils. She was neither tall nor petite, but average height and an average build, although in her dark coat, which hit just above her black knee-high leather boots, she looked polished and pretty.

He didn’t want her to be pretty, though. He didn’t want to find anything about her attractive or desirable, and yet he was aware of her, just as he was aware that beneath her winter coat, there were curves, generous curves, because he’d felt them when he’d drawn her against him, her body pressed to his. “So what is your plan?” he asked tautly. “Have you sorted out how you intend to get us to accept the child? Because a family is not just DNA. A family is nurture, and relationships, and those develop over years. You can’t simply force one to accept an outsider—”

“Michael is not an outsider. He’s Antonio’s son.” She’d gone pale, her expression strained. “And my sister’s son,” she added after a half beat, “and I know you have no love for my sister, but she cared for your brother, deeply—”

“We’re in private now. You can drop the script. There’s no need for theatrics.”

“You don’t even know the facts.”

“I know enough.”

“Well, I thought I did, too, but I was wrong, and Juliet’s no longer here because I got it wrong. Michael has no one but us and you can think what you want of Juliet, and me, but I insist you give him a chance—” She broke off as the door opened and a young, slim, dark-haired woman entered carrying a huge, ornate silver tray filled with silver pots and smaller sterling silver dishes along with a pair of china cups and saucers.

Rachel was grateful for the interruption. She needed a moment to compose herself. She still felt so rattled by his kisses. There had been nothing light or friendly in the way he took her mouth, claiming her as if she belonged to him, shaping her to his frame. She did not belong to him, and to have his tongue stroke the inside of her mouth, creating the dark seductive rhythm that made her body ache—