Taming the Big Bad Billionaire
Page 42
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The Flaw in His Marriage Plan
by Tara Pammi
CHAPTER ONE
“LET’S GET MARRIED, PRINCESS.”
Vincenzo Cavalli adopted his usual composed expression but it didn’t come easily this time. Shock made it hard for him to pretend as if he’d been planning to say those words all along. As if they hadn’t erupted out of some place inside him that he didn’t even know existed.
Alessandra Giovanni—top supermodel and the most beautiful woman he’d ever met, froze in the act of pushing her hair back from her face, her expression arrested.
It was as if a circuit in his brain had shorted, bypassing years of unwritten rules he’d always lived by. Every step in his life for the last two decades had been planned meticulously, building toward a future he’d pictured for himself as a young boy denied everything—love and basic security.
Every step dictated by his final goal—to take over Brunetti Finance International and nothing else. Every hour of every day he’d poured sweat and blood into pulling himself up from poverty to be able to claim his birthright one day.
Pursuing Alessandra Giovanni had initially been a part of that carefully crafted plan, as he’d discovered Alessandra was attached to all the Brunettis, especially the matriarch of the family, Greta Brunetti, who had thrown his mother and him out to starve.
Asking her to marry him—no. That was as much a surprise to him as it was to her.
But now that the words were out, he found he meant them. And not because he was an honorable man who kept his word at all costs.
Honor had always been a luxury he couldn’t afford—like shoes or three meals a day when he’d been growing up on the streets of Milan.
Honor had no place in his world.
No, this request was purely selfish. Maybe the first selfish, nonstrategic thing he’d done in a long time. In forever, actually.
It was irrational and illogical, but the shocked look in Alessandra’s eyes, the quick flare of excitement she buried the next second, the flush of color dusting her cheeks as her chest rose and fell, the fast rush of blood in his own veins as he imagined facing the famed Brunettis with Alessandra at his side as his wife—he knew this was utterly right.
More than anything, he wanted Alex in his life.
The chemistry of their instant connection had taken him aback when he’d hunted her down to this perfect corner of Bali. Their mutual attraction a useful tool he hadn’t counted on. But now that he had her, he wasn’t going to give her up.
As to the fact of her being connected to the very family he’d been planning to destroy for so long, he was certain he could persuade her to see his point of view. Once he explained his reasons, Alessandra would take his side. She wasn’t a blood relative of theirs. She would understand his need to topple them all. Her strong sense of right and wrong, her championing of causes around the world—it was an innate part of her nature, a quality that only added an extra dimension to his already magnetic attraction to her.
He raised the glass of champagne in his hand while never breaking eye contact with her.
Clad in a sky blue bikini that hugged her firm breasts like a lover’s caressing hands, she looked voluptuously beautiful. As a supermodel who had worked for most of the large international design houses, he hadn’t been surprised by her punishing fitness routine. But the natural energy of the woman as she geared up to take on the world and its myriad injustices... It still amazed him.
The blue of the infinity pool they were standing next to, in the grounds of her private villa, with the backdrop of Bali’s lush hills and valleys surrounding it, couldn’t equal the breathtaking quality of Alessandra’s beauty. Hers was not simply the beauty of flawless skin or perfectly symmetrical features or curves most women would die for, though she possessed all those things.
It was her imperfections that delighted him, the quirks that made Alessandra Giovanni one of the most beautiful women in the world.
The gap between her front teeth, that fresh-faced girl-next-door quality, the awkward, self-deprecating sense of humor, her mad obsession with the world of boxing, her incredible verve for life, the audacious drive to fix all the injustices of the world...
On paper, she’d been too good to be true, stoking Vincenzo’s curiosity into a wildfire.
In real life, she was magnificent, a force to be reckoned with, and he’d stood no chance against her from the second their eyes had met.
And then there was her air of wary vulnerability that innumerable magazines and countless photoshoots had never managed to accurately capture.