She did owe him a debt. But it was a debt she couldn’t afford to pay emotionally.
Lara’s sense of self-preservation kicked in and she cursed herself for even trying to defend herself. She couldn’t bear for him to find out just how vulnerable she really was—how nothing had really moved on for her since she’d known him. How the last two years of her life had been a kind of lonely torture.
She ruthlessly pushed aside all those memories and shrugged one shoulder minutely, affecting an air of boredom. She’d played this part once before—she could do it again.
‘Well, it’s been interesting to see you again, Ciro. But quite frankly you’re even more pathetic now than you were two years ago, if this is how little you’ve moved on. What would you have done if Henry hadn’t died? Kidnapped me? Seduced me away and then meted out your punishment?’
Lara’s words fell like stinging barbs onto Ciro’s skin. They cut far too close to the bone. He had been keeping tabs on her. Getting reports on her whereabouts and her activities—which, as far as he could see, had consisted of not much at all. Not even socialising. Her husband had monopolised her attention, kept her all to himself.
Ciro hadn’t articulated to himself exactly what he was going to do where Lara was concerned, but he’d known he had reached some kind of nadir when he’d bought this house, sight unseen, because it was around the corner from where she lived. He’d known that he was reaching a place where he simply could not go on without exacting retribution.
Without seeing her again.
He crushed that rogue thought.
In the past few months, as a restless tension had increased inside him, he’d found himself contemplating seducing Lara Winterborne. He’d told himself it would be to prove just how duplicitous she was. But he knew that his motivations were murkier than that. Embedded in a place he’d locked them away two years ago, when she’d morphed into a stranger in front of his very eyes.
When she’d shown him up as a fool who had cast aside his well-worn cynical shell in a fit of blind lust and something even more disturbing. Emotion. A yearning for a life he’d never known. For a woman who was pure and who would be faithful. Loving. Loyal. A good mother. Fantasies he’d never indulged in before he’d met Lara and she’d exposed a seam of vulnerability he’d never acknowledged before.
The fact that he’d even considered seducing her away from her husband was galling for a man who had always vowed to conduct his life with more integrity than his mother—never to stoop to her level of betrayal. And yet he’d had to face the unwelcome realisation that his desires were no less base than his weak and adulterous mother’s.
Lara watched a series of expressions flicker across Ciro’s face. They gradually got darker and darker, until he was glaring at her as if she was the sum of all evil. He started moving towards her then, all coiled lethal masculinity, and Lara took an involuntary step back.
She wasn’t scared of his physicality—not even with this tension in the air. She was scared of something far more ambiguous and personal deep inside where she knew he had the ability to destroy her. Where he’d already destroyed her.
He stood in front of her, his scent winding around her like invisible captive threads. He asked with lethal softness, ‘Are you suggesting my life has been on hold?’
Before she could respond, a sound halfway between a sneer and a laugh came out of Ciro’s mouth.
‘Oh, cara, my life hasn’t been on hold for one second since you decided to take that old man into your bed.’
Lara winced inwardly. She already knew that Ciro’s life hadn’t been on hold. Far from it. As much as she’d tried to block him out of her consciousness, it had been next to impossible. Since his kidnapping he’d become even more infamous and sought-after. He’d tripled his fortune, extending the wildly successful Sant’Angelo Holdings, which had been mainly focused on real estate, to encompass logistics and shipping worldwide.
And he hadn’t been seen with the same woman twice—which was some feat, considering the frequency with which he’d been photographed at every ubiquitous glamorous event on the European and the worldwide circuit.
The gossip about his hectic love-life had quickly eclipsed any rumours about why his wedding to Lara hadn’t taken place. Most people had assumed exactly what her uncle had wanted them to assume—that the kidnapping and fresh stories of his links to the Mafia had scared off Lara Templeton, one of Britain’s most eligible society heiresses.
If anything the tone of the gossip about her had been as sneering as about Ciro—especially when she’d got married so quickly after the event, to a man more than twice her age. It was as if she’d merely proved her own snobbishness. As if she hadn’t been woman enough to handle Ciro Sant’Angelo.
Certainly all the women he had been photographed with since then had run to a type that was a million miles from Lara’s cool blonde, blue-eyed looks. Women with flashing dark eyes and glossy hair. With unashamedly sexy and curvaceous bodies and an effortless sensuality that Lara could never hope to embody. She was too self-conscious. Too...inexperienced.
Ciro was shaking his head now, a look of disgust twisting his features and making his scar stand out even more. ‘Did you keep up the virginal act with your husband? Or did you fake it right up until—?’
‘Stop it!’ The sharp cry of Lara’s voice surprised even herself. She felt shaky. ‘That wasn’t an act.’
Ciro made a rude sound, dismissing her words. More proof that she’d been utterly naive to try and defend herself. All she could hope for was that Ciro would get bored and ask her to leave.
‘Look, what do you want, Ciro?’ Lara’s voice had a distinctly desperate tone that she didn’t even try to disguise now.
‘It’s very simple. I want you, Lara.’ He folded his arms across his formidable chest. ‘It’s time to pay your debt.’
LARA’S SENSE OF panic and desperation increased. ‘I told—you I don’t owe you anything.’
Ciro responded, ‘We’ve been through this and, yes, you do. You owe me a wedding.’
Lara fought to stay calm. To appear unmoved. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not going to marry you.’
He shook his head. ‘Not ridiculous at all. Very practical, actually. Like I said, I’m in need of a wife, and as you deprived me of one so memorably two years ago, you can step up now and honour the commitment you made when you agreed to marry me in the first place.’
Vainly scrabbling around for something—anything to make sense of Ciro’s crazy suggestion, Lara asked, ‘Why do you need a wife so badly?’
‘The circles I’m moving in... Let’s just say things would be better for me if I had an appearance of stability. Settling down. Conforming to societal norms of what people expect of a man my age.’
‘An appearance... So this would just be a sham...a fake marriage?’
‘Call it a marriage of convenience.’
‘But it’ll mean nothing.’
Ciro’s lip curled. ‘As if that was a concern in your first marriage... As if you cared about Winterborne.’
Lara had to hide her flinch at that.
Ciro continued, ‘It’ll be a lesson in learning that your actions have consequences.’
She took a step backwards, surprised that her legs were still working. ‘This is beyond crazy. If marriage is so important to your image then I’m sure there are many more suitable women who would be happy to become your wife.’