I need is a wife, and you, tesoro, are the perfect woman for the job.’
There was a moment of stunned silence before she pushed her chair back and rose to her feet. ‘You are despicable, do you know that? You can keep your mind games to yourself. I don’t want to play. And for the record, I am not your darling.’
Snatching her canvas bag from the foot of her chair, Eva turned to stalk away from the terrace, out of the suite, and far away from this arrogant man who she had no intention of ever seeing again.
She hadn’t taken two paces when the sound of clicking echoed in the air and Daniele said, ‘Before you leave, I have something to show you.’
‘You have nothing I want to see.’
‘Not even a million dollars in cash?’
Against her better judgement—again—Eva turned her head.
There on the table, beside his bowl of soup, lay an open briefcase.
She blinked. How had he moved so fast? What was he? Some kind of magician?
The briefcase was neatly crammed with wads of money.
She blinked again and met his eyes.
‘Do I have your attention now?’ he asked. All his previous good humour, which she had already suspected of being a façade, had been stripped away.
She nodded. Yes. He had her attention, but there was a part of her that thought she had to be dreaming. A briefcase stuffed with cash only existed in dreams or the movies. Not in real life.
Daniele Pellegrini didn’t exist in real life either. He was a billionaire from an old and noble family. His life couldn’t be more different from her reality than if he’d been beamed in from the moon.
‘If you agree to marry me, this money, all one million dollars of it, will be handed to the Blue Train Aid Agency tomorrow morning. And this is only the start.’
‘The start?’ she asked faintly, looking back at all that lovely money.
‘If you sit back down I will explain everything.’
Eva inched her way back to her seat, resting her bottom carefully while she kept her gaze fixed on Daniele so he couldn’t pull another rabbit out of a hat that wasn’t even there.
He downed his Scotch, poured another three fingers into the glass and pushed it to her.
She didn’t hesitate, tipping the amber liquid down her throat in one swallow, not caring that his lips had pressed against the same surface just moments before. It was the smoothest Scotch she’d ever tasted and she had no doubt the bottle cost more than her weekly salary.
‘Agree to marry me and this money goes directly to your charity. On the day of our marriage I will transfer another two million into their account and a further three million dollars for every year of our marriage. I will give you a personal allowance of a quarter of a million dollars a month to spend on whatever you wish—you can donate the whole lot for all I care, it won’t matter as I will also give you an unlimited credit card to spend on travel and clothing and whatever else you require for the duration of our marriage.’
Eva’s head spun. Had she slipped into some kind of vortex that distorted reality?
‘Can I have some more of that Scotch?’ she mumbled.
He took a drink himself then passed the glass back.
Drinking it didn’t make his words any more comprehensible.
She shook her head and took a breath. ‘You want to pay me to be your wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why would you want to marry me?’
‘It’s nothing to do with want. It’s to do with need. I need a wife.’
‘You’ve already said that, but why would you choose me for the role when there are hundreds of women out there who would take the job without having to be bribed into it? Why marry someone who doesn’t even like you?’ There was no point in pretending. She didn’t like him and he damn well knew it.
‘That is the exact reason why I want you to take the role.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
A tight smile played on his lips. ‘I don’t want to marry someone who’s going to fall in love with me.’
HE WAS MAD. He had to be. No sane person could make such a suggestion.
And then she looked into those green-brown eyes and thought them the eyes of a man who was perfectly sane and knew exactly what he was doing. Far from reassuring her, the expression in them frightened her, and Eva was not a woman who scared easily. She’d learned to hide it. She hid it now.
‘There’s no chance of that,’ she said, hoping Daniele couldn’t hear the beats of her hammering heart in her words.
He shrugged and took the glass back, pouring himself another hefty measure. ‘Good. I don’t want a wife with romantic dreams. I’m not marrying for love. I’m marrying to inherit my family estate.’ He must have read her blank expression for he added, ‘My brother died without children. I’m the spare son. I can only inherit if I’m married.’
‘What do you need the estate for? You’re worth a fortune as you are.’
‘To keep it in the family.’ He swirled his Scotch in his glass before drinking it. ‘Duty has finally come calling for me.’
‘You need a wife to inherit?’
‘Sí. The estate is...’ She could see him struggle to find the correct English. ‘It is bound by an old trust that states only a married heir can inherit.’
‘Is that legal?’
He nodded grimly. ‘To unravel the trust and make it fit for the modern age will take years. I don’t have years. I need to act now.’
‘Then find someone else.’
‘I don’t want anyone else. Everyone else is too needy. You’re tough.’
‘You don’t even know me,’ she protested darkly. ‘Twenty minutes ago you thought I was English.’
If she was tough it was because she’d had to be. To turn her back on her family when it had made her heart bleed, then to lose Johann and find that same heart torn apart had put a shell around her. It had been an organic process, not something she had consciously built, a shell she’d only become aware of four years ago, back when she’d been living and working in The Hague and a drunk colleague had accused her of being an unfeeling, ball-breaking bitch. She’d returned home to the small apartment she’d once shared with Johann and looked in the mirror and realised there was truth in what her colleague had said. Not the part about being a ball-breaking bitch. She wasn’t those things, she knew that. But unfeeling...? Yes. That, she had been forced to accept when she’d looked in that mirror and realised she no longer felt anything at all. She was empty inside.
‘I know all I need to know, tesoro,’ he countered. ‘I don’t need to know anything else. I have no interest in your past. I don’t want to exchange pillow talk and hear about your dreams. This will be a partnership, not a romance. I want someone practical and cool under pressure.’
And he thought that person was her?
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Had she become so cold that someone could think she would be agreeable to such an emotionless proposition?
Once she had been warm. She had felt the sun in her heart as well as on her skin.
And what did his proposal say about him? What had made him this way? she wondered. How could someone be so cynical about marriage?
‘Marriage