unfeeling bastard,’ she bit out. ‘How could you twist the knife like that in a dying man?’
‘As you know, I had a score to settle,’ he said. ‘He took it very well, all things considered. He handed me everything—the house, the cars, the business, and…’ He paused deliberately, his gaze locking meaningfully with hers.
Don’t ask, Nikki told herself firmly. You already know the answer, so what would be the point?
‘You do not want to know what else your husband put up for purchase?’ he asked.
She met his sardonic gaze with a flare of resentment in hers. ‘If by any chance you are presuming to lump me in with the goods and chattels, then forget it—I am not for sale.’
His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes as he came to stand right in front of her. ‘He paid you to marry him,’ he said. ‘He even told me how much. You put quite a high price on yourself, did you not?’
Nikki ran her tongue over her dry lips as his eyes burned into hers. She refused to answer out of a mixture of pride and anger. Let him think what he liked. What did it matter now? Joseph was dead, and if what Massimo had said was true she was going to have to find a way to scrape what she could together to keep Jayden in care. She’d been down on her luck before and pulled herself out of it. It would be hard, but she’d damn well do it for her brother’s sake.
‘Of course, I will be very generous in my payment for your services,’ he said. ‘Very generous, indeed.’
She clenched her fists at her sides, her chest heaving against the tide of anger raging within her. ‘I am not going to sleep with you,’ she said. ‘Not for any price.’
The look he gave her was full of icy disdain. ‘You are very convincing, but I know what you are up to, Nikki. You are used to a high standard of living. You want to make sure it continues, do you not?’
Nikki felt as if her heart was being crushed between two solid bookends. ‘Joseph would not have left me with nothing,’ she said again, dearly hoping it was true. ‘He told me I would be left well-provided for on his death.’
‘I already told you, Nikki. Were you not listening? He left you with nothing. Nothing but debts that will take you years to clear, but fortunately for you I have come up with a plan to help you offload them more or less immediately.’
Nikki moistened her lips again, panic beating like a primitive tribal drum inside her chest. ‘What p-plan would that be?’ she asked, wishing her voice didn’t sound so thin and scared.
He gave her one of his inscrutable looks. ‘I want you to be my mistress of convenience.’
She frowned as she tried to make sense of his statement. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to explain what you mean,’ she said after a heart-chugging pause. ‘I’m unfamiliar with the term.’
‘I have recently ended a relationship,’ he informed her in a dispassionate tone. ‘The woman I was involved with is not finding it easy to let go. I have always found the best way to deal with such stubbornness is to have physical evidence that I have now moved on with my life.’
‘I’m still not sure what it is you want me to do,’ she said guardedly.
‘You are being deliberately obtuse, are you not?’ he asked. ‘I want you to do everything for me that you did for my stepfather.’
Nikki couldn’t imagine Joseph revealing the unconsummated nature of their relationship, and wondered if he had told Massimo a mountain of lies instead in an effort to maintain his sense of male pride.
Massimo waved a hand towards the mansion behind him. ‘You see this house?’ he asked.
She looked past his shoulder at the huge, two-storey mock-Georgian building before bringing her gaze back to his. ‘Yes…’
‘I want you to move in with me.’
Her eyes widened. ‘I’m afraid that’s out of the question,’ she said. ‘I can’t possibly live with you.’
He gave her an ironic glance. ‘You find the position I am offering beneath you?’
She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘What’s this about, Massimo? Some petty payback scheme to make me regret our stupid little fling five years ago?’
‘I need a trophy mistress,’ he said. ‘You need a job—it is as simple as that.’
Nikki felt her stomach lurch sideways in alarm. ‘I already have a job, if you remember,’ she said, moistening her bone-dry lips again. ‘I am still the face of Ferliani Fashions. I only took off the last six months to nurse Joseph.’
His eyes were unreadable as they held hers. ‘As the new owner and CEO of Ferliani Fashions, I have decided not to renew your contract,’ he said. ‘I have other plans for you.’
She gave him a fiery glare. ‘What do you want me to do, scrub your floors and fold your socks?’
‘That, and a whole lot more.’
Her eyes narrowed into wary slits. ‘How much more?’
‘I have a busy life,’ he said. ‘I do not have time to cook proper meals or maintain an immaculate house. Joseph told me what a wonderful wife you were in that respect. He told me how you refused to have a housekeeper—that you preferred to do it yourself. I need someone running things here twenty-four-seven. I am willing to pay you generously for each month the arrangement continues.’ He named a sum that sent her brows winging upwards, and added, ‘It is twice what you were earning from the Ferliani contract.’
‘There are hundreds of women who would give anything to have this job,’ she said. ‘But I’m not interested.’
‘Ah, but you have no choice, Nikki,’ he said. ‘For if you do not agree you will have to pay back every cent of the money your husband borrowed from me in your name a month before he died. Your signature is on the documents.’
Nikki stared at him, cold fear trickling into every one of her veins like a flow of ice. She vaguely remembered Joseph pushing some papers under her nose, mumbling something about advertising expenses. It had been an astonishing amount of money, she recalled with another quake of apprehension. But she had signed her name and felt grateful that he was taking care of the business side of things while he still could, never realising it would lead to this.
‘You’ve been planning this for months, haven’t you?’ she bit out caustically. ‘You’ve been watching and waiting like a vulture circling overhead for your stepfather to die.’
‘I told you five years ago when we met that I would have my revenge on what he did. He stole my father’s money and launched the Ferliani label using it,’ he said. ‘But I must say my motivation increased even more after our brief assignation. There’s a certain irony in it, don’t you think? We have come full circle. You are the face of Ferliani Fashions only because my stepfather gave you the leg up you needed, but I now own the company. You do not have a future without me. You need me, Nikki, whether you like it or not. You need me.’
Her grey-blue eyes glittered with sparks of fury. ‘You’re asking for my degradation, that’s what you’re doing.’
He gave her a cool, composed smile in return. ‘I am not asking anything of you, Nikki. I am telling you what is going to happen.’
‘And I am telling you to go to hell!’ she said and, spinning on her heels, began to stalk down the long crushed-lime-stone driveway.
‘If you take even one step outside that gate, I will activate legal proceedings immediately to recoup the money you owe me—every last cent of it,’ Massimo said in an indomitable tone.
Nikki’s right foot hovered over the boundary line as she thought about her choices. There was so much she didn’t know. Joseph’s business affairs had always seemed to her to be a little on the complicated side. He’d had money coming in from various