spine.
She stood up abruptly, her cheeks warm with anger now. ‘I don’t know what game it is that you’re playing, Mr Gambrelli, but I can assure you—’
‘No game, Robin,’ he cut in, dark eyes glittering as he looked up at her, his expression scornful, his jaw clenched. ‘Sit down,’ he instructed coldly.
‘How dare you—’
‘I said sit down, Robin,’ he repeated.
‘Must I remind you that you’re a guest in my home, Mr Gambrelli? An unwelcome guest at that!’ she snapped. ‘And that I don’t take orders from anyone!’ she added furiously.
‘You will sit down,’ Cesare told her calmly once again. ‘The two of us will talk. Or rather, I will talk, and you will listen,’ he amended. ‘And when your father returns home later this afternoon you will inform him that you have decided to become my wife.’
‘Your—your—’ Robin stuttered in stupefied outrage. ‘I most certainly will not!’ she scorned incredulously. ‘Are you taking medication, Mr Gambrelli?’ she exclaimed. ‘Would you like me to call you a doctor?’
‘I am not taking anything, Robin,’ he assured her with icy calm. ‘Neither am I insane,’ he added, as he saw the wary way she was now looking at him.
With not a trace of sexual arousal left in her tensed-for-flight body, he noted with hard amusement.
No matter. There would be plenty of time for that once she was his wife. He envisaged a lifetime of exploring the delights of this woman’s body.
Once she had married him…
He had made a more thorough investigation of Robin Ingram—briefly Mrs Robin Bennet—during the last six days, and now he even knew exactly what her bra size was, amongst other things that she would probably rather he nor anyone else didn’t know about her.
Cesare’s mouth tightened as he thought of her failed first marriage, of the real reason her husband had divorced her. And it had nothing to do with the ‘incompatibility’ that had been quoted on the petition.
Many things would change for Robin once she was his wife. She would become Marco’s mother, of course. But Cesare also intended her to bear him more sons and daughters. He intended for the beautiful, the accomplished, the elusive Ms Ingram to become Mrs Cesare Gambrelli, and to spend at least the next few years barefoot and pregnant!
Suitable retribution, Cesare believed, for this woman’s brother taking the life of his own sister, Carla—for depriving Marco of his mother.
Although he very much doubted that Robin was going to see it the same way he did.
Not that it mattered what her objections were. He had other inducements, to bend her to his will—if necessary. And, from the look of rebellion on her exquisite face, it seemed as if that was going to be the case.
Again, it did not matter. He would not be thwarted in this. Robin Ingram would become his wife, and Marco’s mother, whether she wanted to or not.
‘Sit down before you fall down!’ he ordered.
Was her apprehension—her fear of this man—so obvious? Robin wondered with an inward wince.
Well, of course it was! What woman wouldn’t be nervous in the company of a man—a man she barely knew—who had come into her home and arrogantly informed her she was to be his wife?
‘I would rather stand, thank you,’ she informed him with dignity. ‘And I really would like you to leave now,’ she added firmly. ‘You’re obviously suffering under some delusion that I wish to marry you, and—’
‘Let me assure you that I am not suffering under any delusions at all where you are concerned, Robin,’ he informed her with a hard, humourless laugh. ‘You are the spoilt, pampered, overindulged daughter of a man who had absolutely no control over either of his children—’
‘Would you please leave!’ Robin cut in forcefully, trembling.
‘—and you are the sister of the man responsible for killing my young sister!’ Cesare Gambrelli continued harshly, as if she had never spoken.
Robin stared at him, her eyes deep purple smudges in a face gone suddenly white.
Gambrelli…!
She had thought the name sounded familiar a week ago, but once her father had explained he was the multimillionaire Cesare Gambrelli she had reasoned that must be why she recognised it.
But now she remembered.
Now she knew!
Her brother Simon’s car had collided with another vehicle when he had been so tragically killed in Monaco three months ago. And the driver of that other vehicle, who had also died, had been a young woman called Carla Gambrelli.
Cesare Gambrelli’s sister…?
It had been a very traumatic time for all of them. But she was sure, once her father had recovered sufficiently, he had sent a letter of condolence to Carla Gambrelli’s family. To Cesare Gambrelli…?
She shook her head. ‘As my father wrote at the time, we’re so very sorry for your loss, Mr Gambrelli—as we are for my brother’s—’
‘I do not want your apologies!’ he rasped forcefully, and he surged to his feet, once again dominating the room with his powerful presence as he glared at Robin with fiercely black eyes. ‘No amount of apologies can bring my sister back to me,’ he grated.
‘Or my brother Simon,’ she reminded him quietly, her chin raised in challenge.
Her father had never mentioned whether or not he had received any acknowledgement of his note—although from Cesare Gambrelli’s behaviour now, she somehow doubted it!
Cesare gave a scornful snort. ‘Your brother was a wastrel and a gambler. A man without honour. A man who was no loss to anyone. Whereas—’
‘How can you say that?’ Robin gasped incredulously.
‘I say it because it is true,’ he told her, every inch the arrogant Sicilian that he was. ‘Your brother had lost everything to his gambling habit; he was a disgrace to his family—’
‘I believe that is for my father and I to decide,’ Robin interrupted emotionally. ‘Look, I realise that you’re upset about the death of your sister, Mr Gambrelli. And I can sympathise with that—really I can. But your sister and Simon collided on a steep and winding mountain road. No one knows who was responsible. You can’t seriously place the blame for your sister’s death on Simon—’
‘I can and I do!’ he assured her fiercely, once again filled with the frigid rage he had felt on hearing how his sister had met her death.
For so long it had just been the two of them—Cesare and Carla—their mother having died when Carla was born and Cesare was only eleven years old. The bringing up of his baby sister had been left to Cesare as his father took to drink, which had eventually killed him when Cesare was twenty-two and Carla eleven.
Cesare had loved his sister dearly, had cared and protected her all her life—and Simon Ingram had killed her!
‘Your brother had been at the casino the whole of the evening before the accident occurred,’ he continued disgustedly. ‘Several witnesses have confirmed that he was extremely upset by his losses, that he was belligerant and aggressive, and that he got into a fight with one of the other patrons before he left the casino,’ Cesare sneered scathingly. ‘Whereas Carla had been to dinner with friends in Nice that night—I have spoken to Pierre and Charisse Dupont, and they both confirmed that Carla was happy and cheerful when she left them. My sister was a careful driver, Robin—of the two, which do you think more likely to have caused the accident?’ he finished.
If anything, Robin Ingram looked even more beautiful with her face so deathly pale, her deeply violet eyes huge in that pallor,