and Frankie forced herself to hold his penetrating gaze. Could he see how threatened she was by his presence? His potent, far too attractive presence? So much for her immunity. Her body was reacting to his closeness like an ice sculpture in front of a blowtorch. Her skin tightened, tingled, tensed as if anticipating his touch. Even her breasts, hidden behind the layers of her clothes, prickled and shifted in the lace cage of her bra like something too long restrained.
‘I can think of nothing you could say that would be of the remotest interest to me.’ She injected her tone with a generous dose of scorn. Eat your heart out, Miss Elizabeth Bennet. No one but no one could do a cold put-down better than Frankie. She wasn’t called an ice princess for nothing.
A half-smile lifted one edge of his mouth, making something in her stomach flip and flop and flap like a torn sail in a stiff breeze. He tapped the paperwork he was holding against his other hand. ‘I have a solution to your current dilemma.’
‘A...solution?’ Frankie affected a laugh. ‘I can’t imagine how any solution you’ve come up with would be in any way agreeable to me.’
He shrugged one broad shoulder, his spy face back in place. ‘It’s an offer. Take it or leave it.’
Frankie could see why he was lethally successful at brokering high-stakes property deals. No wonder he had become one of the wealthiest businessmen in Italy. Even wealthier than his own family, which was saying something. They weren’t called the silver-tailed Salvettis for nothing.
She licked her suddenly paper-dry lips. ‘Are you offering to...to lend me money?’
‘Not lend. Give.’
His eyes held hers in a lock that pulsed with something she didn’t want to name. Stubbornly refused to name or acknowledge. But she felt it all the same. Her body betraying her with a slow-moving heat spreading like warm treacle to all her secret places. His deep mellifluous voice with its rich Italian accent always did that to her—made her aware of every inch of her skin, aware of its traitorous desire to get closer to him, even though her rational brain told her, Danger. Keep away.
‘Give?’ Frankie raised her eyebrows. ‘Free? No strings?’
The half-smile was back and was even more devastating to her resolve to resist him. She couldn’t stop thinking about his mouth and how it would feel to have it pressed to hers. They had not touched each other than a handshake on their first introduction when she was seventeen and a handful of times since, most notably the night of her twenty-first birthday. But it hadn’t stopped her wondering what his touch would be like on other parts of her body. Polite nods and handshakes. That’s all he had done and yet her body had reacted, still reacted as if he had some strange sensual power over her.
‘There are always strings, cara mio. Always.’ His dark-as-night gaze drifted to her mouth as if he too was having the same wicked thoughts. She took a moment to study him. He was clean shaven but there was enough dark stubble on his jaw to suggest there was nothing wrong with the supply of his virile male hormones. His eyes were fringed with thick lashes and his prominent eyebrows could switch from intimidating interrogation to intelligent interest in less than a heartbeat.
Speaking of heartbeats... Frankie’s was currently giving a very good impression of having some sort of medical event. Strings? What strings? What did he mean? And dared she ask him?
He was standing within touching distance. If she so much as reached out a hand she could touch that broad, muscle-packed chest. She could trace the contours of his mouth, trace the slightly Roman nose, trace the slash of a jagged white scar above his left cheekbone. He was dressed casually: dark blue jeans, a white T-shirt with a grey cashmere sweater over the top to counter the chill of late autumn. She could smell the light lemon and lime notes of his aftershave—they swirled around her nostrils like a stupefying drug.
Frankie brought her gaze back to his and stepped back, her hands curled into fists in case she was tempted to touch him. Tempted to tell him she didn’t care what strings he had in mind, she just wanted to be rescued from the shame of her father’s crippling debts. But of course, her pride would never allow her to do something like that. She flashed him an icy glare. ‘I suppose you’ve come here to tell me you’re the new owner.’
‘I’ve bought the villa, yes. But I plan to give it to you.’
The words couldn’t have been more shocking. Or pleasing. And it was this ambiguity of her feelings that was even more worrying. ‘What do you mean?’ Frankie was surprised her voice came out at all as her throat was so tight with a combination of hope and dread. Hope that she would be able to keep her home and dread that there would be a price to pay that had nothing to do with money.
He tapped the paperwork against the back of his other hand again. ‘My lawyer has drawn up a contract. But I’m not going to discuss this out here in the foyer.’ He nodded towards the library door. ‘I think it’s best if you’re seated for this.’
Frankie widened her eyes but then quickly averted her gaze and stalked ahead of him to the library. No way was she going to let him see how much he unsettled her. She had spent years keeping men with nefarious motives at bay. Men who saw her, because of her social standing and her family wealth, as a trophy worth collecting. Even some of her girlfriends had only been friends with her because of her aristocratic background. It had made her distrustful of just about everyone but what choice did she have? She had been stung too many times in the past.
She was conscious of Gabriel following her, wondering if his satirical dark gaze was on the curves of her bottom. Was he comparing her to Miss Beach Baby?
Frankie turned around to face him once they were both inside the study. She folded her arms and planted her feet, giving him her best make-me-sit-down-at-your-peril glare. ‘Tell me what’s going on.’
His gaze flicked to the chair next to her. ‘Sit.’
She straightened her shoulders like she was channelling a deportment guru. ‘No, I will not sit. I’m a woman, not a dog.’
His gaze skated over her figure, leaving a trail of fiery heat in its wake. His eyes came back to hers and her heart went into arrhythmia again. The steely glint of determination in his eyes warned her she was seriously outmatched. ‘I’m trying to help you, Francesca. It would be wise not to bite the hand that currently holds the deeds to your ancestral home.’
Frankie unfolded her arms and made fists of her hands. She wanted to slap that arrogantly assured expression off his face. Then she would punch him in his rock-hard stomach, even if it shattered every bone in her hand in the process. He was deliberately baiting her. Making her squirm like a bug on a corkboard. She had refused to date him in the past and now he wanted revenge with an indecent proposal. She plonked herself down in the chair and threw him a look that could have blistered the paint off every one of her ancestors’ portraits. ‘Do you think you can blackmail me to sleep with you?’
He was sitting on the corner of her father’s desk, his long legs stretched out in front of him, casually crossed at the ankles. ‘I prefer a less offensive term than blackmail, cara.’
She curled her lip. ‘What term do you prefer to use? And for God’s sake stop calling me cara.’
‘The term I would use is charity.’
Frankie frowned so hard her forehead hurt. ‘Charity?’
His lazy smile set that sail in her stomach flapping again. ‘I am willing to gift you this house as well as the money to cover your father’s debts if you’ll agree to become my wife.’
Frankie shot out of her chair so fast it fell over with a thump. ‘Your...wife?’
‘Yes. My wife. But only for a year.’
Frankie opened and closed her mouth, unable to find her voice. For a shameful moment, unable to find a reason to refuse him when she thought of all that money. And her family home. Not to mention the hope of avoiding the public shame of millions of euros of debt.
No shame.