Dante's Blackmailed Bride (9 page)

He ran his thumb along the curve of her bottom lip. “You okay?” he asked quietly.

She blew out her breath in a sigh, murmuring in an undertone, “Well…I don’t think we have to worry about whether or not they believe our engagement is real.”

He bent and captured her mouth, no doubt because he knew she didn’t dare protest. Not that protesting occurred to her until long after he’d released her. “No, we don’t.”

Nonna grinned as she watched their parting. “It is good, what you have. Special.”

“I think complicated might be a more accurate description.”

Nonna nodded in agreement. “With Dante men, it can be nothing less.” She gathered Francesca’s hand in hers. “He needs you, that one. Oh, you may look at him and wonder. He is so strong. So hard-nosed. He is quite capable of standing on his own. But he has had to be. He has had no choice but to take the one path open to him. Anything else would have meant disaster for his family.”

“Because—” Francesca broke off, realizing it might not be politic to mention that her son’s poor business skills almost destroyed the business her husband built.

Nonna nodded. “You are tactful. I appreciate that. But what you are thinking is true. Dominic almost destroyed Dantes.” Lines of grief couldn’t detract from a face still handsome despite the weight of her years. “If not for Severo, Dantes would be no more.”

“It couldn’t have been easy for him.”

“It was more than difficult. The decisions he has made…” Nonna shook her head. “Any man would find them near to impossible. But at so young an age, so soon after the death of his mother and father…” She clicked her tongue in distress.

“You’re saying he had to be ruthless.” As he’d proven to her on more than one occasion these past weeks.

“Yes.” Nonna closed her eyes and whispered a silent prayer. Then she looked at Francesca, joy replacing her sorrow. “But then he found you. He needs you,
ciccina.
You…soften him. And after all that has been forced on him, all the horrible choices, you give him peace. Best of all, you give him The Inferno.”

With a grateful smile, she linked arms with Francesca and urged her toward the kitchen. It troubled Francesca to see the situation from Sev’s side of the fence. She didn’t want to sympathize with all he’d been through.

Worse, rather than fading, her physical and emotional response toward him grew progressively stronger with each passing day. Considering all that stood between them, it would make life easier if it would just go away. She entered the kitchen and spared him a swift look, confirming that those feelings weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

To her surprise, she spotted Primo at the stove, commandeering the burners like an admiral overseeing his fleet, while the Dante men moved in practiced synchronicity, taking care of all the domestic chores in preparation for the meal.

Her surprise must have shown because Nonna grinned. “This is my night off. It is a Dante tradition,” she explained, gesturing toward her grandchildren. “They take care of me on family day.”

“I like that.” Francesca’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “They do dishes, too, right? You don’t get stuck with those?”

“No, no.” She gave a broad wink. “I am too clever for that. Here. You take Gianna’s seat next to me. She’s in
L’Italia.
Visiting
famiglia
with her parents and brothers. You will meet them next time.”

Assuming there was a next time, Francesca almost said, before catching back the words at the last second. Fortunately, dinner came together just then and the Dante men descended on the table like locusts. After grace, conversation exploded, for the most part in English, occasionally in Italian, as a bewildering array of dishes passed back and forth.

The choices were endless. Marinated calamari vied with panzanella. Cannellini beans cooked with garlic, olive oil and sage competed with stuffed tomatoes. Then the main dishes marched around the table. Chicken Marsala with red peppers, tortellini, pasta with a variety of sauces.

“Save room for dessert,” Sev warned as he piled her food high.

She shook her head at the overloaded plate. “I can serve myself, you know.”

He gave her a look a shade too innocent. “I just wanted to make sure you try a bit of everything.”

She knew him too well to buy into that one. “I think you want to stuff me full of carbs so my brain goes to sleep.”

“Now why would I want to do that?” But his mouth twitched, giving him away.

“So I can’t think fast enough to argue with you.”

He grinned. “But,
cara,
I love arguing with you.”

A liquid warmth swept through her again at the teeny-tiny accent that crept through his words. No doubt the setting contributed to it, and the fact that he constantly switched back and forth between English and Italian.

“Ho-ho. What a liar you are,” Nonna corrected in Italian. “It is not the arguing you love. It is the making up afterward.”

“Well…” Francesca offered judiciously. “He does excel at both.”

Silence descended over the table.
“Parlate italiano?”
Nonna demanded in astonishment. “And why did you not tell us this?”

Francesca grinned. “How would I know what you were all saying about me if I admitted I spoke Italian?”

Delighted laughter rang out as they all bombarded her with questions in rapid-fire succession. Primo rapped his knuckles in an effort to regain control. Instantly, silence descended. “I will ask the questions at my own table, if you do not mind,” he informed his grandsons. Eyes identical to Sev’s fixed her with uncomfortable shrewdness. “You have Italian relatives? This is why you learned Italian?” he asked.

She shook her head. “As far as I’m aware I’m not of Italian descent.” A shadow of regret came and went. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about my ancestors, so anything’s possible, I suppose.”

She caught a hint of compassion in Primo’s expression, though he didn’t allow it to color his voice. “Then why?” he asked. “Why did you learn Italian?”

“Because it’s always been my dream to work at Dantes,” she admitted. “So it made sense to learn the language.” A subtle shift in attitude occurred after her confession, one that left her somewhat puzzled.

“Figured it out yet?” Sev asked softly.

Her gaze jerked up to meet his. “Figured what out?”

“You’ll get there.” He gave her a small wedge of
panforte,
a traditional Tuscan dessert filled with nuts, fruit and a hint of chocolate. With it he served her a cup of strong coffee.

“Do you mean…?” She glanced around the table, reassured to see that a heated discussion about the best time to expand Dantes raged on, preoccupying the rest of Sev’s family. “Do you mean have I worked out the change in your family? The change in their attitude toward me?”

“Almost there,” he murmured.

She shrugged. “That’s easy enough. It’s because they found out I speak Italian. I blend in better.”

“Not even close.”

Startled, she gave him her full attention. “What? They love me now because I told them I’ve always wanted to work at Dantes? So what? Lots of people would kill to work for you.”

“Nope. Come on, honey. You know. You just refuse to accept the significance of it.”

He saw too clearly and it left her far too vulnerable. She returned her fork to her plate, before confessing, “It’s because I learned Italian in the hopes I’d someday work for Dantes. That I took that extra step.”

A slow smile built across his mouth. “I knew you’d get it.”

She scanned the table again, realizing that with that simple, painfully honest statement she’d become one of the family, her acceptance into their inner circle absolute. Most important of all, she’d done it by being herself. Even so, the knowledge filled her with guilt. “But it’s a lie.”

He helped himself to a second slice of
panforte.
“You didn’t learn Italian because you wanted to work for me?”

“Not
you,
” she stressed. “Dantes. And not
that.
” She shoved her left hand under his nose. “
This.
This is a—”

He leaned over and stopped her with a kiss. “We’ll discuss that later,” he murmured against her mouth. “In the meantime, don’t worry. These things have a way of sorting themselves out.”

They lingered over their coffee for another hour before Sev stood and told his family they needed to leave. Hugs were liberally dispensed before they made it out the door. The instant they slid into the car, she returned to the concern uppermost on her mind.

“Can’t we tell your family the truth? I really like them, and I’d rather not lie to them.”

“We’re not lying to them. We are engaged.”

“You know what I mean.” Impatience edged her voice. “They think we’re getting married.”

“That might prove a problem at some point,” he conceded. “But not today.” He pulled up outside her apartment complex. After curbing the wheels to keep them from rolling downhill, he threw the car in Park and shut off the engine. A gentle rain tapped against the windshield and blocked out everything but a watery blur of city lights. “Have you really always wanted to work at Dantes?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then you’ve achieved your dream. Is a temporary engagement to me so high a price to pay for that dream?”

“No.” She touched her engagement ring in an increasingly familiar gesture. “But what I’ve done to the Fontaines is far too high a price for any dream.”

“You need to trust me. It’s all going to work out. It may not be a perfect solution. Compromise will be involved. But it’s going to work out.”

“Because you say so?”

“Because I intend to make it so.”

He cupped her face and drew her close. At the first brush of his mouth against hers, every thought evaporated from her head. The Fontaines, the Dante clan, work pressures…they all slipped away beneath the heat of his taking. He played with her mouth, offering light, teasing kisses. But it only took her tiny moan of pleasure for it to transform into something more. Something deep and sensual and unbearably desperate. Passion exploded, fogging the windows and ripping apart both intent and intention. It needed to stop…before stopping became an impossibility.

“You don’t play fair,” she protested, struggling to draw breath.

“It doesn’t pay to play fair.” He eyed her in open amusement. “What it does is give me what I want most.”

“And what’s that?” she couldn’t resist asking.

“You.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Invite me in and put us both out of our misery.”

Did he think it would be that easy to recover the ground they’d lost? Maybe if their embrace had continued for another few minutes. But it hadn’t and she still found enough self-possession—somewhere, if she looked around hard enough—to stand firm in her resolve not to tumble back into his bed.

“No, I’m not inviting you in.” She gave him her sweetest smile. “I don’t play fair, either. As far as I’m concerned, you can sit here and suffer for your sins.”

“But not for much longer,” he said. Or was it a warning?

F
rancesca flipped through her sketchpad and experienced a sense of accomplishment unlike anything she’d ever felt before. She’d worked on the creations contained on these pages for most of her life.

It hadn’t been her first glimpse of the sparkle and glitter of gemstones that had drawn her to jewelry design. Sure, she loved the beauty of them. And she loved the endless ideas that danced through her imagination, ideas for how to combine the different gemstones into stunning patterns. But that hadn’t been what snagged her heart.

From the moment she’d understood the true symbolism of a wedding ring and what it stood for…From the instant she realized what her mother never experienced, and no doubt longed to share with the man she loved, Francesca had been drawn to create the dream. And now she had.

She studied her designs one last time, thrilled that she’d completed what she’d set out to achieve all those years ago. She’d given birth to something beyond her wildest expectations, and ironically she owed it all to Severo Dante. Somehow, at some point, he’d crept into her heart and given her the final spark of inspiration she’d needed to bring her designs to life.

Tears filled her eyes and she shook her head with a smile. How ridiculous to get all weepy over a bunch of drawings. She hadn’t even completed a mock-up of them, yet. Not that it mattered. She knew how the finished product would look. She even knew how they could market the collection. An entire campaign existed between the covers of her sketchpad, a campaign that would relaunch Dantes into a full line of women’s jewelry, should that possibility interest them.

Flipping her pad closed, she locked it away just as her studio door banged open. Tina stood there, looking more devastated than Francesca had ever seen her.

“Tina? What’s wrong?” Francesca asked, half-rising. “What’s happened?”

“Is it true?” Tina slammed the door closed behind her, closeting them together in the room. “All this time I thought you were the innocent in this. That Dante had you completely snowed. I actually thought maybe we could work things out between us. But now I’m not so sure.”

A sick suspicion clawed at Francesca’s stomach. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about my husband.” Tina’s mouth twisted. “Or should I say…your father.”

Francesca felt every scrap of color drain from her face and she sank back into her chair. “You can’t be serious. I’m not—”

Tina cut her off with a swipe of her hand. “Don’t. At least have the decency not to lie to me.” Her heels pounded out a succession of hard staccato raps as she crossed the room. “I have the evidence.”

“How?”

“That’s not important.” She reached the edge of the desk and Francesca could see the wild pain lurking in the older woman’s eyes. “You lied to me. To Kurt.”

“Only about my connection to him. Only that, I swear.”

A wild laugh ripped loose. “Only that?
Only?
”

How could she explain? “I just wanted to get to know him. From a distance,” Francesca emphasized. “I never planned to tell either of you the truth.”

Fury ignited. “What were you waiting for? To worm your way into our good graces and then spring it on us? Hope Kurt was smitten enough with the idea of having a daughter that he’d give you a piece of my business?” She slammed her palms on Francesca’s desk. “
My
business. Not Kurt’s. He may keep the production end of things afloat, but I’m the creative force behind Timeless Heirlooms.”

Francesca shook her head. “You don’t understand. I’d never do anything to cause trouble for you two.” Guilt overwhelmed her. She never should have applied for a job at TH. Never should have put her own selfish needs ahead of respecting the sanctity of her father’s marriage. “I just wanted to get to know my father,” she confessed miserably. “I never planned to tell either of you who I was. Please, Tina. This isn’t Kurt’s fault.”

“I’m well aware of whose fault this is.” She stabbed a finger at Francesca. “Yours. You chose to come into our life. You chose to become involved with Severo Dante. You ruined my marriage.”

“Ruined?” Francesca shot to her feet. “No, Tina. Don’t walk out on Kurt. Not because of me.”

“I can add. Better yet, I can subtract. According to our personnel records, you’re twenty-six. That means Kurt and I were married three years when he—” She broke off, clearly softened the description she’d been about to use. “When he had an affair with your mother.”

“It was a long time ago, Tina. All anyone has to do is look at him to know he’s crazy in love with you.” Francesca jettisoned every scrap of pride to plead on Kurt’s behalf. “After thirty years of marriage, surely that counts for something?”

“Maybe it would have…if not for you. But every time I see you, every time I hear your name or see your designs, it’s a slap in the face. Living proof of my husband’s infidelity.” Tina spun around and stalked to the door. Once there, she paused. “Oh, and by the way? You can thank your fiancé for clueing me in to your true identity. It would seem he’ll do anything to get his hands on TH. Even destroy my marriage.”

Sev sat behind his desk, papers strewn across the thick glass surface. Some were preliminary jewelry designs, others financial statements from the various international branches, still others proposals for expansion. All of the reports demanded his immediate attention.

A knock sounded at his door just as he reached for the first report. Before he could respond, Francesca entered the room. She shut the door behind her with a tad too much emphasis, warning of her less than stellar mood.

“How could you?” she demanded.

He stilled, studying her through narrowed eyes. “Clichéd, but intriguing nonetheless. Dare I ask…how could I what?”

“Tina knows. Tina knows I’m Kurt’s daughter. There’s only one person who could have told her.”

“I gather that’s where I come in.” He leaned back in his chair, reaching for calm. For some reason that only served to push her anger to greater heights.

“Don’t,” she warned sharply. “Don’t play with me.”

“I’d love to play with you, though not about this.” He gave her a level look. “Honey, I haven’t broken my promise to you. The only contact I’ve had with Tina is to up my offer for Timeless Heirlooms.”

Francesca shook her head. “You don’t get it. You—or one of your brothers—are the only ones who could have told her. No one else knows.”

He smiled at that, which might have been a mistake judging by the flash of fury that glittered in her dark eyes. “Someone must know, otherwise we wouldn’t have uncovered the information in the first place.”

She slowly shook her head. “I hired a private investigator four years ago to find my father. He couldn’t. But he did find an old friend of my mother’s and she’s the one who told me my father’s identity. I never told anyone, not even the P.I. So unless someone tracked this woman down and forced her to talk, I have trouble believing the leak came from her.”

That caught him by surprise. Shoving back his chair, he stood and circled his desk. Cupping her elbow, he drew her over to the sitting area on the far side of the room. “Are you certain she didn’t tell anyone else?”

“Of course I can’t be positive.” She perched on the edge of the couch and he sat next to her—too close judging by the tide of awareness that washed through her. She struggled to hide her dismay by directing it toward anger. “But I find it highly unlikely she’d call Tina out of the blue and just hand over that information. It doesn’t make any sense.”

He analyzed what she’d said, looking for alternate explanations. “What about your foster parents? Is it possible they had that information?”

“Not a chance. They’d have turned Kurt’s name over to the state to force him to pay child support.” She leveled him with a censorious look. “How did you find out about Kurt? Who in your organization knows the truth?”

“We hired a private investigator to check you out,” he admitted.

She couldn’t prevent the accusation. “You’ve had me investigated?”

“We had all of TH’s designers investigated as a matter of course.” He held up a hand to ward off her indignation. “Listen, I’ll contact the investigator and ascertain how he came across the information. All I can tell you is that I didn’t betray your secret to Tina. Nor did any of my brothers.”

She surged to her feet and paced across his office. “This is going to destroy the Fontaines’ marriage.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Though, privately, he’d rate it closer to probable, edging toward definite.

“If it does, you’ll be able to pick up TH for a song.”

He absorbed the accusation. “Which automatically makes me guilty?”

She spun to face him. “Tina claimed you told her. And it makes sense. Who else profits from revealing the truth to her?”

He shrugged. “As far as I know…no one.”

“You’re not helping yourself.” Frustration riddled her expression. “You realize that, don’t you?”

“I realize that nothing I say will change your mind. I also realize that you don’t trust me. You can’t.”

“How could I? Why would I?” She thrust her fingers through her hair, tumbling the curls into delicious disarray. “Since the minute we met you’ve done nothing to inspire that trust.”

That got to him, shaving some of the calm from his temper. “Our nights together didn’t inspire trust? Our time together hasn’t proven the sort of man I am?”

Tears welled in her eyes again. “Those nights meant everything to me, more than they could have meant to you or you’d never have blackmailed me. You’d never have forced me to betray the Fontaines and work for you.”

He climbed to his feet to give weight to his words. “I intend to return Dantes to its position as an international powerhouse, no matter what sort of sacrifices that requires. I made that fact crystal clear to you right from the start. I will recover every last subsidiary I was forced to sell off when I assumed the reins of this company. And that includes TH.”

She tugged off his engagement ring and held it out. “Take this. I refuse to wear it a minute longer.”

He simply shook his head. “That’s not happening. If we break our engagement so soon after we announce it, your life within the jewelry world will become unbearable.” He held up his hand to stem her protest. “As my fiancée, you have the Dante name to protect you. No one will dare say a word about you, your talent, or where you choose to work. Nor will anyone dare say anything should Tina decide to be indiscreet.”

Her mouth trembled. “You…you think she’ll tell people I’m Kurt’s daughter? You think she’ll publicly blame me for TH’s demise?”

“A woman that angry is capable of anything. There’s no telling what she’ll do.”

Francesca made a swift recovery, one that impressed the hell out of him. “I don’t care about any of that. Let people talk. Let Tina do her worst. Let the world assume whatever they want.”

“Right. And maybe you could handle the public fallout. Damned if you don’t seem determined to try. But I have Dantes to consider. Becoming engaged one day and ending it only weeks later is not the image I want to project to the general public, my suppliers, or my associates and competitors.”

“Then you never should have come up with this scheme.”

“Point taken, but it’s a little late for that.” He offered a wry smile. “When I came up with the idea, my only consideration was you and trying to salvage your relationship with the Fontaines. That’s what I get for thinking like Nic.”

For an endless moment she wavered between acceptance and rejection. To his profound relief, she released her breath in a sigh of reluctant agreement. “How long? How long do we have to keep up the pretense?”

“For as long as it takes.” He ran his hands up and down her arms, picking up on the slight shiver she couldn’t quite suppress. “Give it time, sweetheart. Is it really so bad being engaged to me? You liked my family, didn’t you?”

Once again, he’d said the wrong thing. Her eyes darkened in distress. “I don’t want to fall in love with them.”

He could guess why. “Because it hurts too much when it ends and you’re forced to walk away.”

She didn’t deny it. Instead she changed the subject. “What about the Fontaines? You have to promise me you won’t take advantage of this latest wrinkle. You have to promise me you’re still going to pay full price for TH, even if their marriage falls apart.”

He refused to be anything other than straight with her. “If they offer me a good deal, I’m not going to turn it down.”

Maybe he shouldn’t have been quite that straight. She pulled back and glared. “We have a contract. You have to pay them full price for their business. And I intend to make sure you stick to that agreement.”

“Our contract states I’m to pay fair market value. That’s what I intend to pay and not a penny more.”

“Even if the fair market value drops because Kurt and Tina divorce?”

“Fair. Market. Value,” he repeated succinctly.

She stilled and something drifted across her expression, something that had the businessman in him going on red alert. Then she gave a careless shrug. “If that’s the best you’re willing to do, I guess I have no choice but to accept it, do I?”

He stared at her through narrowed eyes. “That’s precisely what I expect you to do, since that’s precisely what the contract calls for.”

She turned to leave his office without further argument, which worried him all the more. Hell. No question about it. She was up to something, and he suspected he wouldn’t like whatever scheme she was busily hatching.

Later that evening, Francesca stood outside Sev’s apartment building, her head bent against the rain, soaked to the skin from an unexpected shower. Why had he demanded she come by tonight of all nights? she wondered in despair. Maybe if she hadn’t gotten together with Kurt she wouldn’t be finding this so difficult. But when she’d suggested waiting until morning to show Sev her latest designs, he’d insisted that he needed to see them tonight.

She shivered uncontrollably, wanting nothing more than to crawl into her bathtub at home and have a long, hot soak in conjunction with an even longer cry. Swiping the dampness from her cheeks—rain, she attempted to reassure herself, not tears—she rode the elevator to the top floor of Sev’s apartment building and applied fist to door.