His Convenient Wife

“Caterina—” Aldo emerged from the shadows.

“What is it?” Cat asked thinly. “What do you want?”

“To be alone with my wife.” A small smile lingered on his incredibly sexy mouth.

Cat drew in a ragged breath. “So you finally remembered my existence. It took you long enough—two months by my reckoning.”

“Cara—I admit my absence was regrettable, but it really was necessary if—”

“I’m sure it was,” she said, cutting him off. “Business, was it?”

He pulled her hard against him and she gasped as she tried to pull in enough air to enable her to tell him to stop this pretense, but all that emerged was a tiny despairing groan.

“Don’t be sad, cara,” he said, obviously mistaking that distressed sound for something else entirely.

And as he murmured soft words of comfort in Italian, he sounded so sincere that she could almost believe he cared.

His Convenient Wife
Diana Hamilton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

‘YOU can’t be serious! Are you actually suggesting I marry this Aldo Patrucco character?’ Cat’s green eyes flashed withering scorn in her grandfather’s direction. She pulled herself up to her full five feet nine inches, towering above him, her patrician nostrils pinched with a mix of disbelief and outrage.

Gramps looked oddly shrunken, his clothes suddenly seeming too big for his frail bones as he sat in his favourite armchair. She felt sorry for him, of course she did, very sorry, and she loved him dearly, but no way would she fall in with the insane suggestion he’d just thrown at her.

‘Listen to yourself, won’t you?’ she pushed out through her teeth. ‘You’re asking me to sell myself—it’s positively medieval!’

‘And you are overreacting as usual, Caterina,’ Domenico Patrucco objected flatly, his black eyes immediately softening in his lined face as he went on to ask gently, ‘Why don’t you pour the tea and then we can sit and have a civilised discussion? Without shouting.’

Cat let out a long, pent-up breath. It would cost her nothing to humour him, would it? Poor old Gramps had had a tough time recently. He had lost both his sister Silvana and his beloved wife Alice in the space of three months. She and Gramps were still grieving for Alice, so she knew how he felt. She’d never met her Italian great-aunt Silvana, of course, but she knew how much Gramps had looked forward to those long, gossipy letters which had told him of the doings of the Italian side of the family he had split from all those long years ago.

He was all alone now apart from Bonnie, who had been housekeeper here from the year dot. It had been Bonnie who had waddled over to the converted barn in what had once been the stack yard, where Cat had her workshop beneath her living quarters, to announce that her grandfather wished her to join him for afternoon tea.

As she dealt with the tea things Cat wondered if she should offer to move back into the farmhouse to keep the old man company. To stop him brooding and being too lonely. The farmland had been sold off years ago, when he’d retired, and the poor old guy had nothing to do with his time but come up with manic suggestions.

She owed him big time. He and Gran had brought her up since his only child, her mother, had been killed with Cat’s father in a road accident when she had been little more than a baby. Their love and care had been unstinting.

Two years ago when she’d left college with a degree in jewellery and silversmithing her grandparents had offered her the use of the barn as a workshop and had reluctantly agreed to her plan to move out of the main house and convert the barn’s upper storey into a self-contained flat. She’d been twenty-one and eager to have her own space where she could work or relax, entertain her friends, as the mood took her, be independent.

Keeping him company, keeping an eye on him for a few months, just until he was more himself, wouldn’t hurt her. It was, she supposed, the least she could do after all he and Gran had done for her.

The tea poured, she handed him a delicate china cup and saucer and flopped down on the opposite side of the hearth to where he was sitting, her long jeans-clad legs stretched out in front of her, and offered brightly, ‘Why don’t I move back in here for a month or two? We could spend time together.’

She could sub-let her booth in the craft centre for three months and put her work on hold, she mentally sacrificed, and because that was not the best idea in the world as far as her career was concerned she flashed him a brilliant, Gramps-deluding smile. ‘We could take days out together; I’ll drive you wherever you want to go—’

‘And give me a heart attack!’ he interrupted drily. ‘The way you drive is as flamboyant and erratic as the way you dress!’ And, seeing the way her vivid, animated and lovely features went blank, her wide mouth compressing, he amended gently, ‘I thank you for your concern, but I assure you I am not in need of such a sacrifice. What you can do to make me a happy man is give serious consideration to my suggestion.’

So they were back to that, were they? Cat ground her teeth together. Her diversionary tactics hadn’t worked, so the only way to handle this was to get it all out in the open, force him to see that his intention to marry her off to his great-nephew was a complete non-starter.

‘If your suggestion had been remotely sane I might have done that,’ she came back carefully, tenaciously holding on to her patience. ‘But I’m willing to listen while you try to say something sensible on the subject; that’s all I can promise.’

Leaning back in her chair, she pushed her untameable mane of chestnut hair away from her face. The room was unbearably warm. It was only mid-September but a huge log fire was burning in the hearth. Her grandfather had lived in cool, misty England for many years but his Italian blood still craved warmth.

His heavily hooded eyes held hers but he said nothing for long moments. Trying to find a form of words that would make something crazy sound completely sensible, she guessed. Well, it wouldn’t work, however he dressed it up.

‘Family,’ he said at last. ‘It all comes down to family. Forget the shares for the moment; they are important but not as important as closing the circle.’

Cat could have asked him what he meant by that but didn’t bother. And as for the shares she would happily forget them. Forever.

Growing up she’d heard the story so many times it bored her socks off. How her grandfather had been incensed, hurt in his pride, as he put it, when his older married brother had inherited seventy per cent of the shares in the Patrucco family business while he had received a mere miserable thirty. Marcantonio had had the upper hand, made all the decisions, told him what to do. Had control. So the younger and disgruntled Domenico had just upped and left. America first stop, where, hot-headed and determined to show Marcantonio that he didn’t need him or the olive plantations and the vineyards, he got into trouble over something to do with a parcel of land.

England next, to seek his fortune. What he had found was love. His Alice.

The only child of farming parents, Alice Mayhew had fallen head over heels with her handsome Italian suitor and after their marriage he’d helped out on the Shropshire farm; the income from the shares that had caused his permanent split from his brother had purchased more land, updated equipment and renovated the down-at-heel farmhouse.

However much he had despised the insulting smallness of his holding in the Italian business he had never sold those shares. And now, according to the healthy state of his bank balance, they were paying huge dividends.

‘You didn’t think family was important when you upped and left Italy and broke off all contact,’ Cat reminded him gently when she guessed by his continuing silence he had run out of things to say.

‘That was pride. The pride of a man is stiff, unyielding.’ He lifted his shoulders in a fatalistic shrug, but defended, ‘I kept contact through our sister Silvana. She told me of Marcantonio’s success in expanding the business, of the birth of his son, my nephew Astorre. Of my brother’s death ten years after Astorre’s marriage into a super-wealthy Roman family and the arrival of my great-nephew Aldo. Through her I know that Astorre has retired to Amalfi with his grand Roman wife and that Aldo now holds the business reins and has expanded into luxury holiday villas and apartments.’

Cat could almost feel sorry for him. A seventy-nine-year-old man indulging in pipedreams. She saw the relevance of that ‘closing the circle’ bit now. Sweep past resentments and quarrels aside, marry his granddaughter to his great-nephew and make everything right and whole again.

In his dreams!

‘And through the photographs Silvana sent me—’ a slow pause, a smile that might, if she were to be uncharitable, be described as sly ‘—I know that Aldo is a fine figure of Italian manhood—at thirty years of age he has a truly astute business brain and is the owner of a villa in Tuscany, a town house in Florence and an apartment in Portofino—che bello! You could do far worse! That I know all that is important to know about my lost family I explained to Aldo when I spoke to him on the phone a fortnight ago and suggested that a marriage between you two young things might be arranged to reunite the family.’

A beat of appalled silence. Cat felt her face colour hotly. ‘You did what? I do not believe this!’ Then the cool and welcome slide of common sense effectively stopped her exploding with outrage. ‘And he quite rightly told you where to put your interfering “suggestion”. Right?’

‘Far from it. He accepted my invitation to come and meet you. To discuss the matter further. As I said, he has an astute brain. Which brings us to my shares.’ He held out his cup and saucer. ‘Would you?’

Rising, Cat poured his second cup of tea, her hands shaking. She would not let her temper rip. Her grandfather was seventy-nine years old; he was grieving for his Alice. His sister was also, sadly, gone. He couldn’t make his peace with his older brother—he had died many years ago. He wanted to heal the family rift through his granddaughter and his great-nephew. She had to keep reminding herself of the facts to stop herself throttling him!

So she wouldn’t storm out of here as every instinct urged her to. She really didn’t want to upset him. Besides, no one on this earth could make her marry a man she didn’t know, quite possibly wouldn’t even like and certainly wouldn’t love.

Reassured, she handed him his tea and asked, ‘So when does this paragon arrive?’

‘Any time now. I didn’t tell you what I had in mind earlier. You would have suddenly expressed the wish to take a walking holiday in Scotland or go climbing in the Andes!’

Cat dipped her head, acknowledging his correct reading of her character. She recalled a note appended to one of her end-of-term reports. ‘Caterina is stubborn and headstrong. She won’t be led and she won’t be pushed.’

Bolshie, in other words.

She preferred to think of herself as strong-minded. She knew what she wanted and that wasn’t having to endure being looked over by some Italian big shot like a heifer at market!

‘Why aren’t you shouting at me, Caterina?’

The thread of amusement in his voice brought her attention back to her grandfather. She gave a slight, dismissive shrug and walked to the window to look out at the tail end of the afternoon. The days were shortening and the turning leaves of the damson tree mimicked the promise of hazy sunshine breaking through the warm and heavy early-autumn mist.

‘The timing of Aldo’s arrival is irrelevant. He is wasting his time coming here at all.’ She turned back to face him, the russet colour of the heavy-duty smock she usually wore when she was working emphasising the burnished glow of her chestnut hair, making her skin look paler, her eyes a deeper emerald. She spread her long-fingered artist’s hands expressively. ‘I can’t understand why he’s bothering. The guy’s obviously loaded and unless he looks like a cross between Quasimodo and a pot-bellied pig he could take his own pick of women.’

‘As no doubt he has,’ Domenico remarked drily. ‘But when it comes to taking a wife there is much to be considered. Family honour demands that a man marries wisely and well and not merely because he has lustful desires for a particular pretty woman.’

‘Your shares in his business,’ Cat deduced in a flat voice. This Aldo creep was obviously the pits. Popular culture marked the Italian male as being passionate, hot-blooded and fiery but this distant relative of hers had to be anything but if he could contemplate, even for one moment, marrying a woman he had yet to meet for the sake of clawing back a parcel of shares.

Verifying that conclusion, Domenico dipped his head. ‘My thirty-per-cent holding in his business, plus everything that is mine will one day come to you.’ He stirred his tea reflectively. ‘You are young, you are beautiful and when I am gone you will be all alone. If you were safely married to a man such as Aldo your future would be secure. You would be part of a family, cared for and pampered. I do not make this suggestion because I am crazy but because I love you and worry about your future.’

‘There’s no need,’ Cat said gruffly, her throat thickening. On the one hand she wanted to give him a verbal lashing. He was like something out of the ark! In his outdated opinion women couldn’t stand on their own feet; they needed a member of that superior race—a man—to look after them. And when he was no longer around to perform that duty he wanted to pass her over to someone he thought he could trust! He was living back in the nineteenth century—and, what was worse, an Italian nineteenth century!

On the other hand, she knew he loved her, cared about her, and that made her want to fling her arms around him and tell him she loved him, too.

She did neither. She said, relatively calmly, ‘I’m a big girl; I can look after myself. And if we really must have to anticipate events—which is not what I want to do—then I have a business of my own, remember. I could sell those shares to invest in it,’ she pointed out. ‘I could buy more and better equipment, hire staff, open a proper high-street shop instead of trading from a craft centre. I have no intention of tying myself to a cold-fish business brain for the sake of a life of idle luxury!’ She turned to the door, telling him, ‘You’d better start thinking of how to apologise to the guy for bringing him over here on a wild-goose chase.’

‘Wait.’ Domenico’s voice was smooth as cream. ‘Marriage is by no means certain. Though I know Aldo wouldn’t have agreed to this meeting if he hadn’t thought the idea viable. And I warn you, if he does propose and you turn him down for no good reason but pigheadedness—going against my wishes and your own best interests—then the shares, everything I have, will go to him.’

For several long seconds Cat couldn’t move. A heavy ache balled in her chest and her eyes flooded with tears. Gramps had said he loved her but he was quite happy to blackmail her. It hurt more than he would ever know.

The loss of her inheritance paled into insignificance. It would be tough, but she’d manage. When the time came she would have to find new living and working premises to rent, work all hours in order to keep her tiny business viable, and maybe not make it.

But that was nothing beside the knowledge that he was prepared to disinherit her if she didn’t toe the line. He couldn’t care for her at all, or not as much as he cared for what he called family honour.

When she could get her feet to move she walked out of the room and exactly one hour later she saw Aldo Patrucco arrive from the vantage point of her kitchen window above the cobbled stack yard.

He exited from the back of a dark saloon. He was tall, wearing a beautiful dark grey overcoat and a white silk scarf, and that was all she could see because the mist that had been hanging around all day had thickened in the autumn evening.

The uniformed chauffeur took a single leather suitcase from the boot and moments later drove away. So the big shot must have hired the package, Cat deduced as the main door was opened by Bonnie to admit the Italian.

Cat shuddered, her mouth clamped decisively shut. Only ten minutes ago Bonnie had called from the bottom of the stairs that led up from her work-room, telling her that her grandfather expected her to take dinner with him and his guest. Eight o’clock sharp.

She could refuse to put in an appearance. Or she could turn up in her shabbiest work clothes, display disgraceful table manners and vile personal habits, and put the guy off the idea of having anything at all to do with her.

The latter idea was tempting but she had too much pride to let herself act with such immaturity. She would go. She would be dignified. Not speak until spoken to. And spend her time trying to calculate if the amount in her bank balance would fund the renting of new premises if her grandfather threw her out as soon as Aldo Patrucco had left England, his proposal of marriage—if he made it—rejected with the scorn it deserved.

CHAPTER ONE

MARRYING Aldo Patrucco had been the biggest mistake of her life, Cat told herself for the millionth time as she stood in front of the tall window at the top of the villa, staring out at the rolling Tuscan hills shimmering in the haze of afternoon heat.

The panoramic view might once have entranced her. But the gentle purple hills, silver olive groves and scattered ochre-coloured farmhouses, the ubiquitous punctuation marks of the cypress trees merely emphasised her isolation, her frustration and misery.

The villa—every luxury provided…well, that went without saying in a Patrucco residence—reputedly built for the Medici family way back in the middle ages, had been her prison for two long months, since shortly after her miscarriage back in June.

Apart from his twice-weekly dutiful phone calls she’d had no contact with Aldo; he’d used his excuse of ‘Rest and Recuperation’ to get her away from the house in Florence, out of his sight, masking his disappointment in her failure to carry his heir to full term with an unconvincing display of polite concern for her well-being.

Leaving him free to be with his mistress.

He was cold. Heartless. Unreachable. Except…

Except she’d once been so sure he hadn’t been like that at all, that she could somehow reach his heart.

But he hadn’t got a heart, had he? Just an efficient machine, like a calculator.

As it too often did, her mind slid back with humiliating ease to that fatal night when she’d first met him. Only eleven months ago but it seemed like a lifetime now.

Dinner at eight. True to her intention to grit her teeth and make an appearance, to present a dignified front, she’d dressed in the soberest garment she owned. A peacock-green crêpe shift that skimmed her generously curved body and left her arms bare. Her make-up discreet, her unmanageable hair somehow tamed, drawn back from her face and painstakingly secured with a black velvet bow at her nape.

‘Caterina—’ There’d been such a note of pride in her grandfather’s voice as he’d risen from a leather club chair in the study as she’d walked into the room with her head high, but his introduction was lost on her as Aldo Patrucco got to his feet.

Over six feet of superbly dressed Italian male, a strong, harshly handsome face, his features shimmering out of focus because it was the look in those bitter-chocolate eyes that entrapped her.

She’d seen that look in men’s eyes before and had uninterestedly ignored it. Her one and only short-lived affair with Josh, a fellow student, in her final year at college had fizzled out with no regret on either side, and since then she hadn’t been remotely tempted.

But this hot, sultry branding held her as she’d never been held before, and her lips parted on a breathless gasp as his hard mouth curved in a slight, lazy smile just before he greeted her with easy Italian panache, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders, a light kiss on her forehead, another just above the corner of her mouth.

Just the softest brush of his lips against her skin, but it was enough to make her shake, make her breathless, disorientated.

‘Ciao, Caterina.’ His voice slid over her like warm dark honey. She mumbled something and turned away to hide the heat that suddenly flared over her face. She preferred to be called Cat—it sounded sharper, definite, more like the self she knew herself to be—but Caterina, on his lips, sounded like magic.

Charm, she told herself, making no attempt to join in the ensuing conversation, which was being conducted in part Italian, part English. He could turn charm on like a tap. Obviously. So why was she feeling hot and bothered, overpowered, when she had to know that the way he had looked at her, as if he wanted to bed her right here and now, was just the stock-in-trade of a man who knew what he wanted and how to get it? A man who was fully aware of his power over other people and used it.

The physical presence of the man filled the book-lined room with a dangerous sexual threat. A combination of a lean, powerful six-foot frame clothed in sheer Italian elegance, and that closely cropped black hair framing hard tanned features, that tough jawline and a mouth that could soften into a wicked, explicit promise whenever he looked her way made a tense, fluttery excitement curl in the pit of her stomach.

Cat rose with a sense of relief when Bonnie poked her head round the door to announce that dinner was ready, a relief that quickly turned into deep trepidation when Aldo rose to escort her, the palm of his long, lean hand hot against the small of her back, burning her. Burning her up with a sheet of wildfire that sizzled through her veins and made her feel light-headed.

No other man had ever affected her this way. She’d sort of fallen into her brief affair with Josh because he fancied her, was easy on the eye, and had been amusing company. And it had seemed to her that she was the only girl in her peer group not in a relationship. But this feeling was entirely different. It was immediate, insistent. Shattering.

Seated opposite him, Cat didn’t know where to put herself, and Bonnie’s meal, beautifully cooked and presented as usual, was untouched on her plate. But the champagne Gramps had insisted on eventually loosened her tongue and Aldo’s dark eyes locked on to her soft mouth as he murmured, ‘You speak fluent Italian.’

‘I was brought up on it—my grandparents insisted.’ She drained her glass, feeling reckless, feeling more like herself. The situation was weird, like something out of an old and rather silly novel, but undoubtedly exciting. What woman wouldn’t be feeling as if she were permanently plugged into a conduit for live electricity when face to face with such a breathtakingly sexy, brain-blowingly gorgeous male who was here with the express intent of looking her over, deciding whether she was suitable wife material?

‘Caterina has always been made aware of her heritage,’ Domenico put in with an undertow of satisfaction, like a breeder demonstrating the finer points of his bloodstock to a possible purchaser.

Far from experiencing all that earlier outrage, Cat giggled softly as she watched the bubbles rise in the crystal flute as Aldo helped her to yet more champagne. ‘I have far more English blood in my veins than Italian,’ she argued softly, feeling those bitter-chocolate eyes on her and secretly wallowing in the sensation of feeling more truly alive than she had ever done before.

Aldo leaned back in his chair, his eyes hooded now as they roamed from the crown of her glossy chestnut head, over her milky white skin and down to the lushly rounded breasts beneath the soft covering of fine fabric, the explicit shafts of golden light in the veiled depths making her blush as he murmured, ‘With your colouring, your grace, you could be Veneziana, and I hear from Zio Domenico that your temperament is fiery, pure Italiana, with nothing of the phlegmatic English.’

‘And could you cope with that, signor?’ she dared, green eyes sparkling through a thick sweep of dark lashes as she thrust the agenda out into the open, wondering if such exposure would wrong-foot this supremely self-assured male, unprepared for and wantonly excited by his softly drawled comeback, the slow and decidedly rakish grin that made her pulse flutter.

‘I am quite sure I could. With much pleasure.’

His purring, silken response filled her head with X-rated images. Married to him, enjoying him. His mouth on hers, giving her the heaven it had so far only promised, his hard, honed naked body covering hers, demanding, taking, possessing… It would be criminally easy to give him exactly what his eyes told her he wanted and then ask him for more!

She couldn’t tear her eyes away from his; he mesmerised her, turned her blood to fire, filled her with aching need. And her breathing was going haywire, her pulse throbbing as Domenico rose to his feet, satisfaction in his voice after following their exchange as he announced softly, ‘You must excuse me. I am an old man and retire early. Caterina, why don’t you show Aldo where you work and give him coffee?’

Which was what she needed, yet didn’t need at all. She wanted to be alone with him and yet the prospect scared her witless. She didn’t trust herself around this man, she didn’t trust herself at all and yet the prospect was heady, electrifying, disturbingly exciting.

Aldo stood and turned to speak to her grandfather, his voice low-pitched. Cat wasn’t listening and she didn’t look at him either. It wasn’t safe.

Looking at him, drowning in that warm, honeyed voice short-circuited her brain. She needed to come down out of fantasy land and plant her feet firmly on the ground, put her brain in gear and tell him she knew exactly why he was here.

Tell him he didn’t need to waste any more of his doubtlessly precious time looking her over because the idea of their marriage was a non-starter.

And yet…

Angrily, she squashed the treacherous beginnings of a mental veer in the opposite direction, the shafting thought that it would be much too easy to fall helplessly in love with this man, that marriage to him would be a challenge, exciting, endlessly rewarding.

Indulging in wild fantasies was alien to her, alien, unwanted and unnecessary. It was time she did something about it, put a stop to all this nonsense. Laying down her napkin, she, too, got to her feet and said stiltedly, ‘Bonnie will bring coffee, signor; I’ll ask her on my way out. So I’ll say goodnight, too, Grandfather. I’m sure your guest has no desire to see a workshop.’

‘I have every desire, Caterina.’ The silken stroke of his voice made every muscle in her body tighten. His stress on that word ‘desire’ left her in no doubt that he wasn’t referring to her work benches and tools. And the gleam in his eyes as he let them drift lazily over her taut body terrified her. Already she had a violently insane need to get closer, to loop her arms around those wide, immaculately clad shoulders and submit the soft, melting femininity of her body to his hard domination.

She had to be losing her mind! Resisting the impulse to cover her burning face with her shaking hands, Cat made a strenuous mental effort to pull herself together.

She was free, she was independent, she had her work and she loved it. She was passionate about everything she had, and had no intention of accepting a hand-picked husband, selected and presented in cold blood.

It was her misfortune that the man in question was sexier than any man had a right to be. What she was experiencing was lust, she reminded herself tartly. Just lust. All the more shattering because she’d been celibate for a long time, ever since she and Josh had broken up before the end of their final year at college.

Having been left with no other option, Cat led the way over the cobbled yard, picking her way carefully on the uneven surface. The security lights were on but she was used to striding around in flat shoes and jeans or flowing, colourful skirts, and the skirt of the dress she was wearing was narrow and tight and her heels, although restrainedly elegant, were too high.

She more than half expected him to slide an intimate hand around her waist on the pretext of steadying her slow and tottery progress but he did nothing of the sort. She didn’t know whether to feel glad about that or strangely deprived. Whatever, her heart was beating so violently she was sure it would burst out of her chest.

As always, the double doors opened easily at her touch and as she depressed the light switch Aldo remarked coolly, ‘You don’t lock your premises?’

Cat shrugged slim shoulders. ‘Sometimes. If I’m out for any length of time. Does it matter?’ Which was her way of saying, Is it any of your business?