Vinn wants his estranged wife, Ailsa, back on his arm. And given that she ran out of their marriage, he’s not above blackmailing her into agreeing to his plan—a temporary reunion that will end on his terms! But passionate Ailsa meets his fire with fire. Now the challenge is on for Vinn to entice her into succumbing to his scorching seduction!

MELANIE MILBURNE read her first Mills & Boon novel at the age of seventeen, in between studies for her final exams. After completing a master’s degree in education she decided to write a novel, and thus her career as a romance author was born. Melanie is an ambassador for the Australian Childhood Foundation and a keen dog-lover and trainer. She enjoys long walks in the Tasmanian bush. In 2015 Melanie won the Holt Medallion—a prestigious award honouring outstanding literary talent.

Also by Melanie Milburne

The Temporary Mrs MarchettiWedding Night with Her EnemyA Ring for the Greek’s BabyThe Tycoon’s Marriage DealA Virgin for a Vow

The Ravensdale Scandals miniseries

Ravensdale’s Defiant CaptiveAwakening the Ravensdale HeiressEngaged to Her Ravensdale EnemyThe Most Scandalous Ravensdale

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Blackmailed into the Marriage Bed

Melanie Milburne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07194-9

BLACKMAILED INTO THE MARRIAGE BED

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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This Italian hero is for you,

even though I know you already have one. Xxxx

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

AILSA DECIDED THERE was only one thing worse than having to see Vinn Gagliardi after almost two years of separation, and that was being made to wait to see him.

And wait.

Not a couple of minutes. Not ten or fifteen or even twenty, but a whole stomach-knotting, nerve-jangling hour that crawled by like a wet century.

Ailsa pretended to read every glossy magazine Vinn’s young and impossibly glamorous receptionist had artfully fanned on the handcrafted coffee table in front of her. She drank the perfectly brewed coffee and then the sparkling lemon-infused mineral water. She ignored the bowl of breath mints and chewed her nails instead. Right down to her elbow, and if Vinn didn’t open his office door soon her shoulder would be next.

Of course he was doing it deliberately. She could picture him sitting behind his acre of French polished desk, idly passing the time sketching new furniture designs, a lazy smile tilting his mouth as he enjoyed every excruciating minute of the torture she was enduring out here at the prospect of seeing him again.

Ailsa squeezed her eyes shut, trying to rid her mind of the image of his smiling mouth. Oh, dear God, his mouth. The things his mouth had made her feel. The places on her body his mouth had kissed and caressed and left tingling for hours after.

No. No. No. Must not think about his mouth. She repeated the mantra she had been saying for the last twenty-two months. She was over him. Over. Him. There was a thick black line through her relationship with Vinn Gagliardi, and she had been the one to put it there.

‘Mr Gagliardi will see you now.’ The receptionist’s voice made Ailsa’s eyes spring open and her heart stutter like a lawnmower running over rocks. She shouldn’t be feeling so...so nervous. What did she have to be nervous about? She had a perfect right to demand an audience with him, especially when it involved her younger brother.

Although...maybe she shouldn’t have flown to Milan without making an appointment first, but she’d been in Florence for an appointment with some new clients when she got the call from her brother Isaac, informing her Vinn was going to sponsor his professional sporting career. She wasn’t going to leave the country without confronting Vinn about his motive in investing in her brother’s dream of becoming a pro golfer. She’d made up her mind if Vinn wouldn’t see her today then she would damn well camp in his office building until he did. She had her overnight bag with her from her short trip to Florence so at least she had a change of clothes if it came to that.

Ailsa rose from the butter-soft leather sofa, but she’d been sitting for so long her legs gave a credible impression of belonging to a newborn foal. A premature newborn foal. She smoothed her damp hands down the front of her skirt, hitched her tote bag more securely over her shoulder and wheeled her overnight bag with the other hand, approaching the still closed office door with resentment bubbling like a boiling pot in her belly. Why didn’t Vinn come and greet her out here in Reception? Why make her walk all the way to his door and knock on it like she was some servile little nobody? Damn it. She’d been his wife. Slept in his bed. Shared everything with him.

Not quite everything...

Ailsa ignored the prod of her conscience. Who said husbands and wives had to share every single detail of their background? Especially with the sort of marriage she’d had with Vinn. It had been a lust match, not a love match. She’d married him knowing he didn’t love her, but she’d convinced herself his desire for her more than made up for that. She’d convinced herself it would be enough. That she would be enough. But he’d wanted more than a trophy wife. Much more. More than she was prepared to give.

Ailsa was pretty sure Vinn hadn’t told her everything about his background. He’d always been reluctant to talk about the time his father went to jail for fraud and how it impacted on his family’s business. She’d soon got tired of pushing him to talk to her about it and let it slide, figuring she would hate it if he, or anyone for that matter, kept on at her to slide back the doors on her family’s closet. She didn’t have too many skeletons in there, just one big, stinking rotten carcass.

Ailsa stood in front of his office door and aligned her shoulders as if she were preparing for battle. No way was she going to knock on his door and wait for his permission to enter.

No flipping way.

She switched her tote bag to the other shoulder and, grasping her overnight bag with her other clammy hand, took a deep breath and turned the knob and stepped over the threshold to find him standing with his back to her at the window overlooking the bustling streets of Milan. If that wasn’t insult enough, he was seemingly engrossed in a conversation on his phone. He barely gave her a glance over his shoulder, just cursorily waved his hand towards one of the chairs opposite his desk and turned back to the view and continued his conversation as if she were some anonymous blow-in whom he had graciously shoehorned into his incredibly busy day.

A sharp pain seized her in the chest, his casual dismissal piercing the protective I’m over him membrane around her heart like a carelessly flung dart. How could he ignore her after not seeing her for so long? Hadn’t she meant anything to him?

Anything at all?

The conversation was in Italian and Ailsa tried not to listen because listening to Vinn speak in his mother tongue always did strange things to her. Even when he talked in English it did strange things to her. She suspected even if he talked gibberish her spine would still go all mushy and every inch of her skin would tighten and tingle.

While he was talking she took a moment to surreptitiously study him...or at least she hoped it was surreptitious. Every now and again he would move slightly so she could see a little bit more of his face. It was as if he was rationing her vision of him, which was annoying in itself. She wanted to look him in the eye, to see if he carried any scars from their doomed relationship.

He changed the phone to his other hand and turned to the computer on his desk, his brow frowning in concentration as he clicked on the mouse. Why wasn’t he looking at her? Surely he could show a bit more interest? She wasn’t vain but she knew she looked good. Damn it, she paid a lot of money to look this good. She’d bought a new designer outfit for her meeting with her clients and had her hair done and had spent extra time on her make-up. Looking good on the outside made up for feeling rubbish and worthless on the inside.

Vinn moved something on the computer screen and then continued with his conversation. Ailsa was starting to wonder if she should have worn something with a little more cleavage to show him what he’d been missing. He was still as jaw-droppingly gorgeous as the last time she’d seen him. And if she hadn’t been grinding her teeth to powder her jaw would be embedded in the plush ankle-deep carpet right then and there. His jet-black hair was neither long nor short nor straight nor curly, but somewhere sexily in the middle, reminding her of all the times she had trailed her fingers through those thick glossy strands, or fisted her hands in them during earth-shattering, planet-dislodging sex. He was clean-shaven but the rich dark stubble surrounding his nose and mouth and along his chiselled jaw was a heady reminder of all the times he’d left stubble rash on her softer skin. It had been like a sexy brand on her face, on her breasts, between her thighs...

Ailsa suppressed a shudder and, ignoring the chair he’d offered, threw him a look that would have frozen lava. In mid-flow. ‘I want a word with you. Now.’ She leaned on the word ‘now’ like a schoolmistress dressing down a disrespectful pupil.

The corners of Vinn’s mouth flickered as if he were trying to stop a smile...or one of his trademark lip curls. He ended his phone call after another few moments and placed the phone on his desk with unnerving precision. ‘If you’d made an appointment like everyone else then I would have plenty of time to talk to you.’

‘I’m not everyone else.’ Ailsa flashed him another glare. ‘I’m your wife.’

A dark light gleamed in his espresso-brown gaze like the flick of a dangerous match. ‘Don’t you mean soon-to-be ex-wife?’

Did that mean he was finally going to sign off on their divorce? Because they’d married in England they were subject to English divorce law, which stated a couple had to be legally separated for two years. It was strange to think if they had married in Italy they would have been granted a divorce by now because Italian divorce law only required one year of separation.

‘This may surprise you, Vinn, but I’m not here about our imminent divorce.’

‘Let me guess.’ He glanced at the overnight bag by her side and his eyes glinted again. ‘You want to come back to me.’

Ailsa curled her hand around the handle of her bag so tightly her bitten-down nail beds stung. ‘No. I do not want to come back to you. I’m here about my brother. Isaac told me you’re offering to sponsor him for the international golfing circuit next year.’

‘That’s correct.’

She disguised a swallow. ‘But...but why?’

‘Why?’ One dark eyebrow rose as if he found her question ludicrous and her imbecilic to have asked it. ‘He asked me, that’s why.’

‘He...asked you?’ Ailsa’s mouth dropped open so wide she could have parked one of her brother’s golf buggies inside. ‘He didn’t tell me that...’ She took a much-needed breath and, letting go of her bag, gripped the back of the chair opposite his desk instead and swallowed again. ‘He said you told him you would sponsor him but there were conditions on the deal. Conditions that involved me.’

Vinn’s expression changed from mocking to masked. ‘Sit down and we’ll discuss them.’

Ailsa sat, not because he told her but because her legs were threatening to go from under her like damp drinking straws. Why had Isaac led her to believe Vinn had approached him over sponsorship? Why had her brother been so...so insensitive to invite her soon-to-be ex-husband back into her orbit? Vinn’s involvement with her brother’s golfing career would mean she wouldn’t be able to avoid him the way she’d been doing for the last two years.

She had to avoid him.

She had to.

She didn’t trust herself around him. She turned into someone else when she was with him. Someone who had all the hopes and dreams of a normal person—someone who didn’t have a horrible secret in her background. A secret not even her brother knew about.

Her half-brother.

Ailsa was fifteen years old when she stumbled upon the truth about her biological father. For all that time she’d believed, along with everyone else, that her stepfather Michael was her dad. For fifteen years that lie had kept her family knitted together...well, knitted together was maybe stretching it a bit, because there were a few dropped stitches here and there. Her parents, while individually decent and respectable people, hadn’t been happy in their relationship, but she had always blamed them for not trying hard enough to get on.

She hadn’t thought it was her fault.

That the lie about her was the thing that made their lives so wretchedly miserable. But after finding out the truth about her biological father and the circumstances surrounding her conception, she could understand why.

Ailsa straightened her skirt over her thighs and took a calming breath, but then her gaze spied a silver photograph frame on Vinn’s desk and her heart stumbled like a foot missing a rung on a ladder. Why had he kept that? She had given him that frame after their wedding, with her favourite photo of them smiling at each other with the sun setting in the background. Giving him that photo had been her way of deluding herself she was in a real marriage and not one that was simply convenient for Vinn because he wanted a beautiful and accomplished wife to grace his home. She couldn’t see the photo from her side of the desk. Perhaps he had someone else’s image in there now. The thought of it churned her belly into a cauldron of caustic jealousy. She knew it was missish of her since she was the one to walk out on their marriage, but it hurt her pride to think he could so easily move on with his life.

And not just her pride was hurt...

Ailsa had always held a thread of hope that Vinn would fall in love with her. What bride didn’t want her handsome husband to love her? She had fooled herself it would be enough to be his bride, to be in his bed. To be in his life.

But she had longed to be in his heart. To be the first person he thought of in the morning and the last he thought of at night. To be the person he valued over everyone else or anything else. But Vinn didn’t value her. He didn’t prioritise her. He didn’t love her. Never had. Never would. He was incapable of it.

Vinn leaned back in his chair with one ankle crossed over his muscle-packed thigh, his dark unreadable gaze moving over her body like a minesweeper. ‘You’re looking good, cara.’

Ailsa stiffened. ‘Don’t call me that.’

His mouth curved upwards as if he found her anger amusing. ‘Still the same old bad attitude Ailsa.’

‘And why wouldn’t I have a bad attitude where you’re concerned?’ Ailsa said. ‘How do I know you didn’t plant the idea of sponsorship in Isaac’s mind? How often have you been in contact with him since we separated?’

‘My relationship with your brother has nothing to do with my relationship with you,’ Vinn said. ‘That is entirely separate.’

‘We don’t have a relationship any more, Vinn.’

His eyes became obsidian-hard. ‘And whose fault is that, hmm?’

Ailsa was trying to contain her temper but it was like trying to restrain a rabid Rottweiler on a Teacup Chihuahua’s leash. ‘We didn’t have a relationship in the first place. You married me for all the wrong reasons. You wanted a trophy wife. Someone to do little nineteen-fifties wifey things for you while you got on with your business as if my career meant nothing to me.’

A tight line appeared around his mouth as if he too was having trouble reining in his temper. ‘I trust your aforementioned career is keeping you warm at night? Or have you found yourself a lover to do that?’

She put up her chin. ‘My private life is no longer any of your business.’

He made a sound that was suspiciously like a snort. ‘Isaac tells me you haven’t even been on a date.’

Ailsa was going to kill her younger brother. She would chain him to the sofa and force him to watch animated Disney classics instead of the sports channel. She would take away his golf clubs and flush all his golf balls down the toilet. She would force-feed him junk food instead of the healthy organic stuff his sports dietician recommended.

‘Well—’ she gave Vinn a deliberately provocative look ‘—none that he knows about, that is.’

A muscle in the lower quadrant of his jaw moved in and out like an erratic pulse. ‘Any lovers you’ve collected will have to move aside for the next three months as I have other plans for you.’

Plans? What plans? Now it was Ailsa’s pulse that was erratic. So erratic it would have made any decent cardiologist reach for defibrillator paddles.

‘Excuse me?’ She injected derision into every word. ‘You don’t get to make plans for me, Vinn. Not any more. I’m in the driver’s seat of my life and you’re not even in the pit lane.’

He made a steeple with his fingers and rested them against his mouth, watching her with an unwavering gaze that made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle at the roots. But then she noticed the gold band of his wedding ring on his left hand and something in her stomach tilted. Why would he still be wearing that?

‘Isaac will never make the professional circuit without adequate sponsorship,’ he said after a long moment. ‘That nightclub incident he was involved in last year has scared off any potential sponsors. I’m his only chance. His last chance.’

Ailsa mentally gulped. That nightclub incident could well have ended not just her brother’s career prospects but his or someone else’s life as well. The group of friends he’d been hanging around with since school attracted trouble and invariably Isaac got caught in the middle. It wasn’t that he was easily led, more that he was a little slow to see the potential for trouble until it was too late to do anything—his approaching Vinn for sponsorship being a case in point. But if he got on the professional circuit he would be away from those troublemaking friends.

‘Why are you doing this? Why are you involving me? If you want to sponsor him then do it. Leave me out of it.’

Vinn slowly shook his head. ‘Not how it works, cara. You’re the reason I’m sponsoring him. The only reason.’

Ailsa blinked. Could she have got it wrong about Vinn? Had he married her because he loved her, not just because he fancied having a glamorous wife to hang off his arm? Was that why he was still wearing his wedding ring? Had he meant every one of those promises he’d made on their wedding day?

No. Of course he hadn’t loved her.

He had never said those three little magical words. But then, nor had she. She had deliberately held back from saying them because she hadn’t liked the feeling of being so out of balance in their relationship. The person who loved the most had the least power. She hadn’t been prepared to give him even more power over her than he already had. His power over her body was enough. More than enough.

He’d reeled her in with his charm and planted her in his life as his wife, on the surface fine with her decision not to have kids, but then he’d changed his mind a few months into their marriage. Or maybe he hadn’t changed his mind at all. He had gambled on his ability to change her mind.

Gambled and lost.

She glanced at the photo frame again. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

Vinn turned the frame around so she could see the image of their wedding day. Ailsa hadn’t looked at their wedding photos since their separation. She had put the specially monogrammed albums at the back of her wardrobe under some clothes she no longer wore. It had been too embarrassing to look at her smiling face in all of those pictures where she had foolishly agreed to be a trophy wife. She had agreed to become a possession, not a person who had longings and hopes and dreams of her own. Looking at those photos was like looking at all the mistakes she had made. How could she have been so stupid to think an arrangement like that would ever work? That marrying anyone—especially someone like Vinn—would make her feel normal in a way she hadn’t felt since she was fifteen? Their marriage hadn’t even lasted a year. Eleven months and thirteen days, to be precise.

Vinn had mentioned the B word. A baby—a family to continue the Gagliardi dynasty. She would have ended up a breeding machine, her career left to wither, while his business boomed.

Her interior decorating business was her baby. She had given birth to it, nurtured it and made numerous sacrifices for it. Having a real baby was out of the question. There were too many unknowns about her background.

How could she give birth to a child, not knowing what sort of bad blood flowed in its veins?

Ailsa swallowed against the barbed ball of bitterness in her throat and cast her gaze back to Vinn’s onyx one. ‘Why do you keep it on your desk?’

He turned the frame back so it was facing him, his expression now as inscrutable as his computer screen in sleep mode. ‘One of the best bits of business advice I’ve ever received is never forget the mistakes of the past. Use them as learning platforms and move on.’

It wasn’t the first time Ailsa had thought of herself as a mistake. Ever since she’d found out the circumstances surrounding her conception she had trouble thinking about herself as anything else. Most babies were conceived out of love but she had been conceived by brute force. ‘What do your new lovers think when they see that photo on your desk?’

‘It hasn’t been a problem so far.’

Ailsa wasn’t sure if he’d answered the question or not. Was he saying he’d had numerous lovers or that none of them had been inside his office? Or had he taken his new lovers elsewhere, not wanting to remind himself of all the times he had made love to her on that desk? Did he wear his wedding ring when he made love to other women? Or did he take it off when it suited him? She glanced at his face to see if there was any hint of the turmoil she was feeling, but his features were as indifferent as if she were a stranger who had walked in off the street.

‘So...the conditions you’re proposing...’ she began.

‘My grandfather is facing a do-or-die liver transplant,’ Vinn said. ‘The surgeon isn’t giving any guarantee he will make it through the operation, but without it he will die within a matter of weeks.’

‘I’m sorry to hear he’s so unwell,’ Ailsa said. ‘But I hardly see how this has anything to do with—’

‘If he dies, and there’s a very big chance he will, then I want him to die at peace.’

Ailsa knew how much respect Vinn had for his grandfather Domenico Gagliardi and how the old man had helped him during the time when Vinn’s father was in jail. She had genuinely liked Dom and, although she’d always found him a bit austere and even aloof on occasion, she could well imagine for Vinn the prospect of losing his grandfather was immensely painful. She wouldn’t be human if she didn’t feel for him during such a sad and difficult time, but she still couldn’t see how it had anything to do with her.

‘I know how much you care for your grandfather, Vinn. I wish there was something I could do to—’

‘There is something you can do,’ Vinn said. ‘I want us to be reconciled until he is safely through the surgery.’

Ailsa looked at him as if he’d told her to jump out of the window, her heart thumping so heavily she could hear it like an echo in her ears. ‘What?’

‘You heard me.’ The set to his mouth was grimly determined, as if he had made up his mind how things would be and nothing and no one was going to talk him out of it. Not even her.

She licked her parchment-dry lips. He wanted her back? Vinn wanted her to come back to him? As his wife? She opened and closed her mouth, trying to locate her voice. ‘Are you mad?’

‘Not mad. Determined to get my grandfather through this without adding to the stress he’s already going through,’ Vinn said. ‘He’s a family man with strong values. I want those values respected and honoured by resuming our marriage until he is well and truly out of danger. I will allow nothing and no one to compromise his recovery.’

Ailsa got to her feet so abruptly the chair almost toppled over. ‘I’ve never heard anything so outrageous. You can’t expect me to come back to you as if the last two years didn’t happen. I won’t do it. You can’t make me.’

He remained seated with his unwavering gaze locked on hers. Something about his stillness made the floor of her belly flutter like a deck of rapidly shuffled cards.

‘Isaac is talented but that talent will be wasted without my help and you know it,’ he said. ‘I will provide him with not one, not two, but three years of full sponsorship if you’ll agree to come back to me for three months.’

Ailsa wanted to refuse. She needed to refuse. But if she refused her younger brother might never reach his potential. It was within her power to give Isaac this opportunity of a lifetime. But how could she go back to Vinn? Even for three minutes, let alone three months? She clutched the strap of her bag like it was a lifeline and blindly reached for her overnight bag, her hand curling around the handle for support.

‘Aren’t you forgetting something? I have a career in London. I can’t just pack up everything and relocate here.’

‘You could open a temporary branch of your business here in Milan,’ he said. ‘You could even set up a franchise arrangement. You already have some wealthy Italian clients, sì?’

Ailsa frowned so hard she could almost hear her eyebrows saying ouch at the collision. How had he heard about her Italian clients? Had Isaac told him? But she rarely mentioned anything much to her brother about her work. Isaac talked about his stuff not hers: his golfing dreams, his exercise regime, his frustration that their parents didn’t understand how important his sport was to him and that, since their divorce, they weren’t wealthy enough to help him get where he needed to be, etc. Ailsa hadn’t told Isaac this last trip to Florence was to meet with a professional couple who had employed her to decorate their centuries-old villa. They had come to her studio in London and liked her work and engaged her services on the spot.

‘How do you know that?’

Vinn’s mouth curved in a mocking smile. ‘I’m Italian. I have Italian friends and associates across the country.’

Suspicion crawled across Ailsa’s scalp like a stick insect on stilts. ‘So... Do I have you to thank for the di Capellis’ villa in Florence? And the Ferrantes’ in Rome?’

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