even. Those were the attributes he felt comfortable with—the attributes that had taken him from runaway street urchin to billionaire businessman in the space of a decade.
But his success was of no interest to Isobel. Orlando already knew that much. Aside from funding her precious business, his wealth and fortune meant nothing. No amount of money was going to impress her, and clearly chest-beating was not the way to get her to agree to his terms. But maybe shedding a chink of light on his past life would do it. If that was what it took, he would go there. But a chink was all she was getting...
‘Your parents weren’t married, then?’ Isobel put down her knife and fork.
‘No.’
‘Did they live together? As a couple, I mean?’
‘I was the product of a sordid affair. My father was married to someone else at the time, and when he found out my mother was pregnant he disowned her. There was a protracted paternity case, because my mother was determined that I should bear the Cassano name. I wish to God she hadn’t bothered.’
Reaching for her glass of water, Isobel raised it to her lips, regarding him with interest. ‘So your father was eventually forced to acknowledge you?’
‘Yeah.’ Orlando felt his jaw clench. ‘But that was as far as it went.’
If he’d had his way this would have been the end of the conversation, but with Isobel’s green gaze still searching his he knew he was going to have to give her more.
‘I looked him up when I turned seventeen. We had a brief relationship. It didn’t work out.’
That was the understatement of the millennium. Deciding to acquaint himself with his father had been the single worst decision of his life.
Poised on the brink of manhood, the seventeen-year-old Orlando had decided he wanted to see this man for himself—to look him in the eye even if was just to let him know exactly how contemptible Orlando thought he was.
But it hadn’t turned out like that. Handsome and charismatic, Carlo Cassano hadn’t been the man Orlando had been expecting at all—and neither had he expected the welcome he’d received, the open-armed enthusiasm of Carlo Cassano for his long-lost son. His father had offered him a glimpse of a world of glamour and wealth that bore no resemblance to the austerity of the children’s home or the misery of his early childhood with his mother. As Marchese di Trevente he lived a life of money and power, fast cars and glamorous women.
And Orlando had been hooked.
Choosing to ignore everything his mother had told him over the years—including the hysterical rants and wailing sobs that had accompanied the name Carlo Cassano every time it had been mentioned—he had decided this was the life he wanted. So when his father had offered him a home, told him he should come and work for him, Orlando had jumped at the chance. Little knowing that his mother’s bitterly miserable opinion of him had barely scratched the surface.
For in truth his father had been far more immoral, far more depraved than even she had known, and Orlando’s brief association with him had resulted in the worst possible tragedy—the death of a young woman...Sophia, Orlando’s girlfriend and first love. Orlando would never, ever forgive his father for what had happened. And, what was more, he would never forgive himself.
‘And now?’ Isobel was persisting with her needling questions. ‘Do you know where he is?’
‘I do.’ His voice sounded harsh and he cursed it for betraying him. ‘Buried in the family plot on the Trevente estate.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Well, I’m not.’ He could rot in hell as far as Orlando was concerned.
‘Trevente...’ Isobel narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. ‘Isn’t that in the Le Marche region of Italy?’
‘Correct.’
A dawning realisation slowly spread across her beautiful face. ‘So you grew up in Le Marche? That’s why you suggested siting the Spicer Shoes factory there? Why you were able to locate the premises so quickly?’
‘I have contacts all over the world.’ Orlando returned to his food. ‘Le Marche is well known for producing luxury leather goods. It was the logical solution.’
‘Logical... Yes, of course.’
Her smug remark stuck in his craw, but Orlando refused to let her see it. ‘Perhaps now you can see why we need to marry. Our child needs the stability of legitimacy and, frankly, so do I.’
There—he had said his piece and that was all she was getting. He looked across the table to see that Isobel had lowered her eyes to her barely touched plate of seafood, her slender fingers fiddling with a lock of chestnut hair. She appeared poised, so elegant, with that graceful style she had, but closer inspection revealed the effort involved in holding that spine so straight, the fact that her shoulders were hitched a bit too high.
‘It is a huge commitment, Orlando.’
‘I know that.’
Finally he could feel her weakening. If his confession had cost him a sliver of pride, he could see that Isobel was hanging on to hers for dear life.
He deliberately softened his voice. ‘But then so is having child.’
‘If I do agree to marry you—and it is if, Orlando—you will have to respect my one condition.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘I want us to wait until after the baby is born.’
Steepling his hands under his chin, Orlando gazed at Isobel’s determined face, weighing up his options.
‘Okay.’
He would accept her decision. For now, at least, that would have to do.
* * *
‘You have a visitor.’
Daisy, a young intern working for Spicer Shoes, came through from the workshop and stuck her head around the door of Isobel’s office. From seeing her flushed cheeks and the exaggerated widening of her eyes Isobel already knew who the visitor was. Orlando Cassano had that kind of effect on women.
Isobel massaged her temples. She really was in no mood this morning to take any more of Orlando’s bullying. The torturous meal last night had been more than enough, thank you. That meal during which...oh, yes...she had somehow found herself agreeing to marry him.
Pleading a headache had cut short the evening, and Isobel had found herself travelling home in the back of a taxi, trying to put the pieces of her life back together. If she had thought being pregnant was enough of a shock—with the worry and responsibility, the dramatic changes it would mean to her life—she now found herself caught up in the giddying, controlling world of Orlando Cassano. And it was a frighteningly dangerous place to be. For her freedom, her sanity, and most of all for her virgin heart.
For Isobel’s heart had never been touched by desire before. Broken by her father’s death, yes. Tortured by her fractured relationship with her mother, definitely. But love...? That was something that happened to other people and she had no
