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?’
‘Why shouldn’t I recommend you? Your work is superb.’
Ailsa narrowed her gaze. ‘Presumably, you mean as an interior decorator, not as a wife.’
‘Maybe you’ll be better at it the second time around.’
‘There isn’t going to be a second time around,’ Ailsa said. ‘You tricked me into marrying you the first time. Do you really think I’m so stupid I’d fall for it again?’
He leaned back in his leather chair with indolent grace, reminding her of a lion pausing before he pounced on his prey. ‘I didn’t say it would be a real marriage this time around.’
Ailsa wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or insulted. Could he have made it any more obvious he didn’t find her attractive any more? Sex was the only thing they were good at in the past. Better than good...brilliant. The chemistry they’d shared had been nothing short of electrifying. From their first kiss her body had sparked with incendiary sexual heat. She had never orgasmed with anyone but him. She hadn’t even enjoyed sex before him. And, even more telling, she hadn’t had sex since him. So why wouldn’t he want to cash in on the amazing chemistry they’d shared?
‘Not real...as in—?’
‘We won’t be sleeping together.’
‘We...we won’t?’ She was annoyed her voice sounded so tentative and uncertain. So...crushed.
‘We’ll be together in public for the sake of appearances. But we’ll have separate rooms in private.’
Ailsa couldn’t understand why she was feeling so hurt. She didn’t want to sleep with him. Well, maybe her traitorous body did, but her mind was dead set against it. Her body would have to get a grip and behave itself because there was no way she was going to dive back into bed with Vinn... She had a sneaking suspicion she might not want to get out of it.
‘Look, this is a pointless discussion because I’m not coming back to you in public or private or even in this century. Understood?’
He held her gaze with such quiet, steely intensity a shiver shimmied down her spine like rolling ice cubes. ‘Once the three months is up I will grant you a divorce without contest.’
Ailsa swallowed again. This was what she’d wanted—an uncomplicated straightforward divorce. He would give it to her if she agreed to a three month charade. ‘But if we’re seen to be living together it will cancel out the last two years of separation according to English divorce law.’
‘It will delay the divorce for another couple of years, but that would only be a problem if you’re intending to marry someone else.’ He waited a beat before adding, ‘Are you?’
Ailsa forced herself to hold his gaze. ‘That depends.’
‘On?’
‘On whether I find a man who’ll treat me as an equal instead of a brood mare.’
He rose from his chair with an expelled breath as if his patience had come to the end of its leash. ‘For God’s sake, Ailsa. I raised the topic back then as a discussion, not as an imperative. I felt it was something we should at least talk about.’
‘But you knew my opinion on having children when you asked me to marry you,’ Ailsa said. ‘You gave me the impression you were fine with not having a family. I wouldn’t have married you if I’d thought you were going to hanker after a bunch of kids before the ink was barely dry on our marriage certificate.’
His expression was storm cloud broody and lightning flashed in his eyes. ‘You have no idea of the word compromise, do you?’
Ailsa gave a mocking laugh. ‘That’s rich, coming from you. I didn’t hear any talk of you offering to stay home and bring up the babies while I worked. You assumed I would gladly kick off my shoes and pad barefoot around your kitchen with my belly protruding, didn’t you?’
His expression locked down into his trademark intractable manner. ‘I’ve never understood why someone from such a normal and loving family would be so against having one of her own.’
Normal? There was nothing normal about her background. On the surface, yes, her family life looked normal and loving. Even since their divorce both her mother and stepfather had tried hard to keep things reasonably civil, but it was all smoke and mirrors and closed cupboards because the truth was too awful, too shameful and too horrifying to name.
On one level Ailsa understood her mother and stepfather’s decision to keep the information about her mother’s rape by a friend of a friend—who’d turned out to be a complete stranger gate-crashing a party—a secret from her. Her mother had been traumatised enough by the event, so traumatised she hadn’t reported it to the police, nor had she told her boyfriend—Ailsa’s stepfather—until it was too late to do anything about the pregnancy that had resulted. Her stepfather had always been against having a DNA test but her mother had insisted on it, saying she needed to know. When Ailsa was fifteen she had come home earlier than normal from school to overhear her mother and stepfather arguing in their bedroom. She’d overheard many arguments between her parents before but this one had been different.
