live in?”
Bristling, she snapped, “Not a hovel, if that’s what you’re implying,” and wondered how much Lindsay had told him about her straitened circumstances.
“I didn’t suggest that it was,” he returned mildly. “I’m merely trying to learn more about you. Paint the appropriate background to a very attractive portrait, if you like.”
Mollified enough to reply less defensively, she said, “I rent a two-bedroom town house in a gated community several miles south of the city.”
“In other words, a safe place where your son can play in the garden without fear that he might wander away.”
She thought of the narrow patio outside her kitchen, the strip of lawn not much bigger than a bath towel that lay beyond it and her neighbors on the other side, the Shaws—a crusty old couple in their eighties, who complained constantly that Matthew made too much noise. “Not exactly. I have no garden as such. I take him to play at a nearby park instead, and if I’m not available, my sitter takes him for me.”
“But there are other children he can visit in this gated community, boys his own age, with similar interests?”
“Unfortunately not. Most residents are older—many, like my baby-sitter, retired.”
“Does he at least have a dog or cat to keep him company?”
“We aren’t allowed to own pets.”
He raised his elegant black brows. “Dio, he might as well be in prison, for all the freedom he enjoys.”
In truth, she couldn’t refute an opinion which all too closely coincided with her own, but she wasn’t about to tell him so. “Nothing’s ever perfect, Mr. Orsini. If it were, our children wouldn’t be growing up with one parent standing in for two.”
“But they are,” he replied. “Which brings me to my next question. Now that you’ve had time to recover from the initial shock, what is your opinion on the content of the letters?”
“What?” She raised startled eyes to his and found herself impaled in a gaze at once penetrating and inscrutable.
“Your opinion,” he repeated, a sudden hint of steel threading his words. “Surely, Signora Mallory, you haven’t forgotten the real reason you’re here?”
“Hardly. I just haven’t given the matter…much thought.”
“Then I suggest you do so. Enough time has passed since my wife wrote of her last wishes. I do not propose to delay honoring them any longer than I have to.”
“Well, I do not propose to be bullied, Mr. Orsini, not by you or anyone else. Since you’re so anxious for an answer, though, let me be blunt. I can’t see myself ever agreeing to Lindsay’s request.”
“Her friendship meant so little to you, then?”
“Save the emotional blackmail for someone else,” she shot back. “It’s not going to work with me.”
His smoky-gray eyes darkened. With suppressed anger? Sorrow? Frustration? She couldn’t tell. His expression gave away nothing. “Emotion does not play a role in this situation. It is a business proposition, pure and simple, devised solely for the benefit of your child and mine. The most convenient way to implement it is for you and me to join forces in marriage.”
“Something I find totally unacceptable. In case you’re not aware, marriages of convenience went out of fashion in this country a long time ago. Should I ever decide to marry again, which is doubtful, it will be to someone of my own choosing.”
“It seems to me, Signora Mallory, that you’re in no position to be so particular. By your own admission, you do not own your own home, which leaves you at the mercy of a landlord, you’re overworked and your son spends a great deal of time being cared for by someone other than yourself.”
“At least I have my independence.”
“For which both you and your boy pay a very high price.” He regarded her silently a moment, then in a seductively cajoling tone, went on, “I admire your spirit, cara mia, but why are you so set on continuing with your present lifestyle, when I can offer you so much more?”
“For a start, because I don’t like having charity forced down my throat.” And calling me cara mia isn’t going to change that.
“Is that how you see this? Do you not understand that, in our situation, the favors work both ways—that my daughter stands to gain as much from the arrangement as your son?”
Absently Corinne touched a fingertip to the velvet-soft petals of the nearest rose. They reminded her of Matthew’s skin when he was a baby. Before he’d turned into a tyrant.
…Raffaello will do his best to keep me alive in her heart, but having you to turn to would be the next best thing to having me, Lindsay had written, or words to that effect. I’m entrusting you with my daughter’s life, Corinne….
Seeming to think she was actually considering his proposal, Raffaello Orsini asked, “Are you afraid I’m going to demand my husbandly rights in the bedroom?”
“I don’t know. Are you?” Corinne blurted out rashly, too irked by the faint hint of derision in his question to consider how he might interpret her reply.
“Would you like me to?”
She opened her mouth to issue a flat denial, then snapped it closed as an image swam unbidden into her mind, shockingly detailed, shockingly erotic, of how Raffaello Orsini’s naked body might look. Her inner response—the jolt of awareness that rocked her body, the sudden flush of heat streaming through her blood—appalled her.
She’d moved through the preceding four years like an automaton, directing all her energies to providing a safe, stable and loving home for her son. As breadwinner, the one responsible for everything from rent to medical insurance to paying off debts incurred by her late husband, she’d had no choice but to put her own needs aside. To be assaulted now by this sudden aberration—for how else could she describe it?—was ridiculous, but also an untimely reminder that she was still a woman whose sexuality might have been relegated to the back burner, but whose flame, it seemed, had not been entirely extinguished.
“Don’t feel you have to make up your mind on that point at this very moment,” Orsini suggested smoothly. “The welfare of two children is the main issue here, not sexual intercourse between you and me. I shall not press you to consummate the marriage against your will, but you’re an attractive woman and as a hot-blooded Sicilian, I would not spurn your overtures, should you feel inclined to make any.”
Hot-blooded Sicilian, maybe, she thought, staggered by his arrogance, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before I come begging for sexual favors from you. “There’s not the slightest chance of that ever happening, for the simple reason that I have no intention at all of agreeing to your proposition. It’s a lousy idea.”
“Why? What’s wrong with two adults uniting to create a semblance of normal family life for their children? Don’t you think they deserve it?”
“They deserve the best that we can give them—and that is not by having their respective
