women. The opposite sex had flown so far off his radar that the electricity between him and Eva had been a welcome reminder that he was alive.
After that initial zing her manner had been nothing but calm and professional towards him, which he’d assumed had been a product of the environment they’d been in. He’d also assumed that getting her out of the pit of hell that was Caballeros and into the more picturesque setting of Aguadilla would remove the straitjacket she’d put around herself. He’d certainly got that wrong.
Despite the zings of electricity that had flown between them that evening, she’d remained cool and poker-faced, his usually winning attempts at flattery being met with stony silence. She’d outright rejected his offer of a nightcap. Not only that, but there had been contempt in her rejection too.
There had been no denying it—Eva Bergen had been looking down her pretty little nose at him. At him.
No one had ever looked at him like that before. It had felt bitter and ugly in his guts and he’d dismissed her without a second thought. Rejection he could deal with but contempt?
It had been too much like the expression he’d seen on his father’s face when the media reported on one or another of Daniele’s dalliances with the opposite sex. His parents had been desperate for him to marry. Pieta had found a woman to settle down with—even though it had taken him six years to actually exchange vows with her—which meant it had been time for Daniele to settle down too.
Daniele had had no intention of ever settling down. His life was fun. He pleased himself, not answerable to anyone. If he wanted a weekend in Vegas, all he had to do was jump on his jet and off he would go, collecting some friends on the way to share the fun with. His perfect brother had never behaved anything but...perfectly, and he’d been held up as the shining beacon for Daniele to emulate. He’d been held up as the shining beacon before Daniele had even been out of nappies.
Well, Daniele had had the last laugh. He’d earned himself a fortune worth more than Pieta’s personal wealth and the estate Pieta would inherit combined.
And then the last laugh had stopped being funny. Pieta had died in a helicopter crash and the man he’d loved and loathed in equal measure, his brother, his rival, was no longer there. He was dead. Gone. Passed. All the terms used to convey a person’s death but none with the true weight of how the loss felt in Daniele’s heart.
‘I take my job very seriously, Mr Pellegrini. I’m not here to have fun.’ Eva said it as if it were a dirty concept. ‘Your flirting was inappropriate and your offer of a nightcap doubly so.’
No doubt his sister would call him a masochist for choosing to marry a woman who openly despised him. Francesca wouldn’t understand how refreshing it was to be with a woman without artifice. She wouldn’t understand the challenge Eva posed, like an experienced mountaineer peering up from the base of Everest, the peak so high it was hidden in the clouds. To reach the top would be dangerous but the thrills would make every minute of danger worthwhile.
The only danger Eva posed was to his ego and he would be the first to admit that his ego could use some knocks. He despised thin-skinned men and looking back to his reaction when Eva had rejected his offer of a nightcap, he could see he’d been as thin-skinned as the worst of them.
‘I would have thought an intimate meal for two in a Michelin-starred restaurant was the most appropriate place to flirt with a beautiful woman.’
The faintest trace of colour appeared on her cheeks. ‘If you flirt with me again I’ll leave.’
‘Without hearing what I wish to discuss first?’
‘That’s up to you. If you can control your natural tendency to flirt and actually get to the point, it won’t be an issue.’ She put a spoonful of soup into her wide, full-lipped mouth.
Daniele took hold of his spoon. ‘In that case I shall get straight to the point. I need a wife and want you to take the role.’
A groove appeared in her forehead, crystal-clear blue eyes flashing at him. ‘That is not funny. What do you really want?’
He sipped at his soup. Eva was right. It was delicious. ‘What I want is to get on my jet and fly away from here, but what I need is a wife, and you, tesoro, are the perfect woman for the job.’
There was a moment of stunned silence before she pushed her chair back and rose to her feet. ‘You are despicable, do you know that? You can keep your mind games to yourself. I don’t want to play. And for the record, I am not your darling.’
Snatching her canvas bag from the foot of her chair, Eva turned to stalk away from the terrace, out of the suite, and far away from this arrogant man who she had no intention of ever seeing again.
She hadn’t taken two paces when the sound of clicking echoed in the air and Daniele said, ‘Before you leave, I have something to show you.’
‘You have nothing I want to see.’
‘Not even a million dollars in cash?’
Against her better judgement—again—Eva turned her head.
There on the table, beside his bowl of soup, lay an open briefcase.
She blinked. How had he moved so fast? What was he? Some kind of magician?
The briefcase was neatly crammed with wads of money.
She blinked again and met his eyes.
‘Do I have your attention now?’ he asked. All his previous good humour, which she had already suspected of being a façade, had been stripped away.
She nodded. Yes. He had her attention, but there was a part of her that thought she had to be dreaming. A briefcase stuffed with cash only existed in dreams or the movies. Not in real life.
Daniele Pellegrini didn’t exist in real life either. He was a billionaire from an old and noble family. His life couldn’t be more different from her reality than if he’d been beamed in from the moon.
‘If you agree to marry me, this money, all one million dollars of it, will be handed to the Blue Train Aid Agency tomorrow morning. And this is only the start.’
‘The start?’ she asked faintly, looking back at all that lovely money.
‘If you sit back down I will explain everything.’
Eva inched her way back to her seat, resting her bottom carefully while she kept her gaze fixed on Daniele so he couldn’t pull another rabbit out of a hat that wasn’t even there.
He downed his Scotch, poured another three fingers into the glass and pushed it to her.
She didn’t hesitate, tipping the amber liquid down her throat in one swallow, not caring that his lips had pressed against the same surface just moments before. It was the smoothest Scotch she’d ever tasted and she had no doubt the bottle cost more than her weekly salary.
‘Agree to marry me and this money goes directly to your charity. On the day of our marriage I will transfer another two million into their account and a further three million dollars for every year of our marriage. I will give you a personal allowance of a quarter of a million dollars a month to spend on whatever you wish—you can donate the whole lot for all I care, it won’t matter as I will also give
