wanted to storm out of the house, head for the nearest port and take a boat to the opposite end of the world—where she would hide out for maybe ten years, until this whole ludicrous situation had been sorted out.
Without her involvement.
At first, when her father had sat her down and told her that she was to be married to a De Angelis, she had thought that he was joking.
An arranged marriage? In this day and age? To a son of the man with whom he had had a stupid, simmering feud for thirty-five years? What else could it have been but a joke?
That had been a week ago—plenty long enough for her to discover that her father had been deadly serious.
‘The poor man is in serious financial trouble.’ Carlo Caldini had opened up to her in an attempt to pull at her heartstrings. He had looked at her with a sad expression and mournful eyes. ‘True, he and I have not seen eye to eye over the years...’
‘All thirty-five of them, Papà...’
‘But in the end who else does one turn to but a friend? I would have done the same in his position...’
Alexa had been baffled at this show of seemingly heart-wrenching empathy, but if her father had deemed it fit to rush to the rescue of a man he had spent over three decades deriding, then so be it. What did it have to do with her?
Everything, as it had transpired.
She had been bartered like a...a...piece of meat!
She adored her father, but she would still have dug her heels in and point-blank refused had he not pulled out his trump card—in the shape of her mother.
Cora Caldini, recovering from a stroke, was under doctor’s orders to take it easy. No stress, her family had been warned. And, more than that, her father had confided, this last stroke had been the most serious of three... Her heart was weak and all her talk was of her mortality, of her dying before she could see her only child married and settled. What if something happened to her? her father had asked. What if she was taken away from them before her only wish could be granted?
Caught in the eye of a hurricane, Alexa had ranted and raved, had stood her ground with rousing lectures about modern times, about arranged marriages being a thing of the past. She had pointed out, arms folded, that they hadn’t had their marriage arranged so why should she? She had waxed lyrical about the importance of love, even though she didn’t know the first thing about that. She had darkly suggested that the last thing Cora Caldini would want would be a phoney marriage for all the wrong reasons...
In the end she had gained the only concession that she could. If she married the man then it would be on her terms. After a year of unhappy enforced marital misery she would be free to divorce and Stefano De Angelis would be released from his debt. Her father had quickly acquiesced.
Now, with the man due to arrive at their mansion within the hour, she gritted her teeth and returned the elaborate blue dress to the wardrobe from which it had been removed.
She wasn’t going to dress up like a doll for a man whose reputation as a commitment-phobe womaniser spanned the country and beyond. There had been no need to look him up on the Internet because she knew all about him—and his brother. Theo and Daniel De Angelis, cut from the same cloth, both ruthless tycoons, both far too good-looking for their own good.
Despite her privileged background, Alexa had made it her life’s mission to avoid men like them. She had plenty experience with the superficiality of men who had money and power. She had been surrounded with them for years. She had seen the way they always took it as their God-given right that they could do as they pleased and treat women as they liked simply because they could.
She disapproved of everything Theo De Angelis stood for. Certainly the sort of men she preferred had always been of the thoughtful and considerate variety.
When she thought about love she thought about her parents—thought about being swept off her feet by someone kind and humorous, with whom she could enjoy the sort of united happiness her parents enjoyed. When she contemplated marriage she knew that there would be no compromises made. She would marry her soulmate—the man whose hand she would want to hold for the rest of her life. She had met sufficient idle, arrogant, self-absorbed and vain rich guys—guys exactly like Theo De Angelis—to know that she would never find her soulmate amongst them.
And look at her now! So much for all her ideals!
She showered, taking her time because she certainly wasn’t going to scuttle down to the drawing room to wait for him—like an eager bride-to-be, thrilled to nab a man the tabloid press had once labelled the most eligible bachelor alive.
And she wasn’t going to wear the blue dress—or any dress, for that matter. In fact she wasn’t going to wear anything that displayed her body at all.
She chose a pair of jeans and a loose-fitting blouse that was buttoned to the neck and then, taut with suppressed anger at her situation, stared at her reflection in the mirror.
Long, wavy dark hair, pulled back into a no-nonsense bun, framed an oval face. Like her father, she was olive-skinned, with dark eyebrows and thick, dark eyelashes, but from her mother she had inherited her bright turquoise eyes. Her best feature, as far as she was concerned—because the rest did little to excite the imagination. She wasn’t long and leggy, and she had stopped being able to fit into a size eight the second she had hit adolescence. Hers, to her eternal regret, was an unfashionable five-foot-four hourglass figure—the sort that personal trainers over the years had tried and failed to whip into shape.
She heard voices before she reached the drawing room because the door was open, and was assailed by a sudden attack of nerves.
It was one thing pouring scorn on the likes of Theo De Angelis from the relative safety of her bedroom.
It was quite another holding on to her self-righteous, justifiable fury when he was perched on a chair, metres away from her, just out of sight.
She had never seen him in the flesh. He lived in London, but even if he had lived in Rome she probably wouldn’t have seen him anyway, because she made a point of avoiding society dos whenever possible.
Heart beating fast, she took a deep breath and entered the drawing room.
Drinks were being served and her parents were sitting opposite him, their body language indicating that they were delighted with whatever he happened to be saying.
Conversation came to an abrupt halt.
Alexa had never thrived on being the centre of attention. Along with her background of vast wealth, she had grown up in circles where the girls were catty and where looks counted for everything. Trapped in a figure that had always catapulted her in the direction of baggy clothes, she had learned to leave the attention-seeking to others, and once she had left school had turned her back on it completely.
Right now she found herself riveted by the long, lean man, relaxing in a deep velvet chair which he seemed to dwarf.
Photos could say so much, but they had given her very little indication of just how big and muscular he was. They had also not prepared her for the sheer outrageousness of his looks. He was drop-dead gorgeous. His hair was cropped short and black, his features perfectly chiselled, his eyes lazy and the most peculiar shade of green she had ever seen, fringed with the sort of luxurious lashes any woman would have given her
