‘You’re not getting any younger, Theo. You’re thirty-two years old! Your mother dearly wished that she would see one of you boys settled... It wasn’t to be...’
‘I’m not following you...’
‘All of this unravelled over eight months ago,’ Stefano said heavily. ‘During that time it proved impossible to repay the loan. It’s been an uphill struggle just picking apart the extent of the losses and dealing with Alfredo...’
‘And you kept it all to yourself!’
‘There seemed little point in worrying you or your brother.’
‘Just tell me what ruinous interest rates Carlo has imposed and I’ll deal with it.’
‘Here is the part you may not like, son...’
‘I’m all ears.’
When it came to money there was nothing Theo couldn’t buy, and naturally he would pay the bill without complaint—although he was furious with his father for thinking it necessary to seek help outside the direct family circle.
Pride.
‘As you know, Carlo has a daughter. An only child. Sadly there were to be no sons for him.’
Even in the thick of disclosing what he knew his son would not want to hear Stefano couldn’t quite conceal the smugness in his voice, and Theo raised his eyebrows wryly. He had never known what had caused the enmity between his father and Carlo, but he suspected that the lifelong grudge stemmed from something ridiculously insignificant.
‘What has that got to do with anything?’ he asked, frankly bewildered at the tangent his father had taken.
‘Alexa... I think you may have met her... Or perhaps not... Well, it seems that the girl is not yet married, and Carlo...’ Stefano shrugged. ‘He is saddened at that—as I would be had I had a daughter... So part of the repayment schedule—which, in fairness to that sly old fox, is more lenient than at any bank—is that you help him out of his predicament with Alexa. In other words, Theo, I have promised him your hand in marriage to the girl...’
* * *
Alexa glared down at the outfit her mother had laid out for her to wear.
Something ‘suitable’ to meet a man she had no wish to meet, far less marry. A wildly ridiculous frothy dress in startling blue that swept down to the ankles with a plunging neckline and an even more ridiculously plunging back.
She was to be paraded in front of Theo De Angelis like a sacrificial lamb.
She 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
