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Authors: Lynne Graham

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‘Even then your mind wandered places I could never follow,' Alessio acknowledged gruffly without turning his head. ‘We are very different people.'
For some peculiar reason that reminder distressed her, yet it was an undeniable truth. Alessio was an extrovert, but he didn't show his emotions—not the private ones anyway—and he was always in control. Daisy was an introvert, but love had smashed her barriers and she had poured out on Alessio all the fierce emotion and affection that no one else had ever wanted from her.
She
had been dangerously out of control. Afterwards, she had promised herself that she would never bare herself to another human being like that again. And, with the single exception of her daughter, she had kept that promise.
‘Yes...' she acknowledged unevenly, and just in case he might be thinking of that humiliating inequality she added, ‘You're organised and practical and sensible. You don't lose things or forget things or... or fall over or off things.' Sucking in a shaky breath, Daisy pinned her lips shut with an effort, her eyes suddenly smarting with tears. At seventeen she had been dumb enough to think that those' differences meant that they complemented each other.
‘Exasperatingly efficient but with not much in the way of imagination?' Alessio queried silkily. ‘Possibly I am about to surprise you.'
‘Surprise me?' Daisy questioned.
He swung back another door and stood back for her to precede him. Her fine brows knit as she walked through and glanced round a room obviously used as an office. She cleared her throat uncertainly. ‘Why have you brought me in here?'
His strong dark face hardened. ‘I didn't want to have to do this, Daisy.'
Goose-flesh prickled at the sensitive nape of her neck. ‘Do what?'
‘It was not my intention to use undue pressure.'
‘Undue pressure?' Daisy queried slightly shrilly, already calculating the distance she was from the door, her fertile imagination running riot.
‘I have employed every means of rational persuasion within my power.'
‘Tara...' Daisy sighed limply.
Alessio lifted a thick document from the desk and held it out to her.
Daisy tensed even more. ‘What's that?'
‘A deed of purchase for Elite Estates. I have bought the agency.'
The taut silence thrummed in her eardrums.
Her brow slowly furrowed. ‘That's not possible. Old Mr Dickson would never sell. It was his first business, and he may not take much of a direct interest these days but—'
‘The agency is not very profitable given the current state of the property market,' Alessio returned levelly. ‘Lewis Dickson couldn't close with my offer fast enough.'
‘But what would you want with a London estate company?' Daisy looked at him in perplexity. ‘You
couldn't
have bought the agency!' she argued with sudden conviction. ‘Giles would have known if there was anything like that in the wind.'
‘Carter is only an employee.'
‘But he manages Elite Estates—'
‘That does not grant him automatic access to his employer's decisions, and discretion was part of the deal.'
Alessio had bought the agency? Daisy studied the document, intricate legal terms blurring beneath her searching gaze until she finally picked out sentences that had a frightening ring of reality. ‘I just don't understand why...' she muttered in a daze.
‘I
could
make a very tidy profit on the deal. The agency is sitting on a prime site with a great deal of expensive space wasted on that car park. It's ripe for redevelopment.'
‘Redevelopment?' Daisy repeated sickly. ‘Are you talking about closing the agency down?'
Glittering eyes rested intently on her. ‘That's up to you.'
‘
Me?
' Daisy gasped. ‘What's it got to do with me?'
‘The fate of your former colleagues is in your hands,' Alessio delivered softly. ‘If you marry me, the agency will continue to do business. If you don't marry me, I will be consoled by a large profit but the agency will cease trading.'
A brittle laugh of disbelief was torn from Daisy. ‘You're not serious!'
‘Never before has so much ridden on the back of one little deal,' Alessio responded with complete cool.
‘But...but
you
wouldn't do that sort of thing...make it personal like that,' Daisy reasoned unsteadily. ‘That would be unethical.'
Alessio's eyes met her expectant gaze in a head-on collision. ‘Blackmail
is
unethical.'
Daisy tried and failed to swallow at that unashamed acknowledgement. ‘You're saying that if I don't marry you you'll put people out of work and it will be my fault. Why... why do you think that will influence me?'
Alessio's gaze wandered over her, taking in her stark white face, the horror in her expressive eyes, and the hold she had on the desk to stay upright. His lush dark lashes lowered and his shapely mouth quirted. ‘I know you.'
‘You don't know me. If you're the new owner of Elite Estates, it's got nothing to do with me!' Casting aside the document, Daisy turned her back on him, her stomach twisting. She was reeling with shock but struggling desperately hard to hide it.
‘Daisy, you couldn't sleep knowing that you were responsible for
one
person losing their job.'
Daisy flinched from that confident assurance, inwardly counting up the ten other people who formed the agency staff. In recent times, many estate agencies had cut back on employees. It would be very difficult, if not impossible for some of her colleagues to find work elsewhere. Four of the men had families to support. One woman was a single parent like herself, another had a husband who had recently lost his own job. The sudden loss of their pay cheques and their security would devastate all their lives.
‘Daisy...you feed stray animals. You weep over soppy movies. You worry that plants feel pain,' Alessio enumerated softly. ‘That bleeding-heart sensitivity may not have extended to me thirteen years ago but you are definitely not one of the world's most ruthless women.'
‘I hate you,' Daisy mumbled strickenly, her slight shoulders rigid with strain.
‘You hate spiders...but have you ever stepped on one?'
‘Don't be snide.'
‘I was being realistic on your behalf.'
‘I am a very realistic person but I never, ever thought that you would do anything like this,' Daisy confessed chokily. ‘I always thought that aside from all the flaws you couldn't help or were just born with...well, that you did at least
try
to be a basically decent human being...and even if you weren't very good at it at least the trying had to count for something. To find out that you're not even
trying
any more...Well, words just fail me...'
They appeared to fail Alessio as well because the silence stretched and thrummed for enervating and endless seconds. Then a strangled little hiss of air escaped him and all of a sudden he went off into a bout of coughing.
‘I hope you choke,' Daisy said thinly while she toyed wildly with the idea of telling Tara about his threat. Her daughter would be appalled. Didn't Alessio appreciate that? If Daisy talked, Tara's trust in her father would be destroyed. But such an act would damage and hurt her daughter most of all, wouldn't it? Tara had so many hopes and expectations already centred on Alessio. Acknowledging defeat, Daisy sagged like a beaten but bitterly resentful rag doll down into an armchair.
‘You've won...'
Alessio swung back to her.
‘I'll marry you,' she whispered jerkily. ‘But I want you to know that you are making a very big mistake.'
Alessio was very still, not a muscle moving in his darkly handsome face. ‘I don't think so.'
‘We will be utterly miserable together,' Daisy forecast.
‘That's a risk I'm prepared to take.'
‘Tara will be miserable too,' Daisy stressed.
‘Not if I have anything to do with it.'
‘She just won't believe that we're getting married again this fast.'
‘No?' Alessio queried silkily. ‘I wonder who it was who first filled her head with all that stuff about Romeo and Juliet?'
Daisy flinched and looked hunted.
‘Because, oddly enough, she's a very practical girl,' Alessio continued smoothly. ‘I wouldn't have said that she had a natural bent for throbbing melodrama. None of my family have. In fact the
only
person I have ever known who could turn a broken cup into a stirring six-act tragedy is—'
‘So we're getting married on Saturday, are we?' Daisy broke in feverishly fast.
‘But we'll still be lagging a long way behind the example set by Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers.' Alessio contrived to look simultaneously soulful and sardonic. ‘
They
got hitched within twenty-four hours.'
Two spots of scarlet now burned over Daisy's cheekbones. ‘I wouldn't know. I've never read
Romeo and Juliet
,' she said, crossing two sets of fingers the way she always did when she lied.
‘I'm reading it line by line. So far, it has been a most enlightening experience.'
Daisy's soft mouth compressed and she tilted her chin. ‘This will be a marriage of convenience, right?' she prompted snappishly.
‘Mutual convenience,' Alessio agreed silkily. ‘What else?'
CHAPTER SIX
J
ANET and Tara chattered cheerfully the whole way to the register office. It was just as well. Daisy was not in a chatty mood. Her wedding day. Her second wedding day. She tried hard to concentrate on positive thoughts. She was not in love with Alessio, nor did she have any illusions about this marriage. Alessio had made no attempt to pretend that it would be anything more than a convenient arrangement for Tara's benefit.
And Tara was ecstatic, Daisy reminded herself. Indeed her daughter had decided that her father was madly romantic and impetuous and that her mother was one incredibly lucky woman. But then Tara had been so absorbed in the end of the school term, packing for her French trip and contemplating the new life awaiting her in Italy on her return that she was currently suffering from a severe case of over-excitement.
Janet had remarked that Daisy had never been remarkable for her caution in Alessio's radius. As a thought for the day, it had not been inspiring. And when her aunt had had the insensitivity to point out that, after all, she had always had this
thing
about Alessio and that it would be pointless to interfere when the two of them had always acted
crazy
around each other Daisy had almost choked on her sense of injustice.
This time around, she had withstood Alessio with the heroic self-denial of a chocaholic on a strict diet. When he had asked her to marry him again, it had been like a shot of aversion therapy. No blissful dream of drifting down the aisle to the tune of a heavenly chorus had afflicted her. She had felt
ill
, hadn't she? She had not been tempted. But Alessio had employed blackmail. Alessio had defeated her only with cold-blooded threats and intimidation.
And Daisy had been truly shattered by that development. Now she asked herself why. All that inquisitive reading of the financial papers over the years had taught Daisy that Alessio was not a pussy-cat in the business world. Indeed, he was downright ruthless. In the world of international finance, the name of Leopardi was feared as much as it was respected. But the idealistic teenager whom Daisy remembered would never have sunk to using such brutal tactics in a personal relationship.
But then there was no
personal
relationship between them, Daisy acknowledged painfully. Before Alessio had learnt that she had his daughter, he had made it very clear that he wanted nothing more to do with his exwife. The sofa encounter had just been the knee-jerk response of an innately sexual predator. It had meant nothing. In fact, Alessio had been eager to believe that she was in his office to scrounge money, because he would have happily
paid
her to go away and lose herself again! So how could she feel anything but bitter and humiliated at the prospect of becoming his wife a second time?
‘You're awfully quiet, Mum,' Tara finally observed as Daisy clambered shakily out of the limousine which Alessio had sent to pick the three of them up.
‘Wedding-day nerves,' Janet commented lightly.
Tara frowned at her mother. ‘I wish you hadn't worn that black suit.'
‘It's smart,' Daisy muttered.
‘But you look like a pencil going to a funeral.'
A pencil, Daisy reflected wretchedly. She had barely eaten and slept for a week now and it showed. Alessio strolled towards them and her haunted eyes trailed over him in wondering disbelief. He exuded vibrant energy in surplus waves, his eyes diamond-bright, a brilliant smile curving his relaxed mouth. In an exquisitely tailored cream suit that accentuated his golden skin and black hair, he looked as if he had strayed off a Hollywood movie set. Daisy averted her attention again, menaced by the strength and resilience of the enemy.
‘As you can see, Mum is just overwhelmed,' Tara burbled. ‘It's nerves... not cold feet or anything like that!'
‘So you didn't try to make a last-minute break for it through the bathroom window?' Alessio murmured softly to Daisy.
Daisy sidled off one foot onto the other because, oddly enough, there
had
been an insane moment when Tara had been hammering on the door and telling her that the limo had arrived when she had considered using the fire escape. Alessio curved what felt like an imprisoning arm of steel round her slender back. Daisy went rigid. The scent of him so close flared her nostrils. Clean and warm and very male but, worst of all, agonisingly familiar. Her senses remembered him. In a pitch-dark room, she could have picked Alessio out of a hundred men. The knowledge absolutely terrified her.
 
The marriage ceremony was brief. A tide of sick dizziness ran over her as a slender platinum wedding ring was threaded over her knuckle.
‘Signora Leopardi...' Alessio carried her ice-cold fingers smoothly to his lips and kissed them.
The return of that name churned up Daisy's stomach. Tugging free of his light hold, she rubbed her trembling fingers against her skirt. Her wavering smile, kept in valiant place for Tara, died away altogether.
Alessio swept them off to an early lunch at the Ritz. He ate a hearty meal, whereas his bride couldn't manage a single lettuce leaf. He cracked jokes with Janet and teased Tara. No, there was nothing remotely sensitive about Alessio, Daisy reflected. When Alessio triumphed, he was never tempted to a show of mock humility. No, indeed. He radiated glowing satisfaction and that burning, wolfish smile flashed out with unnerving frequency. When a Leopardi was on top, all was bliss in the Leopardi world.
Repelled by that brazen lack of remorse, Daisy escaped to the cloakroom and, finding a comfortable chair, sat there for a while with the attitude of an earthquake victim waiting for the tidal wave that would surely follow. When she finally emerged again, she was startled to find Alessio waiting outside for her.
‘I thought you might have done a runner,' he confided with complete calm. ‘Lucky for you that you didn't. I would have called the police—'
‘The
police
?' Daisy repeated in horror.
‘When your sense of tragedy overpowers you, you are very likely to fall under a bus.
Dio
, in the state you're in right now, it would be like letting a rampaging toddler loose in rush-hour traffic!' Alessio said with rueful amusement. ‘I have known people who have faced death with greater fortitude than you faced our wedding with today, but it has been a memorable experience for which I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I have been entranced from the minute you tottered into the register office in unrelieved black. Every lachrymose sigh, every sensitive shudder has held me mesmerised.'
Hot pink invading her extreme pallor, Daisy straightened her slight shoulders. ‘Excuse me?'
‘Oh, don't stop drooping,' Alessio pleaded, studying her with dancing golden eyes. ‘It makes me feel so wonderfully medieval and macho.'
‘I was not
drooping
!' Daisy bit out in outrage.
‘And you look so incredibly feminine and fragile when you do it, I get this really erotic buzz,' Alessio drawled with thickened emphasis, his golden eyes flashing over her with a sudden, startling smoulder of raw sexual appreciation.
Shocked to the core by the unexpectedness of that assertion, Daisy connected with that explicit look and jerked as if she had been struck by lightning. Instantaneous heat surged up inside her, making her slender thighs clench. Suddenly it was alarmingly difficult to breathe and her heart was pounding insanely fast. Horrified, she dropped her head, breaking that dangerous visual contact while she struggled to still her racing pulses and conceal the response he had so effortlessly evoked.
‘That remark was inappropriate,' Daisy managed to say in what she hoped was a lofty tone of disapproval. ‘This is a marriage of convenience.'
‘Convenience.' The repetition deep and audibly appreciative, Alessio caught her hand smoothly in his to lead her in the direction of Tara and Janet, who stood across the foyer. ‘How do you define convenience, or haven't you got around to that yet?'
‘Separate bedrooms,' Daisy said in breathless clarification. ‘I should think that was obvious.'
‘Barry was so sweet last night,' Tara was proclaiming loudly as they drew level. ‘I felt really sorry for him. He even brought Mum flowers.'
Alessio stilled. ‘Barry?'
Spinning around, Tara flushed and threw her father a startled look.
Daisy stiffened. ‘He called in to see me...and wish me well.'
Out of her daughter's hearing, Barry had congratulated Daisy on being such a fast mover and had then implied that she owed him a favour for her good fortune as Alessio had, after all, been his client. ‘Maybe you would like to marry him instead,' Daisy had said. Barry had roared with laughter and soon revealed the true motivation behind his visit. That very morning, Giles had told Barry that Alessio now owned Elite Estates. Barry, very much in barracuda guise, had called round to remind Daisy that she had always thought Giles Carter was a sexist pig. He had gone on to suggest that young, aggressive blood in management would bear much more profitable fruit.
They dropped Tara off with her luggage at the school. She hurtled onto the waiting coach to join her friends and waved frantically through the back window.
‘She's scared that one kid on that coach will fail to see the limousine,' Daisy groaned in embarrassment.
‘She's happy,' Alessio countered. ‘That's all that matters.'
A few minutes later, the limo drew up outside Janet's house. Her aunt smiled widely at them both, her eyes brimming with wry amusement, her indifference to the tense atmosphere profound. ‘Have a wonderful honeymoon!' she urged with immovable good cheer.
‘What honeymoon?' Daisy bleated as the door thudded shut.
‘We're flying straight to Italy,' Alessio informed her. ‘Janet packed a few things for you.'
‘What do
we
need with a honeymoon?'
‘I think we need one very, very badly.'
‘I thought I would be moving into your apartment until Tara got back—'
‘But you hadn't packed for that eventuality either, had you?' Alessio murmured drily.
The uncomfortable silence lasted all the way to the airport and onto the Leopardi private jet. After takeoff, the steward served them with champagne and offered them the flight crew's best wishes.
‘Have you told your family about this yet?' Daisy asked Alessio abruptly.
‘Of course.'
‘I suppose it hit them harder than a crisis on Wall Street.'
‘They would have liked to have attended the wedding.'
Daisy turned as pale as death and helped herself to some more champagne with an unsteady hand. ‘And I thought the day couldn't have got any worse...'
‘There would have been no recriminations,' Alessio asserted.
Daisy sat forward, dragged from her lethargy by a horrible thought. ‘We're not going back to live with them, are we?'
Alessio expelled his breath in a hiss. ‘Of course not!'
Daisy sank back, weak with relief.
‘But they were extremely shocked to learn that I am the father of a teenage daughter,' Alessio admitted tautly. ‘They feel very guilty.'
Daisy wasn't listening. She had already switched off. One Leopardi at a time was enough for her to deal with. ‘This has been the very worst week of my life,' she complained, looking back on a mindless blur of sleepless nights, abandoned meals and thumping tension headaches.
‘Last Saturday, I met you again. It destroyed my weekend,' Alessio volunteered with velvet-smooth emphasis. ‘On Monday, you told me I was a father. I spent the night walking the floor. Tuesday was dominated by an almost overwhelming desire to seek you out and strangle you. I consoled myself by buying the estate agency. Wednesday, I met my daughter. I cooled down and started to laugh again. Thursday, I had to play games of entrapment. Friday, I prayed that Tara would prevent you from buying a one-way ticket to somewhere like the Bermuda Triangle. But today we got married and the games are over. I can now finally relax.'
Outraged by that assessment, Daisy studied his darkly handsome face and long, lithe, undeniably indolent sprawl. ‘How can you call what you did to me a game? You
blackmailed
me!'
Alessio surveyed her, his bright gaze a sliver of gleaming gold below luxuriant ebony lashes. ‘Stress is not for you,
piccola mia
. I thrive on it. You don't. If I hadn't gone for the special licence and the blackmail you might well have starved yourself into a lasting decline before I got you to the altar. You've already lost a lot of weight.' His lean features were surprisingly taut.
The complete exhaustion which Daisy had been fighting off all week was relentlessly gaining on her. It was becoming an effort to think straight. An enormous yawn crept up on her while she wondered why he was going on about her weight.
‘And let me assure you that you will not be staging a continuing decline under any roof of mine. The next meal that is put in front of you you will eat,' Alessio spelt out as he sprang lithely upright. ‘Now I think you should get some rest.'

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