Alicia looked up to Dante’s face and willed herself to stand tall, strong, when everything in her wanted to hurl herself back into his arms and beg him to kiss her again.
‘I don’t know what just happened there—’
He advanced with a dangerous look on his face. ‘I can show you if you like.’ He clearly didn’t like the direction things were going. Alicia retreated around the back of the seat and gripped it. Her top slid off her shoulder again.
‘That won’t be happening again. Just because you have me here as a result of extenuating circumstances, just because you’ve dressed me, does not mean that I am available sexually. I am not interested—do you hear me? I will not be used like this just because it’s… it’s easy or convenient.’
Dante regarded the woman in front of him. Two spots of high colour marked her cheeks; her mouth looked like a ripe moist fruit…her hair was coming undone, tendrils of curls falling in sexy disarray. He had no doubt in his mind that he would indeed be taking Alicia Parker to bed. She was here now, his for a month. Plenty of time. She wouldn’t last more than a week with this heat burning up the air around them.
Abby Green worked for twelve years in the film industry. The glamour of four a.m. starts, dealing with precious egos, mucky fields, driving rain…all became too much. After stumbling across a guide to writing romance, she took it as a sign and saw her way out, capitalising on her long-time love for romance books. Now she is very happy to sit in her nice warm house while others are out in the rain and muck! She lives and works in Dublin.
THE MEDITERRANEAN BILLIONAIRE’S BLACKMAIL BARGAIN
BY
ABBY GREEN
CHAPTER ONE
‘I AM quite certain that if I had fathered a child I would be well aware of the fact, which, needless to say, would be none of your business, as you are a complete stranger. Now take your hand off me immediately.’
Alicia Parker was still stunned into immobility by the sheer audacity of her actions, which had stopped this man in his tracks. She looked up into a face so savagely handsome that the breath left her body. All her poor muddled, overtired and overwrought brain could formulate were impressions. Tall. Broad. Dark. Gorgeous. Sexy. Powerful. Sexy. Powerful.
Eyes as cold and dark as the night stared down with uncompromising arrogance and supreme assurance that she—and her preposterous accusation—were so far removed from his gilded life that she must be certifiably mad to accost him like this. His look could have turned her to ice…and yet, awfully, Alicia didn’t feel cold. She felt hot. All over.
And as she watched, struck dumb by any number of things, the very least of which was his overwhelming presence, Dante D’Aquanni calmly and disdainfully extricated the expensive cloth of his suit from her white knuckle grip, flicked a glance to his minions nearby and strode off and out of the mammoth building which housed his offices in London.
He was gone, as if spirited away, without a backward glance at the petite, dishevelled woman who stood gaping at his departing back. Who’d had only the briefest of chances to get out a few words, her attempt to make him listen having failed abysmally.
Within seconds Alicia was surrounded by great hulking security guards and, without knowing exactly how, she found herself outside in the teeming rain and what had just happened seemed like a blur…or a bad dream…
Alicia’s soft mouth tightened into a grim line. Unfortunately, that day a week ago hadn’t been a bad dream. It was a stark reality and the reason why she was now seated in a tiny rental car across the road from an exclusively opulent hotel near the shores of Lake Como in Italy. She even had the remnants of a cold as a result of getting soaked to the skin that day. Dante D’Aquanni had refused to hear her out then, but he wouldn’t—couldn’t—refuse to listen to her here…
The sun had set some hours ago, but the sky was still a dark, bruised violet colour. That magical moment when day teetered into night had come and gone, its beauty unnoticed. And, across the road, the hotel quite literally glittered with luxuriousness, adding to this heightened sense of beauty.
Alicia was terrified. She was trying not to be bowled over by it. Trying not to let the pristine streets intimidate her, the unmistakable handsome foreigness of the smartly dressed people coming in and out of the hotel. But still not him…yet. This was a million miles away from anywhere she’d ever been, or anywhere she was ever likely to be. She closed her eyes for a second; they were gritty with tiredness, every limb ached with exhaustion. She knew she wasn’t far from collapse, but didn’t have the luxury of time to sleep, to catch her breath. She was existing in a haze, anger at his recent curt dismissal and sheer nerves keeping her going.
This was the only solution, and the only way she was going to get to see him, to force him to admit his responsibility. To admit to fathering her sister’s unborn child. A sudden image of Melanie’s small, pale face against the hospital bed linen made Alicia’s breath stop painfully. She closed her eyes but the image got stronger and she could see with alarming vividness, the scary profusion of tubes and wires that had snaked around her too thin body with its small bump. Alicia felt tears threaten; if anything happened to her… She couldn’t let it. Her eyes snapped open. She needed money now for Melanie’s treatment and Dante D’Aquanni would be made to accept the part he’d played in this chain of events. Would be made to pay. He was their only option. Alicia was desperate.
Her sister had been involved in a horrific car crash while on her way to see this very man and somehow, miraculously, she and her baby had survived. But she had suffered a fractured pelvis, among other more minor internal injuries. With the complication of being pregnant, the result was that they desperately needed to get Melanie into the care of a consultant who had expert experience with pregnancies which had suffered trauma. He was based in central London and Alicia knew well that this kind of care came privately and with a hefty price tag.
With no other close family and no friends who had anything approaching that kind of money to call upon, it had left her no choice but to take this course of action. The ward sister, an old friend of Alicia’s from her nursing training days, had assured her that Melanie was stable and could be left for a short time. That assurance had led her to feel confident enough to make this drastic, desperate step, along with the promise that she would be notified the minute that any change occurred in Mel’s condition.
She looked quickly at the hotel’s intricately carved doors again, afraid that she might have missed him. Nothing. She’d followed him earlier from his villa on the shores of the lake to the hotel, where he had met a stunning brunette on the steps. She could only imagine what they would be doing now and wondered if Dante D’Aquanni would be taking her back to his villa or entertaining her in an opulent suite inside. Alicia worried her lower lip. She prayed that he wouldn’t bring her back—Alicia needed him on his own.
Something caught the corner of her eye and she looked across the road again. A valet was bringing a low-slung, gleaming silver car to a halt outside the door, which was opening. Her eyes widened in apprehension—his car. And then he appeared. Mere feet away. Coming out of the hotel in a black tuxedo, the bow-tie undone at his neck. Certainly looking more dishevelled than when he’d gone in. The beautiful brunette accompanied him down the steps in a glittering silver sheath of a dress, also looking sexily tousled, long, dark lustrous hair around her shoulders. She looked thoroughly bedded.
Alicia wanted to feel revolted, but as she watched the woman twine sinuous arms around his neck and press close, all she did feel was a tingling awareness and something much more disturbing.