She gaped at him. “That is...crazy. I—I don’t even know you. Silvio will—” she waved a hand at him, the multicarat ring she had not been wearing while cleaning blinding in the light “—lose his mind.”
“You had me vetted at the Giarruso,” he reminded her. “They do full security checks. And you know this isn’t going to get any better. If he’s hit you once, he’ll hit you again. And again. Until you’ll think it’s normal to greet the day with bruises. If he doesn’t send you to the hospital with broken bones.”
She stared at him mutely.
“My jet is waiting on standby.” He kept his gaze on hers, steady and sure. “I’m offering you a way out of this. The decision is yours. If you choose to marry Silvio, I can come back at a mutually agreed upon time and make you an offer for the ring.”
Her cheeks drained of color. She pressed her hands to them and shook her head. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Make a decision,’ he advised, casting a deliberate look toward the window. “And fast. When that carriage arrives, you are out of options.”
She paced the length of the room. Back and forth. Finally, she stopped in front of him, her small palms curled into fists by her sides. “You are really willing to do this? What about whatever woman is in your life? How is she going to feel about it?”
His mouth lifted. “There is no current woman, and even if there was, she’d know marriage is never in the cards for me. I’m fine with this, Mina. The question is are you?”
Her chin moved up and down.
“Is that a yes?”
“Sì.”
“You’re sure?” He held her gaze with his. “You have to be sure. There’s no turning back.”
“I’m sure.” Fear filled her eyes. “What if Silvio comes after us?”
“I will deal with him,” he said roughly. God help the man if he got his hands on him.
He swung into execution mode. “Get your purse and passport. Everything else can wait.”
She turned on her heel and walked out of the room, elaborate dress trailing behind her. Nate raked his hair out of his face. This might be the most unique business deal he’d ever made, but it certainly wasn’t the most complex. This one was simple. Marry the girl, get the ring and have their union annulled. As far as marriages went, it was the kind he could wrap his head around.
* * *
Mina was in shock. She must be, she decided as she sat in the backseat of the luxury car alongside Nate and attempted to contemplate the enormity of what she was doing. At this very minute, she was standing up Silvio Marchetti, one of Sicily’s most powerful figureheads, at the altar where her mother and her family and everyone they had known for generations were waiting for her to appear.
An image of her fiancé’s hard, unyielding face with its cruel edge flickered through her head. The incredulity of her failure to show up spreading across it until that white-hot rage of his set in. He would lose his mind. He would take it out on those around him. Her hands, laced together in her lap upon the fine silk of her dress, went ice-cold.
Would he take it out on her mother as the next best thing to her? Would her mother ever forgive her?
Simona Mastrantino might be an unfeeling, ambitious, repressed aristocrat willing to trade on her daughter’s fate, but she was all the family Mina had.
Would Silvio send his henchmen after her when he discovered what had happened? Did he have henchmen?
Her stomach heaved, a determined swallow all that was keeping her breakfast in her stomach. She was giving up everything she knew, agreeing to marry a man she hardly knew, to start a life far away from her home. Where would she go? To Paris where Celia was? Where she could use her French? Or was that too close to danger?
Nate continued to make phone call after phone call on his mobile, barking out orders in that deep authoritative tone of his. Phrases and words flew by in rapid succession. Civil ceremony, marriage license, documentation, prenup.
Nate flicked her a glance. “Can you have your solicitor give us the ring today? It would be better for us to leave tonight rather than wait around until the open of business tomorrow morning.”
Which might give Silvio a chance to track her down in a murderous rage. She shivered. “I will call him and find out.”
A quick conversation with Pasquale Tomei determined they were in luck. He had the ring in his home for safekeeping and could see them late afternoon. Which gave them time to marry first.
They pulled up at the Giarruso minutes later. She kept her head down as Nate put a hand to her back and guided her past curious onlookers through the front doors of the hotel and into the elevators to the penthouse suites. She breathed a sigh of relief as they rode skyward having avoided anyone she knew.
Everything happened in a blur after that. The arrival of the Giarruso butler with the prenuptial agreement Nate’s lawyer had sent along with a bouquet of beautiful white flowers for Mina and two simple, elegant gold bands. She kept her back turned as her colleague offered his congratulations to Nate, then left.
The civil registrar who had miraculously been produced to marry them arrived next. It was a testament to the authority of the stranger who was about to become her husband as every detail fell into rapid-fire place, nothing beyond his control.
Then she was standing by Nate’s side, her groom-to-be now dressed in a dark, expensive-looking suit rather than the jeans and shirt he’d had on when he’d arrived at her home. Insanely handsome.
The registrar began the short, textbook ceremony. Mina recited the words in Italian, Nate in English, words that should have been a sacred affirmation of a love that would last forever conducted in a church with a priest as with the traditions of her own faith.
Nate captured her hand in his as the ceremony came to a close, his dark, fathomless eyes holding hers as he slid the sparkling gold band on her finger. She swallowed hard, took the ring he handed her and slid it onto his elegant, strong hand. A flash of sensual awareness pierced the numbness blanketing her as the heat of his skin bled into hers. Those beautiful hands would be eminently capable of handling a woman.
Devastatingly exciting. Too bad she would never get to find out how exciting.
Her gaze lifted to his, curiosity plastered all over her face. A dark gleam entered his inscrutable gaze, injecting his almost black eyes with a heat that stole her breath.
The registrar indicated Nate could kiss his bride. He lowered his head to hers, his hands resting lightly on her waist to draw her closer. “Just to keep it real,” he murmured in her ear.
He pulled back and set his gaze on her lips. Her heart pounded in her chest as he bent his head and claimed her mouth in a whisper-soft kiss, his hard, sensuous lips settling against the pillowy softness of hers with unerring accuracy. For a moment she remained frozen, neither responding nor rejecting. Nate edged her lips further apart with a light pressure that commanded rather than asked. With a helpless sigh, she relaxed against him, sinking into his warmth as his hand came up to cup her jaw, angling her for his consumption.
It was every bit as good as she’d imagined it would be. She grabbed a handful of his shirt to steady herself, knees weak. She’d been kissed before, surely, by a couple of men, but never like this. Never so expertly, so thoroughly.
Utterly under his spell, a soft sound escaped her throat. The officiant gave a delicate cough. Nate’s hands fell away from her face as he put some distance between them, a flare of something she couldn’t read blazing