She knew she could always rent another property like this one in Chelsea, but that left her at the mercy of landlords, something she had seen too many times during her childhood. Rents could be put up and buildings suddenly sold. The business she had worked so hard to establish would be jeopardised if she didn’t own the property herself.
You could sell the villa after six months and be debt-free for the rest of your life.
Alice allowed the thought a little traction. The business she had sacrificed so much for was her baby, her mission, her purpose in life. Seeing it grow and develop over the last few years had been enormously satisfying. She had built it up from just a handful of clients to now one of the busiest salons in the area. She had celebrities and minor royalty on her books. People came to her because of the standards of excellence she maintained. To achieve her dream of setting up a luxury wedding spa would finally prove she had made it.
Failing wasn’t an option.
Not after using her career as the excuse for not wanting to marry Cristiano. The career she put before everything else. Relationships. Holidays. Fun. Even friendships. All of it had been sacrificed for work.
But she couldn’t marry Cristiano to solve that problem for it would throw her in the middle of an even bigger one.
Alice rose from her chair with her spine steeled with resolve. ‘I’ve made my choice. Now, if you’ve finished catching up on old times, I have a business to run.’
His eyes continued to tether hers as if he were waiting for her cool composure to crack. ‘Are you involved with someone? Is that why you’re saying no?’
Was he still so arrogant? Yes. Arrogance was hardwired into his DNA. A man in his privileged position had no concept of why a woman wouldn’t want to thrust her hand out for him to put a ring on it. He had it all: the money, the looks, the luxury lifestyle, the fast cars and exotic holiday destinations. Alice wished she had a lover to fling in his face. She considered inventing one but knew it wouldn’t take him long to call her out on her lie. He wouldn’t have to hunt around too far to find her social life was practically non-existent. Her work was her social life.
‘I know you find it hard to believe you’re irresistible because of your wealth and other...erm...assets, but I am not going to prostitute myself for the sake of an inheritance I neither asked for nor need.’
His expression gave nothing away. ‘I meant what I said, Alice. It will be a marriage in name only.’
No one said her name quite the way he did. His Italian accent gave it a completely different emphasis. Aleece. The sound of it was like an erotic caress. It made the base of her spine shiver as if he had touched her with a brush of his warm male hand. Thinking of his hands made her want to look at them.
Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.
But in spite of her rational brain’s pleas, she looked. Those broad-spanned hands had travelled over every inch of her flesh. Those long tanned fingers had coaxed her into her first proper orgasm. They had discovered all of her erogenous zones, tortured them with such intense pleasure it had shaken her to the core of her being. She could feel the echo of it even now, as if just being in the same room as him, breathing the same air as him, made her body recognise him as her only pleasure giver.
Alice dragged her gaze upwards and collided with his. He knew. Damn it, he knew how much sensual power he had over her. She could see it in the knowing glint in his pitch-black eyes. She felt it when he sent his gaze over her body as if he too were remembering what it had felt like to hold her in his arms as she splintered into a thousand pieces of shivering, quivering ecstasy.
He lifted a hand to his jacket pocket and took out a business card and placed it on the desk next to the copy of his grandmother’s will. ‘My contact details should you change your mind. I’ll be in London for the next week while I sort out some business affairs.’
Alice wilfully ignored the card. ‘I’m not going to change my mind, Cristiano.’
I’m not. I’m not. I’m not.
A cynical smile lifted one side of his mouth. ‘We’ll see.’
We’ll see?
What did he mean, ‘We’ll see’? Alice didn’t get the chance to ask him for he turned and left her office, leaving her with the lingering fragrance of his aftershave, the lemon and lime with a base note of leather that made her nostrils tingle...not to mention the rest of her body.
Meghan was bug-eyed when she came back. ‘Oh, my God! You didn’t tell me you knew Cristiano Marchetti. I didn’t recognise him at first. He’s much more gorgeous in the flesh than he is in photographs in the press. I nearly fainted when he walked past me just then and smiled at me. What did he want? Is he going to come here for treatments? Please let me do him. Can I do him? Please, please, please?’
Alice wasn’t going to explain her past relationship with her employee even if Meghan was turning out to be one of the best she’d ever had. And as for Meghan ‘doing him’, if anyone was going to ‘do him’ it was going to be her. She would like nothing better than to get a pot of hot wax and strip that supercilious smile off his too-handsome face. ‘He’s not a client. I met him a few years ago. He just dropped in to say hi.’
‘Met him as in met him and dated him?’
Alice didn’t respond other than to purse her mouth. Meghan blushed and bit her lower lip. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that. I know you insist on absolute confidentiality with celebrity clients. It’s just he’s so handsome and you never seem to date anyone and I wondered if it was because—’
‘Can you get my treatment room ready for my next client?’ Alice said. ‘I have some urgent paperwork to see to.’
Alice blew out a breath once Meghan scuttled away. For seven years she had told herself she’d made the right decision. She had chosen her career over commitment. Freedom over having a family. She had stood firm on her decision, not once wavering on it. Now, within her grasp was a way to finally achieve the success and financial security she had thus far only dreamt about.
Six months of marriage.
In name only.
She glanced at his business card. It seemed to taunt her with its presence.
Do it. Do it. Do it.
Alice snatched it up and tore it into as many pieces as she could and tossed them in the bin. It was kind of weird how they floated down just like a handful of confetti.
She hoped to God it wasn’t an omen.
* * *
Cristiano would have had a stiff drink if he’d been a drinking man, but the death of his parents and his older brother to a drunk driver when he was eleven made him wary of using alcohol other than in strict moderation. Seeing Alice Piper again was like having his guts slashed wide open. And stomped on. The mere sight of her reopened the wound of his bitterness until he wondered how he had stood there without showing it.
He’d felt it, though. God in heaven, how he’d felt it. The blood rush. The pulse race. The adrenalin surge. The kick and punch of lust.
He had stood there and drunk in her features like a dehydrated man standing in front of a long cool glass of water. Her indifferent poise, her cornflower-blue gaze that could freeze mercury, the way she looked down her aristocratic nose at him as if he had crept in from a primeval swamp with his knuckles dragging. Her body was as lissom and gorgeous as ever—perhaps even more so. Her unusual silver-blonde hair with her naturally dark eyebrows and the creamy, ageless perfection of her skin gave her a striking appearance that never failed to snatch his breath.
Her rejection of him stung and burned and churned even after all this time. He had thought what they’d had was for ever. A once in a lifetime love. Their passionate affair had been unlike anything he’d experienced before. He’d wanted to build a future with her. A family. He’d believed