‘I can’t let him down,’ he said in a low mumble, as if talking to himself. ‘Not now. Not like this.’
‘Would you like me to go with you?’ The offer was out before Ailsa could stop it. ‘My flight doesn’t leave for a few hours so...’
His expression snapped out of its distracted mode and got straight back to cold, hard business. ‘If you come with me, you come as my wife. Deal or no deal.’
Ailsa was torn between wanting to tell him where to put his deal and wanting to see more of this vulnerable side of him. She could agree to the charade verbally but he could hardly hold her to anything without having her sign something.
‘I’ll go with you to the hospital because I’ve always liked your grandfather. That’s if you think he’d like to see me?’
‘He would like to see you,’ Vinn said and searched through the papers on his desk for something, muttering a curse word in the process.
‘Is this what you’re looking for?’ Ailsa handed him the pages that had fallen the second time.
He took them from her and, reaching for a pen, slid them in front of her on the desk. ‘Sign here.’
She ignored the pen and met his steely gaze. ‘Do we have to do it now? Your grandfather is—’
‘Sign it.’
Ailsa could feel her will preparing for battle. Her spine stiffened to concrete, her jaw set to stone and her gaze sent a round of fire at his. ‘I’m not signing it unless you give me time to read it.’
‘Damn it, Ailsa, there isn’t time,’ Vinn said, slamming his hand down on the desk. ‘I need to see my grandfather. Trust me, okay? Just for once in your life trust me. I can’t let Nonno down. I can’t fail him. He’s depending on me to get him through this. Along with Isaac’s sponsorship, I’ll pay you a lump sum of ten million.’
Ailsa’s eyebrows shot up so high she thought they might hit the light fitting above her head. ‘Ten...million?’
The line of his mouth was white-tight. ‘If you don’t sign in the next five seconds the deal is off. Permanently.’
Ailsa took the pen from him, his fingers brushing hers in the exchange, sending a riot of fiery sensations from her fingertips to her feminine core. The pen was still warm from where he’d been holding it. She remembered all too well his warmth. The way it lit the wick of her desire like a match on dry tinder. She could feel the smouldering of his touch moving through her body, awakening sensual memories.
Memories she had tried so hard to suppress.
She took a shaky breath and ran her gaze over the document. It was reasonably straightforward: three years of sponsorship for Isaac and giving her a lump sum of ten million on signing. While it annoyed her he’d used money as a lure, she realised it was the primary language he spoke. Money was his mother tongue, not Italian. Well, she could learn to speak Money too. Ten million was a lot of money. She was successful in her business but with ten million in her bank account she could expand her studio to Europe.
But then she realised how trapped she would be once she signed that agreement. She would have to spend three months with Vinn. She needed time to think about this. She had rushed into marriage with him in the past. How foolish would it be to rush into this without proper and careful consideration? She left the document unsigned and pushed it and the pen back to him. ‘I need a couple of days to think about this. It’s a lot of money and... I need more time.’
He showed no emotion on his face, which surprised her given how insistent he had been moments earlier. But maybe behind that masked expression he was already planning another tactic to force her to comply with his will. ‘We will discuss this further after we’ve been to the hospital.’ He put the paper under a paperweight and, picking up her overnight bag, ushered her out of his office.
He spoke a few quick words to his receptionist Claudia, explaining what was happening, and Claudia expressed her concern and assured him she would take care of everything back here at the office. Ailsa felt a twinge of jealousy at the way the young woman seemed to be such an integral part of the business. She wondered what had happened to the receptionist who had worked for him during their marriage. Vinn liked surrounding himself with beautiful women and they didn’t come more beautiful than Claudia, who looked as if she’d just stepped out of a photo shoot.
Ailsa waited until they were in Vinn’s car and on their way to the hospital before she brought up the subject. ‘What happened to your other receptionist, Rosa?’
‘I fired her.’
She rounded her eyes in surprise. She’d thought his relationship with the middle-aged Rosa had been excellent. She’d often heard him describe Rosa as the backbone of the business and how he would be lost without her. Why on earth would he have fired her? ‘Really? Why?’
He worked his way through the gears with an almost savage intensity. ‘She overstepped the mark. I fired her. End of story.’
‘Overstepped it in what way?’
He sent her a speaking glance. ‘Could we leave this until another time?’
Ailsa bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry... I know you’re feeling stressed and this must be so upsetting for you with your grandfather so desperately ill...’
There was a long silence.
‘He’s all I have,’ Vinn said in the same hollow-sounding voice he’d used back in his office. ‘I’m not ready to lose him.’
She wanted to reach for his hand or to put her hand on his thigh the way she used to do, but instead she kept to her side of the car. He probably wouldn’t welcome her comfort or he might push her away, which would be even worse. ‘You still have your dad, don’t you?’ she said.
‘No.’ He made another gear change. ‘He died. Car crash. He was driving under the influence and killed himself and his new girlfriend and seriously injured a couple and their two children travelling in the other car.’
‘I’m so sorry...’ Ailsa said. ‘I didn’t know that.’
It pained her to think Vinn had gone through such a tragic loss since she’d left and she’d known nothing about it. She hadn’t even sent a card or flowers. Had he kept his dad’s death out of the press? Not that she went looking for news about Vinn and his family...well, not unless she’d had one too many glasses of wine late at night when she was feeling particularly lonely and miserable.
He shrugged off her sympathy. ‘He was on a fast track to disaster from the moment my mother died when I was a child. Without her steadying influence he was a train wreck waiting to happen.’
Ailsa had rarely heard Vinn mention his mother’s death. It was something he never spoke of, even in passing. But she knew his relationship with his father had never truly recovered after his father was charged with fraud when Vinn was barely out of his teens. The shame on the family’s name and the reputation of the bespoke furniture business had been hard to come back from, but coming back from it had been Vinn’s blood, sweat and tears mission and he had done it, building the company into a global success.
‘I guess not everyone gets to have a father-of-the-year dad,’ she said, sighing as he turned into the entrance of the hospital. ‘Both of us lucked out on that one.’
Vinn had pulled into a parking spot and glanced at her again with a frown. ‘What do you mean? You’ve got a great dad. Michael’s one of the most decent, hardworking men I’ve ever met.’
Ailsa wanted to kick herself. She even