The Parenti Marriage: The Reluctant Surrender

As a child Giselle had felt that he had chosen to die to be with her mother and brother rather than live and be with her. Even now sometimes, in her darkest and most despairing moments, she still thought that. If he’d loved her, he’d have kept her with him…But he hadn’t.

Not that she’d been unhappy with her great-aunt. She hadn’t. Her great-aunt had loved and cared for her, building a new life for her. Of course it had helped that her great-aunt had lived nearly a hundred miles away from the home Giselle had shared with her parents and her baby brother.

Giselle started to walk faster, as though to escape from her own painful memories. Even now, after nearly twenty years, she couldn’t bear to think about what had happened. Her great-aunt had been wonderfully kind and generous in taking her in, and Giselle wanted to do everything she could to make sure the now very elderly lady was well looked after. Without her job it would of course be impossible for her to find the money needed to keep her aunt in her excellent retirement home. And that meant that, no matter how much she might personally resent Saul Parenti and his attitude towards her, she had to be grateful for the fact that he was continuing with the project and keeping the firm on. These were hard times, and to lose such a valuable source of income would have meant redundancies.

Giselle had never imagined when she had been studying and working so hard for her qualifications that there would be such a deep downturn in the economy—one that would affect the construction industry so badly. She had chosen architecture as her career in part because she had believed that she would always be able to find work. Work—and getting paid for it—were vitally important to a woman who had already made up her mind that she would have to provide for herself financially all her life, because she was determined never to share her life with a partner. And in part she had chosen it because she had fallen in love with buildings—great houses and other buildings owned by the National Trust which her great-aunt had taken her to visit so often whilst she had been growing up.

Engaged in her own thoughts, Giselle headed automatically for her parked car, but as she approached the bay instead of seeing her own car all she could see was the highly polished bonnet of a much larger vehicle in the space where hers should have been. Automatically her walking pace slowed, and then she stopped as she looked round, wondering if she had been mistaken about where she had parked. The click of a car door opening caught her attention. She turned in the direction of the sound, her heart plummeting as she saw Saul Parenti getting out of the car with the long bonnet, the one that was parked where she’d expected to see her own car, and coming towards her.

Her reaction was immediate—a gut-deep instinct that went beyond logic or reason, making her confront him and demand, before she could think about the recklessness of doing so, ‘Where is my car? What have you done with it?’

For sheer blind arrogance he doubted she had any equal, Saul decided, listening to her and witnessing her immediate hostility.

Her response confirmed every judgement he had already made about her, and reinforced his growing determination to put her in her place.

‘I had it removed from my parking space,’ he told her meaningfully.

‘Removed?’ Giselle felt the file she was holding slip from her grasp as the shock hit her, disgorging papers as it fell. ‘Removed?’ she repeated ‘How? Where to?’

She knew her voice was trembling under the weight of her shocked emotions, but as she dropped to her haunches to pick up the contents of her file she was helpless to control it. She hated the effect this man seemed to have on her. She had hated it from their first confrontation and she hated it even more now. It made her feel vulnerable and afraid—it made her behave with a defensive antagonism she couldn’t control. It made her want to turn and run away from him. But most of all it made her so acutely aware of him as a man that she hardly dared even breathe, for fear he would somehow sense how physically aware of him her body was. It wasn’t just the shameful stiffening of her nipples, nor even the shockingly purposeful beat of the gnawing pulse aching through her lower body. No, it was the feeling that a whole protective layer had been ripped from every inch of her skin, leaving it so sensitive and reactive to his physical presence that it was as though he had already touched her so intimately that her body knew him—and still wanted him.

How had this happened to her? Giselle didn’t know. It must be because of Saul himself—because of the intense aura of male sexuality he gave off. No other man had ever affected her like this. It shocked her that she could be so vulnerable so quickly to a man she didn’t know and didn’t think she’d like if she did know him. She’d controlled her emotions and her desires for so long that she’d believed she was safe. She must have let her guard slip somehow without realising it. But she could make things right again. She could make herself safe. All she had to do was keep away from Saul Parenti—and that should be easy enough. At least he didn’t want her. That would have been dreadful. She should be grateful for the fact that he was so obviously furious with her.

‘How?’ he was repeating tauntingly. ‘How are illegally parked cars normally removed? And as to where…’

She’d stepped back from him, giving him a haughty look that suggested his proximity was something she wanted to reject, Saul recognised, and his male pride was now as antagonised by her attitude as his temper. Women did not step back from him. Quite the opposite. They clung to him—sometimes far more than he wanted them to do.

Just for a moment Saul mentally allowed himself the pleasure of picturing Giselle clinging to him, her face turned up beseechingly towards his own. That would be a pleasure? Having her want him to bed her? Was he going mad? There was nothing about her that aroused him sexually, nothing at all. He liked his women softly feminine, not challenging and aggressive. He liked them warm and welcoming, not icy cold and rejecting. The thought of taming such a shrew might excite some men, but he was not one of them.

Having stepped back from Saul to what she hoped was a safe distance from the lure of his sexuality, Giselle managed to drag together the determination to insist, ‘My car was not parked illegally, and if you’ve had it clamped and towed away then you are the one who is breaking the law.’

Oh, yes, she was definitely a shrew, Saul decided as he bent to retrieve a stray sheet of paper that had fluttered close to his feet. Automatically he scanned the print on it and then paused to read it more slowly before demanding, ‘You’re working on this project free of charge?’

Desperate to retrieve the paper, Giselle reached for it, almost snatching it from him in her fear of accidentally coming into physical contact with him.

‘And what if I am?’ she defended herself sharply. ‘It doesn’t have anything to do with you, and you have no right to question me.’

There she went again, challenging him with her open animosity to him, when by rights she ought to be humbling herself, admitting her previous fault and seeking his forgiveness.

He had, Saul decided, had enough.

The history of his genes meant that he was not a man who allowed anyone to challenge him, and for a challenge to go unanswered was unthinkable. He might not rule Arezzio, but his ancestors had. They had ruled it and held it against all those who had challenged their right to it. Their blood flowed in his veins and those who defied him—in any way—did so at their own risk.

‘You think not?’

The silky tone of his voice had an electrifying effect on her, causing the fine hairs at the nape of her neck to stand on end, her flesh to react as though he had touched it, caressed it.

‘I understand from Mr Shepherd at the practice that your job is very important to you?’

‘He told you that?’ The words were spoken before Giselle could hold them back. She shivered inwardly with apprehension, unable to conceal the shocked fear that darkened her green eyes to a deep jade. She hadn’t realised that Mr Shepherd even knew how much her job security mattered to her, never mind discussing it with someone else.

So he had found something that made her feel vulnerable. Saul applauded himself.

‘He said that you had turned down far more prestigious job offers and career opportunities to remain with the firm—something which he appears to consider a mark of employee loyalty. I, on the other hand, believe your motivation must be something far more powerful, and am curious to know just what it is.’

He was curious about her? Even as he had spoken the words Saul had felt the jolt of wariness that had shocked through him.

What was it about this woman that was having such an unprecedented effect on him? First she antagonised him and aroused his anger. Now she was arousing his curiosity. Deep within him a normally silent voice was asking him the unthinkable. If she could touch the emotions he normally controlled so tightly that they were immune to being touched, and if he allowed himself to be aroused physically by her, then what would happen? Did he really need to ask? He knew, after all, what happened when someone put a light to a keg of dynamite. The result was destruction. Destruction? Did this infuriating woman have the power to arouse him to the point where that arousal could destroy the barriers he had put in place to keep him immune to the weakness of needing one specific other person in his life? Impossible, Saul reassured himself.

Saul was waiting for her response, Giselle knew—just as she knew that she didn’t want to answer him.

‘Why stay in a job for which you are over-qualified and I daresay underpaid? Unless, of course, you fear that all those qualifications of yours are merely pieces of paper and that in reality you are not up to the work you would be required to do at a higher level.’

Saul pressed her, determined not to step back from his probing just because of an inner warning he refused to give credence to.

His accusation jolted Giselle into an immediate repudiation.

‘Of course I’m up to it.’ Angry pride reflected in both Giselle’s voice and the look she gave him. ‘And I am confident that I could do any job I was offered.’

‘Are you now?’ Her assertion showed him yet another strand to her personality. With the revelation of each new strand he felt increasingly compelled to know more about her. Because she infuriated and antagonised him. Because she was so unlike any other woman he knew. Because she didn’t treat him as they did, with delight and docility, eager to please him and pleasure him, his own inner voice dryly mocked him.

She was obviously determined not to answer him, but Saul was equally determined that he would have an answer. He changed tack, saying silkily, ‘Correct me if I am wrong, but the Kovoca Island project is, as I understand it, all that currently stands between your employers and insolvency—and with that insolvency the loss of your job?’

Giselle’s mouth went dry and her heart started pounding wretchedly heavily as she recognised the threat in his words. She was forced to concede. ‘Yes, that is correct.’

‘Given your employer has suggested to me that it will facilitate matters if you are seconded to me, to ensure that in future all redrawn plans and costings are in line with my requirements, I should have thought that it is only natural that I would have the right to enquire into your reliability and your probity—in all professional matters.’

Silenced by the shock of what she had just learned, Giselle could only stare at him in appalled dismay.

This couldn’t be happening. He—her tormentor—could not be standing there saying that she would be working directly with him, that she would in effect be responsible to him and thus in his power. But he was, Giselle acknowledged as she fought against the panic washing through her at full flood force. If only she could tell him to find someone else to be seconded to him. If only she could turn on her heel and walk away from him…if only he didn’t affect her in the way that he did. So many if onlys. Her life was full of them—heartsickening, cruelly destructive words that spoke of what could never be. She was trapped, by duty and by love, and she had to hold on to this job even though that now meant that she would be in Saul’s power.

At least he did not know how vulnerable she was to him as a woman, Giselle tried to comfort herself. A man like him must be so used to arousing desire in her sex that he simply took it for granted—just as he seemed to take his pick of the beautiful women who flocked around him, from what Emma had told her. Well, he’d certainly never want to pick her. Thank goodness.

‘It is not my choice that you be my point person on this project,’ Saul pointed out. ‘And given what I already know about your inclination towards theft I must warn you that you will be very much on probation. The first sign I see that you are using the same unscrupulous methods you used to gain access to my parking space in your work, you will be out of a job.’

‘I made a mistake—’ Giselle tried to defend herself, but Saul wasn’t in any mood to be compassionate.

‘A very big mistake,’ he agreed. ‘And you will be making another if you don’t show some honesty now and tell me why you turned down two prestigious jobs. I won’t have someone whose morals I find suspect working for me in a position of trust.’

His meaning was perfectly plain, and it caused Giselle to blench.

Watching her, Saul felt confident that now she would tell him what he could do with his job. That was certainly what he wanted her to do. Loath as he was to admit it, somehow or other she had got under his skin in a way that he was finding increasingly hard to ignore—like an annoying, irritating, unignorable itch that needed to be scratched. He didn’t want that kind of intrusion in his life.

Giselle was trying not to let Saul see how vulnerable and anxious she felt. He wanted her to hand in her notice, she suspected. But she was not going to do so. She couldn’t.

His accusations might be unjust, and she might feel angry, but anger was a luxury that she couldn’t afford, Giselle was forced to concede.

She took a deep breath and said, as calmly as she could, ‘Very well. I will tell you.’

Her response was not what Saul had been expecting—and very definitely not what he had wanted.

Lifting her head, Giselle continued, ‘I turned down the other jobs because the great-aunt who brought me up now needs full-time care, and in addition to helping fund that I want to be here to ensure that the care is as good as the care she gave me. I can’t expect her to leave Yorkshire after she’s spent her whole life there, but I do expect myself to be here for her, doing everything I can to ensure that she has all the comfort and care she deserves. Working in London means that I can see her regularly. If I worked abroad that wouldn’t be possible.’

Against all his own expectations Saul felt an unwilling tug of grudging respect—and something more.

‘You were brought up by your great-aunt? What happened to your parents?’ he felt impelled to ask, the words almost dragged from him against his will.

‘They died, and I was orphaned,’ Giselle answered as steadily as she could, proud of how calm she managed to keep her voice.

Damn, damn. Saul swore inwardly as the result of his forcefulness was made plain to him along with something else—something that touched the deepest part of him, no matter how much he might wish that it did not. That single word ‘orphaned’ had such resonance for him—such personal and deep-rooted private emotional history.

He might have forced a confession from Giselle Freeman, but he wasn’t going to be able to force a resignation from her, given what she had just told him.

He started to turn away from her, and then something stopped him. ‘How old were you when…when you lost your parents?’

His voice was low, the words betraying something which in another man Giselle might almost have thought was a hushed, respectful hesitancy. But this man would never show that kind of compassion to anyone, Giselle was sure—much less someone he disliked as much as he had made it plain he disliked her.

‘Seven.’ Well, nearly seven. But there hadn’t been a party to celebrate her November birthday that year—just as there hadn’t been the year before either. A picture slid remorselessly into her head: coffins, two of them, one for her mother and one for the baby brother who had been buried with her, his coffin heaped with white flowers. And the house she had returned to with her father, filled with the agonising silence of his grief and her own guilt. She had longed so much for her father to hold her and tell her that it wasn’t her fault, but instead he had turned away from her, and she’d known he did blame her, just as she blamed herself. They had never talked about what had happened. Instead he had let her great-aunt take her away because he couldn’t bear the sight of her.

Seven! A thought, a fleeting memory of himself at that age, hazy and shadowed: his mother laughing as she stroked a smear of dirt from his cheek, how as that child he had felt his love for her and his happiness because she was there spill out of him to mix with the sunshine.

Saul felt the sour taste of his own revulsion against whatever it was that allowed children to be deprived of the love of their parents. He had been eighteen and he had found it hard enough to cope, even though by then he had thought himself independent and adult.

More memories were surging through the barriers Giselle wanted to put up against them. The other children at the new school she had gone to when her great-aunt had taken her in, feeling sorry for her because she didn’t have parents. They had meant to be kind, of course, but then they hadn’t known the truth.

In her desperation to close the door on those memories, Giselle made a small agonised sound of protest. She wished desperately that her car was here. If it had been she could have stepped past him and got into it and escaped, putting an end to her present humiliation.

Saul, hearing that sound and recognising the pain it contained—a pain he himself had felt and knew—heard himself saying before he could stop himself, ‘I lost my parents when I was eighteen. You think at that age that everyone is immortal.’

Silently they looked at one another.

What was he doing? Saul derided himself. This wasn’t the sort of conversation he had with anyone, never mind a woman who rubbed him up the wrong way and whom he’d already decided he didn’t particularly like. It had been that word orphaned that had done it. Seven years old and taken in by a great-aunt she now had to help support. That explained the cheap suit, Saul reflected.

She’d implied that there wasn’t currently a man in her life, but she must have had lovers. She might not be his type, but he’d be lying to himself if he didn’t admit that physically she had the kind of looks that turned male heads, and that mix of stitched-up coldness allied to the suppressed passion that flashed in her eyes when she couldn’t quite control it would have plenty of members of his sex keen to pursue her.

Fire and ice—that was what she was. How many lovers had she had? he wondered, the question sneaking up on him before he could stop it. Two? Three? Certainly no more than could be counted on the fingers of one hand, he suspected. What was he thinking? Whatever it was he must stop now—must not allow it to get hold and take root.

‘What happened to your parents? Mine died carrying out aid work at the site of an earthquake, when a huge aftershock destroyed the building they were in.’

Giselle’s muscles clenched—both against what he was saying and against the shock of his question.

‘After my parents’ death I wanted to talk about it, but no one would let me. I suppose they thought it would be too…’ he stopped.

‘Too painful for you.’ Giselle supplied, her voice cracking slightly, like an unhealed scab over a still raw wound.

What had been a hostile confrontation between them had somehow or other veered sharply into something else and somewhere else—a territory that was both familiar to her and yet at the same time unexplored by her. Because she was too afraid? Because it hurt too much?

She spoke slowly at first, the effort of speaking about something so deeply traumatic and personal making her throat feel raw.

‘My mother and…and my baby brother were killed in a road accident. My father died from a heart attack eleven months after the accident.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He was, Saul recognised. Sorry for the child she had been, sorry for her loss, sorry he had asked now that he knew the full extent of the tragedy.

‘Life is so fragile,’ Giselle heard herself telling him. ‘My baby brother was only six months old.’ She shuddered. “I can’t imagine how parents must feel when they lose a child—especially one so young—or how they cope with the responsibility of protecting such vulnerability. I’d never have a second’s peace. I could never…I would never want that responsibility.’

There was a finality in her words that found an echo within him.

She had said too much, revealed and betrayed too much, Giselle recognised. Not that she had told him everything. She would never and could never tell anyone everything. Some things were so painful, so shocking and so dark that they could never be shared—had to be kept hidden away from everyone. She could just imagine how people would treat her if they knew the truth, how suspicious of her they would be—and with good reason. No, she could never speak openly about her guilt or her fear. They were burdens she must carry alone.

But she must not dwell on the past, but instead live in the present, with her duty to her great-aunt. Determinedly she focused her thoughts on the issue that had led to this unexpected and far too intimate conversation, telling Saul, ‘If you want to cancel the secondment now that you have the answer to your question…’

She wanted him to cancel the secondment, Saul recognised, ignoring the fact that he had wanted to cancel it himself as he let his male drive to win take over.

‘You wouldn’t have been my choice. However, I don’t have the time to interview other applicants. Of course if you want to withdraw…’ He let the offer hang there.

‘You already know that I can’t,’ Giselle said stiffly. Saul shrugged.

‘I doubt that either of us is happy with the situation, but for different reasons it seems that we shall have to endure it and make the best of it.’

Giselle exhaled. Talking about her past had drained her emotionally and physically, and now she felt dreadfully weak and shaky—but there was still something she needed to know.

‘My car—’ she began, and then stopped when she realised how thin and thready her voice sounded. She was perilously close to the limits of her self-control, she knew. Her head was beginning to ache from the stress of their confrontation. Her lips felt dry. She moistened them with the tip of her tongue.

Saul watched the telltale movement of her tonguetip, his gaze sliding unwillingly down to the small movement of her throat as she swallowed. Her upswept hair revealed the length of her neck and the neat shape of her ears. Mauve shadows lay beneath her eyes like small bruises; her face was drained of any other colour. Something inside him ached and twisted, an emotion he didn’t recognise giving birth to an impulse to reach out and touch her, hold her.

Hold her? Why?

Why? He was a man, wasn’t he? And the way she had just drawn attention to her own mouth had had its obvious effect on his body. That was why he felt impelled to touch her. Right now, if he leaned forward and pressed his thumb to that special place behind her ear, if he stroked his fingertips the length of her throat, if he ran his tongue over the soft pillows of flesh that were her lips, he could make her pale skin flush softly with the warmth of arousal. He could make the pulse beat in her throat with desire for him. He could make those green eyes darken to jade and the breath shudder from her lungs. Saul took a step towards her.