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“The appearance of it at least.” She regarded him more closely. “I suppose you can’t exactly have a public bad day either.”
He chuckled, the sound dark, rolling over her like a thick summer night. “Of course I can. I can do whatever I like, behave as badly as I like. I’m Renzo Valenti, and no one is going to lecture me on decorum.”
“Except maybe your mother.”
He laughed again. “Oh, yes, she most definitely would. But there is nothing my parents can do to me.” He looked past her, at the city visible through the large windows. “They gave me too much freedom for too long, and now I have too much power. All they can do is direct their disapproval at me with as much fervor as humanly possible. A pity for them, but rather a win for me, don’t you think?”
“In some ways approval and disapproval is power, isn’t it?” She thought of her own family. Of the fact that what had kept her rooted in her childhood home for so long was the knowledge that if she should ever leave she would never be able to go back. That if she ever stepped foot out of line her father would disown her. Would turn all of her siblings against her, would forbid her mother from having any contact with her. It was the knowledge that the disapproval would carry so much weight she would be cut off completely, and in order to make even one decision of her own she would have to be willing to accept that as a consequence.
“I suppose.”
“You don’t believe me. But that just means that your parents’ approval doesn’t come with strings.”
That made him laugh again, and he wandered over to the bar, taking out a bottle of Scotch and pouring himself a drink. She wouldn’t have known what the amber-colored alcohol was only a few months ago, but waiting tables had educated her.
“Now, that isn’t true. It’s only that I possess a certain amount of string-pulling power myself. So what you have is a power struggle more than a fait accompli.”
“That’s what I needed,” she said, “strings.”
Of course, that was what actually hurt, she concluded, standing there and turning over what he said. The fact that she wasn’t a string. Her presence in their life wasn’t a string. Control mattered to her father, not love. And he couldn’t have anyone around to challenge that control because it might inspire the other people in his household to do the same.
Parental love wasn’t strong enough to combat that. If there was any parental love coming from his direction at all.
“You should probably get some rest. You will have to start getting ready for the gala tonight as soon as possible. So a short nap might be in your best interest.”
She wasn’t exactly sure what had inspired the abrupt comment, but she would be grateful for some distance. Grateful for a little bit of time away from Renzo and his magnetic presence, and all of the feelings and emotions he stirred up inside her.
“I think I will have a nap. Is... Is someone going to come and help with my makeup and hair?”
“Of course. I’m hardly going to leave that to chance on the night of the most important professional event of the year.”
“Good. I’m too relieved to be offended.” And then she turned and walked away from him, heading into the first bedroom that she saw. Without another thought, she threw herself across the plush mattress and closed her eyes.
And if it was Renzo she saw behind her closed lids rather than the brilliant city skyline, she chose to ignore that.
* * *
Renzo had a plan. And he had a feeling it would be one that was quite simple to complete. He was intent on seducing Esther tonight. Judging by the way she had looked at him this afternoon, the seduction was halfway complete. He was not a vain man, but he was also not a man given to false modesty.
Esther was attracted to him. She had been affected by that kiss, and he would be able to overtake her senses yet again when he touched her tonight. More than that, she was affected by all of this. By the luxury of the travel, by the places in the world that he brought to her fingertips by virtue of his money and connections.
He wasn’t angry that she had an interest in these things; rather, he found it to be a boon to his cause.
If she had been as unaffected by these things as she had claimed that she would be, then he would have lost some leverage. But she wanted to go to school, she wanted to see the world, and whether she knew it or not, she craved his touch. He could give her all of those things. He could satisfy her in a way that no other man could, in a way no other man had.
All she would have to do was agree to marry him. Beyond that, she would have to present a respectable front in public. But that was it. He could see no reason she would find that objectionable.
He had lied to her, of course, when he said that his parents had no leverage with him. His father had presented incredibly hard leverage at his home only two weeks ago. And dammit all, Renzo was not immune. He would not have control in his stake of the family business given up to his brother-in-law. He would not have it given to anyone. He had given up enough.
In order to maintain the status quo, he had already given up a child. He would not lose anything more.
Rage burned in his chest, the kind of rage he had not felt for years. He hadn’t realized it was quite so strong still. He had thought he had accepted that decision. His parents had been acting in his best interest. But it burned. In fact, the more the years passed, it seemed to burn even brighter.
The older he got, the more control he assumed of his life, the angrier he was about the lack of control he’d had at sixteen.
His line of thinking was cut off completely when the door to Esther’s room opened and a flash of slender leg caught his gaze. He turned his focus to her, a hot slug of lead landing in his gut and making his body feel heavy.
Her dark hair was hanging loose, in glossy waves around her shoulders. The bright blue dress she had in place showed off her curves, enhancing her modest bust with the heart-shaped line.
The shimmering, fluttering fabric hung loose over her stomach, a stomach that was showing subtle changes brought about by the pregnancy.
Gold shadow enhanced her eyes, and her cheeks were the color of poppies, matching her full lips.
She was an explosion of color, of shimmering light, and he could not take his eyes off her. Not for the first time, he wondered who might be seducing whom. Perhaps the idea of staying with him was in her plans already. Perhaps all of this was an elaborate ruse to gain access to his wealth and power.
Looking at her now, combined with the incontrovertible evidence of her pregnancy from the scan, he wasn’t sure if it mattered. If she was every bit as innocent as she claimed, and appeared to be, or if she was calculating.
He should care. He just found that he didn’t.
“You look amazing,” he said, closing the space between them and curving his arm around her waist. The stylist he had hired was behind her in the room, and he knew that he could use that as an excuse later for what he was about to do.
He leaned in, brushing his lips against hers. A taste, a tease for them both.
It became apparent immediately that he had not imagined the heat and fire between them. In fact, just that brief touch ignited something inside him that was hotter than anything he’d felt in his memory.
It was nothing. Just lips. Just a hand on the curve of her waist.
And it left him shaken.
“Come,” he said, his voice rough, “cara, let us go to the ball.”
CHAPTER NINE
THE VENUE WAS packed full of people, lavish and expensive, money dripping from every corner of the place. From the diamonds that hung in women’s ears, to the chandelier that hung overhead. It was the perfect example of the kind of opulent lifestyle that Renzo could offer her if she chose to stay with him. The perfect piece of manipulation, and one he had not even planned for.
But it would do. It would do nicely. Esther clung to his side, her delicate fingers curved around his biceps. And even though there were layers between them—his coat and his shirt—he could still feel the heat from her skin.
Yes, this was a very nice diversion, and one that would work to his advantage, but he couldn’t wait till after. Till he would finally strip her bare and hold her in his arms. It had become a madness over the past few weeks. To resist her, to wait.
To speak to her over dinner when he’d wanted to pull her over the table and have her there. To bring her books to read in bed, when he wanted to keep her occupied with other things in bed.
He had thought so many times of going into her room and breaking the door down, laying his body over hers and kissing her until neither of them could breathe.
Of taking full possession of her without any of this pretense. Without any of this delicacy. Because he had a feeling that it wasn’t needed. He had a feeling that the fire burned as hot in her as it did in him. And he desperately wanted to find out if that was true.
However, he could not afford to allow impetuousness to make his decisions for him. He could not afford to make a wrong move simply because his libido was ratcheted up several notches.
He shifted, her hip brushing against him. The reaction was immediate. Primal.
He wanted to hold on to those hips, hold her steady as he thrust into her. As he made her cry out. Thankfully, he had thought to call the doctor before they left Rome. Under the guise of discussing safe travel. And he had of course asked her about what sort of intimacy would be all right, given that the pregnancy was considered a slightly higher risk.
She said that normal intercourse would be fine.
A smile curved his lips. Yes, he was going to have her. Tonight.
“There are so many people here,” Esther said, “and they all seem to know you.”
“Yes, but I do not know them.”
“What must that be like?” she asked, as though he hadn’t spoken. “To be...famous.”
“Infamous, more like. I’m not going to lie to you, I’m mostly well-known because men know they have to watch their women around me.” Now she stiffened, and he was pleased with himself for that well-timed comment. It was a risk, but there was no hiding his reputation from her. However, using it to fire up a little jealousy in her couldn’t hurt, certainly.
“Is that so?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I was single for a very long time, Esther. And I didn’t see any point in living with restraint. As I told you earlier, I don’t have to watch the way that I behave. I have a certain amount of immunity granted to me because I am both male and very rich.”
“That must be nice.”
“I don’t know any differently.”
“My father was big on the men-having-whatever-they-wanted thing,” she said, the tone of her voice disinterested, casual, but he sensed something deep beneath the surface.
“Traditional, was he?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s one word for it. One of the things I’ve been working on is recognizing that whatever my father and the other men like him believed, it isn’t necessarily connected to anything real. It’s not about other people who believe similarly to them. They took something that was all right and twisted it to suit their own ends. And I do understand that.”
“You had...a religious upbringing?”
She shrugged. “I’m hesitant to call it that. I’m not going to put the blame on religion. Just the people involved.”
“Very progressive of you.”
She shrugged both shoulders this time. “Isn’t that the point of life? To progress? That’s what I’m trying to do. Move forward. Not live underneath the cloud of all of that.” She looked up, refracted light shimmering across her face from the chandelier above them as she did. “I’m not under a cloud at all right now.” She smiled then, and all of the thoughts he had earlier about her potentially calculated behavior faded. It was difficult for him to imagine somebody who was simply genuine. Because it was outside his experience. Yet, Esther seemed to be, and if he looked at her from that angle, if you looked at her now, he felt slightly guilty about what he intended to do. Because that really did make it a manipulation, rather than a simple seduction.
But still, she would get everything that she wanted in the end, just in a slightly different format. So, he should not feel guilt.
He turned, and suddenly it felt as though the chandelier had detached from the ceiling and come crashing down around him. It was everything he’d been afraid of, and yet no amount of forward thinking could ever prepare him for it.
There she was.
Samantha.
His daughter.
Seeing her like this, closer to being a woman than a girl, always shocked him. But then, everything about this had always been shocking, horrifying. Seeing her was always something like having his guts torn out straight through his stomach. Having his heart pulled out of his mouth.
It was a pain that never healed, and for a man who avoided strong emotion at all cost it was anathema. He controlled the world. He controlled more money than most people could fathom. He had more—would have more—than many small countries ever would. And yet he did not have her, and there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing he could do short of destroying what she thought her life was. Who she thought she was.
In this, he was helpless. And he despised it.
But there was very little that could be done. In order to be a good man in this situation, in order to be a controlled man, he had to go against everything his instincts told him to do. He had to honor the life that he had chosen to give to his daughter. Even if he had been coerced into it, the ultimate result was the same. There were things she believed about herself and her parents that he could not shake, not now.
He knew it. He knew it, but he despised it.
Fire burned inside him, rage, intensity. He couldn’t go to her. All he could do was hold even more tightly to Esther. And as he did, he held even more tightly to his conviction. He had to make her his. At all costs. Because he would never take a chance that he might lose his children, not again.
He had lost one daughter. And the pain never faded. He doubted it ever would. There was nothing that could be done about it. It was a red slash across his life that could never heal. A mistake that would not be undone.
Oh, her existence wasn’t a mistake. It never could be. The mixture of grief and pride that filled him when he saw Samantha was something that defied description. It was all-encompassing, overwhelming. She was not a mistake. She was destined for a life that was better than the one he could have given her at the time. Than the one she would have had if she had been raised by an angry, bitter woman whose marriage was destroyed because of her existence and a sixteen-year-old boy who could scarcely take care of himself, let alone a little girl.
Yes, there was no doubt she was living a better life than he could have given at the time.
But now... Now he had no excuses. Now he had resources, he had experience, maturity. He had already lived an entire existence trying to prove that he was unsuitable to raise the child he’d had at far too young an age.
Now he was going to have to fashion a new existence. One where he became everything these children would need.
He would give them everything. Starting with a family. One with no room for Ashley, who had engineered their existence for the sole purpose of manipulating him. One that consisted of a mother and a father. Esther. She was the one. She was going to give birth to them. She was the one the public would consider theirs, and so, too, would they.
He was renewed in his purpose. As he stood there, his insides being torn to shreds piece by piece as he looked at the beautiful young woman whom he would never know, who shared his DNA but would always remain a stranger, his purpose was renewed.
He turned away from Samantha. He turned back to Esther. “Dance with me,” he said.
She blinked. “I don’t know how to dance.”
“Don’t tell me, dancing was forbidden?”
She laughed, but the sound was uncomfortable, and it made him feel guilty. “Yes,” she said. “Dancing was definitely something that was off the table. But...I did a lot of things I wasn’t supposed to.”
Something about that admission made his stomach tight, made his blood run hotter. “Is that right?”
“Yes,” she said, her cheeks turning pink. “But I didn’t dance. I might embarrass you.”
“You’re the most beautiful woman in the room. Even if you step all over my feet I will not be embarrassed to be seen with you.”
A warm flush of color spread up her cheeks, her dark eyes bright. She liked that. This attention, the compliments. He reached out, sliding his thumb over her cheekbone, tracing that wash of color that had appeared there. “Do you know that you’re beautiful?”
“It’s nothing that I ever gave much thought to. I mean, I’ve probably given it much more thought ever since I met you.”
He drew her close to him, guiding her to the dance floor, curving his arm around her waist and taking her hand in his. “In a good way, I hope?”
She looked down. “Meeting you has made me think a lot about people.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
She moved easily along with him as he guided her in time with the music. But she kept her eyes downcast. “Just...people. Men, women.” She looked up then, something open and naked in her gaze. It held him fast, hit him square in the chest. “How different we are. What it means. Why it matters. My beauty never mattered until I wanted you to see it. And then, well, since then I’ve wondered about it. If I had it, and if I did, if it was the kind that you noticed. It’s a weird way to think about it, maybe. But I never spent much of my life thinking about how I looked except in the context that being vain about it was wrong.” She shook her head, her dark hair rippling over her shoulders. “That’s quite liberating in a way. If vanity is wrong, then you simply push thoughts of your appearance out of your mind. You don’t worry about it, and neither does anyone around you. But that isn’t the way the rest of the world works.”
“Sadly not.”
“I guess that’s another thing about how I was raised that maybe isn’t so bad. Because now I have worried about it. How my dresses fit, how they look, what you think. But then... Feeling beautiful isn’t so bad. And when you tell me that I am...”
“You like it,” he said.
“I do.”
His stomach tightened, and a smile curved his lips, a feeling of anticipation lancing him. He was very close to having her in the palm of his hand. To having all that glorious skin under his hands. “Vain creature,” he said, injecting a note of levity into his voice.
“Is that a bad thing?” she asked, her tone tentative.
“I find it somewhat charming. Though, I have to ask you now... What have you been thinking about me? You said you had been thinking about our differences.”
The undertone of pink in her cheeks turned scarlet. “That’s silly. Juvenile. You don’t want to hear about that.”
“Oh, I assure you I do.”
He examined the lush curve of her mouth, the dramatic high cheekbones and her dark lashes. She was the epitome of glorious feminine beauty, but there was an innocence there, and part of him wondered just how much.
“You’re just very...” Her lashes fluttered “...big. I’m small. I feel like you could overpower me if you wanted to, and yet, you never have. There’s something incredibly powerful about that. It feels dangerous to be near you sometimes, and yet I know you won’t hurt me. I don’t how to describe that. But sometimes the realization washes over me and it makes me shiver.”
He did something then that he could not quite fully reason out. He released his hold on her hand, sliding his fingertips up her arm and resting his thumb against the hollow at the base of her throat as he curved his fingers around the back of her neck. Demonstrating that power, perhaps.
He could feel her pulse beginning to throb faster beneath his touch, and he felt an answering pounding within his own body.
“What else?” he asked, keeping his tone soft and his touch firm.
“You’re very...hard.”
“Am I?” he asked, lowering his voice further.
She had no idea. He was getting harder by the second. This little flirtation, something he hadn’t quite anticipated enjoying, was adding fuel to the fire of his determination.
“Yes,” she said, doing something completely unexpected, taking her free hand and pressing it against his chest, sliding her palm down to his stomach. “Much harder than I am.”
“You seem like you would benefit from the chance to explore that.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “I don’t...”
He reached down, catching hold of her wrist and pressing her hand more firmly against his chest. “I want you.”
He wanted her. Needed her. And not just because he needed her to marry him, because he needed to ensure that she was bound to him. But because he needed something to blot out the unending pain that was coursing through him—had been coursing through him for sixteen years.
Her eyes widened, an innocent stain spreading across her cheeks. “Want me to...what?”
He pulled her even closer, pressing his lips against her ear. “I want you naked,” he said, feeling her shiver against him. “I want to lay you down in my bed and strip that dress from your body. Then I want to touch every inch of you. And then I want to taste you.”
He barely recognized his own voice. It was rough, hard. And he was somewhere past control.
Esther trembled, and he could feel her shaking her head. “No, you don’t.”
“Of course I do. I said you were beautiful. I meant it.”
“But that doesn’t mean...” Her cheeks looked like they were on fire beneath her golden skin. “There are plenty of other women you could have. You don’t have an obligation to me. We might be engaged publicly, but we both know that privately...”
“Of course I can be seen with no other woman but you,” he said, “but that is beside the point. You’re the one that I want. You, Esther Abbott. Not anyone else.”
“But I’m not... I don’t know... You can’t. Not me.”
The fire in him burned even hotter, and he was surprised by the strength of his conviction. Yes, it was all tangled up in the need to keep possession of his children, the need to give them the best life possible, and he believed he needed Esther for that, but there was more. In this moment, there was more. It would not be a hardship to convince her that he wanted her. Because he did.
“Yes,” he returned, “you. I love your skin. I want to know if it’s smooth like this all over.” He moved a fingertip over her arm, relishing the tremor that racked her frame. “Your lips.” He moved his fingertip around the lush line of her mouth then, that softness doing something to all of the hard, jagged places inside him. The seduction working better on him than he had intended. This was supposed to be about an end goal, one that extended far beyond finding himself between her beautiful thighs tonight. But it was difficult to remember that with lust pounding through him like a drumbeat.
“Your hands,” he said, moving to curve his fingers around her wrist, caressing her palm slowly. “I want to feel them all over my body. And yes, I could have another woman. I have had them. More than I can count, I won’t lie to you. But I don’t want them now. I couldn’t.” It was the truth in his words that surprised him more than anything else. The fact that this wasn’t simply a calculated statement. The fact that the strange creature in front of him had bewitched him in some way.
That she had compelled him to give her books, of all the ridiculous things. A new one every day because he passed a shop on his way home from work, and he thought of her every time he did. Because she wanted to learn and he wanted her to.
And, Dio, what he would teach her tonight.