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Daniele Pellegrini must wed or lose his family inheritance. Eva Bergen is the perfect candidate for three reasons:
1. Her body is pure temptation.
2. She can’t reject his outrageous charitable donation in exchange for their vows.
3. Most important, she can’t stand him—this hard-hearted tycoon won’t risk his wife falling in love with him!
When Eva’s first youthful marriage ended in tragedy, she buried any hope of loving again. She’s certain she’ll have no problem keeping her second marriage on purely convenient terms...until her husband changes the rules with his expertly ruthless seduction!
‘If you agree to marry me, this money—all one million dollars of it—will be handed to the Blue Train Aid Agency tomorrow morning. And that is only the start.’
‘The start?’ Eva asked faintly, looking back at all that lovely money.
‘Agree to marry me and this money goes directly to your charity. On the day of our marriage I will transfer another two million into their account, and a further three million dollars for every year of our marriage.’
Eva’s head spun. Had she slipped into some kind of vortex that distorted reality?
She shook her head and took a breath. ‘You want to pay me to be your wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why would you want to marry me?’
‘It’s nothing to do with want. It’s to do with need. I need a wife.’
‘You’ve already said that. But why would you choose me for the role when there are hundreds of women out there who would take the job without having to be bribed into it? Why marry someone who doesn’t even like you?’
There was no point in pretending. She didn’t like him and he damn well knew it.
‘That is the exact reason why I want you to take the role.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
A tight smile played on Daniele’s lips. ‘I don’t want to marry someone who’s going to fall in love with me.’
Bound to a Billionaire
Claimed by the most powerful of men!
Felipe Lorenzi, Matteo Manaserro and Daniele Pellegrini.
Three powerful billionaires who want for nothing—in business or in bed. But nothing and no one can touch their closely guarded hearts.
That is until Francesca, Natasha and Eva are each bound to a billionaire...and prove to be a challenge these delicious alpha males can’t resist!
Don’t miss Michelle Smart’s stunning trilogy.
Read Felipe and Francesca’s story in
Protecting His Defiant Innocent
Matteo and Natasha’s story in
Claiming His One-Night Baby
&
Daniele and Eva’s story in
Buying His Bride of Convenience
All available now!
Buying His Bride of Convenience
Michelle Smart
www.millsandboon.co.uk
MICHELLE SMART’s love affair with books started when she was a baby, and she would cuddle them in her cot. A voracious reader of all genres, she found her love of romance established when she stumbled across her first Mills & Boon book at the age of twelve. She’s been reading—and writing them ever since. Michelle lives in Northamptonshire, England, with her husband and two young Smarties.
Books by Michelle Smart
Mills & Boon Modern Romance
Once a Moretti Wife The Perfect Cazorla Wife The Russian’s Ultimatum
Bound to a Billionaire
Protecting His Defiant Innocent
Claiming His One-Night Baby
Brides for Billionaires
Married for the Greek’s Convenience
One Night With Consequences
Claiming His Christmas Consequence
Wedlocked!
Wedded, Bedded, Betrayed
The Kalliakis Crown
Talos Claims His Virgin
Theseus Discovers His Heir
Helios Crowns His Mistress
Society Weddings
The Greek’s Pregnant Bride
The Irresistible Sicilians
What a Sicilian Husband Wants
The Sicilian’s Unexpected Duty
Taming the Notorious Sicilian
Visit the Author Profile page at millsandboon.co.uk for more titles.
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To the always amazing Nic Caws.
thanks for everything you do—your encouragement and enthusiasm never fail to lift my spirits xxx
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
Introduction
Bound to a Billionaire
Title Page
About the Author
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
EPILOGUE
Extract
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
‘WILL YOU KEEP STILL?’ Eva Bergen told the man sitting on the stool before her. She’d staunched the bleeding from the wound on the bridge of his nose and had the tiny sterilised strips ready to close it up. What should be a relatively simple procedure was being hampered by his right foot tapping away and jerking the rest of his body.
He glared at her through narrowed eyes, the right one of which was swollen and turning purple. ‘Just get it done.’
‘Do you want me to close this up or not? I’m not a nurse and I need to concentrate, so keep still.’
He took a long breath, clenched his jaw together and fixed his gaze at the distance over her shoulder. She guessed he must have clenched all the muscles in his legs too as his foot finally stopped tapping.
Taking her own deep breath, Eva leaned forward on her stool, which she’d had to raise so she could match his height, then hesitated. ‘Are you sure you don’t want one of the medics to look at it? I’m sure it’s broken.’
‘Just get it done,’ he repeated tersely.
Breathing through her mouth so she didn’t inhale his scent and taking great care not to touch him anywhere apart from his nose, she put the first strip on the wound.
It was amazing that even with a busted nose Daniele Pellegrini still managed to look impeccably suave. The quiff of his thick, dark brown hair was still perfectly placed, his hand-tailored suit perfectly pressed. He could still look in a mirror and wink at his reflection.
He was a handsome man. She didn’t think there was a female aid worker at the refugee camp who hadn’t done a double-take when he’d made his first appearance there a month ago. This was only his second visit. He’d called her thirty minutes ago asking, without a word of greeting, if she was still at the camp. If he’d bothered to know anything about her he would’ve known she, like all the other staff based there, had their own quarters at the camp. He’d then said he was on his way and to meet him in the medical tent. He’d disconnected the call before she could ask what he wanted. She’d learned the answer to that herself when she’d made the short walk from the ramshackle administrative building she worked from to the main medical facility.
When Hurricane Ivor had first hit the Caribbean island of Caballeros, the Blue Train Aid Agency, which already had a large presence in the crime-ridden country, had been the first aid charity to set up a proper camp there. Now, two months after the biggest natural disaster the country had ever known and the loss of twenty thousand of its people, the camp had become home to an estimated thirty thousand people, with canvas tents, modular plastic shelters and makeshift shacks all tightly knit together. Other aid agencies had since set up at different sites and had similar numbers of displaced people living in their camps. It was a disaster on every level imaginable.
Daniele was the brother of the great philanthropist and humanitarian, Pieta Pellegrini. Pieta had seen the news about the hurricane and how the devastation had been amplified by the destruction of a large number of the island’s hospitals. He’d immediately decided that his foundation would build a new, disaster-proof, multi-functional hospital in the island’s capital, San Pedro. A week later he’d been killed in a helicopter crash.
Eva had been saddened by this loss. She’d only met Pieta a few times but he’d been greatly respected by everyone in the aid community.
She and the other staff at the Blue Train Aid Agency had been overjoyed to learn his family wished to proceed with the hospital. The people of the island badly needed more medical facilities. They and the other charities and agencies did the best they could but it wasn’t enough. It could never be enough.
Pieta’s sister, Francesca, had become the new driving force for the project. Eva had liked her very much and admired the younger woman’s determination and focus. She’d expected to like and admire his brother too. Like Pieta, Daniele was a world-famous name, but his reputation had been built through his architecture and construction company, which had won more design awards than any other in the past five years.
She’d found nothing to like or admire about him. Although famed for his good humour and searing intellect, she’d found him arrogant and entitled. She’d seen the wrinkle of distaste on his strong—now busted—nose when he’d come to the camp to collect her for their one evening out together, a date she’d only agreed to because he’d assured her it wasn’t a date and that he’d just wanted to get her input on the kind of hospital he should be building as she was something of an expert on the country and its people. He’d flown her to his exclusive seven-star hotel on the neighbouring paradise island of Aguadilla, spent five minutes asking her pertinent questions, then the rest of the evening drinking heavily, asking impertinent questions and shamelessly flirting with her.
She would go as far as to say his only redeeming features were his looks and physique and the size of his bank account. Seeing as she was immune to men and cared nothing for money, those redeeming features were wasted on her.
The look on his face when she’d coldly turned down his offer of a trip to his suite for a ‘nightcap’ had been priceless. She had a feeling Daniele Pellegrini was not used to the word ‘no’ being uttered to him by members of the opposite sex.
He’d had his driver take her back to the airfield without a word of goodbye. That was the last she’d seen of him until she’d walked into the medical tent ten minutes ago and found him already there, waiting for her. It was immediately obvious that someone had punched him in the face. She wondered who it was and if it was possible to track them down and buy them a drink.
‘I’m not a nurse,’ she’d said when he’d told her he needed her to fix it.
He’d shrugged his broad shoulders but without the ready smile she remembered from their ‘date’. ‘I only need you to stop the bleeding. I’m sure you’ve seen it done enough times that you have a basic idea of what needs to be done.’
She had more than a basic idea. Principally employed as a co-ordinator and translator, she, like most of the other non-medical staff, had often stepped in to help the medical team when needed. That didn’t mean she felt confident in patching up a broken nose, especially when the nose belonged to an arrogant billionaire whose suit likely cost more than the average annual salary of the Caballerons lucky enough to have a job.
‘I’ll get one of the nurses or—’
‘No, they’re busy,’ he’d cut in. ‘Stem the bleeding and I’ll be out of here.’
She’d been about to argue that she was busy too but there had been something in his demeanour that had made her pause. Now, as she gently placed the second strip on his nose, she thought him like a tightly coiled spring. She pitied whoever would be on the receiving end of the explosion that was sure to come when the coil sprang free.
Taking the third and last strip, she couldn’t help but notice how glossy his dark hair was. If she didn’t know it was a genetic blessing, having the same shine as the rest of the family members she’d met, she’d think he took a personal hairdresser with him everywhere he travelled. And a personal dresser.
If she was feeling charitable she could understand his distaste for the camp. Daniele lived in luxury. Here there was only dirt and squalor that everyone’s best efforts at cleaning barely made a dent in. Being in front of him like this made her acutely aware of the grubbiness of her jeans and T-shirt and the messy ponytail she’d thrown her hair back into.
Who cared about her appearance? she asked herself grimly. This was a refugee camp. All the staff were prepared to turn their hand to anything that needed doing. Dressing for a fashion shoot was not only wholly inappropriate but wholly impractical.
It was only this hateful man who made her feel grubby and inferior.
‘Keep still,’ she reminded him when his foot started its agitated tapping again. ‘Almost done. I’m just going to clean you up and you can go. You’ll need to keep the strips on for around a week and remember to keep them dry.’
Reaching for the antiseptic wipes, she gently dabbed at the tiny drops of blood that had leaked out since she’d first cleaned his nose and cheeks.
Suddenly a wave of his scent enveloped her. She’d forgotten to hold her breath.
It was perhaps the most mouthwatering scent she’d ever known, making her think of thick forests and hanging fruit, a reaction and thoughts she would have laughed at if anyone had suggested such romantic notions to her.
How could such a hateful, arrogant man be so blessed? He had more talent in his little finger than she could spend a lifetime hoping for.
And he had the most beautiful eyes, an indecipherable browny-green, his surroundings dominating the colour of them at any particular moment. Eyes that were suddenly focussed on her. Staring intently into hers.
She stared back, trapped in his stare before she forced herself to blink, push her stool back and jump down.
‘I’ll get an ice pack for your eye,’ she murmured, flustered but determined not to show it.
‘No need,’ he dismissed. ‘Don’t waste your resources on me.’ He dug into his inside suit jacket pocket and pulled out his wallet. From it he took some notes and thrust them into her hand. ‘That’s to replace the medical supplies you used.’
Then he strolled out of the medical tent without a word of thanks or goodbye.
Only when Eva opened the hand that tingled where his skin had brushed it did she see he’d given her ten one-hundred-dollar bills.
* * *
‘There has got to be an alternative,’ Daniele said firmly, pouring himself another glass of red wine, his grip on the bottle tight enough to whiten his knuckles. ‘You can have the estate.’
His sister Francesca, who he’d directed this at, shook her head. ‘I can’t. You know that. I’m the wrong gender.’
‘And I can’t marry.’ Marriage was anathema to him. He didn’t want it. He didn’t need it. He’d spent his adult life avoiding it, avoiding any form of commitment.
‘Either you marry and take control of the estate or Matteo gets it.’
At the mention of his traitorous cousin’s name, the last of his control deserted him and he flung his glass at the wall.
Francesca held out a hand to stop Felipe, her fiancé, an ex-Special Forces hard man, who’d braced himself to step in. Her voice remained steady as she said to Daniele, ‘He’s the next male heir after you. You know that’s a fact. If you don’t marry and accept the inheritance, then Matteo gets it.’
He breathed deeply, trying to regain control of his temper. The red liquid trickled down the white wall. Looking at it from the right angle, it was as dark as the blood that had poured from his nose when anger had taken possession of him and he’d flown at Matteo, the pair exchanging blows that would have been a lot worse if Felipe hadn’t stepped in and put a halt to it. Since that exchange he’d felt the anger inside him like a living being, a snake coiled in his guts ready to spring at the slightest provocation.
Matteo had betrayed them all.
‘There has got to be a legal avenue we can take to override the trust,’ he said as the wine, splattered over the wall, obeyed the laws of gravity and trickled to the floor. He’d have to get it repainted before he got new tenants in, he thought absently. He owned the apartment in Pisa but his sister had lived in it for six years. Now she was marrying Felipe and moving to Rome, and unless he thought of an alternative he would be forced to marry too. ‘It’s archaic.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘We all know that. Pieta was working with the trustees to get it overturned but it isn’t as easy as we hoped it would be. The trust is cast-iron. It’ll take months, maybe years, to get that clause overturned and while we’re waiting, Matteo can marry Natasha and take the inheritance.’
The bloody inheritance. The family estate, which included a six-hundred-year-old castello and thousands of acres of vineyards, had belonged to the Pellegrini family and its descendants since the first stone had been laid by Principe Charles Philibert I, the original bad-boy Prince of the family. The family had renounced their titles decades ago but the castello remained their shining jewel. To keep the estate intact, primogeniture ruled and thus the eldest male descendant always inherited. This ruling hadn’t been enough to satisfy Principe Emmanuel II, a particularly cruel and mad prince from the nineteenth century, who had suspected his eldest son of being a homosexual and so had drawn up a ruling, still enforced to this day, that the eldest male descendant could only inherit if he was married. Principe Emmanuel must have had some insight to how social mores would evolve in the future because the marriage clause had specifically stated the spouse had to be female.
This archaic marriage clause had never been an issue. After all, everyone married eventually. It was what people did, especially those of the aristocracy. But times, along with social mores, changed.
Daniele had been a toddler when his grandfather had died and his own father had inherited the estate. Being the second son, Daniele had always known Pieta would inherit when their father died. He was comfortable with that. He didn’t want it. He hated the draughty old castello that leaked money as quickly as it leaked water, and he especially hated the idea of marriage. It had given him perverse satisfaction throughout his adult life to remain single, to be the antithesis of the dutiful, serious Pieta.
But now Pieta was dead.
For two months Daniele had clung to the hope that Pieta’s wife Natasha might be pregnant—if she was and the child was a boy, the child would inherit the estate and Daniele would be free to continue living his life as he’d always enjoyed.
It transpired that Natasha was indeed pregnant. Unfortunately, Pieta wasn’t the father. Before her husband was even cold in the ground, she had embarked on an affair with their cousin Matteo, the cousin who had lived with them as a sibling from the age of thirteen. The disloyal bastard himself had told Daniele that she was pregnant with his child.
Now there were two routes that could be taken. Daniele either found himself a wife and gave up all his cherished freedoms to inherit an estate he didn’t want, or their disloyal cousin inherited everything his father and brother had held dear.
He clenched his jaw and rolled his neck, thinking of his mother and her own love and pride in the family and the estate she had married into as a nineteen-year-old girl.
When it came down to it, there was only one route.
‘I have to marry.’
‘Yes.’
‘And soon.’
‘Yes. Do you have anyone in mind?’ Francesca asked quietly. She knew how much he loathed the idea of marriage. She had an even sharper legal mind than Pieta had done. If she couldn’t think of a way to overturn the clause without Matteo taking everything, then it couldn’t be done.
One day it would, he vowed. The next generation of Pellegrinis would never be forced into a deed they didn’t want, a deed that came with such a heavy price.
Daniele’s mind flickered through all the women he’d dated throughout the years. He estimated that of those who were still unmarried, approximately one hundred per cent of them would high-tail it to a wedding dress shop before he’d even finished proposing.
And then he thought of his last date. The only date he’d been on that hadn’t ended in the bedroom.
Unthinkingly, he touched his bruised nose. The steri-strips Eva had so carefully put on him were still there, the wound healing nicely. He remembered the distaste that flashed in her crystal-clear blue eyes whenever she looked at him.
She’d acted as a translator for him on his first trip to Caballeros a month ago. On an island surrounded by so much destruction, the prevalent colour brown with all the churned-up mud, she’d shone like a beacon in the gloom. Or her scarlet hair had, which she wore in a girlish ponytail. It was a shade of red that could only have come from a bottle and contrasted with her alabaster skin—she must lather herself in factor fifty sun cream on an hourly basis to keep it so colour free—so beautifully he couldn’t see how any other colour, not even that which nature had given her, could suit her so well.
Despite dressing only in scruffy jeans and an official Blue Train Aid Agency T-shirt, Eva Bergen was possibly the most beautiful and definitely the sexiest woman he’d met in his entire thirty-three years. And she hated his guts.
Daniele looked at his sister’s worried face and gave a half-smile. ‘Yes,’ he said with a nod. ‘I know the perfect woman to marry.’
When he left the apartment an hour later, he reflected that whatever else happened, at least his mother would finally be happy with a choice he’d made.
* * *
Eva queued patiently at the staff shower block, playing a game on her phone to pass the time. There was limited fresh water at the camp and the staff rationed their own use zealously. She’d become an expert at showering in sixty seconds of tepid water every three days. Like the rest of the staff, she experienced both guilt and relief when she took her leave, which was every third weekend, and she had the luxury of flying over to Aguadilla and checking into a basic hotel. There, at her own expense, she would laze for hours in sweet-smelling, bubbly, limitless water, dye her hair, do her nails and cleanse her skin, all the while trying to smother the guilt at all the displaced people at the camp who couldn’t take a few days off to pamper themselves.
One thing that wasn’t in short supply at the camp was mobile phones. It seemed that everyone had one, even the tiny kids who barely had a change of clothes to their name. The current craze was for a free game that involved blasting multiplying colourful balls. A technology whizz had linked all the camp players together, refugees and staff alike, to compete against each other directly. Eva had become as addicted to it as everyone else and right then was on track to beat her high score and crack the top one hundred players. At that moment, playing as she waited for her turn in the skinny showers, she had three teenagers at her side, pretending to be cool while they watched her avidly.