Sicilian's Bride For A Price. Tara Pammi
SHE WAS LATE.
Of course she was. It was his own fault for assuming Alisha could ever be a headache-free zone for him. What he should have done was show up at the dingy flat she lived in, insist she pack up and drag her to the airstrip.
Instead, he’d given them both a few days to gain perspective. To make sure he could think, away from the distraction of her...presence. Of her outrageous demands. Like the demand that he forward a sum of ten thousand pounds as the first payment.
Already, his lawyer was freaking out at the massive risk Dante was leaving himself open to by marrying her without a prenup.
And that was before the man found out what a firecracker Alisha was.
But for all the threats and warnings his lawyer had screamed over the transatlantic call, Dante couldn’t see her using this marriage to fleece him, to build her own fortune. He couldn’t see her dragging him into some kind of court battle—but threatening to sully his reputation in a rage, yes.
That he was more than ready for. In fact, the idea of sparring with Alisha now, the very idea of going toe-to-toe with her sent a shiver of excitement through him. Cristo, his life was truly devoid of fun if a battle with Alisha filled him with this much anticipation.
He’d called it her protracted, rebellious phase—he had thought her a spoiled princess but he was beginning to question that. He had had his chauffeur drive him past her flat, he’d seen where she waitressed sometimes. And she’d lived like that for more than five years.
Common sense pointed out that she wasn’t going to come after his fortune. Or Matta Steel.
The realization both calmed and unnerved him. Because, for the first time in his life, he had a feeling that reassurance came mostly from a place of emotion, despite the logic of it too. But he was determined to keep control of the situation.
If she thought he was handing over that amount of money without asking questions...if she thought he’d let her play him, play fast and loose in London, if she thought being his wife in name was just the latest weapon she could use against him...
It was time to reacquaint her with her adversary and set the ground rules for this...agreement between them. He refused to call it a marriage, refused to give his suddenly overdeveloped sense of guilt any more material to chew on.
Which was why he was waiting in Bangkok to accompany her back to London in his private jet rather than have his security bring her. He was also determined to accompany her because her return to London would definitely be commented on by the press, and once they announced that they had married, even their planned civil union without pomp and fanfare would still occupy the news cycle for a couple of weeks at least.
Thanks to his father’s notoriety during his life and the spectacle of his suicide during his incarceration alongside Dante’s swift rise through the ranks of Matta Steel to the position of CEO, there was plenty for the media to chew on. They were always ready to find some chink in his personality, some weak link in his makeup to crow that he was his criminal father’s flawed son.
Sometimes they did get their hands on a juicy story from a woman he’d dumped—for the simple reason that she wanted more from the relationship and he didn’t. Dante didn’t care a hoot about a tabloid feature.
But this...agreement with Alisha would be no small step in the eyes of the media and the world. As such he needed to make her understand the importance of her behavior in the coming months.
The stubborn defiance in her eyes, the stark silence she’d subjected him to through the drive back to her flat hadn’t been lost on him.
Alisha didn’t respond well to threats.
He remembered the two-day disappearance she’d engineered when, on Neel’s instructions, Dante had tried to enroll her in a boarding school in Paris a couple of months after she’d first come to live with her father.
Fighting the near constant hum of his attraction to her had briefly made him forget that.
This was a business deal and he couldn’t antagonize Alisha any more than he would lose his temper with a new business partner. There had to be a way to get her to behave, to cooperate without letting the full force of his contempt for her to shine through.
The one thing he knew for certain was that he couldn’t punish her for his own attraction to her, for his lack of self-control. And as much as his mind and body were bent on reminding him that she had fancied him once, he refused to go down that road.
No.
After the first hour, he stepped out of his car. The unusually heavy wind roared in his ears and he pushed up his sunglasses even though the sun had yet to make an appearance on the chilly late September morning.
Patience had never been his strong point. And yet he had a feeling that it would be stretched to the limit in the near future. A few months with Alisha was bound to turn him mental in his thirties.
He continued to wait and was just about to call her when a caravan of cars—really, a who’s who of colorful vintage cars in different stages of deterioration—pulled up on the long, curving road that led to the airstrip.
Laughter bubbled out of his chest. He sensed his security team giving him sidelong, concerned looks. Well, no one ever made him laugh like Alisha did. Neither had a woman tested his control, or called forth some of his base instincts with a single smile like she did.
How fitting that the drama queen arrived in a ramshackle entourage of her own.
The caravan came to a stop with a lot of screeching noise that confirmed his suspicion that all three cars were on their last legs. But what crawled out of the cars was even more shocking. A surprising number of people clambered out of those small cars, a torrent of English and Thai flowing around. Car trunks were opened and suitcases and bags in different colors and makes pulled out.
Emerging from the third car, dressed again in short shorts that should have been banned, and a chunky sweater that fell to her thighs, almost covering the shorts, was Alisha. Loose and oversize, it fell off one shoulder almost to her bicep, leaving a hot-pink bra strap exposed.
And there was that same black camera bag—heavy from the looks of how the wide strap pulled over one shoulder and between her breasts.
Hair in that messy bun. No jewelry. Combat style boots on her feet.
No makeup that he could see. In fact, in the gray morning light, she looked freshly scrubbed, innocent and so excruciatingly lovely that he felt a tug low in his belly as surely as the sun peeking through the clouds.
Her wide smiles and husky laughter made her eyes twinkle. She stood among the loud group like sun shining on a vast field of sunflowers, every face turned toward her with genuine affection, long limbs grabbing her, hugging her, men and women kissing her cheeks. A sense of disbelief went through him as he spied a sheen of tears as she hugged the man called Mak.
And then she met his eyes.
Current arced between them even across the distance. As one, the group turned their gazes on him. Instead of surprise or curiosity, there was a certain knowledge in the looks leveled at him, knowledge about him. A certain warning in the looks, a subtle crowding around her, as if Alisha had imparted her opinion of him.
Out of the blue, for the first time in their shared history, he wondered what Alisha thought of him. What was behind all that...resentment of him? Did she still believe he’d stolen her legacy?
That hum began again under his skin as she pushed away from the crowd.
His breath suspended in his throat as the subtle scent of her skin teased him. He felt an overwhelming urge to bury his nose in her throat; to see that gorgeous, open smile leveled at him.
“Do you have the money ready?”
“All ten thousand pounds, si,” he responded, a hint of warning in his tone.
She pulled out