‘I’m all ears!’ Robin came back wearily, wanting this man gone. Not just from the house, but from her life!

She wanted to sit and lick her wounds—her battle scars!—in private, away from this man’s all-seeing, all-knowing gaze.

‘On the contrary,’ Cesare Gambrelli continued derisively. ‘Your ears, though charming, are far from your best feature.’ His gaze moved slowly down to her breasts, lingering there.

It took all of Robin’s will-power not to look down at her breasts too—to check and see if the material had dried enough yet after the caressing of this man’s mouth for her nipples not to be clearly visible.

‘You have ten seconds left!’ she warned through gritted teeth.

He gave a confident smile even as he reached into the top pocket of his jacket, bringing out several pieces of paper that he began to unfold with infuriating slowness.

Robin watched him much as a fly must watch the spider that had caught it in its web. She was sure, from Cesare Gabrelli’s unshakeable manner, that whatever those papers contained he personally had no doubts it was enough to induce her to accept his marriage proposal.

The marriage proposal that hadn’t been a marriage proposal at all, but a statement of intent!

‘IS IT NOT time for you to call the butler, Robin?’ Cesare Gambrelli prompted. ‘I believe my allotted ten seconds are up!’

Yes, they were up, and they had passed slowly, painstakingly, as this man meticulously unfolded the sheets of paper he had withdrawn from his jacket pocket.

But her curiosity was such—as Cesare Gambrelli had known it would be!—that Robin had no intention of calling for anyone until she knew exactly what those papers contained.

‘And I believe I told you to get on with it?’ she came back tightly, so tense that her shoulders actually ached.

His mouth tightened. ‘I do not care to have you, or indeed anyone else, tell me what to do!’

‘Ditto,’ she assured him tartly.

Cesare looked at her through narrowed lids, noting the pallor beneath her angrily inflamed cheeks, the way she held her body so rigidly, the telltale tremble in her tightly clenched hands.

All signs that she was not as calm or composed as she wished him to believe.

Perhaps he had pushed her enough for the moment. After all, he had plenty of time—years—in which to take his retribution.

‘Very well,’ he allowed. ‘These papers—’ he held them up for her to see ‘—gathered by me over the last three months, contain an accounting of all the IOUs and debts accrued in casinos scattered across Europe by your brother. Accounts that I have taken upon myself to satisfy—’

‘I’m sure my father will be only too happy to see that you are reimbursed—’

‘But I do not wish to be reimbursed, Robin,’ Cesare assured her. ‘At least not with money,’ he added smoothly.

Robin’s eyes widened. ‘Those debts are the reason you think I will agree to marry you?’ she said incredulously.

‘To marry me and to become Marco’s mother.’

Robin’s resolve shook a little as he once again mentioned his now motherless nephew. It really was beyond imagining—a tragedy—that something so awful should have happened to a child of only a few months old.

And, despite her earlier protestations, she really wasn’t as confident as she’d sounded when she had claimed the accident hadn’t been Simon’s fault…

The last three months had been traumatic. Her father had suffered a mild heart attack when told of Simon’s death, and Robin’s own grief at her loss had almost brought her to her knees.

But those three months had also been a time of learning just exactly how far Simon had fallen into debt. Robin knew that the whole situation had become a nightmare for the lawyers, who were still trying to sort out his will as each day seemed to bring in yet another claim for money owed to one establishment or another.

Obviously Cesare Gambrelli had missed those particular claimants because most of them were in the UK.

But her father would find the money owed. And neither that, nor the spectre of Simon’s debts in the first place, altered the fact that forcing her to become Marco’s mother was not the answer to the problems that now faced Cesare Gambrelli as the adoptive father of his nephew!

There were no real answers for any of them with regard to the future. Three months ago two young people had died needlessly, prematurely, and though their families mourned them there was nothing they could ever do or say that would bring them back, or change what had happened.

It certainly wouldn’t be solved by Robin agreeing to marry Cesare Gambrelli, she reaffirmed to herself determinedly.

Cesare watched the play of emotions on Robin’s beautiful face—her uncertainty, her sorrow, quickly followed by a return of her earlier resolve.

It was time to end this cat-and-mouse game!

Cesare straightened. ‘The debts and IOUs are trivial, unimportant, in comparison with this,’ he told her curtly, and he held out the top sheet of paper to her.

Her hands shook a little as she took the paper from him, all the blood draining from her face as she read what was written there.

‘As you can see,’ Cesare continued remorselessly, ‘almost the last act of your disreputable brother Simon was to gamble away the shares that were left to him by your mother. Shares in your father’s publishing company. Thirty per cent of the shares. Shares that are now owned by me, in a nominee account,’ he pronounced, and he handed her a second sheet of paper.

Robin couldn’t believe what she was reading. This couldn’t possibly be true. Simon couldn’t have—would never have—

Wouldn’t he?

His gambling had become a sickness, an addiction. An addiction that Robin knew he had lost everything to. Everything, they had thought, except Simon’s shares in their father’s publishing company, left to him by their mother on her death five years ago…

‘This can’t possibly be legal—’

‘It is perfectly legal, I assure you,’ Cesare Gambrelli came back confidently.

She swallowed hard, glancing at those papers once again. ‘But the money Simon received for them is—’

‘Far beneath their value,’ the arrogant Sicilian acknowledged dryly. ‘Nevertheless, the transaction was completely legal, and would still have been so if your brother had accepted no more than one of your English pence for them!’

Robin felt slightly numbed, having no doubt that this man would never have come here so full of himself if he weren’t absolutely sure his ownership was legal.

‘I would be willing to gift these shares to you on our wedding day,’ Cesare Gambrelli said with satisfaction.

Robin raised startled lids, staring at him incredulously. This man thought he could blackmail her into marrying him with the promise of the return of Simon’s shares in her father’s company…

He really did!

That darkly handsome face was set in grimly determined lines, his black eyes challenging as he stared at her levelly.

She shook her head. ‘I’m sure my father will happily buy the shares back from you—at the full market value, of course,’ she added hollowly.

‘They are not for sale—for any price,’ Cesare Gambrelli returned. ‘At the moment, because as I told you the stock is held in a nominee account, my name is not registered as a shareholder with your family’s company. However, if you do not agree to my terms, Robin, I intend to put them into my name and take up my role on the board. A very active role,’ he finished pointedly.

Robin swallowed hard, not doubting him for a moment. Knowing how this man felt about her family, she was also sure that once he had taken his place at Ingram Publishing he would then do everything in his power to ruin the business—and her father!

The company meant everything to her father. He and Robin’s mother had established it together, at the beginning of their marriage, building it up into the multimillion-pound empire that it was today.