Making over the Billionaire (an Italian Connection Novel) (Entangled Brazen) (15 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Work was the only antidote Giorgio knew of to take away the pain of loss.

“Thank you, Anna,” he said as she handed him the final copy of the contract with Chang Lee ready for both parties to sign. In the three days since Layla had left he’d flung himself into negotiations, staying at the office until late at night to make up for lost time.

He attempted to read over a document, but the words blurred in front of his eyes. Sometimes he wondered if he’d dreamed the whole weekend with Layla. He slid two fingers between the buttons of his business shirt to feel the soft cotton of the Napoli football jersey she’d given him. He felt marginally better with her gift lying next to his skin.

She’d asked him once what he was afraid of. Now he knew. He was afraid of feeling too much. He hadn’t experienced pain like this since Leo and Papa died. As hard as he’d tried to protect himself by walling himself off from love, it hadn’t worked. The emotion had come anyway, sneaking up on him when he wasn’t looking. Those two days on the yacht, when he’d thought he was giving into lust, he’d really been falling in love.

He couldn’t think of anything but her. He snatched at the slightest excuse to say her name or bring her into the conversation. He constantly thought about her, not just having sex—although he thought about that a lot—but also doing mundane things with her like swimming, going to the football game, having a meal. The ache in his chest simply wouldn’t go away.

The intercom buzzed. It was Anna. “Tina’s here.”

“Send her in.” Giorgio hadn’t seen or heard from his sister since Fabio had been arrested. Yesterday, she’d finally accepted his call. He’d asked her to meet with him. Angela and Francesca were coming too. It was long past time to have a meaningful dialogue with his sisters about the way the corporation did business internally.

Tina entered, pale and soberly dressed, her luxuriant hair tamed into a sleek ponytail. She offered first one cheek then the other. “I’m early but I wanted a few minutes alone.”

“How are you?” He was dying to know what had happened with Fabio but mindful of Layla’s advice, he didn’t ask. “You look tired.”

“I haven’t slept a lot in the past few days, but I’ll be fine,” Tina fidgeted with her purse. “You were right about Fabio. I showed him the police report and asked for an explanation. He blustered that it was all a lie and ranted about you spying on him. While he was in jail for drunk driving the Italian police checked his record. Now Interpol is involved, and he’ll be sent back to France to face charges.” She passed a trembling hand over her face. “It’s been a nightmare.”

“Sit down,
cara
.
” Giorgio guided her to a chair.

When she was settled she lifted her gaze. Her eyes were moist but fierce. “Obviously I’m not going into business with him, but I’m serious about breaking away on my own.”

“Don’t do anything hasty, please. Not till you’ve heard what I have to say. I’m sorry you had to go through that. I wish I hadn’t been the bearer of bad news.”

“Oh, Giorgio, it’s not your fault.” Her eyes filled with tears again. “I was so furious with you for interfering, but if it hadn’t been for you I would have made a terrible mistake. I’m sorry I doubted your motives.”

“If it weren’t for Layla, I would have kept blundering and driven you further away.”

“She’s really gone?” Tina asked. He sighed and nodded. “You should go after her.”

“What’s the use?” he asked. “Before everything blew up I offered her an apartment, business help, anything she wanted. She said no.”

“I bet there was something you didn’t offer her.”

“A contract with the House of Borlenghi?”

Tina shook her head. “Yourself, silly.”

He frowned. Wasn’t that just what he’d done? Well, no, not really. He’d offered her a financial arrangement, not a personal commitment. Not a declaration of love. He was a fool.

A knock sounded at the door. Angela and Francesca entered, kissed him in greeting, and then joined Tina around the coffee table. Giorgio stayed on his feet. He had too much pent-up energy as it was, and if he had to deal with his feisty sisters he preferred to have a height advantage.

“Okay,” he said. “Tell me what you want.”

Tina, Francesca, and Angela all looked at each other, eyebrows raised. Slowly, smiles dawned on their faces.

Tina took the lead. “We want equal say in running the company.”

“Full control of what goes on in the companies under our direction,” Angela added.

“No more veto power for you,” Francesca said.

“I’m not sure that will work,” he said, trying to be reasonable. “The corporation needs a single, unified vision for it to prosper and grow. You three are so individual. I can’t have you all going off in different directions.”

“We understand that,” Tina said. “We’ll cooperate with each other and with you. We want to be part of the vision for the future.” She leaned forward. “This expansion into China is a huge step for Borlenghi Group. We want a say in what happens because it affects us all.”

“Are you against going global?” He’d never thought to ask them. Had always assumed they would naturally want to, as well.

“No, we think it’s good but with certain safeguards,” Francesca said. “We need to have more discussion before we can be certain. What if it fails, for instance? What are the consequences?”

“Will the House of Borlenghi be sacrificed to save some Chinese subsidiary?” Tina asked. “We don’t know the answers to these questions because you haven’t included us in the decision-making process.”

“On a more basic level, we should have equal say simply because—” Angela paused, and again his sisters shared a maddening glance with undercurrents he didn’t understand—”if you need a holiday, for example, important matters don’t grind to a halt.”

He lifted his hands impatiently. “What are you talking about? I don’t take holidays.”

“What she means,” Francesca said. “Is that if you go on working too hard and stressing yourself beyond belief you’ll end up dying prematurely like Dad. We want to know how to run the corporation
before
we have to take over.”

“They’re trying to appeal to your business sense because they think that’s the way to get through to you.” Tina met his gaze, her dark eyes sad. “The real reason is that if anything happened to you, we would be lost. We love you and want you around for a long time.”

Layla had told him that’s what they felt and how they thought. Giorgio felt as if an iron band was tightening across his chest. Was he was having a heart attack right now? He’d agreed to this talk because he was tired of feuding with his sisters. But he still had his doubts. The changes would mean the biggest upheaval in his life since their father died—

He went to the window and stared blindly as thoughts swirled through his head. He wanted to deny his sisters’ fears but he
didn’t
relax enough. Stress was a killer. Even his father, who spent more down time than he did, had suffered two heart attacks in his fifties, the second one fatal.

Was he, Giorgio, really such a control freak? Why was he so driven?

Layla insisted he needed balance. The weekend they’d spent together had been the first time in nearly a year that he’d taken time off. It had left him reinvigorated, with a clearer mind to tackle the final steps in the deal with Chang.

He’d thought a lot about what else Layla had said that day on the road to Positano. His guilt about his brother’s death had skewed many of his decisions about the company. Maybe Leo
should
share some of the responsibility. And the truck driver. Otherwise it meant Giorgio regarded himself as some sort of god, all-powerful and all-knowing.

Had he become overbearing and authoritarian, not listening to Tina, Francesca, and Angela? Over the past ten years, he’d gradually stopped paying attention to what anyone else said, even those who cared about him. His work ethic came at a heavy personal cost. Until now it was a price he’d gladly paid. Until Layla had come into his life.

What did
he
want?

He wanted it all. He wanted family harmony and a thriving business. He wanted to grow his corporation and to have his sisters working alongside him.

And he wanted Layla.

It was up to him to work out how to achieve the balance he knew deep down he needed in his life. He needed to change. He needed to act. And he needed to do it now.

“All right. A good businessman knows when to take advice from experts.” He picked up a stack of briefing notes on the Chinese deal from his desk and plunked them on the coffee table. “Start reading. The meeting with Chang to sign the contract is tomorrow, but I think we should delay till you three are up to speed.”

He picked his suit jacket off his desk chair and slipped his arms through the sleeves. “In the meantime, there’s something I have to do that’s more important.”

“Where are you going?” Francesca asked.

“To Seattle,” he said. “To find Layla and bring her back to Rome where she belongs.”

Chapter Sixteen

Layla trudged through the rain to her studio apartment carrying a damp paper bag full of groceries. June should be sunny, b
ut the clouds had socked in and rain had been pouring down since she’d arrived.

For two days, she’d wallowed in jet-lagged misery, eating ice cream from the tub and watching trashy TV. Then she’d given herself a good talking to and made an appointment with the manager of the clothing company that supplied a national retailer. He’d looked over her portfolio and her sketches of children’s nightwear and offered her a three-month trial.

It was a measure of how low she’d sunk that she was elated at the prospect. Well, elated might be too big a word. Relieved would be more accurate. It was a job, and she was lucky to get it.

Her studio apartment felt cramped after the villa in Rome, but it was shelter and she couldn’t complain. She put away her two-minute noodles, eggs, milk, and a few vegetables. Toughing it out till her first paycheck would be relatively easy. It was the heartache that was hard to bear.

Her thoughts kept returning to Italy. Had she done the right thing by leaving when leaving made her miserable? Yes. She had her pride. She’d been fine before she met Giorgio. She’d be fine again. It would only take two hundred years or so to get over him.

Giorgio had a big heart. He was generous and protective of those he loved. But he was fatally flawed by guilt and grief and the need to control the people around him, because he couldn’t control the randomness of the universe.

She’d thought he understood her even though they hadn’t known each other long. She’d thought they connected in a way she hadn’t with anyone else. All false. He saw her as a liar and a prostitute. His words stabbed deep, taking her back to her brief stint as a burlesque dancer. Her old boss was wrong. Like Giorgio was wrong. But was that how men saw her? Was that why Richard was so determined to change her into who he wanted her to be? Well, screw them all. She was who she was.

The sad truth was, powerful god-like men like Giorgio didn’t fall in love with women so far below their social and economic sphere. He might play with her for a while but in the end, the myths always ended badly for the mortal.

She’d meant to spend her last day in Rome checking in with Renaldo to see if he had any leads on possible contracts and to make one last round of the smaller design houses. But she hadn’t had an ounce of oomph left in her. And really, what was the point? She’d had her heart set on the House of Borlenghi from the beginning even though she’d always known it was a long shot. She’d done her best. Now she had to accept that she was never going to crack that market.

Her revised long-term plan was to sell her lingerie and swimwear designs on the Internet. She’d scribbled down everything she could recall about Giorgio’s ideas for a marketing plan and with a little research she’d come up with some of her own promotional ideas. She would work on her own stuff on the side. Until that got off the ground she would be the best damn pajama designer the department store had ever known.

She got out her drawing pad and got to work, sketching top and bottom sets for boys, nighties and onesies for girls. The good thing about kids’ pajamas was that they were easy. The bad thing was that they were boring. But she tried to put her own twist on them, add a bit of personality, determined to make them the grooviest pajamas on the planet.

A couple of hours later she’d just gotten a cup of coffee and taken a break to work on her website when the doorbell rang. She checked herself in the hall mirror. She was wearing her oldest sweats and her Seattle Seahawks sweatshirt but who cared? It was probably only her elderly neighbor across the hall, come to borrow a cup of sugar or something.

She opened the door. “Hey, Betty— Oh.”

She blinked, her breath stuck in her throat. Giorgio stood there in a leather bomber jacket over a crisp white shirt and dark pants. Handmade leather shoes—Italian, of course. His thick dark hair was swept back from his forehead, and his black winged eyebrows rode above black-fringed eyes so intense they took her breath away.

She forced the air out of her chest. He must be an apparition, a figment of her lonely imagination. Or else jet lag was making her brain fuzzy.

And yet… It was him. Wasn’t it? In a daze she opened the door wider. Reaching up, she touched his jaw. It was faintly raspy with dark stubble. Now she could smell leather and his spicy cologne. “You’re real.”

“
Cara
.” He pulled her into his arms and pressed his face into her neck. “You are so beautiful,” he said, his voice muffled. “How could I have let you go?”

She snapped back to reality and pushed him away with both hands. “You didn’t
let
me go. I left. You said horrible things to me.”

He scrunched his eyes closed, muttering imprecations to himself in Italian. When he looked at her again, his expression was full of remorse. “If I could carve out my tongue and take back those words I would do it. I was angry. Worried about Tina. But mostly I was scared. Scared of losing control. What I said was unforgivable. But I beg you, forgive me.” He pressed his hands together in prayer. “
Per favore
.”

For Giorgio to admit he was afraid of anything was huge. But her feelings were too fragile, and he’d hurt her too badly to forgive him just like that. “What are you doing here? How did you get in the building?”

“A man was entering as I approached. I slipped in behind him. May I come in?” Without waiting for an invitation he stepped past her inside her apartment. He seemed larger than life, too tall and handsome to be true.

“What do you want?” she demanded. “I’m working.”

He picked up a drawing of a little girl in a pink onesie with bunny ears. “Cute. But you’re better than this.”

“Hey, it’s good honest work. I need to put two-minute noodles into my bowl if you don’t mind. Just tell me what you want, and you can be on your way.” Hurt and the desperate need not to cry were making her extra curt.

He put the drawing down and paced the few steps into the living room cum bedroom. He sat on the bed with the painted iron bedhead. Then he stood up again. Could he possibly be nervous? It was the only thing that made sense given the way he was behaving but… Giorgio, nervous? No way.

“Well?” she demanded.

“I came with a proposal…”

Her heart kicked up a notch. “Yes?”

“I… Tina, that is, would like you to sub-contract to the House of Borlenghi.” He started to pace. “You are invited to produce a range of lingerie and swimwear designs and manufacture them under her label.”

Her mind whirled. This is what she’d wanted. And yet…there was something more important even than a contract with the House of Borlenghi. Could she bear to be in Rome and not be with Giorgio? “I thought your employees had to be Italian.”

“I’ve made compromises with my sisters,” he said. “You wouldn’t be a direct employee of the company, but she would provide you with a workspace at the atelier and materials—anything you need. Tina wants you very badly.” He stopped pacing to pick up an empty drink bottle she’d left on the floor and tossed it from hand to hand. “I promised to get you for her.”

“For Tina,” Layla said flatly.

“In Italy, if an outsider becomes close to a family, they become part of that family.” His dark eyes fixed hers. “You are part of our family now.”

Tears jumped into her eyes. Damn. She snatched the bottle out of his hands and marched into the kitchen. Facing away from him she pressed a corner of a tea towel into her eyes. “I don’t know. I’ve got a job here and…and…”

“Most of all I want you for myself,
cara
.” His arms came around her from behind. “I know I work too much, and I’m too pushy but if you would consider me…?” His voice was shaky and he paused for breath.

She turned in his arms and looked up at him through her tears. “What are you saying?”

His eyes drank her in. “Marry me.”

She shook her head in disbelief. This hot, sexy man-god wanted to marry her. Maybe he was a figment of her imagination. She pinched him to see if he was real.

“Ouch,” he protested, jerking back. “Is that how you react to a marriage proposal?”

He
was
real. And he was serious. Her heart started beating even faster. “Go on.”

“I want you to be my wife, my lover, the mother of my children.”

Now she wanted to pinch herself to make sure
she
wasn’t dreaming. She pressed a hand to her forehead, still barely able to accept he was here, much less what he was saying. Could she trust him with her heart? She wanted to but she was afraid. “It’s too sudden. We’ve known each other less than a week.”

“When a person is right for you, you know right away. I feel in my heart you’re that person for me.” He laid a hand across his chest to pledge. “I promise I will never try to tell you what you can do, or who you can be. You are perfect just as you are.” He paused. “My sisters will vouch for me. They will tell you I’m capable of changing.”

“Isn’t your meeting with Chang today? Are you missing it?”

Giorgio took her hands in his. “I don’t care. I want you. I can’t live without you. Please come back to Italy with me.”

“But what about your global expansion?”

“You’re more important.”

“Wow.” She sat down with a thump on the chair. He’d risked the most important deal of his career for her.

“Now do you believe I’m serious about wanting you?” He got to his knees in front of her. “Again, I’m sorry for the terrible things I said to you. I didn’t mean it. I only said it because I couldn’t accept with my head what my heart already knew. I was trying to push you away. Please come back to me. I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I also know you have a kind heart. Take pity on me,
cara
.”

How could she resist those dark eyes, that sexy smile? She leaned forward, into his arms. He kissed her cheeks, her eyes, and her lips. And then his mouth took hers, passionate and demanding, tender and loving.

He pulled her toward the bed, murmuring in Italian. Heat rolled through her, turning her belly to liquid fire. His hands cupped her breasts, a thumb scraping each tingling nipple. They fell onto the creaky springs in a tangle of limbs, her on top of him. His erection pressed against her, making her wet and hot for him.

“Stay there,” she said breathlessly. “I’ll be right back.” She scrambled off him and ran to the closet, looking over her shoulder. “Don’t move.”

Giorgio stretched his legs out and his arms over his head, a sexy grin curling his mouth. “Are you going to give me another burlesque dance?”

“Not quite.” She returned to the bed, holding her hands behind her back. Then she straddled him and gave him a wet, open-mouthed kiss as she ground her hips into his. She fumbled with his wrists, wrapping them in velvet-clad iron. With a click, she sat up. He was handcuffed to her bedpost.

Giorgio tugged on the cuffs and twisted his neck to see. “So, you have a kinky side. Interesting.”

“I was going to use these to keep you in my villa that day we were supposed to ‘have lunch,’” she said. “Your sisters thought it was the only way to keep you still long enough to get you to listen to their concerns.”

“I’m a changed man,” he said. “I’ll talk about whatever you want. Just let me go if you’re not going to ravish me.”

“Not so fast,” she said. “If I’m going to accept your marriage proposal I have a list of demands.”

“
Mio dio
,” he groaned. “You women will be the death of me. What do you want?”

“We’ll have a long engagement,” she said. “So we know this isn’t just an infatuation.”

“I already know it’s not.” He tugged on his wrists, glaring at her obstinate expression. “Okay, three months.”

She was pretty sure that what she felt was true love too, and not infatuation, but he was such fun to tease. And she had the upper hand for the moment. But who knew how long that would last? “Six, minimum.
If
I marry you, you have to agree to take time off work to spend with family and friends on a regular basis.”

“I promise.” He writhed on the bed. “Take these cuffs off,” he added craftily, “and I will cross my heart.”

“All in good time.” He looked mighty sexy moving around like that. She was enjoying herself too much to cut it short. “Next item. We’ll take a holiday on the yacht every year on your birthday. With your entire family.”

“Yes, yes, I agree,” he said. “But you can’t plot against me again with my sisters. It’s not fair. There are four of you and only one of me.”

“Well…okay.” She crossed her fingers behind her back. She suspected she would occasionally need Tina and the others on her side when dealing with her autocratic husband.

“So will you marry me?” he murmured, his eyes dark and burning. “I love you.
Ti amo
.”

She stilled, her heart expanding in her chest. She’d thought she needed time to be sure. But hearing those words from his mouth triggered something inside her and she knew without a doubt. “Yes, I’ll marry you.
Ti amo
.”

“Heaven and all the saints be praised. Now will you get the key and release me so I can make love to you?”

“Shortly.” She started to unbutton his shirt, exposing his muscled chest. “When I’m done making love to you.”

He groaned. “I’ve waited too long for you already.”

“You’ve got to learn patience, Giorgio. Learn to let go of control.” She unzipped his pants and tugged them down. His erection sprang free. She took him in her mouth, sucking hard as she wrapped her hands around his shaft. His hips bucked but she held on, licking and stroking and loving him. When he was panting and on the edge of release she stroked a condom onto him. Then she looked deep into his eyes, her gaze soft with love. “Stick with me. We’ll lose control together.”