Tara Pammi – The Unwanted Conti Bride (страница 2)

Rossi Leather couldn’t tide over their latest financial setback by alienating the powerful Contis. Antonio still held much sway over the older generation in the leather industry and Leandro Conti, his eldest grandson and CEO of Conti Luxury Goods, held the younger, more heated generation.

Antonio’s second grandson, Luca Conti, however...had no clout or morals. Probably no talent. Just oodles of charm, sexuality and utter self-indulgence.

Even thinking about him made her cross. And bitter. And her knees weak.

She’d spent nights pacing her bedroom, sleepless, panicky, when the idea of marrying Leandro had presented itself to her. She’d made herself sick. She’d had nightmares about her past and present morphing into a distasteful, torturous future.

But the welfare of her family had precedence over naive decade-old dreams.

Antonio didn’t look surprised. But then he’d known to ask that question, hadn’t he? His silvery brows rose. “You’re a curiously resourceful young woman, Sophia.”

Sophia’s cheeks heated up. “Even for a half-Italian bastard girl with a broken engagement behind her, you mean?”

He continued looking at her.

If she hadn’t lost her finer sensibilities a long time ago, if she hadn’t developed elephant-thick skin, she’d have been insulted by the purely assessing look the old man cast her, from the top of her dark hair in an efficient knot to the soles of her black Conti pumps, her only nod to fashion, with leisurely stops at her face and several other areas of her body.

“I’m not a cow to be assessed,” she added with a glare. The flash of something in his gaze gave her the creeps. “I’m not in the market for an alliance anymore, either.” There was only so much she could stomach, apparently, even for her family. “Of any kind,” she added for good measure.

Amusement shifted the rigid lines of his face. Flashes of a similar set of features sent a flutter down her spine. “You’re not only dedicated to your family but you’re also sharp and fearless. I like you, Sophia.”

Rarely did the opposite sex, except for her ten-year old brothers, say something that wasn’t condescending or insulting to her. “I wish I could say the same. But I’ve seen you use everyone’s shortcomings to your own advantage, including Sal’s.”

His smile lingered. “Then why not advise your stepfather?”

She remained silent, frustration a quiet snarl inside her. Because Sal never listened to her. He loved her, but not enough to trust her judgment or intelligence when it came to Rossi Leather. All of which she was aware the cunning wolf knew.

“I can give you a way to help Salvatore, Sophia. Without throwing yourself at a married man.”

Stinging anger burned Sophia’s cheeks but she stayed still. He’d baited her well and he knew it. She was going to throttle whoever had started that distasteful rumor.

“I will pour capital into Salvatore’s business,” Antonio continued, “create new contracts for him, bring him back into the old class, so to speak. After his string of poor business decisions, he certainly needs the help.”

“I’m not for sale,” Sophia retorted, a slow panic building inside. She felt like a donkey with a carrot visible but just out of reach. “I suggested marriage to Leandro as a way to help Sal, but I’d have kept every vow I made to him. I would’ve been a good wife.”

“You believe I did not realize that? You believe I would let Salvatore...persuade me into letting you marry my grandson without learning all about you? It is exactly why I make this proposal.”

Her pulse sped up. “What is your proposal?” she forced herself to say.

“I do have another grandson, si? Bring Luca to the altar, marry him and I will take a firm handle on Rossi financial matters. Your mother, your brothers, their futures will never be in peril.”

“No!” Her sharp reply turned heads toward them.

Marry Luca, the Conti Devil?

The very idea was like walking on shards of glass for the rest of her life. Bare feet and with a lead weight over her head. “I don’t want to spend an evening with the Conti Devil, much less marry him.”

As though invoked by their discussion, Luca Conti appeared in the midst of the perfectly manicured lawn before them, a tall, gorgeous blonde following him like a faithful puppy.

A woman on his arm, as always.

The rage in those languid, smoky eyes the night of her engagement to his brother had haunted her. But he’d avoided her as she’d done for a decade.

His dark, wavy hair was in that same stylish cut. Low on the sides and piled high on his head, making his angular face even narrower. Sophistication and grace oozed from his every stride. But any kind of austerity ended with his hair.

Because Luca Conti was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.

His face, now visible only in flashes as he moved through the crowd with that loose-limbed stride had such perfect lines that her breath caught even from this distance.

Broad shoulders lovingly hugged by gray silk, narrowing to a tapered waist and muscular thighs honed to pure steel by hours and hours of swimming. He moved sinuously through the crowd, the tall woman a beautiful accessory around his lean and wiry body, a little on the thin side.

But who could remember all that after one glance at his face?

Wide-set, jet-black eyes, with dark blue smudges underneath, always the shadows underneath his eyes as if the man never slept, a steel blade of a nose and a wide mouth made of plump, lush lips that invited one, two...oh, a hundred glances.

Collagen had nothing on this man’s mouth...

A mouth that invited sin with one word... A mouth he knew how to use every which way...

Sharp cheekbones created planes and grooves, in concert with the high forehead, as if every inch of it had been painstakingly designed and carved to render him breathtaking.

Those features should have been effeminate, too beautiful, yet something in his gaze, in his will, immediately imposed his fierce masculinity on the onlooker, as if the space around him had to become an extension of him.

And the devil was aware of his exquisite beauty, and the effect it had on the female sex, whether they were seventeen or seventy.

It was clear, from even up there, that Luca was sloshed if not drunk and so was the disreputable beauty, who also happened to be the Italian Finance minister’s almost ex-wife, Mariana.

Had she thrown away her powerful husband for Luca? Did she know that Luca would dispose of her like a toddler did last week’s toys?

Sophia could almost, only almost, feel pity for the woman.

The hiss of a curse falling from Antonio’s mouth by her side punctured her obsessively greedy perusal.

Luca, as usual, was creating a ruckus. Heads turned toward him, including Kairos and Valentina. A stiff-lipped Leandro cast a hand on Luca to stop him but his younger brother pushed it away.

Whispers abounded, like the drone of insects.

As indulgent as his family and friends were of his usual escapades, it seemed an open lovers’ spat—for Luca and the lady’s argument was becoming clear now—with another man’s wife was too scandalous for them to overlook.

“This is the man you want me to wed? The man who shamelessly shows off his affair with another man’s wife with no thought to his family or hers? The man who thinks every woman is a challenge to be conquered, a bet to win?” The memory of her own humiliation at his hands was like acid in her throat. “One who tramples hearts like they were little pieces of glass? I wouldn’t touch Luca if he were the last man on earth.”

Antonio turned toward her slowly, as if that small movement cost him a great effort. One look into his eyes and Sophia knew he was going in for the kill. Now she was the deer caught in the wolf’s sights.

“Are you aware, Sophia, that the bank is ready to call Salvatore’s loan in? Or that he has no way to meet the next production per schedule?”

Her heart sank to her toes. “That’s not true. He applied for an extension—”

“And was denied.”

Sunken eyes peered at her with a cunning that sent chills down her spine. He’d done this, she knew.

Oh, Salvatore had paved the way to their financial ruin with his own faulty decisions but this latest setback—the bank’s refusal for an extension—was Antonio’s doing.

Apparently, Antonio was just as desperate as she was. “Even if I were to agree to your outrageous proposal—” her entire life tied to that reckless playboy who had made her so weak once “—how do you think I can accomplish this? Even I, desperate that I am, can’t drag a man to the altar. And definitely not the Conti Devil, who cares for nothing except his own pursuits.”

Drunk as he was, Luca had somehow managed to steer the clinging woman away from the crowd. But her husky laughter and frantic begging in Italian could be heard from where they were standing, behind and beneath the balcony.

Heat tightened Sophia’s cheeks as she understood the gist of the woman’s phrases in Italian. Instead of distaste and fury, she felt pity.

The woman was in love with Luca.

Antonio dragged his gaze away from Luca, his mouth a tight line. His frail body seemed to vibrate with distaste, rage and, Sophia sensed with mounting shock, grief. Antonio Conti was grief-stricken over his grandson Luca. Why?