Fiancée For The Cameras (Mills & Boon Modern)

CHAPTER TWO

S HE SHOULD HAVE looked pathetic.

If Andrea was honest with himself, she did, a little. But standing on those steps, with people watching her and mocking her, in that ghastly overpuffed, overlaced, frothy concoction that someone like Chiara wouldn’t let a staff member wear in her household, Ms. D’Souza also looked brave. As if she’d entered a battle and lost it spectacularly, and yet somehow remained full of that fierce little heart he had never seen in anyone else.

He should have sent his chauffeur, Pascale, to pick her up, throw her over his shoulder if she offered her useless, prideful resistance and dump her inside the car and speed off, so that he could leave her piteous...situation in Mama’s capable, caring hands.

But a little something went off track—a little blip in the fold of the universe, as his brother was fond of saying—and Andrea decided to get out of the car and pick up the wretched baggage himself.

That little lift of her chin as Monica’s catlike golden eyes met his when he lowered the tinted window—even as her hands trembled at her sides, even as her face looked like it was made of myriad shades of red and brown and gold with a little green around her mouth thrown in for good measure, even as she looked like a jilted bride who had crawled out of some haunted mansion in a cheap gothic novel—was the thing that provoked some base instinct that Andrea had never known existed in him.

He raised a hand to his chauffeur to turn the car around on the busy junction, aware that they were already attracting attention. Usually, he hated spectacles like this. He was a well- known figure in Milan and his face was the one that had turned a small leather goods company into his current billion-dollar machine that had resuscitated a sinking economy on its last breath. Flexing his power and prestige and connections in this way had never been his style.

But something egged him on and he didn’t even calculate the risk like he usually did when he encountered such a situation.

He finally reached his assistant and felt a sharp spike of awareness as she looked down at him from a few steps above. Whatever hairstyle she’d started the day with had unraveled, leaving her silky brown waterfall of hair falling to her waist. Her skin was flushed and blotched at the same time, as if she’d been trekking in the sun without water for too long. Her lips were chapped and she kept licking them.

Even with the overdone lace puffs at her shoulders and too much lace fluttering at her neckline, the bodice paid homage to her high breasts and then nipped tightly at her tiny waist. How she had managed to find a dress that fell too far to the ground when she was so tall, Andrea would never know. His leisurely traversing revealed a tear at the hem and one at the waistline, as if she had pulled and torn at the dress to get it away from her body.

But what alarmed Andrea when he would have otherwise found the whole thing comically tragic was the reddish flush to her cheeks, her neck and the skin beneath. And the way she couldn’t seem to stop trembling.

She looked like she was unraveling, providing a spectacle for bored tourists and Milanese alike.

The stubborn tilt of her chin was gone. Had he imagined it, the little flicker of bravery? Was she that same lost little lamb who gave foolishly and generously of herself to one and all?

“Come, let’s go,” he said when he reached her, employing his usual brisk tone, hoping to devolve whatever emotional outburst was building inside the woman like a damn geyser. The last thing he wanted was to be near her when it erupted.

Have a little care, Andrea. She’s twenty-three years old, years younger than you in age and experience and she just got dumped.

Suitably chastened, as if Papa were standing next to him and speaking those words, Andrea extended a hand toward her. “There is no point in lingering here, Ms. D’Souza.”

“I can’t, Mr. Valentini,” she said, her usually husky voice paper-thin. “At least not until I get this thing off me.”

Andrea frowned. He tried, tried his best , to modulate his tone but he was now regretting the impulse of getting out of his car at all. This had disaster written all over it, for her and him. “You’re very well aware of how much I loathe public scenes, Ms. D’Souza. It is bad enough that Mama wouldn’t leave me alone until I picked you up here and delivered you to her care. Bad enough that I had to come here all the way from Mr. Brunetti’s estate at the outskirts of the city. You’re also well aware how busy this week has been at work and how much your leave today has inconvenienced me already. Enough with your—”

“All I need is that Swiss blade you keep on yourself all the time,” she said, eyes not only watering but also shedding tears, which were running tracks down her cheeks and into the grooves of her delicate clavicle.

Cristo , the woman was stunning and sensuous even when she was a hot garbage mess, as one of his younger cousins was fond of saying. Now Ms. D’Souza was swaying where she stood and Andrea thought she might disappear in a whiff of smoke if he so much as breathed wrong.

“Then you can turn around, forget this little scene ever happened and return to your air-conditioned suite and that Brunetti contract. If you do me this favor, I’ll even put in a few hours of work tonight. And I’ll return the blade back to you. I know it is a cherished gift from Mrs. Rossi.”

Andrea stilled, shocked at her request. Shocked at how much of his personal life she was privy to. That he held on to the blade that Chiara had gifted him almost a decade ago, not even his mother knew. It had been foolish sentimentality at the beginning. And now he was simply attached to the master craftsmanship of the blade. Not that he had to explain his uncharacteristic fondness of the blade to this woman.

“Do not be ridiculous, Ms. D’Souza. I’m not so much of a monster that I would make you come in to work when you’re in such a...pathetic state.” It was a bad choice of word, yet again. Andrea regretted it the moment it found shape, even before it landed and she flinched.

Dio mio , what was wrong with him? He was called ruthless, arrogant, but casual cruelty had never been his weapon of choice.

She did draw her chin up then and he knew he hadn’t imagined the same earlier. “If you’re not going to help me, leave me in peace.”

“What good will a Swiss blade do you now? You should have taken better care with your money and your heart before you trusted such a scoundrel. All these dramatics are of no use. Walking naked through these streets is not going to bring him back.”

“That’s not what I mean to do at all,” she said, mouth falling open at his suggestion. “Wait, how do you know that he...” Closing her eyes, she took a bracing breath.

Once again, Andrea was struck by her quiet dignity.

She rubbed a hand over her cheek and neck and opened her eyes. There was a flatness to her gaze that he disliked intensely. “You know what? Like you said, it doesn’t matter. Francesco dumping me here has no more or no less significance just because you found out and use it to talk down to me. If you’ll excuse me, I have other things to take care of. I’m sorry that Flora inconvenienced you and I will see you tomorrow morning at work.”

He should have let her go, let it go. In fact, he was glad to see she had some backbone. But he didn’t. Apparently, today was full of surprises.

When she sidestepped him to take the stairs down past him, he grabbed her wrist. “I’m not talking down to you,” he said, stubbornly wanting the last word. “And you are...”

His words stilled. She was burning to his touch.

Andrea dropped her wrist and touched the back of his hand to her forehead and then her neck, like he had seen Mama do countless times.

“Are you dehydrated?” he demanded, pushing into her space, touching her compulsively in a few more spots. “You’re flushed and sweating and...you need a doctor. You’re a stubborn creature to stand here and argue with me when you—”

“I need your blade,” she said, shoving away from him. “If you have even a tiny bit of respect for me, you’ll listen to me when I say I know what I need. Now, Andrea.”

It was how she said his name that convinced him. With an easy familiarity, as if she had said it many times. When in reality, he had always been Mr. Valentini—his last name almost a shield. Now, in that low-pitched husky voice, it sounded intimate and strangely like something he had imagined before.

“I will not let you do anything foolish, Monica.” Her own name fell easily, effortlessly, from his lips. As if some hitherto closed door had been unlocked, never to be shut again. Cristo , the heat must be getting to him, too, because that was a load of bullshit if he’d ever heard, in his own head.

She scoffed then, and he felt the loss of her innocence keenly. “I have lived through too many shitty foster homes, evaded too many incoming hits, fought too many roving hands, to now harm myself over a man who has no...loyalty.”

He placed his blade into her outstretched hand. “You’re an orphan, then?” How had he not known it in two years of working together so closely? Or the nearly four years that she’d been close to his mother and brother? How had he compartmentalized this woman so easily?

She didn’t answer and Andrea knew that it was a choice, that he hadn’t made the cut to her inner circle. Damn if it didn’t irritate the hell out of him.

She palmed the blade, as if to test its weight and slant, and then turned the pointed edge toward the bodice. Andrea nearly leaped at her, his pulse jumping into his throat. Only to realize that she meant to rip the bodice off her flesh.

“Put some pressure on my hand,” she said, and he clamped his fingers over hers automatically. “The zipper is stuck.”

She was different now, her calm voice and the rigid resolve showing something else beneath the soft-spoken, highly efficient shadow he’d gotten used to for years.

Too close, they were too close. Any protest he had that they were creating a spectacle disappeared as he noted the slight swelling of her lips and the small reddish bubbles near her neck. Her eyes flickered for a second, meeting his, then she groaned as the fabric finally rent under their combined pressure. It fell open, revealing an ivory white lacy bra that was clearly much more expensive than the cheap dress. Her breasts were thrust up, falling and rising with her labored breaths.

“Now the back, please,” she said, and turned around, presenting him with her back.

Shaking himself out of the sudden haze, Andrea cut through the fabric of the dress in the back. He’d barely gotten it down to her waist when she ripped it off her skin as if it...burned her.

He saw it then. The angry red rash all over her back, dipping all the way to the slope of her buttocks. A combination of blisters and rash that looked...intensely painful. Alarmed, Andrea pushed the dress down her shoulders and then down her waist and hips. He pulled the bra away from her skin and cut through that, too, realizing now that her skin must burn when anything touched that ghastly rash in this heat. He hated himself a little for making her wait so long before listening to her.

“That feels...better,” she said, turning around and burrowing her upper body into his. The blaze of heat from her body nearly seared him. Her hands were shaking as she held the torn dress against her breasts, her mouth a rictus of pain, her eyes cloudy.

“You’ll be fine now, Ms. D’Souza,” he said stiffly, shrugging off his jacket, feeling a strange powerless anger thrum through him. He recognized the familiarity of it and loathed it so much that he almost pushed her away. But the wobbling of her delicate chin stopped him.

He had barely draped the jacket over her shoulders when she swayed, lost consciousness and folded into his arms like a doll.

Andrea picked her up in his arms with as much gentleness as he was capable of, his heart in his throat. Why had he not listened to her immediately? How had he not seen her pain in her eyes?

His chauffeur helped him lay her on the backseat with her head in his lap. Grabbing a bottle of water, Andrea uncapped it and sprayed a few drops onto her burning forehead, even as he barked orders at Pascale to rush them to the company-owned flat close to the financial district.

He held her head in his lap, arranging her long, bare legs to stretch out onto the seat, and softly tapped her cheek. She didn’t respond. His fear grew in his throat, choking him out of air. If anything happened to her because of his arrogance... Cristo , he would not forgive himself!

Having drenched a napkin in ice-cold water that was now puddling at his feet, Andrea ran it over her forehead. Slowly, her eyelids fluttered open and she made a half-hearted attempt to sit up. Her hands scrabbled for purchase on his shirt, her lithe softness pressed against him.

He helped her recline against his side, making sure not to touch her back, and held a bottle to her lips.

She drank it down eagerly, coughing and sputtering water until he had to drag the bottle away from her mouth. With a soft gasp, she grabbed the bottle from his hands and poured it over her back and front, dumping cold water all over his leather seats.

“Better?” he asked, as he fished his cell phone out of the jacket that was draped over her shoulders.

“Much, thank you,” she said, bare shoulders trembling, whether with the fever he could clearly see in her eyes or with cold, he didn’t know. “If you can have Pascale drop me off at—”

“You’re not going anywhere alone. You need to be looked after.”

“That’s not your decision.” She licked her chapped lips and softened her tone. “Please, Mr. Valentini. I would prefer—”

“What? No more Andrea ?” he said, just as the call he’d made on his phone connected.

He wondered what her answer would have been while he barked orders on the phone.

She would not like his high-handedness come tomorrow. She would actively loathe his thoughtfulness and care and generosity tomorrow. But he didn’t give a fig.

What did concern him was the couple of cell phones he’d seen focused on him and Monica when he’d been busy cutting the damned dress off her and when he’d carried her to his car. Any other time, he would never have left himself vulnerable to being recorded in a public setting. But the state of her... It was done.

And whatever the consequences, he’d have to deal with them.

Monica had barely discarded his jacket and was holding the bedsheet around her front without it touching the rash when Mr. Valentini returned from his brother Romeo’s bathroom with a tube of aloe vera gel that she had told him where to find. Numerous peeks over her shoulder had been unsuccessful for her to get a good look at her back.

With each passing moment, she was aware of what a nuisance this situation was for a man who abhorred any kind of drama or mess, professional or personal. What a nuisance she herself had become for him today.

The last straw in her miserable day had been to find that he had brought her to the apartment he used in the city.

His younger brother, Romeo, had taken one look at her—holding his brother’s jacket against her near-naked body—and opened his arms wide to her from his wheelchair. Monica had thrown herself into his arms shamelessly, nearly crashing them both to the floor, and sobbed her heart out while he whispered soft endearments into her ear and cursed Francesco to hell and beyond.

The kindness in her friend’s eyes had broken through whatever fake armor she’d put on around his brother, making today’s loss unbearably real.

Now, with Romeo busy with his physiotherapist, Monica wished she hadn’t let go so...completely of her emotions. At least, not where Andrea’s frosty gray eyes watched her and judged her and found her so... pathetic.

That was the word he had used for her. She couldn’t let herself forget it. Not because the ruthless Andrea Valentini had pronounced it so, but because it was what her foolish desperation for love had reduced her to.

Now, looking up at Andrea as he prowled toward the bed, toward her, Monica tried not to be caught up in the indescribable masculine energy of the man. It had been so from the first moment she’d met him four years ago. Even then, it had been her on the hospital bed and him glaring down at her with those inscrutable gray eyes, making her skin prickle with awareness, even amidst the happy haze of painkillers. As if he blamed her for his mother’s mugging incident, rather than thanking her for saving her life.

Nearly three years of close proximity hadn’t dimmed his frightful appeal one bit. Proving her efficiency and efficacy to him and the company hadn’t stopped her insides from tying into knots every time he stepped close. Understanding his work ethic and his care for his employees and his utter intolerance for incompetence and greed hadn’t helped conquer this...ridiculous attack of nerves whenever she was near him.

He’s just a man , she told herself, like she always did. Made of flesh and bones and hand-stitched designer suits. But what a man , the same voice whispered, the bold, brave one she never let out.

With his jacket gone, his cuffs rolled back to reveal hair-roughened corded forearms, the front of his shirt damp and wrinkled thanks to her, he looked less like the suave, sophisticated, steely-eyed businessman and more like...the big, bad boss of a nefarious enterprise. Even his hair, always slickly pushed back, looked as if he’d run his hands through it multiple times, and his mouth had the pinched look that conveyed strain he rarely let rise to the surface.

His meeting with his ex and her father...

Monica’s gaze slipped to his left hand, looking for the ring she’d been expecting for weeks now.

“What are you looking for?” he said, leaning one knee onto the bed while she instantly scuttled back like a frightened cockroach.

His mouth flattened at her reaction.

Her cheeks heated, and she hoped he would just put it down to the feverish haze that still racked her body. “I wondered if I should offer congratulations,” she said, feeling a boldness she’d never known before. Maybe this moment of bravery came with him having seen her at her worst already. Maybe this was the illusion of wisdom since she’d paid dearly for her naive foolishness.

“Congratulations?” he asked, frowning.

“On your engagement to Mrs. Rossi.”

“How the hell did you know that her father was going to demand that as a condition to the merger?” he said, a sudden coldness to his gaze.

She shivered, his anger a freezing blast against her overheated skin. “We ran into her at dinner one evening, almost six weeks ago. Even before your mother invited her, she joined us.”

“Ran into whom?”

“Chiara Rossi,” Monica said and sighed. “Flora told me she’s Mr. Brunetti’s daughter. She was very warm toward your mother. When Flora introduced me as your assistant, gushing how invaluable you find me and couldn’t do without me and that I was almost a Valentini family member—” Monica blushed as he watched her with that relentless gaze, though he didn’t deny his mother’s claims “—it was like a switch had flipped. She kept probing about our working relationship and...” She bit her lip. “When Flora went to the restroom, Mrs. Rossi asked really pointed questions about how well I know you and how much time I spend with you and other intrusive stuff that made me very uncomfortable.”

“You could have refused to answer her.”

Monica stared at him. “She’s your...friend,” she said, instead of “apparently the lost love of your life”, “and I...didn’t want to give offense.” She blew out a breath at having gotten that much out.

“You’re not answerable to anyone other than me, Ms. D’Souza,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “What else?” he asked, his gaze taking in every nuance of hers.

“At the end, she said to make sure I had my head screwed on straight around you, to not lose myself in silly, girlish dreams. To remember that I was nothing but your employee. And then she...”

“What, Monica?”

“She muttered something in Italian, obviously assuming I wouldn’t understand.”

“What?”

“That she would make sure my time with you was limited, beginning right then.”

“You didn’t think to warn me of this?”

“Warn you?” Monica said, frustration creeping into her tone. “Of what? That a stunning, sophisticated woman, your ex, apparently a...member of your family’s intimate circle, interrogated me about...us? You would have thrown me out of your office before I could get started on that story, calling it gossip. And even if you did hear me out, I didn’t know if you would trust my version.”

“When have I ever given you the belief that I don’t trust you? Dio mio , give yourself some credit,” he said through gritted teeth. “I could have walked into that meeting with Brunetti without being blindsided by his ultimatum.”

“You’ve been out with her to the opera and that charity gala the last few months. Spent time with her more than I’ve ever known you to, with any woman, in four years. I thought it was a foregone conclusion. Flora said mergers and marriages were interchangeable in high society.”

“You didn’t even want to know if her threat had credibility with me? About your position?”

Monica sighed, wondering if he really didn’t see. “Pit myself against a woman who knew you for years, who was about to marry you, who has power and prestige and wealth and ask you to pick her or me?”

“You continue to sell yourself short and that is a pathetic trait,” he said, shoving away from the bed.

She flinched, feeling his disappointment worse than the sudden crack in his temper. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “So it is not...a done deal?”

Turning, he glared at her.

“I’m not fishing for gossip. I’m merely asking, especially since I’ve pulled you away from a meeting with her father. I know how much you’ve sunk into the merger and how many livelihoods depend on it, and how hard you’ve worked on this. If—”

“Your little drama today hasn’t affected the merger. Now drop it. When you need to know anything more, you will.”

Monica bristled at his dismissal, though she should be used to it. On one hand, he told her to value herself when it came to him and on the other...he shut her down. Not that she didn’t understand his frustration.

Mr. Valentini thrived on being in control, and Carlo Brunetti’s addendum must have come as a shock.

While he had shut her line of questioning down, it was clear that he wasn’t dating his ex, wasn’t the least bit interested in getting back with her or marrying her. Suddenly, it felt like a weight she hadn’t known she was carrying had been lifted from her shoulders.

And then, in that feverish haze, it dawned on her that even Francesco abandoning her had less weight in the face of her boss’s continued single state. Pressing her hand to her forehead, Monica shivered anew.

Had she been so shaken by Mrs. Rossi’s threat that she’d soon cut Monica out of Andrea’s life that she had thrown herself into seeking security with Francesco? For nearly three years, her boss had been the locus of her life, the sole foundation to the kind of security she’d always craved. Andrea’s needs and demands and requirements of her had become her sole focus, her reason to get through the day.

Had she so feared losing what little she had of Andrea that she had taken such a reckless, uncharacteristic move and thrown her lot in with Francesco? Had she made him into something he’d never been because she’d worried she was losing her place in Andrea’s life?

How bad was her fixation with Andrea Valentini? How had she not seen it?

She was shaking over this new realization when Andrea reached her and opened his palm to reveal two painkillers. “I’ve spoken to Mama’s doctor. He will visit you before nightfall. In the meantime, he suggested these for that fever. He will do blood tests to make sure no lasting damage was done.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t,” she said, wanting not to discuss this with him anymore. Needing this torment to be over. “It’s not late. You could just send Pascale to drop me off at the doctor’s. That way—”

“And then have Mama castigate me that she didn’t raise me to be such a thoughtless, uncaring brute? Save me from a lecture, an extra trip and the headache of an argument with you now, Ms. D’Souza.”