‘Dognapping has become increasingly common and I’m not going to let anyone take mine from me without a fight.’ The serious hue of her eyes turned into a sparkle. ‘I can show you my moves if you want?’
Now he’d heard everything. ‘You think you could fight me?’
Her eyebrows waggled with mischief. ‘Wanna try?’
‘No!’
‘Is that because you’re so much bigger than me and think you would hurt me? Because I assure you, it’s far more likely that I would hurt you.’
Surely she couldn’t believe that, he thought incredulously. He was big enough and strong enough to snap her in two. ‘Would you have been able to fight Dominic off when he tried to force himself on you?’ he challenged. It was a challenge that sent nausea roiling violently in his stomach as, for the first time, he realised what the implications would have been if he hadn’t rescued her that morning.
The sparkle faded to nothing and he knew Clara was thinking the exact same thing.
‘I was prepared to,’ she said, speaking quietly for the first time. ‘I would have fought like hell. I tried to fight him when he first locked me up but he had his bodyguards flanking him and they stopped me. He always had them at his side when he dealt with me.’
Bile rose up his throat. ‘Did he hurt you when he dealt with you?’
She shook her head and gave her first bitter smile. ‘He didn’t want my skin marred for the wedding photos.’
The bile flooded his mouth. It was the most rancid taste he’d ever experienced and, for the first time in his life, Marcelo wished to harm someone. Properly harm them. Maim them.
Before he could swallow the foul taste, his private secretary tapped on the door and slipped into the room.
What she whispered in his ear made his stomach pitch.
Maintaining his composure, he rose to his feet. ‘Excuse me,’ he said to Clara. ‘My mother has requested a meeting with me. Have some dessert. I shouldn’t be long.’
And then, on his return, he would see her into a car and wave goodbye to the sexiest, most infuriating woman he’d ever met in his life.
‘You cannot be serious?’
The looks on the faces of Marcelo’s parents and siblings on the other side of the table, all convened for this family emergency, told him they were.
He kneaded his temples in an effort to temper the forming headache. ‘I can’t marry her. Dear God, Clara Sinclair is completely unsuited to being a member of any royal family let alone this one.’
‘Dominic thought she was good enough for him,’ his mother pointed out.
‘Dominic was, by Clara’s own admission, desperate.’
‘Our situation will become desperate if you don’t,’ Amadeo, his brother, said. ‘As Mother said, it doesn’t have to be for ever, only a year or two, just long enough to be convincing.’
‘Even a day is too long. She has no decorum and no filter on her mouth.’
‘Then you will have to teach her.’
‘I am not a miracle worker.’
His mother put her hand flat on the table and leaned forward. ‘What matters is the public’s perception. This has the potential to destroy us. Marrying her is the only way to mitigate the trouble your actions, however noble they were, have brought on this family.’
Marcelo looked from face to face. Beneath the implacable facades lay compassion. They all knew he wasn’t ready to marry.
But they knew—and he knew—that this mess was a situation of his own making and that it was his responsibility to fix it before the snowball he’d set off turned into an avalanche.
He threw his hands in the air. ‘Okay, I’ll ask her, but she won’t agree to it. Clara doesn’t want to get married. She wants to get back to England and resume her life.’
‘Then it’s up to you to convince her,’ his father said. ‘For all our sakes.’