There was reserve in his voice, she could hear it. Almost, she recognised, a wariness.
‘What is going on?’ she asked bluntly. ‘My booker told me this was a casting of sorts...’
A mordant expression was in his eyes. ‘Of sorts, yes,’ he echoed, his reserve still apparent to her. ‘If we proceed.’
For a moment he just surveyed her, with that unreadable look on his face. Then he placed a gold-tipped, very expensive fountain pen in front of her, nodding slightly at the NDA. She picked up the pen and signed. Clearly he would say nothing more until she did. She pushed the paper and the pen back towards him. He slid the signed and dated NDA back into its folder and rested his gaze on her again.
His expression was still unreadable, but something, Lana fancied, had changed within it. And across his broad shoulders, so elegantly clad in his bespoke suit—Milan, not Savile Row; she’d recognised that from the off with her practised eye for fashion—sat a new slight but discernible tension.
She waited. His eyes rested on her impassively—so dark, so unreadable, and so unfairly fringed with velvet lashes that, had they been fringing a female’s eyes, would not need mascara to thicken them.
But there was tension in his gaze as well. As though, she thought, he might not continue with this exchange after all.
She sat still—she was used to doing so for extended periods during photoshoots—keeping her expression as neutral. Then, abruptly, he spoke again.
‘I find myself in a situation...’ he drew a short breath ‘...which requires a certain line of action.’
The accented voice was brisk now, and very businesslike. The dark eyes were obsidian, suddenly, the planed cheekbones taut, the sensual mouth a tight line. And the tips of his fingers had discernibly whitened around the arms of his chair.
He’s steeling himself.
The realisation was in her head, and a frown as she wondered why that should be so was starting to form on her forehead.
His next words gave the explanation. Bluntly, brusquely and blatantly.
‘I wish,’ he said, ‘to discuss the possibility of a marriage between us.’
Salvatore heard the words fall from his own mouth. In that instant if he’d been able to recall them he would have.
Had he really, truly, gone and said them?
Yes, he must have. The look of extreme astonishment on her face told him so.
His own face set. Too late to backtrack now. He’d launched his bombshell and he must follow it through.
A tight, almost-smile pressed at his mouth. ‘Yes, I agree—not what you were expecting,’ he commented. He took a breath, deliberately slackening what had become an iron grip of his hands around his chair-arms. ‘However, there are sound reasons—indeed, quite sane reasons—for what I have just said.’
She still hadn’t moved, let alone replied, but instinctively he raised a hand as if to silence her.
‘Hear me out,’ he instructed.
For a second he gathered his thoughts. He’d rehearsed his argument countless times since the notion had first come to him, but now it was to be for real.
‘I require,’ he went on, ‘at very short notice, a female in my life whom I can present, for a limited but immediate period, as my wife.’
He halted. She was staring at him as if he were mad, and he could well understand why. He lowered his raised hand and placed it palm down on his desk, pushing his chair back slightly, making himself adopt a more relaxed pose.
It wasn’t one that was echoed in Lana—she was still sitting there, completely frozen, completely expressionless.
Yet still stunningly beautiful!
She was dressed in neutral colours: a pair of dark blue narrow-legged trousers, and a grey, close-fitting top with a loose but smart jacket worn over it. Her feet were in heels, but of modest height. Her hair was drawn back into a ponytail, and she wore only light make-up. But she was still far and away the most stunningly beautiful-looking female he had ever set eyes on—and she was having exactly the same impact on him as she had the first time he’d seen her at that after-party.
She refused me then—will she refuse me now?
He crushed down his reaction to her. Time for that later. For now, it was all about the reason he’d just dropped his bombshell in front of her.
He took a breath, short and indrawn, and made himself speak, keeping his voice impersonal, dispassionate. ‘I have,’ he began, ‘a long-standing business partnership with an associate of my late father, who has recently taken it into his head that I...’ his voice tightened ‘...would make a suitable husband for his daughter. A notion that, unfortunately, his daughter also shares. She, however...’ and now his voice was edged ‘...would not make a suitable wife for me! And although I have tried hard to convince both herself and her father of that truth, neither is willing to accept it.’ He took another incising breath, felt his jaw tense, his mouth thin. ‘It has, therefore, become clear to me that I must...reluctantly...take drastic steps to dispose of a nuisance that has become increasingly irksome...to me. Hence,’ he concluded, ‘what I have just proposed to you.’