The Parenti Marriage: The Reluctant Surrender

Having moved his car a few yards, to let another vehicle pass him, Saul Parenti stared with furious disbelief at the thief who had just taken his parking spot. The fact that this deed had been commited by a woman added insult to injury. Saul had the blood of generations of powerful men running through his veins—men in control, in authority, absolute rulers—and right now that blood was running very hot and fast indeed. Saul would never have described himself as a misogynist, far from it—he liked women. He liked them a lot. But generally speaking the place where he liked them most was in his bed—not in a parking spot for which he had been waiting with a patience that went against his nature.

With no other parking space available, he parked swiftly to one side, obstructing two vehicles, and switched off the car engine. He pushed open the door, unfolding his muscular six-foot-four length from the driving seat of his car.

Giselle was unaware that her theft was about to be challenged until she was out of her small car. Making the short walk from the car park to the lift that would take her up to the office was the time she normally used to get her professional mask firmly in place—the one that hid the fact that she disliked the male interest so often directed at her at work. Because of this she was too involved in adopting her cloak of defensive hauteur—straight back, straight-ahead focus, and a lift of her chin that said she was untouchable—to be aware of the danger until it was too late and she was forced to rock back on her heels in mid-stride or risk walking straight into the man standing between her and the exit.

‘Not so fast. I want a word with you.’

His English was excellent, and somehow slightly at odds with his darkly male looks.

Well, she certainly did not want to exchange any words with him. Giselle stepped past him, and then gasped in outraged shock when he blocked her, stepping closer to her, until she felt as though each breath was filled with the raw masculine smell of him—all dark, erotic mastery spiked with something sharper, like the touch of a velvet glove spiked with hidden danger.

‘You’re in my way,’ she told him as she fought to keep and sound cool—not realising the dangerous opening she had given him.

‘And you are in my parking spot,’ he retorted.

That might be true, but she wasn’t about to give it or anything else up to him.

‘Possession is nine-tenths of the law,’ she quipped, and then wished that she hadn’t when he seemed to move even closer, his presence somehow paralysing and imprisoning her.

‘Possession belongs to those who are strong enough to take what they want and hold on to it—whether that applies to a parking space—or a woman.’

And he was a man who would possess his woman. The knowledge of that had somehow got under her protective armour, and now that it had…She was beginning to feel dizzy, weak, filled with a febrile excitement brought on by the clash of words between them, a dangerous desire to go on pushing him, to test his self-control.

A shudder ripped though her. This was madness. Just because he was a man. And what a man, she was forced to acknowledge dizzily. For a start there was his height—easily over six feet, so that even in her heels she had to tilt her head back to look up at him. Somehow, despite the fact that she had worked for years never to allow herself to be physically aware of men, this one had such a powerful aura of raw male sexuality about him that she suspected it would be impossible for any woman not to be aware of him. Her own unexpected and unwanted vulnerability set off a chain reaction of panic and anger inside her, and those emotions were intensified by the fact that they could not block out the effect his maleness was having on her.

Unfamiliar and definitely unwanted thoughts were springing up inside her head with such vigour that it was impossible for her to cull them. Dangerous thoughts, all allied to the fact that he was a man. And not just a man but the architectural equivalent of instant visual gratification via the perfection of the design of his outer form. In fact looking at him could easily become a female compulsion, Giselle suspected helplessly. That expensive-looking shirt he was wearing must surely have been made to measure for him, to cover those shoulders and that chest. No surplus fat there. His body looked as though it would be all hard muscle over silken flesh. How would it feel to touch such a man? What would it be like to have such a feast of male sensuality spread out for her delight and the enticement of her senses? A quiverful of molten aching darts of longing were piercing her body, lethally infecting it with tiny stings of desire.

Protectively Giselle lifted her hand to her heart in an attempt to steady its increased beat. She must not feel like this. Not now and not ever. Not for this man or for any man. She tried to look away from him, to break the spell his sexuality had cast over her, but instead her gaze slid recklessly to his face and became enmeshed there.

His genes were not derived from any Anglo-Saxon ancestor, she was sure. Not with those arrogant, almost Roman Byzantine features, with that hint of cruelty stamped into them. No. His was an intensely masculine face—intelligent, educated, arrogant and elegant. The Mediterranean olive flesh was drawn smoothly against high cheekbones, a strong jaw, and the Roman strength of his nose. If it hadn’t been for his unexpectedly silver eyes she would have said that this was a man whose bloodline came from the darkest mists of time—from a race of men destined by birthright and their own strength to sweep aside all opposition to their will.

One blast from those grey eyes was like having a laser gun applied to her icy shield. This was a man with a capital M—all-male, all-powerful, a man who believed that his will, his needs and desires should be free to rove and take possession of whatever they and he wanted.

The shock of being confronted by him was definitely having a dangerous effect on her. Somehow her senses had managed to break through the mental chastity belt in which she normally locked them to behave like a group of hormone overloaded teenagers, all too ready to feast themselves on the banquet in front of them. Only of course she had no intention of allowing them to do any such thing. And she had years of practice in ensuring that they obeyed her, she reminded herself as she struggled to retain her air of icy uninterest.

She didn’t like him, Giselle decided. She didn’t like him one little bit. He was far too arrogant. And far too male for her own comfort. Was that why she didn’t like him? Because she knew instinctively that his brand of male sexuality was very dangerous to her and that she was not as protected from it as she knew she had to be? Of course not, she assured herself determinedly.

Saul studied the woman standing in front of him with a practised male gaze. Medium height, slim—although the combination of the almost uniform-like dullness of her black skirt suit, worn over a plain white shirt, and the fact that her clothes were cheap and ill-fitting, as though they were a size too big for her, made it impossible to judge accurately how feminine her body shape might be. Her blonde hair was drawn back tightly into a smooth chignon that revealed the delicate bone structure of her face, with its femininely pronounced cheekbones and luminous skin. The gold tips to her eyelashes revealed by the overhead lighting suggested that they were neither dyed nor covered in mascara. Some men might find her cool, touch-me-not Grace Kelly-type looks a sexual challenge, and be curious enough to see just how much applied male interest her ice would take before cracking, but he was not one of them. He liked his women subtly and seductively wanton and willing—not playing at being ice maidens so that they could demand their ice was melted.

However, even if she had been his type, right now his attention was focused on retribution rather than seduction.

‘Let me past,’ Giselle demanded, asserting herself in an attempt to remind herself of the reality of the situation.

Her sharp demand added to Saul’s impatient fury. She had stolen his parking space, and she was argumentative, stubborn, and refusing to admit that she was in the wrong. Her whole attitude made him want to put her in her place.

He wasn’t going to move, and she was going to be late. Determined to make her escape, Giselle stepped quickly to one side of him—but as she did so he reached for her, taking hold of her forearms in a fiercely hostile grip. She could feel their bruising pressure on her flesh, male and alien and burning away the layers of cloth between them, so that it was almost as though he was touching her bare skin. A shocking sensation seized hold of her body as powerfully as he seized hold of her, panicking her into curling her hands into fists that she wanted to beat against his chest.

‘Let me go,’ she insisted furiously.

Let her go? There was nothing he wanted to do more. She’d already caused him more trouble in five short minutes than he’d ever allowed any woman to cause him. He looked directly at her. Her face was white and set, her eyes burning with temper, her mouth…

Still holding her with one hand, he removed the other from her arm to reach up and very deliberately wipe the lipstick from her mouth with his thumb, as if in preparation to kiss her.

She stood frozen, shocked at the intimate gesture, and the moment stretched as their gazes locked. Unable to move, Giselle was stunned by the leap of sensation his gaze shifting to her mouth conjured within her, and with it the hunger to—to what? To lean in to him?

The sudden blaring of a car horn close to them had Saul releasing his prisoner, thrusting her away from him as he did so. What had possessed him? And what would have happened if they hadn’t been disturbed? he asked himself as Giselle took advantage of the interruption to run from him.

To Giselle’s relief he didn’t follow her to the lift—which thankfully was empty. In it, on the way up to her office, with her heart thudding and racing and her mind in turmoil, she had to force herself not to think about what had just happened but instead to focus on the reason everyone had been called into the office.

For the past two years—in fact virtually since she had joined the prestigious practice of architects—the firm had been working on a lavish and costly project for a Russian billionaire, which involved turning a small island he had acquired off the coast of Croatia into a luxury holiday resort for the very wealthy. The financial downturn had led to the project being put on hold, much to the dismay of the firm’s senior partners, but then late yesterday they had received news that the island had a new owner, in the shape of another billionaire—a very successful entrepreneur, who had seen the plans for the island and now wanted to discuss them.

This news had galvanised the senior partners into swift action. Everyone connected with the plans—no matter in how lowly a capacity—had been instructed to make themselves available after the preliminary early-morning meeting, in case the island’s new owner wished to discuss any aspect of the plans with them. The hope was that he would give the green light to the stalled project, but of course there was no guarantee of that. With the threat of potential redundancies looming over them, naturally the more junior architects, like Giselle, were keeping everything crossed that he would look favourably on the plans.

The lift had stopped at her floor. Giselle exited the lift and headed for the office she shared with several other junior architects—all of them male, apart from her, and all of them in their different ways determined to show both her and the senior partners that they were a better financial investment for the firm than she could ever be.

‘It’s all right,’ said Emma Lewis, their shared PA, as Giselle stepped into the office. ‘The meeting’s been put back an hour. Apparently the new owner has been unavoidably delayed.’

Giselle exhaled with relief and told her, ‘I thought I was going to be late. I had to come in my car, because I’ve got a site meeting this evening, and the traffic was appalling.’

Emma, thirty-four to Giselle’s twenty-six, and married to a surveyor who was working on a contract out in the United Arab Emirates, treated her juniors in much the same way as she did her two children—mothering them with fond affection and doing her best to break up any quarrels between them. Giselle liked her, and was very grateful for the support Emma gave her.

‘Where’s everyone else?’ Giselle asked Emma, only to groan and go on, ‘No, don’t tell me—let me guess. They’re all in the gents, trying to work out how to avoid any blame that might be handed out whilst claiming any plaudits that could be going.’

Emma burst out laughing.

‘Something like that, I expect. I’ll bring you coffee, and then I’ll tell you the latest I’ve heard about our possible new client.’

Giselle nodded her head, and tried not to grimace inwardly. If Emma had one fault it was that she was devoted to gossip magazines charting the lives of the rich and famous, and Giselle suspected that ‘the latest’ was probably going to be some kind of information she’d gleaned from the pages of one of those dubious sources.

Five minutes later, sipping her coffee whilst she listened to Emma, she knew that she was right.

‘I’d never have seen it if I hadn’t had to take Timmy to the dentist, because the magazine was months old, and I couldn’t believe it when I opened it and right in front of me was an article about Saul Parenti. You’d think he was Italian with that surname, wouldn’t you? But he isn’t. Apparently his family actually own their own country, and his cousin is its Grand Duke. It’s somewhere near Croatia, and only small, but apparently he—Saul Parenti, I mean—is fabulously wealthy in his own right, apart from being the cousin of a duke, because his father was involved in loads of business deals with the middle East.’

‘Fascinating.’ Giselle applauded obligingly.

‘I just love knowing all about people’s backgrounds and their families, don’t you?’ Emma enthused. ‘His mother was American, and high up in one of the overseas aid agencies. She and his father were killed in South America whilst she was working there, in the aftermath of an earthquake.’

Giselle nodded her head, to show she was following Emma’s story, but inwardly the last thing she felt like doing was listening to gossip. Her comment about the death of Saul Parenti’s parents had caused an all too familiar panicky swell of nausea and defensive fear to rise insidiously inside her.

The door to the office opened to admit one of the other junior architects, Bill Jeffries. Stockily built and confident, he swaggered into the office looking pleased with himself. Bill considered himself to be something of a ladies’ man. He had made advances to her when she had first joined the practice.

Because she had rebuffed him, she was now on the receiving end of increasing animosity and sexual hostility towards her, and Giselle knew perfectly well what he was getting at when he gave a fake shiver and protested, ‘Brr…it’s cold in here!’ before pretending to notice her and then saying, ‘Oh, sorry—I hadn’t seen you there, Giselle.’

Giselle said nothing. She was well accustomed to Bill’s malice and baiting, which she knew sprang from the fact that she had so resolutely refused all the attempts of both him and the other men she worked with to flirt when she had first joined the practice. Bill had chosen to take her chilly manner personally, and she had no intention of telling him that, far from being personal, her icy reserve was a defensive mechanism she used against every man who attempted to show any kind of sexual interest in her. If Bill and other men like him chose to be offended because she didn’t welcome their attentions, then so be it. The truth was that a long time ago she had sworn that she would never allow herself to date men—because dating could lead to falling in love, falling in love led to making a commitment, and making a commitment led in turn to becoming a pair, and from that pair would come children…

‘Bill, I’ve just been telling Giselle what I’ve read about Saul Parenti.’ Emma broke the hostile silence. ‘Giselle, I still haven’t told you everything. Apparently he’s fabulously wealthy, with a reputation for driving a very hard bargain where his business and his romantic interests are concerned. When it comes to women he likes to play the field—he’s supposed to be a wonderful lover—but he’s said publicly that he never intends to marry.’

‘Hear that, Miss Ice Queen?’ Bill mocked Giselle. ‘Sounds like our new client is just the man to get you warmed up so that you’ll drop your knickers.’ He gave an unpleasant snicker. ‘Mind you, I don’t envy him if he does—all that ice would freeze the balls off any man.’