Carole Mortimer - Fascination

‘Would you please leave!’ Robin cut in forcefully, trembling.

‘—and you are the sister of the man responsible for killing my young sister!’ Cesare Gambrelli continued harshly, as if she had never spoken.

Robin stared at him, her eyes deep purple smudges in a face gone suddenly white.

Gambrelli …!

She had thought the name sounded familiar a week ago, but once her father had explained he was the multimillionaire Cesare Gambrelli she had reasoned that must be why she recognised it.

But now she remembered.

Now she knew!

Her brother Simon’s car had collided with another vehicle when he had been so tragically killed in Monaco three months ago. And the driver of that other vehicle, who had also died, had been a young woman called Carla Gambrelli.

Cesare Gambrelli’s sister …?

It had been a very traumatic time for all of them. But she was sure, once her father had recovered sufficiently, he had sent a letter of condolence to Carla Gambrelli’s family. To Cesare Gambrelli …?

She shook her head. ‘As my father wrote at the time, we’re so very sorry for your loss, Mr Gambrelli—as we are for my brother’s—’

‘I do not want your apologies!’ he rasped forcefully, and he surged to his feet, once again dominating the room with his powerful presence as he glared at Robin with fiercely black eyes. ‘No amount of apologies can bring my sister back to me,’ he grated.

‘Or my brother Simon,’ she reminded him quietly, her chin raised in challenge.

Her father had never mentioned whether or not he had received any acknowledgement of his note—although from Cesare Gambrelli’s behaviour now, she somehow doubted it!

Cesare gave a scornful snort. ‘Your brother was a wastrel and a gambler. A man without honour. A man who was no loss to anyone. Whereas—’

‘How can you say that?’ Robin gasped incredulously.

‘I say it because it is true,’ he told her, every inch the arrogant Sicilian that he was. ‘Your brother had lost everything to his gambling habit; he was a disgrace to his family—’

‘I believe that is for my father and I to decide,’ Robin interrupted emotionally. ‘Look, I realise that you’re upset about the death of your sister, Mr Gambrelli. And I can sympathise with that—really I can. But your sister and Simon collided on a steep and winding mountain road. No one knows who was responsible. You can’t seriously place the blame for your sister’s death on Simon—’

‘I can and I do!’ he assured her fiercely, once again filled with the frigid rage he had felt on hearing how his sister had met her death.

For so long it had just been the two of them—Cesare and Carla—their mother having died when Carla was born and Cesare was only eleven years old. The bringing up of his baby sister had been left to Cesare as his father took to drink, which had eventually killed him when Cesare was twenty-two and Carla eleven.

Cesare had loved his sister dearly, had cared and protected her all her life—and Simon Ingram had killed her!

‘Your brother had been at the casino the whole of the evening before the accident occurred,’ he continued disgustedly. ‘Several witnesses have confirmed that he was extremely upset by his losses, that he was belligerant and aggressive, and that he got into a fight with one of the other patrons before he left the casino,’ Cesare sneered scathingly. ‘Whereas Carla had been to dinner with friends in Nice that night—I have spoken to Pierre and Charisse Dupont, and they both confirmed that Carla was happy and cheerful when she left them. My sister was a careful driver, Robin—of the two, which do you think more likely to have caused the accident?’ he finished.

If anything, Robin Ingram looked even more beautiful with her face so deathly pale, her deeply violet eyes huge in that pallor, the fullness of her mouth trembling slightly.

She gave a shake of her head, her honey-coloured hair moving silkily across the narrowness of her shoulders and the fullness of her breasts. ‘The police report was totally inconclusive as to the cause of the accident—’

‘I know what the police report said, Robin—I asked which of the two you think was responsible,’ Cesare cut in forcefully, black eyes gleaming.

Robin looked away from his accusing gaze, shaking slightly, not knowing quite how to answer him.

Both she and her father had been aware of Simon’s gambling habit. Of the fact that he’d become aggressive and upset when he lost. Which had been most of the time.

But for this man to imply—

No, he hadn’t implied anything—he had clearly stated that he held Simon responsible for his sister’s death. But that still didn’t explain how Cesare Gambrelli jumped from that accusation to demanding that she marry him!

She straightened her shoulders, lifting her chin as she once again met that angry black gaze. ‘The accident was a tragedy for both our families, Mr Gambrelli.’ She spoke softly. ‘I don’t believe that either of us attaching any sort of blame as to its cause is going to help the situation. It certainly won’t bring my brother or your sister back to us!’

‘Or Marco’s mother,’ Cesare Gambrelli put in.

Robin hesitated. This conversation had become surreal several minutes ago, but now she had definitely lost the plot!

‘Marco …?’ she repeated.

His mouth twisted humourlessly. ‘Something else you have chosen not to acknowledge? Or did you seriously not know?’ he added scathingly, his dark eyes narrowed on her pityingly now.

‘Know what?’ she echoed dazedly.

‘That at the time of her death Carla was the mother of a three-month-old baby boy!’ Cesare declared.

Robin’s knees buckled slightly as nausea washed over her, and she staggered back slightly to drop down onto the sofa.

Carla Gambrelli had been a mother when she’d died so prematurely?

Her death had left a three-month-old baby motherless?

Robin swallowed hard, trying to fight down the nausea. Losing Simon had been traumatic—a tragedy neither she nor her father would ever get over. But Cesare Gambrelli’s loss was just too awful to contemplate.

She looked up sharply. ‘Where is the baby—your nephew—now?’

Cesare Gambrelli looked down his haughty nose at her, with no sign of softening in his expression at her obvious shock at what he had just told her. ‘Marco is with me, of course,’ he replied.

‘But I … What of his father?’ Robin prompted.

‘There is no father.’

Well, of course there was a father. There had to be a father! Even if, as Cesare Gambrelli’s manner indicated, he perhaps refused to acknowledge his son …?

Which, considering Carla’s brother was Cesare Gambrelli, was either very brave or very stupid of him!

‘There is no one but me,’ Cesare Gambrelli informed her tersely. ‘Which is why Marco is now my adopted son. A son who needs a mother,’ he concluded pointedly.

Robin gave a pained frown. Was this the reason? Was Marco the reason this man was demanding that she marry him? So that she could act as replacement mother for Marco, because Cesare believed her brother, Simon, had taken Carla away from him?

It was ridiculous.

Insane.

Cesare Gambrelli couldn’t seriously think she would ever—

He did, she realised, as she looked up into his hard, uncompromising face.

She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I really had no idea. But it still doesn’t change the fact that your marriage proposal is a preposterous idea—’

‘It was not a marriage proposal, Robin, but a statement of intent,’ Cesare told her, totally unmoved. ‘You will become my wife as soon as the arrangements can be made.’

‘You can’t force me to marry you, Mr Gambrelli,’ she came back defiantly.