Natalie Anderson - The Innocent's Emergency Wedding

‘What are you doing?’ Her voice veered up in an embarrassing squawk as he stepped deep into her personal space.

He didn’t reply. Instead he surveyed her dispassionately, rather as if she was a curiosity in a natural history museum. Then he leaned closer still.

‘Are you sniffing me?’ Outraged, she flinched away from him.

‘Yes. Have you been drinking?’ He reached out and grasped her chin.

Katie stilled, attempting to fix him with a furious gaze.

Unconcerned, he turned her face to one side then the other, intently studying her features. ‘On drugs?’

‘What? No .’ She jerked free of his hold. ‘Look, I’m perfectly sane.’ The truth slipped out, and so did all the hurt and hopelessness. ‘I’m just in trouble, and you’re the only person I could think of who might be able to help me. Obviously you can’t, so I’ll leave now.’

She turned sharply as emotions whacked her with a one-two punch. She’d never been as embarrassed or as violently angry. She suddenly spun back, slamming her fury into his face.

‘I don’t know why I thought you’d understand the desire to protect the person you love most—to prevent her losing the thing she loves more than anything,’ she yelled at him. ‘I don’t know why I thought you’d ever understand that!’

He stared at her for a long second, his mouth compressed. Sudden emotion flared in his eyes and he stepped forward. ‘Katie—’

She shoved past him, rage giving her strength, but just as she reached the door he slammed his hand high above hers to hold it shut, stopping her from storming out. She tugged, but couldn’t beat his weight or strength and the door remained sealed. She tugged harder.

‘Katie, stop,’ he said eventually.

Belatedly she stilled, realising too late what an exhibition she was making of herself. She breathed hard, trying to block the sensations caused by his invasion of her personal space. He was right behind her, leaning so close she could feel his heat. Something insidious shifted inside her. Something deep…something tempting. Something she intuitively knew she needed to ignore.

She closed her eyes in embarrassment.

‘You can’t just storm in, demand something so outrageous and then flounce off without an explanation. You need to speak,’ he added firmly. ‘Sit down and start from the beginning.’

She remained locked in place for another mortified moment. He was right. And she’d been so wrong. She should never have come—what had she been thinking?

But he wasn’t going to let her leave without a proper explanation. And didn’t she owe him that at least? Hell, she was every bit the useless idiot Brian had called her…

Slowly she released the door handle and pivoted awkwardly on the spot. Because Alessandro didn’t stand back to give her room to move. He still had his palm pressed on the door, as if he didn’t trust her not to try to escape again. He was still so close she almost felt giddy.

Breathe, Katie, breathe.

But she was looking into his eyes and all kinds of confusion clouded her mind. She’d been such a fool to think she could handle him.

He gazed at her, his clear blue eyes compelling and uncharacteristically serious. ‘Take a seat and talk to me.’

He suddenly swung aside so she could walk back into the room.

She quickly bypassed him and sank into the nearest chair, her knees strangely wobbly. ‘White Oaks is in debt,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Apparently we’re about to lose it. Susan doesn’t know.’

‘But isn’t it Susan’s estate?’ Alessandro folded his arms and leaned back against the door, still blocking the exit.

‘Yes.’

Her foster mother had lived there all her life—had inherited it upon her parents’ death. And now, as she faced the disease that was slowly killing her, it was her sanctuary. Katie couldn’t sit back and watch Susan lose it.

‘But she left the business side of it to Brian when her health began to deteriorate. She focused on the gardens—you know she loves them. All these years…’

She shook her head. She’d had no idea that the estate finances were so dire—that Brian had mismanaged everything so badly and hidden it, to boot. His betrayal hurt.

‘He only told me the depth of the trouble we’re in yesterday.’

Katie couldn’t let Susan lose all that was her love and her life. She’d thought the garden tours she’d organised and the sauce business she’d started would be enough to keep the books she’d seen balanced, but she’d been wrong.

‘Brian says he’s made a deal. If I marry Carl Westin, Carl will absorb our debt and Susan and Brian can stay at White Oaks.’

‘If you marry Carl Westin?’ Alessandro pushed away from the door and walked towards her, his gaze narrowing. ‘Of Westin Processing?’

‘You know him?’

Alessandro looked shocked. ‘He’s only a little younger than Brian—’

‘And a lot older than me, yes.’

‘Not to mention unreliable and—’

‘Creepy,’ she interrupted fiercely. ‘I can’t marry him.’

Alessandro rubbed his hand across his mouth, hiding the smile that felled a thousand women. ‘This is twenty-first-century London, Katie. I don’t think Brian can bully you into a marriage you don’t want.’

Discomfort clawed at her innards. Alessandro didn’t know the subtle ways in which her foster father had undermined her over the years. How did she explain something so complex? Explain that something so important had been shredded by stealth over time? By subtle comments and control?

‘There’s physical force, but then there’s the more emotional kind…’ Her throat tightened, shame silencing her. She hated her powerlessness, her lack of real strength .

The remnants of his smile faded as he watched her struggle to finish her sentence. ‘Your supposed debt to Susan?’

It wasn’t ‘supposed’. Susan had cared for Katie. She was the first—the only—person to have done that.

Katie had gone to them when she was almost two, when Susan had finally got Brian to agree to fostering after they’d spent years trying for children of their own. But Brian had never agreed to adoption, and there’d always been the threat that Katie could be sent back into the care system.

In truth, Brian was as controlling of Susan as he was of Katie. It was only that Susan seemed mostly blind to it.

‘She’s vulnerable.’ She glanced at Alessandro. ‘She’s in a wheelchair now. She can’t be left alone for long.’

As Susan’s neurological disease progressed, she lived in her own world, safe in the grounds of the estate. A world Katie cared for with her.

‘It would kill her to have to leave White Oaks.’ Katie had to keep it secure for Susan until the end. ‘It’s her life.’

She loved her gentle foster mother dearly. Susan had welcomed her, and they’d spent so much time together sheltered on the estate… Though over the last decade their roles had slowly reversed. Katie now read to Susan, kept her company and comfortable. She’d do almost anything for her.

But Katie couldn’t talk to Susan about how bad things had become financially, or about Brian’s insane plan—she was too fragile to be burdened with that. For a while now Katie had been shielding Susan from several problems Brian had wrought.

‘So, if Carl gets you, White Oaks stays safe for Susan.’ Alessandro summed it up bluntly. ‘But why does Carl want you?’

She flinched, hit by a hot flash of embarrassment. Yeah, she was hardly catch of the day. ‘You don’t think he finds me attractive?’ she mumbled, knowing her face was blushing beetroot.

He had the grace to shoot her a rueful look. ‘If he actually wanted you he wouldn’t woo you with an ultimatum like this.’