Miranda Lee - It Started With A Proposition - Blackmailed into the Italian's Bed / Contract with Consequences / The Passion Price

Her body—especially her naked body—kept reminding her of Gino, the after-effects of his torrid lovemaking conspiring to keep him in her mind. Just moving the soapy sponge lightly between her legs made her belly tighten and her breath catch.

This was what had happened to her when she’d lived with Gino. She’d been in a perpetual state of arousal. Her flesh had craved his constantly, craved release from the sexual tension he created in her.

It craved release now…

Jordan dropped the sponge, then slowly slid her back down the wet tiles till she was sitting on the shower floor. Her arms lifted to wrap around her drawn-up knees, her head dropping forward as she surrendered once more to tears.

‘Oh, Gino,’ she cried. ‘Gino…’

The phone woke her, its persistent ringing getting through the blissful oblivion which had finally descended on Jordan last night, courtesy of the painkillers she’d taken—strong ones she used when she had a migraine. Unfortunately, they had to tendency to leave her a little groggy the next day.

Rolling over with a groan, she picked up the extension near her bed and shoved it between her ear and the pillow.

‘Yes?’ Not exactly a breezy hello.

‘Jordan? Is that you?’

The sound of Chad’s voice had her sitting up and pushing her tangled hair out of her eyes. A glance at the bedside clock shocked her. It was nearly ten.

‘Yes, it’s me,’ she said more brightly. ‘Have you arrived yet?’

‘Just. Thought I’d ring you before I got out in the New York traffic. You sounded sleepy just now. Did I wake you?’

‘Sort of. I…um…I had a late night.’

‘A late night doing what?’

A rush of guilt had Jordan being grateful Chad couldn’t see her. Not that he was all that intuitive. Chad was the sort of man who only saw what he wanted to see. He honestly thought her turning down his proposal was just her playing hard to get. He clearly had no doubts that she would say yes, even leaving the engagement ring with her—a family heirloom which had belonged to his grandmother.

‘Working,’ she lied. ‘I have to wrap up the Johnson case on Monday, remember?’

‘You’ve become a bit obsessed by that case, don’t you think?’

‘No.’ Her client was a young woman whose husband had been killed in a train derailment. Shock and grief had sent her into early labour, with their premature baby boy not making it. When the government had finally offered her compensation, several years later, they hadn’t included anything for the pain and loss of her child. They’d called her son a foetus, not worthy of consideration as a human being. She’d come to Jordan wanting not a fortune, but justice.

Jordan aimed to get justice for her. Which she would—if she could get her head into gear and prepare a killer of a closing argument this weekend.

‘You work too hard, Jordan.’

‘I enjoy my work, Chad.’ More than enjoyed. She’d feel totally empty without it.

‘Have you thought about what I asked you the other night?’

Jordan’s chest tightened. She’d known he’d get round to this sooner or later.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘And?’

This was it: the moment of truth. Did she have the courage of her convictions? Or was she going to weaken and let Gino keep spoiling things for her?

She had a choice. She could pine over a relationship which had been doomed from the start. Or she could choose a new relationship which had everything going for it.

Okay, not quite everything. But everything that mattered. Great sex was not the be all and end all, she reasoned. Besides, it wasn’t that Chad was a hopeless lover. He certainly wasn’t. The problem—if there was one—lay in her own responses. Gino had somehow programmed her not to respond totally to any other man. He, and he alone, could make her lose her head and lose control. Last night had proved that.

But this phenomenon only occurred when he was around. He wasn’t around now. He would never be around again.

The time had come to stop hiding behind her illogical passion for a man who, by his own admission, would never marry her. Next year she would be thirty. In ten years she’d be forty.

Time to make a decision.

‘Yes, Chad,’ she said firmly. ‘I will marry you.’

GINO was on the top floor of his latest skyscraper construction-in-progress, making his way carefully along a not-too-wide girder, when his cellphone rang. He waited till he reached the relative safety of a corner before fishing it out of his pocket.

‘Gino Bortelli,’ he said, one arm wrapped securely around a post. The breeze was quite strong up that high.

‘What is this I hear about you breaking up with Claudia?’ came his mother’s highly accented voice.

Gino smothered a sigh. The grapevine in the Italian community was very fast and usually accurate.

‘It’s no big deal, Mum. She wasn’t right for me, and I wasn’t right for her. We agreed to go our separate ways.’

‘That is not the way I hear it, Gino. Claudia is very upset with you.’

Very upset that she wasn’t marrying into the Bortelli money would be more like it.

Gino had been astounded at how vicious Claudia had become when he’d told her it was over between them. Suddenly she’d shown her true colours, using quite obscene language which everyone in the restaurant had heard. There’d been no hint of a broken heart, just ambition thwarted. After she’d flounced out all the other patrons in the place had stared at him, making Gino wish he’d chosen to break up with her in a more discreet and private place.

That had been last Sunday—two days ago. In hindsight, he was surprised it had taken his mother this long to find out. Maybe he should have told her himself. But since returning to Melbourne on Saturday he hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with his family.

It was because of them that he’d had to leave Jordan in the first place. And he’d not been able to go back for her. They’d sucked him emotionally dry till he no longer wanted get married and have children. The last ten years had been filled with nothing but unending responsibility and pressure, with him putting his mother’s and sisters’ needs first, never his own.

But enough was enough.

‘Claudia was more in love with my money than she was with me, Mum,’ he said firmly. ‘Trust me on that. Look, I can’t stay and chat. I’m working.’

His mother sighed. ‘You work too hard, Gino. You should take some time off.’

‘Maybe I will. But not today.’

‘Before you go, did you decide what you were going to do with that derelict site in Sydney? The one Papa bought all those years ago?’

‘Everything’s underway. It’s going to be a twenty-storey tower with apartments on the top ten floors, office space on the lower ten, shops on the ground floor, and parking underneath. I signed the contract with the architect last Friday.’

‘That is good, Gino. Papa would be pleased.’

‘How can he be pleased about anything, Mum, when he’s dead?’

‘Gino! How can you say such a wicked thing? Have you no faith? Your papa is watching over us from heaven. He would be very proud of you.’

Gino shook his head. There was no arguing with his mother’s faith. So he didn’t bother.

‘He would be even prouder,’ she added, ‘if you married and carried on the Bortelli name.’

‘I am still only thirty-six, Mum. I have plenty of time for that yet. Look, I have to go.’

‘Will you be coming to dinner next Sunday?’

His mother held a big family get-together on the last Sunday of every month. Gino usually attended. He liked playing with his nieces and nephews. But he hated the thought of being bombarded by questions over why Claudia wasn’t with him.