Public Wife Private Mistress Read online

  HARLEQUIN PRESENTS

  ITALIAN HUSBANDS BUNDLE

  Public Wife, Private Mistress

  By

  Sarah Morgan

  CHAPTER ONE

  She was not going to die.

  Rico Crisanti, billionaire President of the Crisanti Corporation, stared grimly through the window that sep­arated the relatives' room from the intensive care unit, oblivious to the dreamy stares of the nurses working on the unit. He was used to women staring. Women always stared. Sometimes he noticed. Sometimes he didn't.

  Today he didn't.

  His gaze was fixed on the still body of the girl who lay on the bed, surrounded by doctors and high-tech machinery.

  The jacket of his designer suit had long since been removed, tossed with careless disregard for its future appearance over the back of a standard issue hospital chair, and he now stood in a state of rigid tension, silk shirtsleeves rolled back to reveal bronzed forearms, his firm jaw grazed by a dark stubble that made him more bandit than businessman.

  For a man as driven as Rico, a man accustomed to controlling and directing, a man accustomed to action, the waiting was proving to be the worst kind of torture.

  Waiting for anything was not his strong point.

  He wanted the problem fixed now. But for the first time in his life he'd discovered that there was something that he couldn't control. Something that money couldn't buy.

  The life of his teenage sister.

  Rico swore softly under his breath, fighting the temp­tation to punch his fist through the glass.

  He'd been at the hospital for the best part of two weeks and never had he felt so helpless. Never had he felt so ill-equipped to solve a problem that confronted him.

  Blocking out the muted sobs of his mother, grand­mother, aunt and two cousins, he stared in brooding, frustrated silence at the still figure, as if the very force of his personality might be sufficient to rouse her from her unconscious state.

  There must be something more he could do. He was the man with a solution for everything and he refused to give up.

  He sucked in a breath and tried to think clearly, but he'd recently discovered that lack of sleep, grief and worry were not a combination designed to focus the mind. Fear had induced a mind-numbing paralysis that was becoming harder to shake with each passing hour.

  Trying to clear his head, he inhaled deeply and ran a hand over the back of his neck, clenching his jaw as his mother gave another poorly disguised sob of dis­tress. The sound cut like a blade through his heart. The expectation of his family weighed on him heavily and for the first time in his life he knew what it felt like to be truly helpless.

  He'd flown in a top neurosurgeon who had operated to relieve the pressure on Chiara's brain caused by the bleed. She was breathing on her own but still hadn't recovered consciousness. Her life hung in the balance and no one could predict the outcome. No one could answer the question.

  Life or death.

  And if it were life, would it be life with disability, or life as Chiara had known it before the horse had thrown her?

  He swore softly and raked strong fingers through his hair. To Rico, that was the hardest aspect to cope with. The exquisite, drawn out mental torture of waiting. He'd seen his mother worn down by it, had watched the black shadows grow under her eyes as she lived under the cruel shadow of uncertainty on a daily basis. Had watched her wither slightly as she was forced to ask herself whether this would be the day when she lost her only daughter —

  Suddenly his own powerlessness mocked him and had he not been too drained for laughter, then he would have laughed at his own arrogance.

  Had he really thought that he could control destiny?

  The vow he'd made to his father, the vow he'd made to look after the family, seemed suddenly empty and worthless. What did it matter that he'd created an em­pire from nothing but dust using only fierce determi­nation? What did it matter that his success in building that empire had been nothing short of staggering? Somewhere along the way he'd started to believe that there was nothing he couldn't control. Nothing he couldn't do if he set his mind to it. And it had taken this accident to remind him that no amount of riches could protect a man from the hand of fate.

  Driven by the monumental frustration of doing noth­ing, he loosened another button on his silk shirt with impatient fingers and paced the room, his long strides and the confined space combining to provide little in the way of relief. Emotion, as unwelcome as it was unfamiliar, clogged his throat and for the first time since he was a small child he felt the hot sting of tears threaten his usually icy composure.

  Cursing his own weakness, he closed his eyes and rubbed long fingers along the bridge of his nose as if he could physically hold back the building pressure of grief.

  It would help no one if he crumbled.

  The whole family was on the edge, grasping on to fragile threads of hope extended by grim-faced doctors. His was the strength that they used. The rock that they leaned on. If he caved in, gave in to the desire to howl like a baby, then the morale of the whole family would disintegrate. The game they were playing—the game of hope—would be ended.

  So instead he stared in brooding silence at the bruised, immobile body of his sister, willing her to wake up, and he was still staring when the door opened again, this time to admit the doctor who was in charge of his sister's case together with several more junior doctors.

  Ignoring the minions and the immediate response of his own security team to this latest intrusion, Rico's attention zeroed in on the man in charge, sensing from his manner that he had news to impart. Suddenly he was almost afraid to ask the question that needed to be asked.

  'Any change?' His voice was hoarse with strain, lack of sleep and something much worse. The fear of prompting bad news. 'Has there been any change?'

  'Some.' The doctor cleared his throat, clearly more than a little intimidated by the formidable status of the man standing in front of him. 'Her vital signs have im­proved slightly and she regained consciousness briefly,' he announced quietly. 'She spoke.'

  'She spoke?' Relief flooded through him and for the first time in days he felt lighter. 'She said something?'

  The doctor nodded. 'She was very difficult to understand, but one of the nurses thinks that it was a name.' He hesitated and looked at them questioningly. 'Stasia? It sounded like Stasia. Could that be right?'

  Stasia?

  Rico froze, momentarily stunned into shocked si­lence, while behind him his mother gave a strangled gasp of horror and his grandmother gave another wail.

  Rico gritted his teeth and tried to shut out the sound. He would have done anything to banish his well-meaning family to the privacy of his estate but he knew that, for the time being, that option was out of the ques­tion. They needed to be here with Chiara. It was just unfortunate that their hysterical display of emotion was making his job harder, not easier.

  And now that Stasia had been mentioned the situation was about to deteriorate rapidly.

  The mere sound of her name was enough to detonate an explosion within his family.

  And as for his own feelings—

  He closed his eyes briefly and rubbed long fingers over his bronzed forehead. With his sister righting for her life, he didn't need to be thinking about Stasia. It seemed that fate was determined to make further efforts to crush him.

  The doctor cleared his throat. 'Well, whoever she is—could she be brought to the hospital?'

  Ignoring his mother's moan of denial, Rico forced himself to focus on the main issue. His sister's recovery. Somehow he voiced the words. 'Would it make a dif­ference?'

  'It might.' The doctor shrugged. 'Difficult to say, but anything is worth a try. Can she be contacted?'

  Not without considerable emotional sacrifice.

  His mother rose to her feet, her face contorting with anger and pain. 'No! I won't have her here! She—'

  'Enough!' Rico felt the ripple of curiosity spread through the medical team and silenced his mother with one cool, quelling flash of his unusually expressive black eyes.

  It was bad enough that the world's press was camped on their doorstep, tracking every moment of their darkest hour, without supplying them with further fod­der for gossip.

  Stasia.

  How ironic that this should happen now, he reflected, when the connection between them was about to be sev­ered permanently. He had thought that there was no circumstance that would ever require him to lay eyes on his wife again. For the past few months he'd had a team of lawyers working overtime to draw up a divorce settlement that he thought was fair.

  Enough to buy her out of his life and leave him with a clear conscience to marry again. This time to a gentle, compliant Italian girl who understood what it meant to be the wife of a traditional Italian male.

  Not a fiery English redhead who was all heat and spark and knew nothing about compliance.

  He sucked in a breath as a clear vision of Stasia— wild, beautiful Stasia —flared in his mind and he felt the immediate throb of raw sexual heat pulse through his body. It had been a year since their final, blistering en­counter and despite the distasteful circumstances of their parting, his body still craved her with almost in­decent desperation. And he didn't trust himself to see her again. She affected his judgement in ways that he didn't want to admit, even to himself.

  Despite everything she'd done, Stasia was as addictive as any drug and seeing her again was not a sensible move. In the past year he'd learned to hate her, had learned to see her for what she was.

  A mistake.

  Rico paced back to the window and studied his sister in brooding silence, an ominous expression on his hand­some face as he reviewed his options. They were de-pressingly limited. Reaching the unpalatable conclusion that his own needs and wishes had to be secondary to the issue of his sister's recovery, he forced himself to accept that he was going to have to see Stasia again.

  He'd fully intended to end the entire fiasco of their marriage through lawyers and there was no reason why this couldn't still happen, he assured himself swiftly. This was just a temporary stasis in proceedings. He could fly her out and she could do whatever needed to be done and then he could have her flown home again.

  It was entirely possible that they could avoid all but the briefest of conversations. Which would suit him per­fectly. He had no desire whatsoever to indulge in any reminiscence of the past. And even less desire to spend time with the woman.

  He gave a grim smile, knowing that the irony of the situation wouldn't be lost on Stasia. Dazzling, uncon­ventional Stasia. The woman who had never conformed to his family's perceptions of the perfect Sicilian wife.

  Or his.

  He'd given her everything. Had done everything a husband should do. And still, apparently, it had not been enough.

  The doctor cleared his throat discreetly and Rico stirred, making the only decision that he was in a po­sition to make.

  'I will send for her.' He turned to Gio, his head of security. 'Contact her and make arrangements for her to be flown out immediately.'

  He caught the startled glance of the man who'd known him from childhood, heard the shocked gasp of his mother and gritted his teeth as he battled to come to terms with the fact that he was going to have to do the one thing he'd promised himself that he'd never have to do again. Come face to face with Stasia.

  One day soon he was going to put her behind him, he vowed. One day soon he'd be able to think of her without feeling an instantaneous reaction in every male part of himself. And the sooner that day came the better.

  Anastasia put the finishing touches to the painting, stepped back with her eyes narrowed and gave a nod of satisfaction.

  Finally. Finally it was ready.

  Mark would be pleased.

  With a final glance at the canvas, she cleaned her brush and then wandered out of her studio into the kitchen, flicking on the kettle and reaching for a pile of post that had been accumulating over the past two weeks while she'd been concentrating on her painting.

  Still leafing through her post, she reached across to switch on her mobile and it rang immediately.

  Knowing that it would be her mother, she answered the phone with a smile. 'How's business?'

  'Business is booming.' Her mother sounded excited. And confident. Miles removed from the terrified, mouse-like woman she'd been, after Stasia's father had walked out with a blonde half his age, six years earlier.

  Stasia gritted her teeth, trying not to remember that awful time. She'd been in her first year at university and if ever she'd needed evidence that depending on a man, any man, was not a good idea, she'd been given it in spades. Her mother had relied on her father for everything, and when he left she'd been totally unable to cope. Had lost all belief in herself.

  It had been Stasia who had pointed out that her mother knew a great deal about antiques. Stasia who had helped her put that knowledge to commercial use by opening a small antiques business. Gradually the word had spread and soon her mother wasn't just selling antiques, she was advising clients on furnishing entire houses. And six months ago, thanks to a generous busi­ness loan, they'd expanded their premises and business was booming.

  'We're going to have to employ more help. Stasia,' her mother was saying briskly. 'I need to go on a buying trip and I've been invited to a stately home in Yorkshire to advise on restoring some of their antiques and ob­viously I can't just close the shop. People travel from all over the country to visit. It wouldn't be fair on them if we closed. And you're too busy painting to help.'

  Stasia smiled. It was wonderful to hear her mother so animated. 'You're running the show, Mum,' she said lightly, throwing a pile of junk mail into the bin. 'Em­ploy away. The painting is finished, by the way. Mark can collect it whenever he likes.'

  'Marvellous. I'll tell him. if I see him before you do. And how are you, darling? Are you eating?'

  'Yes.' It was a lie. She hadn't done much eating at all in the last year. Since leaving Italy, her emotions had been so disrupted that eating no longer seemed im­portant. But she didn't want her mother to worry. 'I'm fine. Mum. Truly.'

  Her mother sighed. 'Which means you're still pining after that Sicilian.' Her voice took on a hard edge. 'Take it from me, Stasia, men like him never change. I should know. I lived with your father for all those years and he was exactly the same. I was just a possession and when he got bored with me he purchased something new.'

  Stasia heard a car negotiating the potholes in the lane outside the cottage and snatched at the excuse to end the conversation. 'I can't talk now, Mum—I've got a visitor. It's probably Mark about the painting. I'll call you later.'

  Without giving her mother time to protest, she hung up and switched off the phone, releasing a long breath. She adored her mother but that was one conversation she wasn't prepared to have with anyone.

  The car came to a halt and Stasia pulled a face. She didn't really want to see Mark. He made no secret of the fact that he wanted more from her than her paintings and she wasn't ready for that. Maybe she never would be.

  Glancing down at her paint-spattered jeans, she gave a rueful smile. She looked a mess. But if Mark insisted on dropping in without phoning first, what could he expect?

  Anticipating the knock before it came, she opened her front door and froze in shock as she saw who stood there.

  Rico Crisanti.

  Billionaire and bastard.

  The last person in the world she'd expected to see.

  Her heart lurched, the whole world tilted, and for a wild, ecstatic minute she thought he'd finally come after her. And then reality struck and she remembered that it had been a year and that he was in the process of di­vorcing her. Which could only mean that he was here

  for an entirely different reason. And, whatever it was, she wasn't interested.

  'No!' Her immediate impulse to slam the door in his face was thwarted by swift action on his part. Clearly he'd anticipated her response to his arrival and in a powerful movement he slammed a hand in the centre of the door, resisting her attempts to close it.

  'You don't answer your mail and you don't have a phone,' he launched savagely, dark eyes connecting with hers with the lethal force of a missile, 'and you bury yourself in a place so remote that it is almost im­possible to find you.'

  'And it didn't occur to you that maybe I didn't want you to find me? If I'd wanted you to find me then I would have left a forwarding address.' She glared at him, previous hostilities rising to the surface with such frightening force and speed that for a moment she strug­gled to breathe, swept away on a tide of emotion. 'And if I'd thought there was any chance at all that you'd even look for me then I would have buried myself even deeper,' she shot back hoarsely, suddenly wishing she'd done just that.