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.’
‘Maybe he can’t get anyone else to say yes to him? Maybe he thinks he’ll get an obedient wife?’ she said bitterly. ‘This way he’ll be able to control me. He’s used to getting what he wants, however he has to do it.’
Alessandro stepped towards her, the whisker of a smile in his eyes. ‘And you think I’m different?’
A hot fury built within her. ‘I’m sure you’re used to getting what you want. Fortunately you don’t want me.’
He blinked and that smile fully resurfaced. ‘How do you know I don’t want you?’
She laughed bitterly. ‘You never so much as looked at me.’
‘If I recall, the last time we met you were little more than a child. It would have been unacceptable in every way if I’d looked at you then.’ He angled his head. ‘But I’m looking at you now.’
As if that was going to make any difference!
‘Don’t bother,’ she snapped. ‘You have hundreds of gorgeous women you really want. All of them. At once—’ She broke off, realising she’d got herself into a quagmire of excruciating embarrassment.
‘Hundreds at once?’ he echoed with mild incredulity.
‘Oh, whatever.’ She shook off his amusement. ‘You know you don’t need to threaten a woman to get your way with her. You don’t need to use blackmail—emotional or otherwise.’
‘But that’s what Brian does to you.’ All amusement had dropped from his expression.
She drew in a deep breath and sighed. ‘He’s used to me doing what he says.’
Because she’d always worked to keep the peace, for Susan. But in asking this of her Brian had gone too far. It wasn’t a business deal he’d arranged, it was marriage—intimate and personal. And Brian’s brutal response to her refusal had horrified her. So she’d decided to figure out a deal of her own with the one man Brian despised. The only man she’d been able to think of.
‘But you’re not his daughter,’ Alessandro said.
‘Thank you for that reminder,’ she said stiffly, swallowing back the burn of pain.
It was stupid how much it hurt. There’d always been those little comments from Brian—constantly reminding her that she wasn’t family, that she had to be grateful and good, keep her on her best behaviour... The few times she’d tried to fight back, he’d squashed her.
‘I’m no blood relative to any of them.’
And that was what gave Brian even more power over her.
‘You don’t think of me as family?’ Alessandro asked.
She glanced up at him. ‘You weren’t there. How could you be?’
Alessandro had only appeared from boarding school during holidays and formal occasions. Her aloof ‘step-cousin’ couldn’t have been less interested in forming a relationship with his new family.
‘And thank you for that reminder,’ he echoed with a soft jeer. An arrogant smile curved his lips for a fleeting second. ‘I chose to leave—why can’t you?’
‘I’m not like you,’ she said. ‘I can’t just walk out. I can’t talk to Susan about it—she doesn’t
know about any of this.’ Katie was protecting her on several levels. ‘I’d buy out the debt myself, if I could, but I have hardly any money.’
His gaze narrowed. ‘You said your sauces sell well?’
She bristled at his belittling tone. ‘They do okay. They’re even stocked in Sybarite, here in London.’
She’d been so delighted when the gourmet deli had put in a repeat order only a week ago, taking almost all her stock.
‘Sybarite? Wonderful.’ He said with light mockery. ‘Then why aren’t you paid accordingly?’
‘I put all the profit back into the business... I don’t need a lot personally.’
His eyebrows shot up.
‘I live in,’ she explained irritably. ‘I have accommodation and food. I don’t need fancy things.’
He skimmed a glance over her outfit and she shrank at the hint of disdain in his eyes.
But then she fought back. ‘I knew things weren’t good—that’s why I started the garden tours as well. I owe it to them to work hard...to help Susan.’
She’d heard that phrase so many times and Brian was right, she did owe them. They’d plucked her from a life of poverty and neglect... Who knew what her life would have been like if it hadn’t been for their generosity?
‘You don’t owe them the rest of your life,’ Alessandro said bluntly.
‘No, but I love Susan,’ she said fiercely. ‘And she needs me now.’
‘There’s no one else? Not her husband?’ he said dryly.