CHAPTER NINE

      THE VENUE WAS packed full of people, lavish and expensive, money dripping from every corner of the place. From the diamonds that hung in women’s ears, to the chandelier that hung overhead. It was the perfect example of the kind of opulent lifestyle that Renzo could offer her if she chose to stay with him. The perfect piece of manipulation, and one he had not even planned for.

      But it would do. It would do nicely. Esther clung to his side, her delicate fingers curved around his biceps. And even though there were layers between them—his coat and his shirt—he could still feel the heat from her skin.

      Yes, this was a very nice diversion, and one that would work to his advantage, but he couldn’t wait till after. Till he would finally strip her bare and hold her in his arms. It had become a madness over the past few weeks. To resist her, to wait.

      To speak to her over dinner when he’d wanted to pull her over the table and have her there. To bring her books to read in bed, when he wanted to keep her occupied with other things in bed.

      He had thought so many times of going into her room and breaking the door down, laying his body over hers and kissing her until neither of them could breathe.

      Of taking full possession of her without any of this pretense. Without any of this delicacy. Because he had a feeling that it wasn’t needed. He had a feeling that the fire burned as hot in her as it did in him. And he desperately wanted to find out if that was true.

      However, he could not afford to allow impetuousness to make his decisions for him. He could not afford to make a wrong move simply because his libido was ratcheted up several notches.

      He shifted, her hip brushing against him. The reaction was immediate. Primal.

      He wanted to hold on to those hips, hold her steady as he thrust into her. As he made her cry out. Thankfully, he had thought to call the doctor before they left Rome. Under the guise of discussing safe travel. And he had of course asked her about what sort of intimacy would be all right, given that the pregnancy was considered a slightly higher risk.

      She said that normal intercourse would be fine.

      A smile curved his lips. Yes, he was going to have her. Tonight.

      “There are so many people here,” Esther said, “and they all seem to know you.”

      “Yes, but I do not know them.”

      “What must that be like?” she asked, as though he hadn’t spoken. “To be...famous.”

      “Infamous, more like. I’m not going to lie to you, I’m mostly well-known because men know they have to watch their women around me.” Now she stiffened, and he was pleased with himself for that well-timed comment. It was a risk, but there was no hiding his reputation from her. However, using it to fire up a little jealousy in her couldn’t hurt, certainly.

      “Is that so?” she asked.

      “Yes,” he said. “I was single for a very long time, Esther. And I didn’t see any point in living with restraint. As I told you earlier, I don’t have to watch the way that I behave. I have a certain amount of immunity granted to me because I am both male and very rich.”

      “That must be nice.”

      “I don’t know any differently.”

      “My father was big on the men-having-whatever-they-wanted thing,” she said, the tone of her voice disinterested, casual, but he sensed something deep beneath the surface.

      “Traditional, was he?”

      She shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s one word for it. One of the things I’ve been working on is recognizing that whatever my father and the other men like him believed, it isn’t necessarily connected to anything real. It’s not about other people who believe similarly to them. They took something that was all right and twisted it to suit their own ends. And I do understand that.”

      “You had...a religious upbringing?”

      She shrugged. “I’m hesitant to call it that. I’m not going to put the blame on religion. Just the people involved.”

      “Very progressive of you.”

      She shrugged both shoulders this time. “Isn’t that the point of life? To progress? That’s what I’m trying to do. Move forward. Not live underneath the cloud of all of that.” She looked up, refracted light shimmering across her face from the chandelier above them as she did. “I’m not under a cloud at all right now.” She smiled then, and all of the thoughts he had earlier about her potentially calculated behavior faded. It was difficult for him to imagine somebody who was simply genuine. Because it was outside his experience. Yet, Esther seemed to be, and if he looked at her from that angle, if you looked at her now, he felt slightly guilty about what he intended to do. Because that really did make it a manipulation, rather than a simple seduction.

      But still, she would get everything that she wanted in the end, just in a slightly different format. So, he should not feel guilt.

      He turned, and suddenly it felt as though the chandelier had detached from the ceiling and come crashing down around him. It was everything he’d been afraid of, and yet no amount of forward thinking could ever prepare him for it.

      There she was.

      Samantha.

      His daughter.

      Seeing her like this, closer to being a woman than a girl, always shocked him. But then, everything about this had always been shocking, horrifying. Seeing her was always something like having his guts torn out straight through his stomach. Having his heart pulled out of his mouth.

      It was a pain that never healed, and for a man who avoided strong emotion at all cost it was anathema. He controlled the world. He controlled more money than most people could fathom. He had more—would have more—than many small countries ever would. And yet he did not have her, and there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing he could do short of destroying what she thought her life was. Who she thought she was.

      In this, he was helpless. And he despised it.

      But there was very little that could be done. In order to be a good man in this situation, in order to be a controlled man, he had to go against everything his instincts told him to do. He had to honor the life that he had chosen to give to his daughter. Even if he had been coerced into it, the ultimate result was the same. There were things she believed about herself and her parents that he could not shake, not now.

      He knew it. He knew it, but he despised it.

      Fire burned inside him, rage, intensity. He couldn’t go to her. All he could do was hold even more tightly to Esther. And as he did, he held even more tightly to his conviction. He had to make her his. At all costs. Because he would never take a chance that he might lose his children, not again.

      He had lost one daughter. And the pain never faded. He doubted it ever would. There was nothing that could be done about it. It was a red slash across his life that could never heal. A mistake that would not be undone.

      Oh, her existence wasn’t a mistake. It never could be. The mixture of grief and pride that filled him when he saw Samantha was something that defied description. It was all-encompassing, overwhelming. She was not a mistake. She was destined for a life that was better than the one he could have given her at the time. Than the one she would have had if she had been raised by an angry, bitter