A Ring to Take His Revenge Read online

  ‘If you won’t stand then I shall have to come down to you,’ she taunted.

  ‘So be it. I will not move until I’ve had your answer,’ he said, a stubborn determination filling his words in a blissful promise that she wouldn’t have thought him capable of when she’d first met him.

  So she did as she had said and took to her knees, facing him, holding her gaze with his and, just like Antonio, not caring of the attention they were drawing.

  ‘For so long I thought myself strong, capable—no,’ she said as he tried to interrupt her, knowing that he would contradict her words, but knowing too that she needed to say them. ‘I was, am and will continue to be a survivor. But for all the promise and hope put into that list I made as a seventeen-year-old, I never had the courage to ask for the things that I truly wanted. Self-acceptance, self-love and ultimately true love itself. Antonio, you showed me that my scars are beautiful, you taught me to reach for the things I was too scared and too unwilling to admit to myself that I wanted, and you proved to me that doing so, whether successful or not, was the real gift. You showed me that it was okay—more than that, vital for me to put my whole self out into the world. And I love you for it, and I will love you for it until my last breath. So, yes, Antonio Arcuri, I will marry you.’

  The moment the words had left her mouth Antonio pulled Emma to him in a kiss that she would never forget. It was full of the taste of love, passion and everything in between. It was full of light, laughter and finally, the knowledge that they would live happily ever after.

  EPILOGUE

  One year later...

  ARCURI WELCOMES THE

  BIRTH OF HIS SON!

  BY ROANNA KING

  International tycoon announces the

  birth of a beautiful baby boy!

  Hearts across the world might have burned with envy at the pictures of Antonio Arcuri’s wedding only four months ago. The shocking speed not only of his engagement to Emma Guilham—his one-time PA—but his subsequent marriage raised more than a few eyebrows amongst our hallowed readership.

  One could argue that the reason for this was the soon-to-follow birth of their son, little Luca Arcuri. But that would be an argument from a harder heart than mine.

  Because it’s clear to see the love shining in the eyes of this proud papa, and I can only wish them luck in their future endeavours.

  So let me be the first to congratulate you, Mr Arcuri, on the wonderful birth of your son.

  EMMA ENTERED THE large open-plan living room of their house in Sorrento, with her gorgeous son Luca cradled in her arms, to find Antonio talking to himself.

  ‘“Harder heart than mine...”’ he muttered angrily. ‘“Let me be the first...” Really, how dare she?’

  Antonio threw yet another one of Roanna King’s articles into the bin.

  Emma laughed—something she did so very much these days—and crossed the room to pull him into a kiss that wasn’t nearly as deep as she’d like, but perfectly respectable given there were three of them squashed into each other’s arms.

  ‘How dare who?’

  ‘Mmm?’ he asked, as he took in the sight of his wife and child. ‘I’ve forgotten—not important.’

  And he meant it. All he had ever wanted was here in this room.

  So much had changed in the year since he had discovered Bartlett wanted investment in his company—since he’d demanded that Emma find him a fiancée. At the time he’d thought that what he’d wanted was revenge, to destroy his father. But things hadn’t quite turned out that way.

  Soon after his second proposal to Emma, Benjamin Bartlett had got in touch. Apparently Michael Steele had tried to use the information about his daughter against him, but instead of buckling to the demands he’d made Bartlett had stuck to his instincts, turned to Antonio instead, and together they had worked to help Mandy Bartlett weather the storm that Michael Steele had launched upon the poor girl.

  Sometimes Antonio very much wished that he’d found a way to avoid that for Bartlett and his family, but Antonio was beginning to realise that accepting the consequences of one’s actions was an important part of the healing process.

  Bartlett’s shares had wobbled for a few days under the negative press, but with Antonio’s investment they’d soon recovered. With Antonio, Emma and her father’s support, Mandy Bartlett had gone into rehab and ended up finishing her degree and passing with high honours, and the Bartletts were now a firm fixture in their social calendar.

  And as for Michael Steele—it hadn’t taken long for the press to turn against the man. Once they’d discovered that it had been he who had leaked the dossier about Mandy’s troubles, and there had been the suggestion—though unproved and unsupported—that it had been in retaliation for a rejected business venture, it had sickened the international press.

  Hounded and stalked by their fury that he could abuse such an innocent young girl, Michael had found his existing business associates driving as far from him as possible. The man had become a financial and social pariah—though Antonio had been surprised to discover that it hadn’t felt as good as he’d thought. It had been a period that had been difficult for Antonio, when he’d realised just how far he had nearly sunk himself. But Emma had helped him through with patient love, sweet comfort and reassurance.

  Shortly after Antonio had made good on his first promise to Emma, and the Bartletts had been present, alongside Dimitri and Danyl, to toast Emma’s new role as head of the Arcuri Foundation—celebrations that had gone on long into the night, full of joy, laughter and hope for the future.

  Despite their busy schedule, they had already ticked off several of the things on Emma’s Living List. Even now, standing in their home in Sorrento, he remembered the exquisite joy in Emma’s eyes as they’d shared a sunrise over the Terhren desert, and the happiness shining just as bright when they’d seen the sun set over the Mediterranean, surrounded by their closest friends, Danyl and Dimitri, and their respective families.

  ‘Where are you?’ Emma asked, and smiled as she passed his son to him.

  ‘Right here, where I should be,’ replied Antonio, drawing his thoughts away from the past and holding their precious son to his chest.

  He watched Emma, stepping over the changing mat and the stacks of muslins, nappies and other little things he’d never thought to find such joy in, as she went to the mirror that covered almost the entire length of one wall. He watched her as she checked her hair and her brightly coloured dress. He never tired of seeing her in autumn colours, and he was sure that he hadn’t seen her wear black since Buenos Aires.

  He gently put his sleeping son in the small bassinette beside the sofa, already missing the soft, gentle comfort of having him in his arms, and walked to his wife, unable to resist the urge to hold her, touch her. He wondered if he ever would.

  He pressed a starburst of kisses along the beautiful length of her neck, knowing Emma would understand the gesture and the silent, sensual request behind it.

  Emma playfully slapped his arms away from her. ‘You know we don’t have time, Antonio. Danyl and Dimitri will be here with their families in little over two hours, and Danyl’s protection services always make such a drama about the whole thing—they’ll be at the door in twenty minutes.’

  ‘Having a sheikh as a friend has both its perks and its curses,’ Antonio growled.

  That each of the Winners’ Circle had found happiness and love within the space of such a short time was still a marvel to all three men. But those were stories for another time. For now, Antonio’s only thought was of his wife, and just what he could do with twenty little minutes.

  A wicked smile crept across his face, and Emma soon discovered that twenty minutes could be just as pleasurable as a lifetime.

  * * * * *

  If you enjoyed A Ring to Take His Revenge by Pippa Roscoe, look out for the continuation of her The Winners’ Circ
le trilogy, coming soon!

  And in the meantime why not read her Harlequin Presents debut?

  Conquering His Virgin Queen

  Available now!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from The Greek’s Blackmailed Mistress by Lynne Graham.

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  The Greek’s Blackmailed Mistress

  by Lynne Graham

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘I’M TOO BEAUTIFUL to be dumped,’ Fabiana told Xan in all seriousness, her perfect face a mask of disbelief. ‘It’s my poor English, isn’t it? I’m picking you up wrong—’

  ‘No,’ Xan contradicted with gravity, smoothly switching to her native Spanish. ‘The movers will be here in an hour to help you pack. We’ve been together two months. I did tell you that this arrangement wouldn’t last any longer than that—’

  ‘But you can’t not want me any more—’ Giving her reflection an appreciative appraisal in the nearest mirror, Fabiana fluffed up her fall of tumbling dark curls.

  ‘I don’t want you any more,’ Xan countered, losing patience, beginning to wonder how the hell he had enjoyed even one encounter with the brunette, infused as she was with astronomical vanity.

  ‘Where am I supposed to go?’ Fabiana demanded abruptly, studying him in frustration, silently recognising that she was unlikely to ever have a better-looking man in her bed. Six foot three and beautifully built, his black hair cropped short over a lean, devastatingly handsome face, the Greek financial guru, Xan Ziakis, would be a very hard act to follow and without him she would lose access to the exclusive events she had so much enjoyed.

  ‘Your possessions will be stored and a hotel room has been engaged for you,’ Xan clarified, on firmer ground now because he had been changing mistresses every couple of months for years. There was nothing new about the status quo and Fabiana had benefitted richly from their association even though his visits had been few.

  Reflecting on that last surprising truth, Xan questioned his libido. He was only thirty years old. Obviously he was bored with Fabiana, he told himself impatiently. Yet, in truth, work and the pursuit of profit had always won out over the thrill of sex for Xan. Some day he would heed his mother’s endless pleas and start dating with a view to taking a wife but that day was many years off. His father, Helios, had married five times over, gifting Xan with a costly and troublesome flock of half-siblings, and he was determined not to repeat his father’s mistakes. Helios had married too young while Xan intended to wait until he was in his forties, at the very least, and had sown every last wild oat available to him.

  Not that Fabiana and her faceless, virtually indistinguishable predecessors had much in common with wild oats, he conceded with wry self-mockery. All his bed partners had been models or minor actresses, the sort of women who understood that he paid generously for everything they wanted in return for their bodies. Framed in those words, it sounded crude, he acknowledged without shame, but that very basic format worked well for him and the one time he had tried another approach, when he had been both young and idealistic, it had gone badly wrong for him.

  Xan believed love was a dangerous risk. His father had fallen in love repeatedly with demonstrably unsuitable women. Xan had had his heart broken when he was only twenty-one and nothing would’ve persuaded him to revisit that learning experience.

  A financial genius, who had become a billionaire by the age of twenty-five, Xan was the acclaimed mastermind behind City coups worth billions. He had quickly repaired the giant hole in the Ziakis family fortunes left by his imprudent father, and had simply chosen to organise his sex life much as he organised everything else around him because disorder of any kind put him in a bad mood. He liked his life smooth; he preferred a routine he virtually never deviated from. He would not risk the upheaval of marriage breakdowns and hugely expensive divorces that had decimated his father’s wealth. He was stronger than that and infinitely cleverer, indeed smarter than most of the people around him, and the only risks he took were in the financial field where he trusted his gut and aggressive instincts.

  His phone vibrated, instantly freeing him from all awareness of Fabiana’s presence. He dug it out, immediately wondering why Dmitri, the head of his security team, would be contacting him. A moment later, he found out and he was enraged. Someone had dared to steal something very precious from him, and he stalked out of the apartment his mistresses used without another word to the brunette. His penthouse apartment was his sanctuary where he entertained neither women nor anyone else. The idea that any person could violate his London home in spite of all the security he had put in place sent his hot temper nuclear.

  ‘The maid?’ he breathed with audible distaste.

  ‘Or her son. She let him into the apartment even though it’s against the rules,’ Dmitri filled in stiffly. ‘I could pursue this discreetly or call the police—’

  ‘You call the police and provide them with the evidence,’ Xan cut in fiercely. ‘You punish them with the full weight of the law!’

  Xan collected imperial jade that cost him shocking sums and he had placed that little brush pot in the hall for his own enjoyment because it was a remarkably tactile piece and had once belonged to a Chinese emperor. In his penal frame of mind, whipping was too light a punishment for thieves.

  * * *

  The following day, Elvi’s teenaged brother flung himself into her arms and sobbed, ‘I’m so sorry...this whole nightmare is my fault!’

  ‘Let’s calm down,’ Elvi suggested gently, framing her little brother’s face with both small hands, recognising from the anguish in his green eyes that he had been crying alone in his room for some time. ‘I’ll make some tea—’

  ‘I don’t want tea!’ Daniel protested. ‘I want to go down to the police station and admit it was me and not Mum!’

  ‘No, we’re going to talk about this first,’ Elvi overruled. ‘Mum protected you for a reason—’

  ‘Bloody medical school! It doesn’t matter—’

  Of course it mattered, Elvi thought ruefully, that Daniel wanted to be a doctor like their late father. It was all he had ever wanted to be since he was a little boy and a conviction for theft would totally destroy that ambition. Furthermore, Daniel had already been awarded a place at Oxford to study because his academic results were the very best. She knew exactly why her mother had lied and taken the blame for her son, but what she could not understand or credit was that Daniel would ever have stolen anything.

  ‘I need to know what happened,’ s
he persisted quietly, seating herself on the bed where her dark-haired brother had flopped down to hang his head. He was getting so tall and lanky at just past eighteen that he was fast growing out of all his clothes, his jeans barely reaching his ankles and his enormous feet. She and Daniel bore not an ounce of resemblance to each other because, although they had had the same father, they had had different mothers. Elvi’s mother had died when she was a baby, and her father’s second wife had adopted her and brought her up as her own. She was the short, plump one of the family, Elvi conceded ruefully, bright blue eyes troubled, pushing back the white-blonde hair sticking to her perspiring brow because she had run all the way home from work as soon as Daniel had phoned her.

  ‘Yesterday, I called to pick up Mum for her AA meeting but I was a bit early,’ Daniel confided.

  Elvi heaved a sigh, for both of them tried to ensure that their mother went to regular meetings and since the summer arrived and Daniel had finished school and only contrived to find part-time employment, he had taken over the duty. Sally Cartwright deserved her family’s support to stay sober. She had been sober now for three long wonderful years but Elvi was painfully aware that alcoholism was an affliction that never entirely went away. Denying herself the craving for that one dangerous drink was what Sally dealt with every day.

  ‘And?’

  ‘She was cleaning something and had to finish it, so she told me to sit down in the hall and not to touch anything,’ Daniel grumbled. ‘Like I was a little kid or something and I was annoyed, so I didn’t listen...’

  ‘What did you touch?’ Elvi almost whispered.

  ‘There was this little jade pot sitting on the console table in a patch of sunlight—honestly, Elvi...it was the sort of thing I’ve only ever seen inside a museum case—and I just wanted to hold it for a minute, so I picked it up and took it over to the window to hold it up to the light because it was so delicate—’

  ‘And then what?’ Elvi prompted with anxious impatience.