Convenient Wife Conditions
Rebecca Hunter
To the best author crew—Addie, Adrianne, Amy, Anne, Dafina, Elizabeth, Jackie, Kilby, Ro and Shannon—for all your love and support on my path to Harlequin Presents. SBC forever!
Chapter One
“THE WEDDING WILLbe scheduled for two months from now,” said Giuseppe d’Avalos, third-generation head of his family’s far-reaching empire. “That is the soonest it can take place without suggesting more urgent reasons for this marriage.”
Massimo Carandini took a drink of his grappa to hide his scowl at the hint of scandal suggested in the man’s words. He swallowed, letting the liquid run a warm trail down his throat, then leaned back in the leather armchair and gave d’Avalos a tight smile. “Agreed. And I will defer to your daughter on the location and details of the event.”
Massimo glanced toward one of the library’s window seats, where Catarina d’Avalos quietly listened to the conversation. She was angled toward her father, so all he could make out was a long tangle of chestnut tresses, white trousers and a satin top the color of the sea. He thought he saw her nod, an acknowledgment that she was in agreement with their plan, but the bursts of sunlight filtering through the yellows, oranges and reds of the tall stained-glass window made it difficult to be sure.
The window lit the room, casting a warm glow on brass lamps, rows of old books and museum-quality relics of the past. Arched alcoves lined the interior walls, featuring old portraits of self-important men and women, undoubtedly evidence of the family’s pedigree. If the property itself wasn’t enough. This was the kind of estate that marked the legacy Massimo Carandini’s grandfather had sacrificed his life for. And then his father had squandered it.
An engagement was the last thing Massimo wanted to waste business hours on this afternoon. And yet, here he was, missing a key meeting to spend an hour in the library of this sprawling home, just to close this deal with Catarina d’Avalos. Because the desire to restore his family’s name once and for all far outweighed his distaste for marriage.
Massimo’s aversion to this arrangement was not personal. His future bride was lovely by all accounts. Before he had approached Giuseppe d’Avalos with his offer, Massimo’s assistant had provided him with photos, one from a fundraiser, where she wore a rich red gown and a demure smile, her glossy brown hair swept into some sort of twist at the base of her long neck. Another showed Catarina alongside her parents after the opening night of one of her mother’s performances. She was attractive, if not beautiful. Massimo supposed it would be helpful to find his fiancée attractive, even if it wasn’t his primary concern.
He had studied and then dismissed two other equally attractive but less suitable potential candidates. The first, minor nobility, had a well-polished image by day that belied her preference for much wilder nights. The second he’d rejected when his assistant had discovered the topless photos someone had taken of her at a party. He didn’t condemn a taste for wild nights or topless photos on principle, but his own purposes were very specific. If it had only taken a few strokes of the keyboard to dig up those pieces of evidence, what would the paparazzi uncover when their marriage came under closer scrutiny? Massimo wasn’t interested in finding out.
Giuseppe d’Avalos must have also seen his daughter’s nod or somehow gotten the response he was looking for because he returned his attention back to Massimo.
“Yours is not the first offer of marriage that a business associate has proposed,” the man said.
Massimo didn’t mistake his casual tone for anything that neared offhandedness.
“I have no doubt,” he murmured. There was an empire behind her, generations of money and acquisitions, and as the only child, it would all fall to Catarina.
“But yours is the first I have seriously considered,” the man continued. “You have a reputation for following through on your commitments, despite…”
D’Avalos waved his hand through the air dismissively, as if it was unnecessary to detail the train wreck of Massimo’s father’s business failures. As if the whole world knew enough about the rise and fall of the Carandini family legacy that he didn’t have to put it into words.
Massimo gritted his teeth, resisting every steely retort that came to mind. How long would the sins of his father be used as a lens to analyze every decision he made? Hadn’t he shown that he was not the kind of man who would, for example, spend investors’ money on a “company” yacht simply because his wife demanded it? But this was a business deal, like any other, he reminded himself. Except, in this case, he couldn’t leave the velvet-cloaked negotiations to his brother. He had to deal with this one himself.
“Trust is the foundation of this deal on both sides,” he said smoothly, as if references to the disgrace that marked his father’s legacy simply rolled off him.
The marriage would secure the future of both the families’ businesses, but most importantly, a stable, appropriate marriage would prove to the world that the scandals that had plagued the Carandini family were firmly in the past. No more wary investor meetings; no more whispers about that one terrible night on the yacht. So while he wanted a wife who would be a suitable companion at high-profile events, he had instructed his assistant that his first priority was for the woman to have absolutely no controversy attached to her name. She should be a blank slate as far as the media was concerned so as to lend a stable, calming presence to the Carandini name. This was harder to find than one might think in the age of social media, where people regularly and willingly—willingly—offered documentation of their private lives for the world to see.
In this area, Massimo would not compromise. Truth be told, compromise never had much appeal, nor much use, in his life. Ever since coming of age, he and his twin brother, Alessandro, had worked single-mindedly to restore the family’s fortunes and reputation, both of which his parents had so quickly and thoroughly ruined. Massimo and Alessandro had made it their lives’ work to restore their grandfather’s crumbling shipping empire that had fallen into ruins and make it bigger, better, grander than ever. None of their accomplishments were built on compromise.
However, public opinions were unpredictable, fickle and not nearly as controllable as the business itself had proven to be. So while their profits had increased, the stench of their parents’ public drama still clung to the family name. It was holding them back.
After a lifetime of living with their parents’ public fights, their preoccupation with each other at the expense of everything else, neither brother was interested in marriage. However, during one of many endless strategy meetings with PR firms and specialists, the solution became unavoidable: They needed to show the world that this generation of the Carandini family was not cut from the same cloth as the last. They needed to prove that a marriage—because everyone assumed the brothers would inevitably marry someday, no matter how often they discouraged this idea—would not result in the same downward spiral that had caught hold of their parents and never let them go.
Of course, Alessandro had argued that Massimo should be the one to go through with said marriage.
“How convenient for you,” Massimo had responded in his driest tone. “Though I can’t help but point out that you’re far more suitable to find a wife than I am.”
“If you’re referencing my reputation for understanding what women enjoy, then yes,” Alessandro had said in that lazy voice of his. He used it to close business deals as often as he used it to charm the women that seemed to flock to him.
“But we are discussing a marriage that will not spur hungry paparazzi to dig through their archives for old speculations to rekindle. A marriage that does not attract scandal,” his brother had continued. “That is your territory.”
Massimo had scowled at Alessandro, the way he always did when his brother was right. Alessandro’s public reputation was only saved by his carefree facade. He had all but publicly declared his permanent playboy status, and women knew this when they entered into anything that could be mistaken for an entanglement. His brother’s image wouldn’t work for a marriage that inherently implied stability. Massimo, on the other hand, had no qualms about showing himself as the relentlessly calculating businessman that he was. His public persona quite accurately aligned with the relationship he expected: a marriage free of the illusion of love, strictly for convenience.
“I’m already doing my part to sway public opinion in our family’s favour, one woman at a time,” Alessandro had added with a smirk. “You, on the other hand, are determined to force your iron will onto the rest of the world. If anyone is in the position to change our family’s reputation, it’s you.”
He said all of this with a lazy, knowing drawl that got under Massimo’s skin. Especially since, once again, his brother was right. If Massimo showed that his steely reputation would not be bent with marriage, that would certainly settle any lingering doubts that this generation of Carandinis would not make the same mistakes as the last.
