Kitabı oxu: «The Italian's Baby Bargain: The Italian's Wedding Ultimatum / The Italian's Forced Bride / The Mancini Marriage Bargain»

Dark, brooding and ruthless…These fiercely attractive Italians will claim what (or who) they want…

The Italian’s BABY BARGAIN

Three exciting, intense novels by three powerful writers: Kim Lawrence, Kate Walker & Trish Morey

The Italian’s Baby Bargain
Kim Lawrence
Forced Bride Forced Bride
Kate Walker
The Mancini Marriage Bargain
Trish Morey

www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Italian’s Wedding Ultimatum

KIM LAWRENCE lives on a farm in rural Anglesey. She runs two miles daily and finds this an excellent opportunity to unwind and seek inspiration for her writing! It also helps her keep up with her husband, two active sons and the various stray animals which have adopted them. Always a fanatical consumer of fiction, she is now equally enthusiastic about writing. She loves a happy ending!

Look for Kim Lawrence’s latest exciting novels, Unworldly Secretary, Untamed Greek and Sophie’s Seduction, which are available in September 2010 from Mills & Boon© Modern™ romance and October 2010 from M&B™.

Chapter One

SAM identified the person who had come to stand behind her chair long before his hands came to rest lightly on her shoulders. Her heart rate quickened a little before she forced herself to relax. As she turned her head her smile stayed in place. It wasn’t easy, but Sam had reached the point where she felt pretty well qualified to give a master class in hiding her true feelings.

She firmly steered her thoughts from the self-pitying direction they were drifting. Reality check, Samantha Maguire—you weren’t singled out for any particular cruelty from fate. Hearts get broken most days of the week!

So live with it, girl, she told herself sternly.

She was living; in fact she was living proof that there was life after a broken heart! Not that she was ever in danger of downplaying the disaster that was unrequited love—when the only person you had ever imagined spending the rest of your life with married someone else you didn’t become in-different overnight, or even after two years. But you did develop a protective shell; you had to.

There were days now when Sam could go an entire morning without thinking about Jonny Trelevan. Admittedly on those occasions she hadn’t had a glass of champagne and he didn’t have his hand on her shoulder!

Sam suspected that getting on with her life and not brooding on what might have been would probably have been easier if she could have erased him from her life, but that had never been a serious option. There were just too many connections. Not only were the Trelevan and Maguire families friends and neighbours in the small Cornish seaside town where she had been born and brought up, but Jonny’s twin, Emma, was one of her best friends. And now, after the christening that morning, they were both godparents to Emma’s first daughter, Laurie.

‘So this is where you’ve been hiding, Sam.’ Jonny bent down and his lips brushed gently against her cheek.

She was surprised by the unexpected gesture. Jonny wasn’t normally a wildly tactile person—at least not with her—and, for a brief moment unable to shield her feelings, Sam dropped her chin and fixed her attention on the baby in her lap while she fought to regain her composure.

Her god-daughter looked back at her and gave a gummy smile. Sam felt a stab of wistful envy for the childlike innocence.

Why are you worrying? she asked herself as she grinned back at the baby and tweaked her button nose. ‘Are you laughing at silly Aunty Sam…?’ See—even a ten-month-old knows Jonny wouldn’t notice if you stripped naked.

Or if he did it would only be to ask if she was warm enough! The bottom line was that to Jonny she was always going to be good old Sam—the slightly odd, skinny redhead from next door.

As she lifted her chin a moment later, her serene just-good-friends smile firmly pinned in place, Sam’s unwary gaze connected head-on with the enigmatic hooded stare of Alessandro Di Livio, who was standing a little apart from a laughing group of guests on the other side of the room.

She stiffened, and her smile guttered.

A little apart just about described the man who, in Sam’s opinion, carried ‘aloof’ to the point of plain rudeness.

With some men she might have suspected that the entire dark, brooding man-of-mystery thing was cultivated for effect, just to make people notice him. But Alessandro Di Livio didn’t need to make the effort.

He got noticed!

Of course he got noticed. He was tall, lean, and rampantly male, and if his body looked half as good without clothes as it did—Sam lost the thread momentarily as she thought about him naked. Face rosily tinged, she reined in her wayward imagination and concentrated on his face. Individually, his strong, dark features were memorable; collectively, they were nothing short of perfect. And that was before you even touched on the subject of the forcefield of raw sexuality that preceded him into any room!

Even from this distance the unnerving intensity of his stare had her stomach muscles behaving unpredictably. Without dropping her eyes she rested her chin on the top of the baby’s silky head; his eyes really were the darkest she had ever seen—not dark warm, but dark hard. That man, she thought, repressing a shudder, wasn’t chocolate. Not even the dark, bitter variety. He was cold, hard steel!

Despite the familiar wave of antipathy she always experienced when around the Italian financier, Sam forced her lips into a polite smile—while thinking, God, but there’s just something about you that sets my teeth on edge.

Actually, not something, she admitted. Everything!

From the way he walked into a room as if he owned it to the ability of his deep voice with its tactile quality and intriguing accent to make her skin prickle. Even the fact that his incredibly well-cut suit didn’t have a crease in it got under her skin. She knew it was totally irrational, and it probably made her a freak, considering that just about every other female she had ever met drooled when his name was mentioned, but she found his brand of arrogance and raw, in-your-face sexuality a total turn-off.

When she had said as much to Emma, during Jonny and Kat’s belated wedding party, her best friend, who had a pretty warped sense of humour, had grinned slyly and suggested innocently that maybe all this hostility was because Sam was secretly attracted to the Italian.

Well aware that if she showed how repugnant she found the joking suggestion Emma was going to take the she protests too much route, she had rolled her eyes and joked, ‘Sure I am—I dream about him every night.’ Trying not to think about that one shameful occasion she had almost successfully blanked from her mind—the one when she had woken with her entire body bathed in sweat and her heart pumping so fast she’d felt as if she was choking.

Fortunately a girl couldn’t be held accountable for what her subconscious got up to.

‘I think we’ll make a lovely couple,’ she’d added.

Disregarding the irony heavily lacing this prognosis, Emma grinned. ‘So, you think you’re the woman to get our famously commitment-phobic Italian stud to the altar? You do realise that the only time his name has ever been linked with marriage was with that woman…the lawyer…messy divorce, husband a junior minister or something.’ Her smooth brow furrowed as she failed to retrieve the name. ‘What was her name…?’

‘Marisa Sinclair.’ When the ring everyone had expected to see appear on her finger hadn’t materialised Marisa Sinclair had responded to prying questions by saying that Alessandro was and always would be one of the most important people in her life.

‘That’s the one. Stunning-looking—half-Scottish, half-Italian, and super smart. But she didn’t get her man in the end. You fancy taking a shot, Sam…?’

‘You don’t think I’m his type?’

Emma ran a mock critical eye over her friend. ‘You scrub up pretty well when you make the effort, Sam, but…’

Sam held up a hand. ‘I’m no Marisa Sinclair. All right, stop right there, while I still have some self-esteem left,’ she pleaded.

‘Don’t fret, Sam. You’re too deep for him. I think he goes for superficial and obvious. You want to know what my theory is about our enigmatic Italian?’ Taking Sam’s silence as assent—wrongly, as it happened—she went on to explain. ‘When they were handing out the pheremones he got a treble dose. Have you seen the way women act when he walks into a room? Honest to God, an expert in body language would have a field-day!’

Thinking about the uncomfortable all over tingle she had personal experience of, Sam nodded.

‘All that and money too.’ Emma sighed. ‘They do say that the palazzo on his Tuscan estate is out of this world—though I don’t see how anyone knows, because nobody ever gets to go there except a few really close friends.’

‘I’m surprised he has any.’

From Emma’s amused expression Sam could tell that there were more comments about hostility masking attraction heading her way, so she added quickly. ‘Well, maybe now you’re related you’ll get to see it in person.’

‘I hope so. I could do with a couple of weeks in Tuscany this summer. However, if my brother’s connections don’t get me an invite, I’ll just have to rely on my best friend to remember when she lands her dream man.’

Nightmare man, Sam thought, maintaining a long-suffering, smiling silence as her friend dissolved into fits of helpless laughter once more.

Sam sighed and pushed aside the recollections as across the room the man who had been the subject of that long-ago conversation carried on staring, with that same unnerving intensity.

Damn the man, she fumed. He has no manners at all!

It was childish, she knew, and maybe the challenge she thought she read in his eyes was all in her imagination, but Sam was determined that she wasn’t going to be the one to look away first. Consciously allowing her own smile to fade, because making an effort to be polite was clearly wasted on him, she picked up her glass of orange juice and raised it to him in a mocking salute.

The defiant gesture fell rather flat when he didn’t respond. His enigmatic dark eyes, with their heavy fringe of curling lashes, just continued to drill into her from across the room.

Sam’s resolve was wilting fast, but she was saved a humiliating climb-down when an attractive blonde sidled up to him…sidled so close that her breasts were almost touching his chest. Actually, they were touching.

Sam recognised the blonde, who had come with one of Emma’s cousins. The girl had been stalking Alessandro with single-minded determination all day. Sam saw her catch hold of his sleeve and thought viciously, Serve you right! It wasn’t until he turned his head away that she realised she had been literally holding her breath.

Gasping a little, to draw air into her oxygen-deprived lungs, she put her glass down on a table. What a conceited bore the man is, she thought, her lips thinning contemptuously.

A conceited bore with the ability to make your hands shake just by looking at you.

The warm fingers on her shoulder tightened and Sam’s eyes widened. It was kind of shocking to realise that, far from struggling to keep a lid on her feelings for Jonny, she had forgotten he was there! And it was utterly irrational—considering he was not only another woman’s husband, but oblivious to the fact she adored him—that Sam felt a pang of guilt.

As if I’ve been unfaithful! Now, how crazy is that?

‘And how are you, my gorgeous one?’

Sam relaxed a little and felt wistful. Jonny’s voice was exactly like him. Warm, solid, uncomplicated and reliable. Everything, in fact, that the Italian was not, she thought, unable to repress a tiny shudder as an image of those dark, lean, impossibly symmetrical features formed in her head.

Feeling irritated with herself for allowing Alessandro Di Livio to intrude once more into her thoughts, she angled a warm smile at Jonny. And of course she hadn’t for a second made the mistake of thinking that his crooning question had been addressed to her.

She’d known it never would be.

It hadn’t always been that way, and it was deeply embarrassing to recall that for a long time she had firmly believed that one day the scales would fall from Jonny’s eyes and he would finally realise that little Sam Maguire was the only woman he could love.

A rich fantasy life was one thing, Sam mused, but her fantasy had become so firmly embedded that she had believed totally that it was going to happen—to the extent where it had affected the decisions she’d made. This belief had persisted right up to the moment Jonny had arrived home with a stunning girl whom he had proudly introduced to his family as ‘my wife.’

‘She’s pretty much perfect,’ Jonny observed now, awkwardly stroking the smooth cheek of his baby niece with a finger.

Much like yourself.

Sam guiltily lowered her eyes and turned her attention back to the baby on her lap, who gave a contented gurgle and captured the pendant around Sam’s slim neck.

‘She looks just like Emma, doesn’t she?’

‘Kat thinks she looks like me,’ Jonny mused.

‘The same thing, really,’ Sam pointed out.

The twins, though poles apart personality-wise, had always been very alike in looks. And now that Jonny had given up surfing competitively to run first one and then several more stores across the country selling surf gear, his sun-bleached blond hair had darkened to the same honey-brown as his sister’s, so the likeness between the siblings was even more pronounced.

‘What’s up, Sam…?’

‘Up?’

‘You sound…I don’t know…’ He studied her profile. ‘Cranky,’ he decided.

‘I was just thinking about your brother-in-law.’

‘Alessandro!’ Jonny’s eyes automatically sought out the tall figure standing across the room. Their eyes connected and Jonny smiled tensely before looking away. He never had been able to rid himself of the feeling that the older man could read his mind…always an uncomfortable experience, but with the cheque burning a hole in his pocket at that moment particularly so.

She nodded. ‘He may have a perfect face, but his manners could do with some major work.’ Seeing Jonny’s brows lift at the spitting vehemence of her declaration, Sam cautioned herself to downplay her dislike. ‘You have to admit,’ she challenged in a milder tone, ‘he makes no effort whatsoever.’

‘Effort to do what?’

She pursed her lips into a disapproving line. ‘Mingle.’

‘Mingle!’ Jonny echoed, and laughed.

‘He always gives the impression that he’s looking down his nose at me…at everyone…but then I suppose he thinks he doesn’t need to be polite to ordinary people like us,’ she observed contemptuously.

Jonny gave a shrug, still looking amused. ‘Oh, you know Alessandro.’

For once Sam found Jonny’s laid-back attitude irritating. ‘Happily, no, I don’t. We don’t exactly move in the same circles.’

‘He’s actually a pretty private person, Sam, and with the paparazzi on his case all the time, sniffing for a scandal, you can’t really blame him for being a bit cautious.’

‘He’s not cautious. He’s stuck up and snobbish. Still, at least he’s safe from the paparazzi today.’ Nobody was going to expect to see Alessandro Di Livio at a christening in a Cornish seaside village.

Jonny looked at her curiously. ‘God, you really don’t like him, do you, Sam?’

‘He doesn’t like me,’ she countered.

Jonny looked startled by the suggestion. ‘Oh, I doubt that.’ His eyes moved from her bright copper head and slid over her trim but slight figure. ‘He’s probably not even noticed you, Sam.’

From his expression it was obvious that Jonny thought she’d be pleased to realise that she was actually too insignificant even to register on Alessandro Di Livio’s radar.

Sam forced a smile. ‘You mean I’m mistaking indifference for rudeness?’

The ironic inflection in her voice sailed over Jonny’s head. ‘He can be a bit stand-offish,’ he admitted. ‘And he’s not a great talker—at least not with me. But then he still thinks I’m not good enough for Kat.’ He lowered his voice and recalled, ‘You know, the night we told him we’d got married I was expecting an explosion, but the guy didn’t turn a hair. Then later, when Kat wasn’t in the room, he told me that if I ever hurt her he would make me wish I’d never been born.’ The recollection made him shudder.

‘He threatened you?’ Sam bristled with indignation. The man was nothing but a thug!

‘It was more in the nature of a promise.’

‘I hope you told him where he could put his threats.’

Jonny looked amused. ‘Yeah, that’s really likely.’

‘You have to stand up to bullies,’ Sam contended angrily.

‘He wasn’t being a bully, he was looking out for his sister—and I don’t really blame him. He’s been fine with me since, but I’ve never forgotten, and he…’ Jonny shrugged. ‘Alessandro doesn’t forget anything,’ he admitted.

‘Well, I think you and Kat were made for each other!’ Sam declared, meaning it.

It should have been easy to dislike Kat. She had it all—pots of money, beauty and Jonny. But it wasn’t! It was impossible not to like Jonny’s wife, who was as warm, spontaneous and sweet-natured as her brother was revolting, cold and conceited.

‘But he’s right.’ Jonny sighed gloomily. ‘I’m not good enough for her.’

‘Rubbish. Since when is Alessandro Di Livio the expert on relationships? The only person he’s likely to form a loving and long relationship with is his own reflection!’

Jonny chuckled. ‘Don’t let Kat hear you say that,’ he warned, flashing a guilty look towards his wife. ‘As far as she is concerned, Alessandro can do no wrong. But then,’ he added, a note of defence creeping into his voice, ‘he did virtually bring her up single-handed after their parents were killed in that crash.’

Sam felt a cold shiver running down her spine and gave the baby a sudden hug, closing her eyes and burying her face deeper in the comforting warmth of her sweet-smelling soft hair.

The crash Jonny referred to had killed two members of the famous aristocratic Italian family and left a third fighting for his life. It must have had saturation media coverage at the time, but Sam, who had only been in her teens, had only a vague recollection of the story. Coincidentally, she had caught a TV programme only the previous night, in which it had featured prominently.

In asking Are Some People Born Lucky?, the programme-makers had presented a pretty compelling argument that some people did lead a charmed existence, surviving situations which logically they should not have.

The programme had made compulsive viewing, but it had had the sort of voyeuristic qualities that made Sam feel uncomfortable. She had been about to vote with her feet and switch off when a computer simulation had shown the route the Di Livio car had taken when it had gone over the cliffedge, and she had literally held her breath as she watched the action replay.

Sam hadn’t been surprised to hear emergency workers comment that it had been the first time they had ever taken anyone out of a wreck alive on that treacherous mountainside.

When the commentator’s voice had posed in thrilling accents the question ‘Was this man born lucky?’ the screen had been filled with the image of a young-looking Alessandro, his dark hair whitened with dust, his bruised face leeched of all colour, strapped to a stretcher about to be air lifted away from the twisted, mangled remains of the car.

Sam had then switched off the TV and muttered angrily to the cat, ‘Lucky? Very lucky, if your version of lucky happens to involve nearly dying and losing both your parents…Idiots!’

She had caught sight of her scowling reflection in the mirror and stopped dead, her eyes widening. I’m getting all protective and indignant on behalf of Alessandro Di Livio…now, how bizarre is that? One thing was for sure, she’d thought, flashing a wry smile at her mirror image. The recipient of her caring concern would not have been grateful!

The programme had preyed on her mind. She just hadn’t been able to get the image of his tragic, blood-stained face out of her head, no matter how hard she’d tried. Then this morning at the church, as she’d sat alone and waited for everyone else to arrive, in he’d walked!

It had really spooked her—think about him and he appears…That will teach me to be more careful about who and what I think about in the future, she had reflected, shrinking back into her seat.

Unobserved, she’d had the luxury of being able to stare at him. People would probably pay for that privilege. But, no matter how hard she’d looked, she hadn’t found any trace of the vulnerability she had seen in the face of that young man with the bleak, empty eyes, clinging to life.

Same classical profile, same aquiline nose, same razor-sharp prominent cheekbones, and his mouth was still sexy enough to cause a sharp intake of breath in the unprepared observer, but the man exuded an air of unstudied confidence and control.

If she had glimpsed even a shadow of that younger man Sam thought her attitude to him might have softened, but she hadn’t, and when a few moments later she’d knocked a hymn book to the floor and alerted him to her presence she had looked away quickly.

‘I saw a programme about the accident last night,’ she said now.

Jonny nodded. ‘Yeah, Alessandro phoned Kat and told her not to watch it. He said it was sensationalist rubbish and would only upset her.’

‘And did she watch it?’

‘After he’d told her not to?’ Jonny laughed at the notion of Kat not following her brother’s suggestion.

‘Well, he may be a control freak, but in this instance,’ Sam admitted, ‘he was right. It would have upset her. It was a bit graphic.’ A chilly shiver traced a path down her spine as she recalled the bleak devastation in the eyes of the man they had called lucky.

‘I suppose he’s afraid it will resurrect the story.’

‘How old was Kat at the time?’ Jonny’s wife had only been nineteen when they’d married, after a whirlwind romance.

‘She was eleven. She would have been with them on the trip, but she spiked a fever at the last minute…turned out she had mumps.’

‘Lucky mumps,’ Sam said thinking about the moment that morning in church, when her eyes had brushed Alessandro’s. Her smooth brow furrowed. Jonny’s wrong. He doesn’t like me. Her chin came up to a belligerent angle.

Which suits me fine!

Her grim expression lightened as Laurie’s fingers closed over the beaten silver pendant she wore around her neck and she tried to draw it to her rosebud mouth. Sam, grateful to be distracted from her thoughts, disentangled the tenacious chubby fingers and shook her head.

‘No, Laurie, it wouldn’t taste good,’ she reproached.

Jonny’s fingers tightened on her shoulder. ‘Feeling broody, Sam?’

The question sounded teasing and light, but something in his voice made Sam lift her head and study his face. ‘Broody—me…?’ Jonny smiled, but she noticed it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘I prefer babies when you can hand them back at the end of the day.’ Not true, but it sounded like a suitable response. She could hardly go with the other option, which was to say If I can’t have your babies I don’t want any!

‘You think that now, but all women start talking babies.’

Sam received a jolt as his meaning sank in. Jonny a father…It would happen one day, so get used to it. ‘Are congratulations in order?’

Jonny didn’t respond to her question. Following the direction of his distracted gaze, Sam saw his eyes had come to rest on Kat.

Feeling like an intruder, Sam quickly averted her gaze, trying and failing to imagine a man looking at her with the kind of suppressed longing she had read in Jonny’s face. She caught a glimpse of herself reflected in the enormous gilt-framed mirror that covered the wall to her right and thought, Sure—that’s really going to happen. It was a fact of life that freckles, red hair and a body that was never going to be curvy did not inspire dumbstruck lust and longing.

‘Congratulations?’ Jonny dragged his attention back to Sam.

‘I thought you and Kat might be starting a family.’

Her innocuous remark caused Jonny’s good-looking features to freeze. ‘I’m not ready to start a family.’

Meaning Kat was…? Sam speculated, puzzling over his expression. ‘I thought you loved children…’

Not that she could for a second imagine Jonny as a handson father. Though he had many good points, Jonny did have some pretty old-fashioned ideas.

‘This isn’t a good time.’

‘Is there ever a good time?’

Dark colour flooded Jonny’s face as he bent closer. ‘For God’s sake, Sam,’ he hissed. ‘Do I have to spell it out? You of all people should realise that I can’t afford to be thinking of babies. And I can’t tell Kat…’ He swallowed, drew a deep breath and shook his head. The strained smile he gave her was ruefully apologetic. ‘Sorry, Sam. I shouldn’t take it out on you.’ Absently he patted her shoulder. ‘Could I have a word, Sam?’

He looked so apologetic that she immediately forgave his outburst. ‘Isn’t that what we are doing?’

Jonny cleared his throat and nodded towards the closed French doors. ‘In private.’

You can have anything you want.

Her colour slightly heightened by her traitorous thought, Sam nodded placidly and reminded herself for the tenth time that afternoon that she was a strong, independent woman who didn’t need a man—and, anyway, she wasn’t the sort of person who would settle for second best.

In the alcove, where he had retreated to watch them, Alessandro Di Livio tightened his long fingers around the stem of his untouched glass of champagne as he observed his brother-in-law’s head move closer to the glossy copper one of the seated woman.

They were so close they looked like lovers about to embrace. He couldn’t give the man his sister had chosen a backbone, but he could make damned sure that he didn’t cheat and break his besotted little sister’s heart!

God knew what either woman saw in him. Maybe it was the surfing thing? He presumed, from the cabinet of trophies ostentatiously on show in his sister’s apartment, that the younger man had been more successful riding the waves than he was at business. Perhaps the younger man could have coped with one store, he conceded, but his rapid and reckless expansion over the past eighteen months had been nothing short of suicidal. The only thing that surprised Alessandro, who had been set to bail him out for the past year, was that he was still financially afloat.

His sensually sculpted lips formed a twisted, cynical smile as the Maguire woman lifted her hand in a fluttery gesture to her slender, pale throat. The action was as revealing as he had come to expect of her, but he couldn’t quite decide if she was as transparent as she appeared, or if it was all part of some sort of act.

Alessandro’s nostrils flared. If Jonny Trelevan didn’t know she was his for the asking the younger man was an even bigger fool than he’d taken him for. His eyes slid towards his sister, who had been talking too loudly and brightly all afternoon, and found she too was watching the couple. As he watched she turned her head, and he was sure he caught the glitter of tears in her eyes.

Whatever was wrong with his sister’s marriage, he would have laid odds that the red-headed little witch was responsible. What was her game? Alessandro wondered as he angled his dark head a little to one side and studied the slim figure.

If asked to classify her look he would have called it sexy, yet demure. Not to his taste, but he knew a lot of men went for the perennial virgin look. She was the sort of female who simultaneously aroused predatory and protective instincts in the opposite sex.

No wonder men got confused around her. They didn’t know whether to kiss her or protect her from a light breeze! He, on the other hand, knew what he wanted to do—namely shake her and tell her to display a little more discretion when she looked at Trelevan with those big hungry eyes!

Of course her dress sense was nothing short of a total disaster, but colour co-ordination wasn’t going to be high on your average male’s list of priorities when he heard her laugh—that low, husky, wicked chuckle.

It was the sort of laugh a man imagined hearing behind a closed bedroom door. Or is that just me…?

He had known from the beginning, of course, that she was in love with Jonny Trelevan—though astonishingly, as far as he could tell, he was the only person who did! Her friends and relations seemed uniformly oblivious to the intense misery behind the brave smile. He had suspected at that time that if you had taken away that smile and the screaming tension in every fibre of her slender body she would probably have collapsed.

He was neither a relation or a friend, but an objective observer, so her unrequited love was none of his concern so long as she represented no danger to his sister’s happiness.

He had decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.

For starters, Trelevan had seemed to view her as one of the boys, and the only time he got physical was when he punched her playfully on the arm.

As for the girl herself…His eyes narrowed as once again they fell on Samantha Maguire, face buried in the hair of the baby on her lap, so that all he could see was the top of her copper head. If he had thought she represented a threat to his sister’s happiness he would have taken whatever action he deemed necessary. But two years ago he had decided that she did not possess the tempestuous nature that was meant to accompany her vibrant colouring.

She would look, but not touch. And there was no law against looking. He had done some of that himself. On every occasion since, when their paths had crossed, he had kept a watchful eye on her.

Of course he’d been glad that Katerina did not have the added complication of a jealous would-be lover in the background, trying to sabotage her marriage, but he’d felt a stab of contempt when he considered the Maguire girl’s passive acceptance of the hand fate had dealt her. It was lincomprehensiblle to him, but maybe, he mused, it had something to do with British stoicism—something which Alessandro with his more volatile Latin temperament had never been able to get a handle on. But then he never had understood people taking pride in being a good loser.

Now, though, he wasn’t so sure about his earlier assessment. Had he been mistaken in her? Had Samantha Maguire been playing the long game and waiting for her chance? Alessandro was not the sort of man who left things to chance, and this was a possibility he had to consider.

Jonny Trelevan wasn’t the husband he would have chosen for his sister—he was too weak and ineffectual to Alessandro’s mind—but Alessandro had accepted that his wishes were not the ones that counted. The younger man was the husband Kat wanted, and as her brother he would do anything in his power to give Katerina, deprived of the parental love and support he himself had enjoyed, what she wanted.

He stood listening to the inane prattle of the young woman at his side, catching only one word in three of what she was saying, and plunged headlong into one of the flashbacks which had been part of his life for the last ten years.

Chapter Two

A FLASHBACK implied that you’d lost sense of your surroundings, but for Alessandro it was more a sense of dislocation, of being in two places at the same time.

Like today—in the here and now he was saying something that made the plastic blonde girl giggle, while simultaneously he was back on the dark road of that night, pressing the brakes and feeling no response.

The only outward evidence of what was happening to him was the sheen of sweat across his brow.

He could hear the blonde listing her favourite haunts. The flickering images always followed the same rigid sequence. He knew that the next one involved being pretty sure he was going to die.

‘I don’t go to nightclubs,’ he replied, when she finally asked his own preference.

She could have looked no more shocked had he confided a predilection for women’s underwear. Alessandro might have laughed had he not been calling on every skill he had, and then some he didn’t, in a futile attempt to control the car. Knowing as he did so that nothing he could do would affect the outcome.

Looking at the card scrawled with a number, he nodded and murmured an ironic, ‘You’re very kind,’ as his guts tightened in anticipation of the car launching itself into space.

Then the blonde was gone, and so was the car, and they were falling on and on. He could hear the high-pitched female scream that seemed to go on for ever, and then the screech of metal as it ripped and tore. The foul stench of petrol filled his flared nostrils.

Wiping a hand across his damp brow, he looked across the room and saw Samantha Maguire on the point of stepping through the French windows with his brother-in-law. Watching the couple slip outside, Alessandro narrowed his eyes in speculative anger. Did they think nobody had noticed?

Maybe conducting their illicit relationship under the very nose of Katerina added spice? Or maybe the redhead wanted to be discovered?

In his head there was silence, an eerie silence broken finally by his own voice calling to his parents, asking, ‘Are you all right?’

Imprisoned in his seat, he could only imagine why there was no reply to the question he kept repeating, and all the time he had the knowledge that it would take only one spark and the car and its contents would become a raging inferno.

Dawn had been breaking before the first rescuers had arrived.

Alessandro had still been in hospital when the inquest was held. And, thanks to the irritating intransigence of the surgeon responsible for uniting the shattered fragments of bone in his right leg, he had been banned from attending.

His personality was such that going against expert opinion did not normally present him with an obstacle. Alessandro’s problem on that occasion was that the expert advice he wanted to flout came from the man who had saved his leg when the general consensus of medical opinion had been that the mangled limb was beyond saving. He figured that following his advice was the least he owed the man who had operated not once but three times to give him back his mobility.

The inquest had gone ahead in his absence, and had resulted in the total recall of a series of high-performance cars, all of which had shared the faulty braking system discovered in the one that had plunged off the side of the mountain with him at the wheel. The fact that no blame for the fatal accident had been assigned to him personally, that in fact the crash investigators had said nothing he could have done would have prevented the car going over, did not lessen the responsibility that Alessandro felt for the death of his parents.

He had relived the disastrous moments innumerable times since, sure that if he had done something differently his parents would still be alive. Not that it was in his nature to waste time indulging his survivor guilt. He’d had a sister to bring up—a sister who, thanks to him, had no parents.

His chiselled jaw tightened as, without waiting for his heart-rate to return to normal, he made his way towards the terrace doors. The expression on his face made several people get out of his way.

It was time to issue a warning—a warning that was long overdue. And if Miss Maguire knew what was good for her she would take notice. If not? Well, that was her decision. For his part, Alessandro had no doubts concerning his ability to make her see things his way.

The terrace was empty because, despite the brilliant April sunshine, the fluffy white clouds and the expanse of daffodils on the wide green lawns, the wind held a bone-biting chill.

Sam shivered as the wind cut through the beige linen suit she wore. The skirt length and A-line cut didn’t do her petite, narrow-hipped and high-bosomed frame any favours. As her mother had pointed out earlier, she should never, ever wear beige as it made her look drained and haggard.

Sam had agreed. And of course since then she had felt drained and haggard.

‘God, I’m going to get hypothermia,’ she said, hugging her arms around herself as a particularly harsh gust of wind cut through the fabric. ‘Couldn’t you say what you needed to say inside?’

‘Here.’

Sam looked from the envelope he had thrust into her hand to Jonny’s solemn face. ‘What’s this?’ she asked, making no attempt to open it. She knew what it was.

He ran a hand through his disordered fair curls, and the familiar gesture made Sam’s heart ache. ‘I said I’d repay the loan, Sam,’ he reminded her.

‘And I said there was no hurry, Jonny,’ she returned quietly, hating the way his eyes slid from hers. ‘I don’t need the money. It’s just sitting there in the bank.’ The amount of money that worldwide sales of the Angela’s Cat series made was shockingly large, and Sam’s tastes were pretty simple. And in a funny way she owed her success to Jonny.

Without Jonny she would never have felt the need to escape, and she might never have discovered that writing was the perfect way to do so. In which case the chances were her children’s story might never have been anything more than a few pages lying forgotten in the back of a drawer. And she might still be working as a supply teacher.

‘You helped me out of a sticky spot, and for that, Sam, I’ll be eternally grateful. But,’ he said, closing her fingers around the envelope, ‘this is yours. And thanks to you Kat isn’t going to know how close to bankrupt I was.’

Sam gave a worried frown and hoped Jonny’s male pride wasn’t making him repay the loan before he could afford to. But, aware she couldn’t do much about it, she reluctantly shoved the envelope into her pocket. ‘Well, you know what I think, Jonny.’

‘That I should have told Kat I was on the verge of bankruptcy.’ He shook his fair head and gave a grim laugh. ‘Leave it, Sam. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I had to borrow that money.’

‘But your grandmother’s legacy—’ Sam protested.

‘Paid for the initial investment,’ he slotted in. ‘And I needed money to expand.’

‘Why expand?’

Jonny’s features settled into obstinate lines. ‘I couldn’t expect Kat to be a shopkeeper’s wife.’

Sam shook her head in exasperation. ‘For the record, I think you’re a total idiot. Your wife is rich, and her brother is—’

Jonny ran an unsteady hand over his cleanshaven jaw and interrupted. ‘Her brother is Alessandro Di Livio. That’s the whole point, Sam. He’s worth billions, and I—’

‘Kat knew you weren’t a billionaire when she married you,’ she interrupted impatiently.

His blue eyes slid from hers. ‘How could I tell a girl like Kat that I was taking less out of the shop in a year than she spends on shoes in a month? Her brother has always given her everything she wants before she even asks. She worships him,’ he gritted, unable to conceal the envy in his voice as he added dourly, ‘And, let’s face it, Alessandro is perfect.’

An image of a dark, patrician face flashed into her head, and Sam was unable to voice the denial she would have liked. Physically at least he was about as close to perfect as you could get. If your idea of perfect happened to be six feet five of lean, toned muscle, flashing dark eyes, a sinfully sensual mouth, cheekbones that you could cut yourself on and an aristocratic profile. His gorgeous Mediterranean colouring presumably went all over…

She stopped, alarm filtering into her expression. Mentally undressing the man twice within the space of half an hour was not a good development.

Well, gorgeous body or not, he wasn’t Sam’s idea of perfect. But she accepted that on this she was in the minority. However, it didn’t take a great leap to see how a creature like that could make other men feel inadequate.

‘Tell me, Jonny, what’s the most important thing in your life?’ she asked him quietly.

‘Kat, of course.’

Sam heard the indignation in his voice that she should need to ask, and wondered bleakly if the other woman knew how lucky she was. ‘Exactly.’ Her lips twitched into a contemptuous smile. ‘Can you imagine a woman being the most important thing in Alessandro Di Livio’s life?’

She watched Jonny struggle to do so, and gave a triumphant I told you so smile. ‘Of course you can’t. Because the only person important to Alessandro Di Livio is Alessandro.’

‘He cares about Kat!’ Jonny protested.

Too much, Sam thought. ‘Fair enough,’ she conceded. ‘But if Kat had wanted another version of her brother she’d have found one. She didn’t, because she’s a hell of a lot brighter than you are. What she wanted was a decent bloke who puts her first. She wanted you, Jonny.’

‘You really think so?’

‘How would you like it if Kat was in trouble and she didn’t come to you? Just stop being a stiff-necked idiot, tell your wife the truth, and give her what she wants…which presumably is you, Jonny.’ There’s a lot of it about, she thought, before adding, ‘And maybe a baby…?’

The anger died from Jonny’s face and he clutched his head in his hands. ‘God, Sam, you’re right!’ he cried. ‘I’ve been a total idiot. I know I should have told her. But I didn’t want her to think she’d married a total loser!’

Sam had got into the habit of avoiding physical contact with Jonny—it was a self-protective thing—but if ever there was an occasion for a hug this was it. ‘God,’ she said, wrapping her arms around him, ‘but men are stupid.’

Jonny, who had rested his chin on her glossy hair, lifted his head. ‘Especially me.’

‘Especially you,’ she agreed with a watery grin as she drew back from the embrace.

‘One thing, Sam…?’

‘Anything.’

‘Don’t say anything about this to Alessandro. Like I said, he never did think I was good enough for Kat, and if he found out about my cashflow problems he’d…Well…’

Sam nodded. ‘I understand.’

She understood, all right. She understood that the only way Jonny’s marriage was going to work out was if Kat managed to escape her brother’s overpowering influence.

‘My lips are sealed,’ she promised, miming a zipping motion along the generous curve of her mouth.

About to turn away, Jonny swung back and took her by the shoulders. ‘Sam, I may not say so very often, but I do know that you’re the best friend in the world!’ he said, planting a light kiss on her lips.

‘Sure I am. Now, go and talk to your wife.’

Oblivious to the husky catch in her voice, Jonny responded to her urging, pausing only to blow a kiss back to her from the doorway as he dived back indoors, his expression determined.

Sam forgot her desire to escape the cold wind and closed her eyes, lifting a hand to her lips. Her smooth brow puckered into a frown. No tingling…no wild surge of uncontrollable lust! In fact, no lust at all. Could it be that her under-used sex drive had simply died?

‘That was a very touching scene.’

Chapter Three

THE air was expelled from her lungs in one startled gasp as Sam spun around, thinking, It can’t be…?

Of course it was. Nobody else had a voice like that.

‘Oh, it’s you…’ she said stupidly, then flushed.

Alessandro watched as she pushed the strands of hair that had come free from the loose knot on her head from her face with both hands. It was an almost child-like gesture. The vibrant copper, he noticed, glowed against her pale skin. Actually, now that he thought about it, her skin glowed too, with an almost opalescent sheen.

It was the sort of skin a man would find difficult to look at and not think about touching…the silky softness was a tactile invitation. His brother-in-law had clearly decided it was an invitation, he thought, his angular jaw tightening as he looked at the lips the younger man had found so irresistible.

Sam’s expression grew defensive as she returned the silent, hostile stare of the person responsible for a tingling that extended to the soles of her feet. Inside her chest her heart was banging against her ribcage like a trapped wild animal.

Actually, her trapped wild animal instincts were kicking in pretty hard right now. It was only the fact that he stood between her and the door that stopped her from fleeing.

When she had asked Emma earlier why on earth she had invited the wretched man, her friend had reminded Sam that she’d invited all her own family, and he was Kat’s brother and she didn’t have any other family, poor thing.

‘Besides,’ she had admitted with a rueful grin, ‘I never expected him to actually accept.’

Now, looking up into that lean, arresting face, Sam, who if she was honest had been exasperated by Jonny’s inability to stand up for himself where his brother-in-law was concerned, felt a strong surge of sympathy for him. Small wonder he felt nervous and inadequate around the man—and as for confiding his problems…! Dear God, banana skins probably got out of the way when they saw his hand-made Italian shoes coming!

His was certainly the very last shoulder she’d choose to cry on, she thought as her glance brushed the broad, well-developed area in question. How many women had made use of those manly shoulders? Or even sunk their teeth into that smooth golden flesh during a moment of heightened passion…?

You didn’t look at Alessandro Di Livio and think, Here’s a man with empathy. You thought, Here’s a man who’s never put a foot wrong in his life…Or a man who inspired women to bite his shoulders? You thought, Here’s a man who has no insight and even less sympathy for the failings of lesser mortals…And maybe the ability to make a woman lose control…?

A flurry of alarm filtered into her guarded expression as she wondered where those maverick thoughts had come from.

Had he heard any of her conversation with Jonny?

Her alarm lessened as she realised that unless he’d been lurking in the shadows for a long time, which didn’t seem likely, he couldn’t know about the cheque burning a hole in her pocket. The most he could have witnessed was a quick hug between friends and a peck on the cheek—so nothing incriminating there.

Sam released a tiny sigh of relief. Jonny’s secret was safe.

‘I’m sorry—I didn’t see you there.’ Her normally sunny smile was on the stiff side, but she quietly congratulated herself for making the effort—even though all she wanted to do was escape from his oppressive presence.

‘Obviously.’

‘Is there a problem?’

Considering the degree of hostility emanating from his lean body, it now seemed laughable that on the occasions when Sam had previously encountered the man she had considered him to have a glacially cold disposition. A man with the coldest eyes she had ever seen. A man totally incapable of spontaneous emotion, or for that matter any emotion that wasn’t clinically calculated.

The nerve jumping erratically alongside his sinfully sexy mouth and the combustible air of barely suppressed fury that was emanating from him now rather suggested that he was capable of doing a lot more than raising his voice. He was certainly raising the hairs on the nape of her neck. She refused point-blank to analyse the things his proximity was doing to any points south of her neck!

His dark eyes meshed with hers. ‘You are the problem.’ And one he was going to sort once and for all.

Sam stared, totally bemused by his aggressive response. ‘Have you been drinking?’

‘No, I have not been drinking. I saw you throw yourself at him.’

Sam shook her head at this harsh addition. ‘Throw…? Who…?’

His dark eyes flicked across her slightly parted lips and his own moved in a moue of distaste.’ Kiss him…’ He smiled cynically as he watched the guilty colour fly to her pale cheeks. ‘There is a name for women who do that to married men.’

This last contemptuous observation and that horrid smile snuffed out the guilt Sam had nursed for the secret she carried in her heart and loosened the firm grip she normally kept on her Celtic redhead’s temper. She trembled with the force of the surge of anger that washed over her as she read the superior condemnation in his face.

If she hadn’t been in the grip of strong emotions—namely the desire to physically remove the nasty smile from his smug face—she might have remembered that it probably wasn’t a good idea to antagonise someone who was in a position to make Jonny’s life uncomfortable. But caution wasn’t part of her plan as, head flung back, she took a step towards him.

The sheer, unmitigated nerve of the man—looking down his nose at her like that. Especially when you considered this was the same person who had refused to deny or confirm the rumours that he was the real reason a high-profile politician and his lawyer wife had split up. He was obviously as guilty as sin! Sam chose to ignore the fact that at the time she had argued with a friend that silence did not equate to guilt.

‘You have something against kissing…?’ she asked, injecting sarcasm into her voice and being rewarded by the expression on his face.

Clean up your own act before you criticise other people, she thought grimly.

‘Is that kissing generally…?’ A finger pressed to the soft indentation in her firmly rounded chin, she pretended to consider this possibility. ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head from side to side. ‘That can’t be right. Because you appeared to have nothing against kissing at that film premiere, when that girl was eating your face.’ The tasteless pictures had been plastered over every tabloid’s front page the next day.

Sam almost laughed. He couldn’t have looked more astonished if one of the pieces of furniture had spoken up for itself. She was dimly aware, somewhere in the recesses of her mind, that the adrenaline rush she was experiencing was responsible for half the things coming out of her mouth. Her inability to back down in the face of warning signs you’d have to be blind not to see was down to her own stupidity.

Her breath coming in short, shallow bursts, she studied his proud, patrician features. Hard disdain and anger was implicit in every intriguing hollow and strong plane. His nostrils were flared and his firm jaw tight, and his golden skin was drawn taut across the angles of his jutting cheekbones.

‘The lady in question was not married.’

That made a change, then. ‘Nor very fussy, it would seem.’

She sniffed, and smiled sweetly in response to his hoarsely ejaculated, ‘Dio mio!’

‘But then some people will endure almost anything to advance their careers. I suppose I’m just lucky that I didn’t need to sleep my way to the top.’

Sam registered the dark glitter visible through the mesh of his long lashes and her stomach took a lurching dive. It was only sheer bloody-minded obstinacy—of which her nearest and dearest said she had been gifted an extra portion—that enabled Sam to maintain eye contact.

‘You are at the top, then, are you…?’ His smile said more clearly than any words that he thought she was lying.

The comment made Sam, normally the most self-deprecating of creatures, who would have been the first to play down her success, stick out her chin and boast boldly, ‘I will be.’ Her long-suffering editor, who was often heard to despair over her lack of drive and ambition, would have stared to hear that. ‘And wherever I am,’ she added, with the confidence of someone who knew a company wanted her to write a TV serialisation of the accident-prone feline she had created, ‘at least I won’t have to rely on my looks to stay there.’

There was a pause as his dark glance moved down her reed-slender figure. ‘That is indeed fortunate.’ Actually, she had the sort of delicate bone structure that would enable her to grow old gracefully. And lily-pale flawless skin. His eyes slid over the graceful length of her slender neck and the line between his brows deepened.

Two can play at that game, mate, she thought, smiling at him through gritted teeth. ‘Nor do I have to worry that people want to be my friend just because of what I can do for them.’

‘I consider myself an excellent judge of character.’

Sam’s malicious smile widened. In a rather perverse way she was almost enjoying this exchange of smiling insults. Of course she would have enjoyed kicking his shins even more, but as she was no longer six the option wasn’t open. ‘Of course you do. But this time you have got it so wrong you’re going to feel very stupid.’

‘I doubt that.’

‘Being able to admit when you’re wrong is a sign of maturity.’

‘A subject you would not know one hell of a lot about.’

Great—so now I’m childish, and I go around kissing married men! Sam, who didn’t like the way his dark eyes were lingering on her mouth, decided enough was enough—even if the verbal tussle was exhilarating. ‘Look, you’ve got it wrong—’

‘I know what I saw.’

His sheer bloody-minded intransigence made her want to scream. ‘And even if I did kiss him, what business would it be of yours?’ Even before she saw his expression she knew that he’d interpret her angry retort as an admission of guilt. Frankly, she was past caring.

‘Katerina is my sister, and I will protect her.’

She gave up trying to prove her innocence and asked, ‘How are you going to stop me sleeping with Jonny?’

‘I think telling him you are mine will have the desired effect.’

He said it so matter of factly that Sam thought at first she had misunderstood him. The uncertainty only lasted a moment. There was no room for misinterpretation in his ruthless smile. Honestly, this man belonged in a different century! Mine, he had said…As though owning someone body and soul was perfectly acceptable.

The idea of surrendering control to a man like Alessandro Di Livio was a concept that made her shudder with horror…Are you so sure it’s horror?

Sam swallowed. ‘I take it you’re not an advocate of political correctness?’ she observed, moistening her dry lips with her tongue. She inhaled and raised her eyes, only to discover his burning gaze was fixed on her mouth. As their eyes connected the blaze of raw hunger in his nailed her to the spot.

Paralysed by a stab of lust so strong she couldn’t breathe, Sam stared up at him. He reminded her of a sleek jungle cat—beautiful, and totally ruthless. She had always considered the claim that danger was attractive a particularly stupid one. Now she knew that she had been very wrong. The fear she had denied feeling moments earlier was now coursing through her veins, along with some primitive stuff she had no intention of ever analysing.

There was no point. None of this was real, she told herself. It was all the result of some freak chain of events—events that were never going to happen again. She was never going to feel this way again. She was going to go home and close the door and everything would go back to the way it had been before Alessandro Di Livio had looked at her as if he wanted to rip off her clothes.

Sam closed her eyes, thought about closing that door, and felt slightly calmer. She might get a new safety bolt fitted…She opened her eyes and pointed out the obvious flaw in his manipulative plan.

‘Jonny wouldn’t believe it…’ She thought about it, and added. ‘Nobody would believe you.’

‘Why not?’

Was he serious? Her eyes travelled up the long, lean, gorgeous length of him before settling on his dark, fallen angel features. ‘Because you’re…’ She just stopped short of saying incredibly beautiful, and substituted a husky, ‘I don’t like you. Everyone knows that.’

One dark brow lifted at everyone, and he looked amused. ‘Liking is not a prerequisite to…’ he slotted in.

‘Ownership…?’ she suggested sweetly. ‘Look, this conversation is going nowhere—but I am.’

She edged towards the door, but he blocked her way with his body.

Lips pursed and eyes narrowed, she glared up at him. ‘You’re in my way.’

‘Before you go I want to make very sure that you know it would be unwise for you to continue your pursuit of Trelevan.’

A whistling sound of frustration escaped her clenched teeth. My God, the man was fixated! ‘Where do you get off, making a judgement about me?’ she demanded, indignation making her voice shrill. ‘How many times have we met…? Five…? How dare you? You don’t even know me!’

‘Eight. Not including today.’

The smooth correction made her stare. ‘You were counting…?’ Her brows lifted and she laughed nervously. ‘Should I be flattered?’ Her expression hardened. ‘Or afraid…? You’d like that, wouldn’t you? But then bullies always do,’ she contended grimly. ‘Only I’m not afraid of you, Mr Di Livio. Not at all,’ she stressed shakily, before she was forced to pause to gasp for breath.

‘There is nothing preventing us getting to know one another better, if that is what you would like.’

Sam rubbed her damp palms against her skirt and didn’t even let herself think about what he meant by that. ‘Other than mutual dislike. And I wouldn’t like.’

‘Dislike…?’ he mused contemplatively. After a moment he shook his dark head and a predatory smile split his lean features. ‘Dislike is such a mild word. I think it goes much deeper with us than mere dislike.’

The tactile quality she had noticed before in his deep, darkly textured voice was stronger than ever. Sam swallowed. This man really did have the market in enigmatic and disturbing cornered!

‘You lack caution and judgement.’

‘I was just thinking the same thing.’ Her response had worryingly little to do with caution and a lot to do with the excitement that was tying her stomach in knots! ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s a bit cold out here.’ Actually, she no longer felt the cold—her skin was burning.

Instead of moving out of her way, he leaned against the ajar door, causing it to close with a loud click.

Sam’s voice was flat, even though inside she was panicking. ‘Excuse me…’

His dark eyes slid down her slim figure before returning to her face. The overt contempt in his expression brought a sparkle of anger to Sam’s wide-spaced eyes.

‘No, I will not excuse you.’

Taken aback by the overt provocation in his response Sam blinked.

A long silence followed, which he showed no signs of filling until he suddenly said accusingly, ‘Your eyes have turned green.’

‘Pardon me…?’ It was possible she had misheard him. It was equally possible her aquamarine eyes had turned green. This happened when she was in the grip of strong emotions. Chameleon eyes, her father called them. Though the colour-change did not disguise but reveal the depth of her feelings.

‘No, I will not do that either.’ Without warning he reached out and took her chin in between long brown fingers and carried on looking into her eyes, which were still green. ‘You would not want me for an enemy, cara.’

Gazing up into the dark mesmeric depth of his astounding eyes, Sam felt the breath leave her body in one long, shuddering sigh. Her knees began to give, and she closed her eyes while she tried to tap into her reserves of wilting composure.

She opened her eyes and gave a contemptuous smile. ‘Almost as little as I’d want you as a friend.’

One corner of his mouth lifted in a sneer. ‘Friendship is not possible between men and women.’

That he held this chauvinistic viewpoint did not surprise Sam at all. ‘You would think that. It just so happens that one of my best friends is a male.’

‘And sex has never got in the way…?’

He said it as calmly as if he was asking her how she liked her steak. Sam was less then comfortable about discussing sex in the same county as this man, let alone while he was touching her. She looked away, aware of the flush that had mounted her cheeks. ‘I’m talking about Jonny.’

‘So am I.’

Sam’s horrified gaze flew to his face. ‘All I am to Jonny is a s…supportive friend. I’m getting tired of telling you—there’s never been anything like that between us!’ she protested shrilly.

‘And you wouldn’t want there to be? Do not play the innocent with me. I have been watching you.’

‘The all-knowing, all-seeing Alessandro Di Livio?’ Sam cut in, her voice a successful marriage of boredom and amusement. Inside, however, she was struggling to control her rising panic. She lifted her chin, carefully focusing her gaze somewhere over his right shoulder to avoid contact with those hateful knowing eyes. ‘In case you’ve forgotten,’ she reminded him, ‘Jonny is married.’

Alessandro arched an ironic brow and wondered if the copper hair felt as silky as it looked. ‘I haven’t forgotten.’ His voice dropped to a low, threatening purr as he pushed his point home. ‘And I suggest you don’t.’

Sam felt the humiliating colour in her cheeks deepen.

Of course it wouldn’t occur to him that she might have the odd principle or two. ‘I’ve told you—Jonny and I are just good friends.’

A quiver of irritation crossed his olive-skinned face and he gritted something soft and angry in his native tongue.

‘Well, let’s just say your mouth says one thing…’ He paused, a slightly distracted expression drifting across his face as his glance zeroed in on the soft full curves of her lips. ‘And,’ he continued, anger hardening his voice, ‘those big, hungry eyes say another thing entirely. Have you been waiting for him to notice that you’re a woman?’ He released a low, scornful laugh as his eyes raked her stricken face. ‘Of course it is entirely possible you wouldn’t like it if he had,’ he mused, half to himself.

‘I wouldn’t know—he never has!’ Sam was pushed into yelling.

A moment later she connected with his eyes and wanted to curl up and die from sheer humiliation. But pride, and the scorn in his eyes, made her stick out her chin and pronounce in a low, but clear voice, ‘But I’m not the type to give up at the first hurdle.’

His dark brows twitched into a disapproving straight line above his masterful nose. ‘Are you totally without conscience?’

The irony made her laugh. ‘Gosh!’ she sighed, holding up her hands in mock surrender. ‘You’ve seen right through me. I’m your original scarlet woman. Your sons are not safe while I’m around.’ Her lips twisted into a derisive grimace. ‘For goodness’ sake, you silly man, I don’t represent a danger to anyone.’

He stiffened, and from where she stood she could distinctly hear the sound of his startled inhalation. Sam studied his face and thought, I’m guessing that nobody has ever called him a silly man before. More’s the pity. If they had he might have learnt not to take himself so desperately seriously.

His dark eyes narrowed to slits, but the startled annoyance glittering in the dark depths was mingled with reluctant admiration as he registered the mockery shining in her eyes. ‘You are a very aggravating female.’

She glared back up at him, torn between exhilaration and exasperation and wishing that he’d yelled—not used that purring tone which made more places than the soles of her feet tingle. ‘And you,’ she declared, dumping diplomacy in favour of bluntness, ‘are much more likely to be the cause of the break-up of your sister’s marriage than I am!’

His lips curled. ‘Me…?’ He dismissed her words with a shrug of his magnificent shoulders. ‘You think you can shift the blame that easily?’ A suspicious expression slid into his deep-set eyes. ‘You are talking as though a break-up is inevitable…?’

When Sam turned her head away, her lips tight, Alessandro placed a finger under her chin and drew her face round to him. His narrowed eyes scanned her angry face.

‘What do you know…?’ he demanded, his voice dropping in volume in direct proportion to the degree of threat in his tone.

‘Like I’d tell you if I did know anything,’ she retorted, pulling her chin free.

Her breath coming in short, angry gasps that made her chest rise and fall in tune with her rapid respirations, Sam planted her hands on her hips and angled an angry glare up at him, her eyes flashing green fire.

‘Oh, you will tell me…’

At that moment Sam was willing to do just about anything to wipe that confident smirk off his impossibly good-looking face. ‘Brought your thumbscrews with you, did you?’

Before he could confirm or deny this a giggling couple carrying glasses of wine came around the corner. They saw Alessandro and Sam and stopped dead.

‘Oops—pretend we’re not here!’ said the girl, grabbing her partner’s hand and winking at Sam before she dragged him away.

‘Oh, God!’ groaned Sam, burying her face in her hands. ‘Just what I need.’ Pam Sullivan was the sort of gossip who could make the most innocent incident sound salacious.

‘You’re right—we need some privacy.’

Sam’s head came up, her expression horrorstruck. She needed privacy with Alessandro Di Livio the same way she needed cellulite!

‘That place over there—what is it?’ He nodded towards a section of tiled roof just visible beyond a large shrubbery.

‘It’s the gazebo, I think.’ The original intention had been for a band to be situated there, so that the guests could listen while they sat or strolled around the lovely grounds. Then the weather had intervened and things had been hastily transferred indoors.

‘It will suit our purposes,’ he announced.

God, if Pam had heard that it would have made her year. ‘Look,’ Sam said, deciding it was time to inject a little reality into the conversation, ‘the only place I’m going is back indoors. I’m freezing cold, and this conversation—such as it is—is over.’

She froze and looked at the hand on her arm. A strong, shapely hand, with long, tapering fingers. Having it touching her without any sort of warning switched her brain into mush mode.

‘Yes, you are cold,’ he agreed, sliding one brown finger under the neck of her blouse. It slid slowly across the bony prominence of her collarbone before moving back to the hollow at the base of her throat. The blue-veined pulse there was throbbing so hard that he couldn’t fail to feel it.

Had her brain not already been mush, she might have noticed that his fingers lingered there a lot longer than was strictly necessary—not that it mattered. The damage was done in the first micro-second of contact.

It had an electric effect—almost literally! It was, Sam mused, as she tried to focus her hazy thoughts, like being plugged into the mains. It took the space of a heartbeat for the shock to travel all the way to her curling toes.

‘I don’t want your jacket.’ Actually, there were other things she wanted less—things like the surge of lustful longing that was making her ache in every cell of her body. But a lifetime of focusing on good things enabled her to look on the bright side: now that he was no longer touching her, her paralysed vocal cords had started working.

Acting as if she hadn’t spoken—no change there—he carried on shrugging off the beautifully tailored pale grey jacket he wore. Draping it over her shoulders, he placed a hand in the small of her back and propelled her in the direction of the gazebo.

‘You don’t take no for an answer, do you?’ His jacket retained the warmth of his body and held the faint, elusive fragrance that was exclusively him—a mingling of the masculine fragrance he favoured, soap, and warm male.

Standing there in his silk shirt, he appeared not to notice the cold—even though the fabric was fine enough for her almost to see through. She could definitely see the strategic drift of dark body hair on his chest, and the suggestion of muscle definition on his taut washboard belly.

Ashamed of what amounted to a fascination with his body, Sam—painfully aware that her cheeks were burning—turned her head to one side. Well, as far as she was concerned he could freeze to death—and good riddance!

‘This is ridiculous,’ she muttered under her breath, thinking, He’s not a man, he’s a darned force of nature. Despite the fact that saying no to him had as much impact as saying no to a hurricane, she was uneasily aware that she ought to have at least tried. The casual observer might have been forgiven for jumping to the conclusion that she actually wanted to prolong their time together.

A comment Emma had made not long after she’d met the man she was eventually to marry popped into Sam’s head. ‘You know, Sam, I have more fun fighting with Paul than having sex with any other man. Makes me wonder what the sex will be like…Actually, I started wondering that about five seconds after I met him.’

When Sam had admitted with a touch of envy that she’d never met a stranger who had that effect on her, Emma had laughed and said with total conviction that she would one day.

Though exposed on one side, the gazebo did offer some protection from the elements. Once inside, Alessandro took her by the shoulders and spun her to face him. Leaving his hands where they were, he looked down into her face.

Chapter Four

OH, GOD, did today have to be the day? And did he have to be this stranger?

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he asked.

I was trying to imagine what it would be like having sex with you, was clearly out, and she wasn’t sure if her voice even worked, so Sam shook her head, and inside his jacket carried on trembling. She had no intention of surrendering to her darkest urges even had the opportunity arisen. And she supposed to some people the gazebo, tucked away from prying eyes, might represent that opportunity.

Actually, the fact she had dark urges at all was a bit of shock-horror revelation. The urges she felt for Jonny could not be described as dark, she mused. Those feelings were a lot more wholesome and easier to handle. Also, there was a certain safety in fantasising about a man who had never noticed you had breasts.

While Alessandro didn’t like her, and actually seemed pretty much to despise her, Sam did get the impression he knew…

‘This situation is easily resolved. Just tell me what you know.’

Shamefully aware of the ache and burning tingle in her shamelessly engorged breasts, Sam crossed her hands across her chest in a protective gesture. ‘This is getting beyond ridiculous.’

‘What is ridiculous is you thinking I’m going to let you go before you tell what you know about the problems in my sister’s marriage. And don’t tell me you don’t know anything, because you look as guilty as hell.’

‘And you look—!’ She watched as his lashes dipped, casting a shadow across the slashing curve of his strong cheekbones, and the breath suddenly snagged in her throat. You look perfect, damn you!

She stepped back, and his hands fell from her shoulders. Still feeling the imprint of his light touch on her skin, she squinted angrily up at him. ‘This isn’t guilt,’ she said pointing at her face. ‘This is fear for my safety. You are obviously a total lunatic.’

‘Then I suggest you humour me.’

Sam swung away, her hands gripping the lapels of his jacket. Her low heels clicked on the wooden floor as she walked to the opposite side of the octagonal enclosure to put as much space as was humanly possible between them. A faintly pointless exercise, as the sound of footsteps behind her indicated the wretched man had followed her.

‘Fine!’ she cried, throwing her hands up and turning to face him. ‘The problem with Kat’s marriage? Yes, there’s a problem.’ She jabbed a finger in the direction of his chest. ‘Like I said—you.’

Alessandro looked at the small finger and felt a sudden distracting desire to lift it to his lips. ‘I warn you, I will have an answer.’

‘And I’m giving you one. Has Kat asked you to intervene in her marriage?’

In the act of dragging a hand through his dark and tousled hair, Alessandro stopped and slung her an exasperated look. ‘What sort of question is that?’

Sam ignored the interjection. ‘Well, has she?’

‘Of course she hasn’t.’

‘And would she feel able to come to you if she needed to?’

He looked indignant. ‘Of course she would.’

‘Then don’t you think it might be a good idea to wait until then before you jump in with your…’ she glanced at his feet and added, ‘…size twelves? Kat is twenty-one,’ she reminded him.

‘She was nineteen when she got married. At nineteen she should have been—’

Sam actually felt a twinge of sympathy as he clamped his lips together and inhaled deeply through flared nostrils.

‘You thought she was too young to get married?’

‘Do you think at nineteen you should be deciding to commit yourself to one person?’ he demanded scathingly. ‘What were you doing at nineteen?’

She responded unthinkingly to the curious question. ‘I was training to be a teacher.’

‘And would your parents have been happy if you’d turned up at home married to some beach bum?’

‘Jonny was not a beach bum—he was a champion surfer.’

‘I stand corrected,’ he inserted drily. ‘Married to an exchampion surfer.’

‘My parents would have flipped,’ she admitted. ‘But it happened, so you just have to live with it. You know, I think Kat is pretty resourceful—and quite capable of sorting out her own life. It might be easier for her to do that if you weren’t always there, hovering in the background like a bad smell.’ Actually, he smelt pretty wonderful—but she felt the occasion called for a little poetic licence. ‘Don’t you think,’ she asked him gently, ‘that it’s time you let go? Doesn’t Kat deserve the chance to make her own mistakes?’

An expression of blank astonishment spread across Alessandro’s face. ‘You think you are qualified to offer me advice?’

‘Not qualified, maybe,’ she conceded, flushing at his sneering tone. ‘But you asked. I know you have a close relationship with your sister—’

‘You know nothing about it.’

‘I used to wish I wasn’t an only child, but meeting you has made me realise what a lucky escape I’ve had. Let me spell it out. The fact is you are no longer the person she’s meant to turn to for support. Couldn’t you settle for being emergency back-up rather than the main man? Have you any idea,’ she wondered out loud, ‘how intimidating you must be to a younger man?’

‘Intimidating…?’ he echoed, looking bewildered by her contention.

‘What man could compete with the marvellous Alessandro Di Livio?’ she asked, rolling her eyes.

His mobile lips thinned with displeasure. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Looking thoughtful despite his terse tone, he added, ‘It isn’t a competition.’

‘Not to you maybe…’ she inserted drily.

‘I have never interfered in my sister’s marriage.’

Sam stared at him, wondering how on earth he could say that with a straight face. ‘Oh, pardon me. I must have imagined the past…’ she glanced at her watch, her eyes widening ‘…half an hour.’

‘It has felt like longer,’ he gritted.

Under the capacious folds of his jacket, Sam folded her arms across her chest. ‘You’re being nasty because you know I’m right. You really shouldn’t grind your teeth like that.’

She stood and listened in silent admiration as he loosed a flood of very angry-sounding Italian. If tone was anything to go by he seemed to have an extensive knowledge of expletives in his native tongue.

‘If you’re in love with Trelevan surely it would be in your best interests to see his marriage fail?’

The angry colour in Sam’s cheeks deepened. ‘Caring for someone obviously doesn’t mean the same thing to you as it does to me. When you care for someone you want them to be happy.’

‘Care…?’ His lips twisted derisively as he spat the word. ‘I am not talking about caring. I am talking about passion…lust…’

And I so wish you wouldn’t! ‘I think you’re talking about sleazy sex.’

‘And you? What are you talking about? Holding hands?’ he suggested, reaching out and capturing one of hers. ‘Picking out matching china and deciding on the new garden furniture?’

Angrily Sam tore her hand from his, praying that his no doubt well-developed predatory instincts had not told him what the contact had done to her. ‘You’re obsessed with sex!’ And it’s catching.

The claim made him laugh. ‘Well, at least I don’t have a problem with it.’

The taunt made her cheeks burn. ‘I don’t have a problem with sex—just you!’

‘It makes you blush just to say the word…’ he discovered, sounding astonished. ‘I don’t believe you have ever wanted someone so much that you would do anything to have them.’ He angled a speculative look at her flushed face. ‘When was it you decided he was the love of your life?’

‘I’m not going to discuss Jonny with you.’

He gave a grimace of distaste. ‘Give me honest lust rather than mawkish sentimentality any day.’ His expressive upper lip curled. ‘Look at me—I’ve got a broken heart, but what a little trouper I am…’ He gave a snort of disgust and shook his head. ‘Heaven preserve me from women who fancy themselves as martyrs.’

Scenting a certain inconsistency in his criticism, she held up her hands. ‘Hang on—I thought I was some sort of calculating, husband-stealing—’

‘Frankly,’ he said, dragging his hand through his dark hair in an exasperated manner, ‘I’m not quite sure what you are.’

The way he was looking at her made Sam’s throat grow dry. She pressed a hand to her throat, where her heart was trying to climb out of her chest.

‘You have been generous with your advice…so let me give you some in exchange.’

She folded her arms across her chest and looked bored. ‘This should be good…’

‘Stop weaving your sexual fantasies around somebody else’s husband and go out and get yourself a lover.’

This recommendation drew an inarticulate gurgle from Sam’s throat. ‘Jonny does not feature in my sexual fantasies!’

His eyes stayed hard and hostile while he bared his teeth in a wolfish leer. ‘Then he definitely isn’t the man for you.’

‘I do not have sexual fantasies!’ she choked.

‘Then you really are as repressed as you look.’

Sam regarded him with loathing and prayed that one day he would tell a woman he loved her and she would laugh in his face. That such a woman existed was somewhat doubtful, but if there was any justice at all one day he would crash and burn—and she would be there to see it!

‘Then you don’t have to worry, do you? I’m too repressed to seduce your sister’s husband. And, just for the record, I do not fancy myself a martyr,’ she added, in a voice that shook with the strength of her outraged feelings. ‘And I doubt if you’re capable of anything deeper than lust—with anyone other than yourself, that is.’

The only response she got to her biting condemnation was a quirk of one dark brow. ‘Are you surprised he has never noticed you are a woman when you dress like—? On every occasion I have seen you, you dress to hide your femininity, not celebrate it.’

‘You mean flaunt?’ Sam suggested, and gave a scornful laugh. Actually, she didn’t find being thought dowdy and unattractive by a man who had to be about the most attractive creature on the planet nearly so amusing as she made out. ‘I don’t enjoy being leered at.’

One ebony brow lifted as he affected amazement. ‘I’m amazed you have any experience of leering.’

Ashamed of the weakness which brought the hot sting of tears to her eyes, Sam gritted her teeth and glared up at him. ‘Not all men are as shallow as you!’

‘I think you’ll find they are, cara.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t want the sort of man I have to tart myself up for and pretend to be something I’m not.’

‘I think the idea is that the man should make you feel sexy and attractive. Hasn’t any man done that for you?’

Sam pressed her hands to her ears and shook her head in a childish gesture of denial. ‘If you don’t shut up, I’ll…I’ll…!’

Her frustrated threat ignited a look of astonishment in his heavy-lidded eyes, and then, as he appeared ready to reward her audacity with a killer retort, he saw the telltale glitter in her eyes. ‘You’re crying…?’

Sam bit her lip and shook her head. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ she accused.

Without warning he reached across and took the hand she held clenched against her chest, raising it towards his mouth. ‘I have no desire to see you weep. But that red-headed temper…it will get you into trouble if you don’t learn to tame it.’

Fighting clear of the paralysis which held her a pliant spectator, Sam snatched her hand from his grasp and backed away. Her eyes trained unblinkingly on his face, she carried on backing up until the backs of her legs made contact with a wooden chair. She let out a small shriek and stumbled, and would have fallen if a strong arm hadn’t snaked around her waist.

‘You should be more careful,’ he cautioned.

A shaky laugh squeezed its way past the emotional congestion in her aching throat. ‘That sounds like excellent advice,’ she said, fixing her eyes on a point mid-way up his chest.

His dark, autocratic features were hard and remote as he posed his question. ‘You love him…?’

Very aware of the arm still encircling her waist, she cleared her throat. ‘I’m not about to discuss my feelings with you.’ So what have you been doing for the past half an hour?

‘What I don’t understand is why you stood back and let her take him?’

Sam felt something inside her snap. Her head came up. Let her…? He made it sound as though she’d had some sort of option.

‘What would you have had me do?’ she demanded, stabbing a finger within a whisper of his broad chest.

‘Do…?’ he said, watching the accusing finger with an expression of fascination.

‘Well, you seem to be the expert.’ She angled her head, directing her resentful glare into his lean face and stepping backwards. The fact that she wanted to protest when his hand fell away only made her angrier.

‘How would you go about making someone notice you?’ She recognised the total stupidity of her question the moment the words had left her lips.

As if anyone was not going to notice him!

Let’s face it, the man was a total hunk—with more rampant maleness in his little finger than most men had in their entire bodies. He was the perfect male specimen—from the top of his sleek, glossy head to his highly polished shoes. Her resentful glare slid from his bronzed, beautifully sculpted features and skidded over his lean, lithe frame. Some men might wear a suit to disguise a few unwanted inches around the middle, but not him. Even sheathed in perfect tailoring there was no disguising that Alessandro’s body was in perfect condition.

‘I thought such things came naturally to a woman,’ he offered suggestively.

Sam sucked in a furious breath through her clenched teeth. ‘There’s nothing natural,’ she sneered, ‘about push-up bras.’ Glaring at him, she clamped her hands over her not terribly impressive breasts. ‘Or, for that matter, comfortable—and besides, this has nothing whatever to do with underwear.’

‘You were the one who introduced the subject,’ he pointed out mildly.

‘What would you have suggested? That I flaunt a bit of leg?’ she asked, extending one slender appendage in his direction. A snort of disgust escaped her lips as she shook her hair back from her hot face. ‘Take up pole-dancing?’ she challenged.

His dark eyes travelled up the slender curve of her calf. ‘An interesting thought,’ he murmured, swallowing. ‘But it probably wouldn’t have done you any good if there was no chemistry to begin with.’

‘For your information, I wouldn’t demean myself just to get a man,’ she declared hotly. Then aware that his eyes were fixed on her hands and what they covered, she dropped them and added, ‘I suppose that’s the sort of thing you like? Women who make fools of themselves to get your attention?’

His dark brows lifted to a quizzical angle. ‘You consider it demeaning to seduce a man?’

‘Seduce…?’ she echoed, as an image of herself astride the prone figure of a man, running her fingers down his lean, hard torso flashed through her mind. The image itself was deeply disconcerting. The fact that the man in question was Alessandro was utterly shocking.

‘It is what a women who is worthy of the name would do to get the man she loves,’ he contended calmly. ‘It is certainly a more healthy option than clinging to a juvenile infatuation.’

‘I’m not infatuated with anyone,’ she choked, thinking that if she could curse anyone with unrequited love it would be this man.

Continuing to scan her upturned features, his only response to her protest was a smile that made her want to hit him.

‘You spend too many evenings alone with your romantic dreams. Sex isn’t about soft focus and sweet music,’ he derided scornfully. ‘Sex is visceral. It’s about smells and texture…’ Without warning he reached out and ran a long brown finger down the inner aspect of her wrist. Sam gasped as the light contact sent an electric shock through her body.

When she finally got her paralysed vocal cords to respond, her voice seemed to be coming from a long way away. ‘Thank you for the lesson…’ She had no doubt at all that he was a master of the subject.

His mesmerising eyes locked onto hers and Sam felt her knees shake.

‘It’s about sweat.’ His low, throaty purr had an almost narcotic quality, and Sam, aware of the danger it presented, was seduced by it anyway.

She might not like the man, she might loathe what he was and what he stood for, but she wasn’t crazy enough to imagine she had been granted some sort of immunity to the raw sexuality he exuded.

Painfully conscious of her wildly quivering stomach muscles, and aware that she was quite literally panting—which could give the wrong impression—Sam fought to control her breathing, perfectly aware that there was nothing mutual about the chemical reaction she was suffering. How could there be? Compared to the sexy, in-control women he dated, she must seem like a sexless reject…an oddity.

Sam sniffed and lifted her chin to an aggressive angle. At that moment if she had been granted any wish she would have blown it without a second thought for that special X factor that made some women totally irresistible to the opposite sex—or at least one of the opposite sex.

Well, let’s face it, Sam, the only place you’re going to be able to say no when he begs you to be with him is in your dreams.

‘If I want sweat I’ll go to a gym,’ she retorted, just managing to sound derisive even though her knees were shaking.

The longer this confrontation went on the stronger the feeling became that she was a voyeur rather than a participant in the scene. She shivered and released a scared gasp as his half-closed eyes moved over her slender body.

‘What you need is some reality,’ he concluded.

His thickened accent nailed her to the spot. Was there anything short of a Lotto win that was less real than discussing sweaty sex with Alessandro Di Livio? ‘Reality…?’ A shaky laugh emerged from her lips, sounding reckless when in reality she had never felt less reckless in her life.

‘What I don’t need,’ she panted hoarsely, ‘is advice from you!’

‘What you need is some…’ his heavy-lidded eyes touched her mouth and his own lips quirked ‘…substance.’

‘Next you’ll be telling me that what I need is you…’ Her scornful laugh faded as he took her face between his big hands, and she thought, Did I invite this…?

As he looked at her wide, soft pink mouth, a sound that was close to a growl vibrated in his throat. Sam felt the vibration and opened her own mouth to say something frosty and ascerbically cutting, which would awaken him to the fact that he wasn’t dealing with one of his simpering push-overs, but encountered his glittering eyes. All her life her cutting one-liners had saved her from uncomfortable situations, yet now, of all times, her ability to deliver a slick comeback had failed her!

The last time she had seen that much barely restrained heat had been in a disaster movie about a volcano. She became aware of the fact that she was no longer cold—no longer cold to the point where she was burning up.

‘If you kiss me I’ll sleep with Jonny,’ she hissed.