Читать книгу Her Passionate Italian: The Passion Bargain / A Sicilian Husband / The Italian's Marriage Bargain - Carol Marinelli, Carol Marinelli - Страница 9

CHAPTER SIX

SHE must have inherited some of the Gianni genes after all, she thought with a bitter-wry smile. Funny, she mused, but she’d always assumed she missed out on most of them. Her mother had insisted she had.

No thick and glossy raven hair, none of the Gianni bone features that had given her mother’s face such a striking impact. Her mouth was too wide, her skin too pale—but that cold and unforgiving final cut she’d just used to sever her friendship with Sonya had to have come from the Gianni gene stock.

Along with her mother’s propensity for falling in love with the wrong kind of man. Like lightning striking twice, or that nasty thing called fate other people liked talking about. Had it been written at her birth that she was fated to fall in love with a mercenary like Angelo then be seduced by a vengeful rat like Carlo?

She saw him then and had to pause at the top of stairs while she dealt with the way her heart dipped then shrivelled like a dried-up prune in her chest.

He was standing at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for her, looking stunning as always. The shockingly perfect profile, the smooth, olive-toned skin, the gorgeous mouth that was a mere shadowy outline from up here but could still tighten muscles all over her body on the knowledge of the way it could kiss. His black hair was making her think of ravens’ wings again as it captured the overhead lights and his curling black eyelashes hovered sensuously against those chiselled cheekbones as he stood looking down at his watch.

In a rush to get this over with, signor? Francesca quizzed. Do you want to get the poor little fool out of here so you can finish what you started in the name of revenge?

He could have heard her for the way his dark head lifted. He smiled the most relaxed, warm smile then began walking up to meet her. ‘I was just coming to get you,’ he murmured in that rich, dark voice of his.

Francesca was contemplating telling him where to put his lying smile—when she noticed the people still gathered in the hall. The gauntlet, she remembered, and snapped her mouth shut again then carefully hooded her cold, glinting eyes. There was no way she was going to show herself up again while she told Carlo Carlucci what she thought of him on the Batiste staircase with the mob listening in.

The mob, she thought again, struck by her own acid turn of phrase and almost—almost found it in her to laugh. If these people were a mob they were a very exclusive kind of mob with their designer clothes and their designer jewels and their designer expressions that made her think of wax.

Carlo stopped two steps down from her and reached for her suitcase. ‘Like the jacket,’ he said in a husky attempt to break the tension laying whip cracks across all of them. ‘It goes with the dress.’

‘Can we go, please?’ she responded in a voice misted with frost.

He stopped smiling, his eyes narrowing on her cold face. ‘Of course,’ he replied without any notable change in his rich voice tones but her senses began to scramble about inside her when they detected a change. It didn’t do to return his warm overtures with ice, she realised. He was used to orchestrating the moods of others not altering his own mood to suit.

His fingers closed around her fingers where they clutched the handle to the suitcase. The suitcase changed hands within a hooded silence. Stepping to one side, he indicated that she should continue down the stairs. As she passed by him he fell into step beside her, his tall, dark bulk trying its best to hide her from most of those curious faces down in the hall.

What were they thinking? How much did they know? Was she the sinner in their eyes, caught by Angelo kissing Carlo Carlucci on the night of his engagement to her, or the one to be pitied for falling for Angelo’s smooth, slick, calculating charm at all?

Angelo—Angelo, she suddenly repeated. And felt a shaft of pain as her love for him exploded right here on this fabulous marble staircase. How could he have done this to her—treated her like this?

How could Sonya?

Delayed shock to her night of revelation really began to kick in as they made ground level. She was shaking so badly that she had a horrible suspicion she was going to further humiliate herself by falling into a sobbing huddle on the cold marble floor. Beside her, Carlo must have sensed it because his free hand came to rest against her back as if in assurance. She almost jumped out of her skin as the old warning prickles of hostility and self-defence arrived to remind her that he was not her saviour—far from it. He was as guilty as the others for trying to use her for his own ends.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she hissed in a taut, teeth-clenched whisper.

He did the opposite. Shifting the hand until it arrived at the indent to her waist and with a single warning curl of his long fingers, he brought her into full contact with his side. Then he made the ultimate move to subdue her by stopping them walking so he could propel her around to face him, then in front of their audience he bent his dark head.

His lips arrived against her ear lobe, his breath scoring her frozen white cheek. ‘Behave until we get out of here or I will kiss you stupid,’ he warned very grimly.

There wasn’t a split-second when she thought he might be bluffing. This was yet another man on a mission and she was just his disposable pawn. Bitterness welled, the fine tremors of dismay converting themselves into silver-shard tremors of contempt as he set them moving again.

It was then that she saw their farewell party waiting by the open front door. Mr and Mrs Batiste were standing straight-faced and soldier-like, ready to play the perfect hosts to the bitter end even as their glittering party lay in a wreck around their elegant feet. Did they know what their son had done? Had they been in on his deceit? ‘Your business is safe, Papa, and don’t forget who is paying the price for it.’

Yes, they’d known from the beginning, she concluded and shuddered. Did that also mean they knew why she was being escorted from here by Carlo Carlucci?

Of course they did, she derided her own question. Everyone knew. Everyone knew everything but me!

‘I hate you,’ she hissed.

He ignored that one, the hand keeping her moving towards the open door.

‘Carlo, we need to talk—’ Alessandro Batiste jerked into anxious speech as they reached him.

‘Next week,’ Carlo Carlucci cut him off curtly, passing by him without a single pause. ‘And without your son,’ he added abruptly. ‘If you want to hold on to my business, that is…’

‘Y-yes, of course,’ Angelo’s father agreed in gruff obsequious Italian.

Angelina Batiste said absolutely nothing. The whole thing was a real coup détat for Signor Carlucci. He’d effectively cut Angelo adrift from just about everything, including the support of his own parents, it seemed.

The night air had a sharp nip to it. Carlo’s car stood parked at the bottom of the steps. He guided her towards it and opened the passenger door for her and only then allowed his fingers to ease their grip on her waist when he stepped back, his expression a wall of cool politeness as he waited for her to get in the car. As she sank into luxurious black leather the door was closed with a solid click. Her eyes began to sting as she listened to him putting her case in the car boot and she had to bite down hard on her bottom lip in an effort to maintain her icy dignity as he got in beside her, folding his body like a lithe jungle cat with its killer instincts set on full alert.

It was easier to look out of the side-window than to keep him hovering even on the periphery of her vision. What she saw through that window was the door to Villa Batiste drawing shut. It was the last time she would look at that door, she vowed silently.

The car engine came to life. It kicked into gear and with a spin of wide tyres on loose gravel they moved off, the force of the acceleration pushing her back into the seat. Headlights spanned the two lines of cypress trees. They sped between them and barely paused at the junction before they were turning into the lane and accelerating away again.

She had no idea where he was taking her and at that precise moment she didn’t care. Her life was in tatters. If someone had come along with a knife and cut her to ribbons she couldn’t feel worse than she did right now.

Then she found that she could feel a whole lot worse when he brought the car to a sudden neck-jolting halt. She’d barely recovered from the shock of it when he was twisting towards her in his seat.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Tell me what your friend said to you to turn you back into the spitting cat.’

Cats and wolves were making a prominent show tonight, she thought ridiculously and almost choked on what she recognised as a lump of hysteria now blocking her throat.

‘What makes you think it was Sonya?’ she flashed.

‘Because she was the only loose cannon out there I couldn’t protect you from,’ he answered.

Protect? Her eyes widened. He called this protection? She twisted her face away again, fizzing inside and refusing to answer. For a long, taut tick in time she continued to sit with her eyes still fixed on the side-window and her lips clamped tightly shut.

‘Francesca!’ he rasped.

‘Nicola Mauraux.’

Silence. That was it. She sat there waiting for some kind of response—a guilty curse would have been enough! But nothing else happened. She wasn’t breathing but he was—in and out with a calmness that set her teeth on edge. Her eyes began to sting again—she so badly wanted to break down and cry like a baby that she didn’t know how much longer she could stop herself from doing it!

When he finally moved she was forced to flick another glance at him, warily unsure as to what was coming next. But all he did was settle himself back in his seat and a moment later and they were moving again as if she hadn’t spoken his stepsister’s wretched name.

Well—fine, she thought burningly. Let’s just ignore I said it. Your silence suits me because it means I won’t have to listen to you talk your slick way around the reasons why I am sitting in this car at all!

The car began to accelerate, moving very fast on the straight parts of the narrow country lane, slow and smooth through the bends with the headlights sweeping the darkness ahead of them as her grim-profiled driver put on a slick display of man versus power versus control. His timing was immaculate. He never missed a gear. The engine growled then purred then roared on acceleration then growled and purred again. And the whole thing took place beneath a heavy blanket of silence that helped to hold Francesca mesmerised even though she didn’t want to be. He was the man with everything—great looks, great body and a great sense of style that utilised both to their optimum. Then there was his wealth and his power and his razor-like intellect. The way he used passion for persuasion, words like clubs to beat his opponents to death. And he drove his car with a ruthless, selfish, utter single-mindedness that dared anyone to get in his way. He reminded her of a dark, sleek, prowling predator, top of the food chain. Nothing or no one could touch him.

They sped by her great-uncle’s palazzo. Recognising it jerked her into impulsive speech. ‘You can—’

‘Shut up,’ he incised and made his first mistake with a gear change as if the sound of her voice was all it took to spoil his immaculate performance. The car lurched then put in a surge of power when he’d corrected the error, eating up the winding country lane with precision timing again.

And Francesca subsided in her seat as another bitter thought hit her: what was the use in demanding he take her to her uncle when the miserable old man was likely to refuse to open his door?

When disillusionment hit it stripped you of everything, she noticed, as Bruno Gianni became another name she added to her hate list. I am never going to contact him again, she vowed. He didn’t care about her, hadn’t even bothered to pretend that he did.

The hot ache of tears that were coming closer to bursting free by the second had her closing her eyes and huddling into her seat. As soon as this stupid journey is over I’m going home to England and I’m never going to step foot in Italy again, she promised herself. No wonder my mother never came back. No wonder she froze up whenever Italy or Rome came up in conversation. She was wise; she knew the score. Why hadn’t she listened to her and saved herself a whole lot of grief?

They couldn’t have gone more than a mile or so when the car made a sudden turn that brought her jolting back to her present situation. Her eyelids flickered upwards; she’d barely managed to focus through the tears before they were coming to another neck-jolting halt.

What now—what next? she wondered tensely.

‘I w-want—’

‘You don’t know what you want,’ he cut in tightly.

Then he was dousing the headlights and shutting down the engine with short, tight flicks of his fingers that told her he was still angry—bubbling with it. There was a click and a slither as his seat belt slid away from his body then he was opening his door and climbing into the dark night.

Her wary eyes slewed frontward, following his dark bulk as he moved around the car’s long bonnet, frissons of uncertainty chasing across her skin. Her heart began to stutter. Was he going to eject her from his car and leave her out here in the middle of nowhere now he didn’t have to bother explaining himself?

Her door came open. A waft of cold air placed a chill on her flesh. He bent down to reach across her to unlock her seat belt, and as his face arrived close to her face she saw the grim determination etched into the flat line of his mouth.

‘I’m not getting out,’ she informed him stubbornly.

‘Does it appear that I am giving you a choice?’ he asked. Then grabbed one of her hands as he straightened up again, and used it to haul her out of the car.

She arrived beside him in a state of numbing panic, sights and sounds hitting her senses at the same time as his body did. His arm came round her waist, arching her into full contact with his lean, hard length at the same time that she heard the car door shut behind her and another sound of whirring that had her twisting her head in time to see a pair of huge, thick wrought-iron gates swinging shut beneath a heavy stone arch she hadn’t even been aware that they’d passed beneath.

Dizzy and disorientated, she became aware of uneven cobblestones beneath her thin-soled shoes and turned her head again in an effort to search the darkness for some hint as to where they were. Her mouth brushed his chin as she moved and his hissed sound of his tense response brought her search to a stop on his face. Then she wasn’t seeing anything but the angry flame of desire leaping in his dark eyes, the savage tautening of his skin and flaring nostrils as he took in a swift breath of air. She felt a sudden tightening in his body, sucked in her own shocked gasp when she realised what the tightening meant. Her gaze dipped lower—to his mouth… his hard, tight, angry mouth that was already advertising what was going to come next.

‘No—’ She managed that one breathlessly weak protest before he made full contact. After that she wasn’t capable of saying or doing a single thing as his mouth moulded hers and his tongue made its first stabbing thrust. She was instantly electrified, fierce heat pouring a hot, tight sting of pleasure right down her front to gather in a sense-energising pool at her thighs.

She groaned and clutched at his shoulders, so shocked by her own response that she tried to push away from him, but it was a wasted effort because he only had to use the flat of his hand against the arching base of her spine to bring her in contact with his hard, muscular front for her to go weak at the knees.

He felt them go, felt her whole body quiver as a helpless little moan of pleasure keened in her throat. If this kiss was meant to be a punishment then it had failed in its mission, she found herself thinking dizzily as she went willingly when he pulled her even tighter up against him and she was kissing him back as she’d never kissed anyone, with a wild, deep, urgent hunger that took her over completely.

A powerful light suddenly drenched the two of them. The kiss broke abruptly, and on a curse Carlo twisted with her still wrapped against him while Francesca buried her face in his dinner jacket and quite simply lost the will to live. Her senses had shattered. She’d thought they’d done that earlier tonight when she’d watched Angelo with Sonya. But even that devastating moment could not compare with how she was dealing with the loss of that unbelievable kiss.

‘My apologies, signor,’ a deeply contrite male voice murmured in Italian from somewhere close by. ‘The security lights are not functioning. I had to come myself to see—’

‘Take that damn torch off my face, Lorenzo,’ Carlo commanded in a harsh, rasping growl.

They were thrown into instant darkness again. Francesca managed to unclip her fingers from where they clung to Carlo’s neck. From feeling virtually incandescent with pleasure she was now slowly sinking into horror and shame.

She hated him! How could she have responded like that to a man she absolutely hated?

She tried to stiffen away from him but he was having none of it, his grip only tightening warningly as he held some kind of intelligent discussion with what she presumed was a security guard though she couldn’t be sure of anything right now. Her feet felt strange, as if they didn’t belong to her, her legs were tingling from ankles to hips. And the dragging sensation taking place between her thighs was desperate enough to tug a thick whimper from her aching throat.

Whatever Carlo thought that whimper meant, he reacted to it with another black curse and suddenly she was being thrust beneath the power of one arm and forced to walk.

‘Let me go,’ she choked out. Being this close to him was beginning to take on the properties of a nightmare—the whole evening was!

‘Not in the near future, cara,’ he responded with dry, grim sarcasm that was so thick with sexual reference that she stumbled.

He kept her upright. He kept her moving over uneven cobblestones. He kept her wrapped so closely to him that she had difficulty trying to take in her surroundings though she did manage to note that they were walking across an enclosed courtyard that made her footsteps echo off the surrounding walls. She could also hear the soft sound of a fountain somewhere, saw dark blue paintwork framing long, narrow windows set into burnt-sienna-painted walls.

Then they were stopping in front of a door. Muscles flexed as he leant forward to grasp the handle, the grasp of his long fingers sliding upwards a small inch that was all it required to let her right breast know they were there. She sucked in a sharp gasp as a fresh wave of heat poured in that direction. If it hadn’t been for the denim jacket helping to conceal what was happening to her she would have folded with embarrassment when she felt the nipple grow excruciatingly tight.

The door swung open with a twist of the handle, and she was being propelled through it into a fully lit long, wide hallway with faded blue walls and gold-leaf plasterwork. He didn’t so much as pause as he began hustling her over a stunning blue mosaic floor towards the other end of the hall. They passed by a pair of staircases that sped off at right angles, one on either side of them, passed beautiful pieces of furniture that were in themselves priceless works of art. Everything she set her dizzy eyes on was stunningly tasteful and elegant, nothing bore so much as a vague resemblance to the Batistes’ white villa with its overt grandeur and style.

Another door was flung open and once again she was being ushered firmly through it into a square-shaped room with more gold-leaf plasterwork, chalk-pale terracotta walls and yet another mosaic floor made up of brown and black marble inlaid with gold.

At last he let her go and she swayed a little as she looked for balance, then instantly spun round as the door was slotted into its frame. Eyes wide, control shot, unsure whether she should be terrified or just plain angry after that shocking kiss and the way he’d hustled her in here, ‘W-what is this place?’ she demanded. ‘Why have you brought me here?’

His smile had a sinister cut to it. The way he folded his arms across his impressive chest, crossed his elegant black shoes at his ankles then leant those broad shoulders back against the door and even the glitter behind his narrowed eyes were displays of arrogant provocation that brought every nerve-end she had left ringing on full alert.

‘Welcome, to the Palazzo del Carlucci,’ he murmured smoothly. ‘Home to my family for the last four centuries and now, mi amore, the venue for your complete ravishment—in the honourable name of revenge, of course.’

As a calculated heart-stopper he had certainly hit the perfect note, Carlo saw as he watched all colour drain from her face. His sarcastic tone had slid right by her and he was angry enough not to care.

No, he was more than angry—he was bloody furious! He’d put his reputation on the line for her tonight. He’d watched over her, been there to catch her when she’d fallen, found her time and the privacy to come to terms with the reality of what Batiste was really like. He’d protected, sup-ported—smiled in the face of a hundred scandalised stares while he got her out of that situation as fast as he could. And what did she do?

She took the word of a lying tramp like her flatmate and turned him into the enemy!

‘Lay a hand on me and I’ll claw your eyes out,’ she responded shakily to his silk-honed threat.

He sent her a smile that mocked and derided. ‘Since we both know that my laying both hands on you is more likely to make you purr than claw, it was a rather wasted threat, don’t you think?’

It was like feeding candy to a baby, he noted. She grabbed every word and swallowed it whole. In some dark corner of his anger he enjoyed watching her squirm in growing alarm. He even shifted his stance as if to come after her, just to see how she would react.

She took a step back. ‘Stay right where you are!’ she jerked out sharply and put out a hand to ward him off.

Some chance, he thought. The ravishment was becoming more appetising by the second. And that kiss-softened quivering mouth was just begging to be ravished again—and again. If her beautiful eyes went any darker they would be the same colour as his own eyes, which made him very curious as to how dark they were going to go in the throes of some very intense passion.

‘I will be no one else’s victim—especially not yours!’

‘Why not mine? When you don’t think twice about playing the willing victim for anyone who wants to beat you up with their lies?’

‘Whose lies are you referring to?’ She threw a puzzled frown at him. It hit him low in his loins like a kick. He’d never known a simple dusky frown could be so damn sexy, it sent his shoulders shifting tensely inside his dinner jacket.

‘Are you saying that Nicola Mauraux isn’t your stepsister?’

‘No,’ he sighed. ‘I am not saying that.’

‘Then what are you saying? Do you think tonight has been a ball of laughter for me, signor? Do you think I want to be standing here listening to you play stupid word-games just for the fun of it?’

He went to answer but wasn’t given the chance to. ‘I am not the one at fault for whatever Angelo did to your stepsister,’ she told him in trembling self-defence. ‘As far as I knew they’d finished their relationship when Nicola returned to her studies in Paris!’ she cried. ‘I do not steal other women’s men from them. And I will not take the blame because your stepsister was hurt! If you want your revenge look to Angelo—and show a little class by moving away from that door so that I can leave!’

Well, well, Carlo thought curiously, narrowing his eyes on her stiff if trembling stance, and had to acknowledge that his tables had just been turned. It came as a surprise because he hadn’t thought she had it in her to take him on with quite so much ego-shredding venom.

Show a little class, he repeated musingly to himself, and almost smiled at the hit that cutting remark had landed on his pride.

‘And here I was, waiting for you to apologise to me for daring to believe the word of some vamped-up little tramp in really deep trouble, who thought she would stick a few knives in by telling you that I was capable of using you for the purposes of revenge!’

His voice had risen in anger; now she was staring at him through huge shocked eyes. ‘I…’ she began.

‘From there I thought we would continue where we left off in the courtyard,’ he continued ruthlessly without letting her speak. ‘With some really deep, passionate sex—preferably in my very big, comfortable bed, where we would work to help clear away your quite understandable blues.’

Her chin shot up at the very deliberate way he had just casually dismissed the devastation she had to be suffering.

‘After the sex we could then discuss Nicola and how the whole Carlucci clan is in your debt for luring Batiste into believing that the Gianni fortune would be more accessible than hers would be.’

At last she was beginning to realise that this conversation had another edge to it. He could see a slow dawning colouring her eyes.

‘However,’ he went on, ‘if you prefer to leave then by all means do so.’ He even straightened from the door to give her safe passage. ‘There is a phone in the hall and a pad lying next to it with the number of a very good taxi service. If I were you I would get the driver to recommend a hotel for the night and avoid going back to your apart-ment—just in case you walk in on your best friend and your ex-fiancé indulging their lusts on the sitting-room carpet.’

Having watched her blanch at his final cut-throat comment, he strode across the room, arrogantly assured that he had recovered his ego—at the expense of hers.

Did that knowledge sit well on him? No, it didn’t, he admitted with a grimace. But one of them had to climb off their high horse and, since he had no intention of doing it, it had to be Francesca.

He was a full-blooded Carlucci after all. She was only half a Gianni.

And anyway, he was still angry despite his smooth, careless speech. There were a million things he could have been doing out there if he hadn’t been devoting his full and undivided attention to Francesca Bernard and her Cinderella plight!

Cinderella, he scathed as he approached the antique French armoire almost dominating one wall. Well, if that made him her Prince Charming then he wasn’t doing a very good job of it, he conceded as he glared at the armoire his stepmother had brought with her from Paris when she married his father.

As he opened the doors he smelled the age of the solid old wood. Inside had been converted into a comprehensive drinks cabinet, which had always seemed a desecration to him but—he offered another grimace. Nanette had been proud of it and in the end that was all that mattered. This single piece of furniture had been her one and only heirloom and she’d loved to see it sitting here in this great house that groaned beneath centuries of Carlucci statements to wealth and good taste. What else she brought into this house had always been far more valuable.

It was called love and happiness. And for those gifts alone the armoire would remain exactly where it stood for as long as he held power of decision over the house.

Reaching for the bottle of cognac and a deep-bowled glass, he was aware that Francesca still hadn’t made that move towards the door. Placing the bowl of the glass in his palm to warm it while he uncapped the bottle of cognac, he dared a sideways glance at her.

She looked like a pale and bewildered ghost, he observed. Her eyes were too wide and rimmed by the stinging threat of tears that placed a fine quiver on her mouth. She was trying to control it, trying her best to maintain some pride and dignity. But she wasn’t standing where he was standing and seeing what he was seeing. She looked vulnerable, exhausted, so damn shattered he was amazed she was still in one piece.

Her skin looked so strained it was waxen. And her hair was trying its best to escape again, the beaded comb barely clinging to the twisted silken knot.

But not for long, he promised himself as he turned away again. He was going to help the hair out in a minute. He was going to remove the silly comb and let the whole tawny mass tumble free. And he was going to heat that waxen flesh until it melted. He was going to remove that silly denim jacket then that silly dress with its romantic layers of chiffon that did nothing for her and yelled ‘bought to please Angelo Batiste!’.

Anger growled like a snarling dog inside him; his lips bit together to stop the sound from coming out.

He was going to strip her down to her wonderful skin and bin the whole bloody outfit. Then he was going to begin the task of rebuilding her from the inside out. He was going to turn her into what he perceived she would be if she hadn’t had her self-confidence beaten to a pulp by inadequate selfish swines like Bruno Gianni and Batiste.

But for now he was going to have to continue to play it tough here, because she also looked like a trapped bird trying to sum up the courage to make a bolt for escape. If she did then he was going to have to stop her—and cornered, trapped birds had a nasty habit of flying at your face.

He poured a generous splash of cognac into the glass then swirled it around while deftly recapping the bottle with his free hand. By the time he turned back to her he was relieved to find that she’d moved at last and was no longer staring vacantly into space but was looking up at the gilt-framed portrait hanging above the huge stone fireplace, in which his father stood with his arms linked around the slender frame of the beautiful dark-haired Nanette. Nanette was looking up, his father was gazing down, and only a blind idiot would miss the wealth of love and affection that poured from every brushstroke.

‘You look like him,’ she said.

‘Mm,’ he acknowledged with a small wry smile. ‘Nanette Mauraux was my father’s second wife,’ he explained as he walked towards her. ‘My mother died when I was—quite young.’

He offered her the glass. Francesca shook her head, her attention still fixed on the portrait. ‘That could be Nicola standing with him,’ she said.

‘Does Nanette look so young?’ Turning to view the portrait for himself, ‘Yes, she does,’ he answered his own question. ‘My father managed to shock all of Rome when he went to Paris on a business trip and came back with a child bride clinging to his arm…’

He took a sip of the brandy, remembering. Then offered a soft laugh. ‘He was fifty-four and she was twenty-three. Nicola was a tiny replica of her mama and I was a brooding, dark, resentful youth of nineteen who was appalled to be presented with a stepmother I would probably have made a play for if I’d met her first.’

‘Did you?’ she looked at him. ‘Make a play for her, I mean.’

It took him a few seconds to understand why she dared think such a thing of him. Then, ‘Ah,’ he smiled. ‘I forgot—I have no scruples.’

It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it the moment the comment left his sardonic mouth. She stared at him for a second—then on a small choke she turned and ran.

On a thick black curse he went after her, having to pause to divert to the armoire to lose the brandy glass before continuing on. She’d already thrown the door open and was disappearing into the hall. He uttered another terse curse in Italian. His trapped bird had flown but in her eagerness to get away from him she’d turned the wrong way.