Читать книгу A Wedding At The Italian's Demand - Ким Лоренс, Kim Lawrence - Страница 10

FLORA TIPTOED STEALTHILY down the stairs, wincing as the board beneath her feet creaked. She froze, balanced on one foot, only releasing the breath held in her chest in a sigh of shuddering relief when there was no sound of baby sobs from upstairs.

Her mum said her grandson was teething, but then she also said that Jamie was an easy baby.

After the past few weeks Flora was of the opinion that easy babies were fictional creatures much like elves, or unicorns, only they slept less.

Flora could vaguely remember what sleep was. She had begun to feel increasingly nostalgic for a time when her idea of a bad night was tossing and turning for half an hour before she drifted off.

Now she could sleep standing up; she had slept standing up!

Sami had made it look so easy. Flora’s blue eyes filled with unshed tears and she blinked hard as she choked out her sister’s name in a forlorn whisper. She was so focused on the image in her head of her smiling sister and the physical pain of loss that it took her a few moments to register the cold.

Very cold, cold she hadn’t noticed upstairs, but then walking several miles up and down the cheerily furnished nursery wearing a groove in the carpet while jiggling the cranky baby and humming an irritating jingle advertising a deodorant—not a very appropriate lullaby but she couldn’t get the darned thing out of her head—was one way to keep warm.

She shivered, and gathered the thick cardigan she had put on over her sweater tightly around her. Nepotism aside, she was proud of her very first project as a qualified architect. The conversion of the derelict stone steading her sister and brother-in-law had decided to convert into their home and business, a restaurant with rooms, had won her a mention, though no glittering prize, in a prestigious competition.

Heating and insulation had been a priority in the brief and normally it was warm and cosy, not to mention wildly ecologically efficient with its state-of-the-art heating system, triple glazing that muffled the sound of the storm outside, and a roof of solar panels, but tonight the cold draughts seemed to have discovered ways inside.

She didn’t realise there was more involved than the storm raging outside and some uninsulated nooks and crannies until she brushed past one of the tall modernist column radiators and, instead of feeling comforting heat, her fingers made contact with metal that was stone cold.

She groaned and tried not to think of the missed boiler service she had deemed a reasonable economy, because everything seemed to be working fine and anyway it was state-of-the-art, didn’t that mean something?

Easy with the clarity of hindsight to recognise a classic case of false economy.

She allowed herself a self-pitying sniff or three before squaring her slender shoulders. Right, Flora, beat yourself up tomorrow and call the heating guy—right now stop whining and make the best of it.

She considered her immediate options. Retreating to the small private living room, an oak-framed extension with incredible views over the water to the mainland, wasn’t one because she’d not got around to lighting the wood burner in there earlier and, with the underfloor heating off and a wall of glass, it would be even colder than in here.

So maybe the best move was make a hot-water bottle, put the spare heaters in the nursery and climb into bed. It might only be eight-thirty but her body clock was so out of sync thanks to chronic sleep deprivation that it didn’t really matter—yes, that was definitely a plan.

So, first things first, the heater in the nursery then make herself a hot-water bottle. Her thick wool socks made no sound on the stone floor of the reception-area-cum-lounge and informal bar space while there was a perceptible increase in the volume of the storm raging outside.

Her shiver this time was for anyone unlucky enough not to have several feet of solid stone between them and the elements. Continuing to switch off lights as she went—at least they still had electricity—she fished her mobile from the pocket of her snug-fitting jeans. With a sigh she slid it back—there hadn’t been a signal since lunchtime and a couple of hours later the landline had gone too. It wasn’t being cut off that was worrying Flora, it was her inability to contact her mother.

Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have been concerned about her parent; under normal circumstances her mother would be here helping to run the place and look after baby Jamie, while continuing to run her own pottery business. Multitasking was Grace Henderson’s middle name and Flora wished she had a fraction of her resourceful parent’s energy.

But these weren’t normal circumstances. Her fiercely independent mother was operating on crutches with her leg in plaster and grieving deeply for her firstborn. Flora took comfort for the fact that, although the croft was remote, her mum had several good friends who lived close enough to be called neighbours who would no doubt have checked in on her.

Flora gnawed gently on her full lower lip as she weighed the option of putting more peat on the already smoking open fire before she went to bed. It was a matter of freeze or choke. She was trying to recall where the spare portable heaters she would need to put in the baby’s room were stored, when there was a loud bang on the front door she had bolted after Fergus had left, there being not much point the chef staying when all the diners had cancelled.

Feeling ashamed that her first thought was a selfish, please don’t wake the baby, she rushed across the room, reading desperation into the loud urgent-sounding thuds. She fumbled with the door bolt, urgency making her fingers clumsy as the banging continued.

‘Hold on, hold on, nearly...’ As the door opened the wind blowing in off the sea loch that lapped the shore on the opposite side of the narrow road hit Flora with a full icy blast.

The physical force snatched the breath from her lips and made her stagger backwards, her arms flailing as she struggled to keep her balance. She barely heard the sound of the heavy oak door hitting the wall above the combined roar of the wind and the sound of invisible crashing waves feet away from the door.

It was to this wild soundtrack and out of the heavy swirling mist that the stranger entered.

He was a stranger... For one awful split second she’d thought Callum... It wasn’t, of course. The local boy made good, thanks to an ability to kick a ball and increase the sales of everything from breakfast cereal to cars by smiling into the camera, lived in Spain—or was it Japan?—these days, and anyway there was no real resemblance beyond the impression of height, athletic muscularity, the dark hair and her imagination.

If it had been Callum she might have pushed him back out into the storm, but the man who hadn’t broken her heart didn’t look pushable!

He stood for a moment framed in the doorway, the top of his bare head touching the door frame, his broad shoulders filling the space as the long drover’s-style overcoat he wore, caught by the wind, flared out behind him dramatically.

If this wild elemental storm had taken human form it would have looked like him.

Before her dazed brain could take in any more details he reached out, pulling the heavy door closed being him, making the effort of competing against the gale-force wind look effortless.

The deafening roar was instantly reduced to a dull distant moan and the fire, which had briefly flared to life with the influx of oxygen, died down as it blew out a cloud of acrid eye-stinging smoke, which under normal circumstances would have made Flora think about the damage it would inflict on the fresh white paintwork.

But she wasn’t thinking about paintwork or actually anything else much. The adrenalin surge that held every muscle in her body taut to quivering point had thrown her nervous system directly into flight-or-fight mode, though neither would have done her much good against this man who, now the door was closed, seemed even taller.

He stood there for what felt like hours but might have been seconds, long enough at any rate for the details of his face to imprint themselves in her memory. The moisture that slicked his short dark hair against his skull trembled in droplets on the end of his dark, ludicrously long lashes and covered his face, making the olive-toned skin glow gold in the subdued lighting. Even if you had taken the incredible mouth and the dark deep-set eyes from the equation, the combination of hard planes and fascinating angles, emphasised by the shadow on his square jaw and hollow cheeks, was overtly sensual and overpoweringly male.

Refusing to acknowledge the hot sensation in her stomach as sexual awareness, she tried to kick free of the oddly hypnotic, cold, heavy-lidded eyes that held her own.

‘Who are you?’ she blurted when her vocal cords started working. Her voice lacked the welcoming Highland warmth that happy tourists frequently mentioned in their five-star reviews of the establishment, but, in her defence, she was in shock...or something?

She swallowed and brought her lashes down. Despite the protective sweep she continued to be conscious of those dark eyes with the glittering, deeply disturbing gold lights.

Oh, yes, she thought, grateful for the layers of clothing that muffled the sound of her heart hammering against her ribcage, this was definitely something. Not a big, significant something, just an ‘opening of the door to find the most good-looking man she had ever seen or even dreamt existed standing there’ something.

Was this a good time to discover that you still had a built-in weak spot for a pretty face? No, Callum had been pretty, this man was more...was beautiful. Too big a word...?

No, it wasn’t, she decided, studying the perfect bone structure of his strongly carved face with its high carved cheekbones, square jawline and aquiline nose, her stomach dipping uncomfortably when she reached the sensual outline of his wide mouth.

Though actually what had really thrown her was the shock wave of overt sexuality his large presence in the low-ceilinged room created. The surface of her skin prickled with it and her knees were shaking.

Great! Just what she needed!

Fate decided losing her dearest sister and brother-in-law, inheriting their business and their baby son was not enough! Mr Dark and Brooding had to turn up on her doorstep and kick into life the embers of her dormant libido!

Admittedly, not dark and brooding’s fault, but she struggled to view the intruder who, as supplying the last straw, she felt might just make her fold, with any objectivity.

Mouth closed might be a move in the right direction, Flora.

‘I booked a room.’

His very low, deep voice had an almost tactile quality and held an intriguing almost accent. A wave of deep sadness tightened her throat—much deeper and harsher, but it reminded her a little of her late brother-in-law, Bruno. But Bruno’s voice had been warm and filled with laughter; the stranger’s voice held about the same amount of warmth as his cold dark eyes as he waited for her to respond.

She gave herself a mental shake, and dug deep into her reserves of professionalism. It wasn’t normally an effort—she’d cut her hospitality teeth working shifts in a bar in Edinburgh when she was working her way through university. Several recent guests had commented online about her ‘friendly efficiency and warmth’.

So why was she standing here like a tongue-tied idiot?

True, to date none of the guests she’d immediately felt at ease with had arrived wearing a suit that screamed designer beneath a long, equally expensive-looking coat that hung off shoulders a mile wide. And none had...no, she decided not to even think about the sexual aura he exuded, hoping that she’d wake up tomorrow after a good night’s sleep and discover it was a sleep-deprivation thing. The odds of this happening were pretty good, because, though her ex-fiancé’s opinion on most things counted for zero with her, on one thing he was probably right—she wasn’t really a sexual person.

* * *

‘Is there a problem?’

Beyond the inescapable fact, Ivo realised, that he had made the mistake of nursing preconceptions, having them challenged made him feel slightly off balance—not something he was accustomed to.

He didn’t intend to get accustomed to it.

He hadn’t even realised until the door had opened that he’d been expecting a tall willowy blonde standing there. He’d not been imagining a petite redhead, a belt holding up her snug-fitting jeans around an impossibly narrow waist.

Ivo dug his hands deep into his pockets as his long brown fingers flexed in response to the mental image of them closing around the circumference. The slight but distinctly feminine sinuous curves above and below the belt sent a fresh slug of scorching heat through his body as he studied them again before he dragged his attention back to her face.

He couldn’t pretend it was a hardship to look at the woman his grandfather had casually suggested he marry.

From nowhere an image of her floating down a church aisle in white came into his head but he pushed it away. The same way he pushed away any thought of marriage. It had seemed like an inevitable prospect, something he owed to the continuation of his name...but the existence of Bruno’s child, the next generation, took the pressure off.

Ivo was here, yes, but not to marry anyone!

Was his alternative plan any less insane? Actually, ‘plan’ might be overstating it—more a play-it-by-ear than actual plan.

So, yes, possibly insane, but less insane than it had seemed around the same time he had seriously contemplated abandoning his car on a section of the road that was underwater about half a mile away.

Ivo didn’t believe in fate, signs or divine intervention, but when you were driving along a road that was rapidly becoming a river a man, even one who prided himself on being rational, did start to wonder: was someone somewhere trying to tell him something?

And it wasn’t the first snag!

Ivo prided himself on being adaptable but today had tested him. Since he’d set out this morning everything that could go wrong had. Engine problems shortly after they had taken off from the private airstrip had forced the pilot to turn back and make an emergency landing in Rome.

When he had finally landed in the replacement jet there had been no driver willing to make the journey up to Skye with weather warnings out advising only essential journeys being made.

Considering that his journey was essential, he had been privately pretty scornful of weather warnings in the British Isles, assuming they’d probably meant heavy drizzle.

His contempt had come back to bite him. He glanced down at his ruined handmade leather shoes—the elderly couple he’d rescued after they’d run off the road had treated him like a hero—not a good fit.

And now he was here and things were still not going to plan. He focused the objectivity he was famed for—some called it coldness—on the heart-shaped face turned up to him.

To suggest that she was not beautiful—even taking into account that his taste in women had never run to petite and fragile—would not have been an objective assessment. He’d met women who were more beautiful, though none had possessed a heart-shaped face framed by wild Pre-Raphaelite curls, the deep titian interwoven with strands of lighter gold.

As unexpected as the vividly pretty heart-shaped face had been was the twist of hard desire he’d experienced when he’d first laid eyes on her.

Setting aside that visceral response, he continued to study the face that had drawn this reaction. It was a face that came complete with tip-tilted nose, a cute, curvy full mouth and wildly sexy and deep kitten-wide pansy-blue eyes framed by spiky, thick, straight lashes. There was the suggestion of a cleft in her pointed, determined small chin.

* * *

In response to his question, Flora lifted her eyes from the relative safety of mid-chest level. His hard stare was disconcerting.

‘You’re wearing a tie.’

She squeezed her eyes closed and thought, Any moment now I’m going to say something that suggests I have more than two brain cells.

Please make it soon!

When she opened them again he’d already unbelted his overcoat and a jacket button. The long brown fingers of his hand were smoothing the already smooth streak of his grey tie that stood out against the spotless background of white, a white made virtually transparent by its saturated condition.

She registered the shadow of dark body hair before she looked quickly away, ignoring the tingling tightness that extended even to the skin of her scalp.

‘You have a dress code?’

Ignoring the sneery sarcasm in his question, though if they had had one it would have been waterproofs and walking boots, she reminded herself that it was her job to make their guests’ stays happy ones, even the ones who were objectionable. Though to be fair she supposed that anyone who had negotiated the single-track-with-passing-places roads to get here, scary for the uninitiated in any weather, might have some excuse for feeling stressed.

Not that he looked stressed, quite the opposite. The aura he projected was of someone in charge, not someone who needed reassurance and sympathy. It was hard to imagine anyone offering him a cup of tea and very much easier, she mused as her eyes drifted to that mouth, to think of them offering him a more intimate form of comfort.

She tried to walk back from the image that flashed into her head—it didn’t help the situation in any way imagining a man naked—and produced a half-decent professional smile. Though the effect was probably spoilt by baby sick on her shoulder...again.

‘No, but we do have drying facilities if you venture out on the hills, though obviously not recommended in this weather,’ she added hastily. It was amazing how sometimes you had to spell out the obvious and amazing how little respect some city types had for either the elements or the terrain of the island.

‘Oh, and there are Ordnance Survey maps in all the bedrooms, though some of guests make use of a local mountain guide service. And if you’re interested in geology there are some fascinating—’

‘I’m not, and I have quite a good sense of direction.’ It had enabled him to be one of only a handful of entrants to complete the arduous desert trek against the clock and the elements for charity, but perversely right now the only place it was taking him was the curve of her lush lips—every road led to the same place.

The awkward silence stretched. Flora filled it with a cheery, ‘So, you’re here for the fishing?’ As much as they desperately needed the money, Flora found herself wishing that he wasn’t here at all.

His jaw clenched. ‘I’m not here for the fishing.’

Fighting the childish urge to tell him she wasn’t really interested anyway, she smiled. ‘Well, I hope you enjoy your stay.’ She hesitated a moment before admitting, ‘The truth is I wasn’t aware we had any bookings. Have you come far?’

‘Yes.’

I’ve had more interesting conversations with a brick wall, she thought, keeping her smile in place until she discovered he was staring at her hair. She fought and lost the impulse to lift a hand to smooth the tangled curls, which at some point today had come free of the tight, efficient ponytail. The time when she was working in Edinburgh and spent the twenty minutes required in the morning to religiously straighten it to a smooth, shiny, straight river seemed a million years ago.

Luxury in this life was applying some lip balm.

‘Well, I think you’re very brave to make the journey in this storm, or possibly very foolish...?’ As the addition slipped past her guard she added a smile, which hopefully robbed the comment of insult.

You did have to wonder, though, who in their right mind made a journey in this weather, ignoring advice from every agency out there including the stretched police force, who were begging people not to make unnecessary journeys until the storm abated.

It took a special sort of arrogance, and on their brief acquaintance Flora suspected this man possessed that quality in abundance.

‘Right, well, if you’d just like to check in? Card, or...’ She looked towards the table where the old-fashioned leather ledger was kept beside a book inviting guests to add their hopefully complimentary comments.

The book and the flowers and twigs she’d arranged in the old zinc jug the previous day were there, but not the leather ledger.

Ivo watched as she pressed a finger to the groove above her nose, her smooth brow puckering in concentration, but it was the dark purplish smudges beneath her blue eyes that drew his attention. He pushed away a waft of feeling that fell short of being empathy but nevertheless was distracting.

And he didn’t need any more distraction, he decided, the initial gut-punch reaction when the door had opened to reveal a diminutive flame-haired figure still raising some uncomfortable red-line-crossed feelings that he felt the need to rationalise. He had clearly subconsciously been expecting a replica of her sister, the tall willowy blonde who had bewitched his brother, and he was still adjusting to the reality. Add that to him not factoring in the possibility he might find the woman that stood between him and his nephew attractive.

He had acknowledged it now and moved on... It would only be a problem if he allowed it to be.

And he wouldn’t.

His confidence was justified: the last time Ivo had allowed his libido to rule him he’d been a teenager and his brother had not yet abandoned everything for a woman. Ivo had been in lust a number of times but had so far avoided anything that could be termed in love. He’d never been in what people would call a long-term relationship, because, in his experience, before he’d ever got close to long term the woman in his bed, who had begun by telling him how much she loved him the way he was, had begun chipping quietly away, trying to change what she had claimed to like about him.

A massive red line of a deal breaker; the woman did not exist that he would change for. The woman did not exist that he could not live without. Even the thought drew the corners of his lips into a cynical smile.

‘You are the person in charge?’

His words brought Flora’s chin up. Obviously this guy’s personality was not as perfect as the rest of him.

‘I am the person in charge,’ she confirmed, sounding a lot calmer than she felt while she wondered what sort of write-up punching him on his nose would earn her.

Actually, during the past nightmare weeks, in charge was the last thing she had felt, but luckily she could put on a good act. She did so now as she walked confidently across to the bar, as if there were no doubt in her mind that she would find the old-fashioned bookings diary where it lay concealed on a shelf.

Luck was on her side.

‘Here we are,’ she said, laying it on the reclaimed wood surface.

The satellite dish meant to connect them to the Internet and the twenty-first century was arriving next week, which might make this old-fashioned ledger redundant. It was another of the outstanding bills that was keeping her awake nights.

She turned from the back where the restaurant bookings were written down, all this evening’s cancellations highlighted by a red line drawn through them, to the front where room bookings were recorded. Sure enough, above one of the cancellations one of the rooms had been booked out for tonight.

She looked up, struggling to feel the professional warmth she had infused her smile with. ‘I’m sorry I missed this one, Mr...?’ She shook her head unable to decipher Fergus’s scrawl or throw off the peculiarly strong antipathy the man had evoked in her.

‘Rocco,’ Ivo responded, giving his middle name as he had on the telephone when booking. He hadn’t wanted to commit himself to a course of action before he’d read the situation.

‘Right, Mr Rocco, sorry about the miscommunication and the welcome.’

‘Or lack of it,’ he inserted smoothly.

‘Just so, afraid I’d assumed that everyone had cancelled due to the storm.’

His dark gold-flecked gaze slid to the window where relentless rain was lashing. ‘You mean it’s not always like this?’

The comment was delivered without the leavening humour which would have made it acceptable. Flora resisted the impulse to rush to the defence of her beloved home.

Her smile frayed a little at the edges as her sister’s face floated into her head. Sami would have had this man eating out of her hand by now. She flinched at the physical impact as the fresh loss hit her all over again. She almost wished that Jamie would wake up so that she would have something practical to focus on to dull the pain. Maybe being too tired to think was not such a bad thing, she mused, ignoring the bleak voice in her head that told her she was only delaying the inevitable, she’d have to feel at some point.

‘Would you like a wee dram to warm you after your journey?’ She bent down to reach the forty-year-old single malt they kept behind the bar for occasions such as this.

The bottle of last resort, Bruno had called it, to be used when everything else failed with awkward or upset customers. They had very few of those, and so far it had been brought out to toast special occasions, like newly engaged couples.

Ivo watched, with what he told himself was academic interest, as the denim of the redhead’s jeans stretched attractively over her taut, rounded rear as she bent over. There was nothing academic about the flash of heat down his front.

Flora straightened up, planted the bottle on the bar so that he could see the label, but his expression did not melt... Could granite melt? ‘On the house, of course,’ she added hastily.

‘No.’ The guest responded to the generous gesture with a look that flattened her smile. ‘If I could see the menu?’

Her expression fell. ‘Menu...?’

He arched a sardonic brow and watched the angry colour wash over the fair freckled skin.

She bit her lip. ‘Fergus, the chef, has gone home actually...’ She stopped. Was it such a good idea to tell this bad-tempered beautiful stranger with his indefinably menacing air that they were alone but for a baby lying asleep upstairs? Feeling ashamed of the sudden flurry of fear, she lifted her chin, squared her shoulders and added a very unconvincing, ‘Sorry.’

‘So your kitchen is closed?’ Of course it was. Ivo had stopped trying to imagine the urbane sophisticated brother he remembered living in this cold, misty, uninviting backwater. He sent up a silent apology to his grandfather, who he had assumed was guilty of over-exaggeration when he’d described the place his great-grandson needed rescuing from. Ivo no longer needed convincing.

From his expression she could see there was no five-star rating heading their way. ‘I could make you a sandwich?’ It wasn’t that she couldn’t cook, but Flora was intimidated by the restaurant’s industrial-looking catering kitchen with its shiny stainless-steel surfaces and latest top-of-the-range gadgets.

She didn’t ask for a translation of the sound he made in his throat, quite happy to take it as a rejection.

‘Right, then,’ she said briskly. ‘Shall I show you to your room? We’re having a little storm-related problem with the heating,’ she explained putting an awful lot of effort into the lie. It was glaringly obvious by his attitude that he didn’t actually believe a word she was saying. ‘But I’ll bring up an electric heater and you’ll be toasty in no time.’ She crossed her fingers while making the over-optimistic prediction. ‘If you’ll follow me?’

One foot on the bottom step of the staircase, she stopped as the fire chose that moment to belch a fresh flume of acrid smoke that filled the entire room. Flora stopped cursing long enough to cough. ‘The wind must be in the wrong direction,’ she excused hoarsely.

‘There is a right direction?’ he asked sardonically.

Before she could react to the sarcasm she was distracted by a sighing sound broadcast from the baby monitor, followed by a sleepy murmur.

Ivo watched as the redhead literally held her breath for a full thirty seconds before her tense shoulders sagged with visible relief.