Читать книгу The Sicilian's Passion - Шэрон Кендрик, Sharon Kendrick - Страница 9

‘KATE, what on earth is the matter with you?’

Kate looked at her sister with an unaccustomed blankness in her eyes.

She had spent the whole drive back from Lady St John’s house in Sussex veering between disbelief and self-disgust. In fact, the whole journey had been negotiated on some kind of auto-pilot. She had gone straight upstairs to Lucy’s flat, and it wasn’t until she was inside its elegant interior that she began shaking uncontrollably—like a person who had just come down with a fever.

‘It’s stupid. It’s nothing.’ She shook her head distractedly. ‘It would sound too far-fetched to explain—’

Lucy’s forehead creased with perplexity. ‘But Kate, you never leave your phone switched on during lunch. It’s one of your “unbreakable rules”, remember?’

Oh, yes, she remembered all right. And another of those rules was that she didn’t fall victim to grand and irrational passions. That she was ruled by her head, and not her heart. That she liked and respected herself, so that falling for a man who played the ‘treat them mean and keep them keen’ ticket was simply not on her agenda.

‘I just met a man,’ she said slowly, and ridiculously it sounded like the first line to a love song.

The frown disappeared, and Lucy relaxed. ‘Oh! And about time, too,’ she smiled, with the approval of someone who was happily established in a long-term relationship. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to fall in love for years and years!’

Kate nodded. So had she. But love was not an appropriate word, not in this case. If she was being brutally honest—and she always tried for honesty—then wouldn’t falling in lust be a more fitting description of what had happened to her some time over lunch?

She compressed her mouth into a determined line. ‘It isn’t like that,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t love him. How can I when I barely know him?’

‘But Cupid’s arrow has hit you with unfailing accuracy?’

‘A thunderbolt,’ admitted Kate in a dazed kind of voice. ‘The kind of thing you read about but think will never happen to you.’

‘Yes, I know.’ Lucy gave a wistful smile. ‘The French call it a coup de foudre.’

Kate shook her head. ‘That would imply that it was mutual.’

‘And wasn’t it?’

Kate thought about it. There had been an undeniable fizzle between them, yes, but… but… ‘He looked at me as though he didn’t really like what he saw.’

‘Or what he felt perhaps,’ said Lucy perceptively.

Kate looked at her sister. Two years older and the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, with her dark copper hair and thick-fringed green eyes.

Lucy had been born with looks to burn and a certain irresistibility to the opposite sex. But in the end she had fallen for her boss, unwilling and unable to stop the relationship even when the powers-that-be had threatened her with the sack if she did not.

Lucy had duly lost her job, and although Jack had not he had left anyway, using the opportunity to work for himself at long last. But at least they had stayed together, thought Kate, even if Jack now spent the majority of his life abroad. And Kate had been able to offer her sister a job as her assistant at just the right time. That was the pay-off for being neighbours as well as workmates, she realised. As sisters, she and Lucy looked out for one another.

She looked around Lucy’s flat, which, with Jack helping to pay for it, was much larger and more opulent than her own.

‘How’s things?’ she asked absently, still unable to get Giovanni out of her head.

Lucy stared at her. ‘Tell me about him,’ she said suddenly. ‘This man who’s making you tremble like that.’

Kate looked down with surprise at her unsteady hands. What could she say? That he had the coldest, proudest and most beautiful face she had ever seen? And eyes so startlingly blue that the summer sky would have paled in comparison? She shrugged, but her shoulders felt unusually heavy. ‘There’s nothing to tell. Like I said, I don’t know him. I’ve barely exchanged half a dozen words with him. He’s Lady St John’s godson—’

‘Mmm. So, he’s well-connected, then?’ murmured Lucy.

‘Oh, yes. And he’s Italian—or, rather, he’s Sicilian.’

‘There’s a difference?’

‘That’s exactly what I said! And apparently there is. A huge difference.’ Kate thought of his quietly furious response to her innocent question. ‘His family owns the Calverri silver factory. You must have heard of them.’

Lucy’s eyes widened. ‘You are kidding?’

‘No, I’m not. He’s rich. He’s handsome.’ Kate shut her eyes and forced herself to see facts rather than fantasy. He is curiously unsmiling and there is an impenetrable barrier between him and the rest of the world, she thought with an instinct which seemed to come from nowhere.

‘He sounds perfect.’

‘I’m sure he is,’ said Kate lightly. ‘For someone who doesn’t mind a man who looks arrogantly down his beautifully patrician nose at you!’

‘Hmm! So you’ve got it bad!’

‘Not really. A passing fancy,’ answered Kate tightly. ‘And anyway—I’ll never see him again. Why should I?’

Never. It sounded so brutally final. Oh, what magic had he woven during that tense, short meeting? she wondered despairingly.

She had gathered up all her belongings and left the house in an unseemly rush, driven by some self-protective instinct which was quite alien to her. She had just known that if she didn’t get out of the St John mansion quickly she risked making a very great fool of herself.

Because for one brief, mad moment as he and his godmother had accompanied her into the hall she had actually thought about asking him out!

Oh, not in the kind of ‘would you like to go out with me?’ way which was perfectly acceptable nowadays. Some of her more liberated girlfriends wouldn’t have hesitated.

No, Kate would have been more subtle than that.

She could have said that she would be interested to see the latest Calverri silver catalogue on behalf of one of her clients. And that wouldn’t have been a lie—she could think of at least half a dozen people who would doubtless love to choose something lavish and expensive from the latest glossy Calverri brochure.

But she had recognised in him a steely intelligence—and an innate ability to see what might lie behind a request such as that. He wasn’t stupid. Women must react to him like that all the time—hence the contempt for her, which he had barely bothered trying to conceal.

So she had shaken his hand and given him a cool smile, and hoped that her body language hadn’t betrayed the shimmering thrill of pleasure she felt to have his fingers closing around her hand.

She frowned as Lucy went to make some coffee, walking over to the window where the Thames glittered by in tantalisingly close proximity.

Flats like this didn’t come cheap. Her own had been bought with the proceeds of her work after her salary had started surpassing even her wildest dreams. And everyone knew that you should put money into property.

She had the perfect job. The perfect home. And the perfect life.

So stay away from him, she told herself fiercely, and then she remembered that their paths were never going to cross again.

Thank God. Because she wasn’t sure just how strong her will to resist him would be if they were to meet again.

Crazy.

Crazy to think that a man could arouse that amount of passion in a woman who was normally so self-controlled.

She turned to smile as Lucy carried in the tray of coffee and put him out of her mind with an effort.

Giovanni’s mouth tightened imperceptibly as he put his foot down hard on the accelerator, and behind the smooth, dark curve of his sunglasses, the blue eyes glittered with irritation.

Damn!

And damn Kate Connors! Damn all women with eyes which invited so blatantly, and bodies just made to commit sin with.

He shook his head in denial, as if that could dispel the unmistakable ache of desire that had kept him teetering close to the hot edge of excitement since he had first seen the blaze of her fiery hair.

He wanted nothing more to do with her! And yet, even now he was speeding towards her flat. So why in the name of God was he carrying out his reluctant mission?

Because his godmother had asked him to, that was why. And all because the witch had left her Filofax behind. Again his mouth tightened. It was a laughably obvious ploy! She might as well have dropped her handkerchief to the ground in front of him. Or her panties, he found himself thinking and was cruelly rewarded with the hot, sharp stab of desire.

She must have known that his godmother would insist on his returning it, even though he had shaken his head unequivocably when she had first asked him.

‘I cannot, Elisabeth,’ he had told her.

‘But, Giovanni, the poor girl will be lost without it! It’s the size of an encyclopaedia!’

‘Then why not post it to her?’ he had suggested evenly.

‘Because she’ll need it,’ said Lady St John with all the stubbornness of a woman who had spent her whole life getting her own way. ‘And you virtually have to drive past her flat on your way back to the hotel, don’t you? What time is your flight tonight?’

‘At eight,’ he admitted, resigning himself to the fact that he respected his godmother’s wishes enough to back down on this. Though if any of his business colleagues had been there, they would have been very surprised to see him without his usual ruthless streak of determination.

‘Well, then—you’ve got hours!’ said his godmother brightly. ‘Please, Giovanni?’

‘Sí, sí, Elisabeth,’ he sighed, and held his immaculately manicured hand out with a rare smile. ‘I will return it to her.’

He should have dropped the damned thing off on the way back to his hotel, but he didn’t. Maybe if he had done that…

But instead he took a long, cool shower and changed from his suit into casual trousers and a fine shirt of purest silk that whispered like a woman’s fingertips over his skin. And he shaved, and touched a musky-lemon scent to the pure, clean line of his jaw, though not for one moment did he ask himself why.

Nor why he went down to the bar and ordered a single malt whisky, then sat gazing at it, untouched, as though it contained poison.

He left for her flat just before six. That would just give him time to drop the Filofax off and then to drive straight to the airport. No time to linger. No time for coffee or the inevitable offer of a drink. Just a wry smile as he handed the Filofax over, a smile which told her that he knew exactly what her game was. And that he was far too experienced to fall for it.

But his pulse was hammering like a piston as he approached the turn off for her flat.

Kate left Lucy’s flat and went upstairs to her own, where for once the glorious colour scheme failed to soothe her jangled senses.

She felt restless as she removed her cotton jacket. Itchy. Like a cat on a hot tin roof. As if there was a gaping hole somewhere deep inside her.

She changed from her hot and itchy clothes into one of her favourite outfits—a tiny green skirt and cashmere vest. It flattered her figure enormously, and as she stared into the mirror she found herself wondering what Giovanni Calverri would think of that!

No! This is just becoming madness, she told herself when she was back in the sitting room. With a shaking hand she poured herself a glass of wine and she had gulped down half of it before staring at the glass in a stupefied way that was completely alien to her.

She never drank on her own! Never!

She put the glass back down, with a hand that was no steadier, and walked through the sitting room into the small study which led directly off it, and sat down at her brand-new computer.

She logged on to the Internet and began tentatively pressing keys, until she reached the site she didn’t even realise she was looking for, and one word flashed up on the screen in front of her, mocking her with memories of his lean, beautiful body.

Sicily.

On the screen in front of her, the island unfolded before her eyes with the aid of the electronic equipment she now took for granted, and she printed out all the information available on the harsh beauty of a land which was known as ‘Persephone’s Island’. And then, with an odd thundering in her heart, and a prickling sense of expectation, she settled down and began to read.

Soon she was lost in tales of a bloody past, discovering the complex and stormy history of the sensual European island which lay so close to North Africa. Sicilians were the heirs of the ancient Greeks, Carthaginians, Arabs and Normans, she read. No wonder that Giovanni looked more spectacularly different from any other man she had ever met.

She was only disturbed by the insistent ringing of the doorbell and she blinked, and put the sheets of paper down.

Lucy, probably. She wasn’t expecting anyone else—and in London no one ever seemed to call on anyone else unexpectedly. In fact, she had planned a quiet night as she always did at the end of a job. The celebration of its successful completion would come at the weekend, when they could lie in until late the next morning. They would go to their local bistro and eat chicken and drink a carafe of French country wine.

The doorbell rang again.

OK, she thought, I’m on my way! And if she hadn’t been sure it was her sister she might have felt mildly irritated as she unplugged the Internet connection, but left the picture of Sicily still on the screen.

The ear-splitting sound had just invaded her ears for the third time, and her frown changed to one of worry. What was all the urgency?

With a wrench she pulled the door open, and her heart very nearly stopped.

It was him. Giovanni Calverri.

There.

On her doorstep, with the blue blaze from his eyes nearly blinding her. Briefly she wondered whether those unbelievable, unusual eyes were a throwback to when the island had been invaded by the Greeks, centuries ago, but she had no time to wonder more, merely note the look of derision which was hardening the luscious mouth.

‘Y-you,’ she breathed in a stunned kind of disbelief.

‘But of course it is,’ he concurred sardonically. ‘Weren’t you waiting for me?’

‘Waiting for you?’ She prayed for logic and some kind of strength to seep into her addled brain, but all she could think about was his beauty. A hard, cold kind of beauty unlike anything she had ever seen in her life. ‘Why should I be waiting for you?’

So she wanted to play games.

And, suddenly, so did he, damn her!

‘Didn’t you forget something?’ he purred.

Right at that moment, she would be hard-pressed to remember her name. She felt a shivering awareness of him as she shook her head distractedly. The lemony, musky scent of him had invaded her nostrils like some kind of raw pheromone and she could sense the warm, male heat radiating off him.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She frowned.

Part of him wanted to ram the accusation home. To tell her that he had no need of women who lacked such subtlety. Predatory women with hungry green eyes. But that part of him seemed to be fast on the wane and some alien emotion was in the ascendancy.

Until he reminded himself that emotion had no place in what was happening between them. He didn’t know her. Or particularly like her. Certainly didn’t respect her. He just wanted her, it was as simple and as complicated as that.

His lips parted to say with soft venom, Oh, yes, you do, but some interloper had stolen the words from his mouth. He raised his dark eyebrows questioningly and the hand which had been partially concealed by the hard shaft of his thigh suddenly withdrew and he held out the overstuffed black leather diary towards her. ‘This is yours, I believe?’

‘My Filofax!’ Kate stared at it in astonishment. Why, she depended on it as she would her lifeblood—and she had been in such a state that she hadn’t even noticed it missing! ‘I didn’t even realise I’d left it behind!’

She was a good actress, he would say that for her! For a moment her surprise looked almost genuine. But her reaction to him told him the true story. Should he taunt her with it? Let her know that he could see through her schoolgirl games? ‘You mean you hadn’t missed it?’ he mocked.

Kate stiffened, and indignation took the place of surprise. ‘You think I left it behind on purpose?’ she asked, her voice rising with incredulity.

He shrugged, and the blue eyes glittered a challenge at her. ‘Didn’t you?’

She raised her eyebrows, scarcely believing what she was hearing. ‘Presumably just so that you would return it, I suppose?’

‘If that was your intention.’ He gave a coolly beautiful smile. ‘Then you have succeeded, mmm, cara?’

She almost laughed aloud at his arrogance. ‘Maybe such a scenario happens to you all the time Mr Calverri—’

‘Giovanni,’ he corrected softly, unable to stop himself even though the distant clamour of his conscience told him not to enter into this delicious game of flirtation.

‘Maybe women do throw themselves at you—’

‘They do,’ he agreed gravely, and was rewarded with a renewed look of outrage, though was unprepared for the stealthy acceleration of his pulse as her sinful lips pursed themselves together.

‘Well, for your information—’ she drew a deep breath, slightly aware of behaving a little hypocritically since she had been sitting here obsessing about him, hadn’t she? ‘—if I was that interested in a man I wouldn’t resort to such transparent tactics, I would… would…’

Dark brows were raised in query as her words tailed off. ‘You would…?’

Well, why not tell him the truth? ‘I would have asked you out,’ she said in a matter-of-fact voice.

Giovanni knew a moment of intrigue. Women had asked him out before, particularly English and American women, and he had always felt a sizzling disdain for such forward behaviour. Though a modern man in terms of accomplishments, he remained a staunch traditionalist at heart. The island of his birth defined the roles of the sexes far less markedly than in centuries past. But at its root still lay a machismo society where the man pursued the woman, and not the other way round.

And yet he found himself wondering if the unquestionably strong desire she had aroused in him might have enticed him enough to accept.

‘But you didn’t,’ he stated softly.

Her eyes met his fearlessly. ‘No, I didn’t.’

But she had thought about it, he realised with a start. Mulled over the possibility and decided against it. He felt his interest flicker again, for wasn’t that a kind of rejection?

His eyes narrowed. It was an entirely new sensation for him. No woman had ever rejected him, in any way, shape or form, and Giovanni felt the renewed leap to his senses as the first dull flush of the inevitable made him shrug in wry recognition.

‘I will try not to be too offended at such a blow to my ego,’ he murmured.

‘Oh, thank heavens for that!’ came her sardonic retort. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to sleep nights if you had!’

He almost smiled, acknowledging that something unknown and forbidden and dangerous was pulsing in the air around them. And that, instead of getting out of here as quickly as possible, he lanced through her emerald gaze with a cool look of challenge. ‘So, aren’t you going to ask me inside, cara?’

And then realised just how shockingly and beautifully potent that question sounded.

‘Inside?’ she repeated slowly, and her mind started to play outrageous tricks on her as she imagined the reality of that simple, one-word request which suddenly sounded like the most erotic proposition imaginable. And didn’t cara mean… darling?

He heard her momentary hesitation, knew what had prompted it and felt himself grow hard—so hard that he felt he might die with wanting her. But he pinned a lazy smile onto his mouth instead. A smile he didn’t really mean, because the only thing that had any meaning at that precise moment was the need to possess her. A need he knew he should ruthlessly resist, and yet… yet…

‘For a drink?’ He shrugged, as though he could take it or leave it. ‘As a reward for having come out of my way to see you.’

Some of the tension left her. Some but not all. She forced herself to open the door to him.

Forced! Just who did she think she was kidding? Why, if she gave into her true feelings right then she would have dragged him in by taking a great swathe of that silk shirt in her fist and drawing him close to her. So close that he would not be able to resist her.

But he had done her a favour. And wasn’t she in danger of letting this all get a little out of hand? She should invite him into her home and expose herself to a little more of his own distinctive air of arrogance—that was the way to get him right out of her system! ‘A drink?’ She flashed him a bright, polite smile. ‘Of course. Sure. Come in.’

He walked into her flat and it was as stunning as he had anticipated. He had known that her home would be exquisite, and it was. More than exquisite, it was distinctive. Like her. Strong, bold colours which somehow managed to blend instead of grating on the eye. A mix and match which pleased and excited the senses. Again, like her.

She had changed, he noted, not for the first time—and now wore an indecently short skirt which showed off her long legs. A little vest-top in cool green cashmere emphasised the firm swell of her breasts and the way her torso tapered down to a delicious, tiny waist.

He swallowed and his eyes travelled almost with relief to a small table, where a half-drunk glass of wine rested. His mouth curved, he felt glad of the opportunity to disapprove of her again.

Kate noticed the tiny elevation of the jet-dark brows, felt his disapproval as surely as if it were shimmering in waves of heat off him. He didn’t say anything—but, there again, he didn’t have to. It was written clearly all over the autocratic features.

Some small inkling of who she really was came seeping back and she tried to catch hold of it, fast. Not some simpering schoolgirl, but a woman. His equal. ‘Is something wrong, Giovanni?’ she asked sweetly.

He shrugged. ‘You drink alone?’

For one quietly hysterical moment she felt like saying that yes, yes, she did drink alone. That a bottle of vodka would leave her untouched and unsatisfied. Because she could tell from the unmarred perfection of his face and body that here was a man to whom excess would be anathema. Except perhaps for excess in one thing…

What could she say? That she never drank alone, but that he had unnerved her so much that she felt that wine might bring some warmth and some life back into her cold and bewildered veins?

‘Rarely,’ she conceded with an answering shrug, not caring whether he believed her or not.

Every instinct in his body was clamouring at him to get the hell out. Telling him that here lay danger, a hot and inexplicable danger far beyond any he had ever encountered. Giovanni had never known a moment’s fear in all his thirty-four years, but in that instant his flesh shivered with trepidation at something quite outside his experience.

And yet he was known for his worldliness—his refusal to be cowed by anybody or anything. So what spell was this witch casting on him? Which honeyed chains were denying him an exit from this enchanted place of hers? His head was ordering him to leave and leave now, even as his body bluntly refused to listen to such requests.

Kate saw the fevered glittering in his blue eyes. Take control, she thought. Take control. She drew a deep breath. ‘What would you like to drink, Giovanni?’ His name felt delicious on her lips—so wickedly bewitching that just to say it flooded her with the unturnable tide of desire.

He had asked for a drink and now that it was offered knew that he must refuse it. And yet, like some disbelieving watcher of his own self, he heard himself murmuring that yes, yes—he would like a glass of wine very much indeed.

And then he lowered himself onto one of the sofas, and watched her while she poured, his eyes following her closely, intensely aware of every movement she made, bewitched by her as he was rarely bewitched by a woman. The little skirt she wore skimmed her thighs as she bent over, drawing attention to the heart-stopping length of her legs.

Knowing that he watched her, Kate willed her hands not to tremble as she slopped red wine into a simple-stemmed glass of crystal and handed it to him.

‘Thank you,’ he said gravely and his pupils grew as dark and as wide as a jungle cat’s as she stood in front of him as though she didn’t quite know what to do next. ‘Aren’t you going to sit down and join me, Kate?’ he murmured.

How could such a mundane request sound like the most erotic invitation she had ever heard? She perched on the edge of the chair opposite him, and wrapped her fingers around the crystal glass.

He noticed the prim way that she had glued her knees together, and a pulse beat deep in his throat. He ran the tip of his finger thoughtfully around the rim of his glass. ‘So what shall we drink to?’

For one mad moment, she thought that she saw humour lurking in the depths of those ocean-blue eyes, but the image dissolved almost before it had appeared and a cold hunger had taken its place once more.

‘Hmm, Kate?’ he prompted silkily. ‘A toast to what?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said tonelessly, thinking that her name could sometimes sound like a hard, shotgun sound, but the way that he curved his lips around it made it sound as soft and as beguiling as a caress. ‘What do you usually drink to in Sicily?’

He smiled, but it was a smile without heart and now, at least, totally without humour. ‘Why, we drink to the same things that people drink to all the world over, cara mia. To health. And to happiness,’ he murmured, and raised his glass to her in a mocking gesture.

Leaving Kate wondering why the toast sounded such an empty one.