The Italian's Baby Bargain: The Italian's Wedding Ultimatum / The Italian's Forced Bride / The Mancini Marriage Bargain

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!