The Medici Lover

The Medici Lover
Anne Mather

Mills & Boon are excited to present The Anne Mather Collection – the complete works by this classic author made available to download for the very first time! These books span six decades of a phenomenal writing career, and every story is available to read unedited and untouched from their original release.  Seduced by the handsome Italian…When Mazzaro di Falcone bursts into Suzanne’s life like a bomb, she knows nothing will ever be the same again. An art lover, Suzanne finds herself seduced as much by the man as by the beautiful treasures of his ancestral Italian mansion! Mazzaro can’t help but feel he has found something infinitely precious when he meets Suzanne. But at Villa Falcone, passions and jealousies pervade the very walls – and a desire as strong as theirs can be infinitely dangerous…

Mills & Boon is proud to present a fabulous collection of fantastic novels by bestselling, much loved author

ANNE MATHER

Anne has a stellar record of achievement within the

publishing industry, having written over one hundred

and sixty books, with worldwide sales of more than

forty-eight MILLION copies in multiple languages.

This amazing collection of classic stories offers a chance

for readers to recapture the pleasure Anne’s powerful,

passionate writing has given.

We are sure you will love them all!

I’ve always wanted to write—which is not to say I’ve always wanted to be a professional writer. On the contrary, for years I only wrote for my own pleasure and it wasn’t until my husband suggested sending one of my stories to a publisher that we put several publishers’ names into a hat and pulled one out. The rest, as they say, is history. And now, one hundred and sixty-two books later, I’m literally—excuse the pun—staggered by what’s happened.

I had written all through my infant and junior years and on into my teens, the stories changing from children’s adventures to torrid gypsy passions. My mother used to gather these manuscripts up from time to time, when my bedroom became too untidy, and dispose of them! In those days, I used not to finish any of the stories and Caroline, my first published novel, was the first I’d ever completed. I was newly married then and my daughter was just a baby, and it was quite a job juggling my household chores and scribbling away in exercise books every chance I got. Not very professional, as you can imagine, but that’s the way it was.

These days, I have a bit more time to devote to my work, but that first love of writing has never changed. I can’t imagine not having a current book on the typewriter—yes, it’s my husband who transcribes everything on to the computer. He’s my partner in both life and work and I depend on his good sense more than I care to admit.

We have two grown-up children, a son and a daughter, and two almost grown-up grandchildren, Abi and Ben. My e-mail address is mystic-am@msn.com (mailto:mystic-am@msn.com) and I’d be happy to hear from any of my wonderful readers.

The Medici Lover

Anne Mather

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Table of Contents

Cover (#u8aa316d2-b671-5833-8563-761e0dcd0253)

About the Author (#uf9a10a56-198c-53da-8bfb-201b8fb14fe2)

Title Page (#u8063e4a0-0fdd-526d-8004-728e5ec55448)

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#u9a202efb-3b62-5954-aadd-72b753994b54)

EVER SINCE the sleek Trident had circled low over the lagoon before making a smooth landing at Venice’s international airport, Suzanne had been concerned. No, even before that, she conceded silently to herself, watching Pietro’s square hands as they lightly circled the driving wheel of his sports car. And concerned did not seem a strong enough adjective either. Disturbed, anxious—even uneasy might have described her feelings better. For as they drew nearer and nearer Pietro’s home, she became more and more convinced that she should not have given in to the impulse to come.

What did she know of his family, after all? That he had no brothers or sisters, and that his father was dead. More than that he had seemed curiously loath to reveal, and had Suzanne not found the opportunity to get out of London at this time to her advantage, she would probably never even have considered his invitation.

And yet wasn’t she being unnecessarily harsh with herself? After all, she and Pietro were good friends, and although she sensed that he was hoping their friendship might blossom into something more emotional, there was no reason why she should blame herself for a situation which had been of his making.

All the same, in other circumstances she would have thought twice, and possibly three times, before committing herself to several days in the company of people she had never met, and who were not of her own nationality. Just because she could speak the language and had spent several months last year as courier for the company she worked for at their hotel in Rimini, it did not mean she understood the people.

She and Pietro Vitale had only known one another six weeks. At present, she was working in London, employed at the company’s hotel in the West End, and her meeting with the young Italian had been quite coincidental. Later, he had told her he was studying at the London College of Art, but that morning, in the little antique shop in the Portobello Road, he had been just another tourist trying to make himself understood to an uncomprehending assistant. Appreciating his difficulties, Suzanne had automatically intervened, forgetting for the moment her own reasons for entering the shop. The dark-skinned Italian had not been unappreciative of the combination of thickly-lashed brown eyes and streaked honey-blonde hair that swung silkily about Suzanne’s shoulders, but eventually, between them, they had made the assistant understand that he wanted to price a bronze figurine of the Virgin and Child. He wanted it as a present for his mother, he said, but it had been too expensive and he had had to decline. Afterwards, it had been natural for him to invite her to have coffee with him, and Suzanne had accepted, more out of sympathy for him than a longing to further their acquaintance. But sitting in the coffee shop only a few yards away, she had seen the sleek Mercedes, which had driven her to take refuge in the antique shop in the first place, cruising by on the opposite side of the road, and had felt more relaxed than she had done for weeks.

Pietro had proved to be an entertaining companion, and when he had suggested a second meeting, she had agreed. If her motives had more to do with the cruising Mercedes and less with a genuine desire to go out with him, she excused herself on the grounds that Pietro had invited her, and would have been disappointed if she had refused.

Even so, going back to the hotel in a cab which Pietro had hailed for her, she had had misgivings, and not until Abdul Fezik came storming into her office late that afternoon had she felt that her behaviour had been justified. Now, at least, she had a genuine reason for refusing the Turk’s persistent invitations, a means to divert his attentions, with luck, towards some other member of her sex. He was a powerful and wealthy man, not used to being thwarted when it came to women, particularly not women who had to work for a living.

Suzanne, however, had had surprisingly little to do with men. From an early age, she had learned that her looks might well prove to be an obstacle in her determination to carve a career for herself. Prospective employers tended to regard attractive girls in one of two ways: either predatorily, or suspiciously; on the one hand seeking the kind of relationship Suzanne was determined to avoid, or on the other, assuming she required employment only so long as it took her to find a suitable husband. The situation infuriated Suzanne, who, having seen her own parents’ marriage break up, had no intention of making the same mistakes herself.

Surprisingly though, since she came to work for the Minotaur Group three years ago, these problems had largely been avoided. Of course, that might be because she had spent so little time, comparatively speaking, in one place. During the past three years she had worked in several different countries, and at twenty-four was considered one of the company’s most successful executives. Nicolai Stassis, the elderly Greek who had founded the organisation, had none of his countrymen’s contempt for women, and judged his staff on their ability, not their sex. That was why she objected so strongly to Abdul Fezik’s chauvinist attitude, his assumption that because she was female, she needed masculine companionship. Pietro—at that time she had not even known his surname—had seemed the answer to a prayer.

But she ought to have known that nothing was ever that simple. Pietro was not a puppet she could pull about at her own convenience, no more than Abdul Fezik could be deterred by the supposed presence of a rival. Fezik was an arrogant man, working in London for his government and living at the hotel, and Suzanne was aware that hardly anything she did went unnoticed. She sometimes wondered when he found the time to attend to his own affairs, so intent did he seem on hers. She guessed what intrigued him, of course. He was a handsome man, if a little inclined to overweight; he had money and position, almost everything a girl in her position might wish for. He couldn’t accept that she did not find him as attractive as he seemed to find himself.

Her relationship with Pietro, however, was not totally one-sided. As she got to know him better, she began to enjoy his undemanding company, his gentleness, his courtesy, his sense of humour. His interest in art stemmed, he told her, from a love of beautiful things, and although he told her little about his home life, she gathered that he knew quite a lot about his own country’s heritage. He was obviously not a wealthy man—his clothes were always clean and serviceable, but they were worn in places, the elbows of his jackets patched with leather. And yet, he had a certain air about him at times which was strangely out of keeping with his appearance, and Suzanne had to curb her desire to question him about his background. It was nothing to do with her, she had told herself on these occasions. No matter how likeable Pietro was, he aroused little but her affection, and a curious sense of compassion for his diffidence.

When he told her he was going home to Italy for ten days at Easter, Suzanne had not immediately considered what his absence might mean to her. In the few weeks they had known one another he had heard about her parents’ divorce and her father’s subsequent death in a motor accident. Her mother had married again, but it was not a happy liaison either, and Suzanne’s contact with the woman who had borne her was limited to occasional lunches when her mother came up from Bristol for a day’s shopping. Since Suzanne’s work often kept her out of the country for months at a time, she could not blame her mother for their estrangement, and nowadays they seemed to have little to say to one another. Annabel moved in a different world from that of her daughter, and had never desired independence as her daughter did.

Nevertheless, when Pietro suggested that Suzanne should come home with him for the holiday, the idea of a family occasion had had some appeal. Granted his family was not her family, but if his mother was anything like Pietro himself then she would no doubt be a charming lady. And she was free for the weekend at least …

Even so, she had demurred, insisting that she could not accept such an invitation after such a brief acquaintance. Pietro had protested that he could write to his mother and have her invite Suzanne personally, but still she had refused. Apart from anything else, she was not the sort of girl to agree to spend ten days with a young man she knew practically nothing about, however ingenuous he might seem.