Italian Attraction: The Italian Tycoon's Bride / An Italian Engagement / One Summer in Italy...

‘Excuse me!’ She couldn’t work out if he was teasing her or not but she wasn’t going to let him get away with that. ‘I know loads of English people who marinate their meat beforehand and produce wonderful results.’

‘This is good.’ He nodded gravely. ‘You are restoring my faith in the nation’s culinary expertise after my experience at Roberto’s.’

‘Ah, but Roberto is Italian,’ Maisie pointed out triumphantly. ‘So, if you’re basing your judgement of our barbecues on him, that’s flawed reasoning. It should be me that’s saying I have my doubts about Italian barbecues, surely? Not that I think Jackie’s father is a bad cook, far from it,’ she added hastily. ‘He’s great, as it happens.’

‘But not at the English barbecue.’ His face was unsmiling but the greeny-blue eyes were wicked.

‘Not at any barbecue,’ she corrected severely, trying to ignore how sexy he looked and how the fluttering action in the pit of her stomach was gathering steam.

‘Right. Point taken.’

‘Anyway, how is your father, exactly?’ said Maisie. ‘You mentioned it was a bigger operation than expected.’

Blaine nodded. ‘He was lucky they brought the operation forward,’ he said quietly. ‘Too many years of rich eating and no exercise had clogged up his veins, arteries, valves.’ He shook his head. ‘I’d been telling him for years to get checked out. Hell, he has enough money to get the best medical care for the rest of his life and not worry about it. To cut a long story short, the blood circulation to and from the heart had clogged up to the point where it had almost stopped. He could have had a major heart attack at any moment. But perhaps this was meant to reunite my father and Roberto? Who knows? Certainly, hearing them talk before the operation, I realised for the first time my father was as much to blame for the quarrel as Roberto. More so, probably.’

Maisie nodded, relieved he had come to that conclusion.

‘And you? Can you manage the animals without assistance?’

‘There’s not really anything to manage. To be honest, I feel an absolute fraud that I’m being paid for this. I would much prefer we forget about that. Your mother has paid for my tickets and everything’s settled in England; this is like a holiday to me.’

He frowned. ‘We had an arrangement, did we not?’

‘But that was before I came here, before I met your mother and everything. I don’t want any more money.’

The beautiful eyes had narrowed on her face and Maisie was finding it extremely uncomfortable. If she had known he was going to be here she would have made a little effort—put on some mascara at least. It didn’t help that he was as immaculately turned out as usual and looked good enough to eat. He was wearing a thin pale coffee-coloured shirt today and she could see a dark shadow over his chest denoting black body hair. It did something peculiar to her own body she could well have done without with that piercing gaze fixed on her.

‘You are a very unusual young woman. I thought this when we first met, but on further acquaintance I find you more so.’

His voice had been soft but Maisie stared at him warily. Unusual as in nice, or unusual as in weird? she wanted to ask. She didn’t, though—he might give the wrong answer.

‘And you do not realise this, do you? You do not understand your own worth. This, of course, is part of your charm but also your undoing, I feel.’

Maisie’s train of thought had become so tangled she didn’t know what to say. She stared at him dumbly as he stood up and came to kneel in front of her, his eyes on a level with her wide brown ones.

‘It is this quality in you that draws weak characters like this Jeff person to your strength. Do you know what I mean?’

Maisie shook her head. At this moment she wasn’t even sure who Jeff was, not with Blaine so close she could smell that delicious aftershave again, and, very faintly, hospitals.

Blaine smiled, a sexy quirk of his slightly uneven mouth. It was a fabulous mouth, Maisie thought feverishly. Magnificent. It was coming closer …

She gave herself up to the utterly mindless thrill of his kiss. His mouth was firm and warm and he kissed her slowly and deeply, taking his time. It was the sort of kiss she had dreamed about when she was a spotty schoolgirl, before she had grown up and realised you couldn’t believe everything you read in lurid novels under the bedclothes by the light of a torch.

It didn’t last long enough. When he drew away and rose to his feet Maisie almost cried out in protest, before, that was, she realised he must have heard Liliana’s heels clicking on the wooden floor of the hall. The next second the housekeeper’s head popped round the sitting room door. ‘Dinner is ready,’ she said brightly, her face portraying the fact that whatever reassurance Blaine had given her about his father had worked. ‘And it is your favourite,’ she added to Blaine. ‘You must have known I was making carpaccio tonight, sì?’

‘Liliana, I always live in the hope you are making carpaccio,’ Blaine said lazily.

Maisie stared at him. He was quite unaffected by a kiss that had rocked her down to her toes. How could he just stand there like that, all relaxed and smiling?

When he offered her his hand in the next moment she ignored it, standing up and preceding him out of the room as she said to Liliana, ‘I hope you’ve saved enough for yourself?’

Liliana made a very Italian sound, midway between a clicking of the tongue and a grunt in the back of her throat. ‘Sì, sì,’ she said, clearly impatient. ‘Now come and eat.’

Blaine had brought the bottle of wine through with him but, although he poured her another glass, Maisie noticed he only helped himself to the jug of water on the table. She felt acutely ill at ease as she sat at the vast dining table, which Liliana had laid with two places, one at the head facing the door and the other to its left. She would have much preferred the less formal breakfast room but she knew Liliana would have been horrified if she had even suggested such a thing. The Italian housekeeper was traditional to her last breath. But the heavy silver cutlery, fine linen napkins and beautifully set table complete with a small bowl of fresh flowers all added to her embarrassment. This felt too much like a date.

The carpaccio—a dish of paper-thin slices of fillet steak garnished with fresh egg mayonnaise and finely slivered parmesan—was delicious, as were the accompanying vegetables, but Maisie was finding it difficult to eat. She was acutely aware of Liliana standing at Blaine’s elbow, watching him with a benign smile on her face as he took his first couple of mouthfuls.

‘Excellent.’ He smacked his lips as he turned to the little housekeeper. ‘No one makes carpaccio like you, Liliana. You truly have the touch of an angel.’

Liliana smiled a satisfied smile, practically purring like a cat as she left the room.

‘A little over the top, don’t you think? The touch of an angel?’ Maisie didn’t know why she was being bitchy, but his complete refusal to be stirred by that mind-boggling kiss had something to do with it.

Blaine paused in his eating, taking a sip of the iced water before he said quietly, ‘When Liliana first came to work for my parents in the months before I was born she was recovering from a mental breakdown. It was the result of watching her husband and six children die in a fire caused by the atrocious electrical wiring in the slums where they lived in Naples. It took a long while for her to become the woman you see now, and beneath the black mourning clothes she wears my mother informs me she is heavily scarred from her attempts to rescue her family from the flames. She was returning from her night cleaning job when the accident happened. She has always been completely devoted to my parents and to me. Angel is not too high a praise, I think.’

Maisie swallowed the lump in her throat; she had never felt such a worm in the whole of her life. ‘I’m sorry.’ She blinked hard. ‘I always did have a big mouth.’

Blaine gave the flicker of a smile. ‘It is a beautiful mouth and just the right size,’ he said softly, his eyes touching her in such a way that she felt weak.

She stared at him. She didn’t understand what was happening to her and if it was anyone else explaining to her how they felt, she would tell them to take a long cold shower and act their age. Perhaps that was the trouble? she thought in the next moment. She was twenty-eight years of age and she had never been bedded. Maybe that was what this was all about?

She tore her gaze away from his and gulped at her wine. ‘Liliana’s a love, I can see that,’ she said when she came up for air. ‘And this does have the touch of heaven about it.’ She ate a mouthful of food and closed her eyes in appreciation. When she opened them again his face was an inch from hers and he wasn’t smiling any more.

‘Poor mixed up little girl,’ he said, very softly. ‘Forget him. He isn’t worth it.’

She didn’t like to tell him he was on the wrong lines if he was talking about Jeff. She exhaled slowly. She wanted him to kiss her again, so badly it actually hurt. Which meant she had to be the most flighty female in the world, didn’t it? She had only been an ex-fiancée for a few weeks; it wasn’t even decent to start fancying another male so fast. And as she would have sworn on oath a week or two ago that it would take months, if not years, to get over Jeff, it was also a bit scary too. She swallowed hard. ‘Your carpaccio is getting cold.’

This time his warm mouth just skimmed her lips before he settled back in his seat. ‘We will talk of other things,’ he declared firmly. ‘Your childhood. Tell me about that. Were you a happy child?’

Actually, for most of the time she had been horrendously miserable. Her face must have told him something because his expression changed. ‘Not a good subject? Then that can wait. For now I will tell you about my childhood, sì? Which was happy. And later we will have coffee on the veranda where it is dark and easier to talk and you can tell me about your childhood.’

She didn’t argue. She couldn’t. The dark and easier to talk bit had seen to that.

By the time they walked out on to the veranda Maisie knew a lot more about Blaine Morosini, but nothing which told her about the man, only the child he had been. She knew he had swum every day with his friends as a child on Marina Piccola’s beach, which had involved a descent of two hundred steps; that he’d often gone out in a fishing boat with a pal whose father was a fisherman and that the fish they had caught had been baked over an open fire in a small bay only the locals knew about. He’d had his own chestnut mare, which had since died of old age, had learnt the piano and classical guitar and was a black belt in judo. Holidaying abroad with his parents meant he’d seen more countries than she’d had hot dinners, and he spoke several languages. He had been free and happy and had had everything a child could want. But he hadn’t mentioned Francesca who, according to Liliana, had been his childhood sweetheart and therefore part of his life at that time. Neither had he spoken of his years since leaving university, when he had taken over the family business.

Maisie sat down in one of the big wicker chairs on the veranda, and once Liliana had bustled away after bringing the coffee she tried to relax. The shadows helped. Blaine had told Liliana not to switch the veranda and garden lights on so the warm darkness all around them was sympathetic to her nerves, which felt as tight as piano wire. She didn’t feel she could refuse to talk about her childhood after he had been so eloquent about his, but she intended to keep it short.

With that in mind, she said, ‘You were very fortunate to be born here. I lived in London from the age of two when my parents moved there from Sheffield. They moved because of my father’s job but my mother never really liked London. It … it wasn’t a happy marriage. My father left when I was eight and went to America. I missed him very much.’

‘Do you still see him?’ Blaine asked softly.

‘He died when I was nine years old. An accident.’

‘And your mother?’

‘We don’t get on; we never have. I’m too much like my father, I think.’

‘Then your father must have been a warm and generous man.’