Mediterranean Tycoons: Tempting & Taken: The Italian's Runaway Bride / His Inherited Bride / Pregnancy of Revenge

‘Basta. Enough.’ This farce had gone on long enough. Report him, indeed! Gianfranco saw her flinch, and determinedly forced himself to lower his tone. ‘Well, Kelly McKenzie, I am not going to hurt you; I have never forced a woman in my life and I am not going to start with you. Understand?’ She looked up into the dark attractive face, and wanted to believe him. ‘Now, I am going to let go of you and we are going to sit up and discuss this mistake like two rational human beings. Agreed?’

She nodded, every muscle in her body tensing in anticipation of escape. The next moment he let go of her wrists and sat up, but before she could even move he had placed a strong arm around her slender shoulders and hauled her hard against him.

‘Neither am I a burglar,’ he continued quietly. ‘So sit still and listen.’

She didn’t have much option, with his hands linked in front of her, trapping her in the cage of his arms. But, with the imminent danger of rape fading from her mind, Kelly began to recover some of her usual feisty temperament.

‘So you make a habit of wandering around other people’s gardens with an iron bar?’ She turned her head and arched one delicate eyebrow sardonically. Did the man take her for a complete idiot? she wondered. But to her surprise he started to chuckle, a deep, throaty sound that did uncomfortable things to her pulse rate again.

‘Ah, Kelly, now I understand. I know Carlo Bertoni. I borrowed the tyre iron from him to fix a wheel on the boat trailer, down at the marina. I came around today to return it.’

She had never mentioned her employer’s name and yet this man knew it, and she also knew Signor Bertoni kept a boat in the marina. Kelly almost groaned out loud. Such a simple explanation, but she had jumped to the worst possible scenario. Her own father had always used to tell her she had too much imagination for her own good. This time she had surpassed herself. The man spoke English but with an Italian accent. Obviously he must work at the harbour in Desenzano, and as he continued she felt the colour rise in her face.

‘The security gate was open so I called at the door, and when no one answered I walked around the back with the intention of leaving the iron on the terrace. I didn’t want to take it back with me, because I have another call to make further around the lake at Bardolino. That was until I saw this wild woman come flying at me like a circus tumbler and she immediately accused me of being a thief.’

‘Oh, my God! I am sorry.’ Kelly swivelled around, raising very relieved sparkling blue eyes to his. ‘So you’re not a thief but a sailor, and you work at the port in town.’

Gianfranco’s lips quirked at the corners in the briefest of grins; he had never met a woman in his life before with the ability to jump to conclusions so readily. It crossed his mind to correct her but, looking down into her surprisingly guileless face, and lower to the soft thrust of her breasts, he remembered his earlier decision to have some fun. Plus, it still rankled she had floored him so easily.

‘Yes, I do sail, and I have been working on a boat all morning.’ He didn’t lie, but neither was he telling the truth.

‘I suppose this is the busiest time of year here on Lake Garda, what with all the tourists. Then, of course, there is the big race next week—the contestants come from all over the world, I understand.’ Her employer was going to sail in the twenty-four-hour race. ‘I suppose that is how you speak such good English.’ Kelly was babbling, she knew, but she was so relieved he wasn’t a criminal, just an ordinary person like herself. Now no longer afraid of him, she suddenly had a terrific urge to simply relax in the curve of his arm.

‘Maybe,’ he said with a smile, his dark brown eyes glittering as they met her trusting blue. ‘But allow me to introduce myself. Gianfranco…’

‘How do you do, Signor Franco?’ Nerves and a racing pulse made her jerk out her hand, a tentative smile illuminating her lovely face. ‘May I call you Gian?’

‘Gianni. I prefer Gianni.’ And, with her hand swallowed up in his, he dragged her to her feet. ‘So, Kelly, no more misunderstandings. Friends…as you English say, shake on it.’

Very formally they shook hands, but she could see the dancing lights in his deep brown eyes and she chuckled. Then she laughed out loud; the strength of his handclasp, the slight calluses she could feel against her soft palm, obviously from manual labour, convinced her he was telling the truth. ‘I can’t believe I thought you were a robber,’ she spluttered, and then the spluttering stopped as he drew her close into the long length of his body.

‘A kiss to seal our friendship.’ And his dark head swooped down, his mouth claiming hers in a long, tender kiss.

When he finally eased her away from him she was trembling, bemused; her dazed blue eyes sought his, and as she watched his heavy-lidded eyes narrowed, masking his expression, and just for a second she wondered if she had accepted his explanation a little too easily.

‘I am afraid I have to leave in a minute, but, now we have established we are friends, will you have dinner with me tonight? Or will Signor Bertoni object?’ Gianfranco asked lightly, tucking her hand under his arm and leading her slowly around the side of the house.

‘I’d love to,’ Kelly accepted with alacrity. ‘I have the next week free, because Signor Bertoni and his wife and son Andrea have gone to visit his parents in Rome.’ Her tongue was running away with her, she knew, but with his fingers linked with hers, and her arm pressed against his side, a tingling sensation sizzled through her whole body; she felt as if she had been plugged into an electric socket. The sudden sensual shock to her system was something completely outside her experience.

‘How old are you?’ Gianfranco interrupted her rambling explanation, glancing down at the beautiful but nervous girl at his side with some amusement. He was far too astute not to recognise that her feverish response to his kiss had shocked her more than it had shocked him. Even so, he hadn’t felt such an instant powerful attraction to a woman in years. She obviously did not have vast experience of the male sex, and it would be his pleasure to expand her education. He slashed her a smile, and felt a brief twinge of guilt; she didn’t look much more than a teenager.

‘I’m twenty-one.’ Kelly beamed up at him. ‘Why, how old are you?’

‘Thirty-one—probably too old for you.’

‘Not at all,’ Kelly denied quickly. ‘Judy is twelve years younger than Signor Bertoni, and they are very happily married. In fact, she would do anything for him. That is why I am here on my own. Judy likes to impress her in-laws by looking after her son herself when she visits them.’

Kelly had no idea how much she was giving away by her announcement, but to the man at her side it was a warning. Kelly McKenzie was not the type for a brief fling. She clearly believed in marriage and happy-ever-after and he knew he was on dangerous ground. But, looking down at her animated features and her luscious body, Gianfranco squashed his doubts. He wanted her, and he was a man who always got what he wanted…

Eight o’clock in the evening and Kelly’s first surprise was Gianni’s arrival on a large roaring motorbike. They dined on baked lake trout, sitting on the terrace of a small trattoria in a tiny village high up in the mountains. Far below them, the dark waters of Lake Garda shimmered in the moonlight, a perfect setting for a romantic meal.

It was well after midnight when they took their leave and got back on the bike. Kelly wrapped her slender arms around him, clasping her hands together at his waist and clinging tightly to him as he expertly manoeuvred the motorbike along the winding road back to Desenzano.

Handing Gianni back the crash helmet he had insisted she wear, Kelly was suddenly deflated that the evening was almost over. She looked up at the house and then back to Gianni. Should she ask him in? But it wasn’t her house, and she had only just met him. ‘Thank you for a lovely evening,’ she began formally, but Gianni solved her problem by placing the helmets on the seat of the bike and drawing her slowly into his arms.

‘The pleasure was all mine,’ he husked softly, ‘and, if you will permit me, I have a few days’ holiday and I would like to spend them showing you around the lake.’

‘Yes, please,’ she agreed breathlessly, completely bemused by the slumbering sensuality in his dark eyes, and when he bent his head and kissed her her fate was sealed. He was everything she had ever wanted, dreamed of, she realised, and nothing else mattered in the world but to be in his arms, where she just knew she belonged.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_e7e27653-91c4-5878-80f4-d7a41ea32316)

THE next four days they spent touring on the motorbike to some of the lesser-known beauty spots. Places that only the locals knew, according to Gianni.

Kelly was fascinated and thrilled in turn; they laughed and teased, and talked. She discovered he lived on the other side of Desenzano, with his mother; his father had been dead for some years. It made sense because Kelly knew that the other side of the marina was the old town, so obviously Gianni was a local, and it was quite usual for an Italian male to live at home until he married.

Every day that passed her passion for Gianni grew, until finally she admitted to herself she was in love for the first time in her life.

Kelly lay flat on her back on the blanket Gianni had provided for their picnic. It was a beautiful spot—a small grassy clearing on the edge of the lake. They’d had to ride the bike through the trees to find it. But Gianni had assured her they were not trespassing. Slipping off her shorts and shirt to reveal a tiny blue bikini, she’d run into the cool water of the lake with Gianni chasing her. She could still feel the imprint of his large nearly naked body against hers as he had wrapped two strong arms around her and his firm mouth had closed over hers to kiss her breathless.

She turned her head slightly. Gianni was lying beside her, one arm outstretched and the other loosely curved around the top of her head. She watched the slow rise and fall of his mighty bronzed chest with helpless fascination. They had eaten lunch, fresh bread, a whole roast chicken, and fruit and cheese. Now he looked as if he was asleep and she could admire him to her heart’s content.

Her eyes wandered with awe over his sinfully sexy body—tanned, with a smattering of soft black body hair over his chest arrowing down beneath the wicked black trunks that cupped his sex and not much more. She was beginning to regret not asking him into the house that very first night, because the next day Marta had returned and so now she couldn’t, and she ached for him with fervour she could barely control.

Restlessly she sat up. Judy had called this morning—they were coming back the next day, Saturday, and her freedom to meet Gianni would be seriously curtailed. Helplessly her eyes strayed back to the man at her side and she frowned.

‘Why the frown?’ Gianni queried lazily, lifting heavy-lidded eyes to hers.

She had thought he was asleep and, catching the dark gleam in his slumbrous eyes, she knew he had been aware of her watching him, and liked it. Her heart jumped, and her nipples tightened against the brief cotton covering in unwitting response.

Drawing her knees up to her chin, and wrapping her arms around them, hiding as much of her body as she could, she fixed her eyes on the lake and said, ‘The family are coming back tomorrow.’ She had no real reason to be afraid their relationship would end simply because her brief holiday was ending. But she was… ‘This is the last day of my holiday, I suppose,’ she said with a brief attempt at a smile.

‘Then we must not waste it,’ Gianni drawled huskily, and, reaching up, he caught her shoulders and tumbled her round and down on top of him, his mouth finding hers with unerring accuracy. ‘Open your mouth,’ he husked against her lips, but he did not need to ask as she was more than willing.

Gianni’s strong hands swept down the length of her slender body, shaping her waist and hips, her thighs, and trailed back up, one to settle on her buttocks, the other to inch up over her breast. His fingers slipped beneath her bikini top, his thumb grazing over one pert nipple, and she gasped into his mouth as her breast hardened at his touch. She felt his great body’s instant reaction, and instinctively she straddled him, wanting his masculine hardness at the most sensitive part of her. She squirmed on top of him, only two bits of cloth separating her from the possession she ached for.

‘Dio, I want you,’ Gianni rasped. ‘I have to have you.’ He swallowed a groan.

She was all fire and light in his arms; the provocative sexiness of her incredible body moving against him made him dizzy with a raw, primitive desire he could barely control. It was years since he had made love to a girl out in the open, and he knew he should not do it now. He was a well-known man, the lake was full of boats, perhaps even paparazzi, which was the last thing he needed. He’d never realised until the last few days how difficult it was for lesser mortals to find somewhere to take a woman to bed. He should stop this now. But as he felt her breast swell into his hand, the soft, slightly tentative stroke of her tongue on his throat, he was lost.

Gianni rolled her over onto her back and nudged her thighs apart to settle himself in the cradle of her hips, his hands seeking the halter-neck of her top. He wanted to feast on her beauty, to touch and taste every delectable inch of her. But first his mouth angled over her pouting lips in a kiss of wild, hungry passion. Then he heard it…

Suddenly Kelly found herself staring up into the bright sun glinting down from a clear blue sky. Gianni had leapt up, a string of what had sounded very like curses escaping from his mouth in a low, furious undertone.

She sat up. Gianni was striding to the edge of the trees, where a much older man stood with a shotgun over his arm. She couldn’t hear what was said, and in any case she was too embarrassed. She hadn’t heard the other man approach. Thank heaven Gianni had or the poor old fellow might have got the shock of his life.

Horribly embarrassed by what had nearly happened, she jerked to her feet. Never mind what Gianni had said, she just knew they must be trespassing, and they had been caught. Panic-stricken, she began bundling everything together, visions of languishing in an Italian jail leaping into her mind.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Gianni muttered furiously under his breath, swinging around and striding back to pick up his shorts and shirt and pull them on.