The Italian Match

She shook her head, courage lost. ‘Forget it.’

Leaving him standing there, she ran lightly up the stairs to head for her room. The situation was becoming increasingly difficult. If it weren’t for her lack of transport, she would be tempted to abandon the whole idea and return home. She was vitally attracted to a man who might just be a close blood relation, a man who was making no effort to conceal his objective. Even if there should prove to be no connection, she wasn’t into the kind of casual, ships that pass in the night, relationship that was all Lucius would have in mind.

Despite last night’s refusal, breakfast was brought to her at eight o’clock. Gina ate it out on the balcony, enjoying both the view and the warmth. The sky was so blue, the quality of light a joy in itself. It was possible that her father had viewed the same scene—perhaps even from this very room. Could she really bear, Gina asked herself, not to know for certain?

She went downstairs again with no notion of how she was going to spend the day. Wandering out to the terrace, she found Ottavia stretched out on a lounger beneath an opened umbrella. She was wearing a gold-lamé bikini that barely covered her voluptuous curves, her eyes shielded by designer sunglasses. Her toenails, Gina noted, were painted the same shade of scarlet as her fingernails and lips, the whole effect more reminiscent of the film world, she thought, than Italian aristocracy.

‘Buon giorno,’ she proffered tentatively.

Ottavia pulled down the sunglasses a fraction to run a disparaging eye over the cotton dress Gina had elected to wear. ‘You are quite recovered from your weariness, I trust?’ she enquired, without bothering to respond to the greeting.

‘Quite, thank you,’ Gina confirmed. She felt it necessary to add, ‘The breakfast was very good, but I really don’t expect to be waited on while I’m here.’

‘As you are here at my brother’s invitation, you are entitled to be treated as any other guest,’ came the smooth reply. ‘You realise, of course, how fortunate you are to have gained his support in this affair.’ She didn’t wait for any answer. ‘A word of warning, however. Lucius may pay you some attentions because he is a man and you are attractive to look at, but it means nothing.’

‘In other words, don’t run away with the idea that he might be about to offer marriage,’ Gina returned. ‘I’ll certainly bear it in mind.’

The irony left no visible impression. ‘Good,’ was the only comment.

Her presence wasn’t exactly welcome, Gina gathered, as the glasses were replaced and the head returned to the supporting cushion. She was tempted to stay anyway, just for the hell of it, but there was little to be gained from keeping company with someone who so obviously didn’t want her there.

She had only covered a small part of the immediate grounds earlier. Now would be the right time to take a turn round the other side of the house before the heat became too great for comfort. With several days to fill, and nowhere else to go, she was probably going to be spending a lot of time out of doors. Which in this climate would be no great hardship, she had to admit.

She was crossing the drive when a low-slung sports car came roaring round the bend. Gina leapt instinctively for safety, missed her footing and went down on one knee in the gravel, steeling herself for the impact she was sure was to come. The car screeched to a halt with its front bumper bare inches from her. Spouting Italian at a rate of knots, the driver leapt out without bothering to turn off the engine, a look of concern on his handsome face as he came to lift her to her feet.

‘Inglese,’ Gina said for what seemed like the millionth time in response to what she took to be a spate of solicitous enquiry. ‘Non capisco.’

‘English!’ he exclaimed on a note of surprise.

‘That’s right.’ Gina gave a wry grimace as she eased her knee. ‘Does everybody round here drive like bats out of hell?’

His brows drew together in puzzlement. ‘Bats?’

‘It’s just a saying,’ she explained, regretting the use of it. ‘It means fast, that’s all.’

The frown cleared. ‘Ah, fast!’ Concern leapt once more in his eyes as he caught sight of the trickle of blood running down her leg. ‘You are hurt! Why did you not tell me you were hurt?’

‘I hadn’t realised it was grazed,’ Gina admitted, lifting the edge of her skirt to view the not inconsiderable damage. ‘I thought I’d just knocked it.’

‘It must be cleaned and dressed,’ he declared. ‘Before it becomes infected.’

‘It will be,’ she assured him. ‘Just as soon as I get back to the house. I’m a guest there,’ she added, in case he was in any doubt. ‘Gina Redman.’

‘A friend of the family?’ He sounded intrigued.

‘Not exactly. There was an accident. My car was badly damaged. Lu—Signor Carandente very generously invited me to stay until it’s repaired.’

His lips curved. ‘But of course. Lucius is the most generous of men. I am Cesare Traetta. You must allow me to drive you to the villa.’

‘It’s hardly any distance,’ Gina protested. ‘I might get blood on the upholstery.’

‘If so it will be cleaned.’ He went to open the passenger door. ‘Please to get in.’

Gina wiped away the trickle of blood with her handkerchief before doing so. The soft leather seat cocooned her, its contours designed to hold the body in position. Definitely needed, she thought, as Cesare set the car into motion again with a force that caused the rear wheels to spin. She judged him around Lucius’s age, which made him Donata’s senior by fifteen years, yet the two of them appeared to be on a par when it came to road sense.

They rounded the final bend to come to a further screeching stop outside the house. Switching off the engine, Cesare got swiftly from the car to help Gina from the seat she was struggling to vacate without having her skirt ride up any further than it already had.

‘I think I can manage, thanks,’ she said drily when he made to assist her up the steps. ‘A damp flannel, and I’ll be as good as new!’

‘You are bleeding!’ exclaimed Lucius from the doorway, startling her because she hadn’t seen him arrive. ‘What happened to you?’

‘I slipped and fell on the drive.’ Gina saw no reason to go into greater detail. ‘Signor Traetta was kind enough to give me a lift.’

‘Cesare,’ urged the man at her back. ‘You must call me Cesare.’

She gave him a brief smile. ‘Cesare, then.’ To Lucius she said, ‘I’ll go and clean myself up.’

‘The necessary materials will be brought to you.’ he said. ‘We must be sure no foreign substances remain in the wound.’

‘Of course.’ Gina was fast tiring of the fuss. ‘I can cope.’

‘I am sure of it.’ His tone was dry. ‘Your self-sufficiency does you credit. You will, however, wait for assistance in this matter.’

He took her agreement for granted, indicating that she precede him into the house. Gina battened down her instincts and meekly obeyed. ‘I’m sure you know best,’ she murmured in passing, tongue tucked firmly in cheek.

The dress was not only dirty but torn at the hem, she found on reaching her room. Not beyond repair, she supposed, examining the rip, though she was no expert needle-woman. At any rate, she had plenty of other things to change into, so it could wait until she got home.

Despite instructions, she ran hot water in the bathroom basin and began cleaning off the worst of the mess. The graze was quite extensive, with tiny pieces of gravel embedded in the shredded flesh. Concentrating on extracting them, she was taken unawares when Lucius entered the room bearing a first-aid box.

‘You were to wait until I brought this!’ he exclaimed.

Seated on a padded stool, her foot raised on the bath edge to enable her to see what she was doing, Gina resisted the urge to pull down the skirt she had raised to mid thigh.

‘I hardly expected you to bring it up yourself,’ she said lamely.

Dark brows rose. ‘You think such a task beneath me?’

‘Well, no, not exactly. I just took it…’ She left the sentence unfinished, holding out her hand for the box. ‘It’s very good of you, anyway.’

Lucius made no attempt to hand it over. Placing it on the long marble surface into which the double basins were set, he seized soap from the dish and washed his hands. Gina watched in silence, reminded that she should have done the same before attempting to touch the graze at all.

His presence in the confines of the bathroom—spacious though it was—made her nervous. She found it difficult to control the quivering in her limbs when he took a pair of tweezers from the box and sat down on the bath edge to start work on the gravel.

The hand he slid about the back of her calf to hold her leg still was warm and firm against her skin, his fingers long and supple, the nails smoothly trimmed; she could imagine the way they would feel on her body—the sensual caresses. Her nipples were peaking at the very notion.

Stop it! she told herself harshly, ashamed of the sheer carnality of her thoughts. It might be a long-established fact that women were as capable as men of enjoying sex without love, but she had never followed the trend. From her mid teens she had determined not to settle for anything less than the real thing: the kind of love her mother had known for Giovanni Carandente. The possibility that Lucius could be her father’s nephew was enough on its own to prohibit any notion she might have of relaxing her ideals.

‘I am sorry if I hurt you,’ Lucius apologised as her leg jumped beneath his hands. ‘There are only a few more small pieces to come, and then we are finished but for the antiseptic.’