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

She wasn’t saying being totally gorgeous to look at automatically made a man incapable of fidelity, but it would take a woman who was supremely confident in herself to be able to take the covetous stares of other women in her stride.

The woman who married Alessandro would have to be a supremely confident creature or totally gorgeous—probably both. In short the female equivalent of him.

‘I had a phone call…publisher…’ She shrugged.

Emma looked dissatisfied by her response, but beyond subjecting her friend to an uncomfortably searching look made no further protests beyond, ‘Well, you definitely can’t go without saying goodbye to Paul. When last seen,’ she revealed with a smile, ‘he had retreated with half the other men to the Orangerie. I think they’re talking cricket.’ She rolled her eyes.

‘Lead on,’ Sam said, picking up her handbag and following her friend down the plush carpeted corridor that led to the Orangerie. Emma’s husband, Paul, and half a dozen of the other male guests were indeed there, but they weren’t talking cricket. They were huddled in one corner displaying varying degrees of horror and discomfort as they watched the object responsible for the ear-splitting din that Sam had heard halfway down the corridor.

When Sam had last seen the blond-haired three-year-old he had been enchanting the adults with his sunny smile and a lisping rendition of a nursery rhyme. Now he was lying in the middle of the floor, his red tear-stained face contorted with fury, as he screeched and drummed his heels on the floor.

On seeing his wife, Paul Metcalf hurried across. ‘Thank God you’re here, Emma. It’s Harry. Simon got a call, and he asked me to keep an eye on Harry for a minute.’

‘How long,’ Emma asked, wincing as the toddler hit a high note, ‘has he been like that?’

‘It feels like hours,’ her harassed husband responded dourly.

Emma exchanged glances with Sam. ‘I think he needs his mum. Do you know where Rachel is, Sam?’

Sam shook her head. ‘Shall I go and look for her?’

Despite the fact that Rachel, whose father was the local vicar, was a couple of years older than both herself and Emma, the three girls had always been inseparable. And, unlike many childhood alliances, theirs had not fizzled out when they reached adulthood and went their separate ways. Rachel, who combined a career in banking with being wife to a very dishy New Yorker, had asked Sam to be godmother to Harry, her firstborn. When she had uprooted and followed her husband to the States the previous year both Sam and Emma had visited, but had been delighted when Simon’s firm had decided to resettle them in London.

Paul caught Sam’s arm. ‘No, you stay here. I’ll go,’ he offered eagerly, before his wife told him very firmly to stay put.

Sam paused before going to console her godson, her amused glance sliding around the group of men. ‘Didn’t it occur to any of you lot to do anything for the poor little mite?’

‘Have you seen the state of him?’ her indignant host demanded, speaking on behalf of the other men present. ‘There is enough chocolate cake on that kid to feed the five thousand, and I’m wearing my best suit. And,’ he added, eyeing the flailing legs, ‘the “poor little mite” has a kick like a mule.’

‘Wimp!’ his wife retorted scornfully.

‘This situation obviously calls for the female touch,’ Paul observed with dignity. ‘Either that or a good child psychologist,’ he added under his breath.

Emma caught his arm. ‘You think so?’ she said. ‘Look at that,’ she invited, venting a loud, incredulous laugh as she nodded towards the prone toddler. ‘He doesn’t seem too bothered about getting his suit dirty. My God—this is marvellous!’

Along with Paul, Sam turned in time to see a tall, elegant figure squat down beside the screaming youngster. She watched in total amazement as Alessandro, balancing on his heels and appearing totally unfazed by the pandemonium or the risk to his designer suit, began to talk casually to the screaming toddler.

‘The man has guts—I’ll give him that.’ Paul’s brows knitted as an expression of horror spread across his face. ‘Our sweet little Laurie is never going to do anything like that, is she…?’

Ignoring her husband’s worried enquiry, her fascinated gaze trained on the man and baby, Emma said knowledgeably to Sam, ‘It’s a cultural thing. Mediterranean men have no problem showing affection to babies and children—unlike our homegrown variety…’ she added, directing a scornful sniff towards her spouse.

Alessandro carried on talking as he loosened the knot on his tie. Sam was too far away to make out what he was saying, but the child obviously could, and it appeared to have an immediate and nothing short of magical effect on the distraught youngster.

‘My God!’ Emma breathed, as the child’s cries became noticeably less strident, then faded totally. ‘What is he saying, do you suppose?’ she wondered in an awed undertone.

The child lifted his tear-stained face towards Alessandro and chuckled.

Sam didn’t respond. For some insane reason, when she saw Alessandro respond to the child with a smile that made him look relaxed and at least ten years younger, she got an empty, aching feeling in the pit of her stomach.

‘Come!’

Responding to Alessandro’s imperious command and to his open arms, the toddler climbed into them without a moment’s hesitation and wound his grubby hands around the man’s neck.

There were several gruff murmurs of appreciation as Alessandro got to his feet.

The genuine quality of Alessandro’s smile became—to Sam’s mind, at least—forced when he noticed her. Sam, the lapel of her criminally unattractive suit clasped in one hand, expelled a gusty breath and tried to act as if every nerve in her body wasn’t screaming.

Beautiful man…baby…the whole thing was so painfully clichéd she would have to be a total idiot to fall for it. But falling she was…Oh, what is wrong with me? I must be one of those women who are only attracted when there’s no chance of their feelings being returned, she decided. Even if in this case they were shallow and lustful. A shrink would have a field-day dissecting my twisted psyche.

‘That,’ declared Emma, walking up to Alessandro and ruffling the toddler’s blond hair, ‘was very impressive. I’m glad I invited you now.’

Alessandro’s dark eyes creased at the corners as his smile warmed the dark depths. Sam, whose nerve-endings were twanging like an overstrung guitar, knew that if he ever smiled at her that way she was in deep trouble. And you’re not now?

‘You weren’t glad before?’

‘You were welcome as Kat’s big brother before, and now you’re welcome because you are a brave and resourceful man who laughs in the face of danger.’

‘It’s always nice to feel welcome,’ Alessandro responded, his dark, heavy-lidded eyes briefly flickering in Sam’s direction.

Sam, her heart thudding wildly in her chest, pretended not to notice.

‘Shall I take Harry?’

Emma didn’t argue when he shook his head and said, ‘Harry would like to find his mum, and if the route should take us anywhere near ice cream this would not be a bad thing.’

Sam looked at the smear of chocolate down his cheek, at the sleek hair ruffled by childish fingers, and her indignation escalated. Alessandro looked so damned relaxed and at ease with a grubby, cranky kid on his hip…How dared he slip out of the hedonistic playboy role she had assigned him?

‘No idea where Rachel is,’ Emma admitted. ‘But as for the ice cream, I’ll get that for you myself…’

At that moment Rachel, wrapped in her habitual air of unruffled serenity, walked into the room. She took in the situation at one glance.

‘I take it from the glazed looks that you have been treated to one of Harry’s grade A tantrums? Goodness, Harry,’ she reproached, as her son wrapped his arms limpet-like around her neck, ‘you’ll put Aunty Sam totally off having children,’ she observed, flashing Alessandro a warm smile as the transfer of grubby child was smoothly completed. She arched an enquiring brow as she lifted her eyes to the tall Italian. ‘It looks like I have you to thank Mr Di Livio…’

Alessandro gave a self-deprecating shrug. ‘Not at all. Harry and I were just becoming acquainted and discovering a mutual fondness for ice cream. Now, if you’ll excuse me…Oh, and ladies…’ the voltage of his smile switched up several notches as he added firmly ‘…it’s Alessandro.’

‘If you don’t have children,’ Emma called after him, ‘it will be a total…no, a criminal waste!’

Without breaking stride Alessandro flung her an attractive grin over his shoulder. ‘I am not married.’

‘Where were you three years ago?’

‘Being cited in a divorce case,’ Sam muttered. Did Marisa Sinclair, who had lost both her husband and her lover, regret her affair? Sam wondered. Or did she consider it a price worth paying?

‘Sam, how could you? I’m sure he heard you,’ Emma remonstrated as the tall, dark-headed Italian vanished from view.

Sam gave a defensive shrug. ‘What if he did? And what do you mean, how could I? You don’t like him.’

Rachel stood looking bewildered by this uncharacteristic display of childish venom. ‘Did I miss something?’