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

‘Sam doesn’t like the gorgeous Alessandro,’ Emma explained.

Rachel laughed as she expertly wiped excess chocolate from around her son’s mouth. ‘That much I had gathered. Well,’ she conceded, ‘he’s not the sort of man who inspires liking, is he?’ She gave a naughty grin and added, ‘Personally, I think he’s rather sweet.’

‘Sweet?’ Sam echoed, staring at her friends as though they’d lost their minds. ‘He’s not sweet,’ she hissed. ‘He’s a snake!’

Emma and Rachel looked at their normally good-natured friend in amazement. ‘What has the poor guy done to you?’ Emma asked.

Goaded, Sam yelled, ‘The poor guy kissed me!’

Sam registered the identical looks of shock closely followed by delight that spread across her friends’ faces, and with a groan closed her eyes. ‘Pretend I didn’t say that,’ she begged, knowing there was little to no chance of her plea being heeded.

‘You and Alessandro…’ Emma drew a shuddering breath. ‘Wow!’ she gasped enviously. ‘I’m assuming that he is a very good kisser. How could a man who looks like that not be…?’ she concluded logically.

‘He,’ snipped Sam crossly, ‘would be the first person to agree with you.’

Emma looked totally unperturbed by the loathing in Sam’s retort. ‘I sort of thought he would be…I bet he’s something in bed.’

‘Don’t look at me!’ cried a pink-cheeked Sam, flinging up her hands in exasperation as she gazed balefully at her best friends. ‘I’ve no intention of finding out.’

Rachel grinned. ‘Well, I call that mean. You’re a free agent, and what have Emma and I got left except enjoying a sex life vicariously through our friends? And, let’s face it, Sam, so far your love life has not exactly been any compensation.’

‘So sorry,’ Sam drawled. ‘Look, you two,’ she added uneasily, ‘you’re not going to make a big thing out of this, are you? It was nothing…absolutely nothing.’

‘Nothing that’s got you pretty hot under the collar…Oh, all right,’ Rachel placated as Sam gave a frustrated groan. ‘We’ll be the souls of discretion,’ she promised, miming a zipping motion across her lips, as she winked at Emma.

By the time Sam had extracted the spare tyre from her boot she had been supplied with ample evidence that the age of chivalry was dead and buried. The only attention her plight had gained so far had been honks on the horn from several lorries. She had been trying to figure out which way up the jack went for five minutes when a car actually pulled up. Her knowledge and interest in cars was, to put it mildly, limited. The one that had drawn up was big and black and to her uneducated eye looked expensive.

Brushing her drenched hair from her eyes, she peered through a sheet of rain which was falling horizontally…If it wasn’t a man behind the wheel it was a very large female.

Just my luck!

A woman would have been much less likely to dish out patronising stuff about clueless female drivers in this situation, and with a woman she wouldn’t have had to worry about the sleaze factor. Oh, well, she thought, giving a stoical shrug. This was a situation that called for a lot of smiling and teeth-gritting, and if necessary the defending of her virtue…that was if she wanted to get back to town before she drowned—and she did.

And when you thought about it, it was her own fault. If she didn’t want to be treated like a stereotypical helpless female she should have picked the car maintenance evening class and given Italian Summer Cooking a miss.

Knowing your way around a risotto is not going to get you home, Sam…so smile nicely and book in to the next car maintenance class.

‘Hello, there—’ Sam broke off, her jaw dropping as she identified her rescuer. ‘You!’ she ejaculated in disgust.

It was definite. Fate was having a laugh at her expense!

‘This is your spare wheel…?’ Alessandro pulled up the collar of his jacket and with his toe nudged the tyre, where it lay on the ground.

‘Go away!’ Sam snarled from between gritted teeth.

The broad shoulders lifted in one of his inimical shrugs. ‘As you wish.’

Sam watched as he turned and began to walk back to his car. Almost bursting with indignation, she ran after him. ‘You’re just going to leave me like this?’ she yelled.

He stopped and turned. ‘Was that not what you wanted?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘You’re such a creep!’ she declared forcefully, then added, ‘And don’t think I’m not perfectly capable of putting on my own tyre.’

‘Not that tyre.’

‘Yes, that tyre.’

He shook his head and looked so smug that she wanted to scream. ‘That tyre has no tread.’

She looked at him blankly.

‘It is illegal.’

A flicker of uncertainty crossed her face. ‘It looks fine to me,’ she muttered mutinously.

‘It is useless—actually, worse than useless. Because in this weather the only place it will get you for sure is the nearest casualty department.’

‘You’re exaggerating,’ she charged.

He gave another of his magnificently expressive shrugs. ‘It’s your neck.’ Halfway through turning, he swung back. His eyes slid down the pale column of her throat before he added harshly, ‘I suggest, if you feel unable to accept my help, that you ring the nearest garage.’

Sam bit her lip. She knew the admission was going to make her look even more of an idiot than she already did as she fished her phone from her pocket and grunted, ‘My battery is low.’

He released a long hiss of irritation and wrenched open the door of his own car. ‘Get in—I will give you a lift.’

Sam, who had been looking wistfully at the luxuriously upholstered interior, stiffened at the terse invitation. There was a militant glitter in her aquamarine eyes as she released a scornful laugh. ‘You think I’d get into a car with you…?’

‘Don’t you think it is a little late to display caution?’ His nostrils flared as his eyes swept across her upturned features. ‘I find it staggering,’ he revealed, in a voice that suggested he was trying very hard not to yell, ‘that an apparently intelligent female should act with such wanton disregard for her personal safety.’

‘What do you mean?’ No man had a right to look that good with his hair plastered to his skull…but she was forgetting it wasn’t just any skull—it was the perfect variety. God, she thought, it would be so much easier not to loathe the wretched man if you could discover one minor imperfection.

‘Dio…!’ he gritted. Muttering under his breath in angry Italian, he let his head fall back, revealing the strong lines of his supple brown throat. Then, as she stared through the rain and the mesh of her spiky lashes, he dug both hands into his drenched sable hair and pulled it back in a way that sent water streaming down his olive-skinned face and neck.

Sam, unable to tear her eyes from the spectacle—which oughtn’t to have been erotic but was—felt things move deep inside her. Unspecified, but deeply disturbing things. She reluctantly recognised that something far more worrying than the rain was responsible for the drowning, breathless sensation she was experiencing as she watched the water glide over his smooth brown skin.

Alessandro’s head came up, and guiltily her eyes dropped.

Jaw clenched, he glared at her downbent head. ‘You have been standing at the side of a lonely road, fluttering your eyelashes…’

The injustice of this harsh accusation brought her head up. The first thing her distracted gaze lighted on was the silvered drops of rain trembling on the tips of his own preposterously long eyelashes.

Eyelash-fluttering would get him further than it would me, she thought.

‘I haven’t…’ Her voice faded away as her eyes connected with his.

‘And,’ he continued, once she had lapsed into silence, ‘inviting the attention of any psychopathic lunatic who happens to drive by. You either have an unhealthy addiction to danger or you have no sense of self-preservation whatever. I suspect both,’ he concluded grimly.

The awful part was, he had a point. ‘Well, I’d prefer to get into a car with a psychopath than you!’ she blurted out childishly. Then, lowering her eyes, she added in a small voice, ‘Could I use your phone?’