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

‘You do what?’

‘I do have physical scars. You just haven’t seen them…yet.’

Threat or promise—whichever it was, the result was the same. Desire clutched low on her belly as she struggled to lock the whimper that fought to escape in her throat.

Do not go there! Sam told herself. The sexual tension crackling in the air was too strong to ignore, but maybe if she didn’t react to it, it might go away…? She turned and stared out of the window, and wondered how much more of this her nervous system could take before she burst into flames!

A few moments later the probability of spontaneous combustion became all the more probable when he observed casually, ‘We need to get a room.’

Chapter Seven

NOW, this she couldn’t let ride.

‘You need your head examined,’ she rebutted huskily. ‘If you assumed that just because I kissed you—’ she gave a mocking laugh and was grateful he had no idea of the images playing in her head ‘—I’m going to sleep with you!’

‘I suggest you wait until you’re asked before you say no.’

The humiliating colour flew to Sam’s cheeks as she turned her head back to the window, cursing her unruly tongue.

‘I’m not saying it won’t happen—’

‘I really couldn’t be that lucky…’ she drawled sarcastically.

Alessandro grinned, but didn’t turn his head. ‘I like to prioritise.’

‘You sweet, spontaneous romantic, you.’

Again he grinned. ‘I had no idea you wanted me to be romantic. I assumed you just wanted me for my body. Seriously.’ He slanted a quick sideways glance at her huddled figure. ‘You urgently need to get into some dry clothes. There’s a place a mile or so down here where I sometimes stay. You can take a hot bath while they dry your things.’

Sam released an incredulous laugh. This high-handed behaviour was clearly par for the course for him. ‘It didn’t occur to you to ask me if I want to go there?’

He looked mildly surprised by the question. ‘Not really.’

‘Do people always do what you tell them?’ she wondered out loud.

‘You would prefer to be wet and uncomfortable?’

Sam, very aware that her saturated clothes were chafing in several places, gritted her teeth. ‘That’s not the point…’

‘On the contrary—it is very much the point. I realise that you would prefer to walk barefoot over hot coals than fall in with any suggestion I make…’

‘It wasn’t a suggestion, it was a fait accompli!’ she snapped.

He angled a dark brow. ‘You noticed?’ He congratulated her. ‘Fait accompli rather makes this conversation pointless, wouldn’t you say? Why don’t you give in gracefully? We can even pretend that it was your idea, if you like.’

Glaring at his smug, patrician profile, Sam lapsed into seething silence as he turned through a pair of big wroughtiron gates. The hotel’s impressive driveway was a mile long, and led through some charming parkland where deer grazed in the fading light.

When Alessandro opened the passenger door Sam, who was staring at the big sprawling half-timbered building they had pulled up in front of, shook her head. ‘You can’t walk into somewhere like this and demand a room for an hour. They’ll think…’

Alessandro gave a sardonic smile. ‘They’ll think what…?’ The malicious amusement glittering in his dark eyes made it impossible for her to maintain eye contact. ‘That we could not contain our mutual lust until we got back to London?’

‘Don’t be disgusting!’ she choked.

‘This display of puritanical outrage might carry more weight with me if you hadn’t tried to rip off my clothes once already today. Perhaps it is me who should be concerned about my reputation?’ he suggested, the gleam in his eyes becoming more pronounced as a fresh wave of mortified colour rushed to her cheeks.

‘Reputation!’ Sam yelled, leaping soggily from the car. Feet crunching on the gravel, she advanced, her small fists clenched. ‘I think your reputation is beyond further blackening,’ she sneered. ‘What has it taken…? Ten years…? Still, I’m sure the effort was worthwhile. I think everyone knows by now that you’re a sleazy, womanising loser! And as for ripping off c…clothes…’ A distracted expression slid into her eyes as the memory of her hands sliding under his shirt and over hard, satiny-smooth skin flashed into her head. It was the wrong time to recall how warm and solid and male…She inhaled and shook her head, reminding him angrily, ‘I’m the one missing two buttons.’

It wasn’t until she saw the direction of his gaze that Sam realised that in pulling open her jacket to reveal the gaping section of her shirt she had also unintentionally revealed a section of smooth, pale midriff. With an indignant squeak she dragged the fabric of her jacket together.

His smouldering eyes locked onto hers, and the simmering silence that stretched between them tore her already traumatised nerves to shreds.

‘Relax—they don’t rent rooms by the hour here. And besides, I keep a suite,’ he revealed casually.

Relax? After what he had just said! Sam almost laughed. ‘You keep a suite…?’ she echoed incredulously. ‘You live in a hotel?’

‘Not live, obviously, but it is useful.’

Sam, who didn’t see how a hotel off the beaten track in rural Cornwall could possibly be useful to a man who spent his time flitting from one European capital to another, looked sceptical. ‘How often do you actually use it?’

‘It varies. Twice…maybe three times…’ He began to look impatient with her interrogation.

‘A month…?’ It seemed shockingly extravagant and wasteful to Sam. But then she wasn’t a millionaire—or was that a billionaire…?

‘A year,’ he corrected, and her jaw dropped.

‘A year!’ She shook her head, unable to disguise her disapproval. ‘That must cost a fortune.’

‘You are lecturing me on fiscal imprudence…?’ His expression suggested the idea amused him.

‘It’s nothing to me how you choose to spend your money. You can burn it for all I care.’

‘If it makes you feel any better, I am joint owner of the hotel…a silent partner.’

Sam looked at his hand, extended in a silent invitation for her to climb the shallow flight of steps that led to the porticoed entrance where a tall figure had emerged from the building. The woman, her grey hair tied back in a smooth knot at the nape of her neck, was wearing a silk shirt and tweed skirt.

‘What are you doing standing there?’ She peered over the top of her half-moon spectacles, subjecting Alessandro to a critical glare. ‘This poor child looks perished.’

To Sam’s astonishment, far from going into one of his haughty freeze-you-with-a-glance routines, Alessandro smiled—the sort of heart-flipping smile that he probably reserved for the select few he genuinely gave a damn about.

The possibility that her own heart was utterly susceptible to the warmth of that smile brought a ferocious scowl to Sam’s face.

She felt a hand in her back, propelling her up the steps, and heard him say, ‘Sorry, Smithie.’

Smithie?

Inside the wood-panelled hallway, which didn’t boast the usual reception desk, it was blissfully warm. The moment she stepped in, even before she had had an opportunity to register that the décor was ‘lived-in country house’, Sam was conscious of the warm, comfortable laid-back atmosphere. Despite the fact that her stress levels were off the scale, she felt some of the tension slip from her shoulders.

While Alessandro warmly embraced the older woman Sam examined her surroundings curiously, conscious as she did so of the loud ticking of a grandfather clock set against the wall and of the distant murmur of conversation interspersed by the occasional laugh somewhere close.