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

As she studied him through the spiky sweep of her dark lashes she saw him rake a hand viciously through his hair. As he padded across the room, as sleek and dangerous as any jungle cat, she could hear him muttering under his breath in his native tongue. Having put several feet between them, he turned his head and looked at her.

My God, but he really is magnificent! The tightness in her chest became a physical pain as she watched him.

‘You think I could trust myself to be alone in a car with you?’ The frustration emanating from him was an almost palpable entity in the room.

Sam, not knowing what else she could do or say, shook her head.

His sensual upper lip curled in a grimace of self-derision. ‘Dio,’ he rasped thickly. ‘I can’t trust myself to be in the same room as you!’

It wasn’t until after the door had slammed, hard enough to rattle the hinges and several pieces of artwork on the walls, that Sam, her emotion-whacked body limp, literally crumbled. Tears streaming down her face, she slowly slid down the wall until she sat in a hunched heap of misery on the floor. A sob of titanic proportions rocked her body as her head fell forward into her hands.

Why on earth did you tell him to go?

Sam had no idea how long she sat there. The next thing she registered was strong hands tilting her face upwards and dark eyes filled with concern examining her tear-drenched features.

Alessandro had dropped down onto his knees beside her.

‘Tell me,’ he demanded, his velvet voice roughly imperative. ‘What is wrong?’

‘Nothing…’ she claimed, with tears still streaming down her face. ‘What are you doing here?’ Other than driving me totally out of my mind.

‘Clearly nothing is a lie. I left my jacket.’ His eyes didn’t leave her face as he nodded towards the bed. ‘Now, tell me,’ he coaxed. ‘No, I know,’ he added harshly. ‘And the man is not worth it. I know it seems hard now, but if you can forget…’

‘Forget?’ she shrilled, pulling her face angrily from the protective circle of his fingers with a loud sniff. ‘How the hell am I meant to forget when you’re here.’

He pressed a hand to his chest and looked confused. ‘Me…?’

‘Who else?’ she demanded, rubbing her teary eyes with her balled fists.

‘You were crying before I returned.’

‘Of course I was. You left!’ Her lips started to quiver as a fat tear slid slowly down her cheek. I never cry.

Alessandro dragged a not quite steady hand through his hair and looked mystified. ‘Because that is what you wanted.’

‘My God, are you stupid?’ she yelled, glaring up at him through a shimmer of tears. With both fists she scrubbed the dampness from her cheeks and then, as her eyes slid from his, admitted huskily, ‘I lied.’

‘You lied…?’

She nodded and sniffed. ‘About not wanting you to stay.’

He tensed and leaned back on his heels, his eyes fixed on her downbent head.

‘I didn’t want you to go…’ With a groan, Sam lifted her head, pushing her still damp copper hair back from her smooth forehead as she met his eyes. ‘Well, I did—but I didn’t…’

A muscle in his lean cheek clenched and then clenched again as he fought the impulse to crush her to him. Per amor di Dio! A man would have to be lacking every red blood cell not to respond to the sultry half-scared invitation in those wide-spaced eyes. Despite the fact that his body ached he held himself in check…just.

His seething frustration concealed behind a languid façade, he smiled sardonically. ‘Well, that makes everything as clear as mud.’

Female mood swings were something he had a healthy masculine respect for, but this woman was in a class of her own! He had always prided himself on his self-control, but if she changed her mind again he feared that his control—already tested to the limit—would prove inadequate to the task of walking away. The women he had mutually beneficial arrangements with knew the score; there were no emotional scenes. By contrast, the red-headed Samantha Maguire was a walking three-act drama!

His ironic drawl ignited a flare of anger in Sam. What does he want me to do…? Beg…?

Alessandro watched her white teeth sink into the trembling curve of her full lower lip. He swallowed. Dio mio, it was more than flesh could bear! He had been thinking about that mouth all day, and what he would like to do with it.

Hands clenched at his sides, his thoughts abruptly reversed to the moment earlier that day, when he had witnessed Trevelan kissing her. His primitive desire to choke the life out of the younger man had, he reasoned, been a perfectly legitimate response when the honour of his sister was concerned.

The only problem with that was that Alessandro hadn’t been thinking of Katerina—at least not at that moment. He had seen the other man kissing Sam and his first thought had been, That should be me. His thoughts were running along the same lines at that moment.

Lifting her chin to a belligerent angle, Sam choked bitterly. ‘I thought you were supposed to have a brilliant brain? Do I have to spell it out?’ She heaved an exasperated sigh.

He angled a dark brow as his smoky gaze moved across her face, lingering longest on her pink parted lips, before he produced one of his inimitable shrugs and said, ‘Maybe…’

‘Maybe you’d like me to put it in writing?’ Then there would be permanent proof that she was such a push-over where he was concerned that she was totally shameless. That she was ready to beg and he hadn’t even touched her. If he did touch me… Gulping, she tore her gaze from his long brown fingers. But it was too late. Every nerve-ending in her body was already screaming for attention.

‘Then why did you tell me to go?’

For a bright man, she thought, he could be dense at times.

‘Because you put me on the spot,’ she told him accusingly. ‘Because you made me the one to make the decision when all I wanted you to do was…’

‘What did you want me to do?’

She shrugged and her eyes slid from his. ‘Kiss me, I suppose.’

‘If you wanted to be kissed, telling me you weren’t interested probably wasn’t the best clue.’

‘Well, I didn’t actually know how much I wanted you until you walked away.’

The dark colour scoring his chiselled cheekbones deepened as he inhaled sharply. ‘And do you still want me?’

She swallowed and lifted her eyes. The smouldering heat in his made her dizzy, and totally, utterly reckless. ‘Only slightly more than I want to breathe,’ she confessed huskily.

Alessandro took her face between his hands, allowing his thumbs to move across the smooth contours of her cheeks. ‘I think we can arrange for you to do both.’

Breathing hard, Sam turned her head and kissed the open palm of his hand. ‘You do know that you’ve got everything a perfect lover should have…?’

Alessandro stopped what he was doing and studied her flushed face with a fascinated expression. ‘Are you going to tell me what those qualities are?’

‘You’re beautiful—not that you being ugly would be a deal-breaker, exactly,’ she conceded. ‘Because you’ve got bucket loads of sex appeal. And you’re not going to insult my intelligence by pretending to be in love with me or anything…’

‘You don’t want love?’

She was suggesting the sort of mutually beneficial relationship that he favoured—so why did he not feel pleasure, even relief…? Actually, he couldn’t quite pin down the cause for his perverse gut response, and now was not the moment for deep soul-searching. Alessandro, in the grip of a blind, relentless hunger unlike anything he had felt since adolescence, had more urgent matters to consider—like the very real possibility he might go insane if he didn’t bury himself deep inside her in the near future!

‘I thought I did, but you’ve made me look hard at myself.’

He looked startled by the confidence and framed a cautious question. ‘I have…?’