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

Sam read the contemptuous condemnation in the lean, starkly beautiful contours of his face and her lips tightened. ‘Small wonder Jonny didn’t want to come to you for help.’

‘I imagine he knew that I would not hand him a blank cheque and offer him tea and sympathy.’ He flashed her a cold smile. ‘Or was it hugs and kisses?’

‘He doesn’t want my hugs and kisses.’

Alessandro looked at her mouth, so soft, lush and inviting, and wondered how any man worthy of the name could not want to enjoy them. If Jonny wanted to keep his teeth intact he’d better carry on not wanting, he mused grimly. If he had suspected for one second that Jonny harboured any inappropriate feelings for Samantha he would already have taken action.

‘Presumably if he did you would not be in my bed.’

She looked at his mouth, thought about it on her skin, and thought, I would be in your bed if I had to crawl there! ‘I’m not in your bed.’

Alessandro’s eyes slid from hers as Sam followed the direction of his gaze to the tumbled quilt she had hastily pulled across the bed when she had realised who was ringing the doorbell. The colour flew to her cheeks.

His voice dropped to a sexy rasp. ‘That could easily be fixed.’ He accompanied this with the sort of raw, hungry look that stripped her nerve-endings bare and caused goosebumps to break out like a rash on her overheated skin.

Making contact with the sizzling heat in his sensational eyes, she felt her anger and resistance melting faster than snow in July. Gritting her teeth, she clung to the last shreds of her resentment, reminding herself that this relationship was too one-sided.

‘That’s my bed.’

‘Does it matter whose bed it is?’ Alessandro responded impatiently—because he could think of very little else but her legs wrapped around him as she lay soft and warm beneath him…or maybe on top…?

‘I’ve never been in your bed.’ Sam’s voice went cold as she added bitterly, ‘I’ve never been in your bedroom, or even in your home.’

Alessandro had been scrupulously careful to keep her well away from anyone who knew him. She didn’t even know the location of his London home.

‘Which is fine by me,’ she assured him breezily. ‘I wouldn’t want to meet any of your friends.’ And it was painfully obvious he didn’t want any of them meeting his bit on the side.

Alessandro looked disconcerted by the acrid observation. ‘What are you talking about?’

Meet his friends…? Their casual arrangement, which he was finding increasingly unsatisfactory, meant they spent precious little time together as it was. Having his friends monopolise her time? Sure, he was really going to do that!

‘I’d probably have as little in common with them as I do you.’

The stubborn, tight-lipped contention caused his taut jaw to tighten another notch. ‘You have met Smithie.’

Sam’s expression softened slightly as she thought of Alessandro’s ex-nanny. ‘But she’s not like your other friends.’

He raised an eloquent brow. ‘As you have never met them, how would you know what my friends are like?’

Sam’s eyes narrowed with dislike on his lean face. ‘Not everyone considers me such a social liability.’

‘Social liability…!’ he echoed. ‘Why do you insist on putting words in my mouth?’

‘I don’t!’ she protested mutinously. ‘It’s obviously what you’re thinking.’

A hissing sound of frustration escaped through his clenched teeth. ‘Fine!’ he said, flinging up his hands in a very Latin gesture of irritation. ‘I will arrange a dinner…no, I will arrange a reception, and introduce you to everyone I know. Will you be happy then? Or would you like me to invite a camera crew from one of those magazines that specialise in glossy spreads of such things into my home? We can be pictured lounging beside the pool and gush about how inseparable we are…will that make you happy?’

His biting sarcasm stung. ‘It would make me sick.’

‘Then, you see, we do have something in common after all. I value my privacy, and I thought you felt the same way.’

What he valued was his freedom. ‘Don’t glower at me that way. I’m not Jonny.’

His expression darkened. ‘You know, I am sick of the sound of that name.’ An expression of brooding discontent settled on his lean features as he thought about the younger man. ‘I still don’t understand why, if he needed money, he didn’t come to me?’

‘You are Kat’s brother—the poor, deluded girl thinks you’re perfect…Jonny is afraid he’ll look a wimp by comparison with her marvellous brother.’ Her expression left no doubt that she didn’t share the younger girl’s opinion.

‘Nonsense!’

The way he brushed aside her explanation made Sam’s general crankiness morph into genuine anger. ‘That’s so typical of you. If you don’t want to hear something you just pretend it isn’t so. But ignoring it doesn’t make it any less the truth. The truth is you make Jonny feel incompetent and second best.’

‘He is incompetent, and also boring—I have no wish to talk about him any longer.’ If he didn’t get her into bed some time in the next ten seconds he was going to lose his mind…although it was always possible he had already lost it. A swift mental review of his recent behaviour brought a self-derisive twist to Alessandro’s lips.

Sam flung up her hands. ‘See—you can’t help yourself!’ she exclaimed.

Alessandro remained unmoved by her dramatic hand-waving. ‘I thought you set great store by honesty?’ But then I used to think the same about myself, he thought, considering his recent self-deception.

Damn the man—he always had an answer. ‘So, if he had come to you, what would you have done…?’

‘That depends. But I certainly wouldn’t have thrown good money after bad.’

‘You’d have let him go under?’ she accused, shocked by his unapologetic admission. ‘But that amount of money is absolutely nothing to you!’ she protested, clicking her fingers to underline her point. ‘My God, Alessandro, you’re so callous.’

‘I’d have told him to cut his losses and find something he wants to do. He is clearly doing something he neither enjoys or is suited to. I would have told him to find something he can be passionate about.’

‘You make it sound so easy, but Jonny isn’t like you…’

His jaw clenched. ‘You wish me to emulate your hero…?’

‘There’s no need to be stupid. Jonny is not my hero.’

Something flickered at the back of his dark eyes. There was a short, dense silence before he added huskily, ‘And am I?’

The question threw Sam totally off her stride. ‘Stupid? Or my hero…?’ She angled an uncertain look at his face and discovered nothing from his shuttered expression. Did he want to be her hero? It seemed pretty unlikely.

‘My hero would display a little bit of faith in me—not to mention have some respect for my views,’ she retorted, avoiding a direct answer. ‘But actually I don’t think I need a hero. Actually, I don’t think I need a lover.’

If the moment of shocked silence that followed her announcement had lasted another micro-second longer Sam would have retracted it. Only it didn’t.

‘You wish me to leave?’

Of course it might have been possible to retract her reckless words even then, if he had acted for a moment as if he gave a damn one way or the other. But he just stood there, looking remote in the way only he could, so she dug herself a little deeper and said, ‘Well, there doesn’t seem much point in you staying, does there?’

‘I will not impose on you any longer,’ he said, looking so stiff and starchy she almost expected him to click his heels!

She felt numb with shock and disbelief as he walked out of the door, but still managed to scream a defiant, ‘Good riddance!’ at the top of her lungs, before bursting into noisy, emotional sobs.

She eventually convinced herself that she was better off without him.