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

His was certainly the very last shoulder she’d choose to cry on, she thought as her glance brushed the broad, well-developed area in question. How many women had made use of those manly shoulders? Or even sunk their teeth into that smooth golden flesh during a moment of heightened passion…?

You didn’t look at Alessandro Di Livio and think, Here’s a man with empathy. You thought, Here’s a man who’s never put a foot wrong in his life…Or a man who inspired women to bite his shoulders? You thought, Here’s a man who has no insight and even less sympathy for the failings of lesser mortals…And maybe the ability to make a woman lose control…?

A flurry of alarm filtered into her guarded expression as she wondered where those maverick thoughts had come from.

Had he heard any of her conversation with Jonny?

Her alarm lessened as she realised that unless he’d been lurking in the shadows for a long time, which didn’t seem likely, he couldn’t know about the cheque burning a hole in her pocket. The most he could have witnessed was a quick hug between friends and a peck on the cheek—so nothing incriminating there.

Sam released a tiny sigh of relief. Jonny’s secret was safe.

‘I’m sorry—I didn’t see you there.’ Her normally sunny smile was on the stiff side, but she quietly congratulated herself for making the effort—even though all she wanted to do was escape from his oppressive presence.

‘Obviously.’

‘Is there a problem?’

Considering the degree of hostility emanating from his lean body, it now seemed laughable that on the occasions when Sam had previously encountered the man she had considered him to have a glacially cold disposition. A man with the coldest eyes she had ever seen. A man totally incapable of spontaneous emotion, or for that matter any emotion that wasn’t clinically calculated.

The nerve jumping erratically alongside his sinfully sexy mouth and the combustible air of barely suppressed fury that was emanating from him now rather suggested that he was capable of doing a lot more than raising his voice. He was certainly raising the hairs on the nape of her neck. She refused point-blank to analyse the things his proximity was doing to any points south of her neck!

His dark eyes meshed with hers. ‘You are the problem.’ And one he was going to sort once and for all.

Sam stared, totally bemused by his aggressive response. ‘Have you been drinking?’

‘No, I have not been drinking. I saw you throw yourself at him.’

Sam shook her head at this harsh addition. ‘Throw…? Who…?’

His dark eyes flicked across her slightly parted lips and his own moved in a moue of distaste.’ Kiss him…’ He smiled cynically as he watched the guilty colour fly to her pale cheeks. ‘There is a name for women who do that to married men.’

This last contemptuous observation and that horrid smile snuffed out the guilt Sam had nursed for the secret she carried in her heart and loosened the firm grip she normally kept on her Celtic redhead’s temper. She trembled with the force of the surge of anger that washed over her as she read the superior condemnation in his face.

If she hadn’t been in the grip of strong emotions—namely the desire to physically remove the nasty smile from his smug face—she might have remembered that it probably wasn’t a good idea to antagonise someone who was in a position to make Jonny’s life uncomfortable. But caution wasn’t part of her plan as, head flung back, she took a step towards him.

The sheer, unmitigated nerve of the man—looking down his nose at her like that. Especially when you considered this was the same person who had refused to deny or confirm the rumours that he was the real reason a high-profile politician and his lawyer wife had split up. He was obviously as guilty as sin! Sam chose to ignore the fact that at the time she had argued with a friend that silence did not equate to guilt.

‘You have something against kissing…?’ she asked, injecting sarcasm into her voice and being rewarded by the expression on his face.

Clean up your own act before you criticise other people, she thought grimly.

‘Is that kissing generally…?’ A finger pressed to the soft indentation in her firmly rounded chin, she pretended to consider this possibility. ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head from side to side. ‘That can’t be right. Because you appeared to have nothing against kissing at that film premiere, when that girl was eating your face.’ The tasteless pictures had been plastered over every tabloid’s front page the next day.

Sam almost laughed. He couldn’t have looked more astonished if one of the pieces of furniture had spoken up for itself. She was dimly aware, somewhere in the recesses of her mind, that the adrenaline rush she was experiencing was responsible for half the things coming out of her mouth. Her inability to back down in the face of warning signs you’d have to be blind not to see was down to her own stupidity.

Her breath coming in short, shallow bursts, she studied his proud, patrician features. Hard disdain and anger was implicit in every intriguing hollow and strong plane. His nostrils were flared and his firm jaw tight, and his golden skin was drawn taut across the angles of his jutting cheekbones.

‘The lady in question was not married.’

That made a change, then. ‘Nor very fussy, it would seem.’

She sniffed, and smiled sweetly in response to his hoarsely ejaculated, ‘Dio mio!’

‘But then some people will endure almost anything to advance their careers. I suppose I’m just lucky that I didn’t need to sleep my way to the top.’

Sam registered the dark glitter visible through the mesh of his long lashes and her stomach took a lurching dive. It was only sheer bloody-minded obstinacy—of which her nearest and dearest said she had been gifted an extra portion—that enabled Sam to maintain eye contact.

‘You are at the top, then, are you…?’ His smile said more clearly than any words that he thought she was lying.

The comment made Sam, normally the most self-deprecating of creatures, who would have been the first to play down her success, stick out her chin and boast boldly, ‘I will be.’ Her long-suffering editor, who was often heard to despair over her lack of drive and ambition, would have stared to hear that. ‘And wherever I am,’ she added, with the confidence of someone who knew a company wanted her to write a TV serialisation of the accident-prone feline she had created, ‘at least I won’t have to rely on my looks to stay there.’

There was a pause as his dark glance moved down her reed-slender figure. ‘That is indeed fortunate.’ Actually, she had the sort of delicate bone structure that would enable her to grow old gracefully. And lily-pale flawless skin. His eyes slid over the graceful length of her slender neck and the line between his brows deepened.

Two can play at that game, mate, she thought, smiling at him through gritted teeth. ‘Nor do I have to worry that people want to be my friend just because of what I can do for them.’

‘I consider myself an excellent judge of character.’

Sam’s malicious smile widened. In a rather perverse way she was almost enjoying this exchange of smiling insults. Of course she would have enjoyed kicking his shins even more, but as she was no longer six the option wasn’t open. ‘Of course you do. But this time you have got it so wrong you’re going to feel very stupid.’

‘I doubt that.’

‘Being able to admit when you’re wrong is a sign of maturity.’

‘A subject you would not know one hell of a lot about.’

Great—so now I’m childish, and I go around kissing married men! Sam, who didn’t like the way his dark eyes were lingering on her mouth, decided enough was enough—even if the verbal tussle was exhilarating. ‘Look, you’ve got it wrong—’

‘I know what I saw.’

His sheer bloody-minded intransigence made her want to scream. ‘And even if I did kiss him, what business would it be of yours?’ Even before she saw his expression she knew that he’d interpret her angry retort as an admission of guilt. Frankly, she was past caring.

‘Katerina is my sister, and I will protect her.’

She gave up trying to prove her innocence and asked, ‘How are you going to stop me sleeping with Jonny?’

‘I think telling him you are mine will have the desired effect.’

He said it so matter of factly that Sam thought at first she had misunderstood him. The uncertainty only lasted a moment. There was no room for misinterpretation in his ruthless smile. Honestly, this man belonged in a different century! Mine, he had said…As though owning someone body and soul was perfectly acceptable.

The idea of surrendering control to a man like Alessandro Di Livio was a concept that made her shudder with horror…Are you so sure it’s horror?

Sam swallowed. ‘I take it you’re not an advocate of political correctness?’ she observed, moistening her dry lips with her tongue. She inhaled and raised her eyes, only to discover his burning gaze was fixed on her mouth. As their eyes connected the blaze of raw hunger in his nailed her to the spot.

Paralysed by a stab of lust so strong she couldn’t breathe, Sam stared up at him. He reminded her of a sleek jungle cat—beautiful, and totally ruthless. She had always considered the claim that danger was attractive a particularly stupid one. Now she knew that she had been very wrong. The fear she had denied feeling moments earlier was now coursing through her veins, along with some primitive stuff she had no intention of ever analysing.

There was no point. None of this was real, she told herself. It was all the result of some freak chain of events—events that were never going to happen again. She was never going to feel this way again. She was going to go home and close the door and everything would go back to the way it had been before Alessandro Di Livio had looked at her as if he wanted to rip off her clothes.

Sam closed her eyes, thought about closing that door, and felt slightly calmer. She might get a new safety bolt fitted…She opened her eyes and pointed out the obvious flaw in his manipulative plan.