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

‘You thought she was too young to get married?’

‘Do you think at nineteen you should be deciding to commit yourself to one person?’ he demanded scathingly. ‘What were you doing at nineteen?’

She responded unthinkingly to the curious question. ‘I was training to be a teacher.’

‘And would your parents have been happy if you’d turned up at home married to some beach bum?’

‘Jonny was not a beach bum—he was a champion surfer.’

‘I stand corrected,’ he inserted drily. ‘Married to an exchampion surfer.’

‘My parents would have flipped,’ she admitted. ‘But it happened, so you just have to live with it. You know, I think Kat is pretty resourceful—and quite capable of sorting out her own life. It might be easier for her to do that if you weren’t always there, hovering in the background like a bad smell.’ Actually, he smelt pretty wonderful—but she felt the occasion called for a little poetic licence. ‘Don’t you think,’ she asked him gently, ‘that it’s time you let go? Doesn’t Kat deserve the chance to make her own mistakes?’

An expression of blank astonishment spread across Alessandro’s face. ‘You think you are qualified to offer me advice?’

‘Not qualified, maybe,’ she conceded, flushing at his sneering tone. ‘But you asked. I know you have a close relationship with your sister—’

‘You know nothing about it.’

‘I used to wish I wasn’t an only child, but meeting you has made me realise what a lucky escape I’ve had. Let me spell it out. The fact is you are no longer the person she’s meant to turn to for support. Couldn’t you settle for being emergency back-up rather than the main man? Have you any idea,’ she wondered out loud, ‘how intimidating you must be to a younger man?’

‘Intimidating…?’ he echoed, looking bewildered by her contention.

‘What man could compete with the marvellous Alessandro Di Livio?’ she asked, rolling her eyes.

His mobile lips thinned with displeasure. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Looking thoughtful despite his terse tone, he added, ‘It isn’t a competition.’

‘Not to you maybe…’ she inserted drily.

‘I have never interfered in my sister’s marriage.’

Sam stared at him, wondering how on earth he could say that with a straight face. ‘Oh, pardon me. I must have imagined the past…’ she glanced at her watch, her eyes widening ‘…half an hour.’

‘It has felt like longer,’ he gritted.

Under the capacious folds of his jacket, Sam folded her arms across her chest. ‘You’re being nasty because you know I’m right. You really shouldn’t grind your teeth like that.’

She stood and listened in silent admiration as he loosed a flood of very angry-sounding Italian. If tone was anything to go by he seemed to have an extensive knowledge of expletives in his native tongue.

‘If you’re in love with Trelevan surely it would be in your best interests to see his marriage fail?’

The angry colour in Sam’s cheeks deepened. ‘Caring for someone obviously doesn’t mean the same thing to you as it does to me. When you care for someone you want them to be happy.’

‘Care…?’ His lips twisted derisively as he spat the word. ‘I am not talking about caring. I am talking about passion…lust…’

And I so wish you wouldn’t! ‘I think you’re talking about sleazy sex.’

‘And you? What are you talking about? Holding hands?’ he suggested, reaching out and capturing one of hers. ‘Picking out matching china and deciding on the new garden furniture?’

Angrily Sam tore her hand from his, praying that his no doubt well-developed predatory instincts had not told him what the contact had done to her. ‘You’re obsessed with sex!’ And it’s catching.

The claim made him laugh. ‘Well, at least I don’t have a problem with it.’

The taunt made her cheeks burn. ‘I don’t have a problem with sex—just you!’

‘It makes you blush just to say the word…’ he discovered, sounding astonished. ‘I don’t believe you have ever wanted someone so much that you would do anything to have them.’ He angled a speculative look at her flushed face. ‘When was it you decided he was the love of your life?’

‘I’m not going to discuss Jonny with you.’

He gave a grimace of distaste. ‘Give me honest lust rather than mawkish sentimentality any day.’ His expressive upper lip curled. ‘Look at me—I’ve got a broken heart, but what a little trouper I am…’ He gave a snort of disgust and shook his head. ‘Heaven preserve me from women who fancy themselves as martyrs.’

Scenting a certain inconsistency in his criticism, she held up her hands. ‘Hang on—I thought I was some sort of calculating, husband-stealing—’

‘Frankly,’ he said, dragging his hand through his dark hair in an exasperated manner, ‘I’m not quite sure what you are.’

The way he was looking at her made Sam’s throat grow dry. She pressed a hand to her throat, where her heart was trying to climb out of her chest.

‘You have been generous with your advice…so let me give you some in exchange.’

She folded her arms across her chest and looked bored. ‘This should be good…’

‘Stop weaving your sexual fantasies around somebody else’s husband and go out and get yourself a lover.’

This recommendation drew an inarticulate gurgle from Sam’s throat. ‘Jonny does not feature in my sexual fantasies!’

His eyes stayed hard and hostile while he bared his teeth in a wolfish leer. ‘Then he definitely isn’t the man for you.’

‘I do not have sexual fantasies!’ she choked.

‘Then you really are as repressed as you look.’

Sam regarded him with loathing and prayed that one day he would tell a woman he loved her and she would laugh in his face. That such a woman existed was somewhat doubtful, but if there was any justice at all one day he would crash and burn—and she would be there to see it!

‘Then you don’t have to worry, do you? I’m too repressed to seduce your sister’s husband. And, just for the record, I do not fancy myself a martyr,’ she added, in a voice that shook with the strength of her outraged feelings. ‘And I doubt if you’re capable of anything deeper than lust—with anyone other than yourself, that is.’

The only response she got to her biting condemnation was a quirk of one dark brow. ‘Are you surprised he has never noticed you are a woman when you dress like—? On every occasion I have seen you, you dress to hide your femininity, not celebrate it.’

‘You mean flaunt?’ Sam suggested, and gave a scornful laugh. Actually, she didn’t find being thought dowdy and unattractive by a man who had to be about the most attractive creature on the planet nearly so amusing as she made out. ‘I don’t enjoy being leered at.’

One ebony brow lifted as he affected amazement. ‘I’m amazed you have any experience of leering.’

Ashamed of the weakness which brought the hot sting of tears to her eyes, Sam gritted her teeth and glared up at him. ‘Not all men are as shallow as you!’

‘I think you’ll find they are, cara.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t want the sort of man I have to tart myself up for and pretend to be something I’m not.’

‘I think the idea is that the man should make you feel sexy and attractive. Hasn’t any man done that for you?’