Her Passionate Italian: The Passion Bargain / A Sicilian Husband / The Italian's Marriage Bargain

‘You kept your affair with Carlo Carlucci a dark secret.’ Sonya got in her own hit. ‘How long has that been going on, cara? Don’t think I missed the way you were wrapped around each other before Angelo’s mother dragged me away! The room was swimming in overactive pheromones. You were both so kiss-drugged you could barely focus on anything else!’

‘But at least I still had my underwear on,’ Francesca retaliated with a withering slide of her eyes down the front of Sonya’s dress.

She was rewarded with a choked gasp and the sight of a hand jerking down to tug guiltily at the hem of the dress. Leaving Sonya to stew on her own sluttish behaviour, she moved into the bathroom and began quickly gathering up her toiletries.

When she re-entered the bedroom she saw that Sonya was ready to go back on the attack. ‘You might like to think of yourself as morally a cut above me, Francesca. But you’re as guilty as I am for playing around with another woman’s man.’

Was she saying that Carlo was committed to some other woman? It stopped her dead in her tracks.

‘And here’s the real nasty little twist, cara,’ Sonya continued, aiming sure with her knives now. ‘Nicola Mauraux—you know, the dark-haired beauty with the brown eyes you were talking about? She’s Carlo Carlucci’s stepsister. It was a bit of a foregone conclusion that she and Angelo would marry one day—until you came along and he turfed her out.’

Carlo was not in another relationship, was the first part of that she grabbed at with relief. Then the rest arrived like a blast, blanching the colour out of her face.

‘Angelo told me it was already over,’ she breathed in a stifled whisper.

‘Since when has he ever spoken the truth?’ Sonya asked. ‘He’s an incurable liar with a greedy eye for the main chance! Nicola isn’t rich like you will be one day, Francesca. She isn’t a Carlucci so has no claim on the Carlucci wealth. She attends this very posh university in Paris at her stepbrother’s expense but that’s about the sum total of what she’s likely to get from him.’

‘You knew all of this and didn’t bother to tell me?’

‘What for? I wasn’t to know that you would start two-timing your beloved Angelo with Carlo Carlucci.’ Oh, the knives were flying thick and fast now. This was Sonya at her cutting best. ‘But if I did happen to be you right now, I would be asking if Signor Carlucci isn’t using you to get back a bit of revenge on Angelo for dumping his stepsister.’

The word revenge hit her first. Angelo had accused Carlo of being out for revenge on him but she had been too confused to pick up on it then. He’d also said that Carlo was using her and she’d let that float right by her too. Then there were Carlo’s displays of contempt towards Angelo and the smooth, slick, cutting way he had demolished him from the very outset—as if he’d been planning to do it—as if the whole kiss thing had been timed and rigged to happen as Angelo walked into the room!

She began to feel sick again—very sick. Her hand had to jerk up to cover her mouth. If it wasn’t enough to be used by one ruthless swine, now another one had come along to do the same thing again!

Talk about being a sucker for it, she thought bitterly, and had to turn her back to Sonya so she wouldn’t see the hurt tears starting in her eyes.

‘I just don’t want you to pile all the blame on me, that’s all!’ Sonya cried out. ‘If you witnessed what Angelo and I were doing out there on the terrace then you must have heard me tell him that I wanted to tell you everything—and I was going to do it this time, Francesca! Only you found out before I could get to you first.’

After the sex, of course, Francesca thought bitterly. After she’d stood there on that wretched terrace and drowned herself in Angelo!

She was never going to trust a single living person, she vowed as she went to throw the last of her things into the suitcase. The tears were blurring her vision. Her fingers had developed a permanent shake. If someone had told her that she was going to spend her engagement night having her life ripped apart she would have laughed in their face!

And she still had to run the gauntlet to get out of here. She still had to face Carlo Carlucci knowing what she now knew about him!

She shut the suitcase, stuffing straggling bits of clothing inside it as she struggled to fasten the zip. Where was she going to go—what was she going to do?

‘Let me come with you,’ Sonya begged suddenly as if she could actually read what was going on inside her head. ‘Wait for me to pack and we’ll go and stay at that hotel where the rest of our group is staying.’

‘Do they know about your affair with Angelo?’ she asked quietly.

Silence met that—one of those stark, thick silences that screamed the answer loud and clear.

She took a final quick glance around her to see if she’d missed anything, then bent to pick up her little denim jacket and pulled it on over her dress. Next she hauled up the suitcase.

This was it. There was nothing left for her here. Mouth tight, eyes hard, she turned to walk towards the door.

‘Please…’ Sonya’s painfully shaken cry followed her. ‘Don’t leave me here to face the music alone, Francesca. You’re my friend—you’re the only real friend I’ve ever had! Let me come with you—please!’

Francesca turned to look at this petite, flaxen-haired, sylph-like friend who was just too beautiful for her own good. Even the tears shining in her anxious blue eyes enhanced that beauty, as did the quiver of her lips.

‘Enjoy the rest of your life, Sonya,’ she said, then left with her great-uncle Bruno’s chilling form of goodbye still ringing behind her like the toll of death.

CHAPTER SIX

SHE must have inherited some of the Gianni genes after all, she thought with a bitter-wry smile. Funny, she mused, but she’d always assumed she missed out on most of them. Her mother had insisted she had.

No thick and glossy raven hair, none of the Gianni bone features that had given her mother’s face such a striking impact. Her mouth was too wide, her skin too pale—but that cold and unforgiving final cut she’d just used to sever her friendship with Sonya had to have come from the Gianni gene stock.

Along with her mother’s propensity for falling in love with the wrong kind of man. Like lightning striking twice, or that nasty thing called fate other people liked talking about. Had it been written at her birth that she was fated to fall in love with a mercenary like Angelo then be seduced by a vengeful rat like Carlo?

She saw him then and had to pause at the top of stairs while she dealt with the way her heart dipped then shrivelled like a dried-up prune in her chest.

He was standing at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for her, looking stunning as always. The shockingly perfect profile, the smooth, olive-toned skin, the gorgeous mouth that was a mere shadowy outline from up here but could still tighten muscles all over her body on the knowledge of the way it could kiss. His black hair was making her think of ravens’ wings again as it captured the overhead lights and his curling black eyelashes hovered sensuously against those chiselled cheekbones as he stood looking down at his watch.

In a rush to get this over with, signor? Francesca quizzed. Do you want to get the poor little fool out of here so you can finish what you started in the name of revenge?

He could have heard her for the way his dark head lifted. He smiled the most relaxed, warm smile then began walking up to meet her. ‘I was just coming to get you,’ he murmured in that rich, dark voice of his.

Francesca was contemplating telling him where to put his lying smile—when she noticed the people still gathered in the hall. The gauntlet, she remembered, and snapped her mouth shut again then carefully hooded her cold, glinting eyes. There was no way she was going to show herself up again while she told Carlo Carlucci what she thought of him on the Batiste staircase with the mob listening in.

The mob, she thought again, struck by her own acid turn of phrase and almost—almost found it in her to laugh. If these people were a mob they were a very exclusive kind of mob with their designer clothes and their designer jewels and their designer expressions that made her think of wax.

Carlo stopped two steps down from her and reached for her suitcase. ‘Like the jacket,’ he said in a husky attempt to break the tension laying whip cracks across all of them. ‘It goes with the dress.’

‘Can we go, please?’ she responded in a voice misted with frost.

He stopped smiling, his eyes narrowing on her cold face. ‘Of course,’ he replied without any notable change in his rich voice tones but her senses began to scramble about inside her when they detected a change. It didn’t do to return his warm overtures with ice, she realised. He was used to orchestrating the moods of others not altering his own mood to suit.

His fingers closed around her fingers where they clutched the handle to the suitcase. The suitcase changed hands within a hooded silence. Stepping to one side, he indicated that she should continue down the stairs. As she passed by him he fell into step beside her, his tall, dark bulk trying its best to hide her from most of those curious faces down in the hall.

What were they thinking? How much did they know? Was she the sinner in their eyes, caught by Angelo kissing Carlo Carlucci on the night of his engagement to her, or the one to be pitied for falling for Angelo’s smooth, slick, calculating charm at all?

Angelo—Angelo, she suddenly repeated. And felt a shaft of pain as her love for him exploded right here on this fabulous marble staircase. How could he have done this to her—treated her like this?

How could Sonya?

Delayed shock to her night of revelation really began to kick in as they made ground level. She was shaking so badly that she had a horrible suspicion she was going to further humiliate herself by falling into a sobbing huddle on the cold marble floor. Beside her, Carlo must have sensed it because his free hand came to rest against her back as if in assurance. She almost jumped out of her skin as the old warning prickles of hostility and self-defence arrived to remind her that he was not her saviour—far from it. He was as guilty as the others for trying to use her for his own ends.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she hissed in a taut, teeth-clenched whisper.

He did the opposite. Shifting the hand until it arrived at the indent to her waist and with a single warning curl of his long fingers, he brought her into full contact with his side. Then he made the ultimate move to subdue her by stopping them walking so he could propel her around to face him, then in front of their audience he bent his dark head.

His lips arrived against her ear lobe, his breath scoring her frozen white cheek. ‘Behave until we get out of here or I will kiss you stupid,’ he warned very grimly.

There wasn’t a split-second when she thought he might be bluffing. This was yet another man on a mission and she was just his disposable pawn. Bitterness welled, the fine tremors of dismay converting themselves into silver-shard tremors of contempt as he set them moving again.

It was then that she saw their farewell party waiting by the open front door. Mr and Mrs Batiste were standing straight-faced and soldier-like, ready to play the perfect hosts to the bitter end even as their glittering party lay in a wreck around their elegant feet. Did they know what their son had done? Had they been in on his deceit? ‘Your business is safe, Papa, and don’t forget who is paying the price for it.’