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

He offered her the glass. Francesca shook her head, her attention still fixed on the portrait. ‘That could be Nicola standing with him,’ she said.

‘Does Nanette look so young?’ Turning to view the portrait for himself, ‘Yes, she does,’ he answered his own question. ‘My father managed to shock all of Rome when he went to Paris on a business trip and came back with a child bride clinging to his arm…’

He took a sip of the brandy, remembering. Then offered a soft laugh. ‘He was fifty-four and she was twenty-three. Nicola was a tiny replica of her mama and I was a brooding, dark, resentful youth of nineteen who was appalled to be presented with a stepmother I would probably have made a play for if I’d met her first.’

‘Did you?’ she looked at him. ‘Make a play for her, I mean.’

It took him a few seconds to understand why she dared think such a thing of him. Then, ‘Ah,’ he smiled. ‘I forgot—I have no scruples.’

It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it the moment the comment left his sardonic mouth. She stared at him for a second—then on a small choke she turned and ran.

On a thick black curse he went after her, having to pause to divert to the armoire to lose the brandy glass before continuing on. She’d already thrown the door open and was disappearing into the hall. He uttered another terse curse in Italian. His trapped bird had flown but in her eagerness to get away from him she’d turned the wrong way.

CHAPTER SEVEN

FRANCESCA knew what she’d done two flying steps along the hallway but there was no way she was turning around and risking passing that door just as he came out of it.

She’d had enough. She just couldn’t take any more of his cruel sarcasm and anyway, she’d already spied a pair of doors standing shut ahead of her so she just kept going, not caring where those doors led to as long as she managed to put a distance between herself and the hateful Carlo Carlucci before she finally gave in and fell apart.

What she didn’t expect was to drag open those two doors and take two more flying steps, only to come to a perfect standstill, held breathless, feeling as if she’d stepped out of that door and straight into a completely different world.

Lake Alba was floating right in front of her, its smooth surface wearing a moonlit glaze like a sheet of frosted white silk. She had never seen anything quite like it. She forgot she was supposed to be running away from Carlo’s taunting as she stared through a stone archway supported by twin slender pillars that framed the lake like a painting, its base trimmed by a low stone latticework balustrade that seemed to form an edge to the end of the world.

It was the most magical scene she had ever encountered; nothing had prepared her for it on the swift journey here through the winding lanes. Villa Batiste claimed a view of the lake but nothing to compare with this one. They were so close—yet not very close at all. It was a strange very disorientating sensation to stand here and feel as if you could reach out and touch those silver silk waters yet be aware at the same time that acres of layered garden lay in between.

Her feet took her across the wide stone terrace, drawing her like a magnet to stand beneath the arch. She was so enchanted she didn’t notice that she was shivering so badly that her arms had wrapped around her in an instinctive attempt to ward off the cold.

‘The lake changes with every hour,’ a deep voice murmured levelly. ‘She will pull on her shimmering silver cloak in the early morning, a burnished gold one in the late afternoon. In the middle of the day she wears a sensational azure-blue cloak and invites you to come and play…’

‘So you framed it,’ she said softly.

‘One of my ancestors was inspired by that particular vision,’ he replied in a lazy tone that reluctantly refused to take the praise. Then she heard the slow, even pace of his steps bringing him closer as he continued, ‘We are in fact standing in a colonnade of arches, each one carefully placed to form the same framework of the lake whichever door or window you happen to step through in this wing.’

A fleeting glance sideways confirmed that she was indeed standing in the middle of a line of arches that attached to the house by long, gracefully arching ribs on which the moonlight placed more frosted silk.

‘It’s beautiful—the whole thing.’ She turned her head frontward again as he came to a halt directly behind her.

’Gratzi,’ he replied at the same time as his jacket settled across her shoulders and was held there by a pair of hands that curled around her slender upper arms. She shivered compulsively as her chilled flesh grabbed at the warmth the jacket offered. ‘No, cara, don’t prickle.’ He’d misread the shiver. ‘I am not about to renew hostilities.’

Then what does come next—the ravishment? she heard herself thinking. And this time the shiver was a prickle.

‘I’m sorry if I hurt your stepsister,’ she felt compelled to say.

‘You didn’t—he did.’ His grip on her arms altered fractionally so he could turn her round to face him. She found herself staring at the bright white front to his shirt. ‘All I could do was support her through her heartache. While I was doing that I became curious as to who this new woman in his life was, who could make him dare to hurt one of mine.’

‘So whose wounded pride were you out to salve when you went looking for a way to punish him—your stepsister’s or your own?’

This time it was the cleft in his chin that captured her attention when it flexed with his brief, dry smile. ‘Try—both,’ he said and moved his fingers, causing her breathing to feather as he ran them lightly beneath the silk lapel to his jacket, lifting the fabric so it hugged her chilly nape. ‘And you have a novel way of making subtle stabs at a man’s ego, cara,’ he said softly. ‘But I advise you to drop such tactics with me. You see, I like my arrogance. It gives me leave to do anything I want to do even when I know the moment is not appropriate.’

And that was the point when alarm bells began to ring. She managed only to lift wary eyes to his face and note the warning gleam of what was to come before he gave a firm tug on his jacket collar and she was arriving with a breathless gasp against his chest. She felt the heat of him, his sheer physical power, wanted to push away but only found herself raising her chin.

Their eyes connected, almost black consuming anxious hazel with promises that robbed her of the ability to breathe.

‘No,’ she said, ‘don’t…’

And to her hopeless confusion he didn’t do anything but hold her trapped between his body and his jacket and a tense, tingling limbo world between heaven and hell. She couldn’t even tell which the hell belonged to—the kiss or no kiss.

‘Sure?’ he said softly.

She nodded, lips parted and trembling like wicked liars. He was too much—of everything. He overwhelmed in every way there was. ‘I’m out of my depth with you,’ she heard herself whisper and though she wished the words back the moment she’d said them she knew they were telling the utter truth.

His response was one of those sardonic tilts to his mouth. ‘I am wading in pretty deep myself, cara,’ he responded huskily. ‘So don’t let yourself think that those pale cheeks and that frightened expression is going to save you. We will come together sooner or later.’

Then he dropped his head, capturing her lips in a single swift, hard kiss that fused them together with its heat. ‘Again and again and again…’ he murmured with sensual promise as he lifted his mouth away.

Why? Because she’d responded. He knew it. She knew it. She’d even been the one to taste him with the moist, tingling tip of her tongue and placed that gloss on his lips she could see. And the worst of it was she wanted to do it again. She wanted to curl a hand around his nape and bring that mouth back to her. She wanted to…

His chest heaved on a tense intake of air, dark eyes glittering now as he took in the helpless expression colouring her eyes. ‘Come on,’ he said with a low gruffness. ‘It’s too damn cold out here for this…’

This being that she had just committed herself. This being that she couldn’t even pretend to herself that she didn’t want him. Letting go of his jacket lapels, Carlo placed an arm round her shoulders and turned them back to the house.

The door closed behind them; centuries-old blue mosaic caught the tap of her delicate heels. She wanted to say something—anything to break the grim, sexual resolve she could feel pulsing in him. But there wasn’t a single word that came to mind that could halt what was now in flow.

He led her up the left-hand staircase, his arm still keeping her close to his side. They emerged from the stairs into another long corridor flanked by long, narrow windows she saw looked out on the courtyard below. He paused at a door, pushed it open and took her through it. She found herself standing in a bedroom like no other bedroom she had ever been in.

The floor was an ocean of polished dark wood that led her eyes to the huge stone fireplace opposite where logs blazed in a black iron grate. The flames flickered across the floor, the dark terracotta-painted walls and crawled like fingers up the swathes of dark red silk festooning a huge canopied four-poster bed.

The bed dominated the room above everything. It dominated her—grabbed her eyes and fixed the senses exactly where it intended to fix them. If she’d ever wondered what a room designed to pull all the right sensual strings looked like then this would have been it. She even captured an image of herself lying there naked like a wanton on the red silk coverlet. She saw him with his dark golden flesh touched by the flames as he lay at her side.

The vision alone was enough to put her right back into a panic. She turned on him. ‘I don’t…’

Want this, she had been going to say but the words became lost in the feel of his light touch as he plucked the comb from her hair. The heavy twist quivered as it uncoiled its way to her shoulders. He stood observing the effect through dark, unfathomable eyes for a long moment then abruptly turned away.

‘I’ll go and get your case,’ he said. ‘Relax, take a look around, I won’t be more than a few minutes…’

Threat or reassurance? Francesca wondered as she watched him disappear. Then she shivered and turned back to her new surroundings. Her gaze was instantly drawn to the four-poster bed, where those unnerving images still played with her head.

Shame on you, she tried telling herself and tugged her eyes away then moved restlessly across the room towards a long window draped with more red silk. The window showed her a different view of the lake. Its surface wasn’t quite as frosted now, the moon having already continued on its way.

What am I doing here? she asked herself.

An answering tug on certain sensitive folds of flesh made her draw in air on a sharp catch of breath.

‘Oh,’ she choked, and dropped down onto the polished wood window seat, lost her shoes then pulled her knees up to her chin and dragged Carlo’s jacket tightly around her before she lowered her face to her knees.

To hide.

From what she was.