Mediterranean Men & Marriage: The Italian's Forgotten Baby / The Sicilian's Bride / Hired: The Italian's Bride

She went into the little kitchenette and opened a small refrigerator, pulling out a pitcher of iced tea and reaching into a cupboard for two tall glasses. He took his gratefully and drank most of it down. It was a hot day.

“So,” she said, leaning on the counter between them and gazing at him levelly, “you’re back. I assume there’s a reason?”

He leaned on the counter, too, just to keep things even. “I came back to find you.”

Something flashed in her eyes. It wasn’t particularly friendly, but there was a wary question behind the guardedness. She was angry and resentful about something, but she was ready to be coaxed back into friendliness. If he could just figure out what that would take, he would do it.

“Well, here I am,” she said, trying to be flip. “Though I didn’t know I was missing.”

Their gazes met and held. There was a hesitant question in her beautiful eyes, along with that touch of resentment. He frowned. This was a mystery he was going to have to get to the bottom of.

“Look, Shayna, I don’t know why you’re so angry with me,” he said, putting his glass down on the counter. “I don’t know what I did.” And he leaned back a little, expecting a vigorous response.

And that was pretty much what he got.

“You don’t know?” She stared at him as though flabbergasted. “Marco Smith—” She stopped. “Oops, I forgot. It’s really Marco DiSanto, isn’t it?” Her startlingly blue eyes were glaring at him now. “What are you doing, having memory lapses now? Don’t know what you did! Please.”

Whatever his mistake had been, she didn’t like it. That much was evident. He watched her anger, wishing he knew how to quench it.

“But I guess you are forgetting things,” she said crisply, waving a hand at him. “Look, you’ve only been gone a few weeks and already you’ve forgotten how we live in the tropics.” She shook her head. “Don’t you feel overdressed in that suit?”

“I had a meeting with a client in Singapore just before I caught the plane out here,” he explained, looking down.

She shrugged.

“At least get rid of that suit coat.”

“I’d like to,” he admitted, shrugging out of it. “With your kind permission,” he added, exaggerating his manners.

She hesitated and he could tell she had the impulse to come around the counter and take it from him in order to hang it up somewhere. But she was reminding herself that she was angry and an angry woman didn’t do things like that for the object of her anger. So she stayed put, but it was obviously an effort.

“Just hang it on the back of that stool,” she muttered, and her cheeks reddened a bit.

Marco’s instincts were right on the money. Shayna was a mass of conflicting emotions right now and that made life more uncomfortable than she was used to. She watched him take care of his jacket and loosen the knot in his tie. He tugged open the top three buttons on his silky white shirt, unbuttoned his cuffs, and shoved one sleeve up to his elbow. She was fascinated as he began a transformation. With each adjustment, he seemed to lose a bit of his reserve. He was sloughing away a more formal civilization and sinking into island life and, for some crazy reason, that made her heart beat faster.

“Stop it!” she said aloud before she realized what she was doing.

“What?” he said, looking up in surprise, the second sleeve only beginning to be pushed up.

“N…nothing,” she said quickly, flushing. “I wasn’t talking to you, I was just…” Her voice trailed off. There was no way to explain.

But she could take this as a warning. She was still vulnerable to his charms and she had to beware.

All she had to do was remember how easily she’d fallen under his spell a few weeks ago. He’d looked very different that first day. There had been no business suit then. In fact, there had been very little covering his beautiful body after she’d rescued him from the little blue men-of-war.

Once back on the shore, she’d gone against her better instincts and invited him in for iced tea that day, too.

“My name is Shayna Pierce,” she’d said once they’d settled at this same counter that day.

There was just the slightest hesitation before he’d answered. She should have paid more attention to that.

“Marco,” he said at last. “Marco Smith.”

She’d gaped at him. He was so obviously Italian, from his dashing dark looks to his very sexy accent. The name seemed like a fake from the start.

“Smith! Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

His dark eyes had gazed at her levelly, just a touch of humor in their cloudy recesses.

“You doubt me?”

She’d flushed. Doubt him? Not at all. Here in the islands, everyone was entitled to whatever name they wanted to use. Who was she to judge him? Her own name was as phony as…well, as a three-dollar bill. She’d made it up and now that she was used to it, she found that the name she was hiding under suited her much better than her old name. “No, of course not.”

But he’d been so gorgeous that day. As she remembered it, after a few minutes of sipping and conversation, she’d found her gaze straying to his muscular chest once too often.

“Where exactly did you leave your clothes?” she’d asked him a bit fretfully.

He was feeling much better by that time. The red welts had mostly melted away.

“What do I need with clothes?” he’d responded, halfteasing. “Isn’t this the tropics? I thought you all walked around like children in the Garden of Eden.”

She’d laughed, teasing right back. “Even Adam was embarrassed when he realized Eve was looking at him cross-eyed.”

“I don’t embarrass that easily,” he said, and at the same moment, his gaze caught hers and held and she felt a rush of sensual excitement in a way she’d never experienced before. There was a knowing glint in his eyes, which told her he had thoughts of exploring things between them, things that would come too close to intimacy. Things she couldn’t allow. She didn’t think she’d ever read the signals in a man’s eyes quite so clearly as she did at that moment. She’d been uncharacteristically tongue-tied for a good twenty seconds.

He’d broken the spell by smiling and speaking casually, as though none of that had happened at all.

“As for my clothes, they are back on the beach somewhere. Closer to town. The water was so clear and the fish were so beautiful, I guess I got caught up in the moment and swam pretty far from where I started.”

She’d sighed, looking at him and biting her lip. It was one thing to pal around with a half-naked man on the beach. Somehow it seemed very different here in her home. It had made her uncomfortable.

He’d noticed. “I’d ask to borrow one of your shirts, but I have a feeling that would be a tight squeeze,” he said lightly.

“I’ll find you something,” she’d said, jumping up and then afraid she’d sounded a bit too eager. “Uh, I’ll be right back.”

She took her time, rummaging through her closet shelves and waiting for her cheeks to cool down. And then she remembered the Hawaiian shirts a previous tenant had left and pulled them out, choosing a bright yellow one with a red parrot on the front.

“Here you go,” she said as she came out into the living room again, expecting to find him still at the counter. But he wasn’t there. Instead, he was across the room where he had obviously been studying the things on her display shelves. As she came into the room he’d turned and stared at her, a completely new look on his face.

“Didn’t you say your name was Shayna Pierce?” he’d asked, at the same time studying her closely.

She remembered blinking and feeling a tiny thread of alarm slithering down her spine. What had he seen on her display shelves?

“That’s right.”

He’d frowned, staring at her face. “Are you sure?”