In The Count's Bed: The Count's Blackmail Bargain / The French Count's Pregnant Bride / The Italian Count's Baby

Alessio parked the Jeep in front of the house, and swung himself out of the driving seat. He needed, he thought as he strode indoors, a long cold drink, and a swim.

What he did not require was the sudden appearance of his aunt, as if she’d been lying in wait for him.

‘Where have you been?’ she demanded, and he checked resignedly.

‘Down to the village. Luca Donini asked me to talk to his father—persuade him not to spend another winter in that hut of his.’

‘He asked you?’ Her brows lifted haughtily. ‘But how can this concern you? Sometimes, Alessio, I think you forget your position.’

He gave her a long, hard look. ‘Yes, Zia Lucrezia,’ he drawled. ‘Sometimes, I do, as the events of the past few weeks have unhappily proved. But Besavoro is my village, and the concerns of my friends there are mine too.’

She snorted impatiently. ‘You did not take the girl with you?’

He shrugged. ‘I invited her, but she refused me.’

She glared at him. ‘That is bad. You cannot be trying.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It is better than I expected after such a short time.’ His smile was cold. ‘But do not ask me to explain.’

She changed tack. ‘You should have told me you were going to the village. You could have gone to the pharmacy for my poor boy. Last night he was delirious—talking nonsense in his sleep.’

‘It is probably a habit of his,’ Alessio commented curtly. ‘Why not ask his innamorata?’

She gave him a furious look, and swept back to her nursing duties.

Alessio proceeded moodily to his room. The jibe had been almost irresistible, but he regretted it. There’d been no need to remind himself that Laura and Paolo had been enjoying an intimate relationship prior to their arrival in Italy. Because he knew it only too well already.

But what he could not explain was why he found it so galling. After all, he thought, he had never felt jealous or possessive about any of his previous involvements. For him, sex was usually just another appetite to be enjoyably and mutually satisfied. And there was nothing to be gained by jealousy or speculation over other lovers.

He’d awaited Laura’s arrival at the villa with a sense of blazing resentment, even though he knew he had only himself to blame for his predicament, and, instead, found himself instantly intrigued by her. From that, it had only been a brief step to desire. And he strongly suspected this would have happened if he’d met her somewhere far from his aunt’s interference.

He remembered, with distaste, icily promising to send her home with a beautiful memory. Now he wasn’t sure he’d send her back at all. Certainly not immediately, he thought, frowning as he stripped and found a pair of brief black swimming trunks.

Maybe he’d whisk her away somewhere—the Seychelles or the Maldives, perhaps, or the Bahamas—for a few weeks of exotic pampering, with a quick trip to Milan first, of course, to reinvent her wardrobe. Buy her the kind of clothes he would enjoy removing.

And on that enticing thought he collected a towel and his sunglasses, and went down to the pool to find her.

He found her peacefully asleep, the long lashes curling on her cheek, her head turned slightly to one side. The sun had moved round, leaving one ankle and foot out in the open, vulnerable to its direct rays, and he reached up to make a slight adjustment to the parasol.

Having done so, he did not move away immediately, but stood for a moment, looking down at her. In the simple dark green one-piece swimsuit, her slender body looked like the stem of a flower, her hair crowning it like an exotic corolla of russet petals.

A single strand lay across her cheek, and he was tempted to smooth it back, but knew he could not risk so intimate a gesture.

Because he wanted her so fiercely, so unequivocally, it was like a blow in the guts. However, now was not yet the moment, so he would have to practise unaccustomed restraint, he reminded himself grimly.

Swallowing, he turned away, tossing his towel and sunglasses onto an adjoining lounger, then walked to the edge of the pool and dived in, his body cutting the water as cleanly as a knife.

Dimly, Laura heard the splash and came awake, lifting herself onto one elbow as she looked around her, faintly disorientated.

Then her eyes went to the pool, and the tanned body sliding with powerful grace through the water, and her mind cleared, with an instantaneous nervous lurch of the stomach.

Stealthily, she watched him complete another two lengths of the pool, then turn towards the side. She retrieved her sunglasses and slid them on, then grabbed her book, holding it in front of her like a barrier as Alessio lifted himself lithely out of the water and walked towards her, his body gleaming, sleek as a seal, in the sunlight.

‘Ciao.’ His smile was casual as he began to blot the moisture from his skin with his towel.

‘Hello,’ she responded hesitantly, not looking at him directly. Those trunks, she thought, her mouth drying, were even briefer than his shorts had been. She hurried into speech. ‘You—you’re back early. Did you settle all your business?’

‘Not as I wished.’ He grimaced. ‘I had a battle of wills with a stubborn old man and lost.’

‘Well,’ she said. ‘That can’t happen too often.’

‘It does with Fredo.’ His face relaxed into a grin. ‘He cannot forget that his son and I grew up together, and that he was almost a second father to me when my parents were away. He even took his belt to Luca and myself with complete impartiality when we behaved badly, and likes to remind me of it when he can.’

He shrugged. ‘But he also showed us every track and trail in the forest, and taught us to use them safely. He even took me on my first wild boar hunt.’

‘So why are you disagreeing now? Not that it’s any of my business,’ she added hastily.

‘It’s no secret. Even when his wife was alive, he did not like life in town, so when she died he moved up to a hut on the mountain to look after his goats there. He has been there ever since, and Luca worries that he is getting too old for such a life. He wants his father to live with him, but Fredo says his daughter-in-law is a bad cook, and has a tongue as sharp as a viper’s bite, and I could not argue with that.’

‘Absolutely not,’ she agreed solemnly. ‘A double whammy, no less.’

He laughed. ‘As you say, bella mia. But the campaign is not over yet.’

‘You don’t give up easily.’

‘I do not give up at all.’

He spread his towel on the lounger and stretched out, nodding at the book she was still clutching. ‘Is it good?’

‘The jacket says it’s a best-seller.’

‘Ah,’ he said, softly. ‘But what does Laura say?’

‘That the jury’s still out, but the verdict will probably be guilty. Murder by cliché.’ She sighed. ‘However, it’s all I brought with me, so I have to make it last.’

‘There are English books in my library up at the villa,’ he said. ‘Some classics, and some modern. You are welcome to borrow them. Ask Emilia to show you where they are.’

‘Thank you, that’s—very kind.’ Her brows lifted in surprise. ‘Is that why your English is so incredibly good—because you read a lot?’

‘I learned English as a second language at school,’ he said. ‘And attended university in Britain and America.’ His grin teased her. ‘And it is fortunate that I did, as your Italian is so minimal.’

‘But my French isn’t bad,’ she defended herself. ‘If I’d gone on the holiday I originally planned, I’d have shone.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘And what holiday was that?’

She was suddenly still, cursing herself under her breath. She’d let her tongue run away with her again. ‘I thought of the Riviera,’ she said. ‘But then I met Paolo—and changed my mind, of course.’

‘Of course.’ She thought she detected a note of irony in his voice.