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She had just finished when she heard a soft footfall behind her, and she turned on her stepladder to find Giovanni standing there, his gaze arrested by the brilliant glimmer of deep blue and gold.
And then the gaze was lifted almost reluctantly to her face, and Kate felt herself imprisoned—impaled, almost—by a shaft of blinding sapphire light.
‘You look surprised,’ she observed in a low voice.
He was. He had expected… what? That she was too modern, too up-to-the-minute, and that the fabric she chose would look shockingly out of place in this beautiful old house.
‘A little,’ he conceded, with a very Sicilian shrug of his shoulders.
‘You thought I would have poor taste?’
He looked at her. She had perception, he noted. And such green eyes. And hair like fire. He felt some unknown and unwanted sensation washing over his skin. ‘You should not ask questions to which you do not wish to hear the answers.’
How ridiculously old-fashioned he sounded! ‘I’m a big girl, Mr Calverri—’
‘Signor Calverri,’ he corrected softly.
How could he possibly make his own name sound so beguiling? ‘And?’ she challenged in a husky voice she didn’t quite recognise as her own. ‘On the question of taste?’
He saw the quickening of her breath, and felt it fire a rapid response in his heart. ‘Your taste is quite exquisite,’ he said quietly.
Kate let her eyelids flutter down before he read the unwelcome hunger in her eyes. She didn’t like him! So why did she want to keep running his compliment round and round in her head like an old-fashioned record?
‘Thank you,’ she said breathlessly, feeling as uncoordinated as a giraffe as she slowly stepped down off the ladder, unspeakably relieved to see his godmother appear, her face one of delight as she surveyed the finished effect.
‘Oh, Kate! It’s perfect!’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Better than I could have hoped for in my wildest dreams!’
Kate found herself having some pretty wild dreams of her own—and most of them seemed to involve the unsmiling face of Giovanni Calverri, trying to imagine what it would be like to be undressed by him or to be kissed by those hard, sensuous lips.
‘Why, Kate,’ said Lady St John, with a little frown of concern, ‘you’d better come and have some lunch—you’ve gone quite pale!’
‘H-have I?’ She touched her fingertips to her cheeks, and prayed for co-ordination to return.
The three of them walked to the light-filled room which overlooked the garden and Giovanni found his eyes being drawn to the graceful curve of her neck, feeling his senses spring into life as he told himself that she was resistible. Easily resistible. But the sunlight that flooded through the windows had made her hair look even brighter—as though someone had put a flame to it, and the waves were made of dancing fire.
He was unsmiling as he waited for the two women to sit down, and Kate thought that she had never seen a face quite so devoid of emotion. Or so compelling. And she became aware of the sudden soft rush of colour to her cheeks.
Giovanni saw her blush, and interpreted the unmistakable reason behind it, feeling his heart begin to hammer in his chest as he realised how much she wanted him.
‘Have a glass of wine, Kate,’ smiled Lady St John.
Kate shook her head as she tried to avoid the clash of that blue stare, the small but knowing smile which was playing at the corners of a mouth which looked almost cruel. Wine was the very last thing she needed. ‘Just water for me, thanks—I’m driving. And I have to get back to London straight after lunch.’
What a pity, Giovanni found himself thinking and then, with a huge effort of will, pushed her green-eyed temptation to the very recesses of his mind.
It was an endurance test of a meal which Kate forced herself to eat. Because if she pushed her food round and round her plate, wouldn’t he be able to tell how debilitated she felt in his presence? How aware she was of those long, olive fingers as they casually broke bread and then sensuously placed a fragment in his mouth? Why, she was in danger of acting like an overgrown schoolgirl, with a schoolgirl’s crush! At twenty-seven, for heaven’s sake!
She cleared her throat and forced herself to look directly at him, unprepared for another sudden, sharp tug of longing. He isn’t your type, she told herself again. He isn’t!
‘So are you just over here for business or for… for—’ she got the next word out with some difficulty ‘—pleasure?’ she finished on a gulp.
He noted the faltering quality of her voice without surprise, the tremble of her mouth which made him long to taste its sweetness, and was appalled at his own weakness. ‘Business brings me to England,’ he said, his accent deepening. ‘But it is always a pleasure to see my godmother.’
Kate persevered, forcing herself to continue as if he were just anyone and she was networking. ‘And what is your business, exactly?’
‘This!’ Lady St John waved an elegant hand at the solid silver candelabra which adorned the centre of the table and at the exquisitely fashioned knives and forks they were using. ‘The Calverri family exports silver all over the world,’ she said proudly.
And suddenly Kate made the connection—if she hadn’t been quite so reluctantly dazzled by the man she might have made it a whole lot sooner. ‘Calverri silver?’ she asked him faintly. ‘You mean, the Calverri silver?’
‘There is only one,’ he told her arrogantly.
Which explained the outrageously expensive car and the outrageously expensive suit—his air of only being used to the very best. Because Calverri silver—recreating classic, antique pieces, or creating timeless new ones—was a must-have for anyone with taste and plenty of money.
‘Your company is doing very well,’ Kate offered.
‘But of course! Under Giovanni’s guiding hand, it has become truly international,’ said Lady St John, with another proud smile at her godson.
He shrugged. ‘We have an exemplary workforce, Elisabeth,’ he murmured. ‘I am simply a small cog in a very well-oiled machine.’
Kate thought that modesty did not become him, and something in the look of challenge which he glittered across the table at her told her that he probably had a good idea exactly what she was thinking. She broke the stare and looked down with determination at her salmon instead. Was she going completely mad? Since when had anyone ever been able to read her mind?
‘This is delicious,’ she said politely.
Liar, thought Giovanni as she chewed without enthusiasm. You have barely touched a thing, angela mia.
The plates had just been cleared away, when her mobile phone began shrilling from her bag, and Kate stared down at it in consternation as she heard Giovanni’s unmistakable click of annoyance. What had she been thinking of? She always switched her phone off when she was eating!
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, reaching down for her bag.
‘The curse of technology,’ came his low, mocking response.
‘You’d better answer it, hadn’t you?’ asked Lady St John mildly.
‘If you don’t mind.’ Kate grabbed the bag and rose to her feet. ‘I’ll take it outside.’
But she was happy to escape from that unsettling stare and equally unsettling presence, and even happier to discover that it was Lucy who was calling. Lucy, her beloved older sister, who worked for Kate and ran her life like clockwork.
Kate clicked on the ‘talk’ button. ‘Lucy, hi! No, no, no, of course I understand—it can’t be helped! An emergency is an emergency!’
‘Kate, what on earth are you talking about?’ Lucy sounded confused. ‘What emergency?’
‘No, of course I can come back immediately,’ babbled Kate loudly. ‘I’ve just finished here, and I’m sure that I can be excused pudding and coffee!’
‘No doubt you’ll give me some kind of explanation later,’ came Lucy’s dry response.
‘Oh, definitely! Definitely!’ breathed Kate. Though how on earth would she put into words that she had fallen for a man with a cold, contemptuous face? The most beautiful man she had ever seen? And she wanted him, this blue-eyed stranger.
She shivered as she acknowledged the awful truth.
She wanted Giovanni Calverri!
CHAPTER TWO
‘KATE, what on earth is the matter with you?’
Kate looked at her sister with an unaccustomed blankness in her eyes.
She had spent the whole drive back from Lady St John’s house in Sussex veering between disbelief and self-disgust. In fact, the whole journey had been negotiated on some kind of auto-pilot. She had gone straight upstairs to Lucy’s flat, and it wasn’t until she was inside its elegant interior that she began shaking uncontrollably—like a person who had just come down with a fever.
‘It’s stupid. It’s nothing.’ She shook her head distractedly. ‘It would sound too far-fetched to explain—’
Lucy’s forehead creased with perplexity. ‘But Kate, you never leave your phone switched on during lunch. It’s one of your “unbreakable rules”, remember?’
Oh, yes, she remembered all right. And another of those rules was that she didn’t fall victim to grand and irrational passions. That she was ruled by her head, and not her heart. That she liked and respected herself, so that falling for a man who played the ‘treat them mean and keep them keen’ ticket was simply not on her agenda.
‘I just met a man,’ she said slowly, and ridiculously it sounded like the first line to a love song.
The frown disappeared, and Lucy relaxed. ‘Oh! And about time, too,’ she smiled, with the approval of someone who was happily established in a long-term relationship. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to fall in love for years and years!’
Kate nodded. So had she. But love was not an appropriate word, not in this case. If she was being brutally honest—and she always tried for honesty—then wouldn’t falling in lust be a more fitting description of what had happened to her some time over lunch?
She compressed her mouth into a determined line. ‘It isn’t like that,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t love him. How can I when I barely know him?’
‘But Cupid’s arrow has hit you with unfailing accuracy?’
‘A thunderbolt,’ admitted Kate in a dazed kind of voice. ‘The kind of thing you read about but think will never happen to you.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Lucy gave a wistful smile. ‘The French call it a coup de foudre.’
Kate shook her head. ‘That would imply that it was mutual.’
‘And wasn’t it?’
Kate thought about it. There had been an undeniable fizzle between them, yes, but… but… ‘He looked at me as though he didn’t really like what he saw.’
‘Or what he felt perhaps,’ said Lucy perceptively.
Kate looked at her sister. Two years older and the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, with her dark copper hair and thick-fringed green eyes.
Lucy had been born with looks to burn and a certain irresistibility to the opposite sex. But in the end she had fallen for her boss, unwilling and unable to stop the relationship even when the powers-that-be had threatened her with the sack if she did not.
Lucy had duly lost her job, and although Jack had not he had left anyway, using the opportunity to work for himself at long last. But at least they had stayed together, thought Kate, even if Jack now spent the majority of his life abroad. And Kate had been able to offer her sister a job as her assistant at just the right time. That was the pay-off for being neighbours as well as workmates, she realised. As sisters, she and Lucy looked out for one another.
She looked around Lucy’s flat, which, with Jack helping to pay for it, was much larger and more opulent than her own.
‘How’s things?’ she asked absently, still unable to get Giovanni out of her head.
Lucy stared at her. ‘Tell me about him,’ she said suddenly. ‘This man who’s making you tremble like that.’
Kate looked down with surprise at her unsteady hands. What could she say? That he had the coldest, proudest and most beautiful face she had ever seen? And eyes so startlingly blue that the summer sky would have paled in comparison? She shrugged, but her shoulders felt unusually heavy. ‘There’s nothing to tell. Like I said, I don’t know him. I’ve barely exchanged half a dozen words with him. He’s Lady St John’s godson—’
‘Mmm. So, he’s well-connected, then?’ murmured Lucy.
‘Oh, yes. And he’s Italian—or, rather, he’s Sicilian.’
‘There’s a difference?’
‘That’s exactly what I said! And apparently there is. A huge difference.’ Kate thought of his quietly furious response to her innocent question. ‘His family owns the Calverri silver factory. You must have heard of them.’
Lucy’s eyes widened. ‘You are kidding?’
‘No, I’m not. He’s rich. He’s handsome.’ Kate shut her eyes and forced herself to see facts rather than fantasy. He is curiously unsmiling and there is an impenetrable barrier between him and the rest of the world, she thought with an instinct which seemed to come from nowhere.
‘He sounds perfect.’
‘I’m sure he is,’ said Kate lightly. ‘For someone who doesn’t mind a man who looks arrogantly down his beautifully patrician nose at you!’
‘Hmm! So you’ve got it bad!’
‘Not really. A passing fancy,’ answered Kate tightly. ‘And anyway—I’ll never see him again. Why should I?’
Never. It sounded so brutally final. Oh, what magic had he woven during that tense, short meeting? she wondered despairingly.
She had gathered up all her belongings and left the house in an unseemly rush, driven by some self-protective instinct which was quite alien to her. She had just known that if she didn’t get out of the St John mansion quickly she risked making a very great fool of herself.
Because for one brief, mad moment as he and his godmother had accompanied her into the hall she had actually thought about asking him out!
Oh, not in the kind of ‘would you like to go out with me?’ way which was perfectly acceptable nowadays. Some of her more liberated girlfriends wouldn’t have hesitated.
No, Kate would have been more subtle than that.
She could have said that she would be interested to see the latest Calverri silver catalogue on behalf of one of her clients. And that wouldn’t have been a lie—she could think of at least half a dozen people who would doubtless love to choose something lavish and expensive from the latest glossy Calverri brochure.
But she had recognised in him a steely intelligence—and an innate ability to see what might lie behind a request such as that. He wasn’t stupid. Women must react to him like that all the time—hence the contempt for her, which he had barely bothered trying to conceal.
So she had shaken his hand and given him a cool smile, and hoped that her body language hadn’t betrayed the shimmering thrill of pleasure she felt to have his fingers closing around her hand.
She frowned as Lucy went to make some coffee, walking over to the window where the Thames glittered by in tantalisingly close proximity.
Flats like this didn’t come cheap. Her own had been bought with the proceeds of her work after her salary had started surpassing even her wildest dreams. And everyone knew that you should put money into property.
She had the perfect job. The perfect home. And the perfect life.
So stay away from him, she told herself fiercely, and then she remembered that their paths were never going to cross again.
Thank God. Because she wasn’t sure just how strong her will to resist him would be if they were to meet again.
Crazy.
Crazy to think that a man could arouse that amount of passion in a woman who was normally so self-controlled.
She turned to smile as Lucy carried in the tray of coffee and put him out of her mind with an effort.
Giovanni’s mouth tightened imperceptibly as he put his foot down hard on the accelerator, and behind the smooth, dark curve of his sunglasses, the blue eyes glittered with irritation.
Damn!
And damn Kate Connors! Damn all women with eyes which invited so blatantly, and bodies just made to commit sin with.
He shook his head in denial, as if that could dispel the unmistakable ache of desire that had kept him teetering close to the hot edge of excitement since he had first seen the blaze of her fiery hair.
He wanted nothing more to do with her! And yet, even now he was speeding towards her flat. So why in the name of God was he carrying out his reluctant mission?
Because his godmother had asked him to, that was why. And all because the witch had left her Filofax behind. Again his mouth tightened. It was a laughably obvious ploy! She might as well have dropped her handkerchief to the ground in front of him. Or her panties, he found himself thinking and was cruelly rewarded with the hot, sharp stab of desire.
She must have known that his godmother would insist on his returning it, even though he had shaken his head unequivocably when she had first asked him.
‘I cannot, Elisabeth,’ he had told her.
‘But, Giovanni, the poor girl will be lost without it! It’s the size of an encyclopaedia!’
‘Then why not post it to her?’ he had suggested evenly.
‘Because she’ll need it,’ said Lady St John with all the stubbornness of a woman who had spent her whole life getting her own way. ‘And you virtually have to drive past her flat on your way back to the hotel, don’t you? What time is your flight tonight?’
‘At eight,’ he admitted, resigning himself to the fact that he respected his godmother’s wishes enough to back down on this. Though if any of his business colleagues had been there, they would have been very surprised to see him without his usual ruthless streak of determination.
‘Well, then—you’ve got hours!’ said his godmother brightly. ‘Please, Giovanni?’
‘Sí, sí, Elisabeth,’ he sighed, and held his immaculately manicured hand out with a rare smile. ‘I will return it to her.’
He should have dropped the damned thing off on the way back to his hotel, but he didn’t. Maybe if he had done that…
But instead he took a long, cool shower and changed from his suit into casual trousers and a fine shirt of purest silk that whispered like a woman’s fingertips over his skin. And he shaved, and touched a musky-lemon scent to the pure, clean line of his jaw, though not for one moment did he ask himself why.
Nor why he went down to the bar and ordered a single malt whisky, then sat gazing at it, untouched, as though it contained poison.
He left for her flat just before six. That would just give him time to drop the Filofax off and then to drive straight to the airport. No time to linger. No time for coffee or the inevitable offer of a drink. Just a wry smile as he handed the Filofax over, a smile which told her that he knew exactly what her game was. And that he was far too experienced to fall for it.
But his pulse was hammering like a piston as he approached the turn off for her flat.
Kate left Lucy’s flat and went upstairs to her own, where for once the glorious colour scheme failed to soothe her jangled senses.
She felt restless as she removed her cotton jacket. Itchy. Like a cat on a hot tin roof. As if there was a gaping hole somewhere deep inside her.
She changed from her hot and itchy clothes into one of her favourite outfits—a tiny green skirt and cashmere vest. It flattered her figure enormously, and as she stared into the mirror she found herself wondering what Giovanni Calverri would think of that!
No! This is just becoming madness, she told herself when she was back in the sitting room. With a shaking hand she poured herself a glass of wine and she had gulped down half of it before staring at the glass in a stupefied way that was completely alien to her.
She never drank on her own! Never!
She put the glass back down, with a hand that was no steadier, and walked through the sitting room into the small study which led directly off it, and sat down at her brand-new computer.
She logged on to the Internet and began tentatively pressing keys, until she reached the site she didn’t even realise she was looking for, and one word flashed up on the screen in front of her, mocking her with memories of his lean, beautiful body.
Sicily.
On the screen in front of her, the island unfolded before her eyes with the aid of the electronic equipment she now took for granted, and she printed out all the information available on the harsh beauty of a land which was known as ‘Persephone’s Island’. And then, with an odd thundering in her heart, and a prickling sense of expectation, she settled down and began to read.
Soon she was lost in tales of a bloody past, discovering the complex and stormy history of the sensual European island which lay so close to North Africa. Sicilians were the heirs of the ancient Greeks, Carthaginians, Arabs and Normans, she read. No wonder that Giovanni looked more spectacularly different from any other man she had ever met.
She was only disturbed by the insistent ringing of the doorbell and she blinked, and put the sheets of paper down.
Lucy, probably. She wasn’t expecting anyone else—and in London no one ever seemed to call on anyone else unexpectedly. In fact, she had planned a quiet night as she always did at the end of a job. The celebration of its successful completion would come at the weekend, when they could lie in until late the next morning. They would go to their local bistro and eat chicken and drink a carafe of French country wine.
The doorbell rang again.
OK, she thought, I’m on my way! And if she hadn’t been sure it was her sister she might have felt mildly irritated as she unplugged the Internet connection, but left the picture of Sicily still on the screen.
The ear-splitting sound had just invaded her ears for the third time, and her frown changed to one of worry. What was all the urgency?
With a wrench she pulled the door open, and her heart very nearly stopped.
It was him. Giovanni Calverri.
There.
On her doorstep, with the blue blaze from his eyes nearly blinding her. Briefly she wondered whether those unbelievable, unusual eyes were a throwback to when the island had been invaded by the Greeks, centuries ago, but she had no time to wonder more, merely note the look of derision which was hardening the luscious mouth.
‘Y-you,’ she breathed in a stunned kind of disbelief.
‘But of course it is,’ he concurred sardonically. ‘Weren’t you waiting for me?’
‘Waiting for you?’ She prayed for logic and some kind of strength to seep into her addled brain, but all she could think about was his beauty. A hard, cold kind of beauty unlike anything she had ever seen in her life. ‘Why should I be waiting for you?’
So she wanted to play games.
And, suddenly, so did he, damn her!
‘Didn’t you forget something?’ he purred.
Right at that moment, she would be hard-pressed to remember her name. She felt a shivering awareness of him as she shook her head distractedly. The lemony, musky scent of him had invaded her nostrils like some kind of raw pheromone and she could sense the warm, male heat radiating off him.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She frowned.
Part of him wanted to ram the accusation home. To tell her that he had no need of women who lacked such subtlety. Predatory women with hungry green eyes. But that part of him seemed to be fast on the wane and some alien emotion was in the ascendancy.
Until he reminded himself that emotion had no place in what was happening between them. He didn’t know her. Or particularly like her. Certainly didn’t respect her. He just wanted her, it was as simple and as complicated as that.
His lips parted to say with soft venom, Oh, yes, you do, but some interloper had stolen the words from his mouth. He raised his dark eyebrows questioningly and the hand which had been partially concealed by the hard shaft of his thigh suddenly withdrew and he held out the overstuffed black leather diary towards her. ‘This is yours, I believe?’