Secret Baby, Convenient Wife

Welcome to the new collection of Harlequin Presents!

Don’t miss contributions from favorite authors Michelle Reid, Kim Lawrence and Susan Napier, as well as the second part of Jane Porter’s THE DESERT KINGS series, Lucy Gordon’s passionate Italian, Chantelle Shaw’s Tuscan tycoon and Jennie Lucas’s sexy Spaniard! And look out for Trish Wylie’s brilliant debut Presents book, Her Bedroom Surrender!

We’d love to hear what you think about Harlequin Presents. E-mail us at Presents@hmb.co.uk or join in the discussions at www.iheartpresents.com and www.sensationalromance.blogspot.com, where you’ll also find more information about books and authors!

Harlequin Presents®

ITALIAN

HUSBANDS

They’re tall, dark…and ready to marry!

If you love reading about our sensual Italian men, don’t delay, look out for the next story in this great miniseries!

ITALIAN HUSBANDS

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

All about the author…

Kim Lawrence

Though lacking much authentic Welsh blood, KIM LAWRENCE—from English/Irish stock—was born and brought up in north Wales. She returned there when she married, and her sons were both born on Anglesey, an island off the coast. Though not isolated, Anglesey is a little off the beaten track, but lively Dublin, which Kim loves, is only a short ferry ride away.

Today they live on the farm her husband was brought up on. Welsh is the first language of many people in this area and Kim’s husband and sons are all bilingual. She is having a lot of fun, not to mention a few headaches, trying to learn the language!

With small children, she thought the unsocial hours of nursing weren’t too attractive, so, encouraged by a husband who thinks she can do anything she sets her mind to, Kim tried her hand at writing. Always a keen Harlequin reader, she felt it was natural for her to write a romance novel. Now she can’t imagine doing anything else.

She is a keen gardener and cook, and enjoys running—often on the beach because, living on an island, the sea is never very far away. She is usually accompanied by her Jack Russell, Sprout—don’t ask, it’s a long story!

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

DERVLA’S skirt lifted in the updraft as the helicopter carrying their guests lifted off. Her husband—it had taken her three months before she could use the term even in the privacy of her own thoughts—laughed huskily, his dark eyes glinting with amusement as he watched her frenzied efforts to smooth the fabric back down modestly over her thighs.

She gave him a half-hearted glare, avoiding prolonged exposure to those mocking eyes because mingled in with the amusement was a glint of insolent sexual challenge that made her hand shake slightly as she lifted it to smooth her tousled red hair into a semblance of order—never an easy objective to achieve where her wayward pre-Raphaelite curls were concerned.

Gianfranco made no attempt to restore order to his own mussed dark hair, but he looked gorgeous anyway.

With his glorious vibrant Mediterranean colouring, dark fallen-angel features and six-foot-five lean, muscle-packed frame, Gianfranco Bruni could not not look gorgeous if he tried!

Gorgeous in a way that triggered a hot hormonal rush and made the muscles low in Dervla’s pelvis tighten when she looked at him; gorgeous in a way that never failed to make her throat tighten with emotion she had no trouble putting a name to—but she didn’t!

While not mentioning love had not been included in their marriage vows, it might as well have been because Gianfranco had made his own feelings on the subject crystal-clear when he had proposed.

He had proposed!

Now how bizarre was that?

Gianfranco arched a darkly delineated brow and looked down at her, one corner of his wide sensual mouth lifting in a teasing half-smile. ‘What does that enigmatic little smile mean, cara mia?’

Dervla shivered as he traced the curve of her mouth with the pad of one long brown finger and tilted her face up to his like a flower seeking sunlight. She turned her flushed cheek into the curve of his hand as she looked at him through her lashes, marvelling at the perfect symmetry of his slashing cheekbones, velvety dark eyes and sensually sculpted lips.

‘I just have to pinch myself sometimes. It all seems so surreal.’

His darkly delineated brows drew together above his aquiline nose. ‘And bruise such perfect flawless skin?’ he said, allowing his finger to drop, trailing sensuously down over the pale flesh of her neck until it came to rest in the pulse spot at the base of her throat.

Dervla swallowed as the slumberous heat in his dark eyes made her wildly sensitive stomach flip and her heartbeat stumble and quicken.

‘I can’t think straight when you look at me like that and we still have a guest, Gianfranco,’ she protested, her heart skipping another beat as his wicked smile flashed, deepening the sexy creases around his bold dark eyes.

‘Carla?’ Frowning at the reminder, he dismissed his distant cousin with an eloquent shrug of one shoulder. ‘I don’t know why you invited her anyway. It was meant to be a weekend to catch up with Angelo and Kate.’

The gentle reproach made Dervla’s green eyes widen in incredulity.

‘Me invite her?’ Not only had Gianfranco issued the invitation to the gorgeous brunette, but he’d forgotten to even mention it to her!

So when the older woman had appeared looking her usual immaculately groomed self with an amount of luggage that had seemed to Dervla more appropriate to a two-month luxury cruise than an informal weekend in the country, Dervla had had to think on her feet and pretend she knew all about it.

And Gianfranco himself had not exactly helped the situation when, on heaving himself dripping from the pool, he had found the older woman watching him through her designer shades.

His, ‘What are you doing here, Carla?’ had not exactly oozed warmth and welcome!

Actually he’d said it in Italian, but Dervla’s command of the language had progressed to the point where she could even get the gist of fairly rapid conversations. She despaired of her accent, but Gianfranco had promised her it was extremely sexy.

Dervla didn’t entirely believe him, but it was always flattering to be told you were sexy, especially by a man who was lusted after by every female under ninety that came in contact with him!

‘I know you two are friendly, but I would like my wife to myself sometimes.’

Friendly?

Dervla felt a spasm of guilt. She ought to think of Gianfranco’s cousin as a friend; the other woman had gone out of her way to make Dervla feel at home when she had arrived.

If it hadn’t been for Carla’s tactful suggestions she could have made a number of painful faux pas—actually she’d made them anyway, but that was because she didn’t always accept the older woman’s very good advice.

It had been Carla who had supplied the identity of the gorgeous, nubile young woman who had plastered herself against Gianfranco as they did a circuit of the dance floor when everyone else she had asked changed the subject or pleaded ignorance.

Carla had explained about the blonde’s on/off relationship with Gianfranco. It seemed that they picked up the threads of their relationship when it suited them both.

‘More of a habit than a relationship, really,’ she observed dismissively.

Habits, Dervla thought, watching Gianfranco’s ex-girlfriend trail her scarlet fingertips down his lapel before drawing his face down to kiss his lips, were hard to break.

Even if you wanted to, and she wasn’t sure in the early days Gianfranco did!

Carla advised her not to bring up the subject.

‘You really mustn’t feel insecure about it, Dervla, because I’m sure he would never disrespect you by being unfaithful.’

Carla was the only one who didn’t clam up when she mentioned Sara, Gianfranco’s first wife and mother of his son.

‘He adored her,’ Carla confided when she walked into a room and saw Dervla staring at a framed portrait by a famous photographer of a newborn Alberto in the arms of his mother, who had the serene look of a glowing Madonna.

Not exactly news, but it had made Dervla’s spirits sink like a lead weight anyway.

If she considered anyone a friend here in Italy it really ought to be Carla. Yet somehow she never felt totally easy in the Italian woman’s sophisticated company.

Maybe, she mused, it was because of the incident just after her move to Tuscany when she had still been feeling totally out of her depth and insecure.

Understandable really—Dervla had been less philosophical about the mix-up at the time—that a person would assume that Carla was Gianfranco’s wife. The stylish Italian woman was the sort of person you expected to find married to an incredibly attractive Italian billionaire.

But he chose me, she reminded herself, sticking out her chin in an attitude of defiance.

‘We should get back to the house. Carla’s on her own.’ She caught her lower lip between her teeth and grimaced. ‘I think we’ve neglected her a bit this weekend,’ she reflected guiltily.

The moment Angelo and Kate had arrived the two men had exchanged their suits for jeans and tee shirts and headed out onto the hills on horseback while Angelo’s heavily pregnant wife had understandably been pretty much unable to talk about much else but pregnancy and birth.

‘Carla’s not really a woman who feels comfortable in the company of other women,’ Dervla mused, thinking how the other woman became more animated when a man walked into a room—which made her efforts to seek out Dervla all the more considerate. ‘And she definitely doesn’t like baby talk,’ she added, recalling the other woman’s glazed expression and yawns.

Gianfranco threaded his thumbs into the belt loops of his jeans and turned his squinting regard on the panoramic view of the valley, drawing her a little to one side as they joined the path through the trees that led back to the house.

‘But were you all right with it?’ His eyes swivelled towards her, the expression in the dark depths concealed from her by the sweep of his ebony lashes. ‘All the baby talk?’

Not fooled by his casual tone, Dervla knew exactly what Gianfranco was really wondering.

Was being around the heavily pregnant and glowing Kate a painful reminder of her own infertility? Did it make her mourn for the child she could never carry for the man she loved?

If she had been being strictly honest about the subject—which she never was, not even to herself—Dervla would have had to reply yes to his question. Or she would have, but, fingers crossed, things had changed. Excitement fizzed up inside her and she quickly lowered her lashes like a shield, because she knew he would see the hope she felt sure was shining in her eyes.

And now wasn’t the right moment.

When she did tell Gianfranco her news she didn’t want any interruptions and cousin Carla had an instinct for walking into a room at the wrong moment!

‘Of course.’

Catching her chin between his long fingers, Gianfranco tilted her face up to his.

She shifted uncomfortably under his searching scrutiny, but did not drop her eyes. After a moment he nodded, presumably satisfied by what he had seen in her face.

Dervla was amazed, but relieved—normally it was impossible to get even a half-truth past Gianfranco.

‘Poor Carla,’ she said as his hand fell away. ‘I don’t think she could get her head around the fact the staff had the weekend off and you and Angelo were cooking. I think she thought it was beneath you.’

Dervla might have once assumed the same herself when the only things she had known about the billionaire Gianfranco Bruni, socialite and hotshot ruthless financier, were the headlines containing his name she had read. It wasn’t that he wasn’t that man the financial pages referred to with respect, awe and in some circumstances fear, but he was more—much more.

Gianfranco was a complex man, a man with many layers. A man it would take a lifetime to understand. A man who would drive you insane with frustration while you tried!

‘I have no interest in discussing Carla,’ her many-layered husband remarked, oozing male arrogance as he dismissed his cousin with a click of his long fingers and turned his attention to his wife.

The raw smouldering heat in his sensuous regard sent her temperature up several degrees in the space of a single heartbeat.

‘And at this moment I would much prefer that you were beneath me,’ he remarked, sliding his big hands to her shoulders.

Dervla, her wide eyes melded with his smouldering dark orbs, didn’t resist as he drew her towards him; molten heat pooled low in her belly and her knees gave way.

‘Carla…’ she faltered with one last attempt to cling to sanity and common sense.

Gianfranco just smiled, all smug male confidence, and she might have been angry with him if she hadn’t been able to feel the tremors running through his body like a fever. She could forgive him for turning her into a mindless slave to desire because amazingly she did the same to him…red hair, freckles and all. The man had the oddest taste, but who was she to argue…?

Still holding her eyes with his, Gianfranco slid his hand down, grazing the contours of one small, firm breast with his knuckles before encircling it with his fingers, letting the warmth fill his palm.

There was no slow build-up; the desire that licked through like a white-hot flame was instantaneous. Dervla’s head fell back, her eyelids flickering downwards across her flushed cheeks as she inhaled deeply and then released the breath on a long, fractured sigh.

As he watched her Gianfranco’s arm slid supportively to her waist as her knees sagged; he pressed his mouth to the smooth column of her throat.

‘Do you know how much I want you?’

Before she had any opportunity to respond to this harsh question—always supposing she had been capable of more than a whimper—he took her hand and pressed it palm down against his groin where his erection was painfully restrained by the denim.

‘This much.’

Dervla’s insides dissolved with primal desire, the liquid heat spreading until every hungry cell ached and throbbed with it, the pleasure bordering pain.

Gianfranco felt her gasp and shudder and when she opened her eyes and looked at him her eyes looked dark and glazed, the green almost swallowed up by the dilated pupil.

‘Gianfranco, we shouldn’t…’ she whispered, while thinking, If we don’t I’ll die. I’ll shrivel up and expire of sheer frustration.

Their warm breaths mingled as he tugged gently at her lower lip with his teeth. Skimming his tongue across the full, cushiony, soft, trembling, moist outline, he nuzzled his nose against hers.

‘We should,’ he contradicted thickly as he bent his head, fixing his warm mouth to hers. Her tongue slid sinuously against his and a ragged moan was dragged from deep in Gianfranco’s chest.

‘Do you know how good you feel?’ he asked, cupping the curve of her bottom with his hand and dragging her hard up against him. With his free hand he began to trace the soft contours of her face, his fingertips barely touching her skin. ‘I couldn’t go through a day without smelling your skin, seeing your face, touching you…’

She tilted her head back and looked directly into the mesmerising heat of his eyes. She wanted, actually she ached, to say I love you, but instead she blocked the forbidden words and whispered, ‘Show me how much you want me, Gianfranco.’

She saw the flame in his eyes and raised herself onto tiptoe, then slanted her mouth softly across his. As she began to pull away he released a low imprecation and, grabbing the back of her head, ground his mouth into hers. Kissing her as though he’d drain the life from her.

Lips attached, they sank entwined to the mossy floor.

A silence punctuated by soft gasps and hoarse gasps pulsed as the trees stood silent witness as they feverishly tore at each other’s clothes until they lay hot bare flesh to hot bare flesh.

Gianfranco covered one hardened nipple with his mouth, causing her slender back to arch as deep darts of pleasure penetrated to the very core of her. He kissed his way down her belly as his fingers explored the soft curls at the apex of her legs before sliding deeper into her.

Feeling as though she were drowning in erotic pleasure, Dervla slid her fingers across the sweat-slick golden contours of his hard, smooth shoulders. ‘Now, please!’ she begged. ‘Oh, my God, Gianfranco, why are you so damned good at this?’ she groaned as he responded willingly to her plea.

‘Look at me!’ he commanded thickly as he filled her, sinking deep into her heat. ‘I want to see your face.’ His own face was flushed, the skin drawn tight against the strong planes and hollows of his bone structure.

Their eyes were sealed as tightly as their bodies as they moved together, both silent but for tortured breathing until a low, almost feral cry of pleasure was torn from Dervla’s lips as the first wave of release hit her.

At almost the same moment she felt him pulse hotly inside her.

Stretched out lazily on the mossy floor, Gianfranco watched, one hand beneath his head, as she began to dress. Arms twisted behind her back, balanced on one leg, Dervla struggled clumsily with the clasp on her bra.

He responded to the wave of tenderness that hit him with his usual mantra of, It’s just lust, a purely sexual thing, and wondered as he rode out the wave how much shelf-life that particular rationalisation had?

‘You could help.’

‘My expertise lies in removing undergarments. Besides, you really don’t need that thing, pretty though it is,’ he conceded. ‘I prefer you free and unfettered, especially under a silk blouse.’

‘You mean I’m flat-chested,’ Dervla snapped, pretending outrage as she tore her blouse from his fingers. Actually marriage to Gianfranco had cured her of any insecurities she had about her body; he enjoyed it and had taught her to do the same.

Gianfranco laughed. ‘Hardly that, cara! You fit in my hands just perfectly,’ he reminded her, extending one hand and flexing his fingers suggestively to demonstrate the fit.

She turned her head quickly, but not before he had seen the hot fiery rush of colour to her cheeks. That she could blush now when he could still taste her on his lips, when he knew every inch of her body better than he knew his own, made him grin. ‘You’re blushing.’

Dervla tossed back her red hair and turned, fastening her shirt as it settled in wild rippling curls around her shoulders. ‘You just like to torment me,’ she charged reproachfully.

His eyes slid to her smooth, high cleavage as he levered himself upright in one fluid motion. With one hand he smoothed back her hair from her face before planting a warm, lingering kiss on her parted lips.

‘It only seems fair, cara,’ he husked, ‘as you torment me.’

It was true, though the urgency of his desire had ebbed, it was never far away when he looked at her or even thought of her. He had never known anything like it.

‘What are you thinking?’ he asked, studying her face with the unnerving intensity that always made her feel he could see into her head and read her thoughts.

Dervla shook her head. ‘I was just thinking…’ She watched through her lashes, her attention drifting as he fastened the belt across his slim hips and began to button his shirt across his flat, muscle-ridged belly. ‘It’s just all this—’

The expressive sweep of her slim arm took in the Tuscan landscape, of rolling hills dotted with olive groves and the sensitively and expensively restored palazzo, which, with the exception of a few years when Gianfranco’s father had lost it in a poker game, had been in his family since the fifteenth century.

A year ago life had been much simpler. She had been a nurse, philosophical about the fact that there was no way she could afford to get on the property ladder in London.

Now she was mistress of this vast estate and several other luxurious homes across Europe including a London Georgian town house complete with the obligatory underground pool and leisure complex, and wife of the powerful enigmatic man who earned the billions for their upkeep.

‘It’s so far away from my old life.’

There had been so many changes in the past year that sometimes when she caught sight of her reflection in a mirror Dervla hardly recognised the woman reflected there, and she wasn’t talking designer outfits!

The changes went much deeper.

But then she hadn’t actually had much choice but to adapt when she’d found herself plunged into a totally alien environment and dramatically out of her comfort zone. She’d had to develop a few new skills to cope.

And she had.

A year ago she would have laughed hysterically at the suggestion that she had the ability to get a children’s hospice—funded by the charitable trust funded by Gianfranco’s financial empire—from the drawing-board stage to bricks-and-mortar reality.

Similarly she would have had a panic attack at the notion that she could attend and, even more scary, host glittering events where the guests could be as diverse as politicians, Hollywood royalty and the real thing—who ever knew there were so many princes in Europe?

Maybe some of Gianfranco’s—not entirely realistic in her view—confidence in her ability to do whatever he threw at her had rubbed off, because she had done both.

And become a stepmother.

A small frown puckered the smooth skin of her brow as her thoughts turned to her stepson, whom she adored.

That might have been the biggest challenge of all if Alberto had displayed even the remotest resentment of her, his new stepmother, or if Gianfranco had made it quite clear on the one occasion she had found herself in the middle of a father-son tussle that when it came to his son he made the decisions.

She had forgotten what the minor disagreement had been about, but not his words when he had referred to the incident when they were in private.

‘There has been just Alberto and me for a long time now…what we have works.’

Dervla’s admiration was sincere. ‘I know you’re a great father. I was only—’

‘I will not have you undermining my authority with my son, Dervla.’

‘I wasn’t trying to—’

He brushed aside her protest with an impatient motion of his hand. ‘Children,’ he told her, apparently unaware of the insult he had offered her, ‘need continuity.’

‘You mean children are permanent and wives are temporary.’

His irritation was written clear in his steely stare as he retorted coldly, ‘If you wish to put it that way.’

She hid her hurt behind aggression. ‘You put it that way.’

His careless shrug made her resentment spill over into an unwise—she knew it the moment it left her lips—reference to his dead first wife.

‘I don’t suppose you told Alberto’s mother it was not for ever when you proposed to her?’