The Italian's Baby Bargain: The Italian's Wedding Ultimatum / The Italian's Forced Bride / The Mancini Marriage Bargain
- -
- 100%
- +
Sam received a jolt as his meaning sank in. Jonny a father…It would happen one day, so get used to it. ‘Are congratulations in order?’
Jonny didn’t respond to her question. Following the direction of his distracted gaze, Sam saw his eyes had come to rest on Kat.
Feeling like an intruder, Sam quickly averted her gaze, trying and failing to imagine a man looking at her with the kind of suppressed longing she had read in Jonny’s face. She caught a glimpse of herself reflected in the enormous gilt-framed mirror that covered the wall to her right and thought, Sure—that’s really going to happen. It was a fact of life that freckles, red hair and a body that was never going to be curvy did not inspire dumbstruck lust and longing.
‘Congratulations?’ Jonny dragged his attention back to Sam.
‘I thought you and Kat might be starting a family.’
Her innocuous remark caused Jonny’s good-looking features to freeze. ‘I’m not ready to start a family.’
Meaning Kat was…? Sam speculated, puzzling over his expression. ‘I thought you loved children…’
Not that she could for a second imagine Jonny as a handson father. Though he had many good points, Jonny did have some pretty old-fashioned ideas.
‘This isn’t a good time.’
‘Is there ever a good time?’
Dark colour flooded Jonny’s face as he bent closer. ‘For God’s sake, Sam,’ he hissed. ‘Do I have to spell it out? You of all people should realise that I can’t afford to be thinking of babies. And I can’t tell Kat…’ He swallowed, drew a deep breath and shook his head. The strained smile he gave her was ruefully apologetic. ‘Sorry, Sam. I shouldn’t take it out on you.’ Absently he patted her shoulder. ‘Could I have a word, Sam?’
He looked so apologetic that she immediately forgave his outburst. ‘Isn’t that what we are doing?’
Jonny cleared his throat and nodded towards the closed French doors. ‘In private.’
You can have anything you want.
Her colour slightly heightened by her traitorous thought, Sam nodded placidly and reminded herself for the tenth time that afternoon that she was a strong, independent woman who didn’t need a man—and, anyway, she wasn’t the sort of person who would settle for second best.
In the alcove, where he had retreated to watch them, Alessandro Di Livio tightened his long fingers around the stem of his untouched glass of champagne as he observed his brother-in-law’s head move closer to the glossy copper one of the seated woman.
They were so close they looked like lovers about to embrace. He couldn’t give the man his sister had chosen a backbone, but he could make damned sure that he didn’t cheat and break his besotted little sister’s heart!
God knew what either woman saw in him. Maybe it was the surfing thing? He presumed, from the cabinet of trophies ostentatiously on show in his sister’s apartment, that the younger man had been more successful riding the waves than he was at business. Perhaps the younger man could have coped with one store, he conceded, but his rapid and reckless expansion over the past eighteen months had been nothing short of suicidal. The only thing that surprised Alessandro, who had been set to bail him out for the past year, was that he was still financially afloat.
His sensually sculpted lips formed a twisted, cynical smile as the Maguire woman lifted her hand in a fluttery gesture to her slender, pale throat. The action was as revealing as he had come to expect of her, but he couldn’t quite decide if she was as transparent as she appeared, or if it was all part of some sort of act.
Alessandro’s nostrils flared. If Jonny Trelevan didn’t know she was his for the asking the younger man was an even bigger fool than he’d taken him for. His eyes slid towards his sister, who had been talking too loudly and brightly all afternoon, and found she too was watching the couple. As he watched she turned her head, and he was sure he caught the glitter of tears in her eyes.
Whatever was wrong with his sister’s marriage, he would have laid odds that the red-headed little witch was responsible. What was her game? Alessandro wondered as he angled his dark head a little to one side and studied the slim figure.
If asked to classify her look he would have called it sexy, yet demure. Not to his taste, but he knew a lot of men went for the perennial virgin look. She was the sort of female who simultaneously aroused predatory and protective instincts in the opposite sex.
No wonder men got confused around her. They didn’t know whether to kiss her or protect her from a light breeze! He, on the other hand, knew what he wanted to do—namely shake her and tell her to display a little more discretion when she looked at Trelevan with those big hungry eyes!
Of course her dress sense was nothing short of a total disaster, but colour co-ordination wasn’t going to be high on your average male’s list of priorities when he heard her laugh—that low, husky, wicked chuckle.
It was the sort of laugh a man imagined hearing behind a closed bedroom door. Or is that just me…?
He had known from the beginning, of course, that she was in love with Jonny Trelevan—though astonishingly, as far as he could tell, he was the only person who did! Her friends and relations seemed uniformly oblivious to the intense misery behind the brave smile. He had suspected at that time that if you had taken away that smile and the screaming tension in every fibre of her slender body she would probably have collapsed.
He was neither a relation or a friend, but an objective observer, so her unrequited love was none of his concern so long as she represented no danger to his sister’s happiness.
He had decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.
For starters, Trelevan had seemed to view her as one of the boys, and the only time he got physical was when he punched her playfully on the arm.
As for the girl herself…His eyes narrowed as once again they fell on Samantha Maguire, face buried in the hair of the baby on her lap, so that all he could see was the top of her copper head. If he had thought she represented a threat to his sister’s happiness he would have taken whatever action he deemed necessary. But two years ago he had decided that she did not possess the tempestuous nature that was meant to accompany her vibrant colouring.
She would look, but not touch. And there was no law against looking. He had done some of that himself. On every occasion since, when their paths had crossed, he had kept a watchful eye on her.
Of course he’d been glad that Katerina did not have the added complication of a jealous would-be lover in the background, trying to sabotage her marriage, but he’d felt a stab of contempt when he considered the Maguire girl’s passive acceptance of the hand fate had dealt her. It was lincomprehensiblle to him, but maybe, he mused, it had something to do with British stoicism—something which Alessandro with his more volatile Latin temperament had never been able to get a handle on. But then he never had understood people taking pride in being a good loser.
Now, though, he wasn’t so sure about his earlier assessment. Had he been mistaken in her? Had Samantha Maguire been playing the long game and waiting for her chance? Alessandro was not the sort of man who left things to chance, and this was a possibility he had to consider.
Jonny Trelevan wasn’t the husband he would have chosen for his sister—he was too weak and ineffectual to Alessandro’s mind—but Alessandro had accepted that his wishes were not the ones that counted. The younger man was the husband Kat wanted, and as her brother he would do anything in his power to give Katerina, deprived of the parental love and support he himself had enjoyed, what she wanted.
He stood listening to the inane prattle of the young woman at his side, catching only one word in three of what she was saying, and plunged headlong into one of the flashbacks which had been part of his life for the last ten years.
Chapter Two
A FLASHBACK implied that you’d lost sense of your surroundings, but for Alessandro it was more a sense of dislocation, of being in two places at the same time.
Like today—in the here and now he was saying something that made the plastic blonde girl giggle, while simultaneously he was back on the dark road of that night, pressing the brakes and feeling no response.
The only outward evidence of what was happening to him was the sheen of sweat across his brow.
He could hear the blonde listing her favourite haunts. The flickering images always followed the same rigid sequence. He knew that the next one involved being pretty sure he was going to die.
‘I don’t go to nightclubs,’ he replied, when she finally asked his own preference.
She could have looked no more shocked had he confided a predilection for women’s underwear. Alessandro might have laughed had he not been calling on every skill he had, and then some he didn’t, in a futile attempt to control the car. Knowing as he did so that nothing he could do would affect the outcome.
Looking at the card scrawled with a number, he nodded and murmured an ironic, ‘You’re very kind,’ as his guts tightened in anticipation of the car launching itself into space.
Then the blonde was gone, and so was the car, and they were falling on and on. He could hear the high-pitched female scream that seemed to go on for ever, and then the screech of metal as it ripped and tore. The foul stench of petrol filled his flared nostrils.
Wiping a hand across his damp brow, he looked across the room and saw Samantha Maguire on the point of stepping through the French windows with his brother-in-law. Watching the couple slip outside, Alessandro narrowed his eyes in speculative anger. Did they think nobody had noticed?
Maybe conducting their illicit relationship under the very nose of Katerina added spice? Or maybe the redhead wanted to be discovered?
In his head there was silence, an eerie silence broken finally by his own voice calling to his parents, asking, ‘Are you all right?’
Imprisoned in his seat, he could only imagine why there was no reply to the question he kept repeating, and all the time he had the knowledge that it would take only one spark and the car and its contents would become a raging inferno.
Dawn had been breaking before the first rescuers had arrived.
Alessandro had still been in hospital when the inquest was held. And, thanks to the irritating intransigence of the surgeon responsible for uniting the shattered fragments of bone in his right leg, he had been banned from attending.
His personality was such that going against expert opinion did not normally present him with an obstacle. Alessandro’s problem on that occasion was that the expert advice he wanted to flout came from the man who had saved his leg when the general consensus of medical opinion had been that the mangled limb was beyond saving. He figured that following his advice was the least he owed the man who had operated not once but three times to give him back his mobility.
The inquest had gone ahead in his absence, and had resulted in the total recall of a series of high-performance cars, all of which had shared the faulty braking system discovered in the one that had plunged off the side of the mountain with him at the wheel. The fact that no blame for the fatal accident had been assigned to him personally, that in fact the crash investigators had said nothing he could have done would have prevented the car going over, did not lessen the responsibility that Alessandro felt for the death of his parents.
He had relived the disastrous moments innumerable times since, sure that if he had done something differently his parents would still be alive. Not that it was in his nature to waste time indulging his survivor guilt. He’d had a sister to bring up—a sister who, thanks to him, had no parents.
His chiselled jaw tightened as, without waiting for his heart-rate to return to normal, he made his way towards the terrace doors. The expression on his face made several people get out of his way.
It was time to issue a warning—a warning that was long overdue. And if Miss Maguire knew what was good for her she would take notice. If not? Well, that was her decision. For his part, Alessandro had no doubts concerning his ability to make her see things his way.
The terrace was empty because, despite the brilliant April sunshine, the fluffy white clouds and the expanse of daffodils on the wide green lawns, the wind held a bone-biting chill.
Sam shivered as the wind cut through the beige linen suit she wore. The skirt length and A-line cut didn’t do her petite, narrow-hipped and high-bosomed frame any favours. As her mother had pointed out earlier, she should never, ever wear beige as it made her look drained and haggard.
Sam had agreed. And of course since then she had felt drained and haggard.
‘God, I’m going to get hypothermia,’ she said, hugging her arms around herself as a particularly harsh gust of wind cut through the fabric. ‘Couldn’t you say what you needed to say inside?’
‘Here.’
Sam looked from the envelope he had thrust into her hand to Jonny’s solemn face. ‘What’s this?’ she asked, making no attempt to open it. She knew what it was.
He ran a hand through his disordered fair curls, and the familiar gesture made Sam’s heart ache. ‘I said I’d repay the loan, Sam,’ he reminded her.
‘And I said there was no hurry, Jonny,’ she returned quietly, hating the way his eyes slid from hers. ‘I don’t need the money. It’s just sitting there in the bank.’ The amount of money that worldwide sales of the Angela’s Cat series made was shockingly large, and Sam’s tastes were pretty simple. And in a funny way she owed her success to Jonny.
Without Jonny she would never have felt the need to escape, and she might never have discovered that writing was the perfect way to do so. In which case the chances were her children’s story might never have been anything more than a few pages lying forgotten in the back of a drawer. And she might still be working as a supply teacher.
‘You helped me out of a sticky spot, and for that, Sam, I’ll be eternally grateful. But,’ he said, closing her fingers around the envelope, ‘this is yours. And thanks to you Kat isn’t going to know how close to bankrupt I was.’
Sam gave a worried frown and hoped Jonny’s male pride wasn’t making him repay the loan before he could afford to. But, aware she couldn’t do much about it, she reluctantly shoved the envelope into her pocket. ‘Well, you know what I think, Jonny.’
‘That I should have told Kat I was on the verge of bankruptcy.’ He shook his fair head and gave a grim laugh. ‘Leave it, Sam. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I had to borrow that money.’
‘But your grandmother’s legacy—’ Sam protested.
‘Paid for the initial investment,’ he slotted in. ‘And I needed money to expand.’
‘Why expand?’
Jonny’s features settled into obstinate lines. ‘I couldn’t expect Kat to be a shopkeeper’s wife.’
Sam shook her head in exasperation. ‘For the record, I think you’re a total idiot. Your wife is rich, and her brother is—’
Jonny ran an unsteady hand over his cleanshaven jaw and interrupted. ‘Her brother is Alessandro Di Livio. That’s the whole point, Sam. He’s worth billions, and I—’
‘Kat knew you weren’t a billionaire when she married you,’ she interrupted impatiently.
His blue eyes slid from hers. ‘How could I tell a girl like Kat that I was taking less out of the shop in a year than she spends on shoes in a month? Her brother has always given her everything she wants before she even asks. She worships him,’ he gritted, unable to conceal the envy in his voice as he added dourly, ‘And, let’s face it, Alessandro is perfect.’
An image of a dark, patrician face flashed into her head, and Sam was unable to voice the denial she would have liked. Physically at least he was about as close to perfect as you could get. If your idea of perfect happened to be six feet five of lean, toned muscle, flashing dark eyes, a sinfully sensual mouth, cheekbones that you could cut yourself on and an aristocratic profile. His gorgeous Mediterranean colouring presumably went all over…
She stopped, alarm filtering into her expression. Mentally undressing the man twice within the space of half an hour was not a good development.
Well, gorgeous body or not, he wasn’t Sam’s idea of perfect. But she accepted that on this she was in the minority. However, it didn’t take a great leap to see how a creature like that could make other men feel inadequate.
‘Tell me, Jonny, what’s the most important thing in your life?’ she asked him quietly.
‘Kat, of course.’
Sam heard the indignation in his voice that she should need to ask, and wondered bleakly if the other woman knew how lucky she was. ‘Exactly.’ Her lips twitched into a contemptuous smile. ‘Can you imagine a woman being the most important thing in Alessandro Di Livio’s life?’
She watched Jonny struggle to do so, and gave a triumphant I told you so smile. ‘Of course you can’t. Because the only person important to Alessandro Di Livio is Alessandro.’
‘He cares about Kat!’ Jonny protested.
Too much, Sam thought. ‘Fair enough,’ she conceded. ‘But if Kat had wanted another version of her brother she’d have found one. She didn’t, because she’s a hell of a lot brighter than you are. What she wanted was a decent bloke who puts her first. She wanted you, Jonny.’
‘You really think so?’
‘How would you like it if Kat was in trouble and she didn’t come to you? Just stop being a stiff-necked idiot, tell your wife the truth, and give her what she wants…which presumably is you, Jonny.’ There’s a lot of it about, she thought, before adding, ‘And maybe a baby…?’
The anger died from Jonny’s face and he clutched his head in his hands. ‘God, Sam, you’re right!’ he cried. ‘I’ve been a total idiot. I know I should have told her. But I didn’t want her to think she’d married a total loser!’
Sam had got into the habit of avoiding physical contact with Jonny—it was a self-protective thing—but if ever there was an occasion for a hug this was it. ‘God,’ she said, wrapping her arms around him, ‘but men are stupid.’
Jonny, who had rested his chin on her glossy hair, lifted his head. ‘Especially me.’
‘Especially you,’ she agreed with a watery grin as she drew back from the embrace.
‘One thing, Sam…?’
‘Anything.’
‘Don’t say anything about this to Alessandro. Like I said, he never did think I was good enough for Kat, and if he found out about my cashflow problems he’d…Well…’
Sam nodded. ‘I understand.’
She understood, all right. She understood that the only way Jonny’s marriage was going to work out was if Kat managed to escape her brother’s overpowering influence.
‘My lips are sealed,’ she promised, miming a zipping motion along the generous curve of her mouth.
About to turn away, Jonny swung back and took her by the shoulders. ‘Sam, I may not say so very often, but I do know that you’re the best friend in the world!’ he said, planting a light kiss on her lips.
‘Sure I am. Now, go and talk to your wife.’
Oblivious to the husky catch in her voice, Jonny responded to her urging, pausing only to blow a kiss back to her from the doorway as he dived back indoors, his expression determined.
Sam forgot her desire to escape the cold wind and closed her eyes, lifting a hand to her lips. Her smooth brow puckered into a frown. No tingling…no wild surge of uncontrollable lust! In fact, no lust at all. Could it be that her under-used sex drive had simply died?
‘That was a very touching scene.’
Chapter Three
THE air was expelled from her lungs in one startled gasp as Sam spun around, thinking, It can’t be…?
Of course it was. Nobody else had a voice like that.
‘Oh, it’s you…’ she said stupidly, then flushed.
Alessandro watched as she pushed the strands of hair that had come free from the loose knot on her head from her face with both hands. It was an almost child-like gesture. The vibrant copper, he noticed, glowed against her pale skin. Actually, now that he thought about it, her skin glowed too, with an almost opalescent sheen.
It was the sort of skin a man would find difficult to look at and not think about touching…the silky softness was a tactile invitation. His brother-in-law had clearly decided it was an invitation, he thought, his angular jaw tightening as he looked at the lips the younger man had found so irresistible.
Sam’s expression grew defensive as she returned the silent, hostile stare of the person responsible for a tingling that extended to the soles of her feet. Inside her chest her heart was banging against her ribcage like a trapped wild animal.
Actually, her trapped wild animal instincts were kicking in pretty hard right now. It was only the fact that he stood between her and the door that stopped her from fleeing.
When she had asked Emma earlier why on earth she had invited the wretched man, her friend had reminded Sam that she’d invited all her own family, and he was Kat’s brother and she didn’t have any other family, poor thing.
‘Besides,’ she had admitted with a rueful grin, ‘I never expected him to actually accept.’
Now, looking up into that lean, arresting face, Sam, who if she was honest had been exasperated by Jonny’s inability to stand up for himself where his brother-in-law was concerned, felt a strong surge of sympathy for him. Small wonder he felt nervous and inadequate around the man—and as for confiding his problems…! Dear God, banana skins probably got out of the way when they saw his hand-made Italian shoes coming!
His was certainly the very last shoulder she’d choose to cry on, she thought as her glance brushed the broad, well-developed area in question. How many women had made use of those manly shoulders? Or even sunk their teeth into that smooth golden flesh during a moment of heightened passion…?
You didn’t look at Alessandro Di Livio and think, Here’s a man with empathy. You thought, Here’s a man who’s never put a foot wrong in his life…Or a man who inspired women to bite his shoulders? You thought, Here’s a man who has no insight and even less sympathy for the failings of lesser mortals…And maybe the ability to make a woman lose control…?
A flurry of alarm filtered into her guarded expression as she wondered where those maverick thoughts had come from.
Had he heard any of her conversation with Jonny?
Her alarm lessened as she realised that unless he’d been lurking in the shadows for a long time, which didn’t seem likely, he couldn’t know about the cheque burning a hole in her pocket. The most he could have witnessed was a quick hug between friends and a peck on the cheek—so nothing incriminating there.
Sam released a tiny sigh of relief. Jonny’s secret was safe.
‘I’m sorry—I didn’t see you there.’ Her normally sunny smile was on the stiff side, but she quietly congratulated herself for making the effort—even though all she wanted to do was escape from his oppressive presence.
‘Obviously.’
‘Is there a problem?’
Considering the degree of hostility emanating from his lean body, it now seemed laughable that on the occasions when Sam had previously encountered the man she had considered him to have a glacially cold disposition. A man with the coldest eyes she had ever seen. A man totally incapable of spontaneous emotion, or for that matter any emotion that wasn’t clinically calculated.
The nerve jumping erratically alongside his sinfully sexy mouth and the combustible air of barely suppressed fury that was emanating from him now rather suggested that he was capable of doing a lot more than raising his voice. He was certainly raising the hairs on the nape of her neck. She refused point-blank to analyse the things his proximity was doing to any points south of her neck!