Her Passionate Italian: The Passion Bargain / A Sicilian Husband / The Italian's Marriage Bargain

THE PASSION BARGAIN

by

Michelle Reid

A SICILIAN HUSBAND

by

Kate Walker

THE ITALIAN’S MARRIAGE BARGAIN

by

Carol Marinelli

THE PASSION BARGAIN

by

Michelle Reid

Michelle Reid grew up on the southern edges of Manchester, the youngest in a family of five lively children. But now she lives in the beautiful county of Cheshire with her busy executive husband and two grown-up daughters. She loves reading, the ballet, and playing tennis when she gets the chance. She hates cooking, cleaning, and despises ironing! Sleep she can do without and produces some of her best written work during the early hours of the morning.

Don’t miss Michelle Reid’s exciting new novel, The De Santis Marriage, out in September from Mills & Boon® Modern™.

CHAPTER ONE

FRANCESCA used gentle pressure on the brake pedal to bring the Vespa to a smooth stop at a set of red traffic lights then stretched out a long golden leg and placed a strappy sandalled foot on the ground to maintain the motor scooter’s balance while she waited for the lights to change.

It was a gorgeous morning, still early enough for the traffic on the Corso to be so light that she actually seemed to have the road almost entirely to herself.

A rare occurrence in this mad, bad, traffic-clogged city, she mused with a smile as she tossed back her head to send her tawny brown hair streaming down her back then closed her warm hazel eyes and lifted her face up to the sun to enjoy the feel of its silky warmth caressing her skin.

The air was exquisite today, clear and sharp and drenched in that unique golden light that gave Italy its famous sensual glow.

Her smile widened, her smooth rather generous mouth stretching to enhance the sheen of clear lip-gloss that along with a quick flick of mascara was the only make-up she wore.

Life, she decided, could not be more perfect. For here she was, living in one of the most beautiful cities in the world and only days away from becoming formally betrothed to the most wonderful man in the world. One very short month from now she and Angelo would be exchanging their marriage vows in a sweet little church overlooking Lake Alba before taking off for Venice to honeymoon in the most romantic city in the world.

And she was happy, happy, happy. She even sighed that happiness up at the sun while she waited for the lights to change, too engrossed in the warmth of her own sublime contentment to be aware of the sleek red sports car drawing up at her side. It was only when the driver decided to send the car’s convertible top floating into its neat rear housing and the sultry sound of Puccini suddenly filled the air that she took note of his presence.

Then immediately wished that she hadn’t when she took a glance sideways and saw why the driver had sent the car hood floating back. Her skin gave a sharp warning prickle, her soft hazel eyes quickly lost their smile—none of which had anything to do with the way she was being thoroughly scrutinised from the tips of her extended toes to the shiny flow of her freshly washed hair. Heck, it was almost obligatory for any warm-blooded Italian male to check out the female form when presented with the opportunity. No, her prickling response was due to the fact that she knew this particular Italian male. Or, to be more accurate, she had made his acquaintance once or twice when they had been thrown into the same company.

‘Buon giorno, Signorina Bernard,’ he greeted, the beautifully polite tones of this supremely cultured male completely belying the lazy sweep his dark eyes had just enjoyed.

‘Signor,’ she returned with a small acknowledging dip of her head.

If he noticed the chill she was giving off then he chose to ignore it, preferring to divert his attention away from her to guide one of his long-fingered hands out towards the car dashboard. Puccini died into a slumberous murmur. As he moved, sunlight shot across the raven’s-wing quality of his satiny black hair. Signor Carlo Carlucci was a man that most people would describe as truly handsome, Francesca acknowledged with a complicated pinch of her stomach muscles that forced her to twitch restlessly. Skin the shade of ripened dark olives hugged the most superbly balanced bone structure she had ever seen on a man. Every one of his lean features quite simply fitted, even the nose that was so Roman you could not mistake his heritage. His jaw-line was square, his chin cleft, his cheekbones ever so slightly chiselled, and the firmly moulded shape of his slender mouth was—well—perfect, she admitted with yet another restless twitch.

Dark brown eyes were set beneath a pair of almost straight, satiny black eyebrows and were shaded by eyelashes that were almost a sin they were so long, and silky black. And as he shifted his long lean torso in the seat so he could give her his full attention Francesca would have had to be immune to the whole male species to resist noticing the leashed power in his muscles as they flexed beneath the bright white cloth of his shirt.

He oozed class and style and an unyielding self-possession. Everything about him was polished and smooth. He disturbed her when he shouldn’t. He antagonised her when she knew she shouldn’t let him.

Even the strictly polite smile he offered her set her nerve-ends singing as he remarked pleasantly, ‘You were looking the essence of happiness as I drove up. I suppose credit for this must go to the fine weather we are enjoying today.’

If it was, now it’s gone, Francesca thought resentfully. And wished she understood why she always suffered this itchy suspicion that he was taunting her whenever he spoke to her. He had been making her feel like this from the first time they’d been introduced at a party given by Angelo’s parents. Even the way he had of looking at her always gave her the uncomfortable impression that he knew things about her that she did not and was amused by that.

He was doing it now, holding her gaze with his velvet dark eyes that pretended to be friendly but really were not. He mocked her—he did.

‘Summer has arrived at last,’ she agreed, willing to play the weather game that was what it took to keep this unwantedinterlude neutralised long enough for the lights to change.

‘Which is why you are out and about so early.’ He nodded gravely, mocking her—again?

‘I’m out and about early, as you put it, because this is my day off and I have things to do before I can hit the shops before the crowds arrive.’

‘Ah.’ He nodded. ‘Now I understand the happy essence. Shopping has to be the preferred option to herding weary tourists through the Sistine Chapel or encouraging them to squat upon the Spanish Steps.’

He really had this taunting stuff down to a fine art, Francesca acknowledged as he put her right on the defensive. She had been guiding British tourists round the historical sites of Rome for months now and had learned early on that, though the city’s economy might enjoy the healthy fruits of its tourist industry, the true residents of Rome did not always treat this point with the respect it deserved. They despaired of tourists, could be gruff and curt and sometimes downright rude. Especially in the high season, when they couldn’t walk anywhere without bumping into cameratoting groups.

‘You should be proud of your heritage,’ she censured stiffly.

‘Oh, I am—very proud. Why should you think that I am not? I simply object to sharing,’ he said. ‘It is not in my nature.’

‘Which sounds very selfish.’

‘Not selfish but possessive of what I believe belongs to me.’

‘That still adds up to being selfish,’ she insisted.

‘You think so?’ He took a second or two to contemplate that declaration. As he did so he shifted his body again, drawing her gaze to the white-shirted arm he lifted to rest across the black leather back of his seat. Long brown fingers with blunted fingernails uncoiled from a loose clench then rose upwards, tugging her trapped gaze with them as he brought them to rest against the smooth golden sheen of his freshly shaved cheek. He was gorgeous. Her mouth ran dry. Her tummy muscles pinched again and she became suddenly very aware of the Vespa’s little engine vibrating between her spread thighs.

‘No, I cannot agreed with you, cara.’ He began speaking again, making her eyelashes flicker as her attention shifted to his moving lips. ‘When I am involved in a deeply serious relationship with someone, would you still think it selfish of me to expect my lover to remain completely faithful only to me?’

Was he involved in a deeply serious relationship? For some mad reason her skin began to heat. Oh, stop it, she thought crossly. What was the matter with her? She had absolutely no excuse to get so hot and bothered over a man she didn’t even like. She hardly knew him—didn’t want to know him. The Carlo Carluccis of this world were way out of her league and she was happy to keep it that way.

‘We were talking about Rome,’ she pointed out curtly and flipped her eyes towards the set of traffic lights, willing the stupid things to hurry up and change.

‘We were? I thought we had moved on to discuss my objection to sharing,’ he murmured lazily. Teasing her—taunting her, she was sure—but why? ‘Are you prepared to share your lovers, Francesca?’ he dared to ask her. ‘If I was your lover, for instance, would you expect me to be faithful only to you?’

This was stupid—stupid! I hate you, she told the stubborn red traffic light. ‘Since there is no chance of that happening, signor, I don’t see the use in discussing it,’ she announced in her coldest, primmest English voice.

‘Shame,’ he sighed. ‘And here I was, about to test my luck by suggesting that we continue this discussion in more congenial surroundings…’

Congenial…?

It was a clear come-on. Francesca was shocked enough to slew her widened eyes back to his face. It was a mistake. Her breath caught. Those warning prickles began racing up her spine because those dark, hooded eyes were travelling the length of her outstretched leg again. The sun-drenched air was suddenly charging up with sense-invading atoms that made the inner layers of skin covering her leg tingle as if he’d reached out with one of those hands and stroked right along its smooth golden length.

She almost gasped out loud at the electric sensation. The urge to whip her leg out of sight was almost too strong to stop. It took all of her control to keep the leg exactly where it was as she became stiflingly aware of the way her white cotton skirt was stretched taut across her slender long thighs.

Stop it! she wanted to shout at him. Stop trying to do this to me! But she found she couldn’t manage a single stuttered word and those eyes were moving on; heavy-lidded, darkly lashed, they began slowly skimming her little blue sun top where her rounded breasts pushed at the finely woven cloth. Her nipples responded, tightening with piercing speed. The shock of it held her utterly transfixed as those dark eyes lifted higher until—shockingly—their gazes clashed.

He wanted her. The realisation hit her like a violent blow to the chest. Heat enveloped her from feet to hairline. Those eyes told her he knew what was happening to her and, worse, they were doing nothing to hide the fact that the same thing was happening to him. She could feel the sexual tension in his body, could see it burning in his now blacker than black eyes. Messages began leaping across the tarmac road and to her horror that place between her thighs feathered a ripple of pleasure across the sex-sensitive tissue.

It was so awful she shifted her hips with an uncontrollable jerk. In all of her twenty-four years she had never experienced anything as sexually acute as this. For a few more terrible seconds the world seemed to be closing in on her. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t—

‘Have coffee with me,’ he murmured suddenly. ‘Meet with me at Café Milan…’

Have coffee with me, she repeated slowly to herself, her brain so sluggish that the invitation made no sense. Then it did make sense with all of its hot and spicy meaning. She grabbed at some oxygen. A car horn sounded. The real world came crashing back in. Dragging her eyes away from his, she looked blankly at the traffic lights, saw they’d turned to green and gunned the Vespa’s little engine and took off down the Corso like a terrified pigeon in flight.

A top-of-the-range Lamborghini could outstrip a Vespa without any effort but, ignoring the protesting car horns behind him, Carlo remained exactly where he was.

His eyes were narrowed and fixed on the racing scooter and its beautiful rider, whose silky hair was blowing out behind her as she fled. He’d scared her out of her wits, Carlo acknowledged. Had he meant to do that? He was not entirely sure what his real motives had been, only that he had been presented with an opportunity and had used it—ruthlessly. Now pretend that I barely exist, signorina, he thought grimly.

The muted sound of Puccini rising to a crescendo began to infiltrate his consciousness. Reaching out, he hit the volume control to fill the air with the music then set the powerful car into motion again. There was a fine film of sweat bathing his torso beneath the fine cloth of his crisp white shirt and he grimaced. Francesca Bernard was the most excitingly sensual woman he had ever encountered and there was no way he was going to let all of that sensuality be laid to waste on a crass, mercenary fool like Angelo Batiste.

As the car built up speed along the Corso the Vespa had already turned off at a junction and by the time Carlo passed that junction neither bike nor rider were anywhere to be seen.

Francesca had pulled into a small piazza, cut the engine then climbed off the machine. She was feeling so shaken up inside that her legs felt like jelly, and she headed for the nearest café so she could sit down. A waiter appeared and she ordered fresh orange juice. She desperately needed a cup of strong coffee to calm her shattered senses but the very idea of drinking coffee was out of the question now that Carlo Carlucci had given the simple pleasure a whole new twist.

She shivered, still gripped by the shock of what had just happened. The whole incident had turned her into such a mess inside she could still feel those hot little frissons chasing across her skin. If he’d actually reached out and touched her she had a horrible feeling she would have gone up in a flaming orgasm. She had no idea where it had all come from. How it had gone from a simple tit-for-tat conversation at a red traffic light to—to what it did!

Her throat felt ravaged. She didn’t think she’d managed to take a single breath all the way from those wretched lights until she sat down on this seat. Her hands were trembling, her legs, her arms—the tips of her stinging breasts!

It wasn’t as if they even knew each other well enough to be anything more than polite nodding acquaintances! They’d met—what—twice before, maybe three times at most? And she didn’t even like him. He had a way of antagonising her with that smoothly sardonic manner of his. Her orange juice arrived. She nodded her thanks to the waiter then picked it up and gulped at it. The cool drink helped to soothe her throat but the rest of her didn’t feel any relief.

Putting the glass down on the table, she hunched forward to sit there frowning into it. It was just beginning to dawn on her how easily she had let him get away with what he’d done. Usually she would know exactly how to deal with a teasing Italian who was only out to fill in a few empty seconds by having a bit of fun with her.

But Carlo Carlucci was no ordinary teasing Italian. He was the thirty-five-year-old head of the famous Carlucci Electronics. That placed him more than a decade ahead of her in years and eons ahead of her in every other way she could think of. Women adored him. He was rarely seen out without some acknowledged beauty hanging on his expensive arm. Put him in a room packed full of his tall, dark, handsome peers and he still managed to overshadow them all.

He was special. Even here in super-sophisticated Rome he was the man other men wanted to emulate. In the way these things should work, a lowly tour-guide like herself should never have come into contact with him at all. But Angelo was the son of one of Signor Carlucci’s business associates, which meant they’d happened to find themselves in the same company while attending the same parties over the last few weeks. Not that this placed them in the same circles because it didn’t, she reminded herself with a frown. Even Angelo only received a cool nod in acknowledgement from Carlo Carlucci’s sleek, dark, sophisticated head. Angelo’s father’s company relied on Carlucci’s for the main thrust of its business and Angelo was only a few years older than herself, which made him very junior and insignificant in the pecking order at these bright and sparklingly sophisticated social events.

But at least Angelo was warm and gentle and easy-going. He preferred fun to passion. It was years since a man like Carlo Carlucci had weaned himself off anything so juvenile as fun.

He was way out of her league, and anyway, she loved Angelo.

Yet when it really came down to the bottom line of it, she hadn’t given a single thought to Angelo while she’d been thinking of Carlo Carlucci at that wretched traffic stop sign.

‘Oh.’ She choked on a fresh wave of frissons, which were quickly doused by a heavy blanket of guilt. How could she—how could she have forgotten about Angelo at that wretched set of lights?

On impulse she reached into her tote bag to fish out her cellphone with the intention of calling up the man she loved. She needed to reassure herself that what Carlo Carlucci had just made her feel was nothing more than a blip on her hormonal calendar. She needed desperately to hear his warm, loving voice!

His cellphone was switched off. It was then that she remembered that he had business in Milan today. He was catching the early flight and had predicted he would be unreachable all day.

Then,’ Milan,’ she repeated and shuddered as the name conjured up a whole new meaning that placed it like coffee in the realms of sin.

Oh, stop it, she thought and tossed her cellphone onto the table then sat back in her seat and closed her eyes to work very hard at building Angelo’s beloved golden image over the top of the darker one that should not have found a way into her head at all!

Angelo didn’t have a dark corner in him. He was all sunlight. Golden skin, golden eyes and fine golden strands streaking in his tawny hair that she so loved to trail her fingers through. When he walked into a room he didn’t cast a long shadow over everyone else, he lit it up with his warm golden temperament that had not yet become hidden beneath a hard, sophisticated shell. When he looked at her she felt warm and loved and beautiful, not—invaded by dark, untrammelled lusts.

Oh, all right, so she admitted it. Sometimes she’d wondered why their relationship wasn’t more passionate. In fact, they had yet to actually make love.

‘Time for that when you’re ready,’ she could hear his gentle voice saying.

And he was right because she wasn’t ready. He’d understoodfrom the beginning that she needed time to get used to the idea of full physical love. It wasn’t that she was frigid, she quickly assured herself, just—wary of the unknown.

It came from being brought up by a deeply religious and straight-laced mother who’d instilled in her daughter standards by which she expected Francesca to live her life. Those standards included the sanctity of marriage coming before any pleasures of the flesh.

Outmoded principles? Yes, of course, principles like those were so out of fashion they could appear almost laughable to some. Indeed Sonya, her best friend and flatmate, did laugh at her—often. Sonya couldn’t believe that a gorgeous masculine specimen like Angelo put up with a shrinking violet from a different century.

‘You must be mad to play Russian roulette with a man like him,’ she’d told her. ‘Aren’t you terrified that he might take his sexual requirements somewhere else?’

Well, yes, sometimes. She’d even confided those concerns to Angelo. He’d just smiled and kissed her, said Sonya was jealous and she wouldn’t recognise a principle if she was staring at one.

Angelo didn’t like Sonya. Sonya could not stand him. They provoked each other like two enemies across a neutral zone. Francesca was the neutral zone. The old-fashioned girl with the old-fashioned principles who loved them both but—more to the point—they loved her.

A smile crossed her mouth again. It wasn’t quite as sunny as the smile she had been wearing before she ran into Carlo Carlucci but at least it was a smile.

Her telephone beeped, she twisted it around to check who was calling and the smile became a rueful grin. ‘Were your ears burning?’ she quizzed.

‘Meaning what?’ Sonya demanded, then sourly before Francesca could offer an answer, ‘I suppose by that you’re somewhere with darling Angelo and he’s slandering my character again.’

‘No,’ Francesca denied. ‘Angelo’s in Milan today so put your claws away and tell me what you’re ringing me for.’

‘Do I only ring you when I want something?’

‘The honest answer to that is—yes,’ Francesca answered drily.

‘Well, not this time,’ her flatmate countered. ‘I got up this morning to find you’d already left the flat. Why are you out so early? This is supposed to be your day off.’

‘And you should be on your way to work by now.’ Francesca took a quick glance at her watch. ‘What time did you crawl into bed this morning?’ It was definitely long after she had fallen fast asleep.

Her answer was a mind-your-own-business tut. ‘Stick to the point,’ Sonya snapped. ‘Where are you going and how long will you be gone for?’

‘I decided to come into town and do my shopping before it gets too hot and sticky to try on clothes.’

‘Oh, I forgot. It’s find-the-right-dress-to-knock-dear-Angelo’s-eyes-out day.’

She really was obsessing on the man. ‘Oh, do stop it, Sonya,’ she sighed impatiently. ‘Have you any idea how wearing this war between you and Angelo is? I hope you’re going to call a truce before the party on Saturday night or I might just knock your heads together in front of Rome’s best.’

‘Maybe you would prefer it if I stayed away altogether—then you won’t have to worry.’

She was offended now. Francesca uttered another sigh. ‘Now, that’s plain childish.’

‘And you are beginning to sound like my mother. Don’t do this, don’t do that. At least try to behave yourself,’ Sonya chanted deridingly. ‘I hoped when I came to Rome that I would leave all of that stuff behind me in London.’

She was right, Francesca realised with a start—she sounded like her own mother. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured heavily.

‘Forget it,’ Sonya said and it was her turn to sigh. ‘I’m a bitch in the mornings. You know I am. Go and buy your knockout dress and I’ll crawl into work like a good girl.’

The call ended a few seconds later, leaving Francesca sitting there frowning and wondering what the heck had happened to her beautiful day.

The answer to that came in the form of a pair of dark eyes and a sensually husky voice saying, ‘Have coffee with me at the Café Milan.’