DEAR READER LETTER

By Sharon Kendrick

Dear Reader,

One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.

There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.

I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100th story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”

So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?

I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.

Love,

Sharon xxx

Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.

About the Author

SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…

The Sicilian’s Passion

Sharon Kendrick

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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With special thanks to Mary D’Angelo of the Italian Cultural Institute and Sarah Locke (of Winchester!) and Victoria and Alexandra and, of course, dear old Goethe.

Contents

Cover

Dear Reader

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

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

EPILOGUE

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS probably the sexiest car Kate had ever seen. Black and sleek and gleaming, it positively screamed testosterone! And it looked all wrong on the forecourt of such an imposing mansion.

Kate smiled. In her experience, only dull little men drove around in cars like that—as if compensating for their own inadequacies with an excess of horsepower!

She squinted at it curiously. Lady St John, her client, was a very wealthy woman, yes—but in a restrained rather than an over-the-top way. Since when had she taken to entertaining people who owned such outrageously powerful cars?

Unless she had taken to driving one herself, thought Kate, her mouth quirking in amusement. It wouldn’t surprise her.

She studied the car again. Maybe not. Lady St John had an abundance of energy—but you would need to be pretty agile to gain access to that long, low and mean machine!

She took one last glance in the driving mirror before she presented herself and looped back a stray strand of fiery hair. Considering that she had been up since six that morning she didn’t look too bad! And appearances, as she knew, were everything. Particularly in her business.

Kate Connors; interior designer to the rich and—sometimes—famous. And, as jobs went, it was… Well, as she often reminded herself, it was pretty cool. It paid well, it had variety, and what was more—it enabled her to meet all kinds of interesting people.

Like Lady St John—an intrepid aristocrat who had travelled to all corners of the globe and then produced exciting—if somewhat under-read—books all about her journeys.

The St John house was as rugged as the magnificent sweep of coastline which lay to the front of it, and as Kate jangled the old-fashioned doorbell, she could hear the thunder of the sea as it crashed and foamed against the craggy grey rocks.

Such an elemental place, she thought, wishing that her job was not almost at an end, as the door was opened by the housekeeper.

‘Hello, Mrs Herley,’ smiled Kate. ‘Lady St John is expecting me, I believe?’

The woman gave a brief smile as she pulled the door open to usher Kate inside. ‘I think that your appointment may have slipped her mind,’ she confided. ‘Lady St John is a little… er… distracted today.’

Kate knew better than to ask why. It hadn’t taken her long in the job to discover that domestic employees never gave away information about their employer—and particularly not one as naturally autocratic as the rather formidable Elisabeth St John, who was nearly eighty, and yet Kate had never met a woman of such advanced years who could exude such beauty and such grace. Who could still wear clothes with the style of the fashion model she had once briefly been. If I look like that at her age, she had thought at their very first meeting, then I would be a very happy bunny indeed!

Mrs Herley shut the door again. ‘If you would like to wait in the Blue Drawing Room, Miss Connors, then I will tell Lady St John that you are here.’

‘Thanks,’ murmured Kate rather wryly.

Her early appeal to Mrs Herley that she ‘call me Kate’ had fallen on polite but deaf ears—and she had remained Miss Connors ever since! Some people’s worlds were built on different structures from her own. But such formality suited this beautiful old house, she decided dreamily, making her way to the enormous room which she was almost through with decorating.

Kate let out a sigh as she looked around. She would be sad to let it go—but then, that happened with nearly all her jobs. They were her babies, in a way, and the final parting always proved more of a wrench than she expected, even after nearly nine years in the business.

The floor-to-ceiling windows were filled with the image of sea and sky—a breathtaking view and one with which the room had needed to compete so that it didn’t fade into complete insignificance.

Kate had chosen the colours carefully, and now the walls were bright with an unusual shade of blue. A deep and stunning and startling blue, and one which made the most of the Gothic mouldings which adorned the cornices.

And if she said so herself—it did look pretty good!

‘Kate?’

She turned around to find Lady St John walking into the room, in a cashmere cardigan and matching ankle-skimming skirt.

‘Hello, Lady St John! Almost my last visit to you, sadly! And I… I…’ Kate’s words faltered and then died completely, stuck in her throat like an insult one had thought better of saying.

For Lady St John was not alone, and insult was the very last word you would associate with the man who had quietly entered the room behind her. For who could possibly criticise pure perfection on two such long, muscular legs? This must be the owner of the car, she realised, and her heart began to race. Had she thought that only dull little men drove cars like that? Because she had been totally and foolishly wrong.

Lady St John performed a seamless introduction, waving her hand in the direction of the man who stood like a dark, silent statue behind her. ‘Kate—this is my godson.’

‘Your godson?’ echoed Kate, in breathless bemusement.

Lady St John smiled. ‘Mmm! I met his mother on my youthful travels to Europe and she became one of my closest friends. I’d like you to meet Giovanni Calverri.’ She turned to the man at her side. ‘Giovanni, this is Kate Connors, who has just been turning her rather spectacular talents to this room.’

As he glanced around the room, Kate couldn’t take her eyes off him. His name implied Latin blood, as did the jet-dark hair, though the eyes were—rather disconcertingly—a bright, dazzling blue. But the term Latin implied warmth and passion, and wasn’t there something awfully cold and aloof about this tall, striking man who was eyeing her with a face that was closed and shuttered?

She matched his look with one of her own. Men in suits that looked as if they had only just left the designer’s showroom the previous day were simply not her type.

‘Hello,’ she said coolly.

Giovanni froze. He had never seen a woman quite so tall or so slim, nor with hair of such a bright, beaten fire—and her very unexpectedness beat a deep, inevitable path into his consciousness. He felt the muscles of his thighs clench, as if his body was instinctively telling him that he wanted to… wanted to… His mouth hardened as he acknowledged the rampant flurry of his thoughts.

He forced himself to make his introduction as bland as possible, although the moist gleam of her mouth filled him with an overwhelming urge to crush its soft pinkness beneath his.

‘Giovanni?’ prompted his godmother, looking at the forbidding set of his shoulders in mild perplexity.

He pulled himself together. ‘I am delighted to meet you,’ he said, in the most beautiful accent Kate had ever heard—rich and dark and overlaid with the slightest and sexiest transatlantic drawl.

Say that again like you meant it, thought Kate indignantly. But she didn’t stop staring, because, even though he was not her type, he was still remarkable, and men who looked like this one were few and far between. Even in the rarefied circles in which she mixed.

Olive skin, an aquiline nose and a hard, sensual mouth. Combine those attributes with a body which was tall and lithe and didn’t possess even the tiniest bit of excess flesh, and you had a man who was most women’s fantasy come true in living, breathing form.

‘Delighted to meet you, too,’ she murmured, tempted to echo his own lack of enthusiasm, but good manners brought her up short and she gave him a polite smile. ‘You’re Italian, are you?’

‘Italian?’ His mouth twisted with a derision which made it look very sexy indeed, and Kate felt her heart race again. What on earth had she said to make him glare at her so?

‘Diu Mio!’ he uttered softly, a warning glitter lighting up the depths of his blue eyes, as if she had inflicted some silent blow on him. ‘I am a Sicilian, not an Italian!’

He made the claim as if he owned the world itself! ‘You mean there’s a difference?’ she questioned lightly and batted her eyelashes playfully at him.

‘Oh, dear,’ murmured Lady St John.

Giovanni felt his muscles tense once more as he met the flirtatious challenge which had suddenly made her eyes look very green indeed. Eyes which were almost on a level with his own. It was a new and unsettling sensation not to be looking down on a woman—from a purely physical point of view. Disturbingly, he found himself wondering how their bodies would feel if they were touching head to toe, horizontal. Naked. He swallowed the thought down and sublimated his desire, preferring instead to dwell on her ignorance.

‘You mean you don’t know the difference between Sicily and Italy?’ he demanded.

‘I wouldn’t have to ask if I knew, would I?’ she returned, though his rudeness was doing nothing to dampen down the heat in her blood.

Giovanni bit back his irritation, for why should this pale and unknown Englishwoman know anything about the deep, secret place which was his home? The place in love with its own silence, which shaped the impenetrable character of all Sicilians.

‘The difference is almost incalculable,’ he told her coldly. ‘And would take far more time to explain than I have at my disposal.’

‘I see,’ said Kate faintly, thinking how well he spoke English—whilst at the same time acknowledging that she could not ever remember anyone being quite so rude to her!

‘Giovanni!’ said Lady St John, with a mild air of reproval. ‘Much more of that severity and you’ll have Kate leaving!’

He turned then, and a sudden brief flash of warmth transformed the chilly face as he looked down at his godmother. ‘Forgive me,’ he murmured, ‘but it has been a very long week. You must make allowances for me if I am not up to giving a history of Sicily this close to lunch!’

Kate was furious. Was he going out of his way to make her feel as though she was something he had found squashed beneath the sole of his delicious, handmade shoe?

‘Oh, don’t worry about me, Lady St John,’ she declared airily. ‘It would take a lot more than that to make me cut and run!’

Giovanni observed the fire which was spitting from eyes as perfectly shaped as bay leaves. For a brief moment he wondered what it would be like to see those same eyes sleepy and satiated in the aftermath of passion, and then hardened his heart against their emerald appeal, astonished to find his body stubbornly attempting to disobey his will.

And yet he had had a lifetime’s practice of seeing beautiful, intelligent women looking at him with open invitation in their eyes. It happened with such monotonous regularity that he was nothing more than bored by it. Usually.

He told himself that she was a predator—that she must put out for every man she wanted, in just this way—and thankfully the fire began to leave his loins.

Confused, Kate turned away from that beautiful, condemning face and tried to pretend that he wasn’t there. ‘I have the curtains in the van, Lady St John,’ she said, gleaming a small smile of pleasure at her client. ‘And I’d like to begin hanging them, if I may.’

‘I can’t wait to see them!’ enthused Lady St John. ‘Shall we ask Giovanni to help you carry them in? They must be very heavy indeed.’

Ask for help from the cold-faced man who had been so rude to her? Like hell! Kate shook her head, and the red hair shimmered like a windblown wheat-field all the way down her back. ‘That won’t be necessary!’ She gave him a defiant smile. ‘I’m used to managing on my own!’

‘How admirably independent!’ His blue eyes mocked her as did the smile which hovered around his lips. ‘But I am afraid that consideration for the weaker sex is inborn in all Sicilian men. I insist on helping you.’

Had he deliberately said that just to inflame her? The weaker sex indeed! And how could he insist against her wishes? Kate opened her mouth to snap back some suitable retort, until she realised that it wouldn’t make very good business sense to be rude to her client’s godson. Even if he did need a few lessons in manners! And the curtains really were very heavy.

‘How terribly sweet of you,’ she emphasised deliberately.

Giovanni silently registered the affront, with another stab of heat to his belly. Sweet was not a description which most red-blooded men strove for. Was she hoping to goad him into some kind of reaction, perhaps? His smile grew even colder. Women were notoriously predictable and he was in grave danger of giving her back just the response she wanted. ‘Why, you are much too kind!’ he murmured back.

Kate felt more than a little out of her depth as she led the way out of the house towards her van. Not a feeling she was used to—and certainly not one with which she was comfortable.

She was sunny and enthusiastic—qualities which were normally contagious. When you worked closely alongside people in their own homes, you had to get along with them. And normally she didn’t have a problem getting along with anyone.

So what was the problem here? Or was Giovanni the problem?

It’s not his home, she reminded herself as she pointed to her van. It belongs to his godmother. He’s obviously just into all that macho stuff—maybe he thinks it turns women on. Well, she should let him know loud and clear that it didn’t! ‘All the stuff’s in there!’ she said, pointing rather frustratedly at the van.

‘Yes,’ he said, narrowing his eyes to look at her as she unlocked the back of a van only a little more flamboyant than she was, and began to climb inside.

She wore a pair of slim-fitting trousers in a soft green as vibrant as the newest buds of spring—stretched closely over a bottom which was high and taut. She half turned, and Giovanni swallowed as his eyes flickered over a tangerine Lycra T-shirt which clung to the lush swell of her breasts.

Most redheads would never have worn a shirt that orange, he decided. But, then, hair that thick and bright was rare indeed. It hung almost to her waist, clipped back from her pale, freckled face with two clips of glittering pink plastic which matched the bangles that jangled around her narrow wrists.

Giovanni had been brought up to believe that a woman should only ever wear gold. Or diamonds. That their bodies should only ever be clothed in silk or cashmere, or the lightest of cottons. Pure, natural fabrics to enhance feminine beauty—not these clinging, man-made clothes. He wondered if her underwear was just as garish and his mouth hardened. What in Diu’s name had made him think of something like that?

‘Here we are!’ said Kate breathlessly, hauling out a huge, plastic-sheathed package from the depths of the van. And then she looked up to find those cold blue eyes studying her with an intensity which was almost… almost… Her own eyes narrowed in response as she realised that the overriding expression on his face was one of censure!

What made this arrogant stranger think he had the right to look down on her?

She curved her lips into a smile. Be pleasant, she urged herself. Or, at least, be outwardly pleasant. Don’t react. Reacting will look like a challenge and this man looked too ruthless an adversary to risk challenging.

‘Think you can manage it OK?’ she asked kindly.

The insincere smile was almost as insulting as her question. She was employed by his godmother, for heaven’s sake—and here she was looking down that freckled snub of a nose as though he was some kind of odd-job man! Giovanni fought the desire to retaliate, even though she was just asking to be put in her place.

‘Give it to me,’ he instructed softly, his voice dipping in Latin caress.

And to her horror Kate found herself responding to that silky order as if he had been talking about something entirely different. She felt her senses spring into some kind of magical life—inspired by nothing more than a throwaway comment. Since when had her self-esteem been so low that she found something as derogatory as that a turn-on?

‘Here.’ She would have dumped the precious package in his arms if it hadn’t been worth a small fortune. As it was she laid it there as tenderly as if it were a newborn infant, and just for a moment their hands brushed and she felt the unwelcome sizzle of longing. ‘I’ll bring the rest of the stuff inside,’ she said, hoping that he hadn’t noticed.

He had, of course. It had happened too often in his past for him not to. Desire could strike inappropriately and randomly; he accepted that. And sometimes, though not often, he was tempted as any man would be tempted—but he had never yet succumbed to the lures of fleeting desire. His sense of honour was too deeply ingrained in him to ever do that.

But Giovanni could never recall a temptation as potent as the one he was experiencing now. He turned his back on her and without another word began to walk back towards the house.

Lady St John was still in the Blue Drawing Room and she turned around with a smile as Giovanni brought the heavy package into the room and placed it on a table.

‘Would you like us to leave you alone now, Kate?’ she asked. ‘I know you prefer to work undisturbed.’

‘Oh, yes, please!’ answered Kate gratefully, trying to imagine hanging heavy brocade under the scrutiny of that critical blue gaze. Why, she would probably break the habit of a lifetime and drop the curtains all over the floor!

‘And afterwards you’ll join us for lunch, I hope?’

Usually, of course, she did. But today? With this moody-looking godson? Thanks, but no, thanks! ‘Well, it’s very sweet of you, but I think I might run over time, and I’d hate to delay you—’

‘No trouble at all,’ said Lady St John immediately. ‘Giovanni has expressed a wish to see the gardens—and I can’t wait to show him how many exotic plants we have acquired in the conservatory!’

‘But perhaps Miss Connors has lost her… appetite?’ he murmured, and his eyes darkened in predatory challenge.

She most certainly had—and he knew it, too! Kate met a mocking blue gaze and knew that this was something she could not refuse—and when she thought about it, why ever should she? Why let this contemptuous individual put her off, when during every other visit she had enjoyed a congenial and delicious meal with Lady St John before setting off back to London? Surely she was accomplished enough in the ways of the world to be able to act indifferently when she wanted to?

‘I haven’t eaten since six this morning,’ she said truthfully. ‘I’d love lunch!’

Giovanni looked at her, and wondered if she was one of those women who could eat with genuine appetite and remain as slim as a blade of grass. Or would a hearty lunch mean that she would exist on nothing but water and fresh air for the next three days?

‘Good! Come on, Giovanni,’ said Lady St John resolutely. ‘Let me show you colours that could rival your Sicilian flora!’

He gave a benign but disbelieving laugh. ‘I do not think so!’

Once they had gone, Kate took out the heavy brocade curtains, and set about pinning them up, running her fingertips down their shiny pleats. When she worked she was focused, seeing nothing more than colour and texture taking shape before her eyes, and she put the dark-haired Sicilian out of her mind.

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?’

‘My Filofax!’ Kate stared at it in astonishment. Why, she depended on it as she would her lifeblood—and she had been in such a state that she hadn’t even noticed it missing! ‘I didn’t even realise I’d left it behind!’

She was a good actress, he would say that for her! For a moment her surprise looked almost genuine. But her reaction to him told him the true story. Should he taunt her with it? Let her know that he could see through her schoolgirl games? ‘You mean you hadn’t missed it?’ he mocked.

Kate stiffened, and indignation took the place of surprise. ‘You think I left it behind on purpose?’ she asked, her voice rising with incredulity.

He shrugged, and the blue eyes glittered a challenge at her. ‘Didn’t you?’

She raised her eyebrows, scarcely believing what she was hearing. ‘Presumably just so that you would return it, I suppose?’

‘If that was your intention.’ He gave a coolly beautiful smile. ‘Then you have succeeded, mmm, cara?’

She almost laughed aloud at his arrogance. ‘Maybe such a scenario happens to you all the time Mr Calverri—’

‘Giovanni,’ he corrected softly, unable to stop himself even though the distant clamour of his conscience told him not to enter into this delicious game of flirtation.

‘Maybe women do throw themselves at you—’

‘They do,’ he agreed gravely, and was rewarded with a renewed look of outrage, though was unprepared for the stealthy acceleration of his pulse as her sinful lips pursed themselves together.

‘Well, for your information—’ she drew a deep breath, slightly aware of behaving a little hypocritically since she had been sitting here obsessing about him, hadn’t she? ‘—if I was that interested in a man I wouldn’t resort to such transparent tactics, I would… would…’

Dark brows were raised in query as her words tailed off. ‘You would…?’

Well, why not tell him the truth? ‘I would have asked you out,’ she said in a matter-of-fact voice.

Giovanni knew a moment of intrigue. Women had asked him out before, particularly English and American women, and he had always felt a sizzling disdain for such forward behaviour. Though a modern man in terms of accomplishments, he remained a staunch traditionalist at heart. The island of his birth defined the roles of the sexes far less markedly than in centuries past. But at its root still lay a machismo society where the man pursued the woman, and not the other way round.

And yet he found himself wondering if the unquestionably strong desire she had aroused in him might have enticed him enough to accept.

‘But you didn’t,’ he stated softly.

Her eyes met his fearlessly. ‘No, I didn’t.’

But she had thought about it, he realised with a start. Mulled over the possibility and decided against it. He felt his interest flicker again, for wasn’t that a kind of rejection?

His eyes narrowed. It was an entirely new sensation for him. No woman had ever rejected him, in any way, shape or form, and Giovanni felt the renewed leap to his senses as the first dull flush of the inevitable made him shrug in wry recognition.

‘I will try not to be too offended at such a blow to my ego,’ he murmured.

‘Oh, thank heavens for that!’ came her sardonic retort. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to sleep nights if you had!’

He almost smiled, acknowledging that something unknown and forbidden and dangerous was pulsing in the air around them. And that, instead of getting out of here as quickly as possible, he lanced through her emerald gaze with a cool look of challenge. ‘So, aren’t you going to ask me inside, cara?’

And then realised just how shockingly and beautifully potent that question sounded.

‘Inside?’ she repeated slowly, and her mind started to play outrageous tricks on her as she imagined the reality of that simple, one-word request which suddenly sounded like the most erotic proposition imaginable. And didn’t cara mean… darling?

He heard her momentary hesitation, knew what had prompted it and felt himself grow hard—so hard that he felt he might die with wanting her. But he pinned a lazy smile onto his mouth instead. A smile he didn’t really mean, because the only thing that had any meaning at that precise moment was the need to possess her. A need he knew he should ruthlessly resist, and yet… yet…

‘For a drink?’ He shrugged, as though he could take it or leave it. ‘As a reward for having come out of my way to see you.’

Some of the tension left her. Some but not all. She forced herself to open the door to him.

Forced! Just who did she think she was kidding? Why, if she gave into her true feelings right then she would have dragged him in by taking a great swathe of that silk shirt in her fist and drawing him close to her. So close that he would not be able to resist her.

But he had done her a favour. And wasn’t she in danger of letting this all get a little out of hand? She should invite him into her home and expose herself to a little more of his own distinctive air of arrogance—that was the way to get him right out of her system! ‘A drink?’ She flashed him a bright, polite smile. ‘Of course. Sure. Come in.’

He walked into her flat and it was as stunning as he had anticipated. He had known that her home would be exquisite, and it was. More than exquisite, it was distinctive. Like her. Strong, bold colours which somehow managed to blend instead of grating on the eye. A mix and match which pleased and excited the senses. Again, like her.

She had changed, he noted, not for the first time—and now wore an indecently short skirt which showed off her long legs. A little vest-top in cool green cashmere emphasised the firm swell of her breasts and the way her torso tapered down to a delicious, tiny waist.

He swallowed and his eyes travelled almost with relief to a small table, where a half-drunk glass of wine rested. His mouth curved, he felt glad of the opportunity to disapprove of her again.

Kate noticed the tiny elevation of the jet-dark brows, felt his disapproval as surely as if it were shimmering in waves of heat off him. He didn’t say anything—but, there again, he didn’t have to. It was written clearly all over the autocratic features.

Some small inkling of who she really was came seeping back and she tried to catch hold of it, fast. Not some simpering schoolgirl, but a woman. His equal. ‘Is something wrong, Giovanni?’ she asked sweetly.

He shrugged. ‘You drink alone?’

For one quietly hysterical moment she felt like saying that yes, yes, she did drink alone. That a bottle of vodka would leave her untouched and unsatisfied. Because she could tell from the unmarred perfection of his face and body that here was a man to whom excess would be anathema. Except perhaps for excess in one thing…

What could she say? That she never drank alone, but that he had unnerved her so much that she felt that wine might bring some warmth and some life back into her cold and bewildered veins?

‘Rarely,’ she conceded with an answering shrug, not caring whether he believed her or not.

Every instinct in his body was clamouring at him to get the hell out. Telling him that here lay danger, a hot and inexplicable danger far beyond any he had ever encountered. Giovanni had never known a moment’s fear in all his thirty-four years, but in that instant his flesh shivered with trepidation at something quite outside his experience.

And yet he was known for his worldliness—his refusal to be cowed by anybody or anything. So what spell was this witch casting on him? Which honeyed chains were denying him an exit from this enchanted place of hers? His head was ordering him to leave and leave now, even as his body bluntly refused to listen to such requests.

Kate saw the fevered glittering in his blue eyes. Take control, she thought. Take control. She drew a deep breath. ‘What would you like to drink, Giovanni?’ His name felt delicious on her lips—so wickedly bewitching that just to say it flooded her with the unturnable tide of desire.

He had asked for a drink and now that it was offered knew that he must refuse it. And yet, like some disbelieving watcher of his own self, he heard himself murmuring that yes, yes—he would like a glass of wine very much indeed.

And then he lowered himself onto one of the sofas, and watched her while she poured, his eyes following her closely, intensely aware of every movement she made, bewitched by her as he was rarely bewitched by a woman. The little skirt she wore skimmed her thighs as she bent over, drawing attention to the heart-stopping length of her legs.

Knowing that he watched her, Kate willed her hands not to tremble as she slopped red wine into a simple-stemmed glass of crystal and handed it to him.

‘Thank you,’ he said gravely and his pupils grew as dark and as wide as a jungle cat’s as she stood in front of him as though she didn’t quite know what to do next. ‘Aren’t you going to sit down and join me, Kate?’ he murmured.

How could such a mundane request sound like the most erotic invitation she had ever heard? She perched on the edge of the chair opposite him, and wrapped her fingers around the crystal glass.

He noticed the prim way that she had glued her knees together, and a pulse beat deep in his throat. He ran the tip of his finger thoughtfully around the rim of his glass. ‘So what shall we drink to?’

For one mad moment, she thought that she saw humour lurking in the depths of those ocean-blue eyes, but the image dissolved almost before it had appeared and a cold hunger had taken its place once more.

‘Hmm, Kate?’ he prompted silkily. ‘A toast to what?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said tonelessly, thinking that her name could sometimes sound like a hard, shotgun sound, but the way that he curved his lips around it made it sound as soft and as beguiling as a caress. ‘What do you usually drink to in Sicily?’

He smiled, but it was a smile without heart and now, at least, totally without humour. ‘Why, we drink to the same things that people drink to all the world over, cara mia. To health. And to happiness,’ he murmured, and raised his glass to her in a mocking gesture.

Leaving Kate wondering why the toast sounded such an empty one.

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