The Italian's Wedding Ultimatum Read online

  "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 clean shaven jaw and interrupted. "Her brother is Alessandro Di Uvio. 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 coloring 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 cash flow 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. Nothing... 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 rib cage 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 are a 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 realized 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!

  His dark eyes meshed with hers. "You are the problem." And one he was going to sort once and for all.

  Sam stared, totally bemused by his aggressive response. "Have you been drinking?"

  "No, I have not been drinking. I saw you throw yourself at him."

  Sam shook her head at this harsh addition. "Throw... ? Who... ?"

  His dark eyes flicked across her slightly parted lips and his own moved in a moue of distaste. "Kiss him..." He smiled cynically as he watched the guilty color fly to her pale cheeks. "There is a name for women who do that to married men."

  This last contemptuous observation and that horrid smile snuffed out the guilt Sam had nursed for the secret she carried in her heart and loosened the firm grip she normally kept on her Celtic redhead's temper. She trembled with the force of the surge of anger that washed over her as she read the superior condemnation in his face.

  If she hadn't been in the grip of strong emotions - namely the desire to physically remove the nasty smile from his smug face - she might have remembered that it probably wasn't a good idea to antagonism someone who was in a position to make Jonny's life uncomfortable. But caution wasn't part of her plan as, head flung back, she took a step towards him.

  The sheer, unmitigated nerve of the man - looking down his nose at her like that. Especially when you considered this was the same person who had refused to deny or confirm the rumors that he was the real reason a high-profile politician and his lawyer wife had split up. He was obviously as guilty as sin! Sam chose to ignore the fact that at the time she had argued with a friend that silence did not equate to guilt.

  "You have something against kissing...?" she asked, injecting sarcasm into her voice and being rewarded by the expression on his face.

  Clean up your own act before you criticise other people, she thought grimly.

  "Is that kissing generally... ?" A finger pressed to the soft indentation in her firmly rounded chin, she pretended to consider this possibility. "No," she said, shaking her head from side to side. "That can't be right. Because you appeared to have nothing against kissing at that film premiere, when that girl was eating your face." The tasteless pictures had been plastered over every tabloid's front page the next day.

  Sam almost laughed. He couldn't have looked more astonished if one of the pieces of furniture had spoken up for itself. She was dimly aware, somewhere in the recesses of her mind, that the adrenaline rush she was experiencing was responsible for half the things coming out of her mouth. Her inability to back down in the face of warning signs you'd have to be blind not to see was down to her own stupidity.

  Her breath coming in short, shallow bursts, she studied his proud, patrician features. Hard disdain and anger was implicit in every intriguing hollow and strong plane. His nostrils were flared and his firm jaw tight, and his golden skin was drawn taut across the angles of his jutting cheekbones.

  "The lady in question was not married."

  That made a change, then. "Nor very fussy, it would seem."

  She sniffed, and smiled sweetly in response to his hoarsely ejaculated, "Dio mio!"

  "But then some people will endure almost anything to advance their careers. I suppose I'm just lucky that I didn't need to sleep my way to the top."

  Sam registered the dark glitter visible through the mesh of his long lashes and her stomach took a lurching dive. It was only sheer bloody-minded obstinacy - of which her nearest and dearest said she had been gifted an extra portion - that enabled Sam to maintain eye contact.

  "You are at the top, then, are you...?" His smile said more clearly than any words that he thought she was lying.

  The comment made Sam, normally the most self-deprecating of creatures, who would have been the first to play down her success, stick out her chin and boast boldly, "I will be. " Her long-suffering editor, who was often heard to despair over her lack of drive and ambition, would have stared to hear that. "And wherever I am," she added, with the confidence of someone who knew a company wanted her to write a TV serialization of the accident-prone feline she had created, "at least I won't have to rely on my looks to stay there."

  There was a pause as his dark glance moved down her reed-slender figure. "That is indeed fortunate. "Actually, she had the sort of delicate bone structure that would enable her to grow old gracefully. And lily-pale flawless skin. His eyes slid over the graceful length of her slender neck and the line between his brows deepened.

  Two can play at that game, mate, she thought, smiling at him through gritted teeth. "Nor do I have to worry that people want to be my friend just because of what I can do for them."

  "I consider myself an excellent judge of character."

  Sam's malicious smile widened. In a rather perverse way she was almost enjoying this exchange of smiling insults. Of course she would have enjoyed kicking his shins even more, but as she was no longer six the option wasn't open. "Of course you do. But this time you have got it so wrong You're going to feel very stupid."

  "I doubt that."

  "Being able to admit when you're wrong is a sign of maturity. "

  "A subject you would not know one hell of a lot about."

  Great - so now I'm childish, and I go around kissing married men! Sam, who didn't like the way his dark eyes were lingering on her mouth, decided enough was enough - even if the verbal tussle was exhilarating. "Look, you've got it wrong-"

  "I know what I saw."

  His sheer bloody-minded intransigence made her want to scream. "And even if I did kiss him, what business would it be of yours?" Even before she saw his expression she knew that he'd interpret her angry retort as an admission of guilt. Frankly, she was past caring.

  "Katerina is my sister, and I will protect her."

  She gave up trying to prove her innocence and asked, "How are you going to stop me sleeping with Jonny?"

  "I think telling him you are mine will have the desired effect"

  He said it so matter of factly that Sam thought at first she had misunderstood him. The uncertainty only lasted a moment. There was no room for misinterpretation in his ruthless smile. Honestly, this man belonged in a different century! Mine, he had said... As though owning someone body and soul was perfectly acceptable.

  The idea of surrendering control to a man like Alessandro Di Livio was a concept that made her shudder with horror. ..Are you so sure it's horror?

  Sam swallowed. "I take it you're not an advocate of political correctness?" she observed, moistening her dry lips with her tongue. She inhaled and raised her eyes, only to discover his burning gaze was fixed on her mouth. As their eyes connected the blaze of raw hunger in his nailed her to the spot.

  Paralysed by a stab of lust so strong she couldn't breathe, Sam stared up at him. He reminded her of a sleek jungle cat - beautiful, and totally ruthless. She had always considered the claim that danger was attractive a particularly stupid one. Now she knew that she had been very wrong. The fear she had denied feeling moments earlier was now coursing through her veins, along with some primitive stuff she had no intention of ever analysing.

  There w
as no point. None of this was real, she told herself. It was all the result of some freak chain of events - that were never going to happen again. She was never going to feel this way again. She was going to go home and close the door and everything would go back to the way it had been before Alessandro Di Livio had looked at her as if he wanted to rip off her clothes.

  Sam closed her eyes, thought about closing that door, and felt slightly calmer. She might get a new safety bolt fitted... She opened her eyes and pointed out the obvious flaw in his manipulative plan.

  "Jonny wouldn't believe it... "She thought about it, and added. "Nobody would believe you."

  "Why not?"

  Was he serious? Her eyes travelled up the long, lean, gorgeous length of him before settling on his dark, fallen angel features. "Because you're... " She just stopped short of saying incredibly beautiful, and substituted a husky, "I don't like you. Everyone knows that."

  One dark brow lifted at everyone, and he looked amused. "Liking is not a prerequisite to..." he slotted in.

  "Ownership... ?" she suggested sweetly. "Look, this conversation is going nowhere - but I am."

  She edged towards the door, but he blocked her way with his body.

  Lips pursed and eyes narrowed, she glared up at him." You're in my way."

  "Before you go I want to make very sure that you know it would be unwise for you to continue your pursuit of Trelevan."

  A whistling sound of frustration escaped her clenched teeth. My God, the man was fixated!"Where do you get off, making a judgement about me?" she demanded, indignation making her voice shrill. "How many times have we met...? Five...? How dare you? You don't even know me!"

  "Eight. Not including today."

  The smooth correction made her stare. "You were counting ... ?" Her brows lifted and she laughed nervously. "Should I be flattered?" Her expression hardened. "Or afraid...? You'd like that, wouldn't you? But then bullies always do," she contended grimly. "Only I'm not afraid of you, Mr Di Livio. Not at all," she stressed shakily, before she was forced to pause to gasp for breath.

  "There is nothing preventing us getting to know one another better, if that is what you would like."