The Italian's Wedding Ultimatum Page 8

  As Alessandro placed a hand lightly on her shoulder and drew her forward Sam caught sight of the crackling flames of an open fire through the open double doors to the right. "This is Miss Samantha Maguire."

  Very conscious of the fingers on her shoulder, Sam nodded and flashing Alessandro a sideways glance, corrected him. "Sam."

  "Well, hello, Sam Maguire. I'm Dorothy Smith - I manage the place."

  "Smithie is the non-sleeping half of the partnership," Alessandro explained.

  Considering the amount of energy the older woman exuded, Sam wouldn't have been surprised to learn she didn't sleep at all!

  "My mother's family have lived in this house for centuries. When she died-" She broke off and sighed, adding, "If it hadn't been for Alessandro's intervention it would have had to be sold to pay the death duties."

  "I know a sound investment when I see one."

  The older woman lifted her brows and laughed before turning to Sam. "He had to sink a small fortune into it just to stop it from falling down," she confided, slanting him a challenging look that dared him to contradict her. "On present performance it will be another ten years before our hard-headed business tycoon even breaks even. Sound investment! Huh!" She snorted.

  "I'm in for the long haul," Alessandro said, looking as close to uncomfortable as Sam had ever seen him.

  "Of course you are, dear," the older woman agreed. "Now, introductions over. What you need is a hot bath and a brandy, Sam," Dorothy announced briskly. "No, Alessandro," she said, accompanying her sharp words with a dismissive wave of her hand as he began to follow them, "we don't need you."

  Now, that was something he couldn't hear very often, thought Sam, torn between outright shock and amusement as she turned her head to see how he was taking the rejection.

  Alessandro inclined his dark head, accepting the prohibition with an uncharacteristic meekness that made Sam's jaw drop. He intercepted her astonished stare and an ironic glitter entered his eyes.

  "Come along, Sam..."

  It amused Sam that the older woman's words were an order, thinly disguised as a request.

  "I will see you later," Alessandro said as she approached the broad sweep of the stairs.

  "Now, there's something to look forward to."

  Her muttered response drew a quizzical look from the older woman, but she made no comment beyond recommending Sam to watch her step. Deciding to take this ambiguous comment literally, Sam lowered her eyes and clasped the curved banister.

  She was eaten up with curiosity as to how this most unlikely of partnerships had come into being, but couldn't work out away of asking without coming across as nosy. "Are you very busy at the moment?" she asked, as a couple emerged from a room along the hallway.

  Her hostess gave a nod, before asking Sam." Have you kn own Alessandro long?"

  Obviously the other woman did not share her concern about appearing nosy. "Not really. Actually, I don't really know him at all. I've been aware of him, of course..." She stopped, a dark blush spreading over her fair skin. "Not aware in that way - just..." Lowering her eyes from the other woman's amused, knowing glance, she bit her lip. "My car broke down - hence the drowned rat look." She laughed. "And he picked me up." That, she decided, could have been phrased better.

  "Oh, yes - he would," the other woman said immediately. "Alessandro is very chivalrous."

  Are we talking about the same man? Sam wondered, responding to this affectionate confidence with a non-committal grunt.

  "I have known him since he was a child. I was his nanny."

  "Oh, that explains it!" Sam exclaimed without thinking.

  "His mother was still travelling a lot with her work then..." The sharp little black-currant eyes scanned Sam's face. "You did know that she was an opera singer.. .?"

  Sam shook her head. "No, I didn't know that." It occurred to her that she didn't know much at all about Alessandro. But then, she asked herself, why should I? Bottom line was, he was the next best thing to a total stranger.

  "Oh, yes, she had a very successful career. But after little Katerina was born she decided to become a full-time mother, and I was not needed."

  "That must have been hard for you." Sam, who imagined that a nanny would become very attached to her charges, sympathised.

  "Yes," admitted Dorothy Smith. "It was."

  "And for the child too...?"

  The observation brought a flicker of approval to the older woman's eyes. "It was," she admitted. "But he always kept in touch. Alessandro was always a punctiliously polite boy, and he wrote me delightful letters. I have kept them all. One day," she promised, sending Sam a warm glance, "I will let you read them."

  Embarrassed that the other woman persisted in misinterpreting her relationship with Alessandro, Sam bit her lip. Before she had a chance to set matters straight once and for all, the other woman continued.

  "When the accident happened I had retired." She shook her head, her expression sombre as she thought about those dark days. "Of course I came back to help - though the first task was convincing Alessandro he needed help." She stopped outside a door and smiled warmly at Sam. "But I'm sure I don't need to tell you that."

  Sam just smiled. She suspected anything she said was not going to alter the other woman's determination to see a relationship where there was none. Hopefully, Alessandro would put her right. What was she thinking? Of course he'd put her right. It would do his reputation no good at all for people to think he was sleeping with a ginger-headed frump who wore beige.

  "Alessandro usually uses that one, but the bedrooms are identical and of course they are adjoining," Dorothy was saying when Sam tuned back into the conversation.

  "Bedrooms...?"

  "Yes, they're adjoining - see," she said, pushing open a door. She saw Sam's expression and frowned. "You could have a room of your own, of course, but with the Food Festival and the fishing tournament falling in the same week this year we're totally full."

  "Goodness, no - I just meant to say, I'm not staying. I'm going back to London tonight."

  "Really ?" Her barely discernible brows rose. " I must have misunderstood. I thought Alessandro said he was staying over."

  "Maybe he is - he's a free agent - but I'm not... Staying, that is - not not a free agent. Which I am -" She broke off, lifted a hand to her head and sighed.

  The other woman observed her pale, drawn face and looked remorseful. "Look at me, chattering on when what you need is some peace and quiet. I'll send you up some brandy. Now, off you go and get out of those wet things. The bathrooms here are really marvelous - when I think what the plumbing was like when I was a girl..." Shaking her head she lifted a hand in farewell and left Sam alone... finally.

  Lying in the deep bath, her senses soothed by the decadent oils she had added to the water, Sam's thoughts turned to the day's extraordinary events. Her mind, pleasantly blurry from the shot of brandy she ought to have refused - though it would have taken a very strong person to say no to the redoubtable Dorothy - kept returning again and again to that bone-melting kiss.

  She had not known that kisses like that one existed! Let alone realised what she had been missing!

  Now she knew, and it had been Alessandro who had been the catalyst - the man who had been in the right place at the right time and pressed all the right buttons.

  "It could have been anyone." The room was empty, so the only voice of dissent to this defiant statement was in her own head. Are you sure about that.. ?

  She sat upright, her expression mutinous and set. "Too right I'm sure, There's nothing special about Alessandro Di Livio."

  The sheer ludicrousness of this contention drew a pained laugh from her throat as she slid back into the water. Alessandro was a lot of things, but commonplace was not one of them...!

  Approaching twenty-four and she had never lost control... now, that was worrying. Even more worrying was the fact that she had not seen the appeal of such a loss until now! A part of her wished that the searing kiss had never happened,
that she was still walking around in blissful ignorance, but another part of her was inclined to relive the moment again and again...!

  Recalling once more those initial moments of boneless, melting submission made her heart-rate quicken. As Alessandro had plundered her mouth the submission had given way to something equally outside her experience: a frantic, inarticulate need to touch and taste...to fuse with his male heat and hardness. Thinking about the primitive response made her breathing quicken and her pale, translucent skin turn a rosy pink.

  Sighing she sank beneath the water. Surfacing moments later, she brushed the fronds of water-darkened hair from her face. She knew she loved Jonny. It had been a given in her life for so long that she just hadn't questioned it - not until Alessandro had put doubts in her head with his sneers.

  "I do love Jonny!" she announced defiantly to the steamy bathroom.

  Just because you couldn't imagine yourself having steamy head-banging sex with someone it didn't mean you didn't love them! And, by the same token, just because you could imagine it, it didn't mean you did!

  No, the stuff with Alessandro was just about sex. Maybe, she thought, lifting her head as the depressing possibility struck her, you couldn't have love and sex. You had to settle for one or the other. Now, that was a depressing thought.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  She was belting a big fluffy robe when there was a tap on the interconnecting door. Without waiting for her to respond, the door opened and Alessandro walked in.

  "What-?" she said, her voice accusing, because his presence sent her hard-won composure straight out of the window.

  "I did knock," he observed, dropping the jacket he was carrying on the bed and walking towards her.

  "The idea of knocking is that you wait for someone to invite you in... or tell you go away."

  "You don't want me to go away."

  His calm assurance made her want to hit him. Lips pursed, she lowered her eyes. He had changed into a pale cashmere sweater and dark, close-fitting jeans, he smelt of soap and himself, and he looked sexy enough to cause mass hysteria in the female population of a small planet!

  "Believe that if it makes you feel happy." Tightening the belt on her robe, she was reminded of the fact she didn't have a stitch on underneath.

  "I didn't come here to fight with you," he said, sounding weary. "I came to ask what you want to do about dinner. Do you want to eat here, or with the other guests? Though I must warn you up-front that a quiet dinner downstairs isn't an option. Smithie favours dining dinner-party-style."

  "I don't want to eat full-stop. I'm going home."

  "Don't be stupid - you must be hungry."

  Sam's eyes narrowed. "Don't call me stupid." She glared into his eyes and lost the plot. He had such gorgeous eyes-dark and deep and so, so.. .sexy.. .they made you want... Gasping sharply, she pulled herself up before she lost it completely. "So you know," she said, "what I'd really like...?"

  "What?" he asked, thinking she looked so pale and brittle that she might break if handled roughly. But he knew she wasn't that fragile. She hadn't felt breakable when he had held her in his arms. She had been supple, strong, and so very, very hot.

  "I'd like you to leave right now." Before I do something very stupid, "Walk out of that door and never come back." Her problem was she was in danger of believing there was something between them. The only thing between us is two years of not liking one another.

  While they had been talking he had been moving towards her and she had been retreating, matching him step for step. Of course his steps were bigger than hers, and by the time her shoulders made contact with the wall and she could retreat no farther he was so close she could see the fine lines radiating from the comers of his eyes.

  "You don't mean that."

  "I do," she said, putting as much conviction into the lie as she could.

  Alessandro, the strong bones of his face drawn taut against his golden skin, regarded her pale face in silence before his eyes dropped. "If you tell me you're not interested I'll walk away." His eyes lifted, and she was pinned beneath a taut, combustible stare that made the muscles in her abdomen quiver.

  Sam blinked to clear the rash of red dots that danced across her vision, conscious as she did so of the heavy thrum of blood as it beat through her body. Chirpy, she told herself. You need to aim for chirpy, but firm.

  Fingers crossed, she scrunched up her face in a mask of determination as she told herself over and over. ..You can do it; you can do it..!

  She opened her eyes, and he looked so damned gorgeous standing there, so dark and lean and excitingly dangerous, that her will-power almost crumbled. My God, but being virtuous and sensible was not all it was cracked up to be, she thought dully.

  "I'm not...interested." She failed miserably with chirpy, but by some freaky accident she hit bored and couldn't-give-a-damn dead centre!

  Other than a slight clenching of his muscles no visible reaction to her reply registered on his strong-boned, autocratic features. When he responded a moment later his tone was coloured only with an easy come, easy go quality.

  At least I know I definitely made the right call, she thought.

  Just because she'd decided that it was time she moved on with her life and stopped being faithful to a relationship that had never existed outside her imagination, it didn't mean her personality and values had changed beyond recognition.

  She was realistic. She hadn't been walking around with her eyes and ears closed. She knew that for a lot of men - and, for that matter, women - sex had the same emotional content as a trip to the gym or a game of squash! A lover, yes. She recognised that she did have needs that weren't being fulfilled. But casual sex - no.

  Am I expecting too much? It's not as if I'm asking for a lifelong commitment!

  It wasn't too much to ask to expect the man you went to bed with to at least remember your name the next day. She didn't want him to sleep with her because it was a rainy afternoon and he had a couple of hours in his diary to kill. Or, even worse, because he wanted to make sure she wasn't climbing into his brother- in -law's bed!

  Alessandro scanned her heart-shaped face for a moment, his expression inscrutable, then after a slight hesitation inclined his dark head. "As you wish."

  Sam nodded back and thought, Wish... If this was about wishes I'd be underneath you now... or maybe on top...

  "You've been very kind," she heard herself say stupidly.

  That she could say anything at all with the sort of erotic images that were jostling for position in her head was nothing short of a miracle.

  He flashed her a hawkish glare that was not at all kind. As he proceeded to consult the metal-banded watch on his wrist Sam's attention was drawn to the contrast of the cold dull metal to his warm, bronzed, satiny skin. Her stomach did a painful flip as she looked at the light dusting of dark body hair on his sinewed forearm and, appalled by the strength and primitive quality of the urge that made her want to touch him, she turned her head.

  You just have to step back, she told herself. Be objective...! Great advice - pity there's not a chance in hell of me taking it, she thought, swallowing the bubble of hysterical laughter in her throat.

  Inhaling a deep, sustaining breath, she made herself focus on his face. The line between his strong dark brows deepened, as though his thoughts had already moved on to more pressing issues. Of course it was good that he'd accepted her decision and not tried to dissuade her, but she would have felt a little better if he had looked as though it cost him some effort!

  Obviously not sleeping with me ranks alongside other minor inconveniences - such as missing the last post!

  It was just beginning to dawn on her that he'd been standing there looking at his watch for a strangely long space of time when he lifted his head and looked at her.

  "If you do want to go back to London tonight speak to Smithie. She will arrange transport."

  "You're not going back...?" His eyes narrowed fractionally and she added quickly, anxious to dispel an
y impression that she was trying to invite herself along for the ride, "Not that I expect a lift or anything."

  His hand on the door, Alessandro turned slowly back. Sam gave a sharp intake of breath and shrank back from the molten ferocity of the expression that drew the flesh taut across the sharp angles of his lean face. "A lift? Madre di Dio!"

  "No, it's fine. I'll probably give my mum a ring and stay at home until my car is sorted."

  His narrowed obsidian gaze moved across her face. "You stand there looking like that and talk about getting your car fixed!" He closed his eyes, pressed his fingers to the bridge of his patrician nose and released a wrathful flood of fluid Italian.

  Italian, Sam decided, listening in awestruck silence to the outpouring, was a very expressive language to get mad in. Though for the life of her she couldn't figure out what she had said or done to trigger this from a man who was legendary for his reserve and control. When he opened his eyes again she realised that she wasn't seeing the polite regret she had felt was being expressed moments earlier. In his searing stare she was seeing overt raw hunger and rampant frustration... Not an 'I missed my game of squash' expression at all.

  As Sam's stomach muscles clenched she suddenly wasn't so sure about her assessment of the situation. Alessandro wasn't acting like a man who was going to forget her name by tomorrow. He was acting like a man who was pretty near to losing it!

  As she studied him through the spiky sweep of her dark lashes she saw him rake a hand viciously through his hair. As he padded across the room, as sleek and dangerous as any jungle cat, she could hear him muttering under his breath in his native tongue. Having put several feet between them, he turned his head and looked at her.

  My God, but he really is magnificent! The tightness in her chest became a physical pain as she watched him.

  "You think I could trust myself to be alone in a car with you?" The frustration emanating from him was an almost palpable entity in the room.