Harlequin Presents: Once Upon A Temptation June 2020--Box Set 2 of 2

by Lynne Graham

  ‘I’ve decided you don’t need the spa experience after all.’

  ‘What? Why? I thought I had to have a complete makeover before I could be let loose into high Italian society.’

  Luca flushed because, put like that, it didn’t seem to say much about him and his values.

  Since when had he ever cared what other people thought? He’d been protecting her, but watching that catwalk model parade those clothes had made him realise that she didn’t need protecting, at least not when it came to whether she would fit into his world or not.

  Naïve and ingenuous she might be, but on the looks front she was head and shoulders above all those women who looked exactly like the dark-haired model. He would guide her through the labyrinth of all those tedious social niceties he had grown up with but, for the rest, she could more than hold her own.

  And besides…

  It had surprised him to find that he didn’t like the thought of her dolled up in all those designer outfits that had been on show.

  He was positively turned off at the thought of her in extravagant black outfits or small, intricate dresses that showed off everything and screamed haute couture.

  ‘I made a mistake,’ he muttered gruffly. He reached for her hand and they began walking away from the stunning piazza down one of the many streets that fanned outwards from the main circle.

  The impressive architecture didn’t stop in the piazza. It continued down the side roads—ornate and magical. Legend had it Siena was a city founded by Senius, the son of Remus who was suckled, along with Romulus, by a she-wolf—hence its emblem.

  Cordelia had managed to look up some historical facts on the drive and had lapped them up thirstily.

  She would have loved nothing better than to have played tourist and seen all the sights but there would be time for that in the future and, for the moment, she was too intrigued by Luca’s change of mind to start talking about city tours.

  Also, her hand was tingling where their fingers were entwined.

  That kiss had lodged in her head and she wanted more. Man and wife…

  How could she ever have imagined that the chemistry between them wouldn’t supercharge given the circumstances? He hadn’t looked back when he’d left after those heady three weeks. He had had his life neatly packaged but now here she was and if this was called making the best of a bad deal, then she was going to take it, because she wanted him more than she could ever think of wanting anyone.

  ‘What do you mean?’ They were at the car and she stood with her hand on the door, looking at him across the width of the Lamborghini. It was black, sleek and just the sort of high-powered sexy car that needed an alpha male like Luca at the wheel.

  ‘Maybe,’ Luca drawled, watching her with his head tilted to one side, ‘you awakened a taste in me for everything that’s natural.’

  ‘Because I live half my life barefoot and don’t own any make-up?’ But her heart was leaping all over the place because that sounded a lot like a compliment.

  ‘Who would have thought that shoes could end up being a highly overrated commodity?’ He grinned and raised his eyebrows and she shivered with a sexual awareness that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. ‘Besides,’ he continued in a lazy drawl, ‘I couldn’t stand the thought of hanging around in Siena any longer.’

  ‘It’s a bore for you,’ she agreed, glancing down and then slipping into the passenger seat of the car. It smelled of soft leather. ‘I guess you probably thought that it was a waste of time, especially when you probably have lots of work to do.’ She turned to him with apologetic eyes because caretaking her really had to be the last thing in the world a guy like him needed or wanted. He was used to expensive women who didn’t need to be escorted to the right shops to buy appropriate clothing.

  Although hadn’t he just said that he liked the thought of her au naturel…?

  A rush of pleasure surged through her body.

  ‘It would have been a bore for me,’ Luca murmured, swivelling so that he was looking at her. He carelessly had one hand by her headrest and he lightly stroked her hair, running one lazy finger through its vibrant blonde curls, ‘because I could have thought of a million better things I would rather have been doing with my time.’ He paused and then traced her mouth with his finger, tugging on her fuller lower lip until she wanted to faint. ‘No, I tell a lie. I would have been thinking of just the one thing I would rather have been doing with my time…’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Luca laughed, amused. ‘Will it turn you on if I spell it out?’ He looked at her with satisfaction when she nodded. ‘I won’t spell it out. I’ll show you just as soon as I get you into my bed…’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CORDELIA STRETCHED OUT on the bed and sighed with contentment.

  The past week had been a whirlwind. Much of it had been spent in bed, the rest on a voyage of discovery. The day after their visit to Siena, Luca had announced that he intended to keep to his word and show her a bit of his country before she broke the news to her father.

  There was work he had to do in Milan, some deals that needed fine tuning. He would arrange for a guide to take her on a personal tour of the city and then they would drive to his house on Lake Como, so that she could see a different countryside from the one she had glimpsed in his Tuscan home.

  Vineyards, of course, but also olive trees, oleanders and palm trees and, along with that, incomparable stretches of exquisite villas, their gardens dipping down to the lake shores.

  ‘Italian aristocracy at its very best,’ he had wryly informed her, and when she had asked him whether his house might be amongst those villas, he had laughed and returned, ‘But of course. Would you expect otherwise?’

  His tone had been one of amused irony but, actually, Cordelia had thought that, no, she wouldn’t have expected otherwise. The more she glimpsed of his eye-wateringly privileged life, the more she acknowledged the gaping differences between them.

  She was forever telling herself that if he could shrug off those differences, then so would she.

  ‘I want you to feel a little more at home in my country before your father gets here,’ he had confided as they had boarded his private jet that would take them to Milan. ‘I want you to show him that this is a country that you can love, as I love it. I would not want him to leave with any…doubts that you are doing the right thing.’

  Still warm after a bout of passionate lovemaking, Cordelia had thought that that was the nicest thing Luca could have said because it showed that, beyond the baby, he was also thinking about her and her well-being. That counted for a lot.

  Milan had been a wondrous place. For someone who had never been abroad, it was mesmerising. Busy but small, it had offered a variety of riches and Cordelia had paid close attention to the charming young guide who had taken her on her whirlwind tour of the city, starting with Piazza del Duomo with its towering cathedral, followed by a visit to see the paintings of the old masters, all of whom were familiar to Cordelia via the many books she had devoured over her lifetime.

  This wasn’t like Siena with its feeling of medieval splendour and laid-back charm. This was hectic and busy. There were chic cafés everywhere, dotted in between the historic splendour of the piazza. The young people all seemed ridiculously good-looking.

  She had enjoyed every minute of it and now here she was, enjoying every second of a completely different environment.

  From the window of Luca’s fabulous villa, she could see the placid waters of the lake in the distance. When the car had first swerved onto the long drive leading to the villa, Cordelia had been gobsmacked. She hadn’t bothered to hide her awe. The square white building with its evenly spaced rectangular windows and its formidable symmetry reeked of opulence. From the front of the villa, gardens led down to an archway that opened out onto the lake via a series of shallow stone steps. It was, put simply, b
reathtaking.

  That, however, was a sight that had been taken in several days ago and now, lying here in bed while Luca showered in the fabulous en-suite bathroom, Cordelia could only marvel at the speed with which she was becoming accustomed to this extraordinary life.

  ‘Penny for them.’

  Cordelia’s eyes shot to the bathroom door where Luca was lounging against the doorframe with a towel slung round his waist. They had already made love that morning and yet she could already feel herself getting turned on all over again. One look at him and stuff inside her ignited and exploded, leaving her wet and weak and at the mercy of his clever mouth and hands and fingers.

  ‘I was just looking out of the window and thinking how beautiful this all is,’ she confessed truthfully, watching as he moved from doorway to wardrobe to extract a white linen shirt and a pair of loose trousers, which he dumped over the back of the chair.

  Slowly Luca began to dress.

  She was, of course, right. It was beautiful, although in truth he rarely noticed the scenery here. In fact, he couldn’t think of the last time he had visited this particular property. For Luca, downtime wasn’t something he enjoyed very often. The last time, he now mused with some surprise, was when he’d vanished off to Cornwall to get his thoughts together, and look at where that had got him.

  A baby on the way and…his eyes roved over the delectable sight of his wife-to-be, pink-faced and tousled, her white-blonde hair spread across the pillow, one long leg draped over the duvet, the other tucked away underneath.

  Even when she was relaxing, even when his libido was at rest and sex wasn’t on the menu, there was something intensely appealing about her. He was finding that he couldn’t keep his hands off, which was just as well considering the situation.

  And that situation, he had to admit, was doing very well. He had never, not once, having found out that she was carrying his baby, contemplated not making her his wife. Anything else would have been out of the question, and when she had turned his offer down flat with all that talk about ‘love’ and ‘finding the one’ he had momentarily been disconcerted at the notion that she might, actually, walk away from him.

  That instant of panic was something he had never experienced before and certainly never in connection with a woman, but she wasn’t like anyone else. She was unique insofar as his money was immaterial.

  He had appealed to her longing to see the world. It had been, first and foremost, a deliberately well-considered plan to open her eyes to what richness lay in store for her and for their child, and the funny thing was that he had begun to see his own country in a slightly different light.

  Had begun to view his own possessions through different spectacles and was appreciating what he had spent a lifetime taking for granted.

  He couldn’t offer her love, but he could offer her a lot more besides and he could tell that all those bonus extras were weaving their magic.

  ‘This is just the tip of the iceberg,’ he murmured, moving to perch next to her at the side of the king-sized bed. ‘You have yet to see the splendour of Rome and Florence, although we will try and visit those two cities when there are fewer tourists. Then there is the Riviera…’ He couldn’t help himself. He drew down the duvet exposing her breasts, bountiful orbs tipped with ripe pink, pouting nipples that begged to be suckled.

  ‘Don’t,’ Cordelia sighed weakly, relaxing back against the pillow and instinctively arching her naked breast to his mouth. ‘We have a lot to do today. Sailing…oh, Luca…oh, yes…’ She clasped her hand behind his head as he took her nipple into his mouth and sucked and licked until she was panting and writhing helplessly on the bed.

  ‘The things you do to me,’ Luca groaned, vaulting up to strip off the shirt with unsteady hands while his eyes burned into her.

  He had work to do. At least a couple of hours before the day could be theirs and yet…he couldn’t resist her.

  Nor did he intend on shortening the time he had with her, which meant that work would have to take a back seat, which was a first for him and would have been hugely disconcerting if his mind had actually been able to focus on anything other than the woman looking back at him with a helpless yearning that mirrored his.

  Their lovemaking was fast and hard and he came with such intensity that the breath left his body for a few wild moments.

  It took him a while to come down from the high. Goodbye any work at all, he thought. Emails would have to be handled later. At some point.

  He lay back and flung one arm over his eyes and Cordelia wriggled against him. Warmth spread through her at the feel of his arm heavy across her back and shoulders.

  His body was slick with perspiration and she flattened the palm of her hand on his chest.

  She loved him. It was as simple as that and the realisation barely shook her because it was something that had crept up slowly but surely, sinking into her consciousness until it was just a fact of life.

  She was in love with this guy and that was why she had agreed to marry him. Or at least, it had been a very strong motive, underneath all the very logical reasons she had told herself.

  If she had truly felt nothing for Luca but bone-deep indifference, then she would have walked away. Yes, she would have made sure contact was maintained for the sake of their child, but she could never have borne living with someone she didn’t care about.

  Curiosity and recklessness had propelled her into doing something she would never have dreamt possible given all the principles she had always lived by and, bit by bit over those three weeks, she had fallen for him and fallen hard.

  The past week and a half had only made that love deeper, because she had seen him for the good guy that he was underneath the power and the wealth.

  All this time he’d taken to show her around, to introduce her to his beautiful country. There was no need for him to have done that!

  Surely that meant something?

  He was no longer the flint-eyed stranger who had made her want to disappear into the ground when she had first shown up in his office.

  She had caught him on the hop, crashed slap bang straight through all the plans he had made for himself, and of course he had been knocked for six, but he had recovered and she wondered whether he wasn’t now finding himself at the mercy of feelings he couldn’t really express. He gave every semblance of enjoying her company. He was tender and considerate with her, making sure she ate all the right stuff at all the right times. He was the guy she had rescued from the stormy ocean…the guy with no background, no past and certainly no vast fortune to his name.

  And they were lovers once again.

  Passion was a powerful force and, accompanied by genuine affection…well, how far were those things from love? Not very. There was no point to viewing the future with anything but optimism and, right now, Cordelia was happy to put on rose-tinted spectacles that made the world look so much better.

  She snuggled and closed her eyes and enjoyed his nakedness against her.

  ‘Sailing,’ Luca murmured drowsily into her hair. ‘It awaits us.’

  ‘I thought you were going to try and get through some work before we left…’ She ran her fingers along his chest and felt him shudder in instant response, before he absently covered her hand with his. ‘You wanted to nail your guy about that project with the refined olive oil…you said he seemed to be digging his heels in on the quality-check front and you were going to push him where you wanted him to be…’

  Luca frowned. He must have told her about Giuseppe without even thinking about it.

  Disturbed for some reason, he edged off the bed and headed for the shower.

  He was gone for a handful of minutes and when he re-entered the bedroom, he was all brisk business as he got dressed.

  ‘You shouldn’t have reminded me, amore.’ He was concentrating on his mobile, only looking up to glance quickly in her direction with his hand
on the doorknob. ‘Now I’ll have to deal with him or my guilty conscience will get the better of me. The great outdoors might have to be put on hold until tomorrow.’ He watched her disappointment with a veiled expression.

  This was all going swimmingly but it was fair to say that disappointment was part and parcel of life. He should know. His father, embroiled in his own emotional world, had largely been a bystander in his life. Luca had learned from an early age to expect little from a guy who never attended sports days and had shown scant interest in the personal goings-on of his son. Disappointment, he had long ago concluded, did wonders for developing tough independence.

  And she would need it because she would realise soon enough that long days doing nothing were not the norm and weren’t going to last for ever.

  He frowned and restlessly raked his fingers through his hair, because her attempts at a bright, sympathetic smile were worse than outright annoyance that plans had changed.

  ‘Sure,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I get it.’

  ‘I will arrange for someone to show you around.’

  ‘No need. I can explore on my own. I might even do a bit of sailing. I could probably give a few courses to the instructors out here. You keep telling me to take it easy but that’s not what I’m used to. A little exercise will do me the world of good.’ She waited for a light-hearted response, which didn’t come so she shuffled off the bed, for some reason self-conscious of her body because of the sudden drop in temperature between them.

  Freed to do what Luca knew he did best, namely bury himself at work, which would be a timely reminder this mini break was a means to an end, he found himself hovering and watching her through narrowed eyes as she took herself off to the en-suite bathroom, making sure to lock the door behind her.

  ‘Don’t take any risks,’ he warned gruffly, as soon as she was back in the bedroom, fully clothed in some khaki shorts and a white tee shirt.

  ‘Risks like what?’ She looked at him, perplexed.