A Guilty Affair

by Hamilton, Diana

  He merely held her closer to his warm, hard body, putting his mouth close to her ear as he whispered wickedly, ‘For a woman in love, you’re playing very hard to get.’

  ‘I...’ Words failed her. Oh, what a loathsome rat! He clearly hadn’t believed her when she’d told him she’d only said she loved him because that was what people said when they had sex together and wanted to dress it up, pretend it wasn’t plain old-fashioned lust.

  He was going to play on that, squeeze her poor battered heart until it bled, take cruel advantage of her devotion, use her precariously controlled emotions for his own sinful ends. She couldn’t possibly be in love with a man like that!

  ‘Evil swine!’ she hissed, the animal ferocity of the abuse negated by the weak tears that flooded her eyes, the pain that clutched her heart making her whimper.

  ‘Hush,’ he said softly, brushing the tears away with his fingers. ‘Sit quietly and try to relax a little while I make a fire.’ He put her down on a peculiar sofa which felt as if it was stuffed with brick-ends and sharp sticks. So how the hell was she supposed to relax?

  She shivered with tension, wrapping her arms around her body. It was cold in this stone room. They must be high in the mountains.

  ‘If you’ve brought me here to persuade me to be your mistress,’ she grated at his broad back as he hunkered down to put a match to the kindling in the huge recessed hearth, ‘then you need educating. Don’t you know you’re supposed to provide soft lights, roses, gallons of champagne and a luxurious bed? Not a hovel and an implement of torture designed to loosely resemble something to sit on!’

  She shot to her feet, her face scarlet with a mixture of anger and misery spiced with a blistering disappointment in her own judgement. How could she have fallen in love with such a creature? ‘I want to go back to Rome. Now. And if you won’t take me I’ll walk.’

  He said nothing. Just stood upright, brushing his hands off, smiling at her. The kindling flared, making the shadows dance, carving out his beautiful features with light and shade. Her throat thickened impossibly, and the pain and anger grew inside her.

  She shot at him nastily, ‘What is this dump?’

  ‘Our trysting place?’ he offered with a grin. ‘Love-nest?’

  ‘I’d rather be made love to in a bus shelter!’ she blistered, and saw him lift his wide shoulders in an eloquent Latin shrug.

  ‘It belongs to Alessandro, one of my many cousins. He is thinking of selling it off as a holiday home. No champagne, I’m afraid, but an excellent Chianti.’

  He reached beneath the table for a carrier bag, producing the wine, glasses, crusty bread, cheese and olives, all carefully wrapped in tissue. ‘And tomorrow we rise late, drive on to the castello—it is not far. It will be ready for us. Chiara has instructions to leave all the doors and windows wide open to get rid of the smell of paint. But for tonight we have a large bed upstairs, with soft linen and—’

  ‘You’re insane!’ she yelled at him, in a flurry of anguish. He expected her to share that bed, then take off with him for more of the same back at his cousin’s castle? ‘What’s poor Helen going to think? Or don’t you give a damn? What’s she doing? Trying to have a lovely honeymoon all on her own? Wondering when her new husband is going to turn up and show an interest?

  ‘And what about your cousin, Emilia? Won’t she mind your sneaking your bit on the side into her home, dodging the workmen and painters and decorators? The poor woman’s trying to turn it into a hotel, for pity’s sake!’ Beside herself, practically in pieces, she howled, ‘Or is she so used to your gross behaviour she won’t bat an eyelid?’

  ‘Carissima!’ He reached for her. The torment had lasted long enough. But he’d had to be sure. And now he was, humbly, gloriously sure.

  Without quite knowing how, she was in his arms, and his touch was so tender, so loving, she dissolved into helpless tears. And he rocked her, holding her bright head against his chest until the storm abated enough for her to hear his whispered, ‘My lovely one, I’m sorry. So sorry. But it was necessary. I had to know that the dreadful things you said to me when I saw you last were said in pain and self-defence and not in truth.’

  He tucked a finger beneath her chin, his soft silvery eyes searching her face. ‘When you said you’d never loved me, that you wanted me out of your life, that you’d changed your mind about coming to me, I was angry enough to pull the building down around our heads with my bare hands.’

  His thumb brushed her trembling lips. ‘I’d spent long days and nights wondering if you’d choose the safety of marriage to Tom and your family’s approval over living with me. I’d promised myself I’d put no pressure on you; it had to be your own decision. But the fact that you hadn’t already given him his marching orders worried me. And I found I couldn’t keep away. You’d told me you’d be seeing him on that Sunday and I had to follow. But I was so on edge I couldn’t trust myself to speak to you without pleading my case, begging you—’

  ‘Then Helen told you she was having your child,’ she supplied with thick misery, burying her head back into his chest, taking this last little comfort. ‘I understand why you felt you had to marry her.’

  ‘Helen married Tom,’ he said gently, stroking hertumbled hair. ‘She is having his child. I have never made love to your sister.’

  ‘Tom! She married Tom? But they hate each other! And you did. You told me you had!’ She was incoherent. She couldn’t take it in. Any of it. Except—except—Luca hadn’t married Helen!

  ‘What did I say, carissima? Tell me.’ He cupped her face in his hands, gazing deeply into her huge green eyes. ‘Why did you believe Helen and I had been lovers? I think I know, but tell me all the same.’

  ‘Something you said.’ She frowned, trying to remember. ‘It was when I thought you were an item, and you said you had no intention of marrying again, unless—as it came out later—you wanted children. You said you’d met her at a party.’ She bit on her lip. ‘That she wanted backing for a new business and that—that these things happen.’

  ‘Sweet idiot!’ He dropped a kiss on her parted lips and desire flooded her with fierce delight. She clung to him but he held her slightly away, his face kinder, more compassionate than she’d ever seen it. ‘I was speaking generally. People do exchange sex for financial favours, my little innocent. Only I’m not one of them.

  ‘I don’t like to bad-mouth your sister, cara, but the signals were all there. If I’d insisted, she would have obliged. But I would never operate that way. I looked over her business proposal and it was excellent. Helen and I have never been lovers.’

  Still holding her hands, he led her to the table and sat her down on one of the chairs. Too bemused to do anything else, Bess watched him open the wine, cut the bread and the cheese, her eyes wide and fuddled because the world had turned itself upside down, revealing a paradise she hadn’t known existed.

  And he told her, ‘When you told me you didn’t want me any more I was burnt out with an emotion I’d never had before. It took me a while to realise what it was.’ He poured a glass of wine and gently curved her fingers round the stem. ‘Love. I was in love with you and it took a bombshell to make me realise it.’ He sat beside her, cutting a tiny square of cheese and popping it into her mouth. Her eyes were huge with the magic of knowing...

  ‘You love me?’

  ‘With my life,’ he answered solemnly. ‘With hindsight, I think I fell in love with you the moment I saw you. And I knew you loved me. At least, I hope so.’ He brushed her hair back off her face, his touch so tender that it made her want to cry. ‘I couldn’t believe that all you’d felt for me was lust. You’d been so responsive, so generous, so adorably loving.

  ‘So during these last weeks I worked it all out,’ he said, with the touch of arrogance she’d always found compelling. ‘While you were seeing Tom, Helen broke down and confessed to what had happened. With the suddenness of a summer storm, she and Tom had discovered they were in love—love and hate—opposite sides of the same coin,
cara. They hadn’t been able to help themselves. Out of one of their violent arguments passion had sprung. And, as luck would have it, she immediately became pregnant.

  ‘Poor old Tom didn’t know how to tell you. But then he didn’t have to, did he? You walked in and broke off the engagement. His relief must have sent him light-headed. The poor guy had been given a reprieve. He hadn’t had to tell you—or any of the parents—of his naughty deeds! He and Helen were free to marry without anyone being able to accuse him of anything.

  ‘But Helen didn’t know that, of course. When you came back she naturally assumed Tom had told you all. When she’d phoned him to warn him you were there, and coming to see him, and he’d better see you at the office rather than at his home, it had been arranged that he’d tell you everything.

  ‘She had no way of knowing you’d only gone to see him to tell him your engagement was off. So she let slip about the pregnancy—or maybe her conscience was really bothering her and she wanted to try to make you understand, not blame her too much. And you, characteristically, jumped to the conclusion that it was my child!’

  He reached for her, pulling her onto his lap, tracing a fingertip down the side of her face, her neck. ‘Having sorted all that out, I used undue pressure to make Mark tell me where you were and came to find out if my detective work proved me right. And it did. You couldn’t hide your true feelings, no matter how you tried.

  ‘And the castello is mine. I made Emilia an offer she couldn’t refuse. It will be our Italian home. And, just to make sure you don’t try to jump out of your pigeon-hole, we shall marry. I am going to bind you to me every way I can.’

  ‘Luca ...’ she breathed deliriously, stroking the side of his lean and handsome face. ‘I think I’m too stunned to take all this in.’

  His wife. His love. For ever. She was too small to contain such happiness. The whole world was too small to contain it!

  But she’d do her best!

  ‘Don’t worry about it, carissima,’ he murmured against her mouth as his long hands caressed her body, scorching her flesh through the thin T-shirt. ‘I will help you. All you have to do is love me.’

  ‘Always,’ she breathed ecstatically.

  ‘Now?’ His voice was suddenly thick, unsteady. Bright colour slashed his angular cheekbones. She found his lips and kissed them fiercely and he gathered her up, carrying her to the wooden staircase, the beat of his heart heavy beneath her cheek.

  ‘Now,’ she affirmed. ‘Always, she promised.

  She spared a very fleeting thought for her suitcases back in Rome. She had nothing with her. Not even a comb.

  She didn’t care.

  This gorgeous, unforgettably wonderful love of her life was all she needed. Now and for ever.

  ISBN : 978-1-4592-6943-9

  A GUILTY AFFAIR

  First North American Publication 1997.

  Copyright © 1996 by Diana Hamilton.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or ratneval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher. Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure intention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.