by Lynne Graham
However, those facts were simply misleading facts. Obviously she had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But Luca wasn’t the type of male likely to question his own judgement. In fact, unless she was very much mistaken, Luca prided himself on his powers of logic and reasoning. That being so, for almost three years he had staunchly believed that she was the culprit. By now, the real thief and the ring had to be long gone. Luca’s mistake, not hers.
In the meantime, only by finding some proof that the ring her father had sold had been a different ring entirely could she hope to defend herself. Had her father kept any record of that sale? And what the heck was the use of wondering that when she was stuck in Venice and unable to conduct any sort of search? Why, oh, why had she allowed Luca to steamroller her into flying straight to Italy?
And the answer came back loud and clear. If she had refused, Luca would have gone without her. Challenged at the very outset of their marriage, Luca would have carried through on that threat.
An hour later, Luca sauntered back into the marital bedroom and stopped dead only halfway towards the canopied bed.
Contented canine snores alerted him to the presence of at least one four-legged intruder. And there was no room for a bridegroom in the bed, vast as it was. Darcy lay dead centre, one arm curved protectively round her slumbering daughter, the other draped across two enormous shaggy backs.
Zou Zou was snoring like a train. Aristide opened his eyes, and in his efforts to conceal himself did a comic impression of a very large dog trying to shrink himself to the size of a chihuahua. Pushing his head bashfully between his paws, perfectly aware that he was not allowed on the bed, he surveyed Luca pleadingly, unaware that the child on the other side of the bed was his most powerful source of protection.
Luca drew in a slow, steadying breath and backed towards the door very quietly. He had learnt considerable respect for the consequences of not letting sleeping toddlers lie...
Darcy was nudged awake at half past six in the morning by the dogs.
After a brisk wash in her usual cold water in the en suite bathroom, she trudged downstairs in her checked pyjamas and old wool dressing gown, startling the dapper little manservant breakfasting in the sleek, ultra-modern kitchen on the ground floor. Beneath the older man’s aghast gaze, she fed and watered the dogs and refused to allow him to interrupt his meal. She then insisted on charring two croissants and brewing some not very successful coffee for herself. She wrinkled her nose as she ate and drank. Cooking had never been her metier, but her digestion was robust.
Finding Zia still soundly asleep when she returned to the bedroom, she succumbed to the notion of returning to bed to give her daughter a cuddle, but while in the act of waiting for the toddler to awaken naturally she contrived to drift off to sleep again.
The second time she woke up, she stretched luxuriantly. Then, as she recalled rising earlier, she was seized by instant guilt and wondered with all the horror of someone who never, ever had a lie-in what time it was.
‘It’s a quarter past nine, cara mia,’ a deep, dark drawl responded to the anxious question she had unwittingly said out loud.
That reply so alarmingly close to hand acted like a cattle prod on Darcy. Eyes flying wide in dismay, she flipped over to her side to confront her uninvited companion. ‘Good heavens...a q-quarter past nine?’ she stuttered. ‘Where’s Zia?’
‘Breakfasting upstairs in the nursery suite.’
His clean-shaven jaw supported by an indolent hand, Luca gazed down at Darcy’s startled face with a slow, mocking smile that made her pulses race. Her shocked appraisal absorbed the width of his bare brown shoulders above the sheet. Instantly she knew that he wasn’t wearing a stitch.
‘This bed was busier than the Rialto at high season last night,’ Luca remarked.
‘Zia needed the security of being with me. She was too cranky to settle somewhere strange on her own,’ Darcy rushed to inform him, heart banging violently against her breastbone as she collided with flaring eyes as bright as shafts of golden sunlight in that lean, dark, devastating face.
‘Were the dogs insecure too?’
‘They cried at the door, Luca! They were really pathetic...’
‘I wonder if I should have tried getting down on all fours and howling. I could have pretended to be a werewolf,’ Luca suggested, taking advantage of her confusion to snake out an imprisoning arm and hold her where she was before she could go into sudden retreat. ‘Then you would’ve had every excuse to tie me to the bed again.’
Darcy turned a slow hot crimson. Every inch of skin above the collar of her pyjama top was infiltrated by that sweeping tide of burning colour. Again! That single word was like a depth charge plunging into her memory banks to cause the maximum chaos. And, worst of all, he was exaggerating. With the aid of his bow tie, she had only got as far as anchoring one wrist before laughter had got the better of her dramatic intentions.
‘Speaking as a male who until that night had never, ever relinquished control in the bedroom, I was delightfully surprised by your creativity—’
‘I was drunk!’ Darcy hissed in anguished self-defence.
‘With a passionate desire to live out every fantasy you had ever had. Yes, you told me,’ Luca reminded her without remorse as he leant over her and long fingers flicked loose the button at her throat without her noticing. ‘You also told me that I was your dream lover... and you were undeniably mine. I don’t have dream aspirations, but what I didn’t know I was missing, I had in abundance that night, and since then no other woman has managed to satisfy me.’
‘You’re not serious,’ Darcy mumbled shakily, mesmerised by the blaze of that golden gaze holding her own.
‘So that is why you are here,’ Luca confided with husky exactitude. ‘I want to know why I find you so tormentingly attractive when my intelligence tells me that you are full of flaws.’
‘Flaws?’
‘You don’t give a damn about your appearance. You’re untidy, disorganised and blunt to the point of insanity. You hack wood like a lumberjack and you let dogs sleep on my bed. And, strange as it is, I have to confess that none of those habits or failings has the slightest cooling effect on my libido...’ Lowering his imperious dark head on that admission, Luca skimmed aside the loose-cut pyjama top to press his mouth hotly to the tiny pulse flickering beneath the delicate skin of her throat.
‘Oh...what are you doing?’ Darcy yelped.
Involuntarily immobilised by the startling burst of warmth igniting low in her belly, she gazed up apprehensively at Luca as he lifted his head.
‘Don’t do that again,’ she muttered weakly, her voice failing to rise to the command level required for the occasion. ‘It makes me feel peculiar and we have to talk about things—’
‘What sort of things?’ Luca enquired thickly.
‘That wretched ring for a start—’
‘No.’
‘I didn’t steal it, Luca! And you should be trying to find out who did!’ Darcy told him baldly.
His heated gaze cooled and hardened in the thumping silence.
Darcy gave him a weary, pleading look. ‘I wouldn’t do something like that... and as soon as I get home I’ll be able to prove that the ring my father sold wasn’t yours!’
‘What do you hope to gain from these absurd lies and promises?’ Luca demanded with raw impatience. ‘I know that you took the Adorata! It is not remotely possible that anyone else could have carried out that theft. An idiot would confirm your guilt on less evidence than I have!’
‘Circumstantial evidence, Luca...nothing more concrete. ’
‘While you refuse to admit the truth, there’s nothing to discuss.’ Luca studied her flushed and frustrated face with smouldering dark golden eyes. With cool deliberation, he smoothed the tumbled curls from her brow. ‘All I want to do at this moment is make passionate love to you.’
‘No!’
Luca let a teasing forefinger trail along the taut line of her mutinous lips, watched her sh
iver in shaken reaction to that contact. ‘Even when you want to?’
‘I don’t want to!’
Suddenly alarmingly short of breath, Darcy looked back at him. Little prickles of tormenting awareness were filling her with tension. She was shamefully conscious of the raw, potent power of his abrasive masculinity, and of its devastating effect on her treacherous body. Already her breasts felt heavy and full, her nipples wantonly taut.
The silence pulsed.
‘I don’t! You think I’m a thief!’ Darcy cried, as though he had argued with her.
Luca’s smile was pure charisma unleashed. ‘Possibly that’s the most dangerous part of your attraction.’
Thoroughly disconcerted by that suggestion, Darcy frowned.
And, in a ruthless play on her bewilderment, Luca bent his well-shaped dark head and kissed her. He plundered her mouth like a warrior on the battlefield in a make-or-break encounter. She jerked as if fireworks were going off inside her. The hot, lustful thrust of his tongue electrified her. As she responded with all the answering hunger she could not suppress, nothing mattered to her but the continuance of that passionate assault.
In an indolent movement Luca sat up and carried her with him. He pushed the top down off her shoulders and trailed it free of her arms, freeing her hands to rise and sink into his luxuriant black hair. He released her reddened mouth, burnished golden eyes dropping lower to take in the tip-tilted curves of her small breasts and the bold thrust of her rosy nipples.
‘You are so perfect,’ he savoured huskily.
Perfect? Never, she thought, but in the pounding silence Darcy still found herself watching as he curved appreciative hands to her aching flesh. With a stifled moan, she shut her eyes tightly, but felt with every quivering fibre the shock-wave of shatteringly intense sensation as expert fingers toyed with the tender peaks. She trembled, her heartbeat thundering in her eardrums.
‘Dio...’ Luca drew in an audible breath. ‘You always do exactly what excites me most...’
With a distinct lack of cool, he pushed her back against the pillows and closed his mouth urgently to the source of his temptation. As he tugged at the shamelessly engorged buds with erotic thoroughness she flung her head back, every muscle tensing as a low, keening sound of excitement escaped her. With every carnal caress he sent an arrow of shooting fire to the tormenting ache between her trembling thighs.
Her fingers knotted tightly into the glossy thickness of his hair, holding him to her, desperately urging him on. A moan of impatience left her lips as he abandoned her breasts to tug up her knees and free her restive lower limbs from the pyjama bottoms.
‘Kiss me,’ she muttered feverishly then.
‘Want me?’ Shimmering golden eyes welded to her darkened gaze and the longing she couldn’t hide from him. ‘How much?’
‘Luca...’ she whispered pleadingly, shivering with need.
‘I find you incredibly sexy, cara mia.’
Rising over her, he slid a lean, hair-roughened thigh between hers and crushed her mouth with passionate fervour under his. There was no room for thought in her head. Passion controlled her utterly. Her body writhed beneath his, a flood of hungry fire burning at the very heart of her. Feeling the bold promise of his manhood pulsing against her hip, she pushed against him in instinctive encouragement.
Luca pulled back from her, eyes smoky with desire. ‘You’re too impatient...the pleasure is all the keener when you wait for what you want. And didn’t you make me wait that night?’ A tantalising hand slowly smoothed over the tense muscles of her stomach. He listened to her suck in oxygen in noisy gasps of anticipation. ‘In fact, you pushed me right over the edge when I was least expecting it.’
Instantly she was lost in that imagery. Luca, helpless in her thrall, driven to satisfaction against his own volition, disconcerted, reacting by suddenly reasserting his masculine dominance and driving her crazy with desire. She reached up to him, finding his sensual mouth again for herself, parting her lips to the stabbing invasion of his tongue. He shuddered violently against her, his control slipping as he kissed her back with raw, hungry force.
His hand skated through the damp auburn curls crowning the apex of her thighs and discovered the satin sensitivity of the moist flesh beneath. Mastered by a need that overwhelmed every restraint, she felt her spine arch, her body opening to him as the terrible ache for satisfaction blazed up, making her whimper and writhe, hungrily craving what he had taught her to crave in a torment of excitement.
‘When you respond like that, all I can think about is plunging inside you,’ Luca groaned, sliding between her thighs.
The hot, hard thrust of his powerful penetration took her breath away. Nothing had ever felt so good. Her whole being was centred on the feel of him inside her, boldly stretching and filling, and giving such intense pleasure she would have died had he stopped.
‘You told me I was absolutely brilliant at this,’ Luca reminded her, gazing down at her with a staggering mixture of lust laced with reluctant amusement as he plunged deeper still and watched her eyes close on a wave of electrified and utterly naked pleasure. “‘Gosh, you’re incredibly good at this too...” you said, in such surprise. I wondered if you were going to score my technique on a questionnaire afterwards—’
‘Shut up!’ Darcy moaned with effort.
‘You said that too.’
She stared up at him, at a peak of such extraordinary excitement she was ready to kill him if he didn’t move.
And Luca vented a hoarse laugh. He knew how she felt. And his own struggle to maintain control was etched in his taut cheekbones, the sheen of sweat on his dark skin and the ragged edge to his voice. With a muffled groan of urgent satisfaction, he drove deeper into her yielding body. Her heart almost burst with the force of her own frantic response.
Mindless, she clung to him as he took her with a wild vigour that destroyed any semblance of control. Her release brought an electrifying explosion. As the paroxysms of uncontrollable pleasure overpowered her, her nails raked down his damp, muscular back. Luca cried out her name and shuddered over her, as lost in that world of physical sensation as she was.
The most unearthly silence reigned in the aftermath of that impassioned joining.
Luca disentangled himself and rolled over to a cooler part of the bed. Darcy stared fixedly at the footboard. Even before the last quakings of sated desire and intense pleasure faded, she felt rejected.
So you slept with him, a little voice said inside her blitzed brain. Did you do it to make this a real marriage that couldn’t be annulled? Did you do it to hang onto the Folly? Or did you do it because you just couldn’t summon up sufficient will-power to resist him? After all, you knew how fantastic he would be.
Darcy flipped her tousled head over to one side to anxiously scan Luca. He looked back at her, his strikingly handsome face taut but uninformative, expressive eyes screened. Darcy’s throat closed over. At that moment she wanted very, very badly to believe that she had sacrificed her body for the sake of her home. It might have been a morally indefensible move, but her pride could have lived with such a cold-blooded decision...
It would be an infinitely greater challenge to co-exist with the ghastly knowledge that she had made love with Luca because she found him totally and absolutely irresistible, even when she ought to hate him...but, unhappily for her, that was the dreadful truth. And any denial of the fact would be complete cowardice.
It was equally craven to lie in the presence of the enemy behaving like a victim, drowning in defeat and loss of face. Darcy flinched from an image infinitely more shameful to her than any loss of control in Luca’s arms. It was unthinkable to let Luca guess that making love with him could reduce her to such a turmoil of painful vulnerability.
‘Right,’ Darcy said flatly, galvanised into action by that awareness and abruptly sitting up with what she hoped was a cool, calm air of decision. ‘Now that we’ve got that out of the way, perhaps we can talk business.’
‘Busi
ness?’ Luca stressed in sharp disconcertion, complete incredulity flaring in his brilliant dark eyes.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘BUSINESS,’ Darcy confirmed steadily.
‘We have no mutual business interests to discuss,’ Luca delivered rather drily.
‘That’s where you’re wrong.’ Her eyes gleamed at that dismissive assurance. ‘As you were so eager to point out yesterday, the Folly estate is still on the brink of bankruptcy.’ She breathed in deep. ‘I only married you because I assumed that my bank manager would increase my overdraft limit once I explained to him about my godmother’s will. However...he refused.’
From beneath dense ebony lashes, Luca surveyed her with something akin to unholy fascination.
‘So as things stand,’ Darcy recounted tautly, ‘not only am I in no position to re-employ the staff laid off after my father’s death, but I am also likely to have my home repossessed before that six months is even up.’
‘One small question,’ Luca breathed in a slightly strained undertone. He was now engaged on a fixed surveillance of the elaborate plasterwork on the ceiling above. ‘Did you happen to mention my name to your bank manager?’
‘What would I have mentioned your name for?’ Darcy countered impatiently. ‘I told him that I’d got married but that my husband would be having nothing to do with the estate.’
‘Honesty is wonderful, but not always wise,’ Luca remarked reflectively. ‘I doubt that you need worry about any imminent threat of repossession. If you’re only a little behind on the mortgage repayments, it’s unlikely.’
‘I disagree. I’ve had some very nasty letters on the subject already. Heavens, I’m scared to open my post these days!’ Darcy admitted ruefully, thrusting bright curls from her troubled brow.
‘Tell me, in a roundabout, extremely clumsy way, is it possible that you are trying to work yourself up to asking me for a loan?’ Luca enquired darkly.
‘Where on earth did you get that idea? I wouldn’t touch your money with a barge-pole!’ Darcy told him in indignant rebuttal. ‘But I need to go home to visit all the other financial institutions that might help. I have to find somewhere prepared to invest in the future of the Folly!’