‘Très belle—look—’ Hands on Anna’s shoulders turned her towards the pier glass, and her stormy eyes widened as she viewed a self that looked totally unlike herself.
The finest black silk dress moulded her voluptuous breasts, skimmed her back-to-normal tiny waist, caressed the sensuous curve of her hips, then floated down to narrow ankles that just cried out for the high-heeled glittery strappy shoes the younger woman was advancing with. Somehow, her widened eyes registered, the sombre colour made the naked skin of her arms, upper breast and shoulders look like whipped cream and her hair like glossy coils of platinum.
Sexy siren!
It wasn’t her—not her at all!
Her cheeks pinkening, adding extra glitter to her stormy green eyes, she was in haste to remove the dress. But the ultra-fine concealed zip was beyond the efforts of her fumbling fingers and turning, looking for assistance, she froze on the spot as Francesco walked in as if he owned the place. Which he did, of course, she grumped at herself.
She swallowed a ragged intake of breath as she found herself unable to look away from his lean, bronzed, classically Italian features, from the searing impact of slightly narrowed eyes that had darkened to unreadable charcoal pools, or the way even in well-worn jeans and a sleeveless black vest he exuded class, natural sophistication and the shattering good-looks that top-flight movie stars would envy.
He was irresistible on an entirely primitive level, she thought despairingly, appalled by her weakness, by her contrariness in lusting after the one man in the world she absolutely hated.
His eyes on Anna, Francesco strode further into the room, his accent more marked than usual as he instructed, ‘Madame Laroche, would you and your assistant wait downstairs? My housekeeper will bring coffee. I will join you shortly.’
Periphery movement, smiles and bobbing heads. Anna didn’t even note when the women left the room. Francesco was advancing towards her, and she could concentrate on nothing else. There was tension in every line of his unforgettable features, something almost pagan smouldering in his eyes as they swept her, the sexy siren personna that wasn’t her at all.
Or was it?
Anna’s head spun. It was difficult to breathe and she couldn’t think straight—not while there was that wicked throb deep inside her. She trembled, something far too responsive to this devil’s erotic magnetism trickling down her spine.
‘Madame Laroche chose well.’ A scant twelve inches away, he stopped. He was having trouble with his breathing. That dress clung to every lethally voluptuous inch of her body, and the mass of bright hair was inviting him to touch, to run his fingers through the silky coils. His voice thickened. ‘That dress is dynamite.’
Anna’s insides squirmed. On its own the dress was discreetly revealing, classy. But with her embarrassingly aroused body inside it, it was shocking. She crossed her arms over her chest to hide the way her breasts were straining to escape over the top of the low-cut bodice, as if the fine fabric couldn’t contain such bounty. Her nipples were tellingly prominent.
Her voice scratchy with her attempts to control her wretched body’s seemingly automatic response to this one man, she pushed at him, ‘She can take it all back. You’ll waste your money if you buy any of it. I won’t wear it!’
‘Why not?’ Unfazed, he fastened his eyes on the soft fullness of her mouth, and had the forbidden memory of exactly how that mouth had felt in the possession of his, the generous, unquestioning response that had never failed to drive him crazy. He felt his body harden and knew this couldn’t go on.
‘Because you only want me to wear stuff like this so you aren’t ashamed of me—just like you’d hate for anyone to know that your in-laws are sleeping in cardboard boxes—no good for your precious image!’
She slung the reminder at him and rejoiced to see his flush of discomfiture. It lasted a bare second before he countered, with enviable cool, ‘No. That is not the case. It would give me pleasure to see the mother of my son wearing lovely things.’
‘And I’m supposed to care about your pleasure?’ Anna’s brows almost hit her hairline. The sheer gall of the man! He had used her and discarded her, and he obviously despised her family—and her. He wouldn’t be giving her the time of day if he hadn’t discovered he was to be a father. And as sure as night followed day he wouldn’t have proposed marriage if he hadn’t fallen in love with his son! And yet he expected her to dress in outfits that would give him pleasure! ‘I’d rather give you a black eye!’ she said, with feeling.
‘I don’t think so,’ Francesco came back with awesome smoothness. ‘In fact, there’s been a change of plan.’
It took a moment for Anna’s seething brain to calm down enough to take that in. ‘In what way?’ He could only mean he’d rethought the marriage stuff, come to his senses. And that shouldn’t make her feel strangely bereft, with the humiliating recognition that she really must have been totally missing from the queue when brains were handed out, but she did feel ridiculously bereft.
‘Our marriage is to be a real one.’
Colour flooded her face at that statement. Her arms, still crossed over her chest, jerked, her fingernails biting into the flesh of her shoulders.
‘I find I still want your body,’ he confessed, with just a hint of self-derision.
‘It’s only this dress,’ she mumbled, hiding her blushes behind her hair at the crazy thought of being his sex slave, knowing, to her utter shame, that his sexual magnetism could make her do anything he wanted her to do.
‘No, it’s not,’ Francesco said thickly, not telling her he’d still thought her the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen earlier, even dressed in that awful tent thing. Lust, of course. Knowing what he now knew of her, it could be nothing else. ‘I’ve changed my mind about going through simply a form of marriage. It would be—’ under her widened gaze he sought an apposite word, felt his heart lurch, and supplied ‘—uncomfortable. A full marriage would make life easier for both of us.’
Initially he’d thought that having his son would be enough. That he could concentrate on his son and as good as ignore her existence except when necessity—social or business—meant they had to appear as a couple. But being driven half out of his mind by unsatisfied lust, knowing from past experience that he could make her burn with the same desire that burned in him, would make a paper marriage untenable. Ultimately harming his son.
Pent-up emotion had her shaking like a leaf and she stammered, ‘S … sex. You mean you’d expect me to have sex with you? You’d—you’d think you’d paid for it!’ Her voice rose by several decibels. ‘I’d feel like a prostitute!’
‘Calmare—’ He reached for her but she backed away, arms still crossed protectively over her breasts. He sucked in his breath. Dio mio! It would not be like that! He’d had affairs in the past, before he met her, and had been up-front about sex. Beautiful women who knew not to expect anything approaching a long-term commitment, who retired discreetly from the scene with some lavish parting gift when his interest faded.
But with Anna it wouldn’t be like that. It was a mystery he wasn’t in the mood to try to solve. He only knew. ‘It wouldn’t be like that,’ he verbalised gruffly, then consciously smoothed away an uncharacteristic feeling of walking on quicksand. He advanced until she’d backed herself against a wall. ‘We’ll have a proper wedding—no downbeat civil service—and our marriage will be consummated.’ His voice thickened as he put his hands over hers and drew them slowly down to her sides. ‘Whatever our differences, you can’t have forgotten how good we once were together.’
How could she ever forget? Anna thought wildly, the intensity of her emotions making her feel spaced out. His eyes slowly travelled her quivering body. Alarm bells were ringing in her head but she couldn’t look away.
Her eyes were riveted to the slow smile that curved his sensual mouth as he told her, ‘It will be good for us again, I promise.’ His hands slid up to her shoulders, detouring tantalisingly over her engorged breasts. She swallowed co
nvulsively. She felt boneless, something hot clenching inside as he imparted huskily, ‘Why live in agony through the years of our marriage? Why deny ourselves the release we can give each other?’
‘Just sex,’ she got out, still trying to fight a battle she knew she was losing. She wanted him and she couldn’t deny that truth. Back on Ischia she had become addicted to him, and he was proving to be an impossible habit to kick.
‘Don’t knock it!’ Smooth as cream, he lowered his dark head and took her mouth with a sensual expertise that made her whimper, whimper some more, then melt and cling to his broad shoulders for support.
Not thinking of what she was doing, not capable of a single rational thought, Anna wriggled her body closer into the hard length of his, felt his deep, responsive shudder as his mouth plundered hers with fierce male urgency. He pressed her back against the wall, firm hands shaping her eager body, the curve of her hips, the mound at the base of her tummy and up to her tingling breasts, long fingers slipping beneath the silky neckline making her gasp with wanton pleasure, wrench her mouth from his and fling her head back in a blatant invitation which he took.
Easing the straps away, he slid the silk from her breasts, dark colour a flash along his angular cheekbones, his eyes heavily lidded as he bent to close his mouth round each taut nipple in turn. Gasping, she dug her fingers into the solid muscle of his shoulders and reality, already a hazy distant thing, slipped entirely away. She was lost again, his again, and her body was screaming demands that only he could meet.
‘You are convinced?’ He drew away, ran long fingers through his rumpled hair. ‘I have proved how good we are together, si? Our marriage will be no hardship.’ He dealt her a smile that drove the breath out of her lungs before turning. ‘Madame Laroche waits. Wear something that will give me pleasure when we dine tonight.’
As the door closed behind him Anna wrapped her arms around her treacherous, unsated body and vented a long, shuddering sob. In his hands she was putty, to be moulded as he pleased. He could seduce her with a look, render her powerless.
He had just proved it. And there was no way out of a marriage that would be full of hot sex and empty of love—not if she wanted to keep her son.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘SOPHIA will arrive on the company jet later this afternoon. Arnold will meet her, and she should be in time to join us for dinner.’
‘Sophia?’ Anna prompted after a beat of silence. Francesco’s statement had been delivered with the first sign of enthusiasm he’d shown all morning.
His sensual mouth was flat, but his dark eyes brooded as they finally turned to her. Had the charade over and done with only a scant five minutes ago brought home with a sickening crunch the reality of the situation they found themselves in?
In the ground-floor drawing room, surrounded by screamingly expensive and beautiful antiques and paintings, Francesco had invited her to make her selection from the fabulous rings displayed in a briefcase that had arrived chained to the wrist of a tall, thin male who looked more like an undertaker than a purveyor of fine gems, accompanied by a hovering stone-faced, flint-eyed bodyguard.
Beneath three pairs of increasingly impatient eyes Anna had only been able to stare at the dazzling array as long awkward moments passed, her throat tightening with every uncomfortable second. She’d felt like an actor who had forgotten her lines and who, if she remembered them, would be reluctant to speak them.
In the end it had been Francesco who had plucked a flashy diamond cluster from its velvet nest without ceremony, and settled it on the third finger of her left hand with about as much romance as a guy would show stuffing loose change back in his pocket.
‘My sister,’ he now answered on a bite. ‘She is flying from Rome and will stay until the wedding to assist you.’
‘I didn’t know you had a sister.’ Anna raised questioning green eyes. She realized she knew very little about him really. Only that he was filthy rich and a womanizer, who liked just now and then to amuse himself by pretending to be dirt-poor and seducing gullible little virgins who wouldn’t get ideas about his wealth because he made sure they stayed ignorant. Recalling the cheap brass chain he’d worn the first time she’d set eyes on him, she nearly exploded with the desire to jump up and hit him.
But negative backwards-looking emotions wouldn’t get her anywhere in the situation that had been as good as thrust upon her. She took a deep steadying breath and invited, ‘Tell me about her.’
Anna’s small hands fisted against the pale cotton of the smoothly styled culottes she’d teamed with an emerald camisole top—both garments courtesy of Madame Laroche’s good taste and Francesco’s bottomless bank account—and did her best to push the other known fact—that he was probably the sexiest guy to walk the planet—right to the back of her mind.
Difficult when he levered his lean, power-packed frame out of the small sofa he’d been occupying and stood looking down at her, feet slightly apart, hands in the trouser pockets of the superbly styled dove-grey suit he was wearing.
He was so breathtakingly handsome he made her feel faint. And so damnably in control that he made her feel so churned up she didn’t know where she was half the time. Like after that torrid scene in her bedroom yesterday, when he’d announced his intention to make their marriage a real one and proved, to her private shame, that she’d be a complete push-over. She’d expected him to come to her last night. But he hadn’t, and that had left her not knowing whether to be mightily relieved or sick as a parrot!
Now he levelled at her, ‘I have wedding arrangements to make. Perhaps you might contact your parents and invite them to stay here for a day or two before the ceremony? I’ll let you know the date.’ And he was gone, leaving her feeling so aggravated she could explode. The diamond cluster on her finger was like a ton weight, dragging her down.
He couldn’t have made his intention to refuse her admission to any part of his life or his family’s clearer if he’d written in it red letters a mile high! As the mother of his son he would dress her, feed her, house her in luxury, bed her when he felt like it—but he would give her no part of himself.
Setting her delicate jaw, Anna got to her feet. He was determined to shut her out. What she felt wasn’t deep hurt—of course not—it was pique, and, piqued, she would do something about it. After all, he didn’t love her, and she as sure as hens were toothless didn’t love him, so why should she feel unbearably hurt?
She found Peggy in the kitchen, shelling peas. Pulling a chair out, Anna sat at the table, grabbed a handful of pods and said, as lightly as she could, ‘So Sophia arrives later today? Francesco was in a hurry, so he didn’t have time to put me properly in the picture. What’s she like? Older or younger?’ Sneaky, or what? But if she was to learn anything at all about the man who was to be her husband and his family she had to use any means at her disposal.
‘Oh, you’ll like her,’ Peggy promised warmly. ‘She’s married to a rich Italian banker—Fabio Bocelli—but there’s no side to her. Come to think of it, she and her big brother are both like that—they treat everybody as equals. It doesn’t matter who they are or what they’ve got, it’s the person inside the skin who counts.’
Really? Despite her best efforts to put on a guileless front, Anna felt one brow shoot towards her hairline.
‘Anyway—’ Peggy pushed herself to her feet. ‘I’ll make coffee while you finish that lot. Oh!’ Colour washed her narrow cheeks. ‘Listen to me! You’ll soon be the mistress here, and there’s me bossing you around like you were a kitchen maid!’
‘Don’t be daft!’ Anna grinned, grabbing a fresh handful of pods. ‘We’re friends, right? Make that coffee. I’m gasping!’ She’d rapidly forgiven Peggy for the way she’d lied to keep her here until Francesco could put in an appearance. When the boss asked, Peggy would oblige—without question. Not out of fear for her position but from loyalty and respect. He must have treated the Powells much better than he’d treated her to gain such unfailing obedience to his slightest wi
sh, she thought sourly.
As she industriously podded the last of the peas, the diamonds on her finger winked coldly. Grimly, Anna slid the ring off and dug it deep into the pocket of her culottes. Wretched spiky thing! If it had been a thin gold band adorned with a single tiny seed pearl but given with love she would have valued it far more highly than this flashy, eye-wateringly expensive bauble given simply because it was the thing to do.
‘There we go—’ Peggy slid a coffee mug in front of her and sat down, cradling her own mug, prepared to gossip. ‘Now—Sophia. She’s six years younger than her brother, so that makes her twenty-eight. She’s lively, very pretty, and has a six-year-old daughter—Cristina. Mind you, she’ll be leaving her behind with her nanny and Signor Bocelli until nearer the wedding.’ She smiled wryly. ‘There’ll be tantrums there—the little scrap just adores her zio Francesco, and he dotes on her, indulges her rotten! I’m not surprised things have turned out as they have. He’s besotted with baby Sholto, but you’ll have to watch out he doesn’t ruin him with spoiling! Spoil the pair of you, is my guess. You should have seen the look on his face when he broke the news of the wedding—cat got the cream wasn’t in it!’
Daddy cat got his kitten, Anna brooded a few hours later. She was just a necessary encumbrance. Necessary to his tiny son’s happiness and well-being, not his.
Never his.
Wandering around the fabulous ground-floor drawing room, plumping cushions, moving a vase of flowers from one table to another, gave her something to do. She had bathed and fed Sholto, played with him, cuddled him, lunched in solitary splendour, taken her dark-haired little son for an airing in the railed gardens at the heart of the elegant square, and now he slept.
Edgy, unable to settle, she was glad of the interruption when Peggy opened the door and announced impressively, ‘A gentleman to see you, madam.’
Mistress to the Mediterranean Male (Mills & Boon By Request) Page 23