Mistress to the Mediterranean Male (Mills & Boon By Request)

by Carole Mortimer

  ‘Poor you!’ Anna sympathised, glancing up and finding Francesco’s eyes on her from the far side of the dance floor. He looked furious. No sign of the redhead. Furious because she was dancing with Nick?

  Her heart skipped. He had given her ample evidence that he couldn’t stand to see her old friend around her. And she’d accused him of being jealous. He’d denied it, of course, but you didn’t feel possessive of someone who meant little to you, did you?

  ‘I think I’ll give the next dance a miss, Nick.’

  She’d grab her brand-new husband and ask him why he’d been in a clinch to music with his one-time lover, inform him that if he thought he could resume his old womanising ways while he was married to her then he could darn well think again!

  ‘Good idea,’ Nick responded as he escorted her from the dance floor, heading for a pair of vacant gilded chairs, his arm around her narrow waist. ‘Wait here.’ His bluntly good-looking face was beaded with sweat. ‘I’ll fetch us a drink—something long and cold. I’m sweltering.’

  The words to tell him not to bother on her account, because she was going to find Francesco, nail him down if necessary, died on her lips as he promptly disappeared in the direction of the bar. Shrugging slightly, she turned and found herself face to face with the redhead.

  ‘I suppose I must give you my congratulations?’

  ‘Thank you.’ Anna didn’t want to acknowledge the woman, but pride forced her to respond.

  ‘Don’t thank me.’ The glossy scarlet lips parted on an insincere smile. ‘Thank your own forward planning and fertility. Entrapment, I believe they call it.’

  ‘I can’t believe you just said that!’ Anna was shaking inside with the force of her emotions. Was that how Francesco viewed his situation? Probably, she conceded in utter misery, and was drainingly humiliated when the other woman smoothed the dark green slinky fabric of her daringly low-cut dress over her snake hips and responded.

  ‘No? Everybody thinks it—even though they’re sweetness and light to your face. But that’s not my style. Call a spade a spade, that’s me. Francesco married you because you made sure you got yourself pregnant—why else would he tie himself to a bog-standard cook? But take it from one who knows. He won’t be faithful. I got it from the horse’s mouth. He invited me to your wedding specifically to tell me.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  AS NICK appeared with two brimming glasses Francesco arrived, his eyes shooting ice as he said, cold as permafrost, ‘My wife won’t be needing that. We’re leaving.’

  The emotional upheaval going on inside her head meant Anna couldn’t think straight, never mind resist, as a long-fingered hand clamped around her upper arm and hustled her out into the vast reception area.

  He spoke into a mobile phone, clipped, authoritative, then snapped it closed and growled, ‘Did you train him to dance attendance?’

  ‘Don’t be silly!’

  ‘What was silly,’ he countered, his eyes glittering, narrowed, ‘was the moony love-lorn look on the guy’s face as he trundled you around in a bear-hug—as if he couldn’t face letting go of you.’

  Looking up into his tension-riven features, Anna felt a reprehensible stab of triumph. He was jealous of Nick! That being so, could he really intend continuing his affair with that woman?

  Or was it a case of sauce for the gander but not for the goose?

  Firmly resisting the urge to string him along—and in the light of what the slinky redhead had said to her and the way they’d been practically seducing each other on the dance floor he deserved it—she informed him coolly, ‘Nick was fed-up. Melody—the woman he’s crazy about—couldn’t be here. They’d planned to stay on for a day or two in London, but she’d had to cancel to cover for a sick colleague. And it wasn’t a bear-hug! He was holding on to me because he kept on bumping me into other couples. He’s got concrete boots when he’s dancing. So don’t lump me and Nick into the same league as you and that woman!’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Apparently unmollified by her defence of Nick, he was really on his high horse. His waiting silence was like an unscaleable brick wall, but Anna was too enraged to back away.

  ‘The redheaded harpie you were practically seducing on the dance floor just accused me of entrapment and told me you’d invited her to our wedding to tell her that the fact that you were married wouldn’t interfere with your affair with her. How sick is that?’

  ‘Dio mio!’ Francesco uttered grimly. Two hands on her upper arms, he swung her round to face him. ‘That is pure poison!’ Strain tightened his sensual mouth. ‘I swear on our son’s precious life that I have never had an affair with that woman. I hardly know her. She is my cousin’s friend. Silvana invited her that weekend—she’s a hopeless matchmaker, and the two of them obviously hoped something would come of our proximity.’ He gave her a tiny shake, silver eyes searching emerald. ‘I wasn’t interested and I let her know it. I haven’t given another woman a single glance since I lost you—I refused to believe it, but I was still in love with you. I never stopped.’

  ‘Oh!’ Light-headed with happiness at that unexpectedly emotional statement, Anna felt her eyes brim.

  ‘She’s just out to make trouble,’ Francesco delivered fervently. ‘It was she who was all over me, and apart from creating an undignified scene on my wedding day there was nothing I could do about it.’ A muscle jerked at the side of his strong jaw. ‘I can’t ask you to trust me. I didn’t do you the courtesy of trusting you, and for that I can never apologise enough. But we will confront the wretched woman, wring the truth from her.’

  Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned! Those old sayings always hit the nail on the head.

  Anna grinned. The man who was always right was actually saying sorry! ‘There’s no need for that,’ she said with conviction. Her eyes were glowing. ‘I trust you. You love Sholto. You would never have sworn to something that wasn’t the absolute truth on his little life. And while we’re about it—’ she gave him a look of mock reproof ‘—you can stop being jealous of Nick. We’ve been good friends since we were barely out of nappies. Yes, he did ask me to marry him.’

  She reached up to stroke the frown of displeasure that now drew his dark brows together. ‘Because he was worried about me being a single parent. But, as I pointed out at the time, we weren’t in love with each other, and, although I was touched by his offer, I wouldn’t have been selfish enough to let him make such a sacrifice, because one day I knew he’d find someone he was crazy about. And now he has. In any case, I was still in love with you. Though, like you, I tried to deny it.’

  That charismatic grin transformed his spectacular features as he briefly crushed her to him. ‘You still love me?’

  ‘Of course.’ She tilted her head back. ‘I tried to tell you before, but you wouldn’t believe it.’

  Francesco gave a driven groan. ‘I have been a fool!’ Gently, he stroked away a strand of blonde curls from her forehead. ‘I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you, I promise, amore mia! And now we go!’ He swept her up in his arms, the beaded skirts of her wedding dress trailing on the floor, and headed for the service area, past the kitchens and through a narrow door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Not that she cared. Whatever he did was fine with her! Her arms looped around his neck, she didn’t know how her body could contain such happiness. He did love her!

  ‘Avoiding the photographers—the car is waiting.’

  Arnold was waiting by the spacious Lexus, she registered, as Francesco’s long stride hit the cobbles of the delivery access. ‘Shouldn’t we be seen off?’ Common sense reasserted itself as her gorgeous husband slid her down his fantastic body. ‘I promised to make sure Cristina caught my bouquet. Only …’ Her brow creased. ‘I’ve already lost it.’

  ‘Shush.’ Smiling lips stopped her words. ‘The last I saw of her my niece was waltzing around the dance floor and her partner was your bouquet. I challenge anyone to take it off her! And I don’t want to be “seen of
f”, as you put it. I want out of here. Now. With you. We fly to Italy.’

  Sholto was fast asleep in the car, securely fastened in his baby seat. Anna slid in beside him and Francesco followed, taking her hands as Arnold, grinning broadly, went round to the driver’s seat and eased the big car smoothly away.

  ‘I can’t travel in a wedding dress.’ Anna just loved the way he lifted her hands to his lips, placed tiny kisses in the palms, along the sensitive skin of her inner wrists.

  ‘There’s no law that says you shouldn’t.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘I adore seeing you in a bridal gown. I adore having a bride—I will take it from you tonight.’

  Such a wealth of promise in that statement of intent. A deliciously convulsive shudder shot through her. ‘I can’t wear it for the whole of our honeymoon,’ she gasped, giggling.

  ‘As our honeymoon will last for the rest of our lives, that would be impractical,’ he conceded on a purr. ‘Peggy has packed for you and Sholto. Anything missing can be easily rectified. I shall like taking my wife shopping. Spoiling her.’

  As his private jet became airborne Francesco undid his seat belt and did the same for Anna. She looked flushed and happy, utterly adorable. His son was asleep in the skycot, his Italian housekeeper was expecting them, and the future promised everything he could hope for. And more.

  ‘If this is entrapment then I’m all for it,’ he told her softly, prepared for her immediate objection.

  ‘I didn’t deliberately—’

  ‘I know you didn’t, cara mia. Neither of us acted responsibly that first time. How could we? And I will give thanks for that for the rest of my life,’ he stated with startling sincerity. ‘If it hadn’t been for our son we would never have found such happiness. So if this is a trap it is pure honey, and I gladly wallow in it.’

  ‘Me too,’ she sighed blissfully, nestling against him as he put an arm round her shoulder and shutting out the hideous thought that if she hadn’t conceived she might have spent the rest of her life telling herself she hated and despised him. ‘I’m not being picky, but when did you decide you could trust me? I know why you didn’t—you were sort of programmed, I guess. But I would like to know.’

  He shifted slightly, holding her eyes with his steady gaze. ‘I was a mad fool. After the time we spent together on Ischia I truly believed I’d found true love and trust. Then your father asked me for a large amount of investment and I felt betrayed. Hurt beyond healing.’ He dragged in a breath. ‘I am so sorry for thinking for one moment that you were even remotely like my mother.’

  ‘What happened to her?’ Anna wasn’t afraid to broach the taboo subject now. It was good to get him talking.

  His face sobered. ‘We heard of her death in a car crash with her latest rich lover shortly before Father died. He’d spent the intervening years pining for her, hoping that she’d eventually return to him and her children. When that hope was extinguished, my guess is he just gave up on living.’

  As he’d given up on the children who had needed him years before that. ‘So when did you start to trust me?’ she pressed, to take his mind off such an unhappy track.

  ‘When I started to think with my brain instead of my prejudices,’ he confessed rawly. ‘At first I put down your vehement refusal to take anything from me—in spite of my acceptance of responsibility for your and our child’s welfare—to a plan to get far more from me. I should have been locked up!’ he castigated herself bitterly. ‘Then when Sholto was born, and I knew I had to be a proper father to my son, I asked you to marry me.’

  ‘Told me!’ she murmured, cuddling closer.

  ‘You did not accept with the greedy happiness I was programmed to expect,’ he responded drily, drawing her even closer. ‘It was only on the night I put my crazy plan for a calm marriage to you in that restaurant that I finally found my sanity and started to put the pieces together. The way you’d refused to accept lavish maintenance payments before the birth; your reluctance to accept the clothes I paid for; the way you spurned the engagement ring I thrust on you which, to my knowledge, you had never worn. I had done you a great injustice. I loathed myself. I booked into a hotel and spent the most miserable hours of my life.

  ‘To rub salt in the wound of my misplaced distrust, and to confirm what I already knew in my heart, I invited your father to meet me last night. It was just as you had said. You’d had no idea who I was or what I was worth. But he did—from reading the financial press. He told me he had never mentioned the episode to you—he was too ashamed of his crass behaviour. He explained that once he got an idea in his head everything else went right out of it. He hadn’t thought he had jeopardised what we had between us. He hadn’t realised our brief holiday romance—as he saw it—was serious. I can tell you he was totally gutted when I pointed out just what he had done.’

  ‘Oh, goodness!’ Anna heaved herself upright. ‘Dad tried to tell me on the way to the church. But I told him to button his lip.’ When he’d claimed it was his fault she’d thought he was talking about the gaggle of photographers! If only she’d listened to him she wouldn’t have spent all that time agonising over whether Francesco had meant what he’d said when he’d told her he loved her at the start of the ceremony.

  Her voice earnest, she pressed, ‘No more misunderstandings. No more secrets. Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’ His voice was a purr of happiness as he lowered his dark head and kissed her.

  The palazzo was something else—perched on a wooded spur, surrounded by sensationally beautiful gardens, the verdant Tuscan countryside rolled out beneath it.

  ‘It’s just perfect,’ Anna breathed as Francesco, carrying Sholto, took her hand and led her in to meet Katerina, the housekeeper, and a group comprising daily helps and outdoor staff whose names she promptly forgot.

  Beaming at them all, she promised herself she would take pains to remember their names in the future, would get to know them, learn to speak Italian. She stood by, deliriously happy, as Francesco presented the now wakeful wriggling baby to his staff.

  The rest of the late afternoon was spent settling Sholto into his perfect nursery, happily arguing over who should bath him, finally doing it together and both getting their wedding finery liberally soaked. When the happy, replete baby lay fast asleep in his fancy crib, and they had agreed that not only was he perfect but completely remarkable, Francesco led her on a voyage of discovery around the magnificent property, her wedding gown trailing.

  As they entered the grand salon, with its vaulted and elaborately painted ceiling, cool marble floor, priceless antiques, porcelain bowls of fragrant flowers everywhere and long windows open to the soft warm air, Anna breathed, ‘Wow! You live in some style!’

  ‘We live in style,’ he stressed, his arm tightening around her waist. ‘But, remember, if there is anything you want changing it shall be done.’

  ‘Everything’s just perfect.’

  ‘I am glad!’ His smile warmed her. ‘The house and lands have been in my family for generations. Apparently, my mother hated it. She preferred bright lights, city living. This place was unvisited for long years. It became sad and neglected. When I inherited I made sure it was brought back to life.’

  Anna melted inside. At last he was talking about the parent who had done him so much damage quite naturally, with no trace of bitterness, just stating facts. The damage was healing. There was one last thing she wanted to know.

  Tilting her head to look up into his face, she asked, ‘Tell me why—with all this luxury at your disposal—were you living in that stone shack when we met, dressing like a beach bum and wearing a pretend gold chain that left green marks on your skin?’

  A wide grin slashed his features. ‘Escapism. I love the sea. I go there to unwind, to pretend I’m not a millionaire with a world-spanning business empire to run. I am incognito, living like a peasant, messing about in a small boat. I am not to be disturbed. But on the day we met one of my senior PAs had broken that rule, had come to me with a pro
blem he believed only I could solve. As punishment I made him accompany me to drop lobster pots while he ran the problem by me! On our return to my private cove I found the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. And we both know what happened then.’

  ‘We fell in love,’ Anna supplied softly. ‘But why wear that tacky chain? Wasn’t that overkill?’ She reached up to draw his head down to hers, green eyes wickedly sparkling as his hands drifted down over her curvy hips.

  He eased her forward against the hard cradle of his manhood in one smoothly erotic movement and answered, his breathing unsteady. ‘Cristina gave it to me. My sister and her family were staying at my hotel for a couple of days. I had to wear it; she’d bought it with her pocket money. You’ll recall I had to show some people around the island? Sophia and her family. You got the impression I was a freelance tour guide, picking up a few euros where I could. I didn’t put you right. How could I when the last thing I wanted was for the lovely, sexy young woman I found to know who I was?’

  Pressed against the urgency of his powerful body, Anna was melting, boneless, but she found the breath to assure him, ‘I loved you when I thought you were a penniless drifter. If you lost everything tomorrow I would still love you, and—’

  Claiming her mouth, he stopped her words with a hunger that sent her spinning into orbit, and she was so weak with wanton longing that she was a molten pool of submission as he swept her into strong arms and carried her out, mounting the curving staircase with determined strides, nudging open the opulent bedroom they were to share and setting her on her unsteady feet.

  ‘My bride.’ Long fingers deft, he began to undo the tiny buttons at the back of the wedding dress, and the hot ache inside her escalated to almost uncontainable proportions as the bodice fell away from her pouting, sensitised breasts. He smoothed the rest of the costly fabric from her hips, revealing tiny lacy panties, and groaned deep in his throat, telling her with husky intent, ‘The moment I turned and saw you enter the church I promised myself I would do this.’