by Penny Jordan
‘Straight in for dinner, please,’ Lily answered him ‘Very well.’ A brief inclination of Marco’s head brought the maître d’ over to their table to escort them through into the restaurant ‘What do you think of the place?’ Marco asked her, observing the manner in which she was thoughtfully studying their surroundings.
‘The decor is stunning.’ Lily told him truthfully, ‘but a woman coming here for a romantic tête-à-tête would have to be very careful about what she wore if she didn’t want to end up competing with so much rich adornment.’
‘To the man who desires her the only clothing a woman needs is her own skin. That is far more erotic to him than anything else could be,’ Marco responded.
Lily could feel her face burning from the heat Marco’s words had aroused inside her. The heat and the desire. She was glad to be able to sit down at the table to which the waiter had shown them, glad of the room’s soft lighting and the large menu she had been handed to conceal her hot face.
Behind his own menu Marco was cursing himself for the rawly sensual images their exchange had produced inside his head. His imagination was laying them out before him in loving detail, as though answering a need within him that had demanded them. Lily lying naked against the silk coverlet of his bed, watching him, wanting him. Her skin would be all shimmering translucent perfection, fine and delicate, her nipples a deep rose-pink, her sex covered by soft blonde hair. Her legs would be long and slender, supple enough to wrap tightly around him.
Marco cursed himself silently again—and her. If this had been any other woman—if he had not known what she really was—then he could have dealt with the situation by taking her to bed. She was not, after all, the first woman to arouse him, and nor had he ever been short of eager partners to share his bed, but he had never desired any of them with this kind of intensity. What was happening to him? Why couldn’t he control and banish the sensual hunger she aroused in him?
The discovery that he wasn’t able to do so was like having a deep, unbridgeable chasm open up at his feet, leaving him vulnerable and desperately trying to cling on to what he had believed to be a perfectly safe landscape. The discovery was demanding answers to questions for which there was no logical answer, stirring up things within him he had not even known were there. And he didn’t like it. He didn’t like any of it. Marco liked being able to control his responses, not have them controlling him. He liked dealing in facts and logic, not being forced to endure the uncertainty of illogical emotions. Most of all he hated the fact that Lily confused him by refusing to a stay true to type. He knew what she was, and yet she kept on exhibiting behaviour that suggested she was something else. Or that he had been wrong about her. That was impossible. Wasn’t it?
The only reason he was even being polite to her was for professional reasons—because of the commitment he had made to the trust’s venture. The last thing he wanted to do was spend time in her company. His pride wouldn’t let him back out of accompanying her, though. That would be tantamount to admitting that he was afraid of the way she made him feel.
He put down his menu, meaning to ignore her, but against his will his gaze was drawn to her. The restaurant was full, and there were many beautiful, expensively dressed women amongst the diners, but it seemed to him that Lily had a pure elegance about her that made her stand out head and shoulders above the other women. From out of nowhere the thought formed inside his head that a man would be proud to have such a wife—educated, intelligent, beautiful and elegant. Proud? To be married to a woman he couldn’t trust? A woman who hid what she really was beneath an outward image?
The waiter was hovering, waiting for Lily to give him her order.
‘I’ll have the missoltini to start with,’ she told him, referring to the Lake Como speciality of small sundried fish, ‘and then the risotto.’ Rice had been grown in Northern Italy for centuries, and risotto was very much a dish of the area.
‘I’ll have the same,’ Marco agreed.
When the wine waiter arrived, hot on the heels of the waiter who had taken their food order, Marco glanced at the list and asked Lily, ‘How do you feel about the Valtellina? I know it’s a red, and we’re starting with fish, but …’
Lily laughed a natural trill of laughter for the first time since they had met, unable to conceal her amusement. She liked the fact that Marco was consulting her rather than telling her what he thought they should drink, and she knew perfectly well why he had suggested the Valtellina.
‘Leonardo drank Valtellina. If it was good enough for him then it’s good enough for me,’ she told him.
Marco had suspected that would be her response, which was in part why he had suggested the Valtellina in the first place.
Was that actually a small smile she could see on Marco’s face, as though he was enjoying a private joke? Lily wondered. He had a good smile, warm and masculine, revealing a tantalising hint of a manly cleft in his jaw and strong white teeth. Her heart missed a beat of female appreciation of his maleness, followed by a dull, hollow feeling inside her chest. Because his smile was not for her?
She was glad of the arrival of their wine to distract her from the possible meaning behind her emotional reaction to him.
‘So that’s the itinerary. We’ll start off tomorrow morning with a visit to Villa Balbiannello. I’ve arranged a private tour for you. Most of the villas we’ll be visiting are not fully open to the public, as you know.’
Lily nodded her head. Marco was discussing the arrangements for the morning with her over coffee after their meal, and now he added, ‘Since we’ve got an early start in the morning, and I’ve got some work to do, I’d like to call it a night—unless you want more coffee.’
Was that a stab of disappointment she felt? Of course not. Lily forced herself to shake her head and tell him firmly, ‘I won’t sleep if I have any more coffee.’
She ought to be tired, not strung so tightly with nervous energy. It had been a long and far from easy day, to put it mildly. The truth was that she felt as though she’d been travelling on an alien emotional rollercoaster from the first moment she had set eyes on Marco.
They had dined relatively early, the restaurant was still full and busy as they left. As they drew level with one table the stunning-looking brunette seated there with several other people, called out to Marco in a very pleased voice. ‘Marco, ciao.’
Lily wasn’t surprised to see him stop as the woman stood up to reveal a perfect hourglass figure in a cream designer dress that showed off her figure to perfection. Politely she left them to it after murmuring a brief ‘goodnight', sensing that the other woman’s delight at seeing Marco did not extend to her. She removed from her evening bag the plastic keycard to her suite, ready to make her way there.
In the ante-room to the restaurant a large group of people were heading towards the restaurant—fashion people from Milan’s fashion week, Lily guessed expertly, easily recognising the mix of expensively suited older men, bone-thin young models, and a handful of very smart women who looked like magazine editors. She had never been comfortable around such people, reminding her as they did of her past. Her stomach was churning anxiously already, her face starting to heat up with nervous dread.
Desperate to get past them as quickly as she could, she started to skirt the group—only to be brought to shocked halt when one of the men stepped out in front of her, blocking her way. Anger, disgust and most shamingly of all stomach-gripping fear washed over her in a nauseating spine-chilling surge. He put his hand on her arm as he smiled his cruel crocodile smile at her, the familiar sour smell of his breath closing her throat against the retching movement of loathing tightening it. Anton Gillman. A man she had every reason to loathe and fear. She wanted to turn and run but she couldn’t.
‘Lily, what a delicious surprise—and looking so grown up as well. It’s been so long. It must be—what? —twelve years?’
It was surely deliberate that he was talking to her in that adult-to-child manner she remembered so well. Because
he knew what hearing it would do to her.
The temptation to correct him and tell him that it was thirteen years was dangerously strong. She must not let him know that she even remembered, never mind knew to the exact year how long it had been.
Someone bumped into her, jolting her uncomfortably. Her keycard slipped from her hand. Immediately, before she could bend down to retrieve it, Anton released her and did so for her, carefully studying the number of the suite printed on the card before taunting her softly as he held it out to her. ‘If that’s an invitation …’
Horror crawled along her veins.
Almost snatching the keycard from him, she said, half choking on her loathing, ‘No, it isn’t. You know I would never …’ She stopped speaking, not trusting herself to say any more.
The people he was with had moved on into the restaurant. She felt hot and cold, as though she was in the grip of a fever.
But instead of annoying him her rejection seemed only to amuse him, because he laughed and shook his head, shook that mane of dark coiffured hair that curled down his neck just as she remembered it ‘Ah, you should never say never, my dear Lily. After all, there is a great deal of unfinished business between you and I, and it would give me a great deal of satisfaction to bring it to its proper end—especially in such an undeniably sensual setting.’
Even though she knew he would be able to see and feel the shudder that ripped through her, she couldn’t control it. She was fourteen again, and he a grown man, stalking her with one thing on his mind.
‘I’m twenty-seven now,’ she forced herself to point out to him. The past fought inside her with the present, the child she had been with the woman she now was. ‘Far too old to appeal to a man of your tastes.’
He was watching her with amusement, and an open sexual greed that had her only increased her panic. ‘Ah, but you do appeal to me, Lily. You always have. They say there is an extra allure to a lost opportunity. Are you here alone?’
Lily hesitated before saying quickly, ‘No.’
She had waited too long before answering him, Lily knew, and his laughter chilled her with horror. It told her that he knew how she felt.
‘You’re lying to me,’ he told her mock disappointedly, confirming her fear. ‘How delightfully erotic that you still fear me. That will add a divine extra pleasure to my possession of you. And I shall possess you, Lily, because it is what you owe me. How pleasing that you should come back into my life so fortuitously. You are staying in suite number sixteen, I see.’
From the restaurant Marco watched Lily with increasing contempt. It was plain to him that she and the man knew one another very well indeed, from the way in which they were standing so intimately close to one another. The man was mature, at least twenty years older than Lily, and well dressed in a flashy kind of way.
‘Marco,’ Izzie Febretti complained at his elbow, ‘you are not listening to me.’
‘You have a husband who I am sure will be delighted to listen to you, Izzie,’ Marco pointed out, adding, ‘Please excuse me,’ and then walking away from the table. A long time ago he and Izzie had been lovers. Just like Lily and the man with her? Why did that thought stab at him with such vicious fury?
‘Anton,’ called one of the other men from the restaurant, leaving Lily free to make her escape on trembling legs. But there could be no real relief for her now that she knew not only that he was here in the same hotel but also, thanks to her own folly, he knew the number of her suite. He had enjoyed threatening and frightening her tonight, she recognised, just as she remembered him enjoying threatening and frightening the young girls he had pursued and destroyed.
‘An old friend? ‘
The sound of Marco’s curt voice broke the dark spell of fear at seeing Anton Gillman and she spun her round to look at him.
Unable to reply, she swallowed hard and then told him unsteadily, ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’m … I’m rather tired … so I’ll say goodnight.’
Without waiting for Marco to respond Lily hurried towards the lift. She was desperate to escape from the surroundings that Anton Gillman had contaminated with his presence. She had been caught off-guard by his presence and foolishly had allowed him to take advantage of her shock. He had deliberately set out to undermine and frighten her, and he had succeeded. She knew she wouldn’t feel safe now until she was locked in her room, Lily admitted.
Marco watched her hurry away. She had been very impatient to go to her suite. Why? Because she had arranged to meet the man he had seen her with there? She hadn’t answered him when he had asked her if he was an old friend. Was he more than merely a friend?
CHAPTER FIVE
IT was just over an hour since she had left Marco—over an hour of sitting on the edge of her bed fully dressed, with her muscles clenched and her gaze fixed on the locked door to her room. Beyond that she had also locked the door to her suite, so that she would feel safe. Only Lily knew that she did not feel safe—that she could not feel safe as long as Anton Gillman was in the hotel.
With every minute that had passed since she had come to her suite her fear had grown. She had tried to apply reason to the situation, to keep calm and remind herself that she wasn’t fourteen any more, that she wasn’t a girl now and was a woman, but it hadn’t made any difference. Her fear had continued to grow until it was out of her control and had taken her over completely. Anton knew which suite she was in thanks to her own clumsiness. How could she feel safe there knowing that—even with her door locked and bolted?
Lily looked at her watch. It was just gone midnight . The darkest hours of the night lay ahead of her to be got through—alone and in fear. She dared not even close her eyes because of the images she knew her memory would force her to relive. The glass doors to her balcony rattled in the breeze, causing her to start up in dread, her heart hammering into her ribs.
And then, like a tiny seed of hope pushing its way through the darkness, a new thought emerged as she remembered the dream she had had and how it had made her feel. There was one place where she would be safe. One person with whom she would be safe if only she had the courage to go to him. Marco. She would be safe with him. If she told him about Anton then she would be safe.
Refusing to give herself time to analyse the instinct driving her, never mind apply any logic to it, Lily got up off the bed, flinging open the locked bedroom door and almost running for the main door as though she was already being pursued. She stopped only to grab her bag before opening the door into the corridor and, having checked that it was empty, hurrying down its length to the door to Marco’s suite.
Marco had just got out of the shower, reluctantly admitting to himself that it was a relief to be there in the solitude of his room, where he could escape from the effect Lily’s presence had on his self control, when he heard the frantic knocking on his suite door—the kind of knocking that overrode logic and sent his body into immediate emergency response. It had him grabbing a towel to wrap around his hips before striding towards the door.
He wasn’t sure what he had expected to see when he opened it, but it certainly hadn’t been Lily. Even less welcome than her arrival was the fact that she had rushed past him and was now in his room, inside his sanctuary from the conflict she had set raging inside him.
Safety … Sanctuary … Such was the extent of Lily’s relief that it was only once she was inside his suite that she took in the fact that Marco’s torso and hair were damp and that all he was wearing was a towel.
Her gaze slithered and skittered as she tried to avoid looking at him and couldn’t. The swift response of her senses to him momentarily distracted her from her purpose in coming to him.
Marco, a man to whom the right and the ability to control his life was something he took for granted, always chose who was allowed into his life and when. No one had ever dared to challenge that right. It had been unthinkable that they should. He was the Prince di Luchessi. No one broke the rules he had made for the way he lived his life. Until now. Until Lily had come—
uninvited and unwanted—into his room. He had to struggle to come to terms with the fact that she had dared to breach his defences. His personal boundaries, like his privacy, were very important to him. People did not cross those boundaries because he did not allow them to do so. He did not want casual physical intimacy with others, because casual physical intimacy could lead to pressure for emotional intimacy. That was something he would never want or give.
His status meant that a good deal of his life was played out in public. That made the privacy he claimed for himself even more important to him. As a lover he considered it his duty to ensure that his partners found pleasure and satisfaction in his arms, but as a man he preferred to sleep alone afterwards. And now here was Lily, intruding into his personal space and looking at him as though.
Did she know what she was doing to him, looking at him like that? Marco wondered grimly. Of course she did. That was why she was doing it. He was not vain about his body—he ate healthily and kept fit without being excessive about it—but that wide-eyed look of dazed, entranced delight Lily was giving him right now, as though his was the most magnificent male form she had ever seen, would boost any man’s ego. Never mind what it was doing to his body. But this was a woman who knew all about manipulating others, Marco reminded himself. Whatever Lily had come to his suite for it certainly wasn’t because she had been filled with an urgent desire for him, no matter what impression she might be trying to give him right now.
‘Why are you here?’ he demanded stiffly. ‘What do you want?’
The sound of Marco’s voice broke the spell that the intimacy of his nearly naked body had spun round her, his curtness bringing Lily back to reality.
‘I had to come. Seeing Anton again after so long … so unexpectedly … He knows my suite number. I couldn’t stay in my room. He …’ Fear and shock disjointed her words.
‘Anton?’ Marco checked her, and then wished that he had simply told her to leave. After all, he wanted her out of his room. He wanted her out of his life, he acknowledged.