The Amalfitano's Bold Abduction (The Italian Billionaires Collection)

by Jennifer Blake

  “This is fair. What do you wish to know?”

  “Asking about my family plans seem a little odd when you’re living the bachelor life. Do you have none in that direction?”

  “I would not say I have plans,” he answered with a shift of one shoulder. “But I have come to an age when being without close ties is—unsatisfactory. I think now and then of having someone who cares whether I come home at night, also to join with in arranging a future that might include children.”

  The deep timbre of his voice and the things he’d said set off a quiet ache inside her. His view of what a marriage should be was not wildly exciting, perhaps, but had deep, sure purpose and intimations of permanence that carried its own appeal.

  “You’ve arrived at this point at the great age of what—thirty? Thirty-five?” she asked.

  “Thirty-four. And you have how many years?”

  She could hardly refuse to answer since he’d been so forthcoming. “Twenty-seven, almost twenty-eight.”

  “It is strange that you are still free. The men you know must be idiots.”

  “Pretty much,” she said on a laugh. “Actually I was engaged once, but discovered his ideas about what a wife should be and do were different from mine.”

  “Different how?”

  “I was to stop working immediately after the wedding, for a start. He would give me a household allowance, but no direct access to the family bank account. He would make the decisions on all major purchases. He expected three freshly cooked meals every day, and both lunch and dinner were to be on the table, waiting for him, when he came home for them. He would decide when and if we had friends over, when we went out and where we went on vacations. And it went downhill from there.”

  “He wished to control your lives together, and you.”

  “I suppose. He just picked the wrong woman.”

  “This fiancé sounds much like Rico, the kind to rant and rave when things fail to go his way. He was unhappy about the broken engagement, I expect, made much noise and many attempts to change your mind?”

  “Good guess,” she told him in some surprise. “He tried everything, even threats. That was, until my brothers put on their uniforms and paid him a visit.”

  He gave a low chuckle. “Good for them. Maybe we should ask your brothers to come have a talk with Rico.”

  “I thought of it, believe me—or at least thought of calling them.”

  His expression turned droll. “To talk to me, yes, as you said before. What changed your mind?”

  “Two men in a boat,” she said succinctly. “Well, and the fact that I haven’t yet wound up duct-taped to a chair in your basement.”

  “I have no basement,” he said with mock severity.

  “Wine cellar then. Don’t tell me you don’t have one of those.”

  “Certo, this I have.” He sighed. “Though I don’t imagine you would stay in it for long, even tied to a chair.”

  “Not on your life.” She paused. “Is it my turn again?”

  “I’ve no idea, but it can be if you like.” He inclined his head with the utmost politeness.

  “Why don’t you go talk to Rico? He deserves to hear a few home truths if he’s the kind of dangerous bully he seems. I’d think you could put the fear of God into him if you felt like it.”

  “I would like nothing better,” he said, looking away from her. “But it isn’t that easy.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “A marriage is an agreement between two people. The fewer who interfere when there is trouble, the better things may turn out for them, at least in most cases. Then I know very well Bella is not the easiest woman with which to live.”

  “So you’re saying the problem between her and Rico is not all one-sided.”

  “Such things seldom are, I think. My sister is extravagant, as she had little reason to be frugal before her marriage. She thrives on excitement, travel, parties, learning and doing new things, especially meeting new people. Rico would like to spend his free time drinking beer and espresso with his friends and following World Cup games, sometimes with travel but most often in his big home media center.”

  “I would guess Bella isn’t fond of soccer.”

  “Or television. She much prefers the theater, ballet, opera, museums, and so on. Her idea of entertainment is attending La Scala.”

  Dana gave him a quizzical look. “What on earth ever made them get married?”

  “The attraction of opposites, I surmise. That and what Bella would probably call a grand passion.”

  “That part where they couldn’t keep their hands off each other,” she said with wry remembrance of his earlier description.

  “Would that be a question? If so, it must be my turn now.”

  She waved a hand. “Ask away.”

  “You were never tempted again after this engagement, never found another man you thought it possible to marry?”

  She shook her head. “I went to the police academy not long afterward. You’d think that would allow plenty of opportunities for meeting a man with a similar background and so on, but it didn’t work that way. The atmosphere was—strained. A few of the guys thought it was cute that I wanted to carry a gun and take down the bad guys. The rest just wanted to see how badly I wanted the job, how much I could stand before I was so intimidated or grossed out that I quit.’”

  She had endured the condescension, sabotage and crude practical jokes, and shown her mettle by coming out among the top ten in her class. She’d never spoken of the difficulty of it, however. Telling her father or her brothers would have gained their support, but forever marked her as a stoolie and a wimp who couldn’t hack it, a female officer who had to call in males for backup. She’d have died first.

  She’d thought she was tough after growing up with her two brothers in a predominantly male household where manners weren’t exactly refined. She had been, compared to some of the female recruits. But she’d been tougher by the time she graduated.

  Relating the circumstance to Andrea was different, somehow. He lived on the other side of the ocean, for one thing, so could never interfere. He was also more interested in how she felt about it than in wreaking vengeance for her sake.

  At least, that was what she thought at first. The grim implacability that settled over his face could have another interpretation.

  “It was better after you began to work at your job?”

  That was two questions for his turn, but she let him get away with it since the subject was the same. “Somewhat,” she agreed. “But my superior is scared to death I’ll be killed on his watch, so creating a huge media headache and reams of paperwork for him. The most exciting thing I get to do is work accidents and chase down little old ladies late for bingo so going sixty miles an hour in a thirty mile zone.”

  “Not quite as exciting as bringing down the bad guys.”

  She looked away from the wry sympathy in his eyes. “What about you? Do you enjoy building ships, or whatever it is you do to add to the bottom line?”

  “The shipyard was sold and moved to Naples two decades ago. Now I sit on the board of the company that bought it, also on those for a number of charitable foundations. On weekends, I work on a fifty-foot sail boat—a yacht you’d probably call it—building it from scratch.”

  “Really?”

  He gave a light shrug. “It feels good to work with my hands. More than that, it’s in the blood.”

  “That’s the meaning behind this then?” She touched the gold signet ring on his finger with a fingertip, smoothing over its bas relief of a sailing ship.

  He gave it a brief glance, as if he had forgotten he wore it. “It belonged to my great-grandfather who worked side-by-side with the men who were constructing his ships.”

  “You don’t have to justify manual labor to me. I think it’s grand that you can build something useful.”

  He chuckled. “I don’t know how useful it’s going to be.”

  “This boat will be seaworthy and get you where
you want to go, right?”

  “So I hope.”

  “Then it’s useful. And no, that can’t be counted as one of my questions!” she added as he looked on the point of doing that.

  “I was only going to say the tops of your knees are turning red, which means I am failing in my job.”

  He sat up straighter and squeezed a generous amount of the sunscreen from the tube he still held. Dropping it, he rubbed his palms together to spread the cream over them. Without hesitation, he put his hands on her leg below her right knee and then swept them upward.

  The sensation that surged along the path of his hands was stunning in its force. The nerves of her leg jumped with it, fluttering with vibrations she felt deep in her body as he inched steadily higher, over her knee, up her thigh.

  She inhaled in sharp surprise and clamped her hands on his wrists.

  His movements stilled, but he did not take his hands away. He met her gaze, his own darkly green there under the umbrella’s shadow.

  Neither of them moved for endless seconds while the sand shimmered around them and the breeze off the water stirred their hair. Dana barely breathed. Anticipation hovered inside her along with the warring urges to invite him closer and also to push him away.

  She hadn’t set out to have a holiday affair of the kind she and Caryn and Suzanne had joked about. It just wasn’t her style. She was also too wary of the kind of men who might think it a fine joke to give an American tourist a thrill.

  Andrea wasn’t like that.

  He was at the other end of the spectrum, if anything: upper class and beyond wealthy, a fantasy man, impossibly handsome, dynamic, cultured, strong and accomplished. He was far too amazing for anything permanent to come from an affair with a garden variety cop’s daughter. Still, there was this moment.

  She lowered her gaze, allowing it to settle on his mouth. His lips were parted as if his breathing was as shallow as hers. As she watched, he leaned toward her, and then hesitated.

  Without conscious thought, she released her grip on his wrists. She lifted a hand to place her fingertips on the warm, firm muscles of his chest, trailing them down to where his heartbeat shuddered against his breastbone. Her lips tingled as if with the rush of the hot blood she could feel surging through her veins, pooling in her lower body. She inclined her head toward his in a minute movement.

  “Dio,” he whispered, and slid one arm around her waist, drawing her to him before settling his mouth upon hers.

  He tasted of heat and power and sea salt, with an underlying sweetness that was her undoing. She opened to him, needing more, wanting to mingle her essence with his as their tongues meshed and stroked. She shifted her grasp to his shoulder, drawing him closer before sliding her fingers into his hair and closing them on its dark, crisp silk. Mindless in a single instant, she clung as she felt him lower her to the blanket, sensed its warmth and softness against her back. Her only concern, a vague fear in the back of her mind, was that he would break the connection between them.

  He did not.

  Supporting himself on one elbow, he plumbed the depths of her mouth, flicking the satin surfaces with his tongue, gliding along the chiseled edges of her teeth. At the same time, he placed his hand on her ribcage covered by her damp suit, spanning it, learning it, before moving upward to cup her breast.

  She made a low sound in her throat as he enclosed that soft mound in his grasp, gently encompassing before brushing his thumb over its apex. She felt her nipple bead, felt a drawing sensation inside as it elongated as if seeking more of his touch.

  Andrea turned his head, his breathing harsh, irregular against her cheek. “I want you, cara,” he said. “I want you, need you, more than life.”

  She could not have answered, even if she’d dared. She wanted him, too, but could see no future for them while they were of different continents, different worlds. Oh, but what did that matter while the sweep of his hand across her abdomen, the spread of his fingers over the mound at the tops of her thighs left her half delirious with longing, so weak with it she wanted nothing more than to hold him to her while the earth spun away to nothing.

  He trailed kisses along the side of her face to the hollow behind her ear, and then down the curve of her neck to her collarbone. As she arched her neck to give him access, he licked along her shoulder, pressing kisses to it, taking small nips with his teeth.

  She hardly knew when he returned his free hand to her cleavage, sliding his fingers into it and skimming upward to ease the damp strap of her suit from her shoulder. She gasped, arching into him as she felt the hot suction of his mouth on her nipple. Shivering, turning to twine her legs with his, pressing against his thigh, she held his head to her while her heart doubled its beat and pleasure exploded along her every nerve ending.

  She brushed her hands over his back, reveling in the corded muscle she found there, absorbing the restrained power of him. .She wanted that inside her, yearned for it as she’d never yearned for anything in her life. The need for connection was so great that she pressed her mouth to his shoulder, the side of his neck, nudged his cheek until he turned his head and took her mouth again.

  It was exactly what she wanted in that moment, but not enough, never enough. She moaned in distress, a sound that seemed to have an echo.

  That sound didn’t come from the man who held her.

  It sprang from no great distance away, a low groaning that rose to a yowl and then became a high-pitched squall. It came closer, grew louder and more desperate. Like a lost soul’s lament, it rent the air over and over.

  Until it stopped.

  Dana felt something probe her neck. Two furry feet rested upon her shoulder. Abruptly a warm damp nose touched her cheek, pushed between her forehead and that of the man who held her. A feline tongue rasped her cheek, then shifted to lick Andrea’s chin.

  He jerked with a whispered curse. Releasing her, he raised his head until he was nose to nose with Guaio.

  Dana could not help smiling at the sight, though she felt dazed with unsatisfied need, uncertain whether to be glad or sorry for the interruption. All she knew was that being too well-liked by animals had its downside.

  With every sign of reluctance then, Andrea reached to tug the strap of her suit back in place, covering her breast. He sat up, scrubbed his hands over his face and raked them back through his hair before giving a violent, full body shudder. He blinked as if waking from a trance.

  He turned his head, then, and his mouth tugged in a slow and sardonic grin as he gazed down at the champion cat as it shifted to lie on her chest, purring in contentment.

  He let out a sigh and glanced out to sea.

  “I wonder,” he said with a low growl in his voice, “if cats can swim.”

  Chapter 7

  Andrea was not a devotee of nude beaches, had never paraded along one in naked nonchalance. He might have made love on a beach in his more heedless teenage years, but not since and never in broad daylight.

  It wasn’t that he’d grown prudish, but rather that he’d gained better sense. Long-range camera lenses made nonsense of pretension of seclusion, and he had no wish to see his backside displayed in the tabloids. No, nor to pay exorbitant sums to an enterprising paparazzo to keep it from their pages.

  Beyond that, he respected his partners too much for such stupidity. He would not expose them to such needless embarrassment. At least, he never had before.

  He had come close, so close, to making love to Dana under an open sky and with the sea murmuring at their feet. It was truly incredible.

  The woman destroyed his ability to think in a way he didn’t understand. It had never happened to him before, this abandonment of principles he’d thought so embedded there was no need to think of them. She tempted him past his will to resist.

  The irony of it was that she wasn’t even trying.

  God help him if she should ever decide to try.

  He barely knew her, or she him. They had been through a number of precarious situations together, but
closeness wasn’t necessarily a by-product. Regardless, he was drawn to her like a thirsty man to cool water. He’d told her he wanted to know everything about her and meant just that. He wanted to know what she’d been like as a child, the things she’d done and seen that brought her joy, and how she felt on the issues of the moment.

  Her skin enthralled him, its satiny sheen and pale, blue-veined smoothness where sun had never touched, also the tracing of golden freckles on her shoulders. He wanted to lick those freckles like bits of candy, taking their sweetness on the tip of his tongue. And her nipples, such an amazing clear pink and incredibly tender, responding to his slightest touch in a way that made him steel-hard just remembering it.

  He would do well to forget. Dana might allow herself to be charmed for a short while, but common sense would soon reestablish itself. Home for her was in the States with her family. When this business with Bella was done, she would rejoin her friends for the rest of her holiday. Following that, she would return to Atlanta and the position for which she was trained, and never think about him or the Isola delle Palme delle Tonellos again.

  Andrea knew these things well. Accepting them was something else altogether.

  He and Dana returned to the house with Guaio following along behind them. They showered and changed, after which he retreated to his office while she sat on the terrace with a magazine in her lap.

  He thought she napped out there in the pergola’s shade, but couldn’t be sure. He could only see her head and shoulders as he stood back at an angle from his study window.

  An insect was buzzing around her. It wasn’t dangerous, he knew, but might disturb her rest. He wanted to go and chase it away, but could not be sure that was all he would do. Swinging away from the window, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and walked back to his desk.

  The day slipped away. Andrea was as industrious as he knew how to be, talking on the phone to colleagues, working at his computer and clearing his inbox. He took the golf cart to the village, seeing to matters there and lunching at the new restaurant near the harbor as an excuse to issue a warning about the trash situation. And all the while, he wondered what his guest was doing, whether she was having lunch inside or outside, and if she was pleased to be eating without him.