‘So tell me,’ he urged quietly as she stuffed the handkerchief in a side pocket of her jeans. Her soft mouth, mutinously pouting, looked oddly appealing and he wondered, not for the first time, what it would taste like.
Impatience with himself for giving headroom to that line of thought unconsciously sharpened the edges of his voice, ‘Lunch looms and Nonna is anxious to meet you. We don’t have much time. Tell me what you think would upset my father. Or do I have to drag it from you?’
Troubled grey eyes met the dark incisiveness of his and her thick lashes fluttered. She didn’t want to say hurtful things about his dead brother but he certainly did look as if he would drag the truth from her if he had to. Shakily, she said, ‘You won’t like it, and you probably won’t believe it, but I never dreamed Vito was already married.’
He let that pass for the moment, asking, ‘How did you meet?’
How cold his voice. In spite of the heat, Portia shivered.
‘In the café where I worked. He’d been sitting there for a good hour. He looked really fed-up.’ She gave a tiny sigh, a shrug of her neat-boned shoulders. ‘He was at one of Betty’s tables, and she’d already had a word with him—Mr Weston, the owner, didn’t like it when customers sat over just one cup of coffee for ages.’
Betty had said, ‘Quick, you go and talk to him, find out what’s wrong. He looks as miserable as sin. Besides, he’s too gorgeous to be tossed out into the street in this rain. I’ve already told him you’re a push-over when it comes to people with problems! Take him another coffee before the boss asks him to leave.’
Remembering how it had all started made Portia feel so miserable, and duped. Her voice wobbly, she said out loud, ‘I did go and talk to him. He said he’d been on his way back to London when his car had broken down. He’d phoned a friend who was coming to pick him up.’
If she hadn’t talked to him, tried to cheer him up for half an hour, until her stint had ended, then none of this would have happened. But she couldn’t really regret it, because if she hadn’t met Vito then Sam wouldn’t have been born and her baby was the most wonderful thing in her life.
‘I never thought I’d see him again, but he turned up a week later, just as I was getting ready to leave. He insisted on taking me for supper—just a bar snack in the pub over the road—as a sort of thank you for getting him out of the doldrums when his old banger had died on him.’
Noting the way her hands were clasped so tightly in front of her, displaying her inner agitation, Lucenzo felt a knot of something beyond his powers of description tighten inside him. Some ‘old banger’! He recalled his brother’s fury and disgust when he’d recounted the way the latest sports car he’d paid a small fortune for had broken down on its first outing.
‘And?’ he prompted heavily. ‘You went to bed with him?’
‘No!’ Her denial was immediate, horrified. ‘We just talked. He told me all about himself. Said he was half-Italian, that he was working in a restaurant in London but he wanted to open his own in the town where I lived. That was why he visited now and then—to look for a suitable affordable property. And, well,’ she confessed uncomfortably, ‘we met up whenever he was in the area. I really liked him, and admired the way he was working so hard to make something of himself. And he said he loved me, that we’d be married when he had a place of his own. We even got engaged—’
She lifted doleful eyes to him, not expecting him to believe a word of what she was saying because he wouldn’t want to think badly of Vito, who was no longer here to defend himself. ‘I wouldn’t let him spend any of his savings on a ring, but I did agree to spend a night with him.’ Her face turned scarlet. ‘He said it would seal our betrothal, that wanting me so much and not having me was burning him up,’ she explained wretchedly. ‘I swear I didn’t know he was married. I knew nothing about who he really was until I saw the report of his accident in the morning paper.’
Lucenzo tugged in a harsh breath. Tears were glittering in her eyes again and her soft mouth was trembling. Everything she’d said rang true. Suddenly, without reservations, he believed her.
He knew exactly what his half-brother had been like and could see why he’d been attracted to her. She was all soft, womanly curves, her eyes were beautiful and when she smiled she was utterly lovely. She would have been a challenge his womanising half-brother would have been constitutionally unable to resist.
She was light years away from his usual bits on the side. Naive, soft-hearted, eager to please. But, in old-fashioned phraseology, she was a good girl—and that would have made the challenge more exciting. A fancy dinner, a ride in a flashy car, a bucket of champagne and a gift of jewellery wouldn’t have got her into his bed.
It had taken a lot more effort. A line in sympathy-seeking, a load of lies and happy-ever-promises he’d had no intention of keeping.
His own attitude towards her hadn’t helped the poor scrap. He’d given her a mountain of aggro. Learning the truth about Vittorio, in the most shocking way possible, must have shattered her. Yet, heavily pregnant with the child his half-brother would have surely disowned had he lived, she’d attended his funeral. Because she’d felt it her duty to pay her last respects to the father of her unborn child? It would have taken a great deal of courage.
And he hated to see her cry. A tide of sympathy, of self-disgust for the way he’d given her such a rough ride, blocked the air in his lungs. Expelling it slowly, he reached out his hands and cupped her face, hating the distress he saw in the wide grey eyes.
‘Don’t cry, Portia,’ he murmured unevenly. And kissed her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT WAS like being swept into paradise, and Portia gasped inwardly as a wave of something too sublime to be recognised engulfed her.
The tingling ribbons of delicious shock that had invaded her entire nervous system when his mouth had first closed over hers were taking ages to die down, making her feel light-headed, incapable of moving, of doing a single thing except simply stand there, drowning in liquid fire, drawing raggedy little breaths as his fingers twined slowly through her hair, his lips moulding the contours of hers.
Every thought was blanked out, all her senses were wholly seduced, fiercely concentrated on the way his mouth felt against hers—just that. The way his lips were gently parting hers, the tip of his tongue moving languorously inside. And she was simply letting it happen, because it was so utterly and completely wonderful.
The first sign that he might be breaking the kiss, withdrawing this irresistible magic, made her give a throatily protesting moan, made her suddenly cling to him, press her lush body against the hardness and heat of his, wanting to lose herself in him, in this heady, needy sensation of entering a paradise she had never known existed.
And the way he immediately deepened the kiss, his answering groan as his hands slid down and urgently shaped the ripe curves of her body, inflamed her so she didn’t know what she was doing—until, abruptly, he moved away from her wild embrace. When she could focus at all she saw that she had almost ripped the shirt from his body in her frantic need to feel his skin against hers, his flesh against her flesh.
Portia’s face turned bright red with deep mortification and she shuddered irrepressibly. What on earth would he be thinking of her? That she was sex-crazy, anybody’s for the asking?
How could she have done that? Oh, how could she? She had practically ravished him on the spot, and if he hadn’t called a halt, been turned off by that rapacious response, then goodness only knew what might have happened!
And how could she long so desperately to be back in his arms yet at the very same time wish she was a million miles away? She put a shaky hand to her mouth to stop herself from crying out.
‘I’m sorry. That shouldn’t have happened.’ Lucenzo’s voice was flat, but she noted that his fingers weren’t quite steady as he slotted the buttons that were left back into their holes and tucked his shirt firmly into the waistband of his trousers.
Swallowing jerkily, deeply and
quite horribly ashamed of what she’d done, she looked away from his now silent scrutiny. He was right. Of course he was right. That kiss should never have happened. It had made her feel wonderful, out of this world, but it had created more barriers than it had broken down.
‘I’m going in,’ she imparted when she could not endure the spiky silence one moment longer. Her voice was stiff with embarrassment as she forced herself forward, treading the maze of paths in an angst-ridden trance.
She did her level best to console herself as she mounted the steps to the sun-drenched terrace. At least what had happened had put an effective stop to the way he’d been insisting on her staying here and had put that dreadfully insulting slant on her motives for telling him she wanted to leave.
And further cemented her decision to do just that.
‘This way.’ His hand, cupping her elbow, prevented her from crassly, unthinkingly, walking back through the open French doors that led into Eduardo’s room.
Disorientated by the mistake she’d been about to make, by the electric touch of his warm hand against her skin, she tried to ignore the way her stomach muscles coiled and tightened. By dint of sheer will-power she managed to pull herself together sufficiently to do her best to freeze him with a look, to pluck his fingers away, one by long, lean one.
Lucenzo stared back at her, a wash of colour creeping along the jutting line of his austere cheekbones, his eyes dark with simmering anger. ‘Don’t panic. I’m not about to try to have my wicked way with you,’ he drawled, and immediately regretted the uncalled for sarcasm as he watched her face go white, the long sweep of her lashes quickly veil her eyes.
Cursing himself for that unfathomable need to lash out at her for rejecting what he’d meant to be a friendly gesture, for acting as though his touch disgusted her, he tightened his jaw in self-revulsion. She had every right to object to what she would possibly see as further unwanted intimacy.
‘Come.’ He knew better than to attempt to touch her, invade her personal space again, but waited until she fell in step beside him and slowly paced towards the far end of the terrace. He deliberately lightened his tone as he told her, ‘I must give you a guided tour some time. You need to be able to find your way around.’ To which came no reply.
He really shouldn’t have kissed her, he told himself, his thoughts heavy with self-disgust. Heaven knew, it had started out as a simple need to comfort, an instinctive and caring response to the sensitive, hurting side of her, the side that had so genuinely protested against causing any of them any more distress by her being here.
And as a kind of atonement, too. For his former attitude towards her, especially that earlier snide accusation of blackmail.
It had started out that way, as an intention to give comfort, a brotherly peck, a consoling cuddle. But, madre de Dio! It had all got wildly out of control. She’d stood, trembling slightly, as his mouth had taken hers, her full lips opening softly for him, like the petals of a rose in the strengthening rays of the sun, and she’d tasted of the sweetest nectar, the headiest wine. It had been then, if he was to be honest with himself, that he’d heard danger signals, loud and shrill, and had decided to call a halt.
But then, right at the significant moment, she’d responded, really responded, and all hell had broken loose inside him. If he hadn’t at last somehow found the strength to batten down that raging torrent of lust he would have made love to her there and then, been no better than his brother. Taking and never giving anything that really mattered in return.
Vittorio had inherited his mother’s genes, and the inability to love anyone other than himself. While he, himself, had had the ability to love knocked out of him after the death of Flavia, his wife of two short years, and the death of his unborn child. Standing at the graveside, he had vowed never to love again. It hurt too much. Nothing was worth the kind of pain he’d suffered then. Nothing!
He dragged a deep steadying breath. He was not going to relive that time in his head. Life went on.
Leading Portia past the corner of the sprawling villa, down the shallow flight of steps that led to level ground and the path beneath the iron arches covered with tiny, rioting, sweet-smelling roses, would give him enough time to get his head straight.
He had no intention of getting emotionally involved with Portia Makepeace, or any other woman for that matter, and was in no danger whatsoever of breaking the vow that had been so easy to keep for ten long years.
Which meant that touching her again was taboo. So was even thinking about it, because she wasn’t one of those smooth, sophisticated bimbos who hung around the rich and the powerful, willing to do anything so long as the pay-off was hefty. She was vulnerable, and mustn’t be hurt or betrayed any more than she had already been.
But his need to atone for the hard times he’d given her, for judging her so harshly without asking for her side of the story, coupled with the desire to help her come to terms with the situation she found herself in, had him confiding, ‘It might help you to know that whatever feelings Vittorio and Lorna had for each other died a long time ago. They had what is called an open marriage. I don’t know about Lorna, but I know my brother had one affair after another. If a woman caught his eye he had to have her, and once he had he quickly lost interest. It was a game to him.’
He shrugged expressively, but his eyes were dark with a mixture of contempt and pain.
He had loved his half-brother, but had hated what he’d seen as Vittorio’s moral bankruptcy. ‘Naturally, I made sure my father knew nothing of this. He has high moral standards and would have hated to know any son of his could have behaved so badly. And I thank you, Portia, for your thoughtfulness in keeping the way my brother used you from him.’
As they entered the welcome coolness of the marble-paved hallway Portia’s soft mouth fell open and the squirm of pleasure in the region of her heart made her feel quite giddy.
Lucenzo believed her! He was actually praising her! His spectacular dark eyes were soft, a deep dark liquid velvet, and she could drown in them. Trying to break the mesmeric spell, she lowered her lashes—but her gaze only dropped as far as his mouth, and stubbornly stayed there.
Such a beautiful mouth, long and sensual, and she knew what it felt like: sexy, seductive, utterly captivating. Just remembering that kiss, when she’d promised herself she’d put the whole embarrassing sequence of events right out of her mind, made her shiver in reaction.
Her brain closed down completely when he smiled, and her whole body was swamped in such a wave of wicked longing she thought it might quite possibly kill her! She ran her tongue over her dry and wobbly lips, but Lucenzo said absolutely levelly, ‘Run along. You’ve just got time to shower and change before lunch. We’ll be eating in the small sala—Paolina will come and show you where to go.’
Her mind was such a blank she couldn’t even begin to think of all her objections to the awkwardness of inflicting her presence on the rest of his disapproving family, and simply did as she was told and took the stairs like a sleepwalker.
His heart beating unnaturally fast, Lucenzo watched her go. Kissing her had been a bloody stupid thing to do, he reminded himself harshly. Kissing her had been crazy enough, but touching her the way he had, impatient hands urgently learning the lush and achingly feminine shape of her body, had been nothing short of madness. It had aroused urges he hadn’t felt in a long time and it might, heaven help him, have created expectations in her that could bring nothing but disillusionment.
As soon as she was settled here and he could convince her that she and her son were a rightful part of this family—with all the benefits that would bring to both of them—he’d leave. He had legitimate business calls on his time and attention in all parts of the globe. No problem.
His dark eyes brooding, he flung one last look at Portia’s slowly retreating back and turned and strode away to find his grandmother.
Nonna would undoubtedly have emerged from the room she’d been given by now, be closeted with her son, telling h
im in that bracing no-nonsense voice of hers to, ‘Pull yourself together, Eduardo. You are too young to be an invalid. I, your mother, will be the first to depart this world for the next—as is entirely natural and as it should be—and I have many healthy years ahead of me!’
Nonna would have to be told to put a curb on that sharp-edged little tongue of hers where Portia was concerned. He, Lucenzo Verdi, would not see her driven away. And the same went for Tia Donatella too—and Giovanni, that spoiled brat cousin of his.
The ferocity of his intentions almost stopped him in his tracks until he edgily reminded himself that he was a fair man, that he wouldn’t stand by and see anyone suffer injustice.
It was nothing personal. Too damn right it wasn’t!
Portia stood beside one of the open windows in her own pretty sitting room, breathing in the hot, aromatic Tuscan air.
She was on edge and she really knew she shouldn’t be, because everything had gone reasonably well. Lucenzo’s grandmother had just left the nursery, after inspecting baby Sam and pronouncing him to be adorable and a credit to the family, and Assunta had departed, too, leaving her in peace, with her beautiful sleeping baby and nothing to worry about except how to spend the long lazy afternoon.
Lunch with the family hadn’t been the ordeal she’d been dreading. And Nonna—as she’d been told to call her—hadn’t looked sneering or contemptuous, except, just briefly, when those bright, intelligent old eyes had first taken stock of the limp, flowered skirt, the well-washed-and-worn T-shirt she’d changed into, the cheap plastic sandals.
She’d asked loads of probing questions about her background during the meal and Portia had answered honestly, because there was no point in doing anything else, conscious that everyone around the lunch table had been listening to what she said.
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