Chapter 4
On that note, he walked her out of the citadel to where he’d left the roadster, drove past a marina in which the masts of million-dollar yachts reached for the stars, and followed a road through a pine forest to an isolated stretch of coast.
“At this very moment,” he said, finally breaking his silence and drawing her onto the beach, “what I most want is to hold you in my arms and kiss you, here in this quiet place, with nothing but the sea and sky as witness.”
“Why?” she asked him.
“Because, at this moment, I find you more desirable than any other woman I have known.”
He ran his hands down her bare arms and, catching her hands, pulled her toward him. The heat of his body reached out to envelop her. The height and breadth of him blotted out the pale moonlight and sheltered her from the cool sea air. The strong, steady thump of his heart reassured her. She was safe with him. He would let nothing hurt her.
He stood close, imprinting her with the evidence of his arousal. His gaze seared her, stripping her to the bone. His breath winnowed over her face, taunting her. Not until he’d reduced her to mindless anticipation did he at last, and with excruciating slowness, lower his mouth to hers.
She didn’t have to be an expert to recognize that, when it came to a kiss, he was. The very second his lips found hers, she was lost. Lost in a reality that exceeded all fantasy. Tossed in a storm of emotion that left her shaking. Caught up in a turbulent wanting that screamed for more…for everything he was willing to give her.
…nothing wrong with a little lust, as long as you’re careful, Gail had said.
But “careful” had no place in Arlene’s world just then. The only thing that ruled was hunger, and it raged at her without mercy. Her mouth softened beneath his, eager and willing to accept him into its heated depths. Her tongue engaged with his, instinctively understanding the ritualistic prelude to greater intimacy and signaling her acquiescence. She clung to him, threading her fingers through his hair. Whimpered softly, an inarticulate little sound beseeching him to take all of her.
He did not. Instead he dragged his mouth away and stepped back, leaving the cool sea air to flow over her limbs and infiltrate her heart. “It grows late. I must take you home.”
His abrupt mood swing almost flattened her. He didn’t mean what he said. He couldn’t, not when, just nanoseconds before, his body had broadcast a blatantly different story.
“No,” she whispered, clinging to him. “I’m not afraid. I trust you, Domenico. You don’t have to stop—”
“Yes, Arlene,” he said flatly, his voice rough as the granite decomposition of the soil that produced his grapes. “Oh, yes, I do.”
Despair welled up in her throat, colder than ice. She’d disappointed him. Been too clumsy, too eager, too…too everything! Humiliated, she spun away so that he wouldn’t see the tears glimmering down her face, and started back to the car.
He kept pace with her. Held open her door. Without a word, he again draped the scarf over her bent head, then climbed into the driver’s seat. One quick turn of the ignition key and the car roared to life, its headlights slicing through the dark to play on the densely packed trunks of the pine trees.
The drive from Alghero to the small town where she was staying was both mercifully long, and cruelly, short. The roadster swept in a wide arc to the forecourt of her hotel and stopped, all the while muttering impatiently as if it couldn’t wait to be rid of her and on its way again.
She opened her door. Swung her legs to the pavement. “Thank you very much for a lovely day,” she said over her shoulder, reciting the words like a child well-coached by her mother. “Thank you, too, for all your kind help. I’m most grateful. Goodbye.”
His silence had continued throughout the journey from the beach, but at that, he finally spoke again. “Tomorrow…”
Three syllables only, they were enough to paralyze her in mid-flight. But she didn’t turn. Didn’t dare look at him. Hardly dared to breathe, let alone hope. “What about tomorrow?”
“Take the day off. Spend it with your friend. You’ve hardly seen her since you arrived.”
Another, more vicious wave of disappointment swept over her. And you’ve seen altogether too much of me and don’t want to spend another minute in my company! Why don’t you just come out and say what you mean, Domenico?
His voice grazed the back of her neck, stilling her retort before she could air it. Seeped into her pores, electrifying her. “I’ll pick you up later…eight o’clock…for dinner…something different from tonight.”
Long after the car had growled away, its red taillights swallowed up by the night, she stood immobile and forced herself to breathe. She didn’t know what he’d meant by his cryptic remark about “something different,” nor, at that moment, did she care. All that mattered was that it wasn’t over between them, after all.
Storming into his villa, Domenico poured himself a grappa and paced the covered veranda outside his living room, cursing himself for being the king of all fools. The minute his mouth touched hers, he’d known kissing her was a mistake and that the kindest thing he could do was never see her again.
He’d told himself that over and over again, throughout the return trip to her hotel because, as he’d learned when he was still in his teens, smart men avoided involvement with women who didn’t understand the rules of the game. And that Arlene hadn’t a clue about them became apparent the minute his lips touched hers.
The passion he’d awoken in her with just one kiss had stunned him. He could have taken her, there on a public beach, and she would not have refused him.
I trust you…you don’t have to stop, she’d said, her voice thick and urgent with need.
That he had stopped was scarcely to his credit. Sexually he desired her in every way a man could desire a woman. Even thinking of how she’d felt in his arms—soft, compliant, sweetly responsive—was enough to stir him to painful arousal. But that word “trust” had awoken in him the voice of conscience and it would not be silenced.
How was it, he’d found himself wondering, that a woman approaching thirty retained such willingness to believe in the goodness of others, when all she’d known as a child was rejection?
And there, in a nutshell, lay the real problem, because he would not, could not, be the one to reject her again. However much he might want it, and however mutually pleasurable it might be at the time, they would never make love because her tender heart would end up being badly bruised.
She wasn’t the casual type. For her, intimacy would mean love and marriage—and he wasn’t in the market for either. Best to avoid further hurt and end things with her now.
He knew exactly the words to say. Rehearsed them all the way back to the hotel until he had them down pat. It’s been a real pleasure, Arlene, but I’ve taught you as much as I can, so consider yourself free to enjoy the rest of your holiday. Goodbye and good luck!
Kind, but final, leaving no room for misinterpretation.
She’d beaten him to it. Served up her little farewell speech with perfect composure, and let him off the hook—or so he’d thought until he heard the confusion in her voice and saw how her chin quivered despite her best efforts to control it. Until he saw her walking away from him, her spine so stiff with pain and hard-won dignity that it undid all his good intentions.
Suddenly, without thought for the complications he was bringing down on himself, he’d blurted out an invitation he never saw coming. One that promised nothing but trouble he didn’t need.
Dinner alone with her was out of the question. Candlelight and wine made for a dangerous combination. Throw in a little music, a little star-shine, the dark intimacy inside his car, and the end result was a recipe, if not for disaster, then for lasting regrets. Even he wasn’t made of stone.
“You’re bringing her for dinner?”
“Here?”
“With us?”
The squeals of excitement that greeted his announcement the next day wou
ld have put a screech owl to shame.
“Don’t make something out of it that isn’t there,” he warned his mother and sisters grimly. “There’s nothing serious going on here. She’s just starting out in this business, that’s all, and the more she talks to people whose entire lives revolve around a vineyard, the more she’ll learn.”
“We understand,” they crowed, their ill-concealed glee giving the lie to their words. “You’re just being a good friend. There’s absolutely nothing else going on.”
As he drove past the main house on his way to collect her, he saw through the lighted windows the hive of activity taking place inside, and knew he might as well have saved his breath. Nobody had believed a word he said.
Well, it was up to him to prove them all wrong. He’d keep the mood light. Hospitable but impersonal. Pleasant without being overly familiar. In other words, treat her exactly as he’d treat any other colleague.
He arrived a few minutes early and was waiting in the hotel lobby when she came out of the elevator. If, yesterday, she’d been pretty as a picture in her sea-green sundress, tonight she was a study in classic elegance. Instead of leaving her hair to flow loose around her face, she secured it at her nape with a black velvet bow. She wore a straight black ankle-length skirt, open-toed black sandals, a simple, long-sleeved white lace blouse and pearl studs at her ears.
“I forgot to return this to you,” she said, handing him the scarf he’d bought for her.
He bent and dusted a kiss on her cheek. A big mistake. The faint trace of her perfume reminded him of the wild violets that grew on the island in spring, but the softness of her skin struck a more intimate note and put a dent in his resolve to keep his distance. “It’s yours to keep, Arlene, but you won’t need it tonight. I put the top up, on the car.”
She trembled slightly under his touch as he guided her outside. “Where are you taking me this time?” she asked, as he drove away from the hotel and turned the car toward the west.
“To dinner with my family.”
“Your family?” she echoed, clearly shocked.
“That’s right. You’ve already met my uncle and sisters. Tonight, you’ll meet the rest.” As in, parents, in-laws, nieces, nephews, dogs, cats and anyone else he could drag into the mix!
“I see.” He felt her thoughtful gray gaze turn on him. “Why?”
He hadn’t anticipated that question and had to scramble for an answer that would neither mislead nor offend her. “Because…because being welcomed into someone’s home is the best way to really get a feel for a foreign country. Hotels and such are fine in their place, but they don’t paint a true picture of the culture.”
In the light thrown by a passing street lamp, he saw a frown marred the smooth width of her forehead. “I think what you’re really saying is that you feel sorry for me, and I have to tell you, I don’t need your pity, Domenico.”
Dio! He’d forgotten she was as perceptive as she was lovely. “Of all the feelings you arouse in me, Arlene, be assured that pity is not one of them. If that’s the impression I gave you, then I chose my words badly, so let me put it this way: I’d like you to spend an evening with my family because I believe you’ll enjoy it, and I know for a fact they are eager to meet you.”
“Why?”
“Do you realize how often you ask me that?”
“I’m sorry if it annoys you.”
“I didn’t say it annoys me.”
She lifted her shoulder in a delicate shrug. “Then answer the question.”
So much for keeping things light and pleasant! Tension, brittle as spun glass, arced between them. “Because I like you,” he said, the annoyance she’d accused him of suddenly becoming a fact. He wasn’t used to being so easily outmaneuvered. “I like you very much. I admire your intelligence and your determination. To be sure, we haven’t known each other more than a few days, but we share common interests and I look upon you as a friend. That’s it, pure and simple. I have no ulterior motive. We Sards are hospitable people. We welcome friends into our homes. Is that so very difficult for you to understand?”
“No,” she said, in such a small, crushed voice that he swore silently for speaking to her so harshly. “I guess I’m being hypersensitive, and I apologize. I tend to react like this when I’m unsure of myself, and I don’t mind admitting I’m finding the prospect of being paraded before your relatives rather daunting.”
His anger died as swiftly as it had arisen. “You have nothing to worry about. You’ll worm your way into their hearts with no trouble at all.”
Just as you’ll worm your way into mine, if I let you, he almost added.
A sobering thought. One best kept to himself.
She was a mess; a bundle of nerves. Overnight, she’d had time to consider his last-minute invitation, and it had left her fluctuating between elation and the unwelcome suspicion that he was merely being kind, just as he would be to a stray dog he found on the side of the road.
“Calm down,” Gail had told her. “Stop looking for a hidden agenda that isn’t there, and just enjoy the evening for what it is—a date with a sophisticated, handsome man who clearly enjoys your company.”
“But what am I supposed to wear? ‘Dinner’ could mean anything from a hamburger at a beachside fast-food outlet, to a five-course meal at a private club,” she fretted.
“Assume it’s the private club, but keep it simple, just in case you’re wrong.”
The trouble was, Arlene thought now, eyeing him furtively as he navigated the curves in the road, nothing to do with Domenico was simple. He was the most complex man she’d ever come across, and she’d known from the start that she was hopelessly out of her depth in trying to deal with him. Discovering she was about to take on the entire Silvaggio d’Avalos family as well was enough to give her the shudders.
“This is the main house where my parents live,” he said, turning into a driveway and pulling up under the portico of a villa which, like his, exemplified wealthy good taste. “My sisters also have homes here, and so do I, as you already know, but we’re spread out far enough not to get under each other’s feet.”
She wished they’d stayed spread out tonight. The house alone intimidated her, and never mind the couple who lived there, but when a manservant opened the door and she saw the mob gathered inside like a receiving committee, her heart sank. Her only comfort was that she’d dressed appropriately. The women all wore floor-length skirts or evening slacks and tops in lustrous fabrics, and the men, suits and ties.
The grand entrance hall where they waited comprised a vast space with a high curved ceiling supported by massive beams, very much in the style she’d come to recognize as typical of Sardinia. The floor was slate-gray, the walls white, the refectory table centered beneath a heavy wrought-iron chandelier so severely plain, it could have come from a monastery. Yet what might otherwise have struck her as stark and rather forbidding was softened by a huge colorful flower arrangement in the middle of the table, muted light from alabaster wall sconces, and vivid oil paintings on the walls.
Soon enough, her other worries eased a little, too. From his aristocratic-looking parents to the smallest child, most spoke at least a smattering of English, and even if they hadn’t, there was no mistaking the warmth of their smiles and the way they embraced her into their midst.
Immediately Domenico introduced her, Federico Silvaggio d’Avalos, his tall, handsome father, stepped forward and kissed her hand as gallantly as if she were royalty. “We are honored to welcome you into our home, signorina.”
His mother, Carmela, well into her fifties and still stunningly beautiful, kissed her on both cheeks, exclaimed at how chilled her face was, and promptly ushered her into a large, elegant salon furnished in pale silks and richly inlaid woods. “We’re so happy Domenico brought you to meet us, my dear. Come sit by the fire with me, and get to know my large, noisy family.”
A flurry of other introductions followed. The pregnant sister who’d been so sympathetic the day Arlene cam
e down with the migraine, joined her on the sofa. “Hello, again, Arlene. I’m Renata, and this is my husband, Vittorio. Not that you’re expected to remember everyone’s names,” she added, with a laugh. “Even we forget who’s who, sometimes, there are so many of us.”
“That’s true.” Another sister put in mischievously. “All four of us girls have married and given our parents grandchildren.” She paused. “You’re not married, though, are you, Arlene?”
“No.”
She smiled sunnily. “What a coincidence. Neither is Domenico.”
Apart from the black glare he shot her way, and despite all the trappings of wealth and privilege—the women’s jewelry, the plush comfort of Persian rugs, damask upholstery as soft as swansdown, and hand-carved wood polished to a satin shine, not to mention the servants hovering unobtrusively in the background—the atmosphere in the room was relaxed and convivial.
Although the older children were more interested in teasing each other than joining in the adult conversation, the younger ones swarmed around Arlene in wide-eyed curiosity. When one of them, a toddler about eighteen months old, stumbled and fell, his grandmother scooped him onto her lap and comforted him, not caring in the least that he drooled down her shot silk blouse.
A grizzled old dog of indeterminate breed dozed by the fire, but no one shooed him away. No irate parent ordered the children to be quiet, or go play in another room. When the noise level grew too loud, the adults simply raised their voices over it.
Long past her initial nervousness, Arlene basked in the scene. She’d crossed the threshold into their home, a stranger, and in no time at all, they’d accepted her unconditionally. They plied her with questions about her life in Canada, and her newly acquired vineyard. Much to his chagrin and to general laughter, they showed her a photograph of Domenico lying naked on a fur rug when he was a baby, and regaled her with amusing accounts of his boyhood exploits.
This, she thought, soaking up every minute, is what a real family is all about.
The Italian Billionaire's Christmas Miracle Page 5