Loe raamatut: «A Sicilian Husband»

CHAPTER ONE

THE man at the other side of the bar was beautiful.

Beautiful.

Terrie could find no other word to describe him that fitted those devastating looks quite so well. And she had tried. Because beautiful didn’t seem like quite the right word to use about someone so masculine, so totally male. And yet it was the only one that worked.

She’d tried handsome and it was too weak, too ‘pretty’ somehow. It didn’t allow for the straight, firm slash of a nose, the sharply defined cheekbones. And good-looking was way too bland. This man was more than good-looking—he was superb!

Attractive didn’t even come near the truth, and, although gorgeous fitted with the lush warmth of his mouth, the stunning deep, deep brown of his eyes, the sleek olive skin that gave away the fact that he was most definitely not English, both attractive and gorgeous lacked the hard edge that this man wore like a suit of armour, the hint of danger that lurked in those deep-set eyes. And she suspected that that mouth, although apparently sensual, could soon harden to a dangerously cruel line.

His disturbing blend of supreme confidence, bordering on arrogance, and an aura of total ease in his surroundings and himself made him stand out in the crowded room as clearly as if a spotlight had been switched on, its beam centring on the glossy mane of jet-black hair.

No, beautiful was the only word that was right. He had a starkly masculine beauty that had caught and held her attention from the moment she had walked into the room. And now she couldn’t drag her eyes away, even though she suspected that the intensity of her gaze must soon get through to him. Surely he would sense that someone was staring at him, feel it like a faint touch on his skin—and then he would look up.

And even as she thought it, the heavy-hooded lids that had been lowered suddenly lifted, and the burning golden-bronze eyes blazed into hers through lush black lashes.

And the look of cold disdain, the molten glare he turned on her, the obvious distance that he clearly wanted to put between them, was so clear, so sharply cutting that it made Terrie actually jump in her seat. Hastily she looked away again as quickly as possible. Heat screamed along the nerve paths of her body, searing a sense of burning embarrassment and humiliation at being caught staring like that. It was the behaviour of some lust-smitten adolescent confronted by the boy-band focus of her latest crush. She had never done anything quite so crass in her life before.

Stop it! she told herself in furious but silent reproof. Stop this nonsense right now!

The woman at the other side of the bar was staring straight at him, Giovanni Cardella realised. Staring straight at him with a mindless, dumbstruck expression on her face that made it look as if she had never seen a man before in her life. Sliding another glance in her direction through the concealment of thick, dark lashes, he frowned deeply, and dropped his eyes again to stare down into his glass.

Another woman.

Another woman who wasn’t Lucia.

Another woman who was making it plain that she found him attractive when that was the last thing on God’s earth that he wanted.

He was no fool. He knew that he had the sort of looks, the colouring, the height, the build that drew female eyes his way. And that when their gaze rested on him, it lingered. As soon as it had become known that he was alone, they had been there. The female vultures had gathered, all seeking to ‘comfort’ the rich widower.

But he had no time, no inclination for other women. There had only ever been one woman in his life—Lucia. And Lucia had been all he had ever wanted.

And this woman was no Lucia. For one thing, she was a pale ash blonde with the sort of delicate complexion that came with the impossible weather on this rain-soaked island. And she was tall; even though she was sitting down he could tell that. Lucia had been petite; slight, dark and stunning. This woman, with her blue-grey eyes and fair hair, was like the opposite. The negative to Lucia’s positive.

And she was still looking, damn her!

Today of all days, her bold stare felt like an invasion. It pushed into the privacy of his thoughts, intruded into his memories. And he hated that.

‘Madre di Dio!’

Hot fury washed over him, driving him to lift his eyes again, when he would far rather have kept them fixed on the ground. His gaze swinging to her face in a rush, he turned on her a blazing glare that held all the force of the rejection of her unsubtle approach that burned in his soul.

‘Oh, damn!’ Terrie muttered under her breath, horrified by the response her unthinking reaction had caused. ‘Damn, damn, damn!’

And the trouble was that even looking swiftly away and down at the table did nothing to ease the sensation of embarrassment and unease. She could still feel the scorch of his contempt searing over her skin, stripping her of a much-needed layer of protection.

‘Well, it’s time we got back.’

Beside her, Claire and Anna drained their glasses and made moves to get to their feet, picking up handbags, pushing back their chairs.

‘You coming, Terrie?’

‘What? No—I think I’ll give this last session a miss.’

What was she doing? This was the perfect opportunity to sneak out of there, disappear before she made an even greater fool of herself. If she went now, then she and this man, the stranger she had been caught staring at, would probably—hopefully—never catch sight of each other again. If she could hide herself in the bustle and crowds of the conference she had come here to attend then hopefully he would forget about her and her faux pas would be overlooked as well.

But the truth was that she really didn’t want to go. Even before she had come into the bar with her friends she had determined that the last session of the sales conference was more trouble than it was worth.

‘Are you sure?’

Terrie nodded emphatically, shaking loose some of the blonde locks that she had forced into a hopefully disciplined chignon at the start of the day so that they fell in disordered tendrils around her oval face.

‘Absolutely. I’ve been bored out of my skull from the start, and I really can’t take any more. Before I came here, I was beginning to suspect that a career in selling baby clothes just wasn’t for me—and now I’m absolutely positive that it’s not. As soon as I get back to Netherton, I’m handing in my notice and looking for something else. So there’s no point at all in my going back to hear the MD spouting about quotas and new lines.’

It sounded totally rational, clearly thought through. Nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that her sense of reality had just been severely rocked as a result of being confronted by the most devastating specimen of manhood she had ever seen. It had nothing to do with that, she told herself fiercely. Nothing at all.

‘Well, if you’ve made up your mind.’

Claire still looked uncertain, but Anna was pulling at her sleeve, tugging her away towards the door through which the other conference delegates were already streaming, heading back to the ballroom.

‘Definitely. I’m going to finish this drink and then go to my room and pack, ready for an early getaway tomorrow.’

‘Then we’ll see you at dinner?’

Terrie nodded abstractedly, her attention elsewhere. Until she had heard herself speak the words aloud, she hadn’t really been aware that she planned to say them. But now that she had, she knew that she meant everything she’d said.

She was bored. If the truth was told, she hated her job. Hated the long hours and the travelling involved in it. Hated trying to persuade people to buy overpriced, second-rate items. She didn’t know how she’d stuck it this long.

Well, from now on everything was going to change!

And for a start she wasn’t going up to her room to pack after all. She was going to stay here and have another drink and relax. Recover from the endurance test that had been the sales conference.

And she wasn’t even going to so much as glance in the direction of the wretched man on the other side of the room, she told herself as she got slowly to her feet. There was no way on earth that she wanted to risk another of those glares. She was still smarting from the scorching effect of the one she had already received.

Despite his determination not even to look in her direction again, Gio found that the woman’s movement drew his attention once more. She uncoiled her slim body like a cat, he couldn’t help reflecting, fascinated in spite of himself. Her movements were slow and sensual, the short stroll from her table to the bar making her slender hips sway underneath the deep red suit with its fitted jacket and narrow pencil skirt. The blonde hair was clearly fighting against the restraints of the too-severe knot she had twisted it up into, and feathery strands of it were blowing about her face, wafting onto her neck.

With a sigh of impatience that he caught even where he sat, she paused, reached up, pulled out a couple of strategically placed pins, and shook her head determinedly. The result caught Gio totally by surprise.

As the pale blonde swathe of hair came loose and tumbled down her back, flowing over her shoulders like a golden wave, he found himself suddenly a prey to an urgent, twisting pull of sensual demand low down in his body.

It had the force of a kick in his gut, hitting with the sort of intensity that he had thought that he would never experience again in his life.

‘Inferno!’ he swore under his breath, struggling to force his attention away and onto the narrow gold watch that encircled one wrist. Though even as he concentrated fiercely on its square face, he knew that every male instinct he possessed was still in a state of heightened awareness of the woman at the bar.

Where the devil was Chris Macdonald?

Drinks and a meal, and a chance to discuss how the day’s events had gone in court, he had suggested, and the prospect had seemed like a lifesaver to Gio, who had been dreading spending the time on his own. Once he’d talked to Paolo on the phone and wished his little son sweet dreams, the evening had stretched ahead empty and dark, filled with bad memories. He had snatched at the opportunity to have company on this, the anniversary of the worst night ever in his life.

But Chris showed no sign at all of putting in an appearance. Their meeting had been arranged for six, and it was now half past.

The realisation had barely crossed his mind when his mobile phone rang sharply. As if summoned by his thoughts, there was Chris Macdonald’s number on the screen.

Flicking the case open with an impatient hand, Gio lifted it to his mouth.

‘Sì?’

A few seconds later he snapped the phone off again and tossed it down onto the table, glaring at it as if the inoffensive gadget were in fact Macdonald himself.

Chris was not coming. He had to stay at home, he had said. His young daughter was ill and they had just called the doctor.

‘Non c’e problema!’ he had assured him. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

But he had been lying through his teeth. There was a problem. The problem of the long, lonely night that lay ahead of him.

He should be used to long, lonely nights. He’d lived through enough of them since he had lost Lucia. Lying awake, staring blank-eyed into the darkness, in the big, empty bed that had suddenly seemed so cold and uncomfortable without the warmth of her softly curvaceous body beside him.

And if he managed to fall asleep then it was even worse. Because then he woke to a moment of forgetfulness, a brief, merciful spell of believing that it had never happened. That she was still there, with him. Until he reached out and felt the coldness of the empty space beside him, and the reality all came flooding back.

‘Dio—no!’ he muttered savagely, both hands clenching into fists as he tried to push away the black thoughts that flooded his mind.

Tonight he had thought that he would escape them. That with friendly company, a meal, and perhaps a glass or two too many of a fine wine, he might find some relief from the emptiness that was always there, like a dark, dangerous chasm in his mind, just waiting for him to fall into it. But Chris’s phone call had just shattered that hope.

‘And what can I get for you, Miss Hayden?’

‘Dry white wine, please.’

Behind him, Gio heard the bartender’s question, the soft, feminine tones of the reply, and knew without a moment’s hesitation that it was the blonde who had spoken. The blonde who had been eyeing him up so blatantly.

‘Your friends not with you tonight, then?’ The bartender almost echoed Gio’s own thoughts.

‘No, they’ve gone into the final session of the conference. I’ll be joining them later for dinner, I suppose.’

‘You didn’t fancy going with them?’

‘No.’

He could almost hear the shudder in her voice.

‘I’ve had more than enough of sales figures and targets. I’ve been bored stupid the past two days; I couldn’t take any more. In fact, I’ve decided to chuck the job in.’

Bored, huh?

The word seemed to echo inside Gio’s head. She was bored, and she had been eyeing him—and she had deliberately stayed behind when her friends had left.

Coincidence or invitation?

The clamour in his body wasn’t easing. If anything, the sound of her voice had made it worse. It was soft, musical, and faintly husky. The sort of voice that made him think of murmurs in the darkness of the night, the heat of a sensual bed, the whisper of her breath across his skin as she spoke.

And it had been so long. Too long for any red-blooded male.

‘This conference has been no fun at all. I’ve decided I need some other way of making a living. So I think I’ll just hang around here for a while and see what happens.’

The thread of laughter through the words was the last straw. It seemed to carry an electrical charge with it, sparking off hot little arrows of hunger that ran along every nerve, bringing them so stingingly awake that he had to bite his lip to keep back the groan of reaction.

So she wanted fun, did she? And he…he wanted anything, anything other than to be alone for another long, dark night. He wanted a warm, living, breathing, responding body in his bed after far, far too long.

He hadn’t felt this interested, this alert, this alive in years. And he wasn’t going to turn his back on the chance to let this feeling continue for as long as he could.

He was on his feet before he had actually finished the thought, turning and heading for the tall, slender figure at the bar.

Terrie rested her elbows on the polished wood, stared down into the cool, clear liquid in her glass and wondered just what she had done.

Burned her boats, the answer came back from the sensible, rational part of her mind. She had well and truly burned her boats, or her bridges, cut off her nose to spite her face… Insert whatever other clichéd sayings described her uncharacteristically rash and unthinking gesture.

She was probably in trouble with her job, for one. James Richmond, her immediate manager, would have noticed her absence from the MD’s speech and she had no doubt that he would haul her into his office as a result. He was that sort of man. And people just did not skip what he considered to be vital parts of this conference—at least, not with impunity. The last time that had happened, the offending person had been shown the door pretty fast.

So even if she didn’t resign herself, she was almost certainly unemployed. And, as a result, in financial difficulties, owing rent on her flat, and with no way to keep up payments on her car. OK, so her job had been a bore and a grind. But it had been a job. One that paid her way at least. And she had put it at risk on some foolish, impossible impulse that she couldn’t even explain to herself.

That man. The thought rushed into her mind, driving everything else before it.

It had been the sight of the beautiful man at the other side of the bar that had somehow pushed her into this crazily impulsive mood. The sort of stupid, irrational mood in which she threw up a perfectly decent job and behaved in a way that meant she just didn’t recognise herself.

For example—just what was she doing standing here, propping up this bar, when everyone else was completing the schedule of the conference before the final dinner and going home? What was she waiting for? Hoping for?

Did she really think—was she actually hoping that the stunning and exotic-looking stranger was going to come up to her and change her life?

Fat chance!

Terrie actually snorted cynically at the idiotic path of her own thoughts. She really couldn’t believe that!

Picking up her glass, she twisted on her heel, turning so that she was half facing the rest of the bar, but at an angle so that if the intriguing stranger was looking again she wouldn’t risk being seen by him. Just one experience of that furiously cold-eyed glare was bad enough. She didn’t want to go through a repeat performance.

The wretched man had actually gone!

‘Well, thanks a bunch!’ Terrie muttered against the rim of her glass as she lifted it to sip at her wine. ‘Thank you so very much!’

Foolishly, she felt as if he was responsible for the pickle she was in. She had made this crazy, impulsive gesture of throwing in her job in some non-typical response to his presence. Had stayed in the bar when she would have been far better to stick with her friends and go to the final session, however boring. Had even…

Admit it! she declared to herself. She had even hung around in the bar in the hope of meeting up with and discovering more about this man who had had such an impact on her.

And the so-and-so had got up and made his way out of the bar while her back was turned, without so much as a second look. He must have walked within inches of her and she hadn’t even noticed!

So much for changing her life at a stroke!

Scowling as much at her own foolishness as at the absent stranger, Terrie lifted her drink in a bleak parody of a toast, inclining it in the direction of the stranger’s now empty seat.

‘To ships that pass in the night,’ she muttered.

And froze as, from her right-hand side, another hand reached out, deliberately clinking the glass it held against hers in acknowledgement of the toast.

‘Salute, signorina!’ a deep, lyrically accented voice murmured in her ear.