Married For Revenge: Roccanti's Marriage Revenge / A Deal at the Altar / A Vow of Obligation

‘Have you not already seen it?’

‘I’ve never been to this area before. My parents don’t do rural holidays.’ Her sultry mouth quirked at the mere idea of her decorative mother in a countryside setting. ‘I did ask my aunt once if she would like to come back and see the garden and she said no, that gardens change with the passage of time and that she preferred to remember it as it was when it was new.’

‘If I can arrange it before you leave I will take you to the Palazzo Barigo for a tour,’ Vitale drawled softly, lifting the bottle to top up her wine glass.

‘No more for me, thanks,’ Zara told him hurriedly. ‘I get giggly too easily, so I never drink much.’

Vitale was sardonically amused by that little speech. She was putting up barriers as prickly as cactus leaves and visibly on her guard. But he was too experienced not to have noticed her lingering appraisals and he was convinced that she wanted him even though she was trying to hide the fact. Erotic promise thrummed through his body, setting up a level of anticipation beyond anything he had ever experienced.

Vitale was as well travelled as Zara and they shared amusing anecdotes about trips abroad, discovering that their sense of humour was amazingly similar. He moved his hands expressively while he talked and slowly but surely she found herself watching him like a hawk. When all of a sudden she collided with his scorching golden eyes, she couldn’t even manage to swallow. The truth that she couldn’t stifle her physical response to him alarmed her. She was not in full control of her response to Vitale Roccanti and disturbingly that took her back to her ordeal with Julian. She breathed in slow and deep and steady, mentally fighting to step back from her reactions. Vitale was gorgeous but not for her. She didn’t want to dip a toe in the water, she didn’t want to get her fingers burnt either. Even if it killed her she was determined to retain her self-respect.

‘I hope you won’t think I’m being rude but I’ve had a lot of late nights this week and I would like to turn in now so that I can make an early start in the morning,’ Zara proffered with a bright smile of apology.

Vitale accepted her decision with good grace, rising immediately to his feet. Her cheeks warmed at the sudden suspicion that he might only have been entertaining her out of courtesy. Not every guy wanted to jump her bones, she reminded herself irritably.

At the foot of the stairs, she hovered, disconcertingly reluctant to leave him even though she had carefully engineered her own exit. ‘Will I see you in the morning?’ she asked breathlessly.

‘I doubt it. I’ll be leaving soon after six,’ Vitale imparted, watching her slim figure shift restively. His level of awareness was at such a pitch it was not only his muscles that ached.

Still unable to tear herself away, Zara looked up at him, focusing on the irresistible dark glitter of his stunning eyes and his perfect lips. He was downright drenched in sex appeal and she wanted to touch him so badly her fingertips tingled. The hunger he was suddenly making no attempt to hide made her feel all hot and shivery deep down inside.

‘But before we part, cara mia …’ Vitale purred, purebred predator on the hunt as he closed long, deft fingers round her arm to ease her closer.

He took Zara by surprise and she froze in dismay, nostrils flaring on the scent of his cologne. ‘No,’ she said abruptly, planting both her palms firmly to his broad chest to literally push him back from her. ‘I don’t know what you think I’m doing here but I’m certainly not here for this.’

Ditching the smile ready to play about his beautifully sculpted mouth, Vitale lifted a sardonic brow. ‘No?’

‘You have a hell of an opinion of yourself, don’t you?’ The tart rejoinder just leapt off Zara’s tongue, fierce annoyance rattling through her at his arrogant attitude. Evidently he had expected her to succumb rather than shoot him down and the knowledge infuriated her, for she had met too many men who expected her to be a pushover.

His dark, heavily lashed eyes flashed with anger and then screened. ‘Perhaps I misread the situation—’

‘Yes, you definitely did,’ Zara retorted defensively. ‘I’m grateful for your hospitality and I’ve enjoyed your company but that’s as far as it goes! Goodnight, Vitale.’

But as she hastened up the stairs and hurriedly shut her bedroom door she felt like a total fraud. Exit shocked virginal heroine stage left, she mocked inwardly, her face burning. He had not misread the situation as much as she would have liked to believe. She did find him incredibly attractive and clearly he had recognised the fact and tried to act on it. She was not the undersexed woman she had come to believe she was. But what a time to make such a discovery about herself! Why now? Why now when she was committed to marrying another man? Even though her bridegroom had no desire to share a bed with her, her susceptibility to Vitale Roccanti’s lethal dark charisma made her feel guilty and disloyal.

She lay in bed studying the crescent of the moon gleaming through the curtains. Vitale was simply a temptation she had to withstand and maybe it was good that she should be reminded now that being a married woman would demand circumspection from her. In the future she would be more on her guard. But she could not forget that even in a temper she had still not told him that she was getting married that summer.

CHAPTER THREE

AT WAR with herself, Zara tossed and turned for a good part of the night, wakening to a warm room bathed in the bright light filtering through the thin curtains. Seating her on the terrace, Giuseppina brought her a breakfast of fresh peaches, milky coffee and bread still warm from the oven served with honey. Birds were singing in the trees, bees buzzing and golden sunshine drenched the country valley below the house. It was a morning to be glad to be alive, not to brood on what could not be helped. So, a handsome Italian had made a mild pass at her, why was she agonising over the fact? The attraction had been mutual? So, she was human, fallible.

Giuseppina brought her keys to the car and the villa and Zara left the house to climb into the sturdy pickup truck parked outside. In the early morning quiet the garden of the villa was a wonderful haven of peace. Grateful that it was still relatively cool, Zara took measurements and sat down on a wrought iron chair in the shade of the house to do some preliminary sketches. She chose the most suitable site for the pool first and, that achieved, her ideas were free to flow thick and fast. For the front of the house she wanted a much more simple and soft approach than the current formal geometry of the box-edged beds. So engrossed was she that she didn’t hear the car pulling up at the front and she glanced up in surprise when she heard a door slam inside the house.

Vitale strolled outside, a vision of sleek dark masculinity sheathed in summer casuals, a sweater knotted round his shoulders with unmistakeable Italian style. She scrambled up, her heart going bang-bang-bang inside her chest and her mouth dry as a bone.

‘Time for lunch,’ he told her lazily.

Zara glanced at her watch for the first time since she had arrived and was startled to find that the afternoon was already well advanced. It had taken his reminder for her to notice that her tummy was hollow with hunger. ‘I lost track of time …’

Vitale moved closer to glance curiously at the sheaf of sketches she was gathering up. ‘Anything for me to see yet?’

‘I prefer to submit a design only when I’m finished,’ she told him evenly, accustomed to dealing with impatient clients. ‘I’ve been working on some options for the hard landscaping first.’

He studied her from beneath the dark lush screen of his lashes. Even without a speck of make-up and clad in sexless shorts and a loose shirt, she was a true beauty. Tendrils of wavy silvery hair had worked loose from the clasp she wore to cluster round her damp temples and fall against her cheekbones. Her lavender eyes were wide above heat-flushed cheeks, her temptress mouth lush and natural pink. The tightening heaviness at his groin made his teeth clench. She looked very young, very fresh and impossibly sexy. He remembered the rumour that Monty Blake had paid a fortune to suppress pornographic pictures taken by some boyfriend of hers when she was only a teenager and he reminded himself that it was quite some time since Zara Blake was in a position to claim that level of innocence.

Disturbingly conscious of his measuring appraisal, Zara packed away her sketch pad and pencils. The coarse cotton of her shirt was rubbing against her swelling nipples. As was often her way in a hot climate she had not worn a bra and in his presence her body was determined to misbehave and she was insanely aware of those tormented tips.

‘I’m taking you to the Palazzo Barigo,’ Vitale volunteered, walking her back through the house and out to the Lamborghini.

Edith’s garden, he was taking her to see Edith’s garden! Zara almost whooped with delight and a huge grin curved her soft lips; she turned shining eyes on him. ‘That’s wonderful—is it open to the public, then?’

‘Not as a rule.’

‘Of course, you said it belonged to your uncle,’ she recalled, reckoning that, had she been on her own, she might not have been granted access. ‘Thank you so much for making this possible. I really appreciate it. Should I get changed or will I do as I am? I haven’t got many clothes with me. I like to travel light.’

‘There is only staff at the palazzo at present. You can be as casual as you like,’ Vitale responded lightly.

‘What will we do about the car I drove here?’ she asked belatedly.

‘It will be picked up later.’

The Palazzo Barigo lay over an hour’s drive away. Zara used a good part of the journey to sound him out on different kinds of stone and then she discussed the need for a lighting consultant. She found him more silent and less approachable than he had seemed the night before. Had her rejection caused offence? It was probably her imagination, she thought ruefully, but once or twice she thought he seemed distinctly tense. His lean, hard-boned face was taut in profile, his handsome mouth compressed.

‘How did you spend your morning?’ she enquired when she had failed to draw him out on other topics.

‘At the office.’

‘Do you often work at weekends?’

‘I was in New York last week. Work piled up while I was away.’ His fingers flexed and tightened again round the leather steering wheel.

‘This landscape is beautiful. No wonder Edith felt inspired working here.’

‘You talk a lot, don’t you?’ Vitale sighed. The views she was admiring were painfully familiar to his grim gaze. He felt as though his world were turning full circle, bringing him back to the place where the events that had indelibly changed his life had begun. Yet conversely he was conscious that only two years earlier he had taken a step that ensured he could never hope to escape that past.

Zara could feel her face reddening. She did talk quite a bit and it wasn’t exactly intellectual stuff. Perhaps he found her boring. Annoyance leapt through her as she fiercely suppressed a sense of hurt. He wasn’t her boyfriend, he wasn’t her lover, he wasn’t anything to her and his opinion should not matter to her in the slightest.

‘I’m sorry, that was rude,’ Vitale drawled softly, shooting the powerful car off the road and below a worn stone archway ornamented with a centrally placed Grecian urn. ‘I’m afraid I’ve had a rough morning but that is not an excuse for ill humour. I find spending time with you very relaxing.’

Zara wasn’t quite convinced by that turnaround and when he parked she got out and said stiffly, ‘You know, if there’s only staff here, you could leave me to explore on my own for an hour. You don’t need to stay—’

‘I want to be with you, angelina mia,’ Vitale intoned across the bonnet, whipping off his sunglasses to view her with level dark golden eyes. ‘Why do you think I arranged this outing? Only to please you.’

As Zara could think of no good reason why he should have bothered otherwise, the anxious tension fell from her heart-shaped face. ‘I’m no good with moody guys,’ she confided with a wry look. ‘They make me uncomfortable.’

‘I’m not moody.’

Aware of the powerful personality that drove him, Zara didn’t quite believe him on that score. He might not be subject to moods as a rule but he was definitely a very driven and strong individual. She was convinced that he could be stubborn and tough and a bit of a maverick but she had no idea how she could be so sure of those traits when she had only met him the day before. And yet she was sure. In much the same way she read the strain in his dark golden gaze and realised for the first time that he wasn’t just flirting with her, he wasn’t just playing a sexual game like so many of the men she had met. Vitale Roccanti was keen to soothe the feelings he had hurt. He sincerely cared about her opinion. Heartened by that conviction, she tried not to smile.

Vitale lifted out the picnic basket Giuseppina had made up and tossed Zara a cotton rug to carry and extended his free hand to her. ‘Let’s find somewhere to eat …’

‘The orchard,’ she suggested dreamily, already mentally visualising the garden design she had often studied.

In the heat of the afternoon they strolled along gravelled paths. The clarity of her aunt’s talent as a designer was still as clear as it must have been forty years earlier when it was first created. ‘The garden’s been replanted,’ Zara registered in surprise and pleasure, for she had expected to see overgrown shrubs and trees, the once noticeable lines of her aunt’s vision blurred by many years of growth.

‘Eighteen months ago.’ Vitale’s explanation was crisp, a little distracted. As she stood there against the backdrop of a great yew tree he was remembering his sister dancing along the same path in a scarlet silk gown for a fashion photographer’s benefit, her lovely face stamped with the detached hauteur of a model, only the sparkle of her eyes revealing her true joyous mood. ‘For a while the house and garden were open as a tourist attraction.’

‘But not now,’ Zara gathered.

‘The owner cherishes his privacy.’

‘It’s almost selfish to own something this beautiful and refuse to share it with other people,’ Zara contended in a tone of censure, lavender eyes darting in every direction because there was so much for her to take in.

His handsome mouth quirked as he watched her clamber unselfconsciously onto a stone bench in an effort to gain a better overall view above the tall evergreen hedges. ‘The temple on the hill above the lake offers the best prospect.’

Zara’s fine brows connected in a sudden frown. ‘There was no temple in the original scheme.’

‘Perhaps the owner felt he could add a little something without destroying the symmetry of the whole,’ Vitale murmured a tinge drily.

Zara went pink. ‘Of course. I think it’s wonderful that he thought enough of the garden to maintain it and secure its future for another generation.’

Vitale shot her a searching glance, much amused against his will by her quick recovery. She was a lousy liar, having something of a child’s artlessness in the way that she spoke and acted without forethought. She had no patience either. He watched her hurry ahead of him with quick light steps, a tiny trim figure with silvery pale hair catching and holding the sunlight. When he had seen the photos of her he had assumed the hair was dyed but it looked strikingly natural, perfectly attuned to her pale Nordic skin and unusual eyes. He would have to get her clothes off to explore the question further and that was a prospect that Vitale was startled to discover that he could hardly wait to bring about.

Monty Blake’s daughter had an unanticipated charm all of her own. Even in the casual clothes her quintessential femininity, dainty curves and deeply disconcerting air of spontaneity turned him on hard and fast. It was years since any woman had had that effect on him and he didn’t like it at all. Vitale much preferred a predictable low level and controllable response to a woman. He did not like surprises.

Beyond an avenue of cypresses and the vista of a picturesque town clinging to the upper slopes of a distant hill, the garden became less formal and a charming winding path led them to the cherry orchard. Wild flowers laced the lush grass and Zara hovered rather than spread the rug because it seemed almost a desecration to flatten those blooms. Vitale had no such inhibitions, however and he took the rug from her and cast it down. He was wondering if she could possibly have chosen the private location in expectation and encouragement of a bout of alfresco sex. No way, absolutely no way, Vitale decided grittily, was he sinking his famously cool reputation to fool about in long grass like a testosterone-driven teenager.

Seated unceremoniously on her knees and looking not remotely seductive, however, Zara was already digging through the basket and producing all sorts of goodies. ‘I’m really hungry,’ she admitted.

Vitale studied her and decided that he was becoming too set in his ways. Maybe he could bite the bullet if the only option was making out in the grass. He poured chilled white wine while she set out plates and extracted thin slices of prosciutto ham, wedges of onion and spinach frittata, a mozzarella and tomato salad and a bowl of pasta sprinkled with zucchini blossoms. It was a colourful and enticing spread.

‘Giuseppina is a treasure,’ Zara commented, digging in without further ado to a wedge of frittata washed down with wine from a moisture-beaded glass.

‘I’m an excellent cook,’ Vitale volunteered unexpectedly. ‘Giuseppina is a recent addition to my household.’

‘I can just about make toast,’ Zara told him cheerfully. ‘My older sister, Bee, is always offering to teach me to cook but I’m more into the garden than the kitchen.’

‘I didn’t know you had a sister.’

Zara kicked off her shoes and lounged back on one elbow to munch through ham and a generous spoonful of the juicy tomato salad with unconcealed enjoyment. ‘Dad has three daughters from two marriages and one affair. He’s a bit of a womaniser,’ she muttered, downplaying the truth to an acceptable level.

‘Is he still married to your mother?’

Worrying at her full lower lip, Zara compressed her sultry mouth. ‘Yes, but he’s had other interests along the way—she turns a blind eye. Gosh, I don’t know why I’m telling you that. It’s private.’

‘Obviously it bothers you,’ Vitale remarked perceptively.

It had always bothered Zara. Several years earlier, Edith had gently warned her niece to mind her own business when it came to her parents’ marriage, pointing out that some adults accepted certain compromises in their efforts to maintain a stable relationship. ‘I think fidelity is very important …’

Thinking of the wedding plans that he already knew were afoot in London on her behalf, Vitale almost laughed out loud in derision at that seemingly naïve declaration. He supposed it sounded good and that many men, burned by female betrayal, would be impressed by such a statement. More cynical and never ever trusting when it came to her sex, Vitale veiled his hard dark eyes lest he betray his scorn.

Zara could feel hot colour creeping across her face. She believed fidelity was important yet she had agreed to marry a man who had no intention of being faithful to her. Suddenly and for the first time she wondered if Bee had been right and if she could be making the biggest mistake of her life. But then, she reminded herself quickly, she would not be entering a real marriage with Sergios. In a perfect world and when people loved each other fidelity was important, she rephrased for her own benefit. Feeling panicky and torn in opposing directions by the commitment she had so recently entered, Zara drained her wine glass and let Vitale top it up.

‘How do you feel about it?’ Zara pressed her silent companion nonetheless because she really wanted to know his answer.

‘As though we’ve strayed into a dialogue that is far too serious for such a beautiful day.’

Was that an evasion? Vitale was very adroit with words and Zara, who more often than not said the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time, was reluctantly impressed by his sidestepping of what could be a controversial subject. More than anything else, though, she respected honesty, but she knew that some regarded her love of candour as a sign of immaturity and social awkwardness.

‘I could never, ever forgive lies or infidelity,’ Zara told him.

Watching sunshine make her hair flare like highly polished silver, her eyes mysterious lavender pools above her pink pouting mouth as she sipped her wine, Vitale reflected that had he been the susceptible type he might have been in danger around Zara Blake. After all she was a beauty, surprisingly individual and very appealing in all sorts of unexpected ways. That radiant smile, for instance, offered a rare amount of joie de vivre. But most fortunately for him, Vitale reminded himself with satisfaction, he was cooler than ice in the emotion department and all too aware of whose blood ran in her veins.

Barely a minute later and without even thinking about what he was going to do, Vitale leant down and pressed his sensual mouth to Zara’s. He tasted headily of wine. His lips were warm and hard and the clean male scent of him unbelievably enticing. Zara stretched closer, increasing the pressure of his mouth on hers with a needy little sound breaking low in her throat.

Her hands curved to his strong, muscular shoulders and, as though she had given him a green light to accelerate the pace, the kiss took off like a rocket. His hot tongue pierced between her lips and she shivered violently, erotic signals racing through her slight length. A flood of heat travelled from the pinched taut tips of her breasts to the liquid tension pooling at the heart of her. Her heart thumping out a tempestuous beat, she dug her fingers into his silky black hair and kissed him back with a hunger she couldn’t repress.

Within seconds she was on her back, Vitale lying half over her with one lean thigh settling between hers. On one level she tensed, ready to object the way she usually would have done if a man got too close, but on another unfamiliar level his weight, proximity and the fiery hunger of his kiss somehow combined in a soaring crescendo of sensuality to unleash a powerful craving she had never felt before.

‘You taste so good,’ Vitale growled huskily, ‘so unbelievably good, angelina mia.’

He was talking too much and she didn’t want him talking, she wanted him kissing, and she pulled him back down to her with impatient hands. He reacted to that shameless invitation with a driving passion that thrilled her. His mouth ravished hers, his tongue darting and sliding in the tender interior and the thunderous wave of desire screaming through her was almost unbearable. Long fingers slid below her top, travelling over her narrow ribcage to close round a small rounded breast. He found the beaded tip, squeezed it and she arched off the ground, shattered by the arrow of hot liquid need shooting down into her pelvis. And that jolt of soul stealing desire was sufficient to spring her out of the sensual spell he had cast.

Eyes bright with dismay, Zara had only a split second to focus over his shoulder on the trees around her and recall where she was and what she was doing. Shot back to awareness with a vengeance, she gasped, ‘No!’ as she pushed at his shoulders and rolled away from him the instant he drew back.

Still on another plane, Vitale blinked, dazed at what had just happened. Almost happened, he corrected mentally. Dio mio, they were lying in an orchard and there wasn’t even the remotest chance that he would have let matters proceed any further. She was like a stick of dynamite, he thought next, dark colour scoring his high cheekbones as he struggled to catch his breath and withstand the literal pain of his fully aroused body. A woman capable of making him behave like that in a public place ought to carry a government health warning. Overconfident, he had underestimated the extent of her pulling power, a mistake he would not repeat, he swore vehemently.