Her Passionate Italian: The Passion Bargain / A Sicilian Husband / The Italian's Marriage Bargain

A silence fell. Sonya was pretending a deep interest in the garden while Angelo became engrossed in his shoes. Standing between them, Francesca glanced from one to the other then uttered a heavy sigh. She’d never managed to find out exactly what it was that had started hostilities between the two of them but she did know that it was getting worse.

Angelo shifted, his square chin rising. ‘Shall we go in?’ he said politely then he turned and strode into the house with Sonya’s bag. The atmosphere cloyed as they followed him into the sheer grandeur of the green and white marble reception hall and walked together up the imposing curve of the white marble staircase. Pushing open a door to one of the bedroom suites, Angelo stood back to allow the two women to enter a place fit for visiting royalty.

Sonya walked forward and stood with her back to them. Angelo remained standing stiffly by the door. ‘If I plead very hard, will you please be nice to each other for tonight?’ Francesca burst out.

‘Excuse me,’ Angelo said. ‘My father is expecting me in his study.’ Then he left, closing the door behind him with a quiet click.

Sonya turned to look at Francesca. ‘Don’t blame me for that,’ she said. ‘I never did a single thing!’

‘I know you didn’t,’ Francesca agreed with her. ‘I apologise for him.’

‘You don’t have to do that,’ Sonya said irritably. ‘He’s just…’

Mad at me, Francesca found herself finishing the sentence and then began to frown because she didn’t understand why she would think like that unless…

It hit her then, just what this war between Sonya and Angelo was all about. ‘It’s the married man you’re seeing,’ she declared suddenly. ‘Angelo knows who it is, doesn’t he?’

To her grim satisfaction Sonya gasped out a choking responsethen spun away from her in a way that all but confirmed her accusation. Things suddenly began to fit. Their barbed comments to each other, the heated exchanges they had in quiet corners that lasted less than thirty seconds but always managed to destroy a pleasant atmosphere. And more relevant was that the hostilities had only started two weeks ago, which, according to Bianca, was when Sonya’s new affair began. Two weeks ago Angelo had asked her to marry him. When she said yes, he’d arranged a celebration dinner at one of his favourite restaurants. It was the first time that Sonya had come into contact with Angelo’s family. She cast her mind back, searching that sea of new faces, hunting out the married ones and trying to decide which one might be willing to cheat on his wife.

How did I miss all of this before? she asked herself. But she knew how. She had spent the last two weeks so engrossed in her love for Angelo that she hadn’t been able to see anything beyond it.

But there was worse to come as yet another thought hit. ‘He’s going to be here tonight, isn’t he?’ she challenged. ‘He’ll be coming here with his wife and you’re going to think you can sneak off with him somewhere for a little while!’

‘That’s so much rubbish,’ Sonya denied.

No, it wasn’t. ‘I know you, Sonya,’ she said. ‘I know how common sense shoots right out of the window when a new man comes into your life.’

‘You sound like my mother again.’

She did, Francesca acknowledged and this time didn’t care. ‘Angelo is worried that you’re both going to risk causing a scene tonight. I bet he even asked you both not to come.’

‘You’re so way off the mark, it’s sad to listen to you.’ Sonya bent to collect her bag.

‘Then why is Angelo mad at you?’ she demanded outright.

Sonya didn’t answer but just walked across the room and threw open the first door that she came to. The fact that it happened to be the bathroom was due to luck more than anything, but as she went to slam the door shut so she didn’t have to have this discussion, Francesca got in one final plea.

‘Promise me you won’t do anything stupid tonight, cara,’ she begged anxiously. ‘I need your assurance—please.’

For a moment she thought Sonya was going to go on protesting her innocence, then it was as if all the fight just trickled out of her and she released a heavy sigh. ‘So long as you promise to keep Angelo away from me,’ she bartered. ‘And don’t try to get out of me who the man is!’

The bathroom door swung shut. Francesca winced as she turned back to the main door. She was just stepping out onto the landing when she heard the sound of raised voices echoing in the hall below. She paused, her heart beginning to beat faster when she recognised Angelo’s angry tones.

‘Do you think I am a fool? Of course I am not going to risk everything now! Your business is safe, Papa, take my word for it,’ he said bitterly. ‘And don’t forget which of us is paying the price for it!’

Angelo’s father spoke then but she couldn’t hear what he was saying because he wasn’t as angry as his son. Then a door closed and she could hear nothing else, but she was left wondering if the Batiste business was in trouble.

Had Carlo Carlucci lived up to Alessandro Batiste’s worst fears and threatened to remove his business and take it elsewhere?

The wretched man was beginning to cast a very long shadow over almost everything that was important in her life, she mused grimly as she stepped into her own room next to Sonya’s and closed the door. If he was a married man she would have to start wondering if he was Sonya’s new lover! Sonya’s reed-slender beauty being most definitely his type!

And on that truly caustic note she took herself off to the bathroom to indulge in a long, hot, tension-relieving soak before she had to present herself downstairs to help welcome the other guests that Angelo’s parents had invited to stay overnight at the villa.

‘I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this.’ She frowned at the mirror.

‘Do what?’ Sonya was standing behind her, busily fixing a beaded comb into the twisted knot she’d fashioned with Francesca’s hair that now felt as if it had left her creamy shoulders and neck vulnerably exposed.

‘Buy something that moulded.’

She was no raving beauty and had never pretended otherwise to herself. She might be tall and slender with passably attractive legs, but she possessed curves—oldfashioned curves like a waist and hips and full, firm breasts that sort of pouted whatever she wore. They were doing it now, pushing up above the straight edge of the bodice as if they were trying to escape.

‘Oh, dear,’ she sighed, and with a shimmy and a tug tried to pull the bodice up a bit.

‘You’re too critical of yourself,’ Sonya mumbled from behind her. ‘Have you any idea how many women shell out thousands to get C cups like yours?

‘They can have mine for free,’ Francesca muttered.

She’d gone shopping for classic black sophistication that would put her on a par with her super-elegant guests tonight and come back with this sultry dark red creation that was supposed to skim not cling to all those places she did not want to accentuate. The silk organza skirt was its saving grace with its ankle-length handkerchief edge. It was singularly the most expensive item of clothing she had ever bought, and, ‘I look like a lush.’

‘Idiot,’ Sonya chided. ‘You look like the lovely belle at your own ball, which is how it should be.’ She finished securing the hair comb then stepped back to study the overall look. ‘Gosh, that colour suits you.’

‘It reminded me of the ruby setting in my ring,’ she explained, which was why she’d bought it instead of nice, safe black. ‘Do you think Angelo will like it?’

‘I think Angelo will adore it,’ Sonya replied without a single hint of her usual caustic spoiling her tone. Then she turned away to pick up the fine chiffon scarf that came with the dress. ‘Here, let’s drape this around your shoulders just so and—presto, we have a princess.’

‘We have an overdressed Barbie doll.’

‘No.’ Sonya appeared beside her in the mirror wearing a short skimpy blue satin slip dress that matched the colour of her eyes. ‘I’m the Barbie doll around here, cara,’ she pronounced. ‘Complete with twenty-four-inch spiked shoes.’

They both fell into a fit of the giggles, which was nice because they hadn’t done much laughing recently—not since Sonya and Angelo fell out. ‘I’m going to miss having you around when I’m married,’ Francesca confided softly once they’d both calmed down again.

There was a silence—a stillness, both short, both tight. Then Sonya uttered a different kind of laugh. ‘You must be joking. You’ll be too busy doing something else to miss me.’

She was talking about making love but the moment that Francesca tried to visualise that Rubicon moment all she saw was a deeply sardonic dark, handsome face. It shook her so badly that she actually gasped.

‘What?’ Sonya demanded sharply, staring at her suddenly whitened face.

‘Nothing,’ she dismissed because how could she confess to Sonya what she had just seen? She would laugh—and why not? To her it would be one in the eye to her favourite enemy, Angelo, to learn that another man could arouse hot visions of lust inside his sex-shy fiancée.

She frowned again. It was beginning to worry her that she could feel like this about another man when she was about to commit herself to Angelo.

There was a knock at the door then. Sonya went to answer it. It was Angelo, come to escort Francesca downstairs. With a stiff smile and a mumbled, ‘See you down there,’ Sonya left them alone, pulling the door shut behind her as Francesca was turning from the mirror.

The moment she looked at him all her worries faded. He was wearing a formal black dinner suit and bow-tie and he looked so handsome that she felt herself melting inside. He was smiling at her, he was warm, he was all sunlight not mocking darkness. I’m just suffering from pre-betrothal nerves, she told herself and found her own smile when he sighed and said, ‘Ah, bella—bella, mi amore. You take my breath away.’

And that was all that she wanted, she told herself as she moved towards him. She wanted to take Angelo’s breath away. She wanted to bask in the warmth of his love.

Which was exactly what she did for the next few hours, as the villa slowly filled with people and Angelo rarely left her side. The official announcement of their engagement was to take place at midnight and until then everyone was encouraged to sample the banquet buffet laid out in one of the grand salons or dance to the music provided by a group of live musicians in another grand salon. By ten the villa was throbbing with music and laughter and the more elegant hum of conversation.

She noted Carlo Carlucci’s arrival at around ten o’clock. Who didn’t note it? she thought sourly as she watched surreptitiously the way he drew people to him without him having to do more than stand by the main salon doors. He’d arrived without the usual beauty hanging on his arm, which surprised her. And he also made no effort to come anywhere near her, which was also a surprise since it wasn’t very polite of him to keep his distance.

But it was an even bigger relief. She didn’t want him using one of his mocking smiles on her, or worse—letting it drop that they’d met by accident a couple of times and exposing the fact that she hadn’t mentioned those meetings to Angelo.

She would do, she promised herself. Tomorrow maybe when this was all over. But for now she was happy—happy—happy again and wanted to keep it that way.

Sonya, she saw, was behaving herself and sticking close to their own friends and work colleagues. If her new lover was here tonight—and Francesca was certain that he was here somewhere—she couldn’t tell from Sonya’s manner who the man was.

And foolishly she relaxed enough to drop her watchful guard on her friend. She was too busy being passed from one partner to another to be whirled beneath glittering crystal chandeliers. She was showered with beautiful compliments and teased and flirted with as only the Italians could do with such stylish panache. It was such a novelty to be the centre of everyone’s attention like this that she began to feel intoxicated by it—or was it the champagne?

Each time she paused for breath someone placed a long, fluted glass in her fingers and bid her a toast that demanded she sip. Her cheeks had discovered a permanent rosy hue and her eyes sparkled beneath the overhead lights. Angelo was being treated to the same kind of attention. They would whirl by each other occasionally and share a laughing comment, but that was all they were allowed.

It was as if there was a conspiracy afoot to keep the two lovers apart until the bewitching hour and when she challenged one of her partners with the suspicion he laughed and whirled her away. No one would know from observing this glitter-bright gaiety that the whole thing was about to shatter with the same spectacular force you would get if one of the huge chandeliers suddenly dropped to the floor.

Francesca was taking a moment to catch her breath when she happened to see Sonya quietly slipping away behind one of the gold-embossed curtains that had been drawn across a wall of French windows that led outside. Her antennae began to sing, sending her eyes flickering quickly around the room to see if anyone was going to follow her out.

It had to be her misfortune that her eyes clashed with those belonging to Carlo Carlucci. He was still holding court by the salon doors, standing with his dark head slightly tilted to one side as he listened to whatever the person with him was saying to him.

But his dark eyes were fixed on her.

That prickling sensation arrived, scoring tight frissons down her back, and she quickly dragged her eyes away from him and began weaving her way towards the French windows, determined to put a stop to the clandestine meeting she was now absolutely certain Sonya had arranged.

Sonya had left one of the doors slightly ajar. Slipping quietly through the gap, she walked across the wide marble terrace towards the stone balustrade beyond which the garden began to drop in a series of stylised tiers. It was cold out here, the late-spring chill in the air sending her hands up to rub at her bare arms as she paused to scan the darkened gardens in search of Sonya and her new man.

She heard them before she saw them, her slender body twisting towards the sound of scuffling feet and hushed voices filtering up from the terrace below. They were standing by the lower balustrade, and she was surprised to see that it was Angelo who was gripping one of Sonya’s arms while she was trying to tug herself free.

‘Let go of me!’ she heard Sonya hiss out angrily.

‘No,’ Angelo rasped. ‘I won’t let you ruin this, Sonya—’

‘I’m still going to tell her,’ Sonya lashed back. ‘She deserves to know the truth before this charade goes any further. I will be doing her a favour.’

She was threatening to confess her affair to her lover’s wife! Oh, dear God, Francesca thought. She couldn’t let her do that! She was about to move towards the steps to go down there to add her own pleas to Angelo’s—when Angelo’s harsh reply stalled her feet.

‘You think she will be grateful to you for your big confession, heh, cara? Do you think she will fall on your neck and forgive you, her closest friend, for sleeping with me, the man she is heart and soul in love with…?’

And that was the point where everything shattered, sprinkling around her like fine crystal shards that lacerated her flesh as they fell.

CHAPTER FOUR

FRANCESCA began to shake so badly she could barely stay upright, even her heart trembling, clawing at the walls of her chest as if it was trying to escape from what she was being made to face. She struggled to believe it, didn’t want to believe it. She even closed her eyes and replayed Angelo’s words inside her head in a silly, stupid, desperate attempt to find out where she had misunderstood what he’d said.

But there was no misunderstanding, Sonya’s next shrill claim made it too sickeningly clear. ‘You don’t want her! You don’t even like her that much!’

‘What I want and I what I am to have are two different issues.’

‘Money,’ Sonya sliced at him. ‘As if the Batistes haven’t got enough of it locked up in this place, you’re willing to marry a woman you have no feelings for just to lay your hands on the Gianni fortune! It’s disgusting. ‘

‘And none of your damn business,’ Angelo rasped.

‘While you can’t keep your hands off me, it’s my damn business.’

There was a groan—an agonised groan that brought Francesca’s eyelids flickering upwards to watch as Angelo pulled Sonya against him then buried his mouth in her throat. ‘I cannot get you out of my head,’ he muttered. ‘I close my eyes and all I see is you, naked, on top of me.’

‘When your little heiress is naked on top of you, will you close your eyes and think of me then?’

The vile taunt brought Angelo’s head up, set his hands moving in a tense, urgent, restless sweep over Sonya’s slippery blue satin dress. ‘Yes,’ he said thickly.

Francesca swayed, her whole world tilting sideways as if it was trying to tip her off. A pair of arms came around her from behind and covered her shivering arms where they still folded like clamps across her front. Long brown fingers closed over her icy fingers, a solid male torso became a supporting wall to her trembling back. A dark head lowered, a pair of lips came to rest on her ear.

‘Heard enough?’ Carlo asked in a soft, rough voice that scraped over her cold flesh like sand across silk.

She wasn’t even surprised that it was him who was holding her. In some mad, tortuous way it seemed fitting that he would be the one to witness this—as if the two of them had been building towards this devastating moment for days.

She was about to attempt a nod in answer to his question when Angelo uttered a thick groan and took fierce possession of Sonya’s lips. Sonya didn’t even try to stop him. The way they kissed, open-mouthed, deep and frantic, their two blond heads locked together. The way they touched, hands moving over each other in hot, tight, convulsive movements that stripped clean to the bone any lingering doubts she might have had that they’d done this many times before. A long, silken thigh was exposed to the hip bone, a small, pale breast was uncovered to receive the hungry clamp of Angelo’s mouth. It only took eyes to see that Sonya was wearing nothing at all beneath the skimpy scrap of silk. She’d come prepared for this, despite all the angry threats and protests she’d just uttered, she’d had no intention of missing out on the sex.

Sickened, Francesca began to shudder. Carlo responded with a swiftness that caught her breath. The soft hiss of his anger stung her icy, quivering face as he twisted her around then tugged her against him and held her there for a moment while she shivered and shook.

Then Angelo’s voice came, raw with pleasure. ‘Yes, do that again,’ he groaned.

For a horrible moment Francesca thought she was going to faint. Carlo Carlucci must have thought so too because the next thing she knew one of his arms had hit the backs of her knees and she was being lifted off the ground.

‘I’m all right,’ she choked.

His lips arrived at her ear again to utter the harsh rasp, ‘Be quiet or they will hear you.’

The very thought of that happening had her curling into him. He started moving, long, swift strides taking them the full length of that side of the villa. A stunning silence arrived as they turned the corner and it was only then Francesca realised that the whole ugly thing had taken place to a background of music and laughter filtering out from the house.

He kept on going further and further down this wing, which housed the more private apartments that were not being used for the party tonight. All the windows were shrouded in darkness, the only light coming from the hazed moon hanging in the night sky. He pulled to a stop beside yet another set of French doors. The villa was ringed with them; elegantly styled and evenly spaced, they gave every room on the ground floor its own access onto the wide terraces that flanked all four sides of the house.

She felt tensile muscles flex as he reached down to try a handle. A door slid open and he swung her inside. It was dark in here too, but she did manage to register that he’d brought her to Mr Batiste’s private study with its heavy, dark pieces of furniture that didn’t blend in with the rest of the house.

Then she was being dumped on a leather chair by the fireplace with logs neatly laid in the grate ready to light. Still shivering, she instantly wrapped her arms back round her body as Carlo moved to close the door they’d just used. She heard a key turn and quivered, though she didn’t know why she did. Then he was moving swiftly in the other direction and a second later another key turned in the door leading out to the hall.

‘Don’t,’ she said when she saw him raise a hand towards the light switch.

The hand dropped to his side and she tried to relax some of the screaming tension from her body. It didn’t happen. Too many muscles had locked and knotted and she’d never felt so cold in her entire life.

Still without comment he began to move again. He was nothing more than a shifting shadow in the darkness, and right now she was happy to keep him like that. She didn’t want to see his face—she didn’t want him to look into her own. She felt stripped and raped and bruised and battered.

This time she heard the chink of glass on glass.

Angelo and Sonya—Sonya and Angelo. Her eyes drifted shut as that dreadful little litany began playing itself over and over inside her head alongside frame-by-frame images of what she had just seen.

The open-mouthed kiss that devoured greedily, the slippery blue satin that was so willing to slide away from a silken thigh and hip. She heard the gasps, the groans of passionate agony, and felt sick to her stomach because all she’d ever got was quietly, calmly—briefly wrapped in a light-hearted affection, not the raging fires and animal lust.

What a perfectly choreographed act they’d put on for her benefit, she thought painfully. What a smooth blinding mask they’d pulled over her eyes as they snipped and sniped at each other the way that they had.

And what a sick—sick joke the two of them had been enjoying at her expense.

Humiliation poured through her bloodstream, the power of it grinding her bruised heart against her ribs. Dragging up her eyelids, she stared down at her dress. Angelo had not felt compelled to drag down this bodice and lay bare one of her breasts. He’d never once so much as stroked her thigh. The light touches she’d received that she’d believed were offered with love and tenderness and respect now became touches of idle contempt wrapped up in calculation and necessity.

He’d intended to marry her and take her to bed only when he had to do it and even then he was going to impose Sonya’s sylph-like image over her to help him get through the ordeal.

She quivered again, despising him for doing this to her—despising herself for being so gullible and blind.

A sound reached into her consciousness—people laughing as they walked past the closed study door. The party, she remembered. Her engagement party. Hers and Angelo’s.

The Gianni heiress and the fortune-hunter, she then thought bitterly.

But she was no heiress. There was no fortune to be had if she was. And she could not understand why Angelo could believe otherwise when she’d already told him the hard truth about her connection to the Gianni name.

‘Here, drink some of this…’

She hadn’t realised her eyes had closed again until she was forced to open them. The dark shadow was squatting in front of her, she realised, though she hadn’t noticed him arrive there. Only he wasn’t quite a dark shadow any more because her eyes had adjusted to the darkness. So she could see the way he was studying her narrowly, the way he was holding his mouth thin and flat. The bright white of his shirt stood out, casting reflected light along the grim set of his chiselled jaw bone as he placed the rim of a glass to her mouth. She sipped without protest. The brandy trickled across her tongue and she forced herself to swallow, leaving warm vapours behind in her mouth.