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

‘Not any more he doesn’t.’

‘No,’ Sonya huskily conceded and watched as Francesca located her suitcase from where she’d stashed it just inside the room then knelt with it on the floor so she could unzip it. She had been intending to change her clothes for something more appropriate before leaving this room again but now all she wanted to do was pack her things and get out.

‘You’re leaving?’ Sonya asked as if it was some huge surprise.

‘What do you think?’ It was enough to make her let loose with a strangled laugh.

She glanced up at her once closest friend to find her propping up the doorway with her arms folded defensively and looking all guilty and pale.

But she was still wearing that wretched blue satin dress, she noticed. ‘You disgust me,’ she said and looked away again, angry fingers unzipping the suitcase.

‘I know,’ Sonya surprised her by agreeing. ‘I disgust myself. You know how much I hate him! I’ve never tried to make a secret of it but…’

They were back to the but Francesca didn’t want to listen to. ‘So how come you went out of your way to introduce this man you hate to your best friend?’

‘What?’ Sonya blinked her long lashes at her.

Francesca felt like slapping her face. Instead she got to her feet to go tugging clothes off hangers. ‘You were living here in Rome for a whole six months before I came to join you,’ she expanded, tossing clothes haphazardly down into the case. ‘Your friends became my friends. You even got me my job! So how come I got no warning about the real character of this man you say you hate? How come you introduced me to him at all?’

‘What was I supposed to do—ignore him when he was there with the rest?’

She had a point, Francesca conceded, though she didn’t want to. She started emptying drawers. ‘You wanted him for yourself even then,’ she stated and only realised it was the truth as the tight words left her lips. She stopped what she was doing as full clarity began to hit. ‘He wasn’t interested. He already had a girlfriend. A gorgeous, dark-haired creature with amazing brown eyes…’

‘Nicola,’ Sonya mumbled.

Francesca nodded, and turned to look at her again. Sonya was looking at the floor now, her long hair like a heavy silk curtain hiding her face. ‘You wanted to get his attention,’ she went on slowly. ‘So you thought you would impress him by telling him that your friend from England had some Gianni blood.’

Sonya’s chin shot up. ‘I didn’t know he would go apoplectic at the mere mention of the Gianni name!’

‘I told you that in confidence! You had no right to set that hungry wolf on to me! And once he did go apoplectic, why didn’t you warn me then what you’d done?’

Sonya flushed and looked away again. Inside Francesca was beginning to seethe as each veil was scraped from her eyes. ‘He took you out to pump more information out of you, didn’t he? I bet he even took you to bed then!’

‘As I said, I hate him.’

And she did, Francesca accepted as she stood taking in that blunt admission. Sonya hated Angelo with absolute venom but she was also so crazily in love with him she couldn’t say no to him.

‘He’s manipulating and sly. He used me to get at you and used our friendship to stop me from telling you the truth. He said you would never forgive me—and he’s right, isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’ Francesca didn’t even need to think about it. Sonya had been deeply instigative from the very beginning in setting her up for all this pain and heartache she’d had to suffer tonight because she was sure of one thing and she would not be standing here in the Batiste villa if Sonya hadn’t mentioned the Gianni name.

You don’t want her; you don’t even like her…! Francesca sucked in a thick breath. Those cruel words were going to be etched on her soul forever now, she predicted painfully.

Bending down, she scooped up the open case with its spilling contents and pushed past Sonya to go and put the case down on the bed.

‘I’m sorry,’ came the husky murmur from somewhere behind her.

‘You call Angelo manipulating and sly but what does that make you, Sonya?’ she asked as she went about gathering up whatever other bits she’d left lying about. ‘We’ve known each other for years. We confided everything.’

‘You kept your affair with Carlo Carlucci a dark secret.’ Sonya got in her own hit. ‘How long has that been going on, cara? Don’t think I missed the way you were wrapped around each other before Angelo’s mother dragged me away! The room was swimming in overactive pheromones. You were both so kiss-drugged you could barely focus on anything else!’

‘But at least I still had my underwear on,’ Francesca retaliated with a withering slide of her eyes down the front of Sonya’s dress.

She was rewarded with a choked gasp and the sight of a hand jerking down to tug guiltily at the hem of the dress. Leaving Sonya to stew on her own sluttish behaviour, she moved into the bathroom and began quickly gathering up her toiletries.

When she re-entered the bedroom she saw that Sonya was ready to go back on the attack. ‘You might like to think of yourself as morally a cut above me, Francesca. But you’re as guilty as I am for playing around with another woman’s man.’

Was she saying that Carlo was committed to some other woman? It stopped her dead in her tracks.

‘And here’s the real nasty little twist, cara,’ Sonya continued, aiming sure with her knives now. ‘Nicola Mauraux—you know, the dark-haired beauty with the brown eyes you were talking about? She’s Carlo Carlucci’s stepsister. It was a bit of a foregone conclusion that she and Angelo would marry one day—until you came along and he turfed her out.’

Carlo was not in another relationship, was the first part of that she grabbed at with relief. Then the rest arrived like a blast, blanching the colour out of her face.

‘Angelo told me it was already over,’ she breathed in a stifled whisper.

‘Since when has he ever spoken the truth?’ Sonya asked. ‘He’s an incurable liar with a greedy eye for the main chance! Nicola isn’t rich like you will be one day, Francesca. She isn’t a Carlucci so has no claim on the Carlucci wealth. She attends this very posh university in Paris at her stepbrother’s expense but that’s about the sum total of what she’s likely to get from him.’

‘You knew all of this and didn’t bother to tell me?’

‘What for? I wasn’t to know that you would start two-timing your beloved Angelo with Carlo Carlucci.’ Oh, the knives were flying thick and fast now. This was Sonya at her cutting best. ‘But if I did happen to be you right now, I would be asking if Signor Carlucci isn’t using you to get back a bit of revenge on Angelo for dumping his stepsister.’

The word revenge hit her first. Angelo had accused Carlo of being out for revenge on him but she had been too confused to pick up on it then. He’d also said that Carlo was using her and she’d let that float right by her too. Then there were Carlo’s displays of contempt towards Angelo and the smooth, slick, cutting way he had demolished him from the very outset—as if he’d been planning to do it—as if the whole kiss thing had been timed and rigged to happen as Angelo walked into the room!

She began to feel sick again—very sick. Her hand had to jerk up to cover her mouth. If it wasn’t enough to be used by one ruthless swine, now another one had come along to do the same thing again!

Talk about being a sucker for it, she thought bitterly, and had to turn her back to Sonya so she wouldn’t see the hurt tears starting in her eyes.

‘I just don’t want you to pile all the blame on me, that’s all!’ Sonya cried out. ‘If you witnessed what Angelo and I were doing out there on the terrace then you must have heard me tell him that I wanted to tell you everything—and I was going to do it this time, Francesca! Only you found out before I could get to you first.’

After the sex, of course, Francesca thought bitterly. After she’d stood there on that wretched terrace and drowned herself in Angelo!

She was never going to trust a single living person, she vowed as she went to throw the last of her things into the suitcase. The tears were blurring her vision. Her fingers had developed a permanent shake. If someone had told her that she was going to spend her engagement night having her life ripped apart she would have laughed in their face!

And she still had to run the gauntlet to get out of here. She still had to face Carlo Carlucci knowing what she now knew about him!

She shut the suitcase, stuffing straggling bits of clothing inside it as she struggled to fasten the zip. Where was she going to go—what was she going to do?

‘Let me come with you,’ Sonya begged suddenly as if she could actually read what was going on inside her head. ‘Wait for me to pack and we’ll go and stay at that hotel where the rest of our group is staying.’

‘Do they know about your affair with Angelo?’ she asked quietly.

Silence met that—one of those stark, thick silences that screamed the answer loud and clear.

She took a final quick glance around her to see if she’d missed anything, then bent to pick up her little denim jacket and pulled it on over her dress. Next she hauled up the suitcase.

This was it. There was nothing left for her here. Mouth tight, eyes hard, she turned to walk towards the door.

‘Please…’ Sonya’s painfully shaken cry followed her. ‘Don’t leave me here to face the music alone, Francesca. You’re my friend—you’re the only real friend I’ve ever had! Let me come with you—please!’

Francesca turned to look at this petite, flaxen-haired, sylph-like friend who was just too beautiful for her own good. Even the tears shining in her anxious blue eyes enhanced that beauty, as did the quiver of her lips.

‘Enjoy the rest of your life, Sonya,’ she said, then left with her great-uncle Bruno’s chilling form of goodbye still ringing behind her like the toll of death.

CHAPTER SIX

SHE must have inherited some of the Gianni genes after all, she thought with a bitter-wry smile. Funny, she mused, but she’d always assumed she missed out on most of them. Her mother had insisted she had.

No thick and glossy raven hair, none of the Gianni bone features that had given her mother’s face such a striking impact. Her mouth was too wide, her skin too pale—but that cold and unforgiving final cut she’d just used to sever her friendship with Sonya had to have come from the Gianni gene stock.

Along with her mother’s propensity for falling in love with the wrong kind of man. Like lightning striking twice, or that nasty thing called fate other people liked talking about. Had it been written at her birth that she was fated to fall in love with a mercenary like Angelo then be seduced by a vengeful rat like Carlo?

She saw him then and had to pause at the top of stairs while she dealt with the way her heart dipped then shrivelled like a dried-up prune in her chest.

He was standing at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for her, looking stunning as always. The shockingly perfect profile, the smooth, olive-toned skin, the gorgeous mouth that was a mere shadowy outline from up here but could still tighten muscles all over her body on the knowledge of the way it could kiss. His black hair was making her think of ravens’ wings again as it captured the overhead lights and his curling black eyelashes hovered sensuously against those chiselled cheekbones as he stood looking down at his watch.

In a rush to get this over with, signor? Francesca quizzed. Do you want to get the poor little fool out of here so you can finish what you started in the name of revenge?

He could have heard her for the way his dark head lifted. He smiled the most relaxed, warm smile then began walking up to meet her. ‘I was just coming to get you,’ he murmured in that rich, dark voice of his.

Francesca was contemplating telling him where to put his lying smile—when she noticed the people still gathered in the hall. The gauntlet, she remembered, and snapped her mouth shut again then carefully hooded her cold, glinting eyes. There was no way she was going to show herself up again while she told Carlo Carlucci what she thought of him on the Batiste staircase with the mob listening in.

The mob, she thought again, struck by her own acid turn of phrase and almost—almost found it in her to laugh. If these people were a mob they were a very exclusive kind of mob with their designer clothes and their designer jewels and their designer expressions that made her think of wax.

Carlo stopped two steps down from her and reached for her suitcase. ‘Like the jacket,’ he said in a husky attempt to break the tension laying whip cracks across all of them. ‘It goes with the dress.’

‘Can we go, please?’ she responded in a voice misted with frost.

He stopped smiling, his eyes narrowing on her cold face. ‘Of course,’ he replied without any notable change in his rich voice tones but her senses began to scramble about inside her when they detected a change. It didn’t do to return his warm overtures with ice, she realised. He was used to orchestrating the moods of others not altering his own mood to suit.

His fingers closed around her fingers where they clutched the handle to the suitcase. The suitcase changed hands within a hooded silence. Stepping to one side, he indicated that she should continue down the stairs. As she passed by him he fell into step beside her, his tall, dark bulk trying its best to hide her from most of those curious faces down in the hall.

What were they thinking? How much did they know? Was she the sinner in their eyes, caught by Angelo kissing Carlo Carlucci on the night of his engagement to her, or the one to be pitied for falling for Angelo’s smooth, slick, calculating charm at all?

Angelo—Angelo, she suddenly repeated. And felt a shaft of pain as her love for him exploded right here on this fabulous marble staircase. How could he have done this to her—treated her like this?

How could Sonya?

Delayed shock to her night of revelation really began to kick in as they made ground level. She was shaking so badly that she had a horrible suspicion she was going to further humiliate herself by falling into a sobbing huddle on the cold marble floor. Beside her, Carlo must have sensed it because his free hand came to rest against her back as if in assurance. She almost jumped out of her skin as the old warning prickles of hostility and self-defence arrived to remind her that he was not her saviour—far from it. He was as guilty as the others for trying to use her for his own ends.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she hissed in a taut, teeth-clenched whisper.

He did the opposite. Shifting the hand until it arrived at the indent to her waist and with a single warning curl of his long fingers, he brought her into full contact with his side. Then he made the ultimate move to subdue her by stopping them walking so he could propel her around to face him, then in front of their audience he bent his dark head.

His lips arrived against her ear lobe, his breath scoring her frozen white cheek. ‘Behave until we get out of here or I will kiss you stupid,’ he warned very grimly.

There wasn’t a split-second when she thought he might be bluffing. This was yet another man on a mission and she was just his disposable pawn. Bitterness welled, the fine tremors of dismay converting themselves into silver-shard tremors of contempt as he set them moving again.

It was then that she saw their farewell party waiting by the open front door. Mr and Mrs Batiste were standing straight-faced and soldier-like, ready to play the perfect hosts to the bitter end even as their glittering party lay in a wreck around their elegant feet. Did they know what their son had done? Had they been in on his deceit? ‘Your business is safe, Papa, and don’t forget who is paying the price for it.’

Yes, they’d known from the beginning, she concluded and shuddered. Did that also mean they knew why she was being escorted from here by Carlo Carlucci?

Of course they did, she derided her own question. Everyone knew. Everyone knew everything but me!

‘I hate you,’ she hissed.

He ignored that one, the hand keeping her moving towards the open door.

‘Carlo, we need to talk—’ Alessandro Batiste jerked into anxious speech as they reached him.

‘Next week,’ Carlo Carlucci cut him off curtly, passing by him without a single pause. ‘And without your son,’ he added abruptly. ‘If you want to hold on to my business, that is…’

‘Y-yes, of course,’ Angelo’s father agreed in gruff obsequious Italian.

Angelina Batiste said absolutely nothing. The whole thing was a real coup détat for Signor Carlucci. He’d effectively cut Angelo adrift from just about everything, including the support of his own parents, it seemed.

The night air had a sharp nip to it. Carlo’s car stood parked at the bottom of the steps. He guided her towards it and opened the passenger door for her and only then allowed his fingers to ease their grip on her waist when he stepped back, his expression a wall of cool politeness as he waited for her to get in the car. As she sank into luxurious black leather the door was closed with a solid click. Her eyes began to sting as she listened to him putting her case in the car boot and she had to bite down hard on her bottom lip in an effort to maintain her icy dignity as he got in beside her, folding his body like a lithe jungle cat with its killer instincts set on full alert.

It was easier to look out of the side-window than to keep him hovering even on the periphery of her vision. What she saw through that window was the door to Villa Batiste drawing shut. It was the last time she would look at that door, she vowed silently.

The car engine came to life. It kicked into gear and with a spin of wide tyres on loose gravel they moved off, the force of the acceleration pushing her back into the seat. Headlights spanned the two lines of cypress trees. They sped between them and barely paused at the junction before they were turning into the lane and accelerating away again.

She had no idea where he was taking her and at that precise moment she didn’t care. Her life was in tatters. If someone had come along with a knife and cut her to ribbons she couldn’t feel worse than she did right now.

Then she found that she could feel a whole lot worse when he brought the car to a sudden neck-jolting halt. She’d barely recovered from the shock of it when he was twisting towards her in his seat.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Tell me what your friend said to you to turn you back into the spitting cat.’

Cats and wolves were making a prominent show tonight, she thought ridiculously and almost choked on what she recognised as a lump of hysteria now blocking her throat.

‘What makes you think it was Sonya?’ she flashed.

‘Because she was the only loose cannon out there I couldn’t protect you from,’ he answered.

Protect? Her eyes widened. He called this protection? She twisted her face away again, fizzing inside and refusing to answer. For a long, taut tick in time she continued to sit with her eyes still fixed on the side-window and her lips clamped tightly shut.

‘Francesca!’ he rasped.

‘Nicola Mauraux.’

Silence. That was it. She sat there waiting for some kind of response—a guilty curse would have been enough! But nothing else happened. She wasn’t breathing but he was—in and out with a calmness that set her teeth on edge. Her eyes began to sting again—she so badly wanted to break down and cry like a baby that she didn’t know how much longer she could stop herself from doing it!

When he finally moved she was forced to flick another glance at him, warily unsure as to what was coming next. But all he did was settle himself back in his seat and a moment later and they were moving again as if she hadn’t spoken his stepsister’s wretched name.

Well—fine, she thought burningly. Let’s just ignore I said it. Your silence suits me because it means I won’t have to listen to you talk your slick way around the reasons why I am sitting in this car at all!

The car began to accelerate, moving very fast on the straight parts of the narrow country lane, slow and smooth through the bends with the headlights sweeping the darkness ahead of them as her grim-profiled driver put on a slick display of man versus power versus control. His timing was immaculate. He never missed a gear. The engine growled then purred then roared on acceleration then growled and purred again. And the whole thing took place beneath a heavy blanket of silence that helped to hold Francesca mesmerised even though she didn’t want to be. He was the man with everything—great looks, great body and a great sense of style that utilised both to their optimum. Then there was his wealth and his power and his razor-like intellect. The way he used passion for persuasion, words like clubs to beat his opponents to death. And he drove his car with a ruthless, selfish, utter single-mindedness that dared anyone to get in his way. He reminded her of a dark, sleek, prowling predator, top of the food chain. Nothing or no one could touch him.

They sped by her great-uncle’s palazzo. Recognising it jerked her into impulsive speech. ‘You can—’

‘Shut up,’ he incised and made his first mistake with a gear change as if the sound of her voice was all it took to spoil his immaculate performance. The car lurched then put in a surge of power when he’d corrected the error, eating up the winding country lane with precision timing again.

And Francesca subsided in her seat as another bitter thought hit her: what was the use in demanding he take her to her uncle when the miserable old man was likely to refuse to open his door?

When disillusionment hit it stripped you of everything, she noticed, as Bruno Gianni became another name she added to her hate list. I am never going to contact him again, she vowed. He didn’t care about her, hadn’t even bothered to pretend that he did.

The hot ache of tears that were coming closer to bursting free by the second had her closing her eyes and huddling into her seat. As soon as this stupid journey is over I’m going home to England and I’m never going to step foot in Italy again, she promised herself. No wonder my mother never came back. No wonder she froze up whenever Italy or Rome came up in conversation. She was wise; she knew the score. Why hadn’t she listened to her and saved herself a whole lot of grief?

They couldn’t have gone more than a mile or so when the car made a sudden turn that brought her jolting back to her present situation. Her eyelids flickered upwards; she’d barely managed to focus through the tears before they were coming to another neck-jolting halt.

What now—what next? she wondered tensely.

‘I w-want—’

‘You don’t know what you want,’ he cut in tightly.

Then he was dousing the headlights and shutting down the engine with short, tight flicks of his fingers that told her he was still angry—bubbling with it. There was a click and a slither as his seat belt slid away from his body then he was opening his door and climbing into the dark night.

Her wary eyes slewed frontward, following his dark bulk as he moved around the car’s long bonnet, frissons of uncertainty chasing across her skin. Her heart began to stutter. Was he going to eject her from his car and leave her out here in the middle of nowhere now he didn’t have to bother explaining himself?

Her door came open. A waft of cold air placed a chill on her flesh. He bent down to reach across her to unlock her seat belt, and as his face arrived close to her face she saw the grim determination etched into the flat line of his mouth.

‘I’m not getting out,’ she informed him stubbornly.

‘Does it appear that I am giving you a choice?’ he asked. Then grabbed one of her hands as he straightened up again, and used it to haul her out of the car.