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In a Storm of Scandal
KIM LAWRENCE
Imprisoned with the Italian!Poppy lost her heart – and her reputation – to the dangerously suave Luca Ranieri. Only to be crushed by a whirlwind of scandal when aristocratic Luca chose duty over desire. Now Poppy finds herself stranded in her grandmother’s castle by a violent storm – captive with none other than the deliciously dishevelled Luca.For three days the tempest rages, and Poppy loses her heart to Luca all over again. But with reality comes the media frenzy. And this time the price of scandal means Luca can’t just walk away…
‘Are you flirting with me?’
‘Was I not meant to?’
Ever since he’d appeared her emotions had been see-sawing dramatically as she struggled against a determination to keep him at arm’s length—physically and emotionally—and an equally strong inclination to pull him close in every way.
‘I don’t want you!’
Before she knew it he was beside her. Without saying a word he planted one hand in the small of her back, the other on the curve of her hip, and with negligent ease dragged her to him.
She was too startled by his actions to resist. That was her story and she was sticking to it!
He arched an expressive brow and lowered his mouth to hers. His dark eyes glittered with insolent challenge. ‘No …?’
About the Author
KIM LAWRENCE lives on a farm in rural Anglesey. She runs two miles daily, and finds this an excellent opportunity to unwind and seek inspiration for her writing! It also helps her keep up with her husband, two active sons, and the various stray animals which have adopted them. Always a fanatical consumer of fiction, she is now equally enthusiastic about writing. She loves a happy ending!
Recent titles by the same author:
THE THORN IN HIS SIDE
A SPANISH AWAKENING
In a Storm
of Scandal
Kim Lawrence
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
PROLOGUE
June 2004 Rome, Villa Palladio.
‘YOU’RE a lucky man.’
‘Yes I am, Uncle Dino.’
He was a lucky man.
Tell yourself that often enough, Luca, and it just might start to sound true.
Arranged marriages worked. The Ranieris had been making arranged marriages work for generations.
His own grandparents’ marriage cementing two powerful Italian families had been arranged, maybe not such a good example … but his own parents had continued the custom and with some success.
But he had always considered himself the moderniser destined to drag his family into the twenty-first century.
However, a lot could change in six weeks.
It had been six weeks to the day when he had accepted his father’s seemingly innocent suggestion to join him for a brandy in his study.
After first pouring them both a generous measure of brandy Damiano Ranieri had extracted a box from the safe concealed behind a painting before ceremoniously presenting it to his son.
‘It was your great-grandmother’s, Luca.’
It seemed supremely ironic now to recall that when he had stared at the heirloom sitting in its bed of velvet his first thought had been: he knows … somehow he knows about us. He knows about Poppy!
He knows and he isn’t screaming or even threatening to disown me!
Touched by what he had seen—for about thirty seconds—as an unexpected parental display of approval, he had opened his mouth to tell his father how much he appreciated the gesture, but that would have been slightly premature.
He and Poppy had discussed the future and envisaged spending it together but they had both agreed that they were too young to make that sort of commitment yet.
‘See how you feel after we’ve spent the next year together, Luca?’ Poppy had teased as they sat beside the loch, and planned the route of their gap-year expedition. ‘By then you might have gone off me totally.’
After he had demonstrated that he was never going to go off her—a task that took some time as her mouth was an invitation to sin—Luca had tugged the sides of his shirt together across his chest and growled. ‘And you’ll have moved on, basking in the attention of all those sex-crazed male students.’
The thought of those determined little hands sliding over another man’s skin, setting another man’s nerve endings on fire, had made his stomach muscles quiver in rejection.
‘Sex crazed sounds interesting …’ Poppy’s delicious husky laugh had stopped as she studied his face. ‘You’re jealous!’ The discovery had appeared to delight her.
‘Heartless little witch,’ he had condemned with a grin.
‘Your heartless little witch, Luca,’ she had reminded him quietly.
The undisguised love and confidence shining in the incredible eyes that had met his had made things tighten painfully in his chest. Poppy never tried to disguise anything. It had all been there on her face, in her voice, the expressive sweep of her slim hands—she was utterly and totally transparent.
Gianluca, the product of a calm home where voices were never raised in either anger or pleasure, where dignity and control were the order of the day, was less comfortable with spontaneous displays of emotion.
He was, to quote Poppy, ‘a work in progress’.
‘That makes a difference,’ he had admitted huskily.
‘Don’t worry, Luca, I will tell all the sex-crazed students that my heart is taken by a computer geek.’
Her smile, never far away, had peeked out again like sun from behind a cloud as she had added, ‘You do know I suppose that computer geeks are not meant to have muscles or look so hot? Though actually I think you’d look pretty good with glasses, sort of sexy intellectual …?’ She had traced the shape of spectacles on his face with her finger and squinted at the imaginary outline. ‘Yes, very Clark Kent.’
‘You think I am a geek?’
‘A hot geek. Oh, don’t worry, there’s no need to play it down, and don’t deny it because I know you do. You don’t have to be embarrassed or anything. I love it that you’re super brainy. By the time I finish my degree you’ll have created the most successful computer webdesign company in the world,’ she had predicted with a happy sigh. ‘It’s actually perfect timing.’
‘How do you manage to be upbeat all the time?’ And be so damned perceptive.
‘It’s all part of my charm and anyhow how could I not be upbeat? Everything is perfect except …’ Tongue caught between her teeth, she had directed a stare of smouldering challenge at his face. ‘You do know that this is the exact spot where we first kissed?’
‘I have not forgotten. Stop that, Poppy,’ he had warned, unable to take his eyes off her luscious mouth.
‘Stop what, Luca?’ Poppy had produced a look of mock innocence and patted the grass. ‘Don’t you think it would be kind of … appropriate if it was the same spot we …?’
Feeling noble and in extreme pain, he had clamped his hand over the slim dextrous fingers that were slipping the buttons on her blouse and, breathing hard through the fog of lust clouding his vision, dragged her to her feet, but not before it had become clear that Poppy was not wearing a bra.
Nobility was definitely overrated!
It was very hard to shield someone from your baser instincts when they didn’t want to be protected. Promises to his godmother or not, had there not been an ice-cold loch for him to walk into fully clothed things might have turned out differently.
‘I appreciate this, Dad, I really do, but actually it’s a bit early.’ And he had always seen Poppy wearing an emerald to match her eyes on her finger. ‘And she’s very young.’
And very impatient with his own reservations when it came to taking their relationship to the next level. The five-year age gap between them did not bother Poppy.
But it bothered him, and in deference to her inexperience from the beginning he had gone slow, keeping his lust under fierce control, not wanting to take advantage or scare her.
‘The first time should be special,’ he had shouted, standing waist deep in the water as he shook the water from his hair before slicking it back with a not quite steady hand.
‘It won’t be special if I die of old age waiting.’
‘I promised your grandmother I wouldn’t—’
‘Break my heart, I know, but you’re not going to and I’m eighteen, Luca, and I’m not going to change my mind. This isn’t a crush—if it was I’d think you’re perfect and I don’t, but I love you despite your faults.’
Laughing, he had waded from the water. ‘Please don’t enumerate them … again—you’re bad for my ego.’
‘Your ego, Luca Ranieri, is bomb and bullet proof,’ Poppy had contended lovingly.
‘There’s a beach in Southern Thailand.’
‘Who did you see the beach with?’
‘I was alone.’
Her furrowed brow had smoothed. ‘Good.’
‘You can only get to it by boat, the sand is white and the air is warm and when the moon is shining and the waves are lapping on the shore—’
‘Stop!’ Poppy had begged with a sigh. ‘You had me at “there’s”. You could make a dictionary sound seductive when you use that voice, Luca Ranieri. Look,’ she had instructed, rolling up her sleeve and extending a bare forearm towards him. ‘I’ve got goose bumps … all over.’ A wicked gleam had appeared in her eyes. ‘Want to see?’
Luca had groaned. ‘You know I do.’
‘Except your old-fashioned sense of honour and a fear of Gran is stopping you,’ she had completed fondly. ‘Fine, have it your way. I’ll let you woo me slowly, but don’t expect me to stop trying,’ she had warned him.
‘Aurelia loves rubies.’
‘Aurelia …’ Luca closed the box with a click. ‘I’m not marrying Aurelia.’
Both families had never made a secret of the wish that their two dynasties should be united by a marriage. As children he and Aurelia had frequently joked about their parents’ old-fashioned, ambitious and ultimately unrealistic plans.
In recent years Aurelia who had gone the finishing-school route rather than university, had been around less to enjoy the joke on the rare occasions when the subject had been mentioned—less a plan now and more a wistful aspiration, or so it had seemed to Luca.
‘I’m in love with someone else.’ The truth seemed to him the simplest way to draw a line under the subject once and for all.
‘Of course you’re in love with someone else, Luca, you’re twenty-three and I’m sure she’s impossibly unsuitable.’
The patronising note in his father’s voice set his teeth on edge.
‘Do you realise how few women understand the responsibility that marrying into a family like ours brings?’ Damiano said, warming to his theme. ‘It’s all about breeding. Girls today want their own careers—obviously your wife can never work.’
Despite the situation he had walked unwittingly into, the thought of Poppy’s reaction if he told her he was about to chain her to the kitchen sink almost made Gianluca smile.
‘They do not understand the concept of duty … the question is do you?’ Damiano fired a fierce look at his son. ‘And if we are talking love, what about Aurelia? She is in love with you and she has been waiting patiently.’
‘That’s rubbish!’ Luca was horrified by the suggestion.
Seeing the flash of doubt in his son’s eyes, Damiano arched a bushy brow. ‘Is it? You have trained for your future career and she has trained for hers. Where is the problem—you like her …?’
‘Liking is not enough.’
‘Love again …’ his father drawled impatiently. ‘Do you think I was in love with your mother?’
‘Yes.’ Everyone knew his parents had made good of their marriage.
His father had the grace to look sheepish. ‘Yes, well, that’s not the point.’
‘It isn’t?’
‘The point is you were always going to marry the girl, Luca, eventually. So why not now?’
Rather than dispute the false claim, Gianluca, sure he was missing something, addressed the question that puzzled him most. ‘Why now? Why the sudden urgency?’
His father ducked the question.
‘Oh, I know you had plans to travel or whatever.’
‘When I agreed to the post-grad year at Harvard you knew I intended to take a gap year once I graduated with an MBA.’
‘Like your friends … but you are not like your friends. You have already seen the world several times.’
‘From the window of five-star hotels.’
‘Yes, you have really suffered, Luca.’
‘I know I have been fortunate.’
‘You have been given everything and now it is time to give something back. It’s time you remembered your duty to your family … your name … it’s time you settled down, my boy.’
