скачать книгу бесплатно
Moaning and grabbing his jacket while she gasped, ‘Oh, God!’ was not the message she had intended to send! But it was either that or fall down at his feet, so she chose the option which was on balance marginally less humiliating.
His long fingers moved through the strands of hair, grazing her scalp and causing several million nerve-endings to sigh as she inhaled the warm male scent of his hard, lean body. There was an expression of fierce fascination in his face as he let the silky strands fall through his fingers, making Sam’s senses spin.
‘Your hair should be hot,’ he rasped throatily.
Why not? The rest of me is. She was burning up from the inside out. Common sense told her that there were no flames burning in his utterly spectacular eyes, but knowing it was a mirage didn’t stop her stomach dropping to somewhere below her knees.
‘I really think…Oh, God…’ She sucked in her breath sharply as he moved his thumb across her trembling lips. ‘The thing is, you don’t have to do this…’
It didn’t take a genius to work out his sudden interest. He thought if he kissed her she would forget about Jonny and start lusting after him. An inconvenience he was no doubt prepared to put up with for his sister’s sake!
Her heavy lids lifted when he stopped what he was doing—something which Sam was dismayed to discover she had mixed feelings about. Blinking, her passion-glazed eyes wide and wary, she glimpsed for a split second his expression. She thought he looked shocked, then a short, strange laugh was wrenched from his throat and he bent his head towards her.
‘The thing is, though, I find I do.’ His expression suggested that the discovery didn’t make him overwhelmingly happy.
‘But I’m not going to seduce Jonny,’ she protested weakly. ‘And if I did,’ she confessed, ‘he probably wouldn’t notice. He doesn’t think of me as a girl…’
Alessandro focused on the curve of her lower lip, which was hard to do without biting into the luscious pink softness. ‘Not even he is that much of an idiot…’ he said, thinking he probably was.
‘He is…That is, no, Jonny’s not an idiot!’ Sam protested. ‘You just don’t understand—’
Alessandro’s angry voice cut across her faltering defence of the man she was clearly infatuated with. ‘I don’t want to understand,’ he informed her tautly.
‘But you…’ The raw, driven intensity of the way he was looking at her made the words dry as her aching throat closed over.
‘The only thing I want to do is taste you,’ he confided, in a rough velvet drawl that made every individual cell of her body ache with a deeply disturbing nameless need. ‘And I’d prefer you didn’t talk about another man while I do it.’
‘Don’t I have any say in the matter?’
She stopped, her expression freezing as she realised that she wanted to kiss him. She wanted him so much that she could feel it in her bones. And, actually, what harm could it do?
My God, am I even considering letting this man kiss me? Could I stop him? And, more to the point, do I want to stop him?
Well, it might be interesting. Actually being kissed by a man who was hard and lean, who smelt delicious and male and…Sucking in a horrified breath, she brought her private debate to an abrupt halt. Interesting…! God, I’m going insane—stark, staring mad!
Alessandro gave a fierce smile and ran a brown finger along the moist inner curve of her lower lip. ‘I don’t generally ask permission before I kiss a woman,’ he confessed, before reaching up and calmly unfastening the clip that held her hair in a careless topknot on her head.
Too astounded by his action to do anything, including breathe, she stood there, her shocked gaze trained on his face, while her hair tumbled around her shoulders. He reached out and lifted a hank of shiny coppery hair, winding the tendril around his finger before he released it. ‘You should always wear your hair loose. Why would I ask for permission to kiss you when it is obvious that you want me to?’
‘You’re insane!’ And he’s not the only one, she thought as she grabbed her hair in both hands before pushing it ruthlessly behind her ears. ‘If you go around doing this sort of thing I’m amazed you’ve not been arrested yet.’
He looked amused by the accusation. ‘It’s the signals you’re sending out. Though you’re probably not even aware of doing so,’ he conceded. ‘Your pupils are dilated and your skin is flushed.’
‘So is yours.’ There was a faint sheen to his glorious olive-toned skin, and bands of colour accentuated the sculpted elegance of his prominent cheekbones.
‘You look like you’ll taste…sweet,’ he observed, his breathing quickening perceptibly as he stared at her lips in a way that made Sam’s sensitive stomach flip and quiver.
‘That would be the strawberry cheescake…’ she responded, faint, but holding it together in a pulse-racing, kneeshaking sort of way—until she made the mistake of allowing her darting gaze to linger on the sensually moulded curve of his mouth. ‘Cheesecake,’ she echoed, getting hot inside as she carried on staring at his mouth and thought about how it would feel on her skin. ‘Do I have some on my mouth…?’ She touched the tip of her tongue to her lips, very aware of and mortified by the heat spreading through her body.
Alessandro sucked in his breath through flared nostrils, and the reckless, predatory gleam in his hooded dark eyes made Sam’s already stressed pulse kick up another notch. She brought her eyelashes down in a protective shield and plucked fretfully at the neck of her shirt, to loosen the fabric that was clinging to her damp, hot skin.
‘The only thing you need on your mouth is mine…’ he claimed, with the sort of macho arrogance that should in theory have brought a scornful laugh to her lips.
But this wasn’t theory, and it was no theoretical tongue that slowly traced the outline of her quivering lips and tilted her face up to his. Paralysed with lust, she literally ached for the taste of him. The man didn’t have many things right, but in this particular instance, as she felt the first movement of his lips against her own, Sam could find no fault with his conclusion. She did need his mouth on hers.
Oh, God, did she need it!
Her lashes lifted from her flushed cheeks when his head lifted. ‘Oh, God!’ she moaned, meeting his hot, glittering eyes. ‘I suppose you think that proves something? Other than the fact you can kiss quite well.’ Which had always been pretty much a given. Nobody with a mouth like his could be a bad kisser.
One corner of his fascinating mouth lifted. ‘Let’s see if I can improve on quite well…’ he rasped, placing one hand on the back of her head and the other on her bottom. He put his lips to hers and jerked her towards him in one smooth motion.
Sam felt something inside her explode as the erotic pressure increased until she could bear it no more, and with a groan she opened her mouth and moaned into his mouth. As they kissed with a wild, frenzied hunger that Sam had never experienced or dreamt existed she pressed her body into his, drawing herself up onto her toes to slide her fingers into his hair.
When his head lifted it was small comfort that he looked almost as dazed as she felt. She stared at him, her eyes big and shocked, and rubbed the back of her hand across her swollen lips. On legs that felt like cotton wool she took a shaky step backwards.
‘Why did you do that…?’
Good question. ‘If you kiss Trelevan—no,’ he corrected. ‘If you go near him, I will wring his pathetic neck,’ Alessandro promised grimly, knowing that she cared for the other man’s safety and comfort a lot more than she did her own.
Well, now she knew why he had done it. Her own motivation was much less clear-cut. ‘You are a manipulative bastard.’ And I am a total push-over. ‘And if you lay one finger on me ever again—’
‘You’ll say, Don’t stop,’ he inserted smoothly.
A wave of mortified colour washed over her milk-pale skin as she stared up at him with loathing. ‘I’ll sell my story to the tabloids.’ As empty threats went, this one was pathetic. He obviously thought so, because she could hear the sound of his laughter as she walked away.
Sam kept her back rigid and her head disdainfully high until she shut herself in a booth in the powder room. She was in there half an hour all told, what with crying and then fixing the damage to her face.
When she emerged she had concluded that it would be a mistake to get hung up over a kiss…It was nothing major—just a wrinkle.
She almost believed it.
Chapter Six
‘LISTEN, Em, I should be making a move.’
‘Now! But it’s still early,’ Emma protested, raising her voice above the gentle buzz of conversation and the music supplied by a string quartet from the local music college. ‘What have you done to your hair?’ she added, looking at the skewed knot on the top of her friend’s head.
Sam, whose efforts to repair the damage had been severely hampered by shaking hands and a need to mouth You idiot at her reflection in the powder room mirror every two seconds, ignored the question.
‘I want to get back before it gets dark.’ Sam felt guilty when her friend’s face dropped, but stuck to her guns. She was pretty sure that if called upon to make polite small talk with Alessandro she might make a total fool of herself. Whether this would involve slapping him or begging him to kiss her was a matter she didn’t want to think too hard about!
‘I thought you were staying with your mum and dad tonight?’
That was before one of your guests kissed me and I kissed him back. ‘Change of plan.’ She flashed a smile. Her guilt injected a couple of extra million volts into it.
Emma took in the brilliance and grinned back. ‘What’s his name? Do I know him? Are we talking husband material?’
An image of Alessandro’s dark, devastating features flashed into Sam’s head. Anything less like husband material would be hard to find. Some women would just look, but there would always be those ready and willing to lead him astray.
She wasn’t saying being totally gorgeous to look at automatically made a man incapable of fidelity, but it would take a woman who was supremely confident in herself to be able to take the covetous stares of other women in her stride.
The woman who married Alessandro would have to be a supremely confident creature or totally gorgeous—probably both. In short the female equivalent of him.
‘I had a phone call…publisher…’ She shrugged.
Emma looked dissatisfied by her response, but beyond subjecting her friend to an uncomfortably searching look made no further protests beyond, ‘Well, you definitely can’t go without saying goodbye to Paul. When last seen,’ she revealed with a smile, ‘he had retreated with half the other men to the Orangerie. I think they’re talking cricket.’ She rolled her eyes.
‘Lead on,’ Sam said, picking up her handbag and following her friend down the plush carpeted corridor that led to the Orangerie. Emma’s husband, Paul, and half a dozen of the other male guests were indeed there, but they weren’t talking cricket. They were huddled in one corner displaying varying degrees of horror and discomfort as they watched the object responsible for the ear-splitting din that Sam had heard halfway down the corridor.
When Sam had last seen the blond-haired three-year-old he had been enchanting the adults with his sunny smile and a lisping rendition of a nursery rhyme. Now he was lying in the middle of the floor, his red tear-stained face contorted with fury, as he screeched and drummed his heels on the floor.
On seeing his wife, Paul Metcalf hurried across. ‘Thank God you’re here, Emma. It’s Harry. Simon got a call, and he asked me to keep an eye on Harry for a minute.’
‘How long,’ Emma asked, wincing as the toddler hit a high note, ‘has he been like that?’
‘It feels like hours,’ her harassed husband responded dourly.
Emma exchanged glances with Sam. ‘I think he needs his mum. Do you know where Rachel is, Sam?’
Sam shook her head. ‘Shall I go and look for her?’
Despite the fact that Rachel, whose father was the local vicar, was a couple of years older than both herself and Emma, the three girls had always been inseparable. And, unlike many childhood alliances, theirs had not fizzled out when they reached adulthood and went their separate ways. Rachel, who combined a career in banking with being wife to a very dishy New Yorker, had asked Sam to be godmother to Harry, her firstborn. When she had uprooted and followed her husband to the States the previous year both Sam and Emma had visited, but had been delighted when Simon’s firm had decided to resettle them in London.
Paul caught Sam’s arm. ‘No, you stay here. I’ll go,’ he offered eagerly, before his wife told him very firmly to stay put.
Sam paused before going to console her godson, her amused glance sliding around the group of men. ‘Didn’t it occur to any of you lot to do anything for the poor little mite?’
‘Have you seen the state of him?’ her indignant host demanded, speaking on behalf of the other men present. ‘There is enough chocolate cake on that kid to feed the five thousand, and I’m wearing my best suit. And,’ he added, eyeing the flailing legs, ‘the “poor little mite” has a kick like a mule.’
‘Wimp!’ his wife retorted scornfully.
‘This situation obviously calls for the female touch,’ Paul observed with dignity. ‘Either that or a good child psychologist,’ he added under his breath.
Emma caught his arm. ‘You think so?’ she said. ‘Look at that,’ she invited, venting a loud, incredulous laugh as she nodded towards the prone toddler. ‘He doesn’t seem too bothered about getting his suit dirty. My God—this is marvellous!’
Along with Paul, Sam turned in time to see a tall, elegant figure squat down beside the screaming youngster. She watched in total amazement as Alessandro, balancing on his heels and appearing totally unfazed by the pandemonium or the risk to his designer suit, began to talk casually to the screaming toddler.
‘The man has guts—I’ll give him that.’ Paul’s brows knitted as an expression of horror spread across his face. ‘Our sweet little Laurie is never going to do anything like that, is she…?’
Ignoring her husband’s worried enquiry, her fascinated gaze trained on the man and baby, Emma said knowledgeably to Sam, ‘It’s a cultural thing. Mediterranean men have no problem showing affection to babies and children—unlike our homegrown variety…’ she added, directing a scornful sniff towards her spouse.
Alessandro carried on talking as he loosened the knot on his tie. Sam was too far away to make out what he was saying, but the child obviously could, and it appeared to have an immediate and nothing short of magical effect on the distraught youngster.
‘My God!’ Emma breathed, as the child’s cries became noticeably less strident, then faded totally. ‘What is he saying, do you suppose?’ she wondered in an awed undertone.
The child lifted his tear-stained face towards Alessandro and chuckled.
Sam didn’t respond. For some insane reason, when she saw Alessandro respond to the child with a smile that made him look relaxed and at least ten years younger, she got an empty, aching feeling in the pit of her stomach.
‘Come!’
Responding to Alessandro’s imperious command and to his open arms, the toddler climbed into them without a moment’s hesitation and wound his grubby hands around the man’s neck.
There were several gruff murmurs of appreciation as Alessandro got to his feet.
The genuine quality of Alessandro’s smile became—to Sam’s mind, at least—forced when he noticed her. Sam, the lapel of her criminally unattractive suit clasped in one hand, expelled a gusty breath and tried to act as if every nerve in her body wasn’t screaming.
Beautiful man…baby…the whole thing was so painfully clichéd she would have to be a total idiot to fall for it. But falling she was…Oh, what is wrong with me? I must be one of those women who are only attracted when there’s no chance of their feelings being returned, she decided. Even if in this case they were shallow and lustful. A shrink would have a field-day dissecting my twisted psyche.
‘That,’ declared Emma, walking up to Alessandro and ruffling the toddler’s blond hair, ‘was very impressive. I’m glad I invited you now.’
Alessandro’s dark eyes creased at the corners as his smile warmed the dark depths. Sam, whose nerve-endings were twanging like an overstrung guitar, knew that if he ever smiled at her that way she was in deep trouble. And you’re not now?
‘You weren’t glad before?’
‘You were welcome as Kat’s big brother before, and now you’re welcome because you are a brave and resourceful man who laughs in the face of danger.’
‘It’s always nice to feel welcome,’ Alessandro responded, his dark, heavy-lidded eyes briefly flickering in Sam’s direction.
Sam, her heart thudding wildly in her chest, pretended not to notice.
‘Shall I take Harry?’
Emma didn’t argue when he shook his head and said, ‘Harry would like to find his mum, and if the route should take us anywhere near ice cream this would not be a bad thing.’
Sam looked at the smear of chocolate down his cheek, at the sleek hair ruffled by childish fingers, and her indignation escalated. Alessandro looked so damned relaxed and at ease with a grubby, cranky kid on his hip…How dared he slip out of the hedonistic playboy role she had assigned him?
‘No idea where Rachel is,’ Emma admitted. ‘But as for the ice cream, I’ll get that for you myself…’
At that moment Rachel, wrapped in her habitual air of unruffled serenity, walked into the room. She took in the situation at one glance.
‘I take it from the glazed looks that you have been treated to one of Harry’s grade A tantrums? Goodness, Harry,’ she reproached, as her son wrapped his arms limpet-like around her neck, ‘you’ll put Aunty Sam totally off having children,’ she observed, flashing Alessandro a warm smile as the transfer of grubby child was smoothly completed. She arched an enquiring brow as she lifted her eyes to the tall Italian. ‘It looks like I have you to thank Mr Di Livio…’
Alessandro gave a self-deprecating shrug. ‘Not at all. Harry and I were just becoming acquainted and discovering a mutual fondness for ice cream. Now, if you’ll excuse me…Oh, and ladies…’ the voltage of his smile switched up several notches as he added firmly ‘…it’s Alessandro.’
‘If you don’t have children,’ Emma called after him, ‘it will be a total…no, a criminal waste!’
Without breaking stride Alessandro flung her an attractive grin over his shoulder. ‘I am not married.’
‘Where were you three years ago?’
‘Being cited in a divorce case,’ Sam muttered. Did Marisa Sinclair, who had lost both her husband and her lover, regret her affair? Sam wondered. Or did she consider it a price worth paying?
‘Sam, how could you? I’m sure he heard you,’ Emma remonstrated as the tall, dark-headed Italian vanished from view.
Sam gave a defensive shrug. ‘What if he did? And what do you mean, how could I? You don’t like him.’
Rachel stood looking bewildered by this uncharacteristic display of childish venom. ‘Did I miss something?’
