скачать книгу бесплатно
‘You ought to take those shoes off. They look tight too.’
More touching! Her eyes became huge grey pools of anxiety. ‘No! I’ll keep them on, thanks.’
‘Yes.’ And he confounded her by kneeling at her feet and carefully beginning to untie the ribbon, his head close to her bare shins. ‘For the sake of your comfort and your quick recovery—which I’m sure we both want,’ he murmured.
In the light from the window his hair gleamed with a depth of colour like those wonderful dark plums with that faint blue tinge—the kind of invitingly glossy, smooth texture that made you reach out and... She checked her fidgeting hand quickly.
What was it about this situation that was making her feel so vulnerable? Was it the powerful and charismatic man at her feet, gently—and surely rather slowly—removing something she was wearing?
She gasped. Colleoni’s fingers were lightly touching her ankle, nothing more, but a shudder had rippled through her body and he’d looked up, his eyes suddenly glowing with an indolent warmth.
‘Something wrong?’ he enquired silkily.
‘I’m ticklish,’ she croaked, and blushed because of the lie.
For a couple of seconds he studied her soberly while she wondered if he was reading the truth: that she found him intensely compelling; that she felt horrified that her long-denied sexual hunger was spilling out to a complete stranger.
‘Really?’ he drawled softly.
Miserably she watched him bend his head again and attend to the ribbons, knowing he’d recognised the signals being sent out by her body. Impatiently she waited, wondering why he was finding the laces so difficult to undo. But it gave her a chance to chill down her feelings.
She was married. Unhappily, perhaps, certainly close to divorce. But, for the moment, she was legally tied and therefore unavailable. Her body must know that, surely?
Curls of wicked, delicious pleasure wound up from her feet to her brain, touching every erogenous zone in between, and she realised that her body knew nothing of the sort and was telling her so in no uncertain fashion.
‘Please...’ she demurred huskily, finding it difficult to breathe.
In protest, she reached down to stop him. Their hands met, their fingers entwined. For a brief second or two they both stilled—she because of the extraordinary sensation that had shot into her chest and stomach and was now warming her thoroughly, crawling through her veins like an electric charge. It appalled her. And he—well, she didn’t know why he had paused, because when his long, dark lashes lifted his eyes were big and glistening and molten but quite without expression.
He seemed filled with a vital force and his energy had flowed into her like a bursting dam filling a channel. She’d heard the expression ‘a coiled spring’ before but had never understood it. Now she did. It was that—the tangible force—which had disturbed her and jolted her with a few hundred volts of electric power. Nothing sexual at all, she told herself, willing it to be true.
‘I’d be hard put to it to translate that plea,’ he drawled, and her lips parted in dismay because she couldn’t speak for the choking sensation in her throat.
His mocking, contemptuous eyes never left hers. He continued to untie the ribbons; she continued to feel disorientated and uncomfortable under the intense, mesmeric stare. With tantalising gentleness, he lifted her feet from the shoes just as her hair fell forward, brushing his face, and she felt its silken strands drifting across the flawless darkness of his skin.
And then, in a flash, he’d straightened and was standing again, leaving her flexing her released feet in relief. But she felt miserable and bemused and warily peered at his shadowed face and his husky body, which was outlined sharp and black against the glare of the sky.
But in the darkness of his face his eyes burned feverishly, causing floodgates to open within her, a terrible rush of flowing heat pouring through her veins. His energy was invading her and she was being drawn to him like a magnet and she was praying for him to have a power failure.
She had to get out. He was evil—one of those Svengali types. But she felt weak and confused, hardly able to understand what was happening to her. Because she knew, somewhere in the back of her mind, that it was nothing to do with a mere sexual vacuum that had existed within her for longer than she could remember. This was something different. Something so threatening to her vaguely ordered life and her respect for herself that she must escape.
And yet ... there was the mystery of the photograph. Torn between flight and curiosity, she looked up at him helplessly, her enormous, soft eyes unknowingly begging him for help. And seeing his tense stillness, his potent and sinister stare, she grasped frantically for the banal.
‘Any chance of some tea?’ she asked tentatively.
A short laugh exploded from his lips as if that was the last thing he’d expected her to say. ‘Tea!’ The cynical mouth curled into something resembling a wry smile. ‘Of course. I should have remembered the English pick-me-up, the solution to all of life’s dramas,’ he said a little scathingly, as if, she thought wryly, she should be knocking back double whiskies like any self-respecting Sicilian.
When he went to the desk and ordered tea over the intercom, she allowed her gaze to focus on the photograph again. Still there. Still Gio. Someone else’s suit-madly elegant and expensive and so designer-labelled it would have been out of their realm—but she recognised the shirt...
She jumped. Colleoni had come up behind her so quietly that she hadn’t noticed, and put a hand on her shoulder. Which she flinched from and which he drew away. But not before his wretched energy field had made her stomach contract in alarm.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, coming around the chair and speaking with a huskiness that rolled through her in waves. Either she’d imagined it or be had caressed her neck with his maddeningly arousing fingers. Something had caused her skin to tingle.
Too many things were happening to her. She needed to deal with one at a time. With a shaking finger, she pointed to the photograph. ‘That’s...that’s my husband,’ she croaked.
Surprise wiped away all the sensuality, all the ruthlessness of his expression and he was briefly just plain handsome. Seeing that she was serious, he followed her pointing finger and then looked back at her in astonishment.
‘Impossible!’ he said emphatically. ‘That’s my brother—my elder brother.’
‘Gio,’ she persisted shakily, levering herself cautiously to her feet.
There was a pause. ‘Really?’
For a moment she thought Luciano had tensed but when she studied him carefully she saw that he was quite composed. She checked the photo again. It was Gio. Her legs wobbled and she caught hold of the arm of the chair as a million doubts began to wash through her mind.
‘He is my husband.’ Her bewildered eyes met his. ‘He’s called Gio Colleoni,’ she cried in agitation. ‘I’m Debbie Colleoni.’
And although he hadn’t moved she knew that Luciano had killed his sexual response to her stone-dead and replaced it with a wall of ice. ‘You’ve linked our names and jumped to a few conclusions. That can’t be your husband. I think you’re mistaken,’ he said coldly.
She wasn’t. Her heart was pumping hard. What did Gio get up to when he was away? Were her secret fears right—that Gio’s stories about his travels didn’t ring true, that his refusal to give her a contact number at work was highly suspicious?
‘Oh, God,’ she groaned softly, closing her eyes. ‘Please let there be a good reason for this.’
“There is.’ Luciano Colleoni stood between her and her view of the photograph. ‘You’ re mistaken. He must be... similar to your husband. The photo’s blurred and there’s a similarity in some faces that—’
‘No. That’s him,’ she whispered, opening her eyes again and staring blindly at the view. She didn’t need to look at the photo again; the image had been burned into her brain. ‘That’s the way he tilts his head.’ She looked up at Luciano helplessly, willing him to solve the mystery. ‘That’s the expensive watch he won in a rams.’
‘A raffle? No. My brother bought that in Venezia—Venice,’ said Luciano curtly.
‘I bought him that shirt!’ she cried, failing to keep her voice calm.
‘There must be a million like it,’ dismissed Luciano with a shrug.
‘That is my husband,’ she persisted in a wobbly voice. ‘Heavens, we have the same surname! There aren’t coincidences like that; you must be some relative!’
‘The name is common among my countrymen. If you were called Smith, would you claim kinship with any Smith who resembled your husband?’
‘If there was a photograph of them both together, yes!’ she declared hotly.
Colleoni strode over to his desk, studied the photograph and appeared to come to a decision. He picked it up and brought it over to her. ‘Do you recognise his wedding-ring?’ he asked abruptly.
She held the frame with trembling hands. It was evidently an expensive ring, a thick gold band with stones set in it. Not the cheap one she’d saved up for and which she’d exchanged with the thin band of gold he’d given her on their wedding-day.
Muddled, she looked up, her expression lost and forlorn. ‘No,’ she admitted.
‘As I said,’ murmured Luciano soothingly, taking the photograph back and dropping it rather casualty on the bubble-wrap, as if it had no sentimental value to him, ‘he can’t be your husband. It’s out of the question.’
‘But... it’s so like him. I thought...’
‘Ah, tea,’ he said, sounding relieved, as if he couldn’t wait to get rid of the paranoid female making outlandish claims in his office. ‘Bring it here, Annie,’ he instructed coolly. ‘Milk?’ Debbie nodded glumly as he went through the ritual. ‘Sugar?’
‘Two.’
‘I’ll make that three.’ He hesitated and then said in stilted tones, ‘It must have been a shock to think that you might be related to me.’
‘Yes,’ she muttered, wondering if she was going crazy. But she couldn’t see the photo any more. Perhaps it had been her imagination. She could be wrong.
He handed her the thin porcelain cup edged in gold and watched while she stirred and sipped, his arms folded across his brawny chest.
When she put the cup down and lifted unhappy eyes to him again, his mouth compressed as if he was stifling a wince. ‘You do see that you’re mistaken, don’t you?’ he said gruffly. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but I do know my brother. I know what he would have spent on that suit, for instance, and...’
She dashed the tears from her eyes. Either he believed what he was saying and she’d mistaken the identity of the man in the photograph, or he was hiding the truth. She needed to be sure.
‘It’s expensive,’ she said shortly. ‘I take your point.’
‘You’re not offended?’
Luciano proffered a royal blue silk handkerchief. She gave a good blow, hoping it would wake up a few brain cells. And then she screwed the silk into a small ball in her clenched fist, her lower lip trembling with uncertainty. Maybe Gio had kept the existence of his family from her because he was ashamed of her.
Debbie swallowed the hard, choking lump in her throat, her eyes filling again. He’d made his opinions clear quite soon after their wedding-day, when he’d discovered the easy, ordinary way they lived. Gio was too smooth, too classy, his manners too impeccable for him to be comfortable in their cramped flat. Sauce bottles on the table, butter from the packet, no napkins—napkins!—which he’d been horrified to hear her mother calling serviettes!
And now she might be facing his brother—the elegant, autocratic Luciano, who seemed equally determined to keep her at arm’s length.
‘I like honest people,’ she said pointedly. ‘I call a spade a spade. I know my husband couldn’t possibly afford to buy such an expensive suit but—’
‘You... you don’t have much money, then?’ asked Luciano carefully, unfolding his arms and passing her a bourbon biscuit from the dainty plate.
‘Not a lot,’ she said cautiously, biting into it gratefully. She was suddenly starving.
‘He’s unemployed, your husband?’
Her eyes flicked up. ‘No, he’s a salesman. He’s not home much. Hardly at all, lately...’
‘He keeps you short of money?’
Debbie frowned and indicated that she had a mouth full of biscuit. Something in his tone spoke of disapproval—no—anger. That didn’t make sense. But it was probably ignorance and he thought all men should make a fair settlement on their wives. What would a wealthy man know of budgeting? He probably gave his wife a huge allowance each month for underwear alone. If he was married.
She peered at the long, tanned fingers of his left hand which was holding out the plate again. A signet-ring on the ring-finger. But he was a Continental. She munched on the biscuit, her tongue absently lapping the thick sandwich of cream, and realised that when Luciano had pointed out his brother’s wedding-ring it had been on the right hand, Continental style. However, Luciano didn’t wear a ring on his right hand. So he could be married or he could be a bachelor.
‘We’re hard up,’ she said defensively, wondering why her thoughts had run on so. ‘Life’s tough out there,’ she informed him wryly.
‘Is he home at the moment?’ he asked casually.
Debbie shot him a quick look because there had been a thread of tension under the silk. His expression, however, was unreadable. ‘Not till tomorrow. He’s travelling back at the moment,’ she explained, her lashes moist with slowly oozing tears as she pictured herself asking Gio for a divorce. He’d threatened to take Steffy away with him if she ever thought of leaving him. She shuddered at the thought.
‘Does he call you when he’s away?’ asked Luciano, soft sympathy in his melting eyes.
‘No.’ She could explain that by saying that Gio had long since stopped bothering to call her, but didn’t want to share the problems of her marriage with Luciano. She bit her lip. ‘He’s working in Scotland and the Midlands at the moment,’ she confided. ‘He’s been away for three weeks...’
The dark eyes met hers with cool remoteness. ‘I see. My brother lives in Sicily. He’s been there for—’ there was a brief hesitation ‘—some time.’ The strong jaw clenched as though he was grinding his teeth in suppressed anger.
‘Oh. It seems that I jumped to the wrong conclusion. It... it did look like him,’ she said in a small voice.
‘How many more deliveries do you have?’ he suddenly asked.
‘None. I’ve finished,’ she answered listlessly, and gave a short laugh. ‘I wouldn’t be sitting here if I hadn’t.’
‘I’ll get you a taxi.’
‘No!’ she cried quickly. ‘I can’t afford one. And,’ she said as he opened his haughty mouth to speak, ‘you can forget any ideas about offering to pay for one. I don’t take charity. I’ve got my van down the road.’
‘You look very pale. I don’t think you should drive,’ he insisted sternly.
‘I’m perfectly all right.’ Flustered, she slipped her feet into the shoes, only to see him cross to his desk and punch the intercom button.
‘Get my driver to bring the limo to the front,’ he ordered abruptly.
It sounded wonderful, but her mother would have hysterics if she turned up in a limo with a chauffeur. ‘I’d rather he didn’t. Thanks for the tea,’ she said politely, roughly tying the ribbon laces. ‘I’m grateful—and sorry to have taken up your time.’
‘I’m seeing you home,’ he said firmly. ‘You can show my chauffeur where your van is and he’ll drive it for you. No arguments,’ he said, holding up his hand when she rose in protest. ‘My sense of honour would be wounded if I didn’t treat a lady in distress with Sicilian gallantry.’
‘You are Sicilian, then!’ she cried in astonishment. ‘So’s my husband.’
His mouth had tightened. ‘As I said, Colleoni is a common name there,’ he said stiffly.
Debbie passed a hand over her forehead, feeling she’d missed something vital. ‘I’m sorry. It seemed such a coincidence...’
‘Remarkable, isn’t it?’ he said smoothly, taking her elbow. ‘Now, no arguing. Let’s get you home and then I can come back and eat my lunch in peace.’
‘You’ll like it,’ she said, allowing herself to be guided into the lift. ‘It’s awfully good.’
He seemed to fill the lift. The air squeezed in on her, making her breathe faster. He looked steadily at her but she studied her feet, feeling dreadfully conscious of his proximity. She squirmed irritably and heard his soft laugh.
Scowling at him from under her thick brows, she said boldly, ‘Give me another chance to do your catering. Your staff don’t want doughnuts and beefburgers, or plastic-tasting sandwiches. We can—’
‘Family comes first,’ he cut in with quiet decisiveness. ‘I have promised Pia, my sister-in-law, that her franchises can supply my banks.’
‘Banks? Plural banks?’ she asked, her eyes widening.
‘Plural banks,’ he confirmed in amusement.
‘Good grief, you must be as rich as Croesus! My statement’s always in the red.’
‘Things are bad, then?’ he enquired thoughtfully.
‘Awful,’ she admitted. ‘I’m not playing for the sympathy vote, but if there’s a chance...’
‘No. I might have to persuade my sister-in-law to reorganise her catering till it’s to my satisfaction, but I will keep the promise I made. I must—you must see that.’
