In a Storm of Scandal
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.’
‘The moral blackmail is not going to work this time.’
His father ignored the interruption. ‘When you take over the company—’
‘I am not going to take over the company.’ Gianluca could still recall the relief he had felt having made the confession—it had been short-lived.
The anger died from his voice as his father sank heavily into a chair. ‘If you don’t marry Aurelia there will be no company for you to take over.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Returning to the safe, his father came back with a file. ‘You know the name Jason Stone?’
‘Of course I do.’ Everyone knew the name of the American who had given a new meaning to the word con.
Luca had always been mystified how the man who had nothing but charm to sell had had to fight off wealthy clients convinced by all his wild promises and eager to put their fortunes in his unscrupulous hands.
The man was now behind bars; of the missing billions there was no sign.
‘Read it, Luca,’ his father instructed.
As he scanned the pages he realised why his father was looking older … he suddenly felt older himself.
‘How much?’ he asked finally.
His father mentioned a figure that drew a groan from Gianluca.
‘I thought it was safe and I thought I would be able to pay it back before anyone—’
‘You used money from the …?’ Gianluca, seeing his father’s expression, bit back his reproach. ‘Who knows?’ Even the suggestion of embezzlement, when added to the disgrace of financial ruin on this scale, would be impossible to hide. ‘Mother …?’ Emotionally vulnerable, she worshipped her husband. The shame of such a scandal, Gianluca realised, would be hard if not impossible for her to bear.
‘The bank, obviously, though not all, and Alessandro … he warned me at the time, but too late now.’
Mention of Aurelia’s father made Gianluca stiffen, he knew what was coming.
‘You know you are the son Alessandro never had and after his last heart attack he feels he needs to hand over the reins. He has run a deal past me … a form of merger. His offer is very generous, Luca, and it will all be kept within the family.’
And now they were family, Gianluca had stepped up to the mark and done what was expected of him—did that make him a hero or a coward?
Aware that such speculation was futile, he pushed away the question. His future was mapped out and he had no regrets, he told himself. He had done the right thing … the only thing.
Duty had been drummed into him since birth. He had made his choice and he would live with it. He would make his marriage work.
Next year Alessandro Cosimo would retire, his own father had already stepped down from his position as CEO, and Gianluca would take charge of the merged business empires.
He had hurt Poppy. It didn’t matter how often he told himself she was young, she would get over it, move on, be happy with someone else … someone who wasn’t him … the knowledge she was hurting because of him ate away at him like corrosive acid.
The thought of her being with someone else—this pain he locked away waiting until it would pass, because it would.
It had to!
She had come today. That he hadn’t expected—why?
He’d never seen Poppy in heels before. The ones she wore today were high and spiky, the bare skin of her shapely calves a toasty pale gold. Attired in a silk shift a shade paler than her green eyes, she looked poised, effortlessly elegant and supremely desirable.
The service in the cathedral with a strategically placed marble column to hide behind had been the place to shed tears, or even during the speeches, but not out in the sunlit gardens while a lady in a very large hat was waiting for her to respond to a question.
Not now, thought Poppy as she took a deep breath and, ignoring her aching cheek muscles, produced an utterly fake smile of brilliant proportions as she snatched a glass from the tray of a passing waiter.
It was a struggle to swallow the fizzing liquid past the emotional lump that lay like a lead weight lodged behind her breastbone. She tossed it back in one deep swallow before excusing herself from large-hat lady in her halting Italian.
Luca had been teaching her, and, though each summer she had increased her vocabulary, her grammar was still shaky. He was a good teacher. Poppy had always planned that he teach her other things. Eyes scrunched closed, she shook her head, causing the dangling beatengold discs suspended from her ears to ring like bells as they brushed her neck.
God, she hated him!
She heard her grandmother call her name and pretended not to hear as she wound a hasty path between the guests who had spilled out onto the manicured lawns overlooking the hillsides covered in olive groves and topped with the darker green of pines.
She held back the tears until she reached the relative seclusion of a small gazebo hidden behind a hedge of tall fragrant lavender.
How had this happened? Life had been perfect and now … had Luca fallen out of love with her? In her head she could hear his voice telling her that it had been a mistake.
Had he ever loved her?
Did he love the perfect Aurelia?
What was not to love? she thought darkly, seeing the tall raven-haired beauty standing at his side and feeling the familiar knife thrust of jealousy. Aurelia didn’t have a mother who made the cover of every European scandal sheet on a monthly basis!
Shaking her head to stem the constant flow of tortured thoughts, Poppy reached into her bag for the wad of tissues inside.
‘Damn!’ She sniffed as they fell to the floor. Bending to pick them up, she froze.
And then he was there, she could feel him.
Poppy lifted her head and he just stood there. Even though he was twenty feet away she could feel the emotion coming off him in waves as he walked towards her.
‘You’re crying.’
Poppy scrunched the tissues in her hand and got to her feet. ‘No—hay fever,’ she lied.
‘Why did you come, Poppy?’
‘I didn’t believe you’d really do it … but you did. Wow, you really did … Did you mean any of it, Luca? Or was it just some sort of sick game?’
His hand extended then dropped to his side. ‘You feel bad now, Poppy, but you’ll forget—’
‘I don’t want to forget.’ She gave a sniff and managed a watery smile. ‘I hope you’ll both be very happy.’
His jaw clenched as his eyes fell from hers.
‘I meant it. I meant everything.’ The words seemed wrenched from his throat against his will.
Seeing the pain in his eyes, Poppy told herself she was glad he was suffering. He deserved to suffer—this was his doing. So why did she want to run to his side and hug him?
‘And that makes it better how?’ Poppy tried to make her voice cold but it quivered pathetically.
She watched his expression grow blank until the muscle clenching in his jaw was the only visible evidence of emotion.
‘Why, Luca? Why have you done this?’
‘Things …’ He dragged a hand through his dark hair. ‘It is complicated.’
‘Do you love her …?’ She let out a soft wail and, teeth gritted, covered her ears with her hands. ‘No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know and don’t you dare feel sorry for me,’ she hissed fiercely.
Luca took her face between his hands and looked down into her tragic tear-stained face. ‘Have a great life, Poppy,’ he said, kissing her lips gently before he turned and walked away.
CHAPTER ONE
POPPY left her overnight bag in the hallway and walked into the dining room of her parents’ garden flat. The remains of breakfast still on the table, her father was working his way through a stack of Sunday newspapers and her stepmother’s fingers were flying with the nimble precision Poppy always envied across the current tapestry she was working on while chuckling at the programme she was listening to on the radio.
The comforting familiarity of the domestic scene smoothed the furrow etched in Poppy’s smooth brow. It hadn’t always been this way. Until the arrival of Millie on the scene Sundays, and for that matter every other day in the Ramsay household, had been very different. At ten Poppy had not realised some fathers did not spend the entire weekend at the office. Millie, she reflected fondly, had changed their lives utterly and very much for the better—it was just a shame that her grandmother still refused to recognise this.
Millie Ramsay glanced up, the smile of welcome on her pretty freckled face fading into a look of concern as she took in her stepdaughter’s troubled expression. ‘A problem, Poppy?’ she asked, laying aside her work.
‘Yes,’ Poppy admitted, perching on the arm of her father’s chair as he laid down his newspaper with a rustle. She paused and shot an apologetic look Millie’s way before responding.
‘It’s Gran,’ she said, thinking, Cue awkward silence.
Robert Ramsay’s expression had iced over before his newspaper came up with a rustle. Millie, her serenity unruffled, switched off the laughter on the radio.
It was Millie who broke the growing awkward silence.
‘Is your grandmother not well, Poppy?’ she asked, getting to her feet.
Behind his newspaper her husband cleared his throat noisily. Millie sighed at the strangled sound as she said quietly, ‘She’s an old lady, and she’s your mother, Rob.’
A second snort then silence from behind the newspaper greeted this quiet reproach.
‘She’s fine—well, not ill at least,’ Poppy said, addressing her response to Millie. ‘On Thursday when we spoke on the phone, I could tell from her voice something was wrong.’ After a lot of probing the truth had finally emerged. ‘It turns out she’d had a letter from the council that had upset her—not the first.’ When pressed her grandmother had admitted the rather one-sided dialogue with the local authority had been going on for nine months.
‘And let me guess … Mother ignored them?’
‘It looks like it,’ Poppy said, addressing her reply to the newspaper. ‘It started when a hiker using the public footpath—the one that goes through the kitchen garden—broke his ankle. He complained and from what I can gather it seems someone came out to investigate and … well, the outcome was they discovered the entire west wall of the east wing is in danger of falling down.’
Robert Ramsay’s newspaper came down. ‘The west wall has been falling down since I was a boy,’ he said scornfully. ‘The entire place has been falling down, but I don’t see what business that is of the council or, for that matter, anyone else.’
‘Pretty much Gran’s reaction, but Inverannoch Castle is a listed building, Dad, and as the owner Gran is legally responsible for maintaining the fabric of the building.’ A brief Internet search had revealed that much. ‘And as the footpath runs so close it becomes a health and safety issue …’
‘Health and safety!’ Her father snorted. ‘A load of mollycoddling rubbish!’
‘Again pretty much Gran’s response, once she stopped throwing the letters from the council’s legal department on the fire. Reading between the lines, I got the impression she’s managed to offend just about everybody and now, well …’ The furrow between Poppy’s dark feathery brows deepened. ‘She’s really afraid she could lose Inverannoch, and I think she might be right.’
‘Oh, dear!’ Millie said, glancing towards her husband, who had hidden again behind his newspaper. ‘What do you think, Rob?’
‘It’s a fuss about nothing.’
‘I hope so,’ Poppy said quietly.
‘Ring the council if you’re worried.’
‘I did, I spent half of Friday being put on hold. But they wouldn’t discuss it with me, which is why I’ve decided to go up there and find out for myself.’
‘What?’ Robert Ramsays’s incredulous deep voice boomed. His paper came down with a rustle. ‘You’re not serious?’
Poppy lifted her chin. ‘I’m on my way to the airport, Dad. I just dropped by to tell you. I’ll ring when I arrive in Inverness. I’ll hire a car there.’
‘Drop everything and hare off to the back of beyond just because of a letter!’ Robert Ramsay rolled his eyes contemptuously. ‘Talk about overreaction. If you expect your grandmother to be grateful for this dramatic gesture …’
‘I don’t,’ Poppy admitted, a brief grin momentarily lighting the sombre cast of her features. ‘She’ll tell me I’m interfering and that she’s more than capable of sorting out her own affairs.’ Her smile faded. ‘Aren’t you even a little bit concerned, Dad?’
Her father’s eyes fell. ‘If you’re really that worried,’ he grunted, ‘give her the number of my solicitors, but I think you’ll find it is all a storm in a teacup.’
‘I really hope you’re right and it’s a wasted journey, Dad, but I am going.’
Robert Ramsay eyed the stubborn set of his daughter’s jaw and shook his head. ‘You always were an obstinate child.’
‘I can’t imagine where I got that from.’
Poppy watched her father fight a smile. ‘All right, if you won’t listen to me what about this boyfriend of yours? What does he think of you dashing off this way? And what about work? I thought you’d used up your annual leave.’
Not the ideal moment she had been waiting for, but … Poppy took a deep breath. ‘I don’t have a boyfriend, and I handed in my notice last month.’
Taking advantage of the stunned silence that followed her casual disclosure, Poppy made a hasty exit turning a deaf ear and closing the door on her father’s bellow.
Adrenaline still surging through his bloodstream, Gianluca, his chest heaving from the exertion of the swim to shore, dragged a hand over the salty water streaming down his face and watched for a moment as the boat he had owned for almost an hour—not his best financial investment—smashed itself to matchwood on the rocks, before turning his back on the scene of devastation.
The ten-mile track around the mist-shrouded mountain in a gale would, it turned out, even allowing for recent rock slides that had apparently washed away part of the track, have been the safer choice, but then hindsight was a marvellous thing.
The warnings of the locals that he had listened politely to before choosing to ignore them had clearly not been exaggerated, unlike the price he had paid for the vessel.
The guy who sold it to him had had no qualms when it came to fleecing a stranger—on another occasion Gianluca might even have admired his enterprise.
He shrugged, his firm lips twitching upwards at the corners into an ironic smile that faded as his lean body was shaken by a deep tremor and then another. He clenched his jaw and blinked away the water that still streamed steadily into his eyes and assessed his situation.
A man did not have to be a survival expert to work out standing here second-guessing his choices was not a good idea. The exposed pebbly beach offered zero shelter from the wind that cut through the wet clothes he wore like a cold surgical blade sending the chill of his skin bone deep, and blue had never really been his colour, he thought, grimacing as he rubbed the skin of his forearms to kick-start the circulation.
Standing here inviting hypothermia would only confirm the locals’ opinion that he was an idiot. According to them taking the small boat out in the storm had been inviting worse than hypothermia and as it turned out they had very nearly been right. Not that Gianluca, who possessed a pragmatic attitude to such things, wasted more than a moment contemplating how close he had come to a fate similar to that of the vessel.
He had chosen to take a calculated risk, something he had done before, though admittedly his own skin was not generally at risk, and in this instance the risk had not been entirely successful. On the plus side, he might be temporarily stranded but he had reached his goal.
He turned his back on the cauldron of grey foaming waves and directed his narrowed gaze speculatively towards the outline of Inverannoch Castle visible through the mist.
The turreted stone building, even in its present semi-derelict state, was imposing—in a grim and forbidding sort of way. Much, he mused, like the old lady who lived there, his godmother Isabel Ramsay.
He had been attending an international conference in Edinburgh where he had been guest speaker when he had received a phone call from his very anxious grandmother, who was worried after speaking to her old friend Isabel.
‘She’s putting a brave face on it, Gianluca, but she’s really upset, I could tell, and that’s just not like Isabel. Do you really think she could lose the castle? You won’t let it happen, will you?’
It would have been hard to fulfil his promise if he had gone down with his ship, he mused as he strode towards the steps cut in the stone cliff past what remained of an old harbour wall, a reminder of the glory days when the castle had been the destination of the rich and glamorous of the day. Possessing the balance of a natural athlete and a lean, toned body to match it, he did not slow as he negotiated the lethally slippery worn steps.
From the top of the cliff the castle, hidden by a forested area, was no longer visible. Someone who was not familiar with the area would not have seen the path through the trees. It took Gianluca a few moments to locate it. Years ago he had been as familiar with every track as he was with his own hand. Now … in recent years his visits to the castle had been to see his godmother and had not involved reacquainting himself with the landscape.
Unsure of his welcome, he had come back that first time eighteen months after his wedding. Since then a sense of duty had made him undertake the painful trip once or twice a year. Seven years now, he made the calculation with a sense of shock, but the visits were rarely more than fleeting overnight stopovers, the private helicopter either waiting for him or returning the next morning to pick him up.
A loud crack broke into his private reflections and Gianluca instinctively stepped back, narrowly avoiding the large branch that fell at his feet—no surprise there had been no pilot willing or suicidal enough to bring him out here today!
He had always supposed that it would have got easier over the years, but no—the place just held too many memories … He had judged it best to limit his contact and avoid falling into the trap of indulging in the sort of sentimental nostalgia that he despised.
Considering his reluctance to spend more than a night here, he had been surprised by how strongly he had reacted to the idea of the resident Ramsay being forced from her home and the crumbling castle being restored by others, not as a home, but a destination on a tourist map.
How would Poppy react if her grandmother was forced from her home?
He pushed the thought away—the past belonged in the past—and walked towards the densely packed trees that offered some shelter from the wind. They also reduced the daylight, such as it was that remained. Wishing he had had the forethought to grab a torch before he had abandoned the boat to its fate, he added a few scratches from overhanging branches to the bruises he could not yet feel. That was something to look forward to when he thawed out.
From this side of the trees he saw what had not been visible from the shore: the lights shining from the windows of the inhabited rooms in the west wing.
CHAPTER TWO
POPPY having finally managed to fan the flames of the open fire in the cavernous fireplace into life, had peeled off her gloves—she had no intention of relinquishing her padded jacket—and was warming her fingers by the flickering flames when the sound of the brass door knocker hitting the oak door once, twice and then again made her fall back on her heels. Eyes on the door, she scrambled to her feet, rubbing her hands on the seat of her pants.
On finding the place deserted when she had arrived earlier, she had frantically searched the castle from top to bottom, her hunt extending outside until the weather had closed in and forced her to retreat.
Was this the rescue party she had been praying for?
Or better still was it Gran herself who would stroll in and demand to know what all the fuss was about?
Had her grandmother been out there all along? It would be just like her not to allow the elements to interfere with her daily constitutional.
‘Gran?’ Heart thudding hopefully, she left the warmth of the fire. Even though Poppy hadn’t bolted the massive metal-banded oak door or turned the big old-fashioned key in the lock—there hadn’t seemed any point—it seemed to take her an age to manipulate the latch and open the door.
The door swung inwards painfully slowly, then, caught by a gust of wind, almost knocked her over before it hit the stone wall with a tremendous crash to reveal, not her grandmother, but the tall sinister outline of a man—a large man.
It was a situation where an active imagination became a curse and Poppy’s immediately went into overdrive. She flinched and sucked in a deep breath as the tall figure was suddenly backlit by a flash of lightning that illuminated the sky for a brief moment.
A scream locked in her throat, Poppy stood there nailed to the spot by a stab of visceral fear while her heart tried to batter its way out of her chest and a bass toll of thunder cracked in perfect horror movie tradition overhead.
The scream emerged as a choked gasp when the figure, without saying a word, took a step forward. Jolted free of the fear-induced paralysis that had gripped her, Poppy shadowed the step hastily retreating, one hand pressed to her throat, before she turned and ran back to the fireplace.
She lifted the heavy poker that lay there. It took both hands to raise it and she whirled back to face the intruder warning fiercely, ‘I’m not alone!’ The normally husky timbre of her voice became shrill as she warned darkly, ‘It’s true!’
Not the best of time to discover that the people who had claimed she couldn’t lie convincingly if her life depended on it were right.
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Gianluca scanned the room. Of his godmother there was no immediate sign, just the weapon-wielding figure in a thick padded jacket. His glance moved to the face framed by a knitted hat complete with furry earflaps.
The resulting jolt of recognition sent a pulse of shock zigzagging through his body with the strength of a lightning bolt. The last time he had looked directly at those spectacular, exotically slanted green eyes they had been filled with sad tears.
It was an image he had spent years trying to bury.
‘And don’t think I’m afraid to use this because I’m not—’ She stopped abruptly, her eyes widening … that voice … deep with the faint foreign inflection … no. Her heartbeat rocketed and her stomach dropped into a big black hole.
Calm down, Poppy, she counselled herself. You’re imagining things. It can’t be … Could it?
Still brandishing her weapon, she tilted her head back, directing a wary look at the intruder’s face. The furrow in her brow deepened and her arms began to ache with the effort of maintaining her defensive pose as she struggled in the gloom to see the man’s face.
Frustratingly all she could make out was an undefined blur and the impression of strong angles, sharp planes and dramatic hollows. Then the figure, not apparently deterred by her threats, stepped forward into a convenient pool of candlelight.
Poppy shook her head in a negative motion, intensifying the dizzy sensation.
‘No! You can’t be here.’ She began to cough as the candle on the table beside her guttered, sending up a plume of acrid smoke. ‘Luca?’
As if there could be two men that looked like this!
Poppy had no doubt that one day she would be able to look back on the last occasion they had spoken and not feel physically sick, but seven years and that day had definitely not come!
Heart pounding—was she going to have a heart attack?—she slowly laid the heavy poker down onto the hearth and tried frantically to marshal her rioting thoughts as she watched Luca brace his shoulder against the door and push. The wind and ancient wood resisted his efforts until, angular jaw clenched, the sinews in his brown neck standing out, with a final grunt of effort he managed to force the door that had been built to hold back armies closed with a loud bang.
The noise of the storm raging outside immediately lowered by several decibels. It was quiet enough now for Poppy to hear the click of the grandfather clock and the steady drip of the water gathering in a pool on the stone flagstones around the feet of Gianluca Ranieri.
She was here alone with Luca. Somewhere in her chest a bubble of terror burst … I can’t do this! Poppy yanked herself back from the brink of outright panic and hid her confused feelings behind a tight controlled smile.
‘I barely recognised you,’ she lied, averting her gaze from the perfect symmetry of a bronzed face bisected by a masterful nose and slashing cheekbones. ‘You’ve changed, Luca.’
This at least was not a lie. He was still the best-looking man imaginable—it was really nice to be able to make the observation with total objectivity, not soppy, misty-eyed foolishness, but the aura of power that hung around him like a second skin made him seem more aloof. And his heavy-lidded eyes, dark and fringed by incredibly long, spiky lashes—they had not in the past held a cynical gleam that suggested their owner expected the worst from the world and was rarely disappointed.
‘You haven’t.’ It was hard to tell from his abrupt delivery if this was a criticism or a compliment. ‘I did not expect you to be here.’
He didn’t add or wild horses would not have dragged me here to his vaguely accusatory statement, but he didn’t have to. He looked about as happy to see her as he had two years earlier, the night she had almost literally bumped into him as she was emerging with a group of friends from a popular West End show.
He had cut her dead.
Poppy had been left standing on the pavement, the awkward half-smile of polite acknowledgement still on her face. The public slight had not gone unnoticed.
‘Someone you know?’ one of the men in the group had asked.
Poppy had shrugged off the hurt inflicted by the chilling indifference in the dark eyes that had moved with the barest hint of recognition over her face.
‘Not really.’
Shaking some of the excess moisture from his hair, Luca moved forward into the room. Poppy responded with several backwards steps, reminding him of a jittery thoroughbred.
‘I am not, to my knowledge, infectious.’
She had no smart response to the mild sarcasm and no easy answer for why she felt the need to keep him at several arms’ lengths.
‘This is …’ she expelled a gusty sigh, her expression reflecting her dismay, and tore off her cap, tossing it on top of a pile of newspapers on a nearby armchair ‘… a total nightmare.’ There seemed very little point putting a brave face on what was an awful situation. A dangerous stranger she could have legitimately clonked on the head with a poker … what was she meant to do with Luca?
Her glance slid to the stern outline of his beautiful—it really was—mouth … A tiny sigh escaped her parted lips. She had once had a lot of ideas about what to do with and to Luca, but few, actually none, were any longer appropriate.
He tilted his head in acknowledgement. ‘The storm is bad.’
Poppy gave herself a mental shake and let his misinterpretation remain uncorrected as she struggled to make her fuzzy brain work … How … why was Luca here? ‘Was Gran expecting you?’
‘No.’
Gianluca’s eyes followed the golden brown waves as they continued to bounce, settling in a silky messy halo around her shoulders. It slid down her back, falling below shoulder-blade level, longer than she had used to wear it. The shaggy fringe was gone too, revealing the purity of her delicate heart-shaped face. A face still dominated, but not overwhelmed, by slanted hazel-green eyes.
‘So you don’t know where she is?’ Poppy pressed.
The furrow between his brows deepened as he registered the anxiety behind her question. ‘Don’t you?’ He struggled to focus on the situation and not on every tiny detail of her face.
Poppy bit her lip and shook her head. ‘I’ve looked everywhere and there’s no sign of her.’ She had scoured the surrounding area yelling until her throat was raw.
‘Did you look for a note?’
His glance moved in an assessing sweep around the rapidly darkening room that, though not in the grand part of the building, still had twice the square footage of an average semi.
‘Of course I looked for a note.’
‘I’m assuming the candles are not for atmosphere.’ Even as he spoke Luca realised that it was a mistake to assume anything; for all he knew Poppy might be here with a boyfriend. ‘The power’s out?’ On every visit he suggested that the electrics needed an overhaul; his suggestion was inevitably met with a point-blank refusal from his frugal godmother, who was fond of saying she did not believe in change for change’s sake.
Poppy nodded and glanced at her watch, her eyes widening when she read the time. ‘Nearly two hours ago.’ Just after she had arrived.
‘Did you check the fuses?’
There was an edge in her voice as Poppy replied, ‘Of course I checked the fuses.’
‘Isn’t there still a back-up generator?’
Poppy struggled against impatience. ‘Yes, but it’s not working.’
He arched a brow. ‘And you know this how?’
‘I tried to start it.’ Though it was notoriously temperamental, the second kick generally did the trick, but not today.
She saw something flicker at the back of his dark eyes. ‘You kicked it?’
Poppy killed the beginning of a grin that tugged at the corners of her mouth and experienced a moment of panic before her instincts of self-preservation kicked in. It had taken her a very long time to put the memories they shared into cold storage; she wasn’t about to thaw out even at the most innocent of them, not now, not ever.
‘As a last resort.’
Frustrated in his attempts to read past her cool mask, he felt a stab of dissatisfaction. She might have changed remarkably little to look at—Poppy could still have passed for a teenager—but clearly she had changed.
And you expected she wouldn’t, Luca? You expected that having her heart broken would not have made her toughen up, develop a few defences?
‘And Isabel, you saw her last … when?’
Poppy responded to the question literally. ‘April.’
His dark brows drew together above the bridge of his hawkish nose. ‘I meant …’
Intercepting the impatient look, she flushed and, resenting the fact he had made her feel foolish, inserted quickly, ‘I know what you meant, and, no, I haven’t seen Gran, but I spoke to her … last night.’ Had it really only been a few hours earlier?
‘This isn’t a case of miscommunication—perhaps she went to the village to meet you?’
‘No, I said I’d catch the ferry and I’d ring when I arrived.’
‘There was no reply?’
‘The phone lines are down and I couldn’t get a signal on my mobile. Where can she be, Luca? The only way out of here is by boat, and don’t,’ she pleaded, ‘suggest she might have walked out, because after the rock fall last winter even a four-wheel drive can’t make it up the track.’
‘I was not going to suggest she walked out. Your gran’s fit for an eighty-year-old but even she is not going to trek out along the mountain track.’
‘I have a bad feeling, Luca.’ It was just a name and what was she meant to call him—Mr Ranieri? ‘Admittedly my feelings are not infallible.’
Her feelings about Luca had been all good, they had told her that Luca was the one, that he was totally trustworthy. Annoyed with herself for allowing ancient history to divert her, Poppy gave her head a tiny negative shake of irritation. She should be focusing on Gran. She was, and realistically she couldn’t exactly ignore Luca, she just had to keep her response … proportionate.
‘There’s probably a simple explanation.’
‘Like Gran is lying out there hurt, unable to call for help … or worse? That sort of simple?’ She swallowed and pushed away the image and sucked in a steadying breath through flared nostrils. ‘Maybe I am overthinking it …? Maybe there is a simple explanation?’ She shot him a look of appeal, willing him to convince her.
Luca did not offer comfort and support, but then it wasn’t his job. Instead he gave a non-committal grunt. ‘I am assuming you are here because of the issue with the council?’
Her emerald eyes flew to his face, wide with surprise. ‘You know about that? Gran asked for your help?’ Of course she had.
And why not?
It was utterly insane to feel a sense of betrayal—there was no reason that Gran shouldn’t turn to Luca. He was her godson. Poppy knew they still had contact and she was fine with that; she didn’t want to know the details, but she was fine with it—totally.
Her gran appreciated she didn’t want to know about Luca’s life—hard not to after her response to a conversation that had opened with, ‘When Luca was here last month …’
Up until that memorable moment—memorable for all the wrong reasons—Poppy had considered herself totally over it … him … It turned out that eighteen months hadn’t been long enough.
Luca tipped his dark head in acknowledgement. ‘The bare bones, no details—my grandmother contacted me. She was concerned.’
Poppy’s tense expression was momentarily lightened as an image of a slight figure who still retained a strong Highland accent even though she had lived the last fifty years of her life in Italy flashed into her head.
‘Aunt Fiona?’ The title was honorary, the only connection being a friendship between the older women that had survived despite the disparate paths their lives had taken since their schooldays. ‘How is she?’
‘Well.’
His eyes drifted slowly over the smooth curve of her cheeks; reaching the full curve of her lush wide mouth, he had zero control over the lustful reaction of his body.
‘She was always k-kind to me.’
The kindness had been a stark contrast to the attitude of his parents, who had acted as though she had a contagious disease when she had attended a birthday tea in a posh London hotel for Luca’s grandmother.
It had been Luca who found her crying in the cloakroom.
‘So my mum gets married a lot and is sometimes photographed without many clothes—she’s never killed anyone! I think your family are mean and horrible!’
‘Did I ever tell you about the time that my mum came out of the ladies’ room with her skirt tucked into her knickers? Or the dinner where my father thought the host was the wine waiter and told him the wine was corked?’
He had continued to tell her scandalous and probably untrue stories that made his parents look ridiculous until she had laughed.
‘Poppy …?’ Concern roughened the edges of his velvet voice.
Poppy’s eyes lifted. She blinked twice to clear her swimming vision and reminded herself she was a competent twenty-first-century woman, not some wimpy heroine in a Victorian melodrama, and even if she had needed a masculine chest to bury her face in Luca’s was already spoken for.
‘This doesn’t look good, does it?’ she said, directing a ‘give it to me straight I can take it’ look at his dark lean face.
She could hide a lot, but not the fear in her luminous eyes. Gianluca studied the emerald stare directed his way and felt something twist hard in his gut.
‘Do not jump to conclusions,’ he cautioned. ‘You always did have a tendency to be over-emotional.’ And outspoken, sentimental, not to mention extremely stubborn, but most of all Poppy had always been herself more so than any person he had ever met.
‘We all move on, Luca.’ She didn’t bother trying to make the message subtle. ‘But cross my heart I’ll do my level best not to have hysterics,’ she promised. ‘So what next?’
‘Next I dry off.’
‘You’re wet …?’ As Poppy made the belated observation her gaze travelled upwards from his feet. Hard …
the word popped into her head and stayed there; greyhound lean and tough, there was no vestige of anything approaching softness in Luca.
‘Top marks for observation.’
Poppy dragged her eyes to his face. ‘But what I don’t understand … How did you get out here, with the storm …?’ Her voice trailed away as her glance shifted to the mullioned window that was being battered by a shower of freakishly large hailstones.
The ferry wasn’t running and the only person willing to ferry her here from Ullapool had refused to wait a moment after she disembarked, so anxious—with good reason as it turned out—had he been not to get caught out in open sea when the storm hit.
‘I bought a boat.’
Poppy stared. He said it the same way someone might say, ‘I bought a bar of chocolate.’ He obviously didn’t have a clue that he had said anything out of the ordinary.
‘Of course you did.’
There were plus sides to his extravagance: at least they were no longer stranded when the storm abated; at least they had an exit route that did not involve SOS signals or swimming.
‘I can’t believe you made it here in this,’ she mused, watching, her stomach performing helpless flips of appreciation, as he walked long-legged and effortlessly elegant like some jungle cat towards the fire.
‘I did. The boat didn’t.’
Poppy, her thoughts still very much involved with thoughts of his feral grace, was still joining the mental dots when he added, ‘It sank.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘SANK!’ The images crowding into her head made her feel physically sick.
As Poppy estimated her chances of getting to the bathroom before she threw up Luca calmly threw a log on the smouldering fire and tossed an almost absent look over his shoulder before he reached for the poker she had dropped.
‘Not my finest moment. I almost made it.’ The almost continued to irritate. ‘But the undertow and the rocks …’ He shrugged his magnificent shoulders and began to prod the reluctant flames.
She regarded him incredulously. Could anyone sane be this casual about a near-death experience?
‘The boat smashed on the rocks?’ she said tightly.
He nodded.
‘You could have drowned.’ And Luca was acting as if the possibility had not even occurred to him. Her indignation grew. It was nothing to her if he decided to kill himself but he had a wife and family responsibilities.
And I once found his reckless streak exciting!
It was reassuring to recognise how much she had changed. There was nothing exciting about the graphic images playing in her head that involved the grey waves closing over a dark head, sucking him down.
The look Luca slung over his shoulder was tinged with impatience. ‘But I did not.’ It was not his habit to expend energy on what if scenarios, in theory at least.
There were exceptions to this rule.
What if he had not chosen duty ahead of personal happiness? What if he hadn’t caved into parental pressure? Seven years and that question had never completely gone away.
He accepted that no choice came without a price, what he could not accept or forgive himself for was others paying the price for his choices.
And for what?
He had kept the family name clear of scandal, he had discovered a talent for making money and found out that he did not have a talent for being a husband.
If he had learnt anything he now knew that marriage was not for him—he was simply not husband material; he was never again going to take on the responsibility for another human being’s happiness.
Poppy, though she hadn’t known it at the time, had actually had a lucky escape.
His meditative stare lingered on her face. And now here she was, in this place where they had met, and he was free. Was Poppy alone or in a relationship … maybe long term—the man he had seen her emerge from the theatre with? His eyes brushed her bare fingers—or maybe it was all new and exciting with a new lover?
‘I am a very good swimmer.’
Poppy’s eyes glazed when without warning his words caused a less traumatic but equally disturbing picture to form in her head—Luca, his sleek brown streamlined body cutting through the blue water before he stopped and, treading water, gestured for her to join him.
She rejected the random memory the same way she had rejected his invitation.
He had nearly died and he was acting as if it didn’t matter. Was he too cool to care or just plain stupid?
‘You know I feel sorry for the people that care about you.’ Her eyes flashed wide as a previously unconsidered possibility occurred to her. ‘I’m assuming that you were alone in the boat?’
‘I’m alone and, as you see, alive.’
Her nose wrinkled. ‘Barely.’ Actually despite his brush with death, or maybe because of it, Luca radiated an aura of restless vitality.
His edgy glance slid her way. ‘Can we end the postmortem?’ That she considered it possible that he’d leave a fellow traveller to their watery fate while he made himself comfortable spoke volumes on her opinion of him. ‘Though obviously it’s good to know someone cares.’
Missing entirely the sarcasm in his voice, Poppy tightened her soft lips as she injected a note of studied boredom into her voice and drawled, ‘Been there done that.’ Spurred by the flash of reaction she glimpsed in his dramatically dark eyes, she added with a smile that left her own eyes cold, ‘So don’t worry, Luca, you’re safe. I won’t be trying to seduce you any time soon.’
His dark lashes swept downwards then lifted. Two thirds of his brain knew it was a bad thing to say but the reckless, self-indulgent last third—blame it on a near-death experience—appeared to have temporary control of his vocal chords as he slurred. ‘Am I meant to think that’s a good thing?’
Poppy met his eyes, saw the dark dangerous unspoken message, sensed the tension rolling off him in waves and felt her insides dissolve.
After several breathless seconds of mind-numbing, heart-racing excitement the shame and disgust kicked in.
What are you doing, Poppy? He’s a married man who broke your heart! And if that made her bad it made him a total sleaze.
Poppy folded her arms across her chest. ‘I’m sure your wife will be pleased you’re alive.’
Message received, she thought, watching his expression blank. He did not look guilty, he looked … She shivered. The eyes that met hers had a flat, almost dead look.
Was his marriage in trouble …?
Not my business.
Admittedly once the possibility would have given her some feeling of shameful satisfaction. Happily she was no longer so bitter and twisted. She hadn’t got noble suddenly, but she had wised up enough to know that one criteria of having a life was letting go of the bad stuff that happened.
Luca constituted bad stuff.
Bad but beautiful, she thought, studying his profile, but she was totally over him. The fact she felt the need to constantly remind herself of this was in itself a cause of concern.
‘And you?’ Back now turned to her, he draped his jacket with what seemed like elaborate care over the back of a wooden rocking chair before taking the hem of his drenched cashmere sweater and peeling it over his head.
‘I am assuming you had a less eventful journey …?’ He lifted an arm, pressing his hand to the back of his head as he rotated his neck and flexed his shoulders, causing the muscles of his powerful shoulders and upper arms to bunch and ripple in a manner that Poppy found very distracting.
Distracting might well be the understatement of the century!
‘I had …’ Poppy swallowed and struggled to focus on the question … What was the question?
Gianluca’s torso was lean and tautly muscled; the drift of dark hair across his chest covered smooth bronze flesh that was tinged with blue and the surface studded with a rash of goose bumps. There was a livid-looking graze along his ribs and a discoloured area that looked like the beginning of a bruise.
The evidence of what had to be painful injuries made her sensitive stomach muscles spasm … Uncomfortably aware that empathy wasn’t the only cause of the growing tension in her belly, Poppy closed her eyes for a moment to shut out all that disturbing rampant maleness, and cleared her throat.
‘Much less eventful,’ she explained to a point somewhere over Gianluca’s left shoulder and continued to studiedly ignore the fact that despite the cold she was suddenly very hot in places that she ought not to be hot. ‘I hired someone to ferry me out. Unfortunately he wouldn’t hang around to wait for me for any money. What are you doing?’ she added, her voice sharpening in alarm.
‘Taking off my pants. It used, as I recall, to be your ambition.’
Poppy laughed, trying to match his flippancy. ‘I’m touched you remember. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that most men don’t put up a fight.’
Before she could begin to question the flash of coruscating anger that lit up his dark eyes there was a deafening crack followed by a loud roar and a succession of bangs that made Poppy cover her ears with her hands and close her eyes.
Utterly convinced that the roof was falling in, she thought, God, the men in suits at the council were right!
Fatalistically prepared for what was to come, she held her breath and waited to feel the weight of the building come crashing down on her head. Instead she felt the pressure of two heavy hands on her hunched shoulders.
‘You can breathe now.’
Poppy’s eyes blinked open. Luca had moved in to stand directly in front of her. He was inches away, very solid and reassuring. ‘What happened?’
‘Not totally sure,’ Luca admitted. ‘But it was dramatic.’ His dark head tipped in acknowledgement of the drama as he took hold of both her wrists and firmly removed her hands from her ears.
She glanced up nervously at the heavily beamed ceiling. There were no gaping holes. It actually looked reassuringly sturdy. ‘I thought the roof was coming off,’ she disclosed huskily.
‘And you thought the best defence was to go into see-no-evil-hear-no-evil mode. Your survival instincts definitely need some work, cara!’
The killer combination of his throaty sexy voice and the casual endearment caused a black hole to open up without warning where her stomach had been.
‘We can’t all be ice cool in the face of danger.’ She must have looked like a total fool but on the plus side she was not lying crushed under a pile of rubble. ‘I didn’t think,’ she admitted huskily. ‘I just sort of … reacted.’
Her heart thudding louder than it had been when she had thought she was about to be buried under several tons of rubble, Poppy’s eyes flickered nervously towards the cool brown fingers circling her wrists. She ran the tip of her tongue across her dry lips; she was trying hard not to react now.
Reacting to her instincts at this moment would have involved snatching her hands from his grasp, an action he might well read too much into … or maybe not.
Luckily Gianluca remained oblivious to the uncomfortable things the light contact was doing to her. He wasn’t even looking at her any longer, he was checking out the room, but he was still holding her wrists.
She gave a gentle tug but instead of responding to the reminder in the way he was meant to Gianluca tightened his grip and his thumbs began to move in circular sweeps over the blue-veined inner aspect of her wrists. Presumably meant to be soothing, the effect of the light pressure was however anything but.
Oh, help!
If she had found the contact disturbing this fresh assault on her senses was almost painful in its intensity. Previously her discomfort had taken the form of vague unease, a prickle under her skin and an empty feeling in her stomach. Now the tingle was a throb and the empty feeling a clenched fist of awareness.
This had to be some post-being-scared-half-to-death-on-top-of-a-very-bad-day scenario. The alternative was not good news.
Gianluca’s attention shifted from the broken glass on the floor to the woman beside him. ‘You’re shaking.’
His concern took the form of a stern frown as his critical scrutiny moved across the soft contours of the heart shaped face turned up to him. Her skin was as pale as milk, making the purplish smudges under her eyes appear even darker. Her dark lashes lowered but not before he had taken note of the glow in those arresting eyes. It had a feverish quality.
‘Are you running a temperature?’ He had intended to lay his hand on her forehead to test his theory when something bright caught his eye.
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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.’
‘The moral blackmail is not going to work this time.’
His father ignored the interruption. ‘When you take over the company—’
‘I am not going to take over the company.’ Gianluca could still recall the relief he had felt having made the confession—it had been short-lived.
The anger died from his voice as his father sank heavily into a chair. ‘If you don’t marry Aurelia there will be no company for you to take over.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Returning to the safe, his father came back with a file. ‘You know the name Jason Stone?’
‘Of course I do.’ Everyone knew the name of the American who had given a new meaning to the word con.
Luca had always been mystified how the man who had nothing but charm to sell had had to fight off wealthy clients convinced by all his wild promises and eager to put their fortunes in his unscrupulous hands.
The man was now behind bars; of the missing billions there was no sign.
‘Read it, Luca,’ his father instructed.
As he scanned the pages he realised why his father was looking older … he suddenly felt older himself.
‘How much?’ he asked finally.
His father mentioned a figure that drew a groan from Gianluca.
‘I thought it was safe and I thought I would be able to pay it back before anyone—’
‘You used money from the …?’ Gianluca, seeing his father’s expression, bit back his reproach. ‘Who knows?’ Even the suggestion of embezzlement, when added to the disgrace of financial ruin on this scale, would be impossible to hide. ‘Mother …?’ Emotionally vulnerable, she worshipped her husband. The shame of such a scandal, Gianluca realised, would be hard if not impossible for her to bear.
‘The bank, obviously, though not all, and Alessandro … he warned me at the time, but too late now.’
Mention of Aurelia’s father made Gianluca stiffen, he knew what was coming.
‘You know you are the son Alessandro never had and after his last heart attack he feels he needs to hand over the reins. He has run a deal past me … a form of merger. His offer is very generous, Luca, and it will all be kept within the family.’
And now they were family, Gianluca had stepped up to the mark and done what was expected of him—did that make him a hero or a coward?
Aware that such speculation was futile, he pushed away the question. His future was mapped out and he had no regrets, he told himself. He had done the right thing … the only thing.
Duty had been drummed into him since birth. He had made his choice and he would live with it. He would make his marriage work.
Next year Alessandro Cosimo would retire, his own father had already stepped down from his position as CEO, and Gianluca would take charge of the merged business empires.
He had hurt Poppy. It didn’t matter how often he told himself she was young, she would get over it, move on, be happy with someone else … someone who wasn’t him … the knowledge she was hurting because of him ate away at him like corrosive acid.
The thought of her being with someone else—this pain he locked away waiting until it would pass, because it would.
It had to!
She had come today. That he hadn’t expected—why?
He’d never seen Poppy in heels before. The ones she wore today were high and spiky, the bare skin of her shapely calves a toasty pale gold. Attired in a silk shift a shade paler than her green eyes, she looked poised, effortlessly elegant and supremely desirable.
The service in the cathedral with a strategically placed marble column to hide behind had been the place to shed tears, or even during the speeches, but not out in the sunlit gardens while a lady in a very large hat was waiting for her to respond to a question.
Not now, thought Poppy as she took a deep breath and, ignoring her aching cheek muscles, produced an utterly fake smile of brilliant proportions as she snatched a glass from the tray of a passing waiter.
It was a struggle to swallow the fizzing liquid past the emotional lump that lay like a lead weight lodged behind her breastbone. She tossed it back in one deep swallow before excusing herself from large-hat lady in her halting Italian.
Luca had been teaching her, and, though each summer she had increased her vocabulary, her grammar was still shaky. He was a good teacher. Poppy had always planned that he teach her other things. Eyes scrunched closed, she shook her head, causing the dangling beatengold discs suspended from her ears to ring like bells as they brushed her neck.
God, she hated him!
She heard her grandmother call her name and pretended not to hear as she wound a hasty path between the guests who had spilled out onto the manicured lawns overlooking the hillsides covered in olive groves and topped with the darker green of pines.
She held back the tears until she reached the relative seclusion of a small gazebo hidden behind a hedge of tall fragrant lavender.
How had this happened? Life had been perfect and now … had Luca fallen out of love with her? In her head she could hear his voice telling her that it had been a mistake.
Had he ever loved her?
Did he love the perfect Aurelia?
What was not to love? she thought darkly, seeing the tall raven-haired beauty standing at his side and feeling the familiar knife thrust of jealousy. Aurelia didn’t have a mother who made the cover of every European scandal sheet on a monthly basis!
Shaking her head to stem the constant flow of tortured thoughts, Poppy reached into her bag for the wad of tissues inside.
‘Damn!’ She sniffed as they fell to the floor. Bending to pick them up, she froze.
And then he was there, she could feel him.
Poppy lifted her head and he just stood there. Even though he was twenty feet away she could feel the emotion coming off him in waves as he walked towards her.
‘You’re crying.’
Poppy scrunched the tissues in her hand and got to her feet. ‘No—hay fever,’ she lied.
‘Why did you come, Poppy?’
‘I didn’t believe you’d really do it … but you did. Wow, you really did … Did you mean any of it, Luca? Or was it just some sort of sick game?’
His hand extended then dropped to his side. ‘You feel bad now, Poppy, but you’ll forget—’
‘I don’t want to forget.’ She gave a sniff and managed a watery smile. ‘I hope you’ll both be very happy.’
His jaw clenched as his eyes fell from hers.
‘I meant it. I meant everything.’ The words seemed wrenched from his throat against his will.
Seeing the pain in his eyes, Poppy told herself she was glad he was suffering. He deserved to suffer—this was his doing. So why did she want to run to his side and hug him?
‘And that makes it better how?’ Poppy tried to make her voice cold but it quivered pathetically.
She watched his expression grow blank until the muscle clenching in his jaw was the only visible evidence of emotion.
‘Why, Luca? Why have you done this?’
‘Things …’ He dragged a hand through his dark hair. ‘It is complicated.’
‘Do you love her …?’ She let out a soft wail and, teeth gritted, covered her ears with her hands. ‘No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know and don’t you dare feel sorry for me,’ she hissed fiercely.
Luca took her face between his hands and looked down into her tragic tear-stained face. ‘Have a great life, Poppy,’ he said, kissing her lips gently before he turned and walked away.
CHAPTER ONE
POPPY left her overnight bag in the hallway and walked into the dining room of her parents’ garden flat. The remains of breakfast still on the table, her father was working his way through a stack of Sunday newspapers and her stepmother’s fingers were flying with the nimble precision Poppy always envied across the current tapestry she was working on while chuckling at the programme she was listening to on the radio.
The comforting familiarity of the domestic scene smoothed the furrow etched in Poppy’s smooth brow. It hadn’t always been this way. Until the arrival of Millie on the scene Sundays, and for that matter every other day in the Ramsay household, had been very different. At ten Poppy had not realised some fathers did not spend the entire weekend at the office. Millie, she reflected fondly, had changed their lives utterly and very much for the better—it was just a shame that her grandmother still refused to recognise this.
Millie Ramsay glanced up, the smile of welcome on her pretty freckled face fading into a look of concern as she took in her stepdaughter’s troubled expression. ‘A problem, Poppy?’ she asked, laying aside her work.
‘Yes,’ Poppy admitted, perching on the arm of her father’s chair as he laid down his newspaper with a rustle. She paused and shot an apologetic look Millie’s way before responding.
‘It’s Gran,’ she said, thinking, Cue awkward silence.
Robert Ramsay’s expression had iced over before his newspaper came up with a rustle. Millie, her serenity unruffled, switched off the laughter on the radio.
It was Millie who broke the growing awkward silence.
‘Is your grandmother not well, Poppy?’ she asked, getting to her feet.
Behind his newspaper her husband cleared his throat noisily. Millie sighed at the strangled sound as she said quietly, ‘She’s an old lady, and she’s your mother, Rob.’
A second snort then silence from behind the newspaper greeted this quiet reproach.
‘She’s fine—well, not ill at least,’ Poppy said, addressing her response to Millie. ‘On Thursday when we spoke on the phone, I could tell from her voice something was wrong.’ After a lot of probing the truth had finally emerged. ‘It turns out she’d had a letter from the council that had upset her—not the first.’ When pressed her grandmother had admitted the rather one-sided dialogue with the local authority had been going on for nine months.
‘And let me guess … Mother ignored them?’
‘It looks like it,’ Poppy said, addressing her reply to the newspaper. ‘It started when a hiker using the public footpath—the one that goes through the kitchen garden—broke his ankle. He complained and from what I can gather it seems someone came out to investigate and … well, the outcome was they discovered the entire west wall of the east wing is in danger of falling down.’
Robert Ramsay’s newspaper came down. ‘The west wall has been falling down since I was a boy,’ he said scornfully. ‘The entire place has been falling down, but I don’t see what business that is of the council or, for that matter, anyone else.’
‘Pretty much Gran’s reaction, but Inverannoch Castle is a listed building, Dad, and as the owner Gran is legally responsible for maintaining the fabric of the building.’ A brief Internet search had revealed that much. ‘And as the footpath runs so close it becomes a health and safety issue …’
‘Health and safety!’ Her father snorted. ‘A load of mollycoddling rubbish!’
‘Again pretty much Gran’s response, once she stopped throwing the letters from the council’s legal department on the fire. Reading between the lines, I got the impression she’s managed to offend just about everybody and now, well …’ The furrow between Poppy’s dark feathery brows deepened. ‘She’s really afraid she could lose Inverannoch, and I think she might be right.’
‘Oh, dear!’ Millie said, glancing towards her husband, who had hidden again behind his newspaper. ‘What do you think, Rob?’
‘It’s a fuss about nothing.’
‘I hope so,’ Poppy said quietly.
‘Ring the council if you’re worried.’
‘I did, I spent half of Friday being put on hold. But they wouldn’t discuss it with me, which is why I’ve decided to go up there and find out for myself.’
‘What?’ Robert Ramsays’s incredulous deep voice boomed. His paper came down with a rustle. ‘You’re not serious?’
Poppy lifted her chin. ‘I’m on my way to the airport, Dad. I just dropped by to tell you. I’ll ring when I arrive in Inverness. I’ll hire a car there.’
‘Drop everything and hare off to the back of beyond just because of a letter!’ Robert Ramsay rolled his eyes contemptuously. ‘Talk about overreaction. If you expect your grandmother to be grateful for this dramatic gesture …’
‘I don’t,’ Poppy admitted, a brief grin momentarily lighting the sombre cast of her features. ‘She’ll tell me I’m interfering and that she’s more than capable of sorting out her own affairs.’ Her smile faded. ‘Aren’t you even a little bit concerned, Dad?’
Her father’s eyes fell. ‘If you’re really that worried,’ he grunted, ‘give her the number of my solicitors, but I think you’ll find it is all a storm in a teacup.’
‘I really hope you’re right and it’s a wasted journey, Dad, but I am going.’
Robert Ramsay eyed the stubborn set of his daughter’s jaw and shook his head. ‘You always were an obstinate child.’
‘I can’t imagine where I got that from.’
Poppy watched her father fight a smile. ‘All right, if you won’t listen to me what about this boyfriend of yours? What does he think of you dashing off this way? And what about work? I thought you’d used up your annual leave.’
Not the ideal moment she had been waiting for, but … Poppy took a deep breath. ‘I don’t have a boyfriend, and I handed in my notice last month.’
Taking advantage of the stunned silence that followed her casual disclosure, Poppy made a hasty exit turning a deaf ear and closing the door on her father’s bellow.
Adrenaline still surging through his bloodstream, Gianluca, his chest heaving from the exertion of the swim to shore, dragged a hand over the salty water streaming down his face and watched for a moment as the boat he had owned for almost an hour—not his best financial investment—smashed itself to matchwood on the rocks, before turning his back on the scene of devastation.
The ten-mile track around the mist-shrouded mountain in a gale would, it turned out, even allowing for recent rock slides that had apparently washed away part of the track, have been the safer choice, but then hindsight was a marvellous thing.
The warnings of the locals that he had listened politely to before choosing to ignore them had clearly not been exaggerated, unlike the price he had paid for the vessel.
The guy who sold it to him had had no qualms when it came to fleecing a stranger—on another occasion Gianluca might even have admired his enterprise.
He shrugged, his firm lips twitching upwards at the corners into an ironic smile that faded as his lean body was shaken by a deep tremor and then another. He clenched his jaw and blinked away the water that still streamed steadily into his eyes and assessed his situation.
A man did not have to be a survival expert to work out standing here second-guessing his choices was not a good idea. The exposed pebbly beach offered zero shelter from the wind that cut through the wet clothes he wore like a cold surgical blade sending the chill of his skin bone deep, and blue had never really been his colour, he thought, grimacing as he rubbed the skin of his forearms to kick-start the circulation.
Standing here inviting hypothermia would only confirm the locals’ opinion that he was an idiot. According to them taking the small boat out in the storm had been inviting worse than hypothermia and as it turned out they had very nearly been right. Not that Gianluca, who possessed a pragmatic attitude to such things, wasted more than a moment contemplating how close he had come to a fate similar to that of the vessel.
He had chosen to take a calculated risk, something he had done before, though admittedly his own skin was not generally at risk, and in this instance the risk had not been entirely successful. On the plus side, he might be temporarily stranded but he had reached his goal.
He turned his back on the cauldron of grey foaming waves and directed his narrowed gaze speculatively towards the outline of Inverannoch Castle visible through the mist.
The turreted stone building, even in its present semi-derelict state, was imposing—in a grim and forbidding sort of way. Much, he mused, like the old lady who lived there, his godmother Isabel Ramsay.
He had been attending an international conference in Edinburgh where he had been guest speaker when he had received a phone call from his very anxious grandmother, who was worried after speaking to her old friend Isabel.
‘She’s putting a brave face on it, Gianluca, but she’s really upset, I could tell, and that’s just not like Isabel. Do you really think she could lose the castle? You won’t let it happen, will you?’
It would have been hard to fulfil his promise if he had gone down with his ship, he mused as he strode towards the steps cut in the stone cliff past what remained of an old harbour wall, a reminder of the glory days when the castle had been the destination of the rich and glamorous of the day. Possessing the balance of a natural athlete and a lean, toned body to match it, he did not slow as he negotiated the lethally slippery worn steps.
From the top of the cliff the castle, hidden by a forested area, was no longer visible. Someone who was not familiar with the area would not have seen the path through the trees. It took Gianluca a few moments to locate it. Years ago he had been as familiar with every track as he was with his own hand. Now … in recent years his visits to the castle had been to see his godmother and had not involved reacquainting himself with the landscape.
Unsure of his welcome, he had come back that first time eighteen months after his wedding. Since then a sense of duty had made him undertake the painful trip once or twice a year. Seven years now, he made the calculation with a sense of shock, but the visits were rarely more than fleeting overnight stopovers, the private helicopter either waiting for him or returning the next morning to pick him up.
A loud crack broke into his private reflections and Gianluca instinctively stepped back, narrowly avoiding the large branch that fell at his feet—no surprise there had been no pilot willing or suicidal enough to bring him out here today!
He had always supposed that it would have got easier over the years, but no—the place just held too many memories … He had judged it best to limit his contact and avoid falling into the trap of indulging in the sort of sentimental nostalgia that he despised.
Considering his reluctance to spend more than a night here, he had been surprised by how strongly he had reacted to the idea of the resident Ramsay being forced from her home and the crumbling castle being restored by others, not as a home, but a destination on a tourist map.
How would Poppy react if her grandmother was forced from her home?
He pushed the thought away—the past belonged in the past—and walked towards the densely packed trees that offered some shelter from the wind. They also reduced the daylight, such as it was that remained. Wishing he had had the forethought to grab a torch before he had abandoned the boat to its fate, he added a few scratches from overhanging branches to the bruises he could not yet feel. That was something to look forward to when he thawed out.
From this side of the trees he saw what had not been visible from the shore: the lights shining from the windows of the inhabited rooms in the west wing.
CHAPTER TWO
POPPY having finally managed to fan the flames of the open fire in the cavernous fireplace into life, had peeled off her gloves—she had no intention of relinquishing her padded jacket—and was warming her fingers by the flickering flames when the sound of the brass door knocker hitting the oak door once, twice and then again made her fall back on her heels. Eyes on the door, she scrambled to her feet, rubbing her hands on the seat of her pants.
On finding the place deserted when she had arrived earlier, she had frantically searched the castle from top to bottom, her hunt extending outside until the weather had closed in and forced her to retreat.
Was this the rescue party she had been praying for?
Or better still was it Gran herself who would stroll in and demand to know what all the fuss was about?
Had her grandmother been out there all along? It would be just like her not to allow the elements to interfere with her daily constitutional.
‘Gran?’ Heart thudding hopefully, she left the warmth of the fire. Even though Poppy hadn’t bolted the massive metal-banded oak door or turned the big old-fashioned key in the lock—there hadn’t seemed any point—it seemed to take her an age to manipulate the latch and open the door.
The door swung inwards painfully slowly, then, caught by a gust of wind, almost knocked her over before it hit the stone wall with a tremendous crash to reveal, not her grandmother, but the tall sinister outline of a man—a large man.
It was a situation where an active imagination became a curse and Poppy’s immediately went into overdrive. She flinched and sucked in a deep breath as the tall figure was suddenly backlit by a flash of lightning that illuminated the sky for a brief moment.
A scream locked in her throat, Poppy stood there nailed to the spot by a stab of visceral fear while her heart tried to batter its way out of her chest and a bass toll of thunder cracked in perfect horror movie tradition overhead.
The scream emerged as a choked gasp when the figure, without saying a word, took a step forward. Jolted free of the fear-induced paralysis that had gripped her, Poppy shadowed the step hastily retreating, one hand pressed to her throat, before she turned and ran back to the fireplace.
She lifted the heavy poker that lay there. It took both hands to raise it and she whirled back to face the intruder warning fiercely, ‘I’m not alone!’ The normally husky timbre of her voice became shrill as she warned darkly, ‘It’s true!’
Not the best of time to discover that the people who had claimed she couldn’t lie convincingly if her life depended on it were right.
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Gianluca scanned the room. Of his godmother there was no immediate sign, just the weapon-wielding figure in a thick padded jacket. His glance moved to the face framed by a knitted hat complete with furry earflaps.
The resulting jolt of recognition sent a pulse of shock zigzagging through his body with the strength of a lightning bolt. The last time he had looked directly at those spectacular, exotically slanted green eyes they had been filled with sad tears.
It was an image he had spent years trying to bury.
‘And don’t think I’m afraid to use this because I’m not—’ She stopped abruptly, her eyes widening … that voice … deep with the faint foreign inflection … no. Her heartbeat rocketed and her stomach dropped into a big black hole.
Calm down, Poppy, she counselled herself. You’re imagining things. It can’t be … Could it?
Still brandishing her weapon, she tilted her head back, directing a wary look at the intruder’s face. The furrow in her brow deepened and her arms began to ache with the effort of maintaining her defensive pose as she struggled in the gloom to see the man’s face.
Frustratingly all she could make out was an undefined blur and the impression of strong angles, sharp planes and dramatic hollows. Then the figure, not apparently deterred by her threats, stepped forward into a convenient pool of candlelight.
Poppy shook her head in a negative motion, intensifying the dizzy sensation.
‘No! You can’t be here.’ She began to cough as the candle on the table beside her guttered, sending up a plume of acrid smoke. ‘Luca?’
As if there could be two men that looked like this!
Poppy had no doubt that one day she would be able to look back on the last occasion they had spoken and not feel physically sick, but seven years and that day had definitely not come!
Heart pounding—was she going to have a heart attack?—she slowly laid the heavy poker down onto the hearth and tried frantically to marshal her rioting thoughts as she watched Luca brace his shoulder against the door and push. The wind and ancient wood resisted his efforts until, angular jaw clenched, the sinews in his brown neck standing out, with a final grunt of effort he managed to force the door that had been built to hold back armies closed with a loud bang.
The noise of the storm raging outside immediately lowered by several decibels. It was quiet enough now for Poppy to hear the click of the grandfather clock and the steady drip of the water gathering in a pool on the stone flagstones around the feet of Gianluca Ranieri.
She was here alone with Luca. Somewhere in her chest a bubble of terror burst … I can’t do this! Poppy yanked herself back from the brink of outright panic and hid her confused feelings behind a tight controlled smile.
‘I barely recognised you,’ she lied, averting her gaze from the perfect symmetry of a bronzed face bisected by a masterful nose and slashing cheekbones. ‘You’ve changed, Luca.’
This at least was not a lie. He was still the best-looking man imaginable—it was really nice to be able to make the observation with total objectivity, not soppy, misty-eyed foolishness, but the aura of power that hung around him like a second skin made him seem more aloof. And his heavy-lidded eyes, dark and fringed by incredibly long, spiky lashes—they had not in the past held a cynical gleam that suggested their owner expected the worst from the world and was rarely disappointed.
‘You haven’t.’ It was hard to tell from his abrupt delivery if this was a criticism or a compliment. ‘I did not expect you to be here.’
He didn’t add or wild horses would not have dragged me here to his vaguely accusatory statement, but he didn’t have to. He looked about as happy to see her as he had two years earlier, the night she had almost literally bumped into him as she was emerging with a group of friends from a popular West End show.
He had cut her dead.
Poppy had been left standing on the pavement, the awkward half-smile of polite acknowledgement still on her face. The public slight had not gone unnoticed.
‘Someone you know?’ one of the men in the group had asked.
Poppy had shrugged off the hurt inflicted by the chilling indifference in the dark eyes that had moved with the barest hint of recognition over her face.
‘Not really.’
Shaking some of the excess moisture from his hair, Luca moved forward into the room. Poppy responded with several backwards steps, reminding him of a jittery thoroughbred.
‘I am not, to my knowledge, infectious.’
She had no smart response to the mild sarcasm and no easy answer for why she felt the need to keep him at several arms’ lengths.
‘This is …’ she expelled a gusty sigh, her expression reflecting her dismay, and tore off her cap, tossing it on top of a pile of newspapers on a nearby armchair ‘… a total nightmare.’ There seemed very little point putting a brave face on what was an awful situation. A dangerous stranger she could have legitimately clonked on the head with a poker … what was she meant to do with Luca?
Her glance slid to the stern outline of his beautiful—it really was—mouth … A tiny sigh escaped her parted lips. She had once had a lot of ideas about what to do with and to Luca, but few, actually none, were any longer appropriate.
He tilted his head in acknowledgement. ‘The storm is bad.’
Poppy gave herself a mental shake and let his misinterpretation remain uncorrected as she struggled to make her fuzzy brain work … How … why was Luca here? ‘Was Gran expecting you?’
‘No.’
Gianluca’s eyes followed the golden brown waves as they continued to bounce, settling in a silky messy halo around her shoulders. It slid down her back, falling below shoulder-blade level, longer than she had used to wear it. The shaggy fringe was gone too, revealing the purity of her delicate heart-shaped face. A face still dominated, but not overwhelmed, by slanted hazel-green eyes.
‘So you don’t know where she is?’ Poppy pressed.
The furrow between his brows deepened as he registered the anxiety behind her question. ‘Don’t you?’ He struggled to focus on the situation and not on every tiny detail of her face.
Poppy bit her lip and shook her head. ‘I’ve looked everywhere and there’s no sign of her.’ She had scoured the surrounding area yelling until her throat was raw.
‘Did you look for a note?’
His glance moved in an assessing sweep around the rapidly darkening room that, though not in the grand part of the building, still had twice the square footage of an average semi.
‘Of course I looked for a note.’
‘I’m assuming the candles are not for atmosphere.’ Even as he spoke Luca realised that it was a mistake to assume anything; for all he knew Poppy might be here with a boyfriend. ‘The power’s out?’ On every visit he suggested that the electrics needed an overhaul; his suggestion was inevitably met with a point-blank refusal from his frugal godmother, who was fond of saying she did not believe in change for change’s sake.
Poppy nodded and glanced at her watch, her eyes widening when she read the time. ‘Nearly two hours ago.’ Just after she had arrived.
‘Did you check the fuses?’
There was an edge in her voice as Poppy replied, ‘Of course I checked the fuses.’
‘Isn’t there still a back-up generator?’
Poppy struggled against impatience. ‘Yes, but it’s not working.’
He arched a brow. ‘And you know this how?’
‘I tried to start it.’ Though it was notoriously temperamental, the second kick generally did the trick, but not today.
She saw something flicker at the back of his dark eyes. ‘You kicked it?’
Poppy killed the beginning of a grin that tugged at the corners of her mouth and experienced a moment of panic before her instincts of self-preservation kicked in. It had taken her a very long time to put the memories they shared into cold storage; she wasn’t about to thaw out even at the most innocent of them, not now, not ever.
‘As a last resort.’
Frustrated in his attempts to read past her cool mask, he felt a stab of dissatisfaction. She might have changed remarkably little to look at—Poppy could still have passed for a teenager—but clearly she had changed.
And you expected she wouldn’t, Luca? You expected that having her heart broken would not have made her toughen up, develop a few defences?
‘And Isabel, you saw her last … when?’
Poppy responded to the question literally. ‘April.’
His dark brows drew together above the bridge of his hawkish nose. ‘I meant …’
Intercepting the impatient look, she flushed and, resenting the fact he had made her feel foolish, inserted quickly, ‘I know what you meant, and, no, I haven’t seen Gran, but I spoke to her … last night.’ Had it really only been a few hours earlier?
‘This isn’t a case of miscommunication—perhaps she went to the village to meet you?’
‘No, I said I’d catch the ferry and I’d ring when I arrived.’
‘There was no reply?’
‘The phone lines are down and I couldn’t get a signal on my mobile. Where can she be, Luca? The only way out of here is by boat, and don’t,’ she pleaded, ‘suggest she might have walked out, because after the rock fall last winter even a four-wheel drive can’t make it up the track.’
‘I was not going to suggest she walked out. Your gran’s fit for an eighty-year-old but even she is not going to trek out along the mountain track.’
‘I have a bad feeling, Luca.’ It was just a name and what was she meant to call him—Mr Ranieri? ‘Admittedly my feelings are not infallible.’
Her feelings about Luca had been all good, they had told her that Luca was the one, that he was totally trustworthy. Annoyed with herself for allowing ancient history to divert her, Poppy gave her head a tiny negative shake of irritation. She should be focusing on Gran. She was, and realistically she couldn’t exactly ignore Luca, she just had to keep her response … proportionate.
‘There’s probably a simple explanation.’
‘Like Gran is lying out there hurt, unable to call for help … or worse? That sort of simple?’ She swallowed and pushed away the image and sucked in a steadying breath through flared nostrils. ‘Maybe I am overthinking it …? Maybe there is a simple explanation?’ She shot him a look of appeal, willing him to convince her.
Luca did not offer comfort and support, but then it wasn’t his job. Instead he gave a non-committal grunt. ‘I am assuming you are here because of the issue with the council?’
Her emerald eyes flew to his face, wide with surprise. ‘You know about that? Gran asked for your help?’ Of course she had.
And why not?
It was utterly insane to feel a sense of betrayal—there was no reason that Gran shouldn’t turn to Luca. He was her godson. Poppy knew they still had contact and she was fine with that; she didn’t want to know the details, but she was fine with it—totally.
Her gran appreciated she didn’t want to know about Luca’s life—hard not to after her response to a conversation that had opened with, ‘When Luca was here last month …’
Up until that memorable moment—memorable for all the wrong reasons—Poppy had considered herself totally over it … him … It turned out that eighteen months hadn’t been long enough.
Luca tipped his dark head in acknowledgement. ‘The bare bones, no details—my grandmother contacted me. She was concerned.’
Poppy’s tense expression was momentarily lightened as an image of a slight figure who still retained a strong Highland accent even though she had lived the last fifty years of her life in Italy flashed into her head.
‘Aunt Fiona?’ The title was honorary, the only connection being a friendship between the older women that had survived despite the disparate paths their lives had taken since their schooldays. ‘How is she?’
‘Well.’
His eyes drifted slowly over the smooth curve of her cheeks; reaching the full curve of her lush wide mouth, he had zero control over the lustful reaction of his body.
‘She was always k-kind to me.’
The kindness had been a stark contrast to the attitude of his parents, who had acted as though she had a contagious disease when she had attended a birthday tea in a posh London hotel for Luca’s grandmother.
It had been Luca who found her crying in the cloakroom.
‘So my mum gets married a lot and is sometimes photographed without many clothes—she’s never killed anyone! I think your family are mean and horrible!’
‘Did I ever tell you about the time that my mum came out of the ladies’ room with her skirt tucked into her knickers? Or the dinner where my father thought the host was the wine waiter and told him the wine was corked?’
He had continued to tell her scandalous and probably untrue stories that made his parents look ridiculous until she had laughed.
‘Poppy …?’ Concern roughened the edges of his velvet voice.
Poppy’s eyes lifted. She blinked twice to clear her swimming vision and reminded herself she was a competent twenty-first-century woman, not some wimpy heroine in a Victorian melodrama, and even if she had needed a masculine chest to bury her face in Luca’s was already spoken for.
‘This doesn’t look good, does it?’ she said, directing a ‘give it to me straight I can take it’ look at his dark lean face.
She could hide a lot, but not the fear in her luminous eyes. Gianluca studied the emerald stare directed his way and felt something twist hard in his gut.
‘Do not jump to conclusions,’ he cautioned. ‘You always did have a tendency to be over-emotional.’ And outspoken, sentimental, not to mention extremely stubborn, but most of all Poppy had always been herself more so than any person he had ever met.
‘We all move on, Luca.’ She didn’t bother trying to make the message subtle. ‘But cross my heart I’ll do my level best not to have hysterics,’ she promised. ‘So what next?’
‘Next I dry off.’
‘You’re wet …?’ As Poppy made the belated observation her gaze travelled upwards from his feet. Hard …
the word popped into her head and stayed there; greyhound lean and tough, there was no vestige of anything approaching softness in Luca.
‘Top marks for observation.’
Poppy dragged her eyes to his face. ‘But what I don’t understand … How did you get out here, with the storm …?’ Her voice trailed away as her glance shifted to the mullioned window that was being battered by a shower of freakishly large hailstones.
The ferry wasn’t running and the only person willing to ferry her here from Ullapool had refused to wait a moment after she disembarked, so anxious—with good reason as it turned out—had he been not to get caught out in open sea when the storm hit.
‘I bought a boat.’
Poppy stared. He said it the same way someone might say, ‘I bought a bar of chocolate.’ He obviously didn’t have a clue that he had said anything out of the ordinary.
‘Of course you did.’
There were plus sides to his extravagance: at least they were no longer stranded when the storm abated; at least they had an exit route that did not involve SOS signals or swimming.
‘I can’t believe you made it here in this,’ she mused, watching, her stomach performing helpless flips of appreciation, as he walked long-legged and effortlessly elegant like some jungle cat towards the fire.
‘I did. The boat didn’t.’
Poppy, her thoughts still very much involved with thoughts of his feral grace, was still joining the mental dots when he added, ‘It sank.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘SANK!’ The images crowding into her head made her feel physically sick.
As Poppy estimated her chances of getting to the bathroom before she threw up Luca calmly threw a log on the smouldering fire and tossed an almost absent look over his shoulder before he reached for the poker she had dropped.
‘Not my finest moment. I almost made it.’ The almost continued to irritate. ‘But the undertow and the rocks …’ He shrugged his magnificent shoulders and began to prod the reluctant flames.
She regarded him incredulously. Could anyone sane be this casual about a near-death experience?
‘The boat smashed on the rocks?’ she said tightly.
He nodded.
‘You could have drowned.’ And Luca was acting as if the possibility had not even occurred to him. Her indignation grew. It was nothing to her if he decided to kill himself but he had a wife and family responsibilities.
And I once found his reckless streak exciting!
It was reassuring to recognise how much she had changed. There was nothing exciting about the graphic images playing in her head that involved the grey waves closing over a dark head, sucking him down.
The look Luca slung over his shoulder was tinged with impatience. ‘But I did not.’ It was not his habit to expend energy on what if scenarios, in theory at least.
There were exceptions to this rule.
What if he had not chosen duty ahead of personal happiness? What if he hadn’t caved into parental pressure? Seven years and that question had never completely gone away.
He accepted that no choice came without a price, what he could not accept or forgive himself for was others paying the price for his choices.
And for what?
He had kept the family name clear of scandal, he had discovered a talent for making money and found out that he did not have a talent for being a husband.
If he had learnt anything he now knew that marriage was not for him—he was simply not husband material; he was never again going to take on the responsibility for another human being’s happiness.
Poppy, though she hadn’t known it at the time, had actually had a lucky escape.
His meditative stare lingered on her face. And now here she was, in this place where they had met, and he was free. Was Poppy alone or in a relationship … maybe long term—the man he had seen her emerge from the theatre with? His eyes brushed her bare fingers—or maybe it was all new and exciting with a new lover?
‘I am a very good swimmer.’
Poppy’s eyes glazed when without warning his words caused a less traumatic but equally disturbing picture to form in her head—Luca, his sleek brown streamlined body cutting through the blue water before he stopped and, treading water, gestured for her to join him.
She rejected the random memory the same way she had rejected his invitation.
He had nearly died and he was acting as if it didn’t matter. Was he too cool to care or just plain stupid?
‘You know I feel sorry for the people that care about you.’ Her eyes flashed wide as a previously unconsidered possibility occurred to her. ‘I’m assuming that you were alone in the boat?’
‘I’m alone and, as you see, alive.’
Her nose wrinkled. ‘Barely.’ Actually despite his brush with death, or maybe because of it, Luca radiated an aura of restless vitality.
His edgy glance slid her way. ‘Can we end the postmortem?’ That she considered it possible that he’d leave a fellow traveller to their watery fate while he made himself comfortable spoke volumes on her opinion of him. ‘Though obviously it’s good to know someone cares.’
Missing entirely the sarcasm in his voice, Poppy tightened her soft lips as she injected a note of studied boredom into her voice and drawled, ‘Been there done that.’ Spurred by the flash of reaction she glimpsed in his dramatically dark eyes, she added with a smile that left her own eyes cold, ‘So don’t worry, Luca, you’re safe. I won’t be trying to seduce you any time soon.’
His dark lashes swept downwards then lifted. Two thirds of his brain knew it was a bad thing to say but the reckless, self-indulgent last third—blame it on a near-death experience—appeared to have temporary control of his vocal chords as he slurred. ‘Am I meant to think that’s a good thing?’
Poppy met his eyes, saw the dark dangerous unspoken message, sensed the tension rolling off him in waves and felt her insides dissolve.
After several breathless seconds of mind-numbing, heart-racing excitement the shame and disgust kicked in.
What are you doing, Poppy? He’s a married man who broke your heart! And if that made her bad it made him a total sleaze.
Poppy folded her arms across her chest. ‘I’m sure your wife will be pleased you’re alive.’
Message received, she thought, watching his expression blank. He did not look guilty, he looked … She shivered. The eyes that met hers had a flat, almost dead look.
Was his marriage in trouble …?
Not my business.
Admittedly once the possibility would have given her some feeling of shameful satisfaction. Happily she was no longer so bitter and twisted. She hadn’t got noble suddenly, but she had wised up enough to know that one criteria of having a life was letting go of the bad stuff that happened.
Luca constituted bad stuff.
Bad but beautiful, she thought, studying his profile, but she was totally over him. The fact she felt the need to constantly remind herself of this was in itself a cause of concern.
‘And you?’ Back now turned to her, he draped his jacket with what seemed like elaborate care over the back of a wooden rocking chair before taking the hem of his drenched cashmere sweater and peeling it over his head.
‘I am assuming you had a less eventful journey …?’ He lifted an arm, pressing his hand to the back of his head as he rotated his neck and flexed his shoulders, causing the muscles of his powerful shoulders and upper arms to bunch and ripple in a manner that Poppy found very distracting.
Distracting might well be the understatement of the century!
‘I had …’ Poppy swallowed and struggled to focus on the question … What was the question?
Gianluca’s torso was lean and tautly muscled; the drift of dark hair across his chest covered smooth bronze flesh that was tinged with blue and the surface studded with a rash of goose bumps. There was a livid-looking graze along his ribs and a discoloured area that looked like the beginning of a bruise.
The evidence of what had to be painful injuries made her sensitive stomach muscles spasm … Uncomfortably aware that empathy wasn’t the only cause of the growing tension in her belly, Poppy closed her eyes for a moment to shut out all that disturbing rampant maleness, and cleared her throat.
‘Much less eventful,’ she explained to a point somewhere over Gianluca’s left shoulder and continued to studiedly ignore the fact that despite the cold she was suddenly very hot in places that she ought not to be hot. ‘I hired someone to ferry me out. Unfortunately he wouldn’t hang around to wait for me for any money. What are you doing?’ she added, her voice sharpening in alarm.
‘Taking off my pants. It used, as I recall, to be your ambition.’
Poppy laughed, trying to match his flippancy. ‘I’m touched you remember. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that most men don’t put up a fight.’
Before she could begin to question the flash of coruscating anger that lit up his dark eyes there was a deafening crack followed by a loud roar and a succession of bangs that made Poppy cover her ears with her hands and close her eyes.
Utterly convinced that the roof was falling in, she thought, God, the men in suits at the council were right!
Fatalistically prepared for what was to come, she held her breath and waited to feel the weight of the building come crashing down on her head. Instead she felt the pressure of two heavy hands on her hunched shoulders.
‘You can breathe now.’
Poppy’s eyes blinked open. Luca had moved in to stand directly in front of her. He was inches away, very solid and reassuring. ‘What happened?’
‘Not totally sure,’ Luca admitted. ‘But it was dramatic.’ His dark head tipped in acknowledgement of the drama as he took hold of both her wrists and firmly removed her hands from her ears.
She glanced up nervously at the heavily beamed ceiling. There were no gaping holes. It actually looked reassuringly sturdy. ‘I thought the roof was coming off,’ she disclosed huskily.
‘And you thought the best defence was to go into see-no-evil-hear-no-evil mode. Your survival instincts definitely need some work, cara!’
The killer combination of his throaty sexy voice and the casual endearment caused a black hole to open up without warning where her stomach had been.
‘We can’t all be ice cool in the face of danger.’ She must have looked like a total fool but on the plus side she was not lying crushed under a pile of rubble. ‘I didn’t think,’ she admitted huskily. ‘I just sort of … reacted.’
Her heart thudding louder than it had been when she had thought she was about to be buried under several tons of rubble, Poppy’s eyes flickered nervously towards the cool brown fingers circling her wrists. She ran the tip of her tongue across her dry lips; she was trying hard not to react now.
Reacting to her instincts at this moment would have involved snatching her hands from his grasp, an action he might well read too much into … or maybe not.
Luckily Gianluca remained oblivious to the uncomfortable things the light contact was doing to her. He wasn’t even looking at her any longer, he was checking out the room, but he was still holding her wrists.
She gave a gentle tug but instead of responding to the reminder in the way he was meant to Gianluca tightened his grip and his thumbs began to move in circular sweeps over the blue-veined inner aspect of her wrists. Presumably meant to be soothing, the effect of the light pressure was however anything but.
Oh, help!
If she had found the contact disturbing this fresh assault on her senses was almost painful in its intensity. Previously her discomfort had taken the form of vague unease, a prickle under her skin and an empty feeling in her stomach. Now the tingle was a throb and the empty feeling a clenched fist of awareness.
This had to be some post-being-scared-half-to-death-on-top-of-a-very-bad-day scenario. The alternative was not good news.
Gianluca’s attention shifted from the broken glass on the floor to the woman beside him. ‘You’re shaking.’
His concern took the form of a stern frown as his critical scrutiny moved across the soft contours of the heart shaped face turned up to him. Her skin was as pale as milk, making the purplish smudges under her eyes appear even darker. Her dark lashes lowered but not before he had taken note of the glow in those arresting eyes. It had a feverish quality.
‘Are you running a temperature?’ He had intended to lay his hand on her forehead to test his theory when something bright caught his eye.
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Ким Лоренс
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: 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…