Powerful Italian, Penniless Housekeeper
Powerful Italian, Penniless Housekeeper
India Grey
Hired: impoverished housekeeper! Though Sarah Halliday is very ordinary, her dangerously attractive new boss is not content with her scrubbing the marble floors of his Tuscan palazzo… Bedded: Italian’s mistress Instead she finds herself catapulted into Lorenzo Cavalleri’s star-studded life – with a wardrobe to match! Make-up masks her blushes, silk evening gowns flatter her fuller figure, but underneath Sarah’s still the shy, frumpy housekeeper Lorenzo hired – and not the sophisticated bedroom siren he seems to be expecting…At His Service From glass slippers to silk sheets
Lorenzo barely recognised that guttural rasp as his own voice. He took hold of her upper arms, wrenching her round. He could feel the heat coming off her damp, voluptuous body, and as he touched her she gave a shivery gasp, jerking beneath his cold, wet hands.
That was what did it—what tore through his iron selfcontrol. That shiver of sensual awareness seemed to reverberate through his own body and galvanise him into actions he couldn’t control. Suddenly he was pulling her against him as their mouths met and their lips parted, and he was running his slippery hands over her bare back beneath her hot, vanilla-scented hair, dripping cold water on her burning skin.
The kiss was hungry, devouring, urgent. She moved round so that she was leaning with her back against the sink, her fingers grasping his shoulders. Lorenzo could feel the jut of her hipbones against his, rising, pressing against his thudding body. His arousal was so sudden, so intense, it was almost painful. He fumbled for the bow at the back of her apron, stretched to breaking point as his fingers moved across her bare, satin-smooth back. He wanted to have her now, standing up against the sink…
As if she’d read his mind she shifted slightly, tearing her lips from his for a moment as she hoisted herself upwards so that she was half sitting on the edge of the worktop. The movement made a little space between them, and without the bewitching ecstasy of her mouth on his, her hot body pressed against him, Lorenzo was pierced through with sudden chilling awareness.
What the hell was he doing?
A self-confessed romance junkie, India Grey was just thirteen years old when she first sent off for the Mills & Boon® Writers’ Guidelines. She can still recall the thrill of getting the large brown envelope with its distinctive logo through the letterbox, and subsequently whiled away many a dull school day staring out of the window and dreaming of the perfect hero. She kept those guidelines with her for the next ten years, tucking them carefully inside the cover of each new diary in January, and beginning every list of New Year’s Resolutions with the words Start Novel. In the meantime she gained a degree in English Literature and Language from Manchester University, and in a stroke of genius on the part of the gods of Romance met her gorgeous future husband on the very last night of their three years there. The last fifteen years have been spent blissfully buried in domesticity and heaps of pink washing, generated by three small daughters, but she has never really stopped daydreaming about romance. She’s just profoundly grateful to have finally got an excuse to do it legitimately!
Powerful
Italian,
Penniless
Housekeeper
By India Grey
MILLS & BOON®
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/)
For Debbie and Alyson,
without whose wit, wisdom and daily conferences
in the school car park
this book would have been written much more quickly
(but at further risk to my sanity).
CHAPTER ONE
ELIGIBLE bachelor.
Sarah came to a standstill in the middle of the car park, her fist tightening around the envelope in her hand.
She had to find an eligible bachelor. As an item in a scavenger hunt.
Since she’d conspicuously failed to find one of those in real life, her chances of success tonight seemed slim.
Beyond the rows of shiny Mercedes and BMWs parked outside Oxfordshire’s trendiest dining pub, the fields and streams and woodland coppices she had grown up amongst lay golden and peaceful in the low summer sun. She gazed out across them, the envelope still clutched in her hand as adrenaline fizzed through her bloodstream and her mind raced.
She didn’t have to go in there; didn’t have to take part in this stupid scavenger hunt for her sister’s hen weekend; didn’t have to be the butt of everyone’s jokes all the time—Sarah, nearly thirty and on the shelf. No, she knew these fields like the back of her hand, and could remember loads of good hiding places.
Thrusting a hand through her tangled curls, she sighed. Hiding up a tree might be considerably more appealing than going into a pub and having to find an eligible bachelor, but at the age of twenty-nine it was slightly less socially acceptable. And she couldn’t really spend the rest of her life hiding. Everyone said she had to get back out there and face it all again, for Lottie’s sake. Children needed two parents, didn’t they? Girls needed fathers. Sooner or later she should at least try to find someone to fill the rather sudden vacancy left by Rupert.
The prospect made her feel cold inside.
Later. Definitely later, rather than sooner. Right now she was going to—
The doors to the bar opened and a group of city types spilled out, laughing and slapping each other on the back in an excess of beery camaraderie. They barely glanced at her as they walked past, but almost as an afterthought the last one dutifully held the door open for her.
Hell. There was no way she could not go in now. They’d think she was some kind of weirdo whose idea of a good night out was hanging around in a pub car park. Stammering her thanks, she slipped into the dim interior of the bar, shoving the envelope into the back pocket of her jeans with a shaking hand.
In the years since she’d moved away from Oxfordshire The Rose and Crown had transformed itself from a tiny rural pub with swirly-patterned carpets and faded hunting prints on the nicotinestained walls to a temple of good taste, with reclaimed-oak floors, exposed brickwork and a background soundtrack of achingly trendy ‘mood music’ obviously intended to help the clientele of stockbrokers and barristers feel instantly ‘chilled out’.
It made Sarah feel instantly on edge. And about ninety years old.
She was about to turn round and walk straight out again when some latent sense of pride stopped her. It was ridiculous, she thought impatiently; she was used to doing things on her own. She put up shelves on her own. She did her income-tax form without help. She brought up her daughter completely singlehandedly. She could surely walk into a bar and get herself a drink.
Murmuring apologies, she slipped through the press of bodies into a space by the bar and glanced nervously around. The doors were open onto the terrace and she could see Angelica and her friends gathered round a big table in the centre. It would have been impossible to miss them. Even in this place, theirs was easily the noisiest, most glamorous group and was clearly attracting the attention of every single male within eyeing-up distance. They were all wearing T-shirts provided by Angelica’s chief bridesmaid, a gazelle-like girl called Fenella, who worked in PR and who was also responsible for the scavenger-hunt idea. The T-shirts had ‘Angelica’s final fling’ emblazoned across the front in pink letters, and Fenella had only had them made in a size ‘small’.
Sarah tugged at hers surreptitiously, desperately trying to make it cover the strip of bare flesh above the waistband of her too-tight jeans. Perhaps if she’d actually stuck to her New Year diet she’d be out there now, laughing, tossing back cocktails and shiny hair and collecting eligible bachelors with the best of them. Hell, if she was a stone lighter perhaps she wouldn’t even need an eligible bachelor because maybe then Rupert wouldn’t have felt the need to get engaged to a glacial blonde Systems Analyst called Julia. But too many nights spent on the sofa while Lottie was asleep, with nothing but a bottle of cheap wine and the biscuit tin for company, had meant she’d failed to lose even a couple of pounds.
She’d definitely try extra-hard between now and the wedding, she vowed silently, trying to make her way to the bar. It was taking place in the ruined farmhouse Angelica and Hugh had bought in Tuscany and were currently having lavishly done up, and Sarah had a sudden mental image of Angelica’s friends floating around the newly landscaped garden in their delicious little silken dresses, while she lurked in the kitchen, covering her bulk with an apron.
Fenella passed her now, on the way back from the bar with a handful of multicoloured drinks sprouting umbrellas and cherries. She eyed Sarah with cool amusement. ‘There you are! We’d almost given up on you. What are you drinking?’
‘Oh—er—I’m just going to have a dry white wine,’ said Sarah. She should really opt for a slimline tonic, but hell, she needed something to get her through the rest of the evening.
Fenella laughed—throwing her head back and producing a rich, throaty sound that had every man in the vicinity craning round to look. ‘Nice try, but I don’t think so. Look in your envelope—it’s the next challenge,’ she smirked, sliding through the crowd towards the door.
With her heart sinking faster than the Titanic, Sarah slid the envelope from her pocket and pulled out the next instruction.
She gave a moan of dismay.
The beautiful, lithe youth behind the bar flickered a glance in her direction and gave a barely perceptible jerk of his head, which she took as a grudging invitation to order. Her heart was hammering uncomfortably against her ribs and she could feel the heat begin to rise to her cheeks as she opened her mouth.
‘I’d like a Screaming Orgasm, please.’
The voice that came from her dry throat was low and cracked, but sadly not in a good way. The youth lifted a scornful eyebrow.
‘A what?’
‘A Screaming Orgasm,’ Sarah repeated miserably. She could feel the press of bodies behind her as other people jostled for a place at the bar. Her cheeks were burning now, and there was an uncomfortable prickling sensation rippling down the back of her neck, as if she was being watched. Which, of course, she was, she thought despairingly. Every one of Angelica’s friends had temporarily suspended their own professional flirtation operations and was peering in through the open doors, suppressing their collective mirth.
Well, at least they were finding this amusing. The youth flicked back his blond fringe and regarded her with dead eyes. ‘What’s one of those?’ he said tonelessly.
‘I don’t know.’ Sarah raised her chin and smiled sweetly, masking her growing desperation. ‘I’ve never had one.’
‘Never had a Screaming Orgasm? Then please, allow me…’
The voice came from just behind her, close to her ear, and was a million miles from the hearty, public-school bray of The Rose and Crown’s usual clientele. As deep and rich as oak-aged cognac, it was infused with an accent Sarah couldn’t immediately place, and the slightest tang of dry amusement.
Her head whipped round. In the crush at the bar it was impossible to get a proper look at the man who had spoken. He was standing close behind her and was so tall that her eyes were on a level with the open neck of his shirt, the triangle of olive skin at his throat.
She felt an unfamiliar lurch in the pit of her stomach as he leaned forward in one fluid movement, towering over her as he spoke to the youth behind the bar.
‘One shot each of vodka, Kahlua, Amaretto…’
His voice really was something else. Italian. She could tell by the way he said ‘Amaretto’, as if it were an intimate promise. Her nipples sprang to life beneath the tiny T-shirt.
God, what was she doing? Sarah Halliday didn’t let strange men buy her cocktails in pubs. She was a grown woman with a five-year-old daughter and the stretch marks to prove it. She’d been madly in love with the same man for nearly seven years. Lusting after strangers in bars wasn’t her style.
‘Thanks for your help,’ she mumbled, ‘but I can get this myself.’
She glanced up at him again and felt her chest tighten. The evening sun was coming from behind him but Sarah had an impression of dark hair, angular features, a strong jaw shadowed with several days of stubble. The exact opposite of Rupert’s English, golden-boy good looks, she thought with a shiver. Compelling rather than handsome.
And then he turned and looked back at her.
It felt as if he’d reached out and pulled her into the warmth of his body. His narrowed eyes were so dark that even this close she couldn’t see where the irises ended and the pupils began, and they travelled over her face lazily for a second before slipping downwards.
‘I’d like to get it for you.’
He said it simply, emotionlessly, as a statement of fact, but there was something about his voice that made the blood throb in her ears, her chest, her too-tight jeans.
‘No, really, I can…’
With shaking hands she opened her purse and peered inside, but the chemical reaction that had just taken place in the region of her knickers was making it difficult to see clearly or think straight.
Apart from a handful of small change her purse was virtually empty, and with a rush of dismay she remembered handing over her last five-pound note to Lottie for the swear box. Lottie’s policy on swearing was draconian and—since she’d introduced a system of fines—extremely lucrative. Clearly her killer business instinct had come from Rupert. The frustrations of the scavenger hunt this afternoon had cost Sarah dearly.
Now she looked up in panic and met the deadpan stare of the barman.
‘Nine pounds fifty,’ he said flatly.
Nine pounds fifty? She’d ordered a drink, not a three-course mealshe and Lottie could live for a week on that. Faint with horror, she looked down into her purse again while her numb brain raced. When she raised her head again it was to see the stranger hand a note over to the blond youth and pick up the ridiculous drink.
He moved away from the bar, and the crowd through which she’d had to fight a passage fell away for him, like the Red Sea before Moses. Unthinkingly she found herself following him, and couldn’t help her gaze from lingering on the breadth of his shoulders beneath the faded blue shirt he wore. He seemed to dwarf every other man in the packed room.
He stopped in the doorway to the terrace and held out the drink to her. It was white and frothy, like a milkshake. A very expensive milkshake.
‘Your first Screaming Orgasm. I hope you enjoy it.’
His face was expressionless, his tone dutifully courteous, but as she took the glass from him their fingers touched and Sarah felt electricity crackle up her arm.
She snatched her hand away so sharply that some of the cocktail splashed onto her wrist. ‘I doubt it,’ she snapped.
The stranger’s dark eyebrows rose in sardonic enquiry.
‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry,’ Sarah said, horrified by her own crassness. ‘That sounds so ungrateful after you paid for it. It’s just that it’s not a drink I’d usually choose, but I’m sure it’ll be delicious.’ And account for about three days’ calorie allowance, she thought, taking a large gulp and forcing herself to look appreciative. ‘Mmm…lovely.’
His eyes held her, dark and steady. ‘Why did you ask for it if it’s not your kind of thing?’
Sarah gave a half-hearted smile. ‘I have nothing against screaming orgasms in theory, but,’ she held up the envelope, ‘it’s a scavenger hunt. You have to collect different items on a list. It’s my sister’s hen weekend, you see…’
Half-sister. She probably should have explained. Right now he was no doubt wondering which one of the beautiful thoroughbred babes out there she could possibly share a full set of genes with.
‘So I gathered.’ He glanced down at her T-shirt and then out into the warm evening, where Angelica and Fenella and their friends had collected a veritable crowd of eligible bachelors and were cavorting conspicuously with them. ‘You don’t seem to be enjoying it quite as much as the others.’
‘Oh, no, I’m having a great time.’ Sarah made a big effort to sound convincing. One of Angelica’s friends was a holistic counsellor and had told her at lunchtime that she had a ‘negative aura’. She took another mouthful of the disgusting cocktail and tried not to gag.
Gently he took the glass from her and put it on the table behind them. ‘You are one of the worst actresses that I’ve come across in a long time.’
‘Thanks,’ she mumbled. ‘There goes my promising career as a Hollywood screen goddess.’
‘Believe me, it was a compliment.’
She looked up quickly, wondering if he was teasing her, but his expression was utterly serious. For a moment their eyes locked. The bolt of pure, stinging desire that shot through her took her completely by surprise and she felt the blood surge up to her face.
‘So what else is on your list of things to find?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know yet.’ She tore her gaze away from his and looked down at the envelope in her hand. ‘It’s all in here. As you get each item you open up the next envelope.’
‘How many have you got so far?’
‘One.’
His long, downturned mouth quirked into half a smile, but Sarah noticed that it didn’t chase the shadows from his eyes. ‘The drink was the first?’
‘Actually it was the second. But I gave up on the first.’
‘Which was?’
She shook her head, deliberately letting her hair fall over her face. ‘It’s not important.’
His fingers closed around the envelope in her hand and gently he took it from her. For a second she tried to snatch it back but he was too strong for her and she looked away in embarrassment as he unfolded the paper and read what was written there.
She looked past him into the blue summer evening. Out on the terrace, Fenella was watching her, and Sarah saw her nudge Angelica and smirk as she nodded in Sarah’s direction.
‘Dio mio,’ said the man beside her, his husky Italian voice tinged with distaste. ‘You have to “collect” an eligible bachelor?’
‘Yes. Not exactly my forte.’ Angrily Sarah turned away from the curious glances from the terrace and gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘I don’t suppose you’re one, are you?’
The moment she’d spoken she felt her face freeze with embarrassment as she realised how it had sounded. As if she was desperate. And as if she was coming on to him. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘Let’s just pretend that I never asked that—’
‘No,’ he said tersely.
‘Please…‘ she ducked her head, staring down at the fashionably worn wooden floorboards ‘…forget it. You don’t have to answer.’
‘I just did. The answer’s no. I am neither a bachelor nor remotely eligible,’ he said gravely, reaching out and lifting her chin with his finger, so that she was left with no choice but to look up into his face. His eyes were black and impossible to read. ‘But they don’t know that,’ he murmured as he moved his lips to hers.
As ideas went, it probably wasn’t his most sensible, Lorenzo thought as he tilted her face up. He saw her dark eyes widen in shock as he brought his mouth down to hers.
But he was bored. Bored and disillusioned and frustrated, and this was as good a way as any of escaping those feelings for a while. Her lips were as soft and sweet as he’d imagined they would be, and as he kissed her with deliberate gentleness he breathed in the clean, artless smell of soap and washing powder.
She was shaking. Her body was rigid with tension, her mouth stayed tightly closed beneath his. Anger at the women on the terrace, who had obviously given her a hard time, churned inside him, adding to the sour disappointment of the day. Instinctively he raised one hand to cradle her face while the other slid beneath the warm tumble of her silken hair and cupped the back of her head.
Patience was one of the things that made him good at his job. The ability to make women relax and release their inhibitions was another. He held her with infinite care, close enough to make her feel cherished, but not so tightly she felt threatened. Gently his fingers caressed the nape of her neck, the secret dip at the base of her skull as his mouth very languidly explored hers.
Triumph shot through him as a soft moan escaped her and felt the stiffness leave her body. Her plump lips parted, her spine arched towards him and then she was kissing him back, with a tentative passion that was surprisingly exciting.
Lorenzo found he was smiling. For the first time in days…Dio, months, he was actually smiling, smiling against her mouth at the sheer unexpected sweetness of kissing this woman with the glorious auburn curls and the spectacular breasts and the sad, sad eyes.
He had come to Oxfordshire on a sort of desperate pilgrimage; a search for places that had long existed in his head thanks to a tattered paperback by a little-known author, picked up by chance years ago. The landscape described so lucidly in Francis Tate’s beautiful, lyrical novel had haunted him for years, and he had come here in the hope that it might rekindle some spark of the creativity that had died alongside the rest of his emotional life. But the reality of the place was disappointing; a far cry from the gentle, rural paradise Tate depicted in The Oak and the Cypress. Lorenzo had discovered a parody of picturepostcard England, bland and soulless.
This woman was the most real, genuine thing he’d come across since he’d arrived here, and probably long before. Emotions played across her face like shadows on a summer day. She didn’t conceal anything. Couldn’t pretend.
After Tia’s prolonged, sophisticated deception he found that profoundly attractive.
And she was actually as sexy as hell. Beneath that self-deprecating insecurity, this girl had depths of heat and passion. He’d kissed her because he felt sorry for her; because she looked sad; because it would cost nothing and mean nothing…
He hadn’t expected to enjoy it as much as this.
Lorenzo felt his smile widen as his hands moved down to her curvaceous waist and pulled her against him, desire spiralling down through the pit of his stomach as his fingers met the warm, soft flesh beneath the T-shirt…
She froze. Her eyes flew open, and then suddenly she was pushing him away; stumbling backwards. Her mouth was reddened and bee-stung from his kiss, and above it her dark eyes welled with hurt as they darted wildly in the direction of the whooping, clapping girls on the terrace before coming back to him.
For a second she just stared at him, her face stricken, and then she turned and pushed her way through the crush of bodies towards the door.
It was a joke, of course. That was what hen parties were all about. Jokes. Fun. Flirting. It was just part of all of that.
Pushing through a gap in the hedge at the back of the car park, Sarah felt the thorns scrape at her bare arms and angrily scrubbed the tears from her face with the back of her hand. Ouch. It hurt. That was why she was crying. Not because she couldn’t take a joke.
Even one as hurtful and humiliating as being kissed in a pub by a complete stranger who couldn’t even keep a straight face while he was doing it. God, no. She wouldn’t get upset about a silly, harmless thing like that.
Hell, she thought, striding angrily through the waist-high wheat, she was the woman who only a week ago had done the catering for an engagement party and dropped the cake—complete with lighted sparklers—in front of all the guests and the happy couple. One half of which just happened to have been her lover of seven years and the father of her child. Embarrassment and abject shame were old friends of hers. The small matter of being set up to provide hilarious entertainment for her sister’s hen party was nothing to Sarah Halliday: the original poster child for humiliation.
The sun was low, dipping down to the horizon, dazzling her through her tears and turning the field into a shimmering sea of gold. Sarah swiped furiously at the wheat in her path, giving vent to the fury and resentment that buzzed through veins that a few moments ago had been thrumming with desire.
That was the worst bit, she thought despairingly. Not that she’d been set up, but that it had felt so wonderful. She was so lonely and desperate that the empty kiss of a stranger had actually made her feel cherished and special and desirable and good…
Right up to the moment she’d realised he was laughing at her.
Reaching the brow of the hill, she tipped back her head and took a big, steadying breath. High up in the faded blue sky the pale ghost of the moon hovered, waiting for the sun to finish its flamboyant exit. It made her think of Lottie, and she found that she was smiling as she started walking again, quickening her pace as she descended the hill towards home.
Lorenzo bent to pick up the envelope that she’d dropped in her hurry to get away from him.
Funny, he thought acidly, in all the versions of the story he’d ever read it was a shoe Cinderella left behind when she fled from the ball. He turned it over. Ah. So her name wasn’t Cinderella…
It was Sarah.
Sarah. It sounded honest and simple and wholesome, he reflected as he pushed through the crowd towards the door. It suited her.
He strode quickly out into the middle of the dusty lane that ran in front of The Rose and Crown and looked around. To the right, the car park was packed bumper-to-bumper and he half expected to see one of the gleaming BMWs shoot backwards out of its space and accelerate out into the narrow road. But no engine noise shattered the still evening.
There was no sign of her.
Intrigued, he shaded his eyes against the low, flaming sun and turned slowly around, scanning the fields of wheat and hedgerows that unfolded on every side. The air was thick, dusty, hazy with heat and, apart from the distant sound of voices and laughter from the terrace, all was quiet. It seemed she had completely vanished.
He was about to turn and go back inside when a movement in the distance caught his eye. Someone was walking through the field beyond the pub, wading through the rippling wheat with fluid, undulating strides. Unmistakably female, she had her back to him, and the sinking sun lit her riot of curls, giving her an aura of pure gold that would have won any lighting technician an Oscar.
It was her. Sarah.
He felt the deep, almost physical jolt in his gut that he got when he was working and instantly his fingers itched for a camera. This was what he had come here looking for. Here, in front of him, was the essence of Francis Tate’s England, the heart and soul of the book Lorenzo had loved for so long, encapsulated by this timeless, sensual image of a girl with the sun in her hair, waist-high in wheat.
On the brow of the hill she paused, tipping back her head and looking up at the pale smudge of moon, so that her hair cascaded down her back. Then, after a moment, she carried on down the slope and disappeared from view.
He let out a long, harsh lungful of air, realising for the first time that he’d been holding his breath as he watched her. He didn’t know who this Sarah was or what had made her run out like that, but actually he didn’t care. He was just very grateful that she had, because in doing so she’d unwittingly given him back something he thought he’d lost for ever. His hunger to work again. His creative vision.
Which, he thought grimly as he walked back across the road, just left the slightly more prosaic matter of copyright permission.
CHAPTER TWO
THREE weeks later.
Sarah’s head throbbed and tiredness dragged at her body, but as she closed her eyes and took a deep inhalation of warm night air she felt her battered spirits lift a little.
Tuscany.
You could smell it; a resiny, slightly astringent combination of rosemary and cedar and the tang of sun-baked earth that was a million miles from the diesel smog that hung over London’s airless streets at the moment. Britain had been having an extended spell of hot weather that had made the headlines night after night for weeks, but here the heat felt different. It had an elemental quality that stole into your bones and almost forced you to relax.
‘You look shattered, darling.’
Across the table her mother’s eyes met hers over her glass of Chianti. Sarah smothered a yawn and smiled quickly.
‘It’s the travelling. I’m not used to it. But it’s great to be here.’
She was surprised, as she said the words, to realise how true they were. She’d got so used to dreading Angelica’s wedding with all its leaden implications of her own conspicuous failure in so many departments—most notably the ‘finding a lifelong partner’ one—that she had neglected to take into account how wonderful it would be to come to Italy. The fulfilment of a lifelong dream, from way back when she could afford to have dreams.
‘It’s great that you’re here.’ Martha’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. ‘I think you needed to get away from things because frankly, my darling, you’re not looking in great shape.’
‘I know, I know…’ Aware of her straining waistband, Sarah squirmed uncomfortably. The bonus of having a broken heart was supposed to be that you lost your appetite and the weight fell off, but she was still waiting for that phase to kick in. At the moment she was stuck in the ‘bitterness-and-comfort-eating’ stage. ‘I am on a diet, but it’s been tough, what with Rupert and work and worrying about money and everything—’
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Martha said gently. ‘I meant mentally. But if money is difficult, darling, you know Guy and I will help.’
‘No!’ Sarah’s response was instant. ‘Really, it’s fine. Something will come up.’ Her thoughts strayed to the letter she’d had a couple of weeks ago from her father’s publishers, the latest in a long line of requests she’d received for film options on The Oak and the Cypress in the eleven years since she’d inherited the rights. In the beginning she’d actually taken several of these offers seriously, until bitter experience had taught her that Francis Tate seemed to attract penniless film students with a tendency to bizarre, obsessive psychological disorders. Now, for the sake of her sanity and her burdensome sense of responsibility to her father’s memory, she simply refused permission outright.
‘How’s Lottie doing?’ Martha asked now.
Sarah glanced uneasily across at Lottie, who was sitting on Angelica’s knee. ‘Fine,’ she said, hating the defensive note that crept into her voice. ‘She hasn’t even noticed that Rupert isn’t around any more, which makes me realise just what a terrible father he’s been. I can’t remember the last time he spent time with her.’ Latterly most of Rupert’s visits to the flat in Shepherd’s Bush had been for hasty and singularly unsatisfactory sex in his lunch hour when Lottie was at school. Sarah shuddered now when she thought of his clumsy, careless touch, and his easy excuses about problems at the office and the pressure of work for the evenings and weekends he no longer spent with her. She wondered how long he would have carried on the deceit if she hadn’t found him out so spectacularly.
‘You’re better off without him,’ Martha said, as if she’d read Sarah’s thoughts. Sarah sincerely hoped she hadn’t.
‘I know.’ She sighed and got to her feet, starting to gather up the plates. ‘Really. I know. I don’t need a man.’
‘That’s not what I said.’ Martha stood up too, reaching across for the wine, holding the bottle up to the light of the candle and squinting at it to see if there was any left. ‘I said without him, not without a man in general.’
‘I’m happy on my own,’ Sarah said stubbornly. It wasn’t exactly a lie; she was happy enough. But she only had to think back to the dark, compelling Italian who had kissed her at Angelica’s hen party to know that she was also only half-alive. Briskly she moved around the table, stacking crockery, keeping her hands busy. ‘You’re just missing Guy. You always get ridiculously sentimental when he’s not here.’
Guy and Hugh and all his friends weren’t arriving until tomorrow, so tonight it was just ‘the girls’, as Angelica called them. Martha shrugged. ‘Perhaps. I’m just an old romantic. But I don’t want you to miss your chance at love because you’re determined to look the other way, that’s all.’
Fat chance of that, thought Sarah, carrying the plates back to the kitchen. Her love life was a vast, deserted plain. If anything ever did chance to appear on the horizon she’d be certain to see it. Whether it would stop or not was another matter altogether.
Looming ahead of her through the Tuscan night, the farmhouse was a jumble of uneven buildings and gently sloping roofs. The kitchen was at one end, a low-ceilinged single-storey addition that Angelica said had once been a dairy. Sarah went in and switched the light on, tiredly setting down the pile of plates on the un-rustic shiny marble countertop. Despite being utterly uninterested in cooking, Angelica and Hugh had spared no expense in the creation of the kitchen, and Sarah couldn’t quite stamp out a hot little flare of envy as she looked around, mentally comparing it with the tiny, grim galley kitchen in her flat in London.
Crossly she turned on the cold tap and let the water run over her wrists. Heat, tiredness and a glass of Chianti had lowered her defences tonight, making it harder than usual to hold back all kinds of forbidden thoughts. She turned off the tap and went back out into the humid evening, pressing her cool, damp hands against her hot neck, beneath her hair. As she returned to the table Angelica was running through the catalogue of disasters that had beset the renovations.
‘…it seems he’s absolutely fanatical about having everything as natural and authentic as possible. He confronted our architect with this obscure bit of Tuscan planning law that meant we weren’t allowed to put a glass roof on the kitchen, but had to reuse the old tiles. Something to do with maintaining the original character of the building.’
Fenella rolled her eyes. ‘That’s all very well for him to say, since he lives in a sixteenth-century palazzo. Does he expect you to live like peasants just because you bought a farmhouse?’
Martha looked up with a smile as Sarah sat down again. ‘Hugh and Angelica have fallen foul of the local aristocracy,’ she explained. ‘From Palazzo Castellaccio, further up the lane.’
‘Aristocracy?’ Angelica snorted. ‘I wouldn’t mind if he was, but he’s definitely new money. A film director. Lorenzo Cavalleri, he’s called. He’s married to that stunning Italian actress, Tia de Luca.’
Fenella was visibly excited. Dropping a celebrity name in front of her had roughly the same effect as dropping a biscuit in front of a dog. ‘Tia de Luca? Not any more apparently.’ She sat up straighter, practically pricking up her ears and panting. ‘There’s an interview with her in that magazine I bought at the airport yesterday. Apparently she left her husband for Ricardo Marcello, and she’s pregnant.’
‘Ooh, how exciting,’ said Angelica avidly. ‘Ricardo Marcello’s gorgeous. Is the baby his, then?’
You’d think they were talking about intimate acquaintances, thought Sarah, stifling another yawn. She knew who Tia de Luca was, of course—everyone did—but couldn’t get excited about the complicated love life of someone she would never meet and with whom she had nothing in common. Fenella was clearly untroubled by such details.
‘Not sure—from what she said, I think the baby might be the husband’s, you know, Lorenzo Whatshisname.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Have you met him?’
Across the table, Lottie was lolling on her grandmother’s knee, her thumb in her mouth. She was obviously exhausted, and Sarah’s own eyelids felt as if they had lead weights attached to them; leaning back in her chair, she tipped up her head and allowed herself the momentary luxury of closing them while the conversation ebbed around her.
‘No,’ Angelica said. ‘Hugh has. Says he’s difficult. Typical Italian alpha male, all arrogant and stand-offish and superior. We have to keep on the right side of him though, because the church where we’re getting married is actually on part of his land.’
‘Mmm…’ Fenella’s voice was warm and throaty. ‘He sounds delish. I wouldn’t mind getting on the right side of an Italian alpha male…’
Sarah opened her eyes, dragging herself ruthlessly back from the edge of that tempting abyss.
‘Come on, Lottie. It’s time you were in bed.’
At the mention of her name Lottie struggled sleepily upright, reluctant as ever to leave a party. ‘I’m not, Mummy,’ she protested. ‘Really…’
‘Uh-uh.’ Lottie had the persuasive powers of a politician, and usually Sarah’s resistance in the face of her killer combination of sweetness and logic was pitifully low. But not tonight. A mixture of exhaustion and an odd, restless feeling of dissatisfaction sharpened her tone. ‘Bed. Now.’
Lottie blinked up at the sky over Sarah’s shoulder. Her forehead was creased up with worry. ‘There’s no moon,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t they have the moon in Italy?’
In an instant Sarah’s edgy frustration melted away. The moon was Lottie’s touchstone, her security blanket. ‘Yes, they do,’ she said softly, ‘but tonight it must be tucked up safely behind all the clouds. Look, there are no stars either.’
Lottie’s frown eased a little. ‘If there are clouds, does that mean it’s going to rain?’
‘Oh, gosh, don’t say that,’ laughed Angelica, getting up and coming over to give Lottie a goodnight kiss. ‘It better not. The whole point of having the wedding here was the weather. It never rains in Tuscany!’
It was going to rain.
Standing at the open window of the study, Lorenzo breathed in the scent of dry earth and looked up into a sky of starless black. Down here the night was hot and heavy, but a sudden breeze stirred the tops of the cypress trees along the drive, making them shiver and whisper that a change was on the way.
Grazie a Dio. The dry spell had lasted for months now, and the ground was cracking and turning to dust. In the garden Alfredo had almost used up his barrels of hoarded rainwater, laboriously filling watering cans to douse the plants wilting in the limonaia, and in daylight the view of the hillside below Palazzo Castellaccio was as uniformally brown as a faded sepia print.
Suddenly from behind him in the room there came a low gasp of sensual pleasure, and Lorenzo turned round just in time to see his ex-wife’s lover bend over her naked body, circling her rosy nipple with his tongue.
Expertly done, he thought acidly as the huge plasma screen above the fireplace was filled with a close shot of Tia’s parted lips. Ricardo Marcello was about as good at acting as your average plank of wood but he certainly came to life in the sex scenes, with the result that the completed filma big-budget blockbuster about the early life of the sixteenth-century Italian scientist Galileocontained rather more of them than Lorenzo had originally planned. Audiences across the world were likely to leave the cinema with little notion of Galileo as the father of modern science but with a lingering impression of him as a three-times-a-night man who was prodigiously gifted in a Kama Sutra of sexual positions.
With an exhalation of disgust Lorenzo reached for the remote control and hit ‘pause’ just as the camera was making yet another of its epic journeys over the honeyed contours of Tia’s flatteringly lit, cosmetically enhanced body. Circling the Sun was guaranteed box-office gold, but it marked the moment of total creative bankruptcy in his own career; the point at which he had officially sold out, traded in his integrity and his vision for money he didn’t need and fame he didn’t want.
He’d done it for Tia. Because she’d begged him to. Because he could. And because he had wanted, somehow, to try to make up for what he couldn’t give her.
He had ended up losing everything, he thought bitterly.
As if sensing his mood the dog that had been sleeping curled up in one corner of the leather sofa lifted his head and jumped down, coming over and pressing his long nose into Lorenzo’s hand. Lupo was part-lurcher, part-wolfhound, part-mystery, but though his pedigree was dubious his loyalty to Lorenzo wasn’t. Stroking the dog’s silky ears, Lorenzo felt his anger dissolve again. That film might have cost him his wife, his selfrespect and very nearly his creative vision, but it was also the brick wall he had needed to hit in order to turn his life around.
Francis Tate’s book lay on the desk beside him and he picked it up, stroking the cover with the palm of his hand. It was soft and worn with age, creased to fit the contours of his body from many years of being carried in his pocket and read on planes and during breaks on film sets. He’d found it by chance in a secondhand bookshop in Bloomsbury on his first trip to England. He had been nineteen, working as a lowly runner on a film job in London. Broke and homesick, and the word Cypress on the creased spine of the book had called to him like a warm, thyme-scented whisper from home.
Idly now he flicked through the yellow-edged pages, his eyes skimming over familiar passages and filling his head with images that hadn’t lost their freshness in the twenty years since he’d first read them. For a second he felt almost light-headed with longing. It might not be commercial, it might just end up costing him more than it earned but, Dio, he wanted to make this film.
Involuntarily, his mind replayed the image of the girl from The Rose and CrownSarahwalking through the field of wheat; the light on her bare brown arms, her treacle-coloured hair. It had become a sort of beacon in his head, that image; the essence of the film he wanted to create. Something subtle and quiet and honest.
He wanted it more than anything he had wanted for a long time.
A piece of paper slipped out from beneath the cover of the book and fluttered to the floor. It was the letter from Tate’s publisher:
Thank you for your interest, but Ms Halliday’s position on the film option for her father’s book The Oak and the Cypress is unchanged at present. We will, of course, inform you should Ms Halliday reconsider her decision in the future.
Grimly he tossed the book down onto the clutter on the low coffee table and went back over to the open window. He could feel a faint breeze now, just enough to lift the corners of the papers on the desk and make the planets in the mechanical model of the solar system on the windowsill rotate a little on their brass axes.
Change was definitely in the air.
He just hoped that, whoever and wherever this Ms Halliday was, she felt it too.
CHAPTER THREE
SARAH woke with a start and sat up, her heart hammering.
Over the last few weeks she had got quite familiar with the sensation of waking up to a pillow wet with tears, but this was more than that. The duvet that she had kicked off was soaked and the cotton shirt she was sleeping in—one of the striped city shirts that Rupert had left at her flat—was damp against her skin. It was dark. Too dark. The glow of light from the landing had gone out and, blinking into the blackness, Sarah heard the sound of cascading water. It was raining.
Hard.
Inside.
A fat drop of water landed on her shoulder and ran down the front of her shirt. Jumping up from the low camp-bed, she groped for the light switch and flicked it. Nothing happened. It was too dark to see anything but instinctively she tilted her face up to try to look at the ceiling, and another drop of water hit her squarely between the eyes. She swore quietly and succinctly.
‘Mummy,’ Lottie murmured from the bed. ‘I heard that. That’s ten pence for the swear box.’ Sarah heard the rustle of bedclothes as Lottie sat up, and then said in a small, uncertain voice, ‘Mummy, everything is wet.’
Sarah made an effort to keep her own tone casual, as if water cascading through the ceiling in the middle of the night was something tedious but perfectly normal. ‘The roof seems to be leaking. Come on. Let’s find you some dry pyjamas and go and see what’s happening.’
Holding Lottie’s hand, Sarah felt her way out onto the landing and felt her way gingerly along the wall in what she hoped she was remembering correctly as the direction of the stairs.
‘Please can we switch the light on?’ Lottie’s whisper had a distinct wobble. ‘It’s so dark. I don’t like it.’
‘The water must have made the lights go out. Don’t worry, darling, it’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m sure’
At that moment loud shrieks from the direction of Angelica’s room made it clear that she had just become aware of the crisis. Then the door burst open and there was a sudden and dramatic increase in the volume of her wailing. ‘Oh, God—wake up, everyone! There’s water pouring through the roof!’
Lottie’s grip tightened on Sarah’s hand as she picked up on the hysteria in her aunt’s voice. ‘We know,’ said Sarah struggling to keep her irritation at bay. ‘Let’s just keep calm while we find out what’s going on.’
But Angelica only did calm if it came expensively packaged in the context of a luxury spa. Fenella appeared beside her, ghostly in the gloom, and the two of them clung together, sobbing.
‘Darlings, what on earth has happened?’ As she joined them Martha’s drawl was faintly indignant. ‘I thought I’d fallen asleep in the bath by mistake. Everything’s soaking.’
‘Must be a problem with the roof,’ Sarah said wearily. ‘Mum, you look after Lottie. Angelica, where would I find a torch?’
‘How should I know?’ Angelica wailed. ‘That’s Hugh’s department, not mine. Oh, God, why isn’t he here? Or Daddy. They’d know what to do.’
‘I know what to do,’ said Sarah through gritted teeth as she made her way towards the stairs. Because that was what happened when you didn’t have a man around to do everything for you; you developed something called independence. ‘I’m going to find a torch and then I’m going to go out and see what’s wrong with the roof.’
‘Don’t be silly—you can’t possibly go climbing up onto the roof in this weather,’ snapped Angelica.
‘Darling, she’s right,’ said Martha. ‘It’s really not a good idea.’
‘Well, let me know the minute you have a better one,’ Sarah called back grimly. The dark house was filled with the ominous sound of trickling water and her feet splashed through puddles on the tiled floor of the kitchen as she searched for Hugh’s expensive and unused collection of tools.
Amongst them was a small torch. Flicking it on, Sarah let its thin beam wander around the walls and felt her heart sink. Water was dripping from the ceiling and running down the walls in rivulets, just like the ones streaming down the window panes outside. The patio doors shed squares of opaque grey light over the wet floor. She opened them and stepped outside.
It was like walking into the shower fully clothed. Or maybe not quite fully clothed, she thought, glancing down at Rupert’s striped shirt. Within seconds it was soaked and clinging to her, which at least meant that she couldn’t get any wetter. Shaking her hair back from her face, blinking against the teeming rain, she sucked in a breath and forced herself to walk further out into the downpour, holding the torch up and pointing it in the direction of the roof.
The low pitch of the single-storey roof was easy to see, but the torch’s weak light showed up nothing that would explain the disaster unfolding inside.
‘Sarah—you’re soaked! Darling, come in.’ Her mother had appeared in the doorway, a raincoat over her elegant La Perla nightdress, an umbrella shielding her from the rain. ‘We’re way out of our depth here. Angelica and Fenella have taken Lottie with them to get help from the yummy man next door.’
Sarah directed the torchlight higher to the spine of the roof, squinting against the rain. ‘But it’s the middle of the night. You can’t just appear on someone’s doorstep at this hour.’
‘Darling, we’re damsels very much in distress,’ Martha yelled above the noise of the rain, collapsing the umbrella as she retreated indoors. ‘This is an emergency. We can hardly wait until morning—we need to be rescued now.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ muttered Sarah disgustedly under her breath, dragging over one of the patio chairs so she could stand on it. Clamping the torch between her teeth, she used the drainpipe to hoist herself onto the low roof.
The tiles were rough beneath her bare knees, but they felt firm enough. Cautiously, shaking dripping hair from her eyes, she stood up, freeing her hands to hold the torch again. The roof sloped gently upwards to the main part of the house, and she carefully climbed higher, the dim beam of light wobbling erratically over the glistening terracotta tiles in front of her. They were uneven and bumpy but none seemed to be missing. Sarah directed the torch to the highest point, where the kitchen roof joined the wall. There seemed to be a gap…
At that moment she heard voices below and the wet blackness was suddenly flooded with blinding white light. Sarah gave a gasp of shock and, lifting her hands to shield her eyes from the glare, she accidentally let the torch slip from her grasp. She heard it clattering down the roof as she struggled to keep her balance on the slippery tiles.
‘Bloody hell!’
‘Stay there. Don’t move.’
The light was shining right up at her, making it impossible to see anything beyond the silver streams of rain in its dazzling arc. Staggering backwards, she squinted into its beam, instinctively trying to see the owner of the deep, gravelly Italian voice while simultaneously peeling the soaking shirt from her wet thighs and bending her knees in an attempt to make it cover as much of her as possible.
‘I said, keep still. Unless, of course, you want to kill yourself.’
‘Right now I’m tempted,’ Sarah muttered grimly, ‘given that
I’m half-naked and you’re shining a spotlight on me. Could you possibly just turn that light off?’
‘And if I do that, how are you going to see to get down from there?’ He didn’t have to raise his voice above the noise of the rain. It was rich and deep enough to need no projection.
‘I was managing all right until you came.’
‘Meaning you hadn’t broken your neck yet. What the hell did you think you were doing, going up there in this weather?’
Sarah gave a snort of exasperation. ‘God, you sound just like my mother. Can I just point out that I wouldn’t be up here in any other kind of weather, since I’m trying to find out where the water’s coming in. Up there I think I can see a’
‘On second thoughts, I don’t really want to know,’ he interrupted, and Sarah clearly heard the exasperation in his tone. ‘I just want you to come very slowly towards the edge of the roof.’
‘Are you mad?’ She pushed dripping tendrils of hair back from her wet face. ‘Why?’
‘Because I know there’ll be a joist there that will support your weight.’
‘Oh, thanks a lot! Would this be a special steel-reinforced?’
‘Sarah, just do it.’
Hearing him say her name detonated a tiny explosion of shock in her abdomen that stopped her dead for a moment. Her mouth opened, though it was a couple of seconds before she was actually able to speak.
‘How do I know I can trust you?’ she said sulkily, squinting into the dazzling light, wishing she could see him. ‘You could be anyone.’
‘You don’t, and I could, but now’s not really the time for lengthy introductions. Let’s just say that my name is Lorenzo, and right now I’m all that’s standing between you and a very nasty fall.’
His voice was doing things to her. Inconvenient things, given her position. Irritation fizzed inside her. ‘I don’t mean to be rude when we’ve only just met, Lorenzo, but you’re building your part up just a little bit. I’m not stupid, you knowI did check before I got up here that it was safe. The roof hardly slopes at all and the tiles are fixed down properly’
Sarah took a step towards the edge and as she did so felt the tile beneath her foot crack and give way suddenly. She let out a sharp cry of anguish, her arms windmilling madly as she tried to keep her balance.
Suddenly she was afraid.
‘It’s OK. You’re all right.’
‘That’s easy for you to say,’ she gasped with a slightly wild laugh. ‘You’re not the one who’s about to crash through the roof and end up on the kitchen table.’ She closed her eyes for a second, waiting for the adrenaline that was pumping through her and making her feel shaky and unsteady to subside.
‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I’m not going to let it.’ The beam of light swung away from her and she shivered in the sudden darkness. But a moment later he spoke again, and his voice was closer now.
‘I can’t do this and hold the torch, so you’re going to have to listen very carefully and do what I say. OK?’
‘OK.’ Her voice sounded small and quiet. But perhaps it was just because her heart was suddenly beating very loudly, making the blood pound in her ears. The torch was on the ground far below, its powerful beam cutting through the indigo darkness and turning the rain on Angelica and Hugh’s limestone patio into pools of mercury. Up here it seemed very dark.
‘Come carefully towards the edge of the roof and stop when I tell you.’
Sarah did as he said, letting out another whimper of fear as she felt another tile crack. Rain was running down her face, making her eyes sting. She closed them.
‘That’s it. Stop there,’ he ordered, and although his voice was harsh there was a peculiar intimacy to it. ‘Now, reach out your arms. I’m going to lift you down.’
‘No! You can’t! I’m too heavy, I’ll…’
But the rest of her protest was lost as she felt one arm circle her waist, and then she was being pulled against his body.
Through the thin layer of their wet clothes she could feel the warmth of his skin, his hard-muscled chest. Instinctively her hands found his shoulders, and even through her shock and fear she was aware of their power. Heat suddenly erupted inside her, tingling through her chilled body.
‘Thank you,’ she muttered, trying to pull quickly away from him as her feet made contact with something solid. Instantly the world tilted and her stomach gave a sickening lurch as she felt herself falling and realised she had just stepped off the edge of the table they were standing on. He grabbed her again, pulling her back into the safety of his arms.
‘I’m beginning to think you have a death wish,’ he said grimly, sweeping her legs from under her and holding her against him as he climbed down from the table in one fluid movement.
‘If I did I could think of more elegant ways to end it all than falling off a roof while wearing nothing but my nightie. Now, please, put me down.’
‘The gravel is sharp and you’ve got no shoes on.’
‘I’m fine. I can manage. Please…’ she said, miserably aware that by now his back was probably groaning with bearing the weight of her. Although he certainly showed no sign of noticing that she was heavier than your average feather pillow. Against her ear his breathing was perfectly slow and steady, and his pace easy. It didn’t slow at all at her words either, she noticed with a thud of alarm and helpless excitement as they rounded the corner of the house and he made straight for the hulking shape of a large 4x4 that loomed out of the darkness. ‘Where are you taking me, anyway?’
‘Home.’
‘Look, stop, please. And let me go!’
He sighed. ‘If that’s really what you want…’
Unreasonable disappointment shafted through her as he set her down on the wet gravel and stood back. She wobbled slightly as the sharp stones cut into her feet. Out of the warmth of his arms, she realised how cold she was.
‘It is,’ she said and hoped that the sudden feeling of uncertainty about that wasn’t evident in her voice. ‘Look, it’s very kind of you to help, but we’ll be fine here until morning. We’ve never even met before and there are five of us here, so—’
‘Actually, you’re wrong.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, for a start, your family are already there, at Castellaccio.’
‘What? But they can’t…we can’t…possibly descend on you. It’s out of the question-we’ll manage fine here.’
‘Funny. That wasn’t what your sister said. Or her friend Fenella, was it?’
Bloody Fenella. Her words from earlier echoed mockingly around Sarah’s head. He sounds delish. I wouldn’t mind getting on the right side of him…Of course, never in a million years would she pass up the opportunity to get a foot in the door of a film director’s luxury palazzo. Limping as quickly as she could after Lorenzo Cavalleri, it wasn’t just the sharp gravel beneath Sarah’s bare feet that made her wince.
He reached the car and pulled open the door. A small light inside went on and she felt her heart stop, and then start again with a painful thump as she caught a fleeting glimpse of hard cheekbone and sharp jawline darkened with stubble before he melted back into the darkness and went around to the other side of the car.
For a moment he had reminded her of the man in the pub that night. The man who had kissed her. But of course that was ridiculous; he was Italian, and male—that was where the coincidence ended. Getting into the car, she quickly did up her seat belt and, as he got into the driver’s seat beside her, deliberately turned her head and looked out into the wet night.
She could hardly remember what he looked like anyway, she told herself crossly. Because it was unimportant. He was unimportant.
‘First thing tomorrow I’ll get a decent local builder to come and have a look at the roof and then hopefully we can get it sorted out,’ she said stiffly as he started the engine.
‘You know many decent local builders?’
‘No, but I’m guessing that any local builder would be better than the idiots that Hugh and Angelica brought over from London. God knows what they’ve done.’
‘My guess is they’ve put the tiles on upside down. Tuscan roof tiles curve slightly, and it appears they’ve laid them so that the water flows right down between the gaps. If I’m right the whole roof will need redoing.’
Sarah groaned. ‘Oh, God, but the wedding’s the day after tomorrow. I’ll have to think of something.’
There was a slight pause, and then he said quietly, ‘Why is it your responsibility?’
Sarah stared through the silvery lines of rain on the window.
‘You’ve met Angelica and my mother. They’re each as hopeless as the other, and we can’t wait until Hugh and Guy get here if it’s going to be sorted out before the wedding.’
‘Hugh I’ve met, but who’s Guy?’
The windscreen wipers beat a steady tattoo, like a heartbeat in the womb-like interior of the car, and warm air from the heater curled around her, making her chilled skin tingle. She felt suddenly very, very tired and leaned her head back against the soft leather seat, closing her eyes. ‘Guy’s my stepfather. Angelica’s father. He’s the kind of person who makes things happen and gets things done—especially for Angelica, but I suspect that re-roofing an entire house in under twenty-four hours is beyond even his capability.’
‘You don’t get on with him?’
‘Oh, I do. You couldn’t not. He’s charming, witty, extremely generous…’
‘But?’
She was dimly aware that the car had come to a standstill, but he didn’t turn the engine off. Below the throb of the engine she could hear the rain pattering on the roof, and it made her feel oddly safe and protected. Or maybe it was this man that made her feel like that—this stranger, Lorenzo Cavalleri. For a moment she thought back to how it had felt to be in his arms when he had rescued her from the roof. The strength that she had sensed in him, that was more than just a matter of hard muscle…
She sat up abruptly and opened her eyes, feeling for the door handle.
Rescued her.
Uh-uh. She didn’t need to be rescued. She didn’t ask for it and she didn’t want it. She could cope perfectly well without a man, and she wasn’t going to make the mistake of letting her hormones rule her head again. Not after Rupert. Not after the man in The Rose and Crown that night. Perhaps she should ring Italian Accents Anonymous.
‘He’s not my father, that’s all,’ she said abruptly, pushing the door open and getting out of the car. The shock of the cold rain on her newly warmed skin was almost a relief.
Small world, thought Lorenzo, getting out of the car and walking round to where she waited by the palazzo’s double front doors. He felt a smile touch his mouth as he looked at her. She was standing perfectly still, perfectly straight, almost as if she was oblivious to the rain that was plastering her hair to her head and running down her face. Most women he knew would be horrified at the idea of being so thoroughly drenched—like her sister, for example, who had insisted on an umbrella being found before she would even make a dash for the car back at the farmhouse.
‘The door’s not locked. Please, go in.’
She didn’t move. ‘Look, I’m sorry about this,’ she said as Lorenzo moved past her, pushing open the door. ‘Really. It doesn’t seem right. We don’t even know you. Maybe we should just go and—’
The light from the hallway spilled out into the wet night. Standing back to let her go ahead of him, he saw her blink in the sudden brightness, and then watched her eyes widen, her lips part in silent shock as realisation hit her.
Her hand flew to her mouth, colour blooming in her rainshiny cheeks as she took a couple of steps backwards into the darkness. Lorenzo reached out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her into the hallway.
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ he said softly. ‘Not this time.’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘THIS time.’
Pressing herself back against the closed door, oblivious to the grandeur of the enormous room in which she found herself, for a moment the only words Sarah’s shocked brain could come up with were a numb echo of his. ‘This time? So you knew? All this time I’ve been out there making a complete and utter spectacle of myself, you knew it was me.’ Horror crept over her as her mind replayed the events of the past hour in this new, humiliating light. ‘You could have said.’
‘And if I had?’
‘I would have stayed up on the roof.’
She closed her eyes, hot shame flooding her as she thought about what she must have looked like from below in her skimpy shirt. How she must have felt when he’d lifted her down.
Oh, God.
Having to surrender your scantily clad self—all too-many stones of it—to the arms of a stranger was bad enough, but discovering that he wasn’t entirely a stranger was infinitely worse. The man who had been shining a torch up her soaked-to-transparency shirt, the man who had lifted her considerable weight down from the roof, was the same man who had kissed her as a joke on her sister’s hen night. It was almost more than she could bear.
‘Exactly,’ he said gravely.
At that moment they were interrupted by a familiar voice from the doorway. ‘Oh, there you are, darling! Honestly, talk about drowned rat!’ Sarah felt the colour deepen in her glowing cheeks as her mother advanced towards them, still in her nightdress and coat but now with a large drink in one hand, as if she were at a slightly bohemian cocktail party. ‘Come through and get a towel, darling—we’re all drying out in front of a lovely fire and warming up with some of Signor Cavalleri’s excellent brandy.’ She batted her eyelashes in Lorenzo’s direction. ‘He’s been so kind, I can’t tell you.’
Sarah gritted her teeth, feeling the way she had when she was at school and Martha and Guy used to turn up at her sports day in the open-topped Rolls-Royce, and loudly uncork bottles of vintage champagne while everyone else was opening flasks of tea. ‘Mum, please,’ she hissed, following her across the inlaidmarble floor and through a doorway on the right. ‘I really don’t think we can…’
She stopped. The room she found herself in had the same majestic proportions, the same ornate plaster panelling as the hall, but here the stately impact was lessened by the fact that it was incredibly untidy. Papers covered every surface, from the vast antique desk that stood between the windows, to the low table in front of the fire and the deep leather chesterfield sofa. Or the bits of it that weren’t taken up with Angelica, Fenella, Lottie and a large grey dog.
‘Lottie’s fast asleep already, bless her,’ Martha continued, peering down at her small pyjama-clad form. ‘Isn’t she sweet? Signor Cavalleri, I really must thank you for taking pity on us in our hour of need. Now we’re all here, please let’s introduce ourselves properly.’
Standing shivering in her wet shirt, Sarah gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘I don’t think there’s any need for that. I believe that Angelica and Signor Cavalleri already know each other.’
Angelica blinked and shook back her silky blonde hair.
‘Oh, no, I don’t think so, but I believe you’ve met my fiancé, Hugh? You were kind enough to come and offer your advice on—’
Beside her Fenella nudged her and murmured something inaudible, glancing at Sarah. Angelica’s blue eyes widened. ‘Oh, my goodness, yes! You were in the pub that night, weren’t you? The Rose and Crown, on my hen night.’
Sarah felt as if there were something wrapped tightly around her neck as Lorenzo gave a curt nod.
‘Oh, gosh—I don’t believe it! What an amazing coincidence, isn’t it, Fenella?’
‘Amazing,’ smirked Fenella, unfolding herself from the sofa in one elegant movement and letting the long cashmere cardigan she was wearing fall open to reveal little shorts and a vest top beneath it. ‘Of course, if we’d had the chance to talk we might have discovered the coincidence sooner but, as I recall, Sarah rather naughtily monopolised you. You both disappeared rather suddenly too.’
Sarah snatched up a towel and began vigorously rubbing her hair, which was the only way she could stop herself from taking Fenella’s elegant neck in her hands and wringing it. It also provided her with a diversion as she struggled to fit this new and unexpected information into the mental slot marked ‘Bastard’ she had created for the Screaming Orgasm man.
If Angelica and Fenella hadn’t set him up that night, then why the hell had he kissed her?
From behind the towel she watched as he briefly shook the hand Fenella held out. ‘As I recall,’ he said casually, turning away, ‘you were monopolising the rest of the males in the vicinity, so I’m sure it was no loss.’
‘Well, how astonishing that you should find yourself in our very sleepy corner of darkest Oxfordshire,’ Martha interjected hastily. ‘I’m Martha, by the way. Martha Halliday.’
Lorenzo stopped, tensing into complete stillness for a second. Then he turned round again, his narrow eyes very dark.
‘Not so sleepy, Signora Halliday.’ Sarah noticed the slight emphasis he placed on her mother’s surname. ‘Certainly not on the night I was there. Have you lived there for long?’
‘Since I was nineteen and I fell in love for the first time. You’re right—it’s nothing like it used to be,’ Clearly eager to steer the conversation back into harmless waters, Martha was at her most chatty and expansive. ‘I grew up in suburbia and it was like being dropped into the middle of a Thomas Hardy novel. Wildly romantic in theory, but the reality was harsh. In those days The Rose and Crown was a tiny little country inn where regulars used to help themselves from behind the bar and put the money in a box. Francis—that was my first husband—spent more of our married life in there than at home. He used to sit at a table in the corner by the inglenook and write. Said it was the only place he could keep warm enough to think in winter.’
‘Write?’
‘Yes. Poetry, mainly, but—’
‘Mum,’ Sarah hissed, ‘it’s three o’clock in the morning. I hardly think this is the time to be discussing literature.’
Especially not the singularly unsuccessful literary efforts of her father. Sarah just knew what Martha had been about to say next that as well as endless volumes of strenuous, angry poems describing the industrialisation of the rural landscape, the late Francis Tate’s canon also included a book, set in Oxfordshire and Tuscany. The fact that it too had been a complete commercial flop never stopped Martha from talking about it as if it were some work of staggering, underrated genius, much to Sarah’s embarrassment.
‘Sorry. Of course, darling, you’re right,’ Martha laughed, putting down her empty brandy glass. ‘We’ve caused you quite enough disruption already, Signor Cavalleri. It’s not too inconvenient to put us up for the night, I hope?’
‘Not at all,’ Lorenzo said tersely. ‘Although I can’t promise five-star service, I’m afraid. I should explain that I’m here alone at the moment. My housekeeper left a while ago and I haven’t got round to finding a replacement yet, so you’ll have to look after yourselves. You found the rooms all right?’
‘Oh, yes, thank you.’ Martha beamed. ‘You have such a beautiful home, and perhaps tomorrow we can see it properly, but now, girls, I think it’s time we took ourselves out of Signor Cavalleri’s way.’
The dog lifted its head mournfully as Angelica and Fenella got up from the sofa and said their goodnights, but it didn’t move. Sarah eyed it warily as she looked down at Lottie, wondering how best to pick her up without waking her. In the warm glow of the firelight she was curled up tightly, her hands tucked neatly beneath one rosy cheek, like a child in an old-fashioned picture book.
She jumped as a low voice broke the silence. ‘So, you have a daughter.’
Her sudden indrawn breath made a little hiss in the quiet room. Lorenzo was standing on the other side of the sofa, watching her expressionlessly.
‘Yes.’ She wasn’t as good as he was at keeping the emotion from her voice, and the short word bristled with defensiveness.
This was the point at which most men would say something bright and howlingly insincere about how sweet Lottie was, how adorable, whilst mentally calculating the quickest method of exit, but Lorenzo Cavalleri simply nodded. His eyes never left hers. It was as if he was looking right inside her. Sarah felt her stomach tighten with reluctant excitement as heat zigzagged down to her pelvis. And then she remembered that she was wearing nothing but a wet shirt, and that she’d towel-dried her hair so vigorously that she was probably doing a very good impression of Neanderthal woman. Quickly she bent over Lottie, hoping he wouldn’t see that she was blushing.
‘I’ll help you get her to bed,’ Lorenzo said flatly, and she was aware of him moving round the sofa to where she stood.
‘No. It’s fine. I can manage.’
‘How did I know you were going to say that?’ he said, his voice laced with sardonic mockery. ‘Do you ever accept help?’
‘I’m used to doing things myself, that’s all,’ Sarah muttered, wondering how she was going to bend down enough to gather Lottie up without completely exposing herself. Again. She wasn’t sure if the fact he’d pretty much seen it all already made it worse or better. ‘Lottie’s father wasn’t exactly the hands-on type.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘In bed with his ice-blonde, beautiful fiancée, I imagine,’ she said bitterly.
Lorenzo nodded slowly. ‘I see.’
She gave a harsh gust of laughter. ‘I doubt it,’ she snapped, sitting down abruptly on the sofa beside Lottie, bending forward to gather her into her arms from there.
They both jumped as the huge plasma screen above the fireplace flickered into life, displaying a close-up image of a woman’s bare midriff—as smooth and brown and endless as a stretch of desert sand. The camera travelled upwards, lingering lovingly on the hollow between her incredibly firm, neat breasts, the ridges of her collarbones and the sharp jut of her jaw as she stretched her head back and opened her mouth in a breathless cry of pleasure…
Sarah’s mouth dropped open too, although it was a look she couldn’t carry off half as sexily as Tia de Luca.
Because there was no mistaking that was who it was. No mistaking those slanting eyes, as cool and green as apples, or the famous pillow-plump lips, which were now quivering with anticipation as the hero’s mouth moved up the column of her throat towards them…
Sarah’s sharp, high gasp matched Tia de Luca’s as Lorenzo’s hand slid beneath her thigh. The next moment the screen was black and empty again.
Whipping her head round, she looked at him. He was standing perfectly still, the remote control held in his hand. For a second Sarah glimpsed a blaze of some unidentifiable emotion in his eyes, but then it was gone; replaced once more by an expressionless mask.
He threw the remote control down onto the low table in front of the fire.
‘You sat on it,’ he said shortly.
Sarah stumbled to her feet. ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry.’
Lorenzo shrugged impatiently. ‘No problem.’ She shook her head. ‘No, not for sitting on the stupid remote. For saying that before, about you not knowing what it’s like. To be left. I was forgetting. I mean, I don’t know anything about it, but Angelica and Fenella were talking earlier about your wife and—’
‘I’m sure you’re tired,’ he interrupted coldly. ‘Perhaps I could show you to your room now.’
Sarah ducked her head, pushing back the trailing sleeves of her shirt as she prepared to pick Lottie up. ‘Of course. Yes. Sorry.’
‘Here. Let me take her. You’re soaking.’
‘So are you.’
‘Yes, but I can take this off.’ He was already undoing the buttons of his shirt, impatiently, with a kind of resignation that told her that he just wanted to get rid of her, with as little fuss as possible. And, of course, she didn’t blame him. He must have been watching the film when Angelica interrupted him, asking for help. That explained why he was still awake, still dressed in the small hours of the morning…
It also explained the sadness she had sensed behind the mask. And probably it accounted for why he’d kissed her that night too, she thought with a wrenching sensation in her chest. When your heart was broken you’d do anything, use anyone to blot out the hurt and loneliness for a while.
Lorenzo didn’t bother undoing all the buttons, pulling the shirt quickly over his head and throwing it hastily on top of the pile of books and papers on the table in front of the sofa.
‘This way.’
Following him across the hallway and up the wide, sweeping staircase, she kept her eyes fixed determinedly on Lottie’s head, resting against his upper arm. It was important not to allow herself to look at the wide shoulders or the way the muscles rippled beneath his olive skin, because then she might start making disloyal comparisons with Rupert’s English pallor; his square, stocky frame that was showing the beginnings of a paunch.
There wasn’t an ounce of spare flesh on Lorenzo Cavalleri. Sarah could see shadows between the ridges of his ribs, and his hip bones jutted above the top of his jeans. For all his strength, he was too thin, she thought with a twist of unexpected compassion.
‘This is it.’
He stopped so suddenly in front of a closed door that Sarah, lost in forbidden thought, walked straight into him. Muttering apologies, she instantly leapt away. He opened the door and went into the room, but she stayed where she was in the dimly lit corridor, pressing herself against the wall and waiting for her breathing to steady. Looking around her, back along the corridor through which they’d just come, she realised guiltily that she hadn’t taken in a single detail of her surroundings as she’d followed him through the palazzo, which was amazing considering that, from the little she could see now, it was pretty damned impressive.
Just not as impressive as Lorenzo Cavalleri’s body.
She closed her eyes, tipping her head back against the panelling and trying to bring her wayward thoughts under control. Or her wayward hormones. It had been a long time since she and Rupert had
‘She’s all yours.’
She opened her eyes, which was a bit of a mistake. He was standing in front of her, the low light from further along the passageway gleaming on the bare skin of his collarbone, the curve of his shoulder.
‘Thanks,’ she croaked ducking her head and sliding along the wall towards the bedroom doorway. ‘For everything. And sorry.’
As she went into the bedroom she heard him say something in reply, but was so busy cursing her own gaucheness that she didn’t catch what it was. Too late; through the halfopen door she could hear his footsteps already dying away on the landing outside, and anyway a moment later all thoughts dissolved in her head as she turned to look around at the room.
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India Grey
Hired: impoverished housekeeper! Though Sarah Halliday is very ordinary, her dangerously attractive new boss is not content with her scrubbing the marble floors of his Tuscan palazzo… Bedded: Italian’s mistress Instead she finds herself catapulted into Lorenzo Cavalleri’s star-studded life – with a wardrobe to match! Make-up masks her blushes, silk evening gowns flatter her fuller figure, but underneath Sarah’s still the shy, frumpy housekeeper Lorenzo hired – and not the sophisticated bedroom siren he seems to be expecting…At His Service From glass slippers to silk sheets
Lorenzo barely recognised that guttural rasp as his own voice. He took hold of her upper arms, wrenching her round. He could feel the heat coming off her damp, voluptuous body, and as he touched her she gave a shivery gasp, jerking beneath his cold, wet hands.
That was what did it—what tore through his iron selfcontrol. That shiver of sensual awareness seemed to reverberate through his own body and galvanise him into actions he couldn’t control. Suddenly he was pulling her against him as their mouths met and their lips parted, and he was running his slippery hands over her bare back beneath her hot, vanilla-scented hair, dripping cold water on her burning skin.
The kiss was hungry, devouring, urgent. She moved round so that she was leaning with her back against the sink, her fingers grasping his shoulders. Lorenzo could feel the jut of her hipbones against his, rising, pressing against his thudding body. His arousal was so sudden, so intense, it was almost painful. He fumbled for the bow at the back of her apron, stretched to breaking point as his fingers moved across her bare, satin-smooth back. He wanted to have her now, standing up against the sink…
As if she’d read his mind she shifted slightly, tearing her lips from his for a moment as she hoisted herself upwards so that she was half sitting on the edge of the worktop. The movement made a little space between them, and without the bewitching ecstasy of her mouth on his, her hot body pressed against him, Lorenzo was pierced through with sudden chilling awareness.
What the hell was he doing?
A self-confessed romance junkie, India Grey was just thirteen years old when she first sent off for the Mills & Boon® Writers’ Guidelines. She can still recall the thrill of getting the large brown envelope with its distinctive logo through the letterbox, and subsequently whiled away many a dull school day staring out of the window and dreaming of the perfect hero. She kept those guidelines with her for the next ten years, tucking them carefully inside the cover of each new diary in January, and beginning every list of New Year’s Resolutions with the words Start Novel. In the meantime she gained a degree in English Literature and Language from Manchester University, and in a stroke of genius on the part of the gods of Romance met her gorgeous future husband on the very last night of their three years there. The last fifteen years have been spent blissfully buried in domesticity and heaps of pink washing, generated by three small daughters, but she has never really stopped daydreaming about romance. She’s just profoundly grateful to have finally got an excuse to do it legitimately!
Powerful
Italian,
Penniless
Housekeeper
By India Grey
MILLS & BOON®
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/)
For Debbie and Alyson,
without whose wit, wisdom and daily conferences
in the school car park
this book would have been written much more quickly
(but at further risk to my sanity).
CHAPTER ONE
ELIGIBLE bachelor.
Sarah came to a standstill in the middle of the car park, her fist tightening around the envelope in her hand.
She had to find an eligible bachelor. As an item in a scavenger hunt.
Since she’d conspicuously failed to find one of those in real life, her chances of success tonight seemed slim.
Beyond the rows of shiny Mercedes and BMWs parked outside Oxfordshire’s trendiest dining pub, the fields and streams and woodland coppices she had grown up amongst lay golden and peaceful in the low summer sun. She gazed out across them, the envelope still clutched in her hand as adrenaline fizzed through her bloodstream and her mind raced.
She didn’t have to go in there; didn’t have to take part in this stupid scavenger hunt for her sister’s hen weekend; didn’t have to be the butt of everyone’s jokes all the time—Sarah, nearly thirty and on the shelf. No, she knew these fields like the back of her hand, and could remember loads of good hiding places.
Thrusting a hand through her tangled curls, she sighed. Hiding up a tree might be considerably more appealing than going into a pub and having to find an eligible bachelor, but at the age of twenty-nine it was slightly less socially acceptable. And she couldn’t really spend the rest of her life hiding. Everyone said she had to get back out there and face it all again, for Lottie’s sake. Children needed two parents, didn’t they? Girls needed fathers. Sooner or later she should at least try to find someone to fill the rather sudden vacancy left by Rupert.
The prospect made her feel cold inside.
Later. Definitely later, rather than sooner. Right now she was going to—
The doors to the bar opened and a group of city types spilled out, laughing and slapping each other on the back in an excess of beery camaraderie. They barely glanced at her as they walked past, but almost as an afterthought the last one dutifully held the door open for her.
Hell. There was no way she could not go in now. They’d think she was some kind of weirdo whose idea of a good night out was hanging around in a pub car park. Stammering her thanks, she slipped into the dim interior of the bar, shoving the envelope into the back pocket of her jeans with a shaking hand.
In the years since she’d moved away from Oxfordshire The Rose and Crown had transformed itself from a tiny rural pub with swirly-patterned carpets and faded hunting prints on the nicotinestained walls to a temple of good taste, with reclaimed-oak floors, exposed brickwork and a background soundtrack of achingly trendy ‘mood music’ obviously intended to help the clientele of stockbrokers and barristers feel instantly ‘chilled out’.
It made Sarah feel instantly on edge. And about ninety years old.
She was about to turn round and walk straight out again when some latent sense of pride stopped her. It was ridiculous, she thought impatiently; she was used to doing things on her own. She put up shelves on her own. She did her income-tax form without help. She brought up her daughter completely singlehandedly. She could surely walk into a bar and get herself a drink.
Murmuring apologies, she slipped through the press of bodies into a space by the bar and glanced nervously around. The doors were open onto the terrace and she could see Angelica and her friends gathered round a big table in the centre. It would have been impossible to miss them. Even in this place, theirs was easily the noisiest, most glamorous group and was clearly attracting the attention of every single male within eyeing-up distance. They were all wearing T-shirts provided by Angelica’s chief bridesmaid, a gazelle-like girl called Fenella, who worked in PR and who was also responsible for the scavenger-hunt idea. The T-shirts had ‘Angelica’s final fling’ emblazoned across the front in pink letters, and Fenella had only had them made in a size ‘small’.
Sarah tugged at hers surreptitiously, desperately trying to make it cover the strip of bare flesh above the waistband of her too-tight jeans. Perhaps if she’d actually stuck to her New Year diet she’d be out there now, laughing, tossing back cocktails and shiny hair and collecting eligible bachelors with the best of them. Hell, if she was a stone lighter perhaps she wouldn’t even need an eligible bachelor because maybe then Rupert wouldn’t have felt the need to get engaged to a glacial blonde Systems Analyst called Julia. But too many nights spent on the sofa while Lottie was asleep, with nothing but a bottle of cheap wine and the biscuit tin for company, had meant she’d failed to lose even a couple of pounds.
She’d definitely try extra-hard between now and the wedding, she vowed silently, trying to make her way to the bar. It was taking place in the ruined farmhouse Angelica and Hugh had bought in Tuscany and were currently having lavishly done up, and Sarah had a sudden mental image of Angelica’s friends floating around the newly landscaped garden in their delicious little silken dresses, while she lurked in the kitchen, covering her bulk with an apron.
Fenella passed her now, on the way back from the bar with a handful of multicoloured drinks sprouting umbrellas and cherries. She eyed Sarah with cool amusement. ‘There you are! We’d almost given up on you. What are you drinking?’
‘Oh—er—I’m just going to have a dry white wine,’ said Sarah. She should really opt for a slimline tonic, but hell, she needed something to get her through the rest of the evening.
Fenella laughed—throwing her head back and producing a rich, throaty sound that had every man in the vicinity craning round to look. ‘Nice try, but I don’t think so. Look in your envelope—it’s the next challenge,’ she smirked, sliding through the crowd towards the door.
With her heart sinking faster than the Titanic, Sarah slid the envelope from her pocket and pulled out the next instruction.
She gave a moan of dismay.
The beautiful, lithe youth behind the bar flickered a glance in her direction and gave a barely perceptible jerk of his head, which she took as a grudging invitation to order. Her heart was hammering uncomfortably against her ribs and she could feel the heat begin to rise to her cheeks as she opened her mouth.
‘I’d like a Screaming Orgasm, please.’
The voice that came from her dry throat was low and cracked, but sadly not in a good way. The youth lifted a scornful eyebrow.
‘A what?’
‘A Screaming Orgasm,’ Sarah repeated miserably. She could feel the press of bodies behind her as other people jostled for a place at the bar. Her cheeks were burning now, and there was an uncomfortable prickling sensation rippling down the back of her neck, as if she was being watched. Which, of course, she was, she thought despairingly. Every one of Angelica’s friends had temporarily suspended their own professional flirtation operations and was peering in through the open doors, suppressing their collective mirth.
Well, at least they were finding this amusing. The youth flicked back his blond fringe and regarded her with dead eyes. ‘What’s one of those?’ he said tonelessly.
‘I don’t know.’ Sarah raised her chin and smiled sweetly, masking her growing desperation. ‘I’ve never had one.’
‘Never had a Screaming Orgasm? Then please, allow me…’
The voice came from just behind her, close to her ear, and was a million miles from the hearty, public-school bray of The Rose and Crown’s usual clientele. As deep and rich as oak-aged cognac, it was infused with an accent Sarah couldn’t immediately place, and the slightest tang of dry amusement.
Her head whipped round. In the crush at the bar it was impossible to get a proper look at the man who had spoken. He was standing close behind her and was so tall that her eyes were on a level with the open neck of his shirt, the triangle of olive skin at his throat.
She felt an unfamiliar lurch in the pit of her stomach as he leaned forward in one fluid movement, towering over her as he spoke to the youth behind the bar.
‘One shot each of vodka, Kahlua, Amaretto…’
His voice really was something else. Italian. She could tell by the way he said ‘Amaretto’, as if it were an intimate promise. Her nipples sprang to life beneath the tiny T-shirt.
God, what was she doing? Sarah Halliday didn’t let strange men buy her cocktails in pubs. She was a grown woman with a five-year-old daughter and the stretch marks to prove it. She’d been madly in love with the same man for nearly seven years. Lusting after strangers in bars wasn’t her style.
‘Thanks for your help,’ she mumbled, ‘but I can get this myself.’
She glanced up at him again and felt her chest tighten. The evening sun was coming from behind him but Sarah had an impression of dark hair, angular features, a strong jaw shadowed with several days of stubble. The exact opposite of Rupert’s English, golden-boy good looks, she thought with a shiver. Compelling rather than handsome.
And then he turned and looked back at her.
It felt as if he’d reached out and pulled her into the warmth of his body. His narrowed eyes were so dark that even this close she couldn’t see where the irises ended and the pupils began, and they travelled over her face lazily for a second before slipping downwards.
‘I’d like to get it for you.’
He said it simply, emotionlessly, as a statement of fact, but there was something about his voice that made the blood throb in her ears, her chest, her too-tight jeans.
‘No, really, I can…’
With shaking hands she opened her purse and peered inside, but the chemical reaction that had just taken place in the region of her knickers was making it difficult to see clearly or think straight.
Apart from a handful of small change her purse was virtually empty, and with a rush of dismay she remembered handing over her last five-pound note to Lottie for the swear box. Lottie’s policy on swearing was draconian and—since she’d introduced a system of fines—extremely lucrative. Clearly her killer business instinct had come from Rupert. The frustrations of the scavenger hunt this afternoon had cost Sarah dearly.
Now she looked up in panic and met the deadpan stare of the barman.
‘Nine pounds fifty,’ he said flatly.
Nine pounds fifty? She’d ordered a drink, not a three-course mealshe and Lottie could live for a week on that. Faint with horror, she looked down into her purse again while her numb brain raced. When she raised her head again it was to see the stranger hand a note over to the blond youth and pick up the ridiculous drink.
He moved away from the bar, and the crowd through which she’d had to fight a passage fell away for him, like the Red Sea before Moses. Unthinkingly she found herself following him, and couldn’t help her gaze from lingering on the breadth of his shoulders beneath the faded blue shirt he wore. He seemed to dwarf every other man in the packed room.
He stopped in the doorway to the terrace and held out the drink to her. It was white and frothy, like a milkshake. A very expensive milkshake.
‘Your first Screaming Orgasm. I hope you enjoy it.’
His face was expressionless, his tone dutifully courteous, but as she took the glass from him their fingers touched and Sarah felt electricity crackle up her arm.
She snatched her hand away so sharply that some of the cocktail splashed onto her wrist. ‘I doubt it,’ she snapped.
The stranger’s dark eyebrows rose in sardonic enquiry.
‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry,’ Sarah said, horrified by her own crassness. ‘That sounds so ungrateful after you paid for it. It’s just that it’s not a drink I’d usually choose, but I’m sure it’ll be delicious.’ And account for about three days’ calorie allowance, she thought, taking a large gulp and forcing herself to look appreciative. ‘Mmm…lovely.’
His eyes held her, dark and steady. ‘Why did you ask for it if it’s not your kind of thing?’
Sarah gave a half-hearted smile. ‘I have nothing against screaming orgasms in theory, but,’ she held up the envelope, ‘it’s a scavenger hunt. You have to collect different items on a list. It’s my sister’s hen weekend, you see…’
Half-sister. She probably should have explained. Right now he was no doubt wondering which one of the beautiful thoroughbred babes out there she could possibly share a full set of genes with.
‘So I gathered.’ He glanced down at her T-shirt and then out into the warm evening, where Angelica and Fenella and their friends had collected a veritable crowd of eligible bachelors and were cavorting conspicuously with them. ‘You don’t seem to be enjoying it quite as much as the others.’
‘Oh, no, I’m having a great time.’ Sarah made a big effort to sound convincing. One of Angelica’s friends was a holistic counsellor and had told her at lunchtime that she had a ‘negative aura’. She took another mouthful of the disgusting cocktail and tried not to gag.
Gently he took the glass from her and put it on the table behind them. ‘You are one of the worst actresses that I’ve come across in a long time.’
‘Thanks,’ she mumbled. ‘There goes my promising career as a Hollywood screen goddess.’
‘Believe me, it was a compliment.’
She looked up quickly, wondering if he was teasing her, but his expression was utterly serious. For a moment their eyes locked. The bolt of pure, stinging desire that shot through her took her completely by surprise and she felt the blood surge up to her face.
‘So what else is on your list of things to find?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know yet.’ She tore her gaze away from his and looked down at the envelope in her hand. ‘It’s all in here. As you get each item you open up the next envelope.’
‘How many have you got so far?’
‘One.’
His long, downturned mouth quirked into half a smile, but Sarah noticed that it didn’t chase the shadows from his eyes. ‘The drink was the first?’
‘Actually it was the second. But I gave up on the first.’
‘Which was?’
She shook her head, deliberately letting her hair fall over her face. ‘It’s not important.’
His fingers closed around the envelope in her hand and gently he took it from her. For a second she tried to snatch it back but he was too strong for her and she looked away in embarrassment as he unfolded the paper and read what was written there.
She looked past him into the blue summer evening. Out on the terrace, Fenella was watching her, and Sarah saw her nudge Angelica and smirk as she nodded in Sarah’s direction.
‘Dio mio,’ said the man beside her, his husky Italian voice tinged with distaste. ‘You have to “collect” an eligible bachelor?’
‘Yes. Not exactly my forte.’ Angrily Sarah turned away from the curious glances from the terrace and gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘I don’t suppose you’re one, are you?’
The moment she’d spoken she felt her face freeze with embarrassment as she realised how it had sounded. As if she was desperate. And as if she was coming on to him. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘Let’s just pretend that I never asked that—’
‘No,’ he said tersely.
‘Please…‘ she ducked her head, staring down at the fashionably worn wooden floorboards ‘…forget it. You don’t have to answer.’
‘I just did. The answer’s no. I am neither a bachelor nor remotely eligible,’ he said gravely, reaching out and lifting her chin with his finger, so that she was left with no choice but to look up into his face. His eyes were black and impossible to read. ‘But they don’t know that,’ he murmured as he moved his lips to hers.
As ideas went, it probably wasn’t his most sensible, Lorenzo thought as he tilted her face up. He saw her dark eyes widen in shock as he brought his mouth down to hers.
But he was bored. Bored and disillusioned and frustrated, and this was as good a way as any of escaping those feelings for a while. Her lips were as soft and sweet as he’d imagined they would be, and as he kissed her with deliberate gentleness he breathed in the clean, artless smell of soap and washing powder.
She was shaking. Her body was rigid with tension, her mouth stayed tightly closed beneath his. Anger at the women on the terrace, who had obviously given her a hard time, churned inside him, adding to the sour disappointment of the day. Instinctively he raised one hand to cradle her face while the other slid beneath the warm tumble of her silken hair and cupped the back of her head.
Patience was one of the things that made him good at his job. The ability to make women relax and release their inhibitions was another. He held her with infinite care, close enough to make her feel cherished, but not so tightly she felt threatened. Gently his fingers caressed the nape of her neck, the secret dip at the base of her skull as his mouth very languidly explored hers.
Triumph shot through him as a soft moan escaped her and felt the stiffness leave her body. Her plump lips parted, her spine arched towards him and then she was kissing him back, with a tentative passion that was surprisingly exciting.
Lorenzo found he was smiling. For the first time in days…Dio, months, he was actually smiling, smiling against her mouth at the sheer unexpected sweetness of kissing this woman with the glorious auburn curls and the spectacular breasts and the sad, sad eyes.
He had come to Oxfordshire on a sort of desperate pilgrimage; a search for places that had long existed in his head thanks to a tattered paperback by a little-known author, picked up by chance years ago. The landscape described so lucidly in Francis Tate’s beautiful, lyrical novel had haunted him for years, and he had come here in the hope that it might rekindle some spark of the creativity that had died alongside the rest of his emotional life. But the reality of the place was disappointing; a far cry from the gentle, rural paradise Tate depicted in The Oak and the Cypress. Lorenzo had discovered a parody of picturepostcard England, bland and soulless.
This woman was the most real, genuine thing he’d come across since he’d arrived here, and probably long before. Emotions played across her face like shadows on a summer day. She didn’t conceal anything. Couldn’t pretend.
After Tia’s prolonged, sophisticated deception he found that profoundly attractive.
And she was actually as sexy as hell. Beneath that self-deprecating insecurity, this girl had depths of heat and passion. He’d kissed her because he felt sorry for her; because she looked sad; because it would cost nothing and mean nothing…
He hadn’t expected to enjoy it as much as this.
Lorenzo felt his smile widen as his hands moved down to her curvaceous waist and pulled her against him, desire spiralling down through the pit of his stomach as his fingers met the warm, soft flesh beneath the T-shirt…
She froze. Her eyes flew open, and then suddenly she was pushing him away; stumbling backwards. Her mouth was reddened and bee-stung from his kiss, and above it her dark eyes welled with hurt as they darted wildly in the direction of the whooping, clapping girls on the terrace before coming back to him.
For a second she just stared at him, her face stricken, and then she turned and pushed her way through the crush of bodies towards the door.
It was a joke, of course. That was what hen parties were all about. Jokes. Fun. Flirting. It was just part of all of that.
Pushing through a gap in the hedge at the back of the car park, Sarah felt the thorns scrape at her bare arms and angrily scrubbed the tears from her face with the back of her hand. Ouch. It hurt. That was why she was crying. Not because she couldn’t take a joke.
Even one as hurtful and humiliating as being kissed in a pub by a complete stranger who couldn’t even keep a straight face while he was doing it. God, no. She wouldn’t get upset about a silly, harmless thing like that.
Hell, she thought, striding angrily through the waist-high wheat, she was the woman who only a week ago had done the catering for an engagement party and dropped the cake—complete with lighted sparklers—in front of all the guests and the happy couple. One half of which just happened to have been her lover of seven years and the father of her child. Embarrassment and abject shame were old friends of hers. The small matter of being set up to provide hilarious entertainment for her sister’s hen party was nothing to Sarah Halliday: the original poster child for humiliation.
The sun was low, dipping down to the horizon, dazzling her through her tears and turning the field into a shimmering sea of gold. Sarah swiped furiously at the wheat in her path, giving vent to the fury and resentment that buzzed through veins that a few moments ago had been thrumming with desire.
That was the worst bit, she thought despairingly. Not that she’d been set up, but that it had felt so wonderful. She was so lonely and desperate that the empty kiss of a stranger had actually made her feel cherished and special and desirable and good…
Right up to the moment she’d realised he was laughing at her.
Reaching the brow of the hill, she tipped back her head and took a big, steadying breath. High up in the faded blue sky the pale ghost of the moon hovered, waiting for the sun to finish its flamboyant exit. It made her think of Lottie, and she found that she was smiling as she started walking again, quickening her pace as she descended the hill towards home.
Lorenzo bent to pick up the envelope that she’d dropped in her hurry to get away from him.
Funny, he thought acidly, in all the versions of the story he’d ever read it was a shoe Cinderella left behind when she fled from the ball. He turned it over. Ah. So her name wasn’t Cinderella…
It was Sarah.
Sarah. It sounded honest and simple and wholesome, he reflected as he pushed through the crowd towards the door. It suited her.
He strode quickly out into the middle of the dusty lane that ran in front of The Rose and Crown and looked around. To the right, the car park was packed bumper-to-bumper and he half expected to see one of the gleaming BMWs shoot backwards out of its space and accelerate out into the narrow road. But no engine noise shattered the still evening.
There was no sign of her.
Intrigued, he shaded his eyes against the low, flaming sun and turned slowly around, scanning the fields of wheat and hedgerows that unfolded on every side. The air was thick, dusty, hazy with heat and, apart from the distant sound of voices and laughter from the terrace, all was quiet. It seemed she had completely vanished.
He was about to turn and go back inside when a movement in the distance caught his eye. Someone was walking through the field beyond the pub, wading through the rippling wheat with fluid, undulating strides. Unmistakably female, she had her back to him, and the sinking sun lit her riot of curls, giving her an aura of pure gold that would have won any lighting technician an Oscar.
It was her. Sarah.
He felt the deep, almost physical jolt in his gut that he got when he was working and instantly his fingers itched for a camera. This was what he had come here looking for. Here, in front of him, was the essence of Francis Tate’s England, the heart and soul of the book Lorenzo had loved for so long, encapsulated by this timeless, sensual image of a girl with the sun in her hair, waist-high in wheat.
On the brow of the hill she paused, tipping back her head and looking up at the pale smudge of moon, so that her hair cascaded down her back. Then, after a moment, she carried on down the slope and disappeared from view.
He let out a long, harsh lungful of air, realising for the first time that he’d been holding his breath as he watched her. He didn’t know who this Sarah was or what had made her run out like that, but actually he didn’t care. He was just very grateful that she had, because in doing so she’d unwittingly given him back something he thought he’d lost for ever. His hunger to work again. His creative vision.
Which, he thought grimly as he walked back across the road, just left the slightly more prosaic matter of copyright permission.
CHAPTER TWO
THREE weeks later.
Sarah’s head throbbed and tiredness dragged at her body, but as she closed her eyes and took a deep inhalation of warm night air she felt her battered spirits lift a little.
Tuscany.
You could smell it; a resiny, slightly astringent combination of rosemary and cedar and the tang of sun-baked earth that was a million miles from the diesel smog that hung over London’s airless streets at the moment. Britain had been having an extended spell of hot weather that had made the headlines night after night for weeks, but here the heat felt different. It had an elemental quality that stole into your bones and almost forced you to relax.
‘You look shattered, darling.’
Across the table her mother’s eyes met hers over her glass of Chianti. Sarah smothered a yawn and smiled quickly.
‘It’s the travelling. I’m not used to it. But it’s great to be here.’
She was surprised, as she said the words, to realise how true they were. She’d got so used to dreading Angelica’s wedding with all its leaden implications of her own conspicuous failure in so many departments—most notably the ‘finding a lifelong partner’ one—that she had neglected to take into account how wonderful it would be to come to Italy. The fulfilment of a lifelong dream, from way back when she could afford to have dreams.
‘It’s great that you’re here.’ Martha’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. ‘I think you needed to get away from things because frankly, my darling, you’re not looking in great shape.’
‘I know, I know…’ Aware of her straining waistband, Sarah squirmed uncomfortably. The bonus of having a broken heart was supposed to be that you lost your appetite and the weight fell off, but she was still waiting for that phase to kick in. At the moment she was stuck in the ‘bitterness-and-comfort-eating’ stage. ‘I am on a diet, but it’s been tough, what with Rupert and work and worrying about money and everything—’
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Martha said gently. ‘I meant mentally. But if money is difficult, darling, you know Guy and I will help.’
‘No!’ Sarah’s response was instant. ‘Really, it’s fine. Something will come up.’ Her thoughts strayed to the letter she’d had a couple of weeks ago from her father’s publishers, the latest in a long line of requests she’d received for film options on The Oak and the Cypress in the eleven years since she’d inherited the rights. In the beginning she’d actually taken several of these offers seriously, until bitter experience had taught her that Francis Tate seemed to attract penniless film students with a tendency to bizarre, obsessive psychological disorders. Now, for the sake of her sanity and her burdensome sense of responsibility to her father’s memory, she simply refused permission outright.
‘How’s Lottie doing?’ Martha asked now.
Sarah glanced uneasily across at Lottie, who was sitting on Angelica’s knee. ‘Fine,’ she said, hating the defensive note that crept into her voice. ‘She hasn’t even noticed that Rupert isn’t around any more, which makes me realise just what a terrible father he’s been. I can’t remember the last time he spent time with her.’ Latterly most of Rupert’s visits to the flat in Shepherd’s Bush had been for hasty and singularly unsatisfactory sex in his lunch hour when Lottie was at school. Sarah shuddered now when she thought of his clumsy, careless touch, and his easy excuses about problems at the office and the pressure of work for the evenings and weekends he no longer spent with her. She wondered how long he would have carried on the deceit if she hadn’t found him out so spectacularly.
‘You’re better off without him,’ Martha said, as if she’d read Sarah’s thoughts. Sarah sincerely hoped she hadn’t.
‘I know.’ She sighed and got to her feet, starting to gather up the plates. ‘Really. I know. I don’t need a man.’
‘That’s not what I said.’ Martha stood up too, reaching across for the wine, holding the bottle up to the light of the candle and squinting at it to see if there was any left. ‘I said without him, not without a man in general.’
‘I’m happy on my own,’ Sarah said stubbornly. It wasn’t exactly a lie; she was happy enough. But she only had to think back to the dark, compelling Italian who had kissed her at Angelica’s hen party to know that she was also only half-alive. Briskly she moved around the table, stacking crockery, keeping her hands busy. ‘You’re just missing Guy. You always get ridiculously sentimental when he’s not here.’
Guy and Hugh and all his friends weren’t arriving until tomorrow, so tonight it was just ‘the girls’, as Angelica called them. Martha shrugged. ‘Perhaps. I’m just an old romantic. But I don’t want you to miss your chance at love because you’re determined to look the other way, that’s all.’
Fat chance of that, thought Sarah, carrying the plates back to the kitchen. Her love life was a vast, deserted plain. If anything ever did chance to appear on the horizon she’d be certain to see it. Whether it would stop or not was another matter altogether.
Looming ahead of her through the Tuscan night, the farmhouse was a jumble of uneven buildings and gently sloping roofs. The kitchen was at one end, a low-ceilinged single-storey addition that Angelica said had once been a dairy. Sarah went in and switched the light on, tiredly setting down the pile of plates on the un-rustic shiny marble countertop. Despite being utterly uninterested in cooking, Angelica and Hugh had spared no expense in the creation of the kitchen, and Sarah couldn’t quite stamp out a hot little flare of envy as she looked around, mentally comparing it with the tiny, grim galley kitchen in her flat in London.
Crossly she turned on the cold tap and let the water run over her wrists. Heat, tiredness and a glass of Chianti had lowered her defences tonight, making it harder than usual to hold back all kinds of forbidden thoughts. She turned off the tap and went back out into the humid evening, pressing her cool, damp hands against her hot neck, beneath her hair. As she returned to the table Angelica was running through the catalogue of disasters that had beset the renovations.
‘…it seems he’s absolutely fanatical about having everything as natural and authentic as possible. He confronted our architect with this obscure bit of Tuscan planning law that meant we weren’t allowed to put a glass roof on the kitchen, but had to reuse the old tiles. Something to do with maintaining the original character of the building.’
Fenella rolled her eyes. ‘That’s all very well for him to say, since he lives in a sixteenth-century palazzo. Does he expect you to live like peasants just because you bought a farmhouse?’
Martha looked up with a smile as Sarah sat down again. ‘Hugh and Angelica have fallen foul of the local aristocracy,’ she explained. ‘From Palazzo Castellaccio, further up the lane.’
‘Aristocracy?’ Angelica snorted. ‘I wouldn’t mind if he was, but he’s definitely new money. A film director. Lorenzo Cavalleri, he’s called. He’s married to that stunning Italian actress, Tia de Luca.’
Fenella was visibly excited. Dropping a celebrity name in front of her had roughly the same effect as dropping a biscuit in front of a dog. ‘Tia de Luca? Not any more apparently.’ She sat up straighter, practically pricking up her ears and panting. ‘There’s an interview with her in that magazine I bought at the airport yesterday. Apparently she left her husband for Ricardo Marcello, and she’s pregnant.’
‘Ooh, how exciting,’ said Angelica avidly. ‘Ricardo Marcello’s gorgeous. Is the baby his, then?’
You’d think they were talking about intimate acquaintances, thought Sarah, stifling another yawn. She knew who Tia de Luca was, of course—everyone did—but couldn’t get excited about the complicated love life of someone she would never meet and with whom she had nothing in common. Fenella was clearly untroubled by such details.
‘Not sure—from what she said, I think the baby might be the husband’s, you know, Lorenzo Whatshisname.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Have you met him?’
Across the table, Lottie was lolling on her grandmother’s knee, her thumb in her mouth. She was obviously exhausted, and Sarah’s own eyelids felt as if they had lead weights attached to them; leaning back in her chair, she tipped up her head and allowed herself the momentary luxury of closing them while the conversation ebbed around her.
‘No,’ Angelica said. ‘Hugh has. Says he’s difficult. Typical Italian alpha male, all arrogant and stand-offish and superior. We have to keep on the right side of him though, because the church where we’re getting married is actually on part of his land.’
‘Mmm…’ Fenella’s voice was warm and throaty. ‘He sounds delish. I wouldn’t mind getting on the right side of an Italian alpha male…’
Sarah opened her eyes, dragging herself ruthlessly back from the edge of that tempting abyss.
‘Come on, Lottie. It’s time you were in bed.’
At the mention of her name Lottie struggled sleepily upright, reluctant as ever to leave a party. ‘I’m not, Mummy,’ she protested. ‘Really…’
‘Uh-uh.’ Lottie had the persuasive powers of a politician, and usually Sarah’s resistance in the face of her killer combination of sweetness and logic was pitifully low. But not tonight. A mixture of exhaustion and an odd, restless feeling of dissatisfaction sharpened her tone. ‘Bed. Now.’
Lottie blinked up at the sky over Sarah’s shoulder. Her forehead was creased up with worry. ‘There’s no moon,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t they have the moon in Italy?’
In an instant Sarah’s edgy frustration melted away. The moon was Lottie’s touchstone, her security blanket. ‘Yes, they do,’ she said softly, ‘but tonight it must be tucked up safely behind all the clouds. Look, there are no stars either.’
Lottie’s frown eased a little. ‘If there are clouds, does that mean it’s going to rain?’
‘Oh, gosh, don’t say that,’ laughed Angelica, getting up and coming over to give Lottie a goodnight kiss. ‘It better not. The whole point of having the wedding here was the weather. It never rains in Tuscany!’
It was going to rain.
Standing at the open window of the study, Lorenzo breathed in the scent of dry earth and looked up into a sky of starless black. Down here the night was hot and heavy, but a sudden breeze stirred the tops of the cypress trees along the drive, making them shiver and whisper that a change was on the way.
Grazie a Dio. The dry spell had lasted for months now, and the ground was cracking and turning to dust. In the garden Alfredo had almost used up his barrels of hoarded rainwater, laboriously filling watering cans to douse the plants wilting in the limonaia, and in daylight the view of the hillside below Palazzo Castellaccio was as uniformally brown as a faded sepia print.
Suddenly from behind him in the room there came a low gasp of sensual pleasure, and Lorenzo turned round just in time to see his ex-wife’s lover bend over her naked body, circling her rosy nipple with his tongue.
Expertly done, he thought acidly as the huge plasma screen above the fireplace was filled with a close shot of Tia’s parted lips. Ricardo Marcello was about as good at acting as your average plank of wood but he certainly came to life in the sex scenes, with the result that the completed filma big-budget blockbuster about the early life of the sixteenth-century Italian scientist Galileocontained rather more of them than Lorenzo had originally planned. Audiences across the world were likely to leave the cinema with little notion of Galileo as the father of modern science but with a lingering impression of him as a three-times-a-night man who was prodigiously gifted in a Kama Sutra of sexual positions.
With an exhalation of disgust Lorenzo reached for the remote control and hit ‘pause’ just as the camera was making yet another of its epic journeys over the honeyed contours of Tia’s flatteringly lit, cosmetically enhanced body. Circling the Sun was guaranteed box-office gold, but it marked the moment of total creative bankruptcy in his own career; the point at which he had officially sold out, traded in his integrity and his vision for money he didn’t need and fame he didn’t want.
He’d done it for Tia. Because she’d begged him to. Because he could. And because he had wanted, somehow, to try to make up for what he couldn’t give her.
He had ended up losing everything, he thought bitterly.
As if sensing his mood the dog that had been sleeping curled up in one corner of the leather sofa lifted his head and jumped down, coming over and pressing his long nose into Lorenzo’s hand. Lupo was part-lurcher, part-wolfhound, part-mystery, but though his pedigree was dubious his loyalty to Lorenzo wasn’t. Stroking the dog’s silky ears, Lorenzo felt his anger dissolve again. That film might have cost him his wife, his selfrespect and very nearly his creative vision, but it was also the brick wall he had needed to hit in order to turn his life around.
Francis Tate’s book lay on the desk beside him and he picked it up, stroking the cover with the palm of his hand. It was soft and worn with age, creased to fit the contours of his body from many years of being carried in his pocket and read on planes and during breaks on film sets. He’d found it by chance in a secondhand bookshop in Bloomsbury on his first trip to England. He had been nineteen, working as a lowly runner on a film job in London. Broke and homesick, and the word Cypress on the creased spine of the book had called to him like a warm, thyme-scented whisper from home.
Idly now he flicked through the yellow-edged pages, his eyes skimming over familiar passages and filling his head with images that hadn’t lost their freshness in the twenty years since he’d first read them. For a second he felt almost light-headed with longing. It might not be commercial, it might just end up costing him more than it earned but, Dio, he wanted to make this film.
Involuntarily, his mind replayed the image of the girl from The Rose and CrownSarahwalking through the field of wheat; the light on her bare brown arms, her treacle-coloured hair. It had become a sort of beacon in his head, that image; the essence of the film he wanted to create. Something subtle and quiet and honest.
He wanted it more than anything he had wanted for a long time.
A piece of paper slipped out from beneath the cover of the book and fluttered to the floor. It was the letter from Tate’s publisher:
Thank you for your interest, but Ms Halliday’s position on the film option for her father’s book The Oak and the Cypress is unchanged at present. We will, of course, inform you should Ms Halliday reconsider her decision in the future.
Grimly he tossed the book down onto the clutter on the low coffee table and went back over to the open window. He could feel a faint breeze now, just enough to lift the corners of the papers on the desk and make the planets in the mechanical model of the solar system on the windowsill rotate a little on their brass axes.
Change was definitely in the air.
He just hoped that, whoever and wherever this Ms Halliday was, she felt it too.
CHAPTER THREE
SARAH woke with a start and sat up, her heart hammering.
Over the last few weeks she had got quite familiar with the sensation of waking up to a pillow wet with tears, but this was more than that. The duvet that she had kicked off was soaked and the cotton shirt she was sleeping in—one of the striped city shirts that Rupert had left at her flat—was damp against her skin. It was dark. Too dark. The glow of light from the landing had gone out and, blinking into the blackness, Sarah heard the sound of cascading water. It was raining.
Hard.
Inside.
A fat drop of water landed on her shoulder and ran down the front of her shirt. Jumping up from the low camp-bed, she groped for the light switch and flicked it. Nothing happened. It was too dark to see anything but instinctively she tilted her face up to try to look at the ceiling, and another drop of water hit her squarely between the eyes. She swore quietly and succinctly.
‘Mummy,’ Lottie murmured from the bed. ‘I heard that. That’s ten pence for the swear box.’ Sarah heard the rustle of bedclothes as Lottie sat up, and then said in a small, uncertain voice, ‘Mummy, everything is wet.’
Sarah made an effort to keep her own tone casual, as if water cascading through the ceiling in the middle of the night was something tedious but perfectly normal. ‘The roof seems to be leaking. Come on. Let’s find you some dry pyjamas and go and see what’s happening.’
Holding Lottie’s hand, Sarah felt her way out onto the landing and felt her way gingerly along the wall in what she hoped she was remembering correctly as the direction of the stairs.
‘Please can we switch the light on?’ Lottie’s whisper had a distinct wobble. ‘It’s so dark. I don’t like it.’
‘The water must have made the lights go out. Don’t worry, darling, it’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m sure’
At that moment loud shrieks from the direction of Angelica’s room made it clear that she had just become aware of the crisis. Then the door burst open and there was a sudden and dramatic increase in the volume of her wailing. ‘Oh, God—wake up, everyone! There’s water pouring through the roof!’
Lottie’s grip tightened on Sarah’s hand as she picked up on the hysteria in her aunt’s voice. ‘We know,’ said Sarah struggling to keep her irritation at bay. ‘Let’s just keep calm while we find out what’s going on.’
But Angelica only did calm if it came expensively packaged in the context of a luxury spa. Fenella appeared beside her, ghostly in the gloom, and the two of them clung together, sobbing.
‘Darlings, what on earth has happened?’ As she joined them Martha’s drawl was faintly indignant. ‘I thought I’d fallen asleep in the bath by mistake. Everything’s soaking.’
‘Must be a problem with the roof,’ Sarah said wearily. ‘Mum, you look after Lottie. Angelica, where would I find a torch?’
‘How should I know?’ Angelica wailed. ‘That’s Hugh’s department, not mine. Oh, God, why isn’t he here? Or Daddy. They’d know what to do.’
‘I know what to do,’ said Sarah through gritted teeth as she made her way towards the stairs. Because that was what happened when you didn’t have a man around to do everything for you; you developed something called independence. ‘I’m going to find a torch and then I’m going to go out and see what’s wrong with the roof.’
‘Don’t be silly—you can’t possibly go climbing up onto the roof in this weather,’ snapped Angelica.
‘Darling, she’s right,’ said Martha. ‘It’s really not a good idea.’
‘Well, let me know the minute you have a better one,’ Sarah called back grimly. The dark house was filled with the ominous sound of trickling water and her feet splashed through puddles on the tiled floor of the kitchen as she searched for Hugh’s expensive and unused collection of tools.
Amongst them was a small torch. Flicking it on, Sarah let its thin beam wander around the walls and felt her heart sink. Water was dripping from the ceiling and running down the walls in rivulets, just like the ones streaming down the window panes outside. The patio doors shed squares of opaque grey light over the wet floor. She opened them and stepped outside.
It was like walking into the shower fully clothed. Or maybe not quite fully clothed, she thought, glancing down at Rupert’s striped shirt. Within seconds it was soaked and clinging to her, which at least meant that she couldn’t get any wetter. Shaking her hair back from her face, blinking against the teeming rain, she sucked in a breath and forced herself to walk further out into the downpour, holding the torch up and pointing it in the direction of the roof.
The low pitch of the single-storey roof was easy to see, but the torch’s weak light showed up nothing that would explain the disaster unfolding inside.
‘Sarah—you’re soaked! Darling, come in.’ Her mother had appeared in the doorway, a raincoat over her elegant La Perla nightdress, an umbrella shielding her from the rain. ‘We’re way out of our depth here. Angelica and Fenella have taken Lottie with them to get help from the yummy man next door.’
Sarah directed the torchlight higher to the spine of the roof, squinting against the rain. ‘But it’s the middle of the night. You can’t just appear on someone’s doorstep at this hour.’
‘Darling, we’re damsels very much in distress,’ Martha yelled above the noise of the rain, collapsing the umbrella as she retreated indoors. ‘This is an emergency. We can hardly wait until morning—we need to be rescued now.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ muttered Sarah disgustedly under her breath, dragging over one of the patio chairs so she could stand on it. Clamping the torch between her teeth, she used the drainpipe to hoist herself onto the low roof.
The tiles were rough beneath her bare knees, but they felt firm enough. Cautiously, shaking dripping hair from her eyes, she stood up, freeing her hands to hold the torch again. The roof sloped gently upwards to the main part of the house, and she carefully climbed higher, the dim beam of light wobbling erratically over the glistening terracotta tiles in front of her. They were uneven and bumpy but none seemed to be missing. Sarah directed the torch to the highest point, where the kitchen roof joined the wall. There seemed to be a gap…
At that moment she heard voices below and the wet blackness was suddenly flooded with blinding white light. Sarah gave a gasp of shock and, lifting her hands to shield her eyes from the glare, she accidentally let the torch slip from her grasp. She heard it clattering down the roof as she struggled to keep her balance on the slippery tiles.
‘Bloody hell!’
‘Stay there. Don’t move.’
The light was shining right up at her, making it impossible to see anything beyond the silver streams of rain in its dazzling arc. Staggering backwards, she squinted into its beam, instinctively trying to see the owner of the deep, gravelly Italian voice while simultaneously peeling the soaking shirt from her wet thighs and bending her knees in an attempt to make it cover as much of her as possible.
‘I said, keep still. Unless, of course, you want to kill yourself.’
‘Right now I’m tempted,’ Sarah muttered grimly, ‘given that
I’m half-naked and you’re shining a spotlight on me. Could you possibly just turn that light off?’
‘And if I do that, how are you going to see to get down from there?’ He didn’t have to raise his voice above the noise of the rain. It was rich and deep enough to need no projection.
‘I was managing all right until you came.’
‘Meaning you hadn’t broken your neck yet. What the hell did you think you were doing, going up there in this weather?’
Sarah gave a snort of exasperation. ‘God, you sound just like my mother. Can I just point out that I wouldn’t be up here in any other kind of weather, since I’m trying to find out where the water’s coming in. Up there I think I can see a’
‘On second thoughts, I don’t really want to know,’ he interrupted, and Sarah clearly heard the exasperation in his tone. ‘I just want you to come very slowly towards the edge of the roof.’
‘Are you mad?’ She pushed dripping tendrils of hair back from her wet face. ‘Why?’
‘Because I know there’ll be a joist there that will support your weight.’
‘Oh, thanks a lot! Would this be a special steel-reinforced?’
‘Sarah, just do it.’
Hearing him say her name detonated a tiny explosion of shock in her abdomen that stopped her dead for a moment. Her mouth opened, though it was a couple of seconds before she was actually able to speak.
‘How do I know I can trust you?’ she said sulkily, squinting into the dazzling light, wishing she could see him. ‘You could be anyone.’
‘You don’t, and I could, but now’s not really the time for lengthy introductions. Let’s just say that my name is Lorenzo, and right now I’m all that’s standing between you and a very nasty fall.’
His voice was doing things to her. Inconvenient things, given her position. Irritation fizzed inside her. ‘I don’t mean to be rude when we’ve only just met, Lorenzo, but you’re building your part up just a little bit. I’m not stupid, you knowI did check before I got up here that it was safe. The roof hardly slopes at all and the tiles are fixed down properly’
Sarah took a step towards the edge and as she did so felt the tile beneath her foot crack and give way suddenly. She let out a sharp cry of anguish, her arms windmilling madly as she tried to keep her balance.
Suddenly she was afraid.
‘It’s OK. You’re all right.’
‘That’s easy for you to say,’ she gasped with a slightly wild laugh. ‘You’re not the one who’s about to crash through the roof and end up on the kitchen table.’ She closed her eyes for a second, waiting for the adrenaline that was pumping through her and making her feel shaky and unsteady to subside.
‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I’m not going to let it.’ The beam of light swung away from her and she shivered in the sudden darkness. But a moment later he spoke again, and his voice was closer now.
‘I can’t do this and hold the torch, so you’re going to have to listen very carefully and do what I say. OK?’
‘OK.’ Her voice sounded small and quiet. But perhaps it was just because her heart was suddenly beating very loudly, making the blood pound in her ears. The torch was on the ground far below, its powerful beam cutting through the indigo darkness and turning the rain on Angelica and Hugh’s limestone patio into pools of mercury. Up here it seemed very dark.
‘Come carefully towards the edge of the roof and stop when I tell you.’
Sarah did as he said, letting out another whimper of fear as she felt another tile crack. Rain was running down her face, making her eyes sting. She closed them.
‘That’s it. Stop there,’ he ordered, and although his voice was harsh there was a peculiar intimacy to it. ‘Now, reach out your arms. I’m going to lift you down.’
‘No! You can’t! I’m too heavy, I’ll…’
But the rest of her protest was lost as she felt one arm circle her waist, and then she was being pulled against his body.
Through the thin layer of their wet clothes she could feel the warmth of his skin, his hard-muscled chest. Instinctively her hands found his shoulders, and even through her shock and fear she was aware of their power. Heat suddenly erupted inside her, tingling through her chilled body.
‘Thank you,’ she muttered, trying to pull quickly away from him as her feet made contact with something solid. Instantly the world tilted and her stomach gave a sickening lurch as she felt herself falling and realised she had just stepped off the edge of the table they were standing on. He grabbed her again, pulling her back into the safety of his arms.
‘I’m beginning to think you have a death wish,’ he said grimly, sweeping her legs from under her and holding her against him as he climbed down from the table in one fluid movement.
‘If I did I could think of more elegant ways to end it all than falling off a roof while wearing nothing but my nightie. Now, please, put me down.’
‘The gravel is sharp and you’ve got no shoes on.’
‘I’m fine. I can manage. Please…’ she said, miserably aware that by now his back was probably groaning with bearing the weight of her. Although he certainly showed no sign of noticing that she was heavier than your average feather pillow. Against her ear his breathing was perfectly slow and steady, and his pace easy. It didn’t slow at all at her words either, she noticed with a thud of alarm and helpless excitement as they rounded the corner of the house and he made straight for the hulking shape of a large 4x4 that loomed out of the darkness. ‘Where are you taking me, anyway?’
‘Home.’
‘Look, stop, please. And let me go!’
He sighed. ‘If that’s really what you want…’
Unreasonable disappointment shafted through her as he set her down on the wet gravel and stood back. She wobbled slightly as the sharp stones cut into her feet. Out of the warmth of his arms, she realised how cold she was.
‘It is,’ she said and hoped that the sudden feeling of uncertainty about that wasn’t evident in her voice. ‘Look, it’s very kind of you to help, but we’ll be fine here until morning. We’ve never even met before and there are five of us here, so—’
‘Actually, you’re wrong.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, for a start, your family are already there, at Castellaccio.’
‘What? But they can’t…we can’t…possibly descend on you. It’s out of the question-we’ll manage fine here.’
‘Funny. That wasn’t what your sister said. Or her friend Fenella, was it?’
Bloody Fenella. Her words from earlier echoed mockingly around Sarah’s head. He sounds delish. I wouldn’t mind getting on the right side of him…Of course, never in a million years would she pass up the opportunity to get a foot in the door of a film director’s luxury palazzo. Limping as quickly as she could after Lorenzo Cavalleri, it wasn’t just the sharp gravel beneath Sarah’s bare feet that made her wince.
He reached the car and pulled open the door. A small light inside went on and she felt her heart stop, and then start again with a painful thump as she caught a fleeting glimpse of hard cheekbone and sharp jawline darkened with stubble before he melted back into the darkness and went around to the other side of the car.
For a moment he had reminded her of the man in the pub that night. The man who had kissed her. But of course that was ridiculous; he was Italian, and male—that was where the coincidence ended. Getting into the car, she quickly did up her seat belt and, as he got into the driver’s seat beside her, deliberately turned her head and looked out into the wet night.
She could hardly remember what he looked like anyway, she told herself crossly. Because it was unimportant. He was unimportant.
‘First thing tomorrow I’ll get a decent local builder to come and have a look at the roof and then hopefully we can get it sorted out,’ she said stiffly as he started the engine.
‘You know many decent local builders?’
‘No, but I’m guessing that any local builder would be better than the idiots that Hugh and Angelica brought over from London. God knows what they’ve done.’
‘My guess is they’ve put the tiles on upside down. Tuscan roof tiles curve slightly, and it appears they’ve laid them so that the water flows right down between the gaps. If I’m right the whole roof will need redoing.’
Sarah groaned. ‘Oh, God, but the wedding’s the day after tomorrow. I’ll have to think of something.’
There was a slight pause, and then he said quietly, ‘Why is it your responsibility?’
Sarah stared through the silvery lines of rain on the window.
‘You’ve met Angelica and my mother. They’re each as hopeless as the other, and we can’t wait until Hugh and Guy get here if it’s going to be sorted out before the wedding.’
‘Hugh I’ve met, but who’s Guy?’
The windscreen wipers beat a steady tattoo, like a heartbeat in the womb-like interior of the car, and warm air from the heater curled around her, making her chilled skin tingle. She felt suddenly very, very tired and leaned her head back against the soft leather seat, closing her eyes. ‘Guy’s my stepfather. Angelica’s father. He’s the kind of person who makes things happen and gets things done—especially for Angelica, but I suspect that re-roofing an entire house in under twenty-four hours is beyond even his capability.’
‘You don’t get on with him?’
‘Oh, I do. You couldn’t not. He’s charming, witty, extremely generous…’
‘But?’
She was dimly aware that the car had come to a standstill, but he didn’t turn the engine off. Below the throb of the engine she could hear the rain pattering on the roof, and it made her feel oddly safe and protected. Or maybe it was this man that made her feel like that—this stranger, Lorenzo Cavalleri. For a moment she thought back to how it had felt to be in his arms when he had rescued her from the roof. The strength that she had sensed in him, that was more than just a matter of hard muscle…
She sat up abruptly and opened her eyes, feeling for the door handle.
Rescued her.
Uh-uh. She didn’t need to be rescued. She didn’t ask for it and she didn’t want it. She could cope perfectly well without a man, and she wasn’t going to make the mistake of letting her hormones rule her head again. Not after Rupert. Not after the man in The Rose and Crown that night. Perhaps she should ring Italian Accents Anonymous.
‘He’s not my father, that’s all,’ she said abruptly, pushing the door open and getting out of the car. The shock of the cold rain on her newly warmed skin was almost a relief.
Small world, thought Lorenzo, getting out of the car and walking round to where she waited by the palazzo’s double front doors. He felt a smile touch his mouth as he looked at her. She was standing perfectly still, perfectly straight, almost as if she was oblivious to the rain that was plastering her hair to her head and running down her face. Most women he knew would be horrified at the idea of being so thoroughly drenched—like her sister, for example, who had insisted on an umbrella being found before she would even make a dash for the car back at the farmhouse.
‘The door’s not locked. Please, go in.’
She didn’t move. ‘Look, I’m sorry about this,’ she said as Lorenzo moved past her, pushing open the door. ‘Really. It doesn’t seem right. We don’t even know you. Maybe we should just go and—’
The light from the hallway spilled out into the wet night. Standing back to let her go ahead of him, he saw her blink in the sudden brightness, and then watched her eyes widen, her lips part in silent shock as realisation hit her.
Her hand flew to her mouth, colour blooming in her rainshiny cheeks as she took a couple of steps backwards into the darkness. Lorenzo reached out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her into the hallway.
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ he said softly. ‘Not this time.’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘THIS time.’
Pressing herself back against the closed door, oblivious to the grandeur of the enormous room in which she found herself, for a moment the only words Sarah’s shocked brain could come up with were a numb echo of his. ‘This time? So you knew? All this time I’ve been out there making a complete and utter spectacle of myself, you knew it was me.’ Horror crept over her as her mind replayed the events of the past hour in this new, humiliating light. ‘You could have said.’
‘And if I had?’
‘I would have stayed up on the roof.’
She closed her eyes, hot shame flooding her as she thought about what she must have looked like from below in her skimpy shirt. How she must have felt when he’d lifted her down.
Oh, God.
Having to surrender your scantily clad self—all too-many stones of it—to the arms of a stranger was bad enough, but discovering that he wasn’t entirely a stranger was infinitely worse. The man who had been shining a torch up her soaked-to-transparency shirt, the man who had lifted her considerable weight down from the roof, was the same man who had kissed her as a joke on her sister’s hen night. It was almost more than she could bear.
‘Exactly,’ he said gravely.
At that moment they were interrupted by a familiar voice from the doorway. ‘Oh, there you are, darling! Honestly, talk about drowned rat!’ Sarah felt the colour deepen in her glowing cheeks as her mother advanced towards them, still in her nightdress and coat but now with a large drink in one hand, as if she were at a slightly bohemian cocktail party. ‘Come through and get a towel, darling—we’re all drying out in front of a lovely fire and warming up with some of Signor Cavalleri’s excellent brandy.’ She batted her eyelashes in Lorenzo’s direction. ‘He’s been so kind, I can’t tell you.’
Sarah gritted her teeth, feeling the way she had when she was at school and Martha and Guy used to turn up at her sports day in the open-topped Rolls-Royce, and loudly uncork bottles of vintage champagne while everyone else was opening flasks of tea. ‘Mum, please,’ she hissed, following her across the inlaidmarble floor and through a doorway on the right. ‘I really don’t think we can…’
She stopped. The room she found herself in had the same majestic proportions, the same ornate plaster panelling as the hall, but here the stately impact was lessened by the fact that it was incredibly untidy. Papers covered every surface, from the vast antique desk that stood between the windows, to the low table in front of the fire and the deep leather chesterfield sofa. Or the bits of it that weren’t taken up with Angelica, Fenella, Lottie and a large grey dog.
‘Lottie’s fast asleep already, bless her,’ Martha continued, peering down at her small pyjama-clad form. ‘Isn’t she sweet? Signor Cavalleri, I really must thank you for taking pity on us in our hour of need. Now we’re all here, please let’s introduce ourselves properly.’
Standing shivering in her wet shirt, Sarah gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘I don’t think there’s any need for that. I believe that Angelica and Signor Cavalleri already know each other.’
Angelica blinked and shook back her silky blonde hair.
‘Oh, no, I don’t think so, but I believe you’ve met my fiancé, Hugh? You were kind enough to come and offer your advice on—’
Beside her Fenella nudged her and murmured something inaudible, glancing at Sarah. Angelica’s blue eyes widened. ‘Oh, my goodness, yes! You were in the pub that night, weren’t you? The Rose and Crown, on my hen night.’
Sarah felt as if there were something wrapped tightly around her neck as Lorenzo gave a curt nod.
‘Oh, gosh—I don’t believe it! What an amazing coincidence, isn’t it, Fenella?’
‘Amazing,’ smirked Fenella, unfolding herself from the sofa in one elegant movement and letting the long cashmere cardigan she was wearing fall open to reveal little shorts and a vest top beneath it. ‘Of course, if we’d had the chance to talk we might have discovered the coincidence sooner but, as I recall, Sarah rather naughtily monopolised you. You both disappeared rather suddenly too.’
Sarah snatched up a towel and began vigorously rubbing her hair, which was the only way she could stop herself from taking Fenella’s elegant neck in her hands and wringing it. It also provided her with a diversion as she struggled to fit this new and unexpected information into the mental slot marked ‘Bastard’ she had created for the Screaming Orgasm man.
If Angelica and Fenella hadn’t set him up that night, then why the hell had he kissed her?
From behind the towel she watched as he briefly shook the hand Fenella held out. ‘As I recall,’ he said casually, turning away, ‘you were monopolising the rest of the males in the vicinity, so I’m sure it was no loss.’
‘Well, how astonishing that you should find yourself in our very sleepy corner of darkest Oxfordshire,’ Martha interjected hastily. ‘I’m Martha, by the way. Martha Halliday.’
Lorenzo stopped, tensing into complete stillness for a second. Then he turned round again, his narrow eyes very dark.
‘Not so sleepy, Signora Halliday.’ Sarah noticed the slight emphasis he placed on her mother’s surname. ‘Certainly not on the night I was there. Have you lived there for long?’
‘Since I was nineteen and I fell in love for the first time. You’re right—it’s nothing like it used to be,’ Clearly eager to steer the conversation back into harmless waters, Martha was at her most chatty and expansive. ‘I grew up in suburbia and it was like being dropped into the middle of a Thomas Hardy novel. Wildly romantic in theory, but the reality was harsh. In those days The Rose and Crown was a tiny little country inn where regulars used to help themselves from behind the bar and put the money in a box. Francis—that was my first husband—spent more of our married life in there than at home. He used to sit at a table in the corner by the inglenook and write. Said it was the only place he could keep warm enough to think in winter.’
‘Write?’
‘Yes. Poetry, mainly, but—’
‘Mum,’ Sarah hissed, ‘it’s three o’clock in the morning. I hardly think this is the time to be discussing literature.’
Especially not the singularly unsuccessful literary efforts of her father. Sarah just knew what Martha had been about to say next that as well as endless volumes of strenuous, angry poems describing the industrialisation of the rural landscape, the late Francis Tate’s canon also included a book, set in Oxfordshire and Tuscany. The fact that it too had been a complete commercial flop never stopped Martha from talking about it as if it were some work of staggering, underrated genius, much to Sarah’s embarrassment.
‘Sorry. Of course, darling, you’re right,’ Martha laughed, putting down her empty brandy glass. ‘We’ve caused you quite enough disruption already, Signor Cavalleri. It’s not too inconvenient to put us up for the night, I hope?’
‘Not at all,’ Lorenzo said tersely. ‘Although I can’t promise five-star service, I’m afraid. I should explain that I’m here alone at the moment. My housekeeper left a while ago and I haven’t got round to finding a replacement yet, so you’ll have to look after yourselves. You found the rooms all right?’
‘Oh, yes, thank you.’ Martha beamed. ‘You have such a beautiful home, and perhaps tomorrow we can see it properly, but now, girls, I think it’s time we took ourselves out of Signor Cavalleri’s way.’
The dog lifted its head mournfully as Angelica and Fenella got up from the sofa and said their goodnights, but it didn’t move. Sarah eyed it warily as she looked down at Lottie, wondering how best to pick her up without waking her. In the warm glow of the firelight she was curled up tightly, her hands tucked neatly beneath one rosy cheek, like a child in an old-fashioned picture book.
She jumped as a low voice broke the silence. ‘So, you have a daughter.’
Her sudden indrawn breath made a little hiss in the quiet room. Lorenzo was standing on the other side of the sofa, watching her expressionlessly.
‘Yes.’ She wasn’t as good as he was at keeping the emotion from her voice, and the short word bristled with defensiveness.
This was the point at which most men would say something bright and howlingly insincere about how sweet Lottie was, how adorable, whilst mentally calculating the quickest method of exit, but Lorenzo Cavalleri simply nodded. His eyes never left hers. It was as if he was looking right inside her. Sarah felt her stomach tighten with reluctant excitement as heat zigzagged down to her pelvis. And then she remembered that she was wearing nothing but a wet shirt, and that she’d towel-dried her hair so vigorously that she was probably doing a very good impression of Neanderthal woman. Quickly she bent over Lottie, hoping he wouldn’t see that she was blushing.
‘I’ll help you get her to bed,’ Lorenzo said flatly, and she was aware of him moving round the sofa to where she stood.
‘No. It’s fine. I can manage.’
‘How did I know you were going to say that?’ he said, his voice laced with sardonic mockery. ‘Do you ever accept help?’
‘I’m used to doing things myself, that’s all,’ Sarah muttered, wondering how she was going to bend down enough to gather Lottie up without completely exposing herself. Again. She wasn’t sure if the fact he’d pretty much seen it all already made it worse or better. ‘Lottie’s father wasn’t exactly the hands-on type.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘In bed with his ice-blonde, beautiful fiancée, I imagine,’ she said bitterly.
Lorenzo nodded slowly. ‘I see.’
She gave a harsh gust of laughter. ‘I doubt it,’ she snapped, sitting down abruptly on the sofa beside Lottie, bending forward to gather her into her arms from there.
They both jumped as the huge plasma screen above the fireplace flickered into life, displaying a close-up image of a woman’s bare midriff—as smooth and brown and endless as a stretch of desert sand. The camera travelled upwards, lingering lovingly on the hollow between her incredibly firm, neat breasts, the ridges of her collarbones and the sharp jut of her jaw as she stretched her head back and opened her mouth in a breathless cry of pleasure…
Sarah’s mouth dropped open too, although it was a look she couldn’t carry off half as sexily as Tia de Luca.
Because there was no mistaking that was who it was. No mistaking those slanting eyes, as cool and green as apples, or the famous pillow-plump lips, which were now quivering with anticipation as the hero’s mouth moved up the column of her throat towards them…
Sarah’s sharp, high gasp matched Tia de Luca’s as Lorenzo’s hand slid beneath her thigh. The next moment the screen was black and empty again.
Whipping her head round, she looked at him. He was standing perfectly still, the remote control held in his hand. For a second Sarah glimpsed a blaze of some unidentifiable emotion in his eyes, but then it was gone; replaced once more by an expressionless mask.
He threw the remote control down onto the low table in front of the fire.
‘You sat on it,’ he said shortly.
Sarah stumbled to her feet. ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry.’
Lorenzo shrugged impatiently. ‘No problem.’ She shook her head. ‘No, not for sitting on the stupid remote. For saying that before, about you not knowing what it’s like. To be left. I was forgetting. I mean, I don’t know anything about it, but Angelica and Fenella were talking earlier about your wife and—’
‘I’m sure you’re tired,’ he interrupted coldly. ‘Perhaps I could show you to your room now.’
Sarah ducked her head, pushing back the trailing sleeves of her shirt as she prepared to pick Lottie up. ‘Of course. Yes. Sorry.’
‘Here. Let me take her. You’re soaking.’
‘So are you.’
‘Yes, but I can take this off.’ He was already undoing the buttons of his shirt, impatiently, with a kind of resignation that told her that he just wanted to get rid of her, with as little fuss as possible. And, of course, she didn’t blame him. He must have been watching the film when Angelica interrupted him, asking for help. That explained why he was still awake, still dressed in the small hours of the morning…
It also explained the sadness she had sensed behind the mask. And probably it accounted for why he’d kissed her that night too, she thought with a wrenching sensation in her chest. When your heart was broken you’d do anything, use anyone to blot out the hurt and loneliness for a while.
Lorenzo didn’t bother undoing all the buttons, pulling the shirt quickly over his head and throwing it hastily on top of the pile of books and papers on the table in front of the sofa.
‘This way.’
Following him across the hallway and up the wide, sweeping staircase, she kept her eyes fixed determinedly on Lottie’s head, resting against his upper arm. It was important not to allow herself to look at the wide shoulders or the way the muscles rippled beneath his olive skin, because then she might start making disloyal comparisons with Rupert’s English pallor; his square, stocky frame that was showing the beginnings of a paunch.
There wasn’t an ounce of spare flesh on Lorenzo Cavalleri. Sarah could see shadows between the ridges of his ribs, and his hip bones jutted above the top of his jeans. For all his strength, he was too thin, she thought with a twist of unexpected compassion.
‘This is it.’
He stopped so suddenly in front of a closed door that Sarah, lost in forbidden thought, walked straight into him. Muttering apologies, she instantly leapt away. He opened the door and went into the room, but she stayed where she was in the dimly lit corridor, pressing herself against the wall and waiting for her breathing to steady. Looking around her, back along the corridor through which they’d just come, she realised guiltily that she hadn’t taken in a single detail of her surroundings as she’d followed him through the palazzo, which was amazing considering that, from the little she could see now, it was pretty damned impressive.
Just not as impressive as Lorenzo Cavalleri’s body.
She closed her eyes, tipping her head back against the panelling and trying to bring her wayward thoughts under control. Or her wayward hormones. It had been a long time since she and Rupert had
‘She’s all yours.’
She opened her eyes, which was a bit of a mistake. He was standing in front of her, the low light from further along the passageway gleaming on the bare skin of his collarbone, the curve of his shoulder.
‘Thanks,’ she croaked ducking her head and sliding along the wall towards the bedroom doorway. ‘For everything. And sorry.’
As she went into the bedroom she heard him say something in reply, but was so busy cursing her own gaucheness that she didn’t catch what it was. Too late; through the halfopen door she could hear his footsteps already dying away on the landing outside, and anyway a moment later all thoughts dissolved in her head as she turned to look around at the room.
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India Grey
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Hired: impoverished housekeeper! Though Sarah Halliday is very ordinary, her dangerously attractive new boss is not content with her scrubbing the marble floors of his Tuscan palazzo… Bedded: Italian’s mistress Instead she finds herself catapulted into Lorenzo Cavalleri’s star-studded life – with a wardrobe to match! Make-up masks her blushes, silk evening gowns flatter her fuller figure, but underneath Sarah’s still the shy, frumpy housekeeper Lorenzo hired – and not the sophisticated bedroom siren he seems to be expecting…At His Service From glass slippers to silk sheets