By the time Marco slid in behind the wheel of the long black car to drive smoothly away from the kerb and enter the stream of traffic, Lily was flushed with embarrassment, and the glass partition separating the front and the back of the limousine wasn’t conducive to any further attempts to question the chauffeur, either.
Left with no other choice, Lily chose to sit back in her leather seat and enjoy the scenery outside as the car sped towards the centre of Rome; if she was going to wake up from this Cinderella-like transformation any time soon then she might as well enjoy what was left of it!
She had been right about the temperature: it wasn’t exactly T-shirt weather outside, but it was definitely ten or so degrees warmer than England, with no snow in sight. And the sun was shining too, which made everything look so much brighter and warmer. Lily was so enthralled by the city of Rome that after the first couple of near misses with other cars, as drivers honked and gesticulated, only to be completely ignored by the stoic Marco, she decided it might be best to return her attention to the amazing scenery outside the window.
Every street corner seemed to have statuary, a fountain or a nativity scene—it was almost Christmas, after all—along with imposing museums that easily rivalled the history of the sludge-covered London Lily had left behind her only hours ago. Many of the outside cafés were open for business too—even if the patrons had to wear coats and scarves in order to keep warm.
No wonder Felix had so obviously fallen in love with the city. And not only the city, apparently; he had informed Lily weeks ago that he was going out with a young Italian girl named Dee, whom he wanted to introduce to her at the earliest opportunity.
Rome appeared to be a city where it would be all too easy to fall in love...
* * *
Lily frowned her confusion when, half an hour or so after leaving the airport, Marco didn’t stop the car outside an apartment building at all, but instead parked outside two imposing wooden doors, at least fifteen foot high. They slowly opened, and Marco then drove the car into the courtyard of a magnificent building that must surely once have been a royal palace.
The tall wooden doors had closed firmly behind them by the time Marco got out of the car and opened the back door for Lily.
Despite the teeming rush and bustle of the city outside, it was strangely silent inside these four walls as she slowly stepped out into the shadowed courtyard. Silent and intimidating. Eerily so.
Lily pulled her jacket more tightly about her as she turned to the chauffeur. ‘Mi scusi, signor—parla inglese?’
‘No,’ he answered abruptly, before moving to the back of the car to remove her case from the boot.
Obviously not the talkative type, she acknowledged ruefully. Which was of absolutely no help to her at all!
She realised that all the attention at the airport in England, and on the plane earlier, had lulled her into a false sense of security. She had, in fact, left Leonardo da Vinci airport with a man she didn’t know and who had hardly spoken a word to her after telling her his name. And it was she who’d mentioned Felix and the Count’s names, not Marco! Added to which, Lily had now been delivered to a building that looked as if it might once have been a palace but could just as easily have been a brothel! An expensive and exclusive brothel, obviously, but a brothel nonetheless.
Pictures flashed inside Lily’s mind of newspaper articles she had read over the years on the lucrative slave trade in blond-haired, blue-eyed young women. Women who to all intents and purposes had simply disappeared into the ether, but who had actually been whisked off somewhere and kept locked behind closed doors, their bodies used and abused, until they were no longer young enough to attract the attention of the wealthy customers. When they were either disposed of or placed in yet another brothel—one whose customers weren’t so fastidious regarding the age of the women they paid to bed.
She really was the country bumpkin she had described herself as being earlier! Shouldn’t be allowed out on her own... Certainly shouldn’t have attempted to fly to Rome on her own...
Slightly frightened now, she turned back to the chauffeur as he placed her suitcase on the cobbled stones of the courtyard. ‘Signor, I really must—’
‘That will be all, thank you, Marco.’
Lily froze for the fraction of a second it took for an icy shiver to run down the length of her spine just at the sound of that husky and yet authoritative voice, before turning sharply to look up at the gallery above. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw there was a man standing in the shadows, looking down into the courtyard from the first floor. Even squinting hard into the depths of those shadows, Lily couldn’t make out the man’s features—was aware only of an impression of height and leashed power.
The brothel master, maybe?
Oh, good grief, Lily, she instantly admonished herself. Of course he wasn’t the brothel master—because this wasn’t a brothel. There would be a perfectly sensible explanation for her having been brought here. One the man on the gallery above could obviously give her, considering that just now he had spoken in perfect, and only slightly accented English.
She turned back to thank Marco for his assistance—only for her apprehension to return with a vengeance when she realised that the chauffeur had disappeared silently into the bowels of the house while she’d stared up, mesmerised by the presence of the man in the gallery.
Which had perhaps been the intention all along? Distracting her attention, allowing Marco to disappear, and so leaving her completely alone and at the mercy of this other man?
She turned to glare up at the man on the gallery. Damn it, she was twenty-six years old, a British citizen and a teacher, with a mortgage on her small London flat and all the responsibilities that went along with those things; she certainly wasn’t going to allow herself to be intimidated by a man who was too afraid even to show his face.
‘Oh. My. Lord!’ Lily gasped softly as the man, as if sensing at least some of her tumultuous thoughts, finally stepped out of the shadows to stand against the balustrade, looking down at her.
She had been correct about the height: the man stood at least a foot taller than her own five feet two inches. And about the leashed power—even wearing an expensive designer label suit over a pristine white shirt and meticulously knotted grey silk tie, the man managed to exude an aura of barely restrained strength. His shoulders were incredibly wide beneath the jacket of that suit, his waist tapered and his long, long legs were encased in perfectly tailored trousers.
But it was the face beneath that midnight black haircut, quite frankly, in a Roman style—that held Lily completely mesmerised. It was a harshly hewn olive-skinned face, dominated by light coloured eyes above a straight slash of a nose and sculptured unsmiling lips. His chin was square and starkly masculine in those arrogantly chiselled features.
He looked like something from one of Lily’s wilder fantasies—the sort of man every woman wanted to tame and claim for her own.
He raised one black and perfectly etched brow, and those sculptured lips curved in hard amusement as he responded to her earlier gasped exclamation. ‘Not even close, I am afraid, Miss Barton.’
He knew her name! ‘I’m afraid you have the advantage over me, signor.’
He gave a terse inclination of his head before walking towards the staircase leading down from the gallery into the courtyard. ‘If you will just wait there, I will come down and introduce myself—’
‘No!’
He came to an abrupt halt at the top of the stairs, that dark and arrogant brow arched higher than before. ‘No?’
‘No.’ Lily stood her ground, shoulders tensed, booted feet braced slightly apart on the cobbles.