To have heard and to be thoroughly contemptuous of, she recognised as she saw the way he looked down the length of his aquiline nose at her, his mouth curling in open disdain.
Totally mortified, Alice could feel her face burning even hotter, her enjoyment of her ice cream completely destroyed by her recognition of his contempt of her. No doubt he thought she was some silly Northern European tourist looking for a cheap holiday fling, she fumed as she gave him a look intended to be as corrosive as the one he had just given her. Unfortunately, though, she had not allowed for the effect of the extremely hot sun on her ice cream and as she turned to glower at him, in what she had planned to be a rebuffing and ladylike manner, she realised that her ice was dripping onto her top.
And that of course was the reason why her nipples should suddenly choose that totally inauspicious moment to peak openly and flauntingly with maddening wilfulness. And all the while she had to stand there waiting to cross the road, with his gaze pinned with deliberate emphasis and insulting thoroughness on the swell of her breasts.
Horrible, horrid man, she designated him under her breath, but she knew as she did so that he was also just about the most sensually magnetic and dangerous man she had ever set eyes on.
Just the merest link between her own bemused, shocked eyes and the hooded, mesmeric topaz intensity of his would have been enough to melt a full glacier, never mind her ice cream, she reflected shakily once he had driven past her.
And that was without him trying. Heaven alone knew what he could do if he really tried to turn a deliberately sensual look on a woman! Not that she was ever likely to know or want to know. Of course not! No. Never. Definitely not!
And as for that open-topped car—in this heat—well, that was obviously a deliberate pose, meant to underline his macho masculinity. She despised men like that! Men who needed to reinforce their machismo. Not that he had looked as though his needed much reinforcing—and no doubt that thick head of dark, dark brown but not quite jet-black hair would ensure that his scalp would never need protecting from strong sunlight.
‘Damn the woman, where is she?’ Marco looked irritably at his watch, and then frowned as he studied the empty foyer of the exclusive and expensive hotel just outside Florence, where he had arranged to meet the Englishwoman he was supposed to be interviewing. He was stalking imperiously up and down its imposing length with a lean and predatory male animal stride that caused the female hotel guest crossing the foyer to give a small, unstoppable little hormonal shiver of appreciation.
Oblivious of his effect on her, Marco continued to frown.
The fact that his interviewee had neither the discipline to be on time for their meeting, nor the good manners to send a message apologising for her late appearance, was not in his opinion a good advertisement for her professional skills, despite the fact that she had come so highly recommended by her agency that it had virtually sung a paean of praise in her favour.
He had not been in the best of moods even before he’d reached the city. His car, the normally totally reliable saloon he drove, had developed some kind of electrical problem, which meant that it was currently being repaired, leaving him with no alternative but to drive the ridiculous and, to his mind, totally over the top bright red Ferrari, which had belonged to his cousin Aldo, but which since Aldo’s death had remained at the palazzo.
Unlike his Mercedes, the Ferrari was certainly the kind of car that attracted a good deal of attention—and the wrong kind of attention in Marco’s opinion. His eyes narrowed slightly as he remembered the blonde girl he had noticed when he had driven into the city earlier in the day on his way to meet a colleague.
Her body had certainly approved of the car, even if her eyes had flashed him a look of murderous, ‘don’t you dare look at me like that’ rejection, he reflected wryly.
Personally, he would far rather have a woman be attracted to him for himself than his car! Aldo, though, had not shared his feelings!
Where was this wretched girl?
To be truthful it had irked him a little that she had refused to stay in this hotel as he had wished. Instead she’d insisted on staying, albeit at her own expense, in a far less convenient, so far as he was concerned, hotel in the centre of Florence itself. This was apparently because she wished to do some sightseeing and because she had been concerned that the hotel he had chosen was too far out of the city centre and too quiet. An ominous statement, so far as Marco was concerned! As a student at university in England, he had witnessed the way in which some English girls chose to demonstrate their dislike of anything ‘too quiet’!
Perhaps it was old-fashioned of him to abhor promiscuity, and to believe that a person—of either sex—should have enough self-restraint and enough self-pride not to treat sex as an emotionless act of physical gratification on a par with eating a bar of chocolate, but that was how he felt.
Irritably he shot back the cuff of his immaculately tailored pale grey suit and frowned. Angelina, the baby for whom he was seeking the services of a nanny, would be awake and wondering where he was. The traumatic loss of her mother had left the baby clinging to the only other adult who was a constant in her life, and who she seemed to feel safe with, and that was himself. Marco was not impressed with the standard of care or commitment the girl who’d originally been hired by Angelina’s late mother was currently giving to the baby.
Grimly Marco reminded himself that now Angelina was his child, and that she was totally dependent on him in every single way. Right now it was Angelina who needed to come first in his thoughts and his actions. That was why he was so determined not to find merely ‘a nanny’ for her, but the right nanny, the best nanny—a nanny who would be prepared to commit herself, her time and to some extent her future to being with Angelina.
And this was where a battle was being fought inside him. His frown changed from that of irritated, almost antagonistic male, to one of deeply concerned protective paternalism. He felt such a strong sense of family and emotional responsibility to Angelina, that the only woman he would entrust the baby with had to be someone who could supply her with the love and security her mother’s death had deprived her of, someone warm and loving, reliable and responsible.
And as the baby’s mother had been British, he had decided to advertise for an Italian speaking British nanny for Angelina, so that she would grow up learning both languages.
The girl he had eventually settled on had in many ways almost seemed to be too good to be true, she had been so highly recommended and praised by her agency. But then of course they would not necessarily be dispassionate about her!
Now it seemed that he had been right to be dubious. Grimly he rechecked his watch. His autocratic features were so arrogantly and blatantly those of a sensually mature adult Italian male that it was no wonder the pretty girl behind the reception desk was watching him with awed longing.
He positively exuded power and masculinity, laced with a dangerous hint of potent sexuality. Just as the lean animal grace of the way he walked failed to cloak that maleness, so too the elegant tailoring failed to cloak the fact that the body beneath it was all raw magnificence and muscle. He possessed that kind of bred-into-the-bone sensuality that no woman could fail to recognise and respond to, be it with longing or apprehension. The kind of sensuality that went much, much deeper than the mere good looks with which nature had so generously endowed him, the kind of sensuality that neither money nor power nor position could buy!
There was, though, a touch of grim determination about the hard line of his mouth that set him apart from most other men of his race, a certain cool hauteur and distance that challenged anyone who dared to come too close to him uninvited.
At thirty-five he had behind him over a decade of heading the vast and complicated tangled network of his extended family; aunts, uncles, and cousins.
His father and mother had been killed outright when his father’s younger brother had crashed the private plane he had been flying. Marco, or, to give him his correct name, Semperius Marco Francisco Conte di Vincenti, had been twenty-five at the time, and freshly qualified as an architect, aware of the responsibility of the role that would