The night air had a sharp nip to it. Carlo’s car stood parked at the bottom of the steps. He guided her towards it and opened the passenger door for her and only then allowed his fingers to ease their grip on her waist when he stepped back, his expression a wall of cool politeness as he waited for her to get in the car. As she sank into luxurious black leather the door was closed with a solid click. Her eyes began to sting as she listened to him putting her case in the car boot and she had to bite down hard on her bottom lip in an effort to maintain her icy dignity as he got in beside her, folding his body like a lithe jungle cat with its killer instincts set on full alert.
It was easier to look out of the side-window than to keep him hovering even on the periphery of her vision. What she saw through that window was the door to Villa Batiste drawing shut. It was the last time she would look at that door, she vowed silently.
The car engine came to life. It kicked into gear and with a spin of wide tyres on loose gravel they moved off, the force of the acceleration pushing her back into the seat. Headlights spanned the two lines of cypress trees. They sped between them and barely paused at the junction before they were turning into the lane and accelerating away again.
She had no idea where he was taking her and at that precise moment she didn’t care. Her life was in tatters. If someone had come along with a knife and cut her to ribbons she couldn’t feel worse than she did right now.
Then she found that she could feel a whole lot worse when he brought the car to a sudden neck-jolting halt. She’d barely recovered from the shock of it when he was twisting towards her in his seat.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Tell me what your friend said to you to turn you back into the spitting cat.’
Cats and wolves were making a prominent show tonight, she thought ridiculously and almost choked on what she recognised as a lump of hysteria now blocking her throat.
‘What makes you think it was Sonya?’ she flashed.
‘Because she was the only loose cannon out there I couldn’t protect you from,’ he answered.
Protect? Her eyes widened. He called this protection? She twisted her face away again, fizzing inside and refusing to answer. For a long, taut tick in time she continued to sit with her eyes still fixed on the side-window and her lips clamped tightly shut.
‘Francesca!’ he rasped.
‘Nicola Mauraux.’
Silence. That was it. She sat there waiting for some kind of response—a guilty curse would have been enough! But nothing else happened. She wasn’t breathing but he was—in and out with a calmness that set her teeth on edge. Her eyes began to sting again—she so badly wanted to break down and cry like a baby that she didn’t know how much longer she could stop herself from doing it!
When he finally moved she was forced to flick another glance at him, warily unsure as to what was coming next. But all he did was settle himself back in his seat and a moment later and they were moving again as if she hadn’t spoken his stepsister’s wretched name.
Well—fine, she thought burningly. Let’s just ignore I said it. Your silence suits me because it means I won’t have to listen to you talk your slick way around the reasons why I am sitting in this car at all!
The car began to accelerate, moving very fast on the straight parts of the narrow country lane, slow and smooth through the bends with the headlights sweeping the darkness ahead of them as her grim-profiled driver put on a slick display of man versus power versus control. His timing was immaculate. He never missed a gear. The engine growled then purred then roared on acceleration then growled and purred again. And the whole thing took place beneath a heavy blanket of silence that helped to hold Francesca mesmerised even though she didn’t want to be. He was the man with everything—great looks, great body and a great sense of style that utilised both to their optimum. Then there was his wealth and his power and his razor-like intellect. The way he used passion for persuasion, words like clubs to beat his opponents to death. And he drove his car with a ruthless, selfish, utter single-mindedness that dared anyone to get in his way. He reminded her of a dark, sleek, prowling predator, top of the food chain. Nothing or no one could touch him.
They sped by her great-uncle’s palazzo. Recognising it jerked her into impulsive speech. ‘You can—’
‘Shut up,’ he incised and made his first mistake with a gear change as if the sound of her voice was all it took to spoil his immaculate performance. The car lurched then put in a surge of power when he’d corrected the error, eating up the winding country lane with precision timing again.
And Francesca subsided in her seat as another bitter thought hit her: what was the use in demanding he take her to her uncle when the miserable old man was likely to refuse to open his door?
When disillusionment hit it stripped you of everything, she noticed, as Bruno Gianni became another name she added to her hate list. I am never going to contact him again, she vowed. He didn’t care about her, hadn’t even bothered to pretend that he did.
The hot ache of tears that were coming closer to bursting free by the second had her closing her eyes and huddling into her seat. As soon as this stupid journey is over I’m going home to England and I’m never going to step foot in Italy again, she promised herself. No wonder my mother never came back. No wonder she froze up whenever Italy or Rome came up in conversation. She was wise; she knew the score. Why hadn’t she listened to her and saved herself a whole lot of grief?
They couldn’t have gone more than a mile or so when the car made a sudden turn that brought her jolting back to her present situation. Her eyelids flickered upwards; she’d barely managed to focus through the tears before they were coming to another neck-jolting halt.
What now—what next? she wondered tensely.
‘I w-want—’
‘You don’t know what you want,’ he cut in tightly.
Then he was dousing the headlights and shutting down the engine with short, tight flicks of his fingers that told her he was still angry—bubbling with it. There was a click and a slither as his seat belt slid away from his body then he was opening his door and climbing into the dark night.
Her wary eyes slewed frontward, following his dark bulk as he moved around the car’s long bonnet, frissons of uncertainty chasing across her skin. Her heart began to stutter. Was he going to eject her from his car and leave her out here in the middle of nowhere now he didn’t have to bother explaining himself?
Her door came open. A waft of cold air placed a chill on her flesh. He bent down to reach across her to unlock her seat belt, and as his face arrived close to her face she saw the grim determination etched into the flat line of his mouth.
‘I’m not getting out,’ she informed him stubbornly.
‘Does it appear that I am giving you a choice?’ he asked. Then grabbed one of her hands as he straightened up again, and used it to haul her out of the car.
She arrived beside him in a state of numbing panic, sights and sounds hitting her senses at the same time as his body did. His arm came round her waist, arching her into full contact with his lean, hard length at the same time that she heard the car door shut behind her and another sound of whirring that had her twisting her head in time to see a pair of huge, thick wrought-iron gates swinging shut beneath a heavy stone arch she hadn’t even been aware that they’d passed beneath.
Dizzy and disorientated, she became aware of uneven cobblestones beneath her thin-soled shoes and turned her head again in an effort to search the darkness for some hint as to where they were. Her mouth brushed his chin as she moved and his hissed sound of his tense response brought her search to a stop on his face. Then she wasn’t seeing anything but the angry flame of desire leaping in his dark eyes, the savage tautening