Claimed by the Italian: Virgin: Wedded at the Italian's Convenience / Count Giovanni's Virgin / The Italian's Unwilling Wife. Kathryn Ross

and turning from the mirror. Outmanoeuvred again! If she persisted in her refusal to marry Paolo those happy plans would bite the dust.

      Great-Aunt Edith had a strong, unshakable sense of duty. She would no more go ahead with her plans to move to Florence, sell the cottage to fund her life here and in the process see her, Lily, homeless or living in a bedsit, than sprout wings and fly. They would move back to England and take up the life they had left.

      Could she be selfish enough to deny the old lady the luxury and ease she deserved in her declining years?

      Edith had never married. A teacher for many years, she had founded the small local charity and adopted her great-niece on her retirement from full-time employment at the age of sixty, having worked hard all her life with precious few of life’s small luxuries. Didn’t she deserve something much better now?

      And, to make everything so much worse, Paolo had been so warm, so attentive—respectful, even—during the last couple of days. The perfect Italian fiancé. On the one hand it had made her fall more deeply in love with him, and on the other it made her feel decidedly murderous!

      Looking forward to this evening’s engagement party with as much pleasure as she would if faced with an appointment with her dentist for root canal work, she heaved a heartfelt sigh and slipped her feet into high-heeled mules.

      The guests would be waiting for the happy couple to put in an appearance. Her stomach gave a violent lurch. Apparently a handful of Paolo’s closest friends had been invited and, ominously, the village priest. And the cousins, of course. Three males and a female. They’d arrived an hour ago, but she’d only had time to smile wanly, register the males with sharp suits and indolent attitudes, and a striking Latin beauty who looked bored, before they’d been shown to their respective rooms.

      On reflection, she thought she could sympathise with Paolo for having little time for them, but grumbled at herself for being uncharitable enough to condemn on first sight a bunch of people who were probably perfectly nice.

      Nervously twisting the heavy ring on her finger, she straightened her spine. She couldn’t hide in her room any longer. Time to face them and take part in this distasteful charade. Try to stop going over and over the uncomfortable facts that in refusing to marry Paolo she would distress her great-aunt, casting a pall of disappointment over her remaining years—not to forget Fiora, who would be one very unhappy lady.

      As if her anguished thoughts, centred on the impossible male who was the author of all her present troubles, had conjured him up, Paolo entered the room.

      Lily’s progress towards the door skidded to a halt. In his white dinner jacket he was breathtakingly handsome, his hard male mouth softened into that sensual smile that always took her wits and scattered them.

      Covering the space between them in a couple of fluid strides, his eyes holding her, entrapping her, he took her hand and lifted it to his lips, confidence oozing from every pore as he commented, ‘You look spectacular, cara mia. A future bride any man would be proud to claim.’ He held her hand against his broad chest, tugging her closer with a gentleness that almost defeated her, making her deplore the weakness that urged her to lean into him, to cling and never let go. But then he claimed, ‘Not too long ago you accused me of considering everyone’s happiness but yours—’

      Which gave her the strength of mind to counter, ‘And considering only your convenience—’

      ‘Let me speak.’ His voice lowered to a spine-weakening husky promise. ‘I could make you happy. I will make you happy,’ he stressed in amendment, and Lily sucked in a shaky breath, hypnotised by his golden eyes, by the lean, olive-toned male beauty of his unforgettable features, horrified by her internal admission that, yes, he could make her happy.

      Ecstatically happy.

      For about a week.

      Until she bored him. And she was left broken, like his first wife.

      Denying herself the relief of flinging her head back and wailing like a baby deprived of its most treasured plaything, she pushed out, ‘We don’t want to keep the guests waiting, do we?’ and headed for the door. She paused just long enough to take a deep breath and make sure her voice emerged sounding as if she were in control. Of herself. Of everything. ‘You may be king fish in the pond you swim in, but I will not be forced or emotionally blackmailed into doing something I know would be wrong for me—something I don’t want to do.’

      Then was undone as his arm snaked around her narrow waist, his warm breath feathering her ear as he whispered, ‘But you do want to do it, my sweet Lily. And if I had the time I would prove it to you now.’

      Her face flaming, Lily leant against him, needing his support because her legs had gone hollow, her whole body weakened by the shameful hunger he could awake in her effortlessly. Miserably aware, as they went down to greet the guests, that she was fighting a battle on two fronts.

      With him. And, more terrifyingly, with herself.

      CHAPTER TEN

      PAOLO leant against the frame of the open French windows, one hand in the pocket of his narrowly cut black trousers, the collar of his dress shirt undone, the shimmering gold of his eyes partly veiled by an enviably thick fringe of black lashes.

      Watching her.

      Lily’s delicate loveliness drew every eye in the room, and the dress she was wearing made him so hot for her he couldn’t wait for this tedious party to be over and he could take a long cold shower.

      Overturning his long-held rejection of the idea of remarriage had been the right thing to do, he congratulated himself, his eyes following her as she and the wife of one of his oldest friends moved out of the way of a couple who were dancing to music pounding out from the state-of-the-art stereo system. Cousin Orfeo’s idea, he supposed, suppressing vague irritation. Fortunately the grand salon had been largely cleared, and could accommodate those of the guests who chose to indulge in the pointless activity.

      With ease he dismissed his notoriously workshy, playboy cousin, and returned his mind to a far more pleasant subject.

      Marriage to Lily, who didn’t treat him with tedious simpering deference, who didn’t have a greedy eye on the main chance, as proved beyond all doubt by her rejection of his proposal when every other woman he knew would have tied herself in knots to accept such an offer, was the obvious step to take. It would be of indisputable benefit to all concerned, an entirely logical step. And logic—not emotional muddle—was how he liked to live his life.

      He would no longer have to endure the constant feeling of guilt because his former refusal to settle down and sire an heir and a spare was causing his mother a great deal of grief—even more so since Antonio’s death.

      He would have a wife and companion he could trust implicitly, and in return Lily would have status, his care and fidelity, his children.

      A band tightened about his heart at that entirely novel prospect. And the hope that their first child would be a girl, small and delicately formed, with those huge silvery grey eyes just like Lily’s, hit him like a thunderclap.

      Unused to bracketing himself and children together, he found the picture pretty startling. He shifted his feet and decided that he liked the idea. At least, he amended, with Lily as the mother of his children he liked the idea.

      His eyes narrowed. She was being approached now by his cousin Renata. Lazy, like the rest of the clan, offspring of his father’s unlamented, light-fingered brother, and believing the world owed her a living. Greedy, bitchy.

      Still watching, he twitched his long mouth. Lily didn’t know it, but her over-emphasised refusal to be his wife was soon to be turned on its head. Everything was in place. The arrival of her relative, planned and executed with precision, had set the scene. The unlooked-for but fortuitous liking the two senior ladies had quickly formed for each other, and their consequent decision to share the apartment in Florence, had been the icing on the cake, the last nail in the coffin of Lily’s resistance—proof, if he needed it, that the gods were on his side.