The Italian's Runaway Bride. Jacqueline Baird

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      “You dare say that to me! You, who deprived our daughter of her father for three years.”

      His night-black eyes leaping with violence bored into hers as he continued. “Deprived me of my child.” He focused on her with a dark blistering anger that heightened the tension to breaking point. “I saw you today on the beach and I wanted to kill you. Three years of hell you put me through. I am going to make sure you suffer as I have,” he hissed with lethal intent.

      The fear and tension that had held her since the moment he had walked back into her life finally snapped and Kelly exploded. “Make me suffer! You did that from the day you married me. You never wanted me. All you ever wanted was my child….”

      JACQUELINE BAIRD began writing as a hobby when her family objected to the smell of her oil painting, and immediately became hooked on the romance genre. She loves traveling and worked her way around the world from Europe to the Americas and Australia, returning to marry her teenage sweetheart. She lives in Northumbria, UK, where she was born, and has two teenage sons. She enjoys playing badminton, and spends most weekends with husband Jim, sailing their Gp. 14 around Derwent Reservoir.

      The Italian’s Runaway Bride

      Jacqueline Baird

      MILLS & BOON

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      Contents

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER ONE

      KELLY MCKENZIE, skimpily clad in cut-off denim shorts and shirt, lay flat on her back on the lawn that sloped softly to the edge of Lake Garda, and sighed her contentment. It was the end of August; the sun was shining and life was great. Rolling onto her stomach, she looked back at the house, a glorious old stone building set some fifty yards from the water’s edge. A terrace extended across the full width of the house, and at one end a cluster of cypress trees and shrubs cascaded over the stone balustrades. Shrubs that appeared to be moving, although there was not a breath of wind! How odd!

      Then she saw him. Her blue eyes narrowed warily. It was the figure of a man half-hidden by the bushes; one hand was on the balustrade and he was leaning over, trying to peer into a window. In his other hand was an iron bar. Kelly’s heart missed a beat. Suspicious didn’t cover it… He looked downright dangerous.

      Every muscle of her body filled with tension. She watched as he straightened up, his back to her. Dressed in a white vest and a pair of oil-stained khaki shorts, he looked thoroughly disreputable. He was tall—well over six feet—broad-shouldered with lean hips, and he had long legs that rippled with muscle and sinew as he moved.

      A man who was moving furtively towards the steps up to the terrace and the entrance to the rear windows of the house…

      Stay cool, girl, she told herself, you can handle this. Three months ago, when she’d bumped into an old school friend, Judy Bertoni, in Bournemouth, and Judy had offered her a job as a nanny to her son with the family in Italy for ten weeks, Kelly had leapt at the chance to spend a summer in the sun, before taking up her post as a research chemist with a government laboratory in Dorset in October.

      It had seemed a great idea at the time, but now, faced with what looked like a very sinister intruder, Kelly was not so sure…

      She was on her own. The family was in Rome, and Marta the housekeeper had taken the opportunity of her employer’s absence to go and visit friends, after having warned Kelly to lock up carefully as there had been a spate of burglaries in the area.

      Kelly fought down the panicked urge to leap up and run and sat silently watching the figure of the man move stealthily to the first step. The tyre iron in his hand said it all. He was obviously intent on breaking in.

      Well, there was nothing for it, Kelly told herself: desperate situations required desperate remedies, and she’d been a keen gymnast in her youth and the university Thai kick-boxing champion two years running. While the intruder’s attention was firmly fixed on the windows of the house she psyched herself into fighting mode. Slowly, silently she rose to her feet, adrenaline pumping through her veins.

      Then, with a blood-curdling yell, she spun through the air like a whirlwind, and in a few deft kicks the would-be burglar was flat on his back and she had the tyre iron in her hand and her foot on his throat.

      Gianfranco Maldini had spun around in surprise at the noise, then he’d had a fleeting image of silver-blonde hair and a very feminine form flying towards him, then all the air had left his lungs.

      He could not believe it… A chit of a girl had quite literally dumped him flat on his back. Never in all of his thirty-one years had a woman done that to him. About to move, he glanced up the long shapely length of her and stilled. His testosterone took over from common sense.

      Dio, but she was gorgeous. His dark eyes raked over her in a slow, intense scrutiny. From the top of her head, where silver-blonde hair had been scraped back into a pony-tail and tied with a ribbon, lingering on the perfect symmetry of her features, wild eyes, and a sultry mouth that was begging to be kissed, then lower, to where her high firm breasts pushed against the soft cotton shirt she had knotted under the luscious mounds. An expanse of smooth pale flesh revealed her tiny waist and the indentation of her navel, which the ridiculously ragged denim shorts could not hide, nor the long shapely legs.

      For the first time in years Gianfranco was struck dumb; he felt himself instantly harden and that had not happened in years either, he thought wryly. But she was stunningly beautiful, vibrant with life, and the image of her flying through the air with such verve and grace was the most spectacular thing he had seen in a long time. What she was doing at Carlo Bertoni’s he had no idea, but it might be a lot of fun to find out. He had not had a holiday in three years and uncomplicated fun had been sadly lacking in his life of late, he suddenly realised. A quick call to his office, and he could free up some time. New York could wait. Yes, he was going to pursue her, he decided with unconscious arrogance.

      He could do without her foot on his neck, but he was in no hurry to get up. The view was stunning. She was standing legs apart, one leg bent at the knee to keep her foot on his throat and the other beside his shoulder. Her shorts did not cover all they should and he made the intriguing discovery that she was a natural blonde and he had to smile as he wondered if she knew what she was exposing.

      Kelly lifted the tyre iron in her hand, finally getting a good look at the burglar. Thick black hair flopped over his broad forehead in soft curls and perfectly arched black eyebrows framed deep brown heavily lidded eyes. Only a slight crook in what once must have been a straight blade of a nose stopped him from