Italian Deception: The Salvatore Marriage / A Sicilian Seduction / The Passion Bargain. Michelle Reid

was standing so close that he could feel her breath on his face. She smelled of Chanel and the hospital, and the tumbled untidiness of her hair flamed like a warning around her face. She was trying her best to defy him but underneath the defiance he knew alarm bells were ringing because she did not understand his motives for bringing her here of all places, back to the scene of the crime, so to speak.

      He could reassure her that he had nothing sinister on his mind and that she had to stay somewhere and even he wasn’t so brutal that he take her to a dead man’s house then leave her there alone—but it would not be the truth. Something had happened to him during the mad drive here, and he now wanted her so badly that it burned in his gut like a pounding fever. He wanted to pick her up and throw her over his shoulder, find the nearest bed and drop her down on it, then follow with some good, hard sex. No preliminaries, just a quick, hot slaking of all this stuff he was struggling to deal with: his brother, her sister—Shannon back here and within his reach. She had made the last two years of his life a misery—the least she could do in reparation was help him assuage his grief!

      Shannon knew what he was thinking—it was vibrating all around them like some dark, compelling force. The desire, the old burning attraction, that needle-sharp prick of sexual awareness that made his eyes glow gold and made her need to run the tip of her tongue around the sudden dry curve of her lips.

      ‘No,’ she breathed in husky denial.

      ‘Why not?’ He watched that telling little gesture and smiled. ‘For old time’s sake.’

      For old time’s sake? Her own affronted gasp almost choked her. She couldn’t believe he was behaving like this! Didn’t it matter to him that there was a life-threatening situation taking place not far away, or that one person had died and another two were fighting a battle with death?

      ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ she told him, then turned on her heel and walked away across the large square entrance hall with all its familiar trappings of wealth, like the exquisite antique chest set against one wall with the magnificent bronze statue of Apollo standing on its top. She strode beneath the wide archway through which she gained access to the rest of the apartment. And she walked with purpose, knowing exactly where she was making for.

      The kitchen, which led to the utility room, which in turn led to the rear exit door. A locked rear exit door, she soon discovered. Her heart sank—but not her resolve, she determined as she dropped her bags to the floor then turned, eyes wearing such a hard glint now that they should have turned him to stone where he stood propping up the other door, watching her lazily.

      ‘I’ll get out,’ she warned, ‘if I have to break windows.’

      ‘We are four floors up,’ he reminded her.

      ‘Broken windows upset people,’ she explained, undeterred. ‘They tend to call in the police when glass comes showering down on top of them.’

      His hard mouth gave a mocking twist. ‘Well, that might have been fun,’ he drawled. ‘If the glass wasn’t shatterproof.’

      Her shoulders sagged; this was getting stupid. ‘Look,’ she snapped. ‘It’s late. I’m tired—you’re tired. We’ve both had a rotten day! Can we just stop this now?’ She tried a bit of pleading. ‘Let me out of here, Luca—please!’

      ‘I wish it was that simple,’ he grimaced.

      ‘It is!’ she insisted.

      ‘No, it isn’t,’ he returned with a snap that altered his taunting mood to the grimly serious. ‘So let’s get a couple of things straight. You are staying here in my apartment, because it is situated so close to the hospital—’

      ‘I’d rather stay at Angelo and Keira’s place.’

      He stiffened suddenly, dark eyes flaring up with a blistering rage. ‘Angelo is dead!’ he barked at her. ‘So will you stop dotting his name into every damn sentence, for goodness’ sake?’

      Shannon blinked in surprise, her face turning as white as a sheet. Had she been doing that? She hadn’t been aware of it. When she thought about her sister she automatically put Angelo with her. Angelo and Keira—it had always been that way. ‘I’m s-sorry,’ she stammered, not knowing what else to say.

      Luca frowned. ‘Forget I said that,’ he dismissed, then sucked in a deep breath. ‘The point is,’ he went on, ‘that Angelo and Keira have moved since you were last here. It is now more than an hour’s drive out of the city to their new home. My mother is not fit to be on her own right now so she has gone to stay with Sophia, which leaves you with a choice, Shannon,’ he offered finally. ‘You either stay here with me, stay with Renata, or you go and stay with my mother at Sophia’s house.’

      Which was absolutely no choice at all, she acknowledged heavily. His mother hated her. So did his sisters. Staying with them would be just a different kind of hell. And anyway, his family had a right to do their grieving together and without an unwanted interloper in their midst.

      ‘There are such things as hotels, you know,’ she pointed out stubbornly.

      ‘Are you really so selfish that you would go to a hotel knowing that such a choice would not only offend my mother, but would hurt Keira beyond all that is fair if and when she discovers it?’ He sent her a look that stung. ‘She will blame the family, she will blame me for not being man enough to put my own feelings about you to one side for her sake.’

      ‘But you aren’t putting your feelings aside!’ she cried.

      ‘I will if you will.’

      ‘Liar,’ she breathed. But as for the rest he was, oh, so frustratingly right that, on acceptance, her ability to remain standing upright any longer disintegrated and she sank wearily against the locked door behind her and dropped her face into her hands.

      It was a surrender. He knew it and well and she knew it. But Shannon could not resist dropping one final comment into the throbbing silence that fell. ‘I hate you,’ she whispered from the all-enveloping shield of her tumbling hair.

      ‘No, you don’t,’ Luca denied. ‘You still fancy the hell out of me and that, cara, is what you hate.’

      ‘That’s a lie!’ The hands dropped so she could spit the disclaimer at him.

      ‘Is it?’ His eyes were cold now, hardened by his arrogant belief in what he was claiming. ‘Cast your mind back to the kiss on the flight over here,’ he suggested. ‘If I had not stopped it you would have gone up in a plume of smoke.’

      ‘My God,’ she gasped. ‘You conceited devil!’

      ‘Maybe.’ He gave an indifferent shrug. ‘But I know what I know.’

      ‘You kissed me, if you remember!’

      ‘And you fell into it as you always did,’ he declared with contempt.

      ‘And you didn’t—?’

      His grimace conceded that point to her. ‘It is going to be really interesting for us to see if we can both survive the next few days without falling on each other again, don’t you think?’

      ‘I think you’re disgusting!’

      A black brow arched, he ran his eyes down the slender body he could see between the gaping sides of her coat. ‘Are your breasts tight, Shannon?’ he questioned softly. ‘Is that place between your legs getting all hot and anxious because we are talking about it?’

      She launched herself away from the door with a need to slap his taunting face!

      ‘Sex in the utility room, now that’s a new turn-on,’ he drawled as she flew towards him. ‘But then you never did have any inhibitions as to where or with whom you did it so long as you did.’

      Each word was aimed to draw blood from its victim, each mocking glint in his dark eyes was meant to drive her over the edge. She stopped a foot away, trying to push down the rage tumbling around inside