The Italian's Defiant Mistress. India Grey

sophisticated intelligence network to find these things out. Five minutes ago I knew almost nothing about you, signorina, but a picture is rapidly emerging.’

      ‘Oh, yes? What picture?’

      Damn. Only a complete simpleton would walk into that one. She could smell the sandalwood maleness of him, and it was having a catastrophic effect on her ability to think rationally.

      ‘That of a silly, inexperienced journalist on a low-rent publication who is getting involved in things that are completely over her pretty blonde head.’

      Well, she had asked.

      He took a step back, making Eve suddenly aware of how close together they had been standing, and how the sheer nearness of him had held her spellbound. With space to breathe, the impact of his words suddenly hit her with all the force of a prizefighter’s punch.

      ‘You patronising male chauvinist pig! How dare you pass judgement on me?’

      He had taken something out of his pocket and was leaning on one of the pavement tables, writing.

      ‘Do you really want me to answer that?’ he drawled, without looking up. ‘Even your friend is of the opinion that you shouldn’t be out on your own.’

      ‘My friend was joking,’ Eve hissed though gritted teeth. ‘To understand that you need something called a sense of humour.’

      Straightening up, Raphael leaned his elegant slim-hipped frame against the table and looked at her for a moment through narrowed eyes. Then, folding his arms in an attitude of complete ease, he began to talk in a swift stream of Italian. His voice was husky and low, almost caressing in its intimacy, and the words flowed over her like warm rain, making her skin tingle and the hairs stand up on the nape of her neck. For a blissful moment she felt an echo of the drenching pleasure that she’d experienced last night in his arms.

      And then she realised he’d stopped speaking and was looking at her questioningly. ‘So?’

      Bewildered, mesmerised, she faltered and shook her head confusedly. ‘I…Sorry, I…’

      He had the same unruffled stillness about him as a panther reclining in the savannah: a dangerous watchfulness that, even though he was relaxed, made him look as if he could pounce at any moment.

      ‘So. You don’t speak the language. You don’t know what you’re getting into. You’re out of your depth. Go home.’

      ‘Are you threatening me?’

      He sighed, and suddenly looked very tired. Noticing it, Eve felt again that irrational, treacherous pull inside, and her fingertips burned with the need to touch him.

      ‘No, I’m warning you to be sensible.’ He shook his head wearily. ‘Please take this. I don’t know how much you were hoping to earn from your little “scoop”, but I think twenty thousand should more than cover it—don’t you?’

      ‘What?’ she gasped, her momentary weakness evaporating in a fresh blast of fury. ‘You’re offering me twenty thousand euros to shut up and go home like a good girl?’

      He gave her a sardonic smile. ‘You underestimate my generosity. I’m offering you twenty thousand pounds.’

      Speechless with shock, she glared at him for a long moment as tears pricked behind her eyes and her breath caught in her throat, choking the words that swirled around her head. My sister’s life was worth more than that!

      A taxi was speeding towards them, and she ran forward to hail it. But her tears and the forgotten glasses, combined with her desperate need to get away from him, made her clumsy. There was a screech of brakes and a blaring of horns as the taxi swerved to avoid her. In a split second Raphael was beside her, grasping her arms and pulling her back onto the pavement.

      ‘Voi ragazza piccola stupid,’ he spat. ‘You stupid little child! You could have been killed!’ He was still gripping her arm, and the icy cool of a few moments ago had been replaced with blistering fury. ‘Do you not even know that in Florence you don’t flag down taxis as you do in London? Dio, Eve!’

      Ashen-faced, and with tears of humiliation and defeat coursing down her face, she looked up at him. ‘Let me go. Please.’

      She was still trembling. From shock, and maybe a little from the way he’d said her name, which on his lips sounded like Eva. But also from the realisation that he’d just jumped out into the road to save her life.

      He did as she asked, stepping abruptly back as if she were the carrier of a contagious disease. With deliberate calm she turned back towards the road and held out her arm as a taxi came towards her. Please, God, let this one stop. Please show Raphael di Lazaro, who clearly thinks he’s your second-in-command, that he doesn’t have to get everything right all of the time…

      She could have kissed the driver as he pulled up alongside her. She turned to Raphael, bravely trying to muster a smile through her tears.

      ‘You see! I’m perfectly capable of—’

      She gasped as he reached towards her and brushed his thumb across her lips in a gesture of perfect sensual intimacy. Her eyelids fluttered closed in blissful submission as, for a fraction of a second, she let her lips press against his firm flesh, feeling his warmth, tasting the salt-sweetness of him, unable to stop the cascade of heat that tumbled through her.

      Her eyes flew to his, but found them cold and mocking.

      ‘Froth. You were saying?’

      His mouth curled into that cruel half-smile as he opened the door for her, then leaned over to speak to the driver. He took a fat wad of notes from his pocket and handed them over.

      Furiously, she slammed the door and wiped her hand over her mouth, as much to dispel the feel of his thumb upon her lips as to remove any lingering traces of froth.

      ‘What did he say to you?’ she asked the driver as he pulled out into the stream of traffic.

      ‘He ask me how much to airport. Is that where we go?’

      ‘No! Take me to my hotel, please.’

      ‘You sure, signorina? The signore, he pay me much money to go to airport.’

      ‘I’m sure.’

      It was a lie. Right now she would have done anything to skip the perfume launch, get on a plane home and never hear the word Lazaro again.

      CHAPTER THREE

      EVE wouldn’t have thought it possible to be sitting in a gold limousine en route to a fearsomely exclusive A-list fashion event and have that horrible sick-in-the-stomach feeling she got on the way to the dentist.

      On the seat opposite, Sienna stretched out her phenomenally long legs and sighed theatrically into her mobile. She’d spent the entire journey on her phone to either her agent or her film star boyfriend, and although Eve knew she should have been listening carefully for material to use in the article, her mind kept drifting back to her own problems.

      Which was hardly surprising. Given the scale of them.

      On paper all the evidence was falling neatly into place, and the fact that three hours ago Raphael di Lazaro had offered her more money to do nothing than Professor Swanson paid her for a year of hard work and long hours was another reason to believe in his guilt. And yet…

      And yet the man she had glimpsed beneath that chilly, reserved veneer was neither evil nor corrupt. He had integrity. And he had it in spades.

      Eve rested her forehead against the limousine window and shut her eyes, delicately probing the painful possibility that she was mistaking Raphael di Lazaro’s undoubted good-looks and dazzling sex appeal for something more meaningful. A year or so ago, before she’d landed the job on the Glitterati fashion desk, Lou had done an article on women who fell in love with prisoners on Death Row. Over a bottle or two of cheap red in a wine bar in Oxford, Eve and Lou had discussed this phenomenon, snorting in contemptuous pity at the