The Sicilian's Innocent Mistress. Carole Mortimer

it!

      Twenty, even twenty-five minutes past eight o’clock should do it, she had decided. Long enough for the egotistical Luc Gambrelli to be made to feel decidedly uncomfortable at the curious glances of the other diners and the restaurant staff that were sure to be directed his way as it became more and more obvious, as the minutes slowly ticked by, that his date for the evening wasn’t going to turn up.

      ‘Stop worrying, Kerry. I will call the restaurant and make my excuses,’ Darci promised.

      ‘Dammit, I forgot to tell you!’ Kerry exclaimed. ‘Mellie phoned earlier. She wanted to know how Grant’s premiere went on Thursday.’

      Darci frowned. ‘She did?’

      ‘Stop looking so worried, Darce,’ her friend replied. ‘I wasn’t stupid enough to tell her what you’re up to.’

      ‘Good.’ Darci breathed her relief.

      ‘Although I probably should have done,’ Kerry continued. ‘I’m sure Mellie would be the first person to tell you to just let this go.’

      ‘I am letting it go,’ Darci rejoined. ‘Do stop worrying, Kerry! After tonight I don’t expect to hear from Luc Gambrelli ever again.’

      Kerry raised her eyes heavenwards. ‘Let’s hope not.’

      ‘Just go, and let me enjoy my movie and my popcorn,’ Darci told her friend laughingly, as Kerry still hesitated in the doorway.

      She heaved a genuine sigh of relief when her flatmate finally complied. Although Darci had a feeling that Kerry might be right when it came to how Mellie would feel about her interference where Luc Gambrelli was concerned…

      Oh, well, it was too late now—and she really did intend to stay well away from the Sicilian in future.

      She wait until half past eight before telephoning Garstang’s and asking them to pass a message on to Luc Gambrelli that she wasn’t well and so wouldn’t be able to meet him after all, hastily refusing the offer of having Mr Gambrelli brought to the telephone so that she might tell him that herself; she didn’t want to even hear that sexily persuasive voice again!

      But that didn’t mean that she hadn’t thought about Luc Gambrelli a lot over the last two days—that she hadn’t remembered the delicious shiver that had run down her spine as his lips had brushed across the back of her hand, and how her body had responded as he’d detailed how he would like to make love to her, while all the time that devilish sense of humour had glinted in his eyes.

      And she had guilty thoughts of him right now, as he sat in the restaurant, waiting for her to arrive, probably under the increasingly pitying gazes of the other customers. Thoughts that kept intruding as she tried to watch her favourite film…

      It was only the memory of the way Luc Gambrelli had so callously hurt Mellie that made Darci so certain she had been right to carry out her plan to stand him up tonight. The man simply didn’t have the right to go around breaking women’s hearts without even a backward glance. And especially when that woman was a friend of Darci’s.

      Then why did she feel so increasingly uncomfortable about what she had done?

      It was ridiculous.

      Luc Gambrelli deserved everything he got!

      When the doorbell rang, a little after nine o’clock, Darci knew she was relieved at the interruption in her tortuous thoughts. She didn’t in the least mind pausing the DVD to go and answer the door—any visitor would be a welcome diversion.

      Until she opened the door and found that visitor was Luc Gambrelli…

      Darci gaped at him, rendered totally speechless as she took in how suavely handsome he looked, in a black silk shirt and black tailored trousers worn beneath a tan suede jacket. The latter was almost a perfect match for his overlong, burnished gold hair, and the shirt and trousers gave the strong angles of his face and his superbly moulded mouth a slightly saturnine appearance.

      All of it succeeded in making Darci feel completely vulnerable, dressed as she was in men’s striped cotton pyjamas, with her face completely bare of make-up, her hair tousled and her feet bare!

      Her legs were in danger of buckling beneath her, she discovered, and she quickly put out a hand to clasp tightly onto the door, the panicky palpitations she could feel in her chest bringing a deep blush to her cheeks.

      ‘I—What—How—’ She was gabbling like an idiot, Darci recognised disgustedly. ‘What are you doing here?’ She finally managed to string a whole sentence together.

      Luc took in Darci’s appearance in one sweeping glance: her tumbling hair, her flushed face, fevered green eyes. His gaze narrowed as he noted the men’s pyjamas she wore and wondered to whom they had originally belonged…

      He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘I was concerned about you after receiving your message at the restaurant you weren’t well,’ he responded. ‘So I telephoned Grant and asked him for your address.’

      Those green eyes widened. ‘And he just gave it to you?’

      ‘Why would he not?’ Luc replied.

      ‘Well, because—because—’ She gave an incredulous shake of her head.

      ‘Once I had explained to him that the two of us should have been having dinner together this evening he was quite happy to be accommodating,’ Luc assured her smoothly. ‘May I come in?’

      ‘I—Well—Yes, I suppose so,’ she accepted grudgingly as she moved back from the door.

      Luc stepped inside, noting the crumpled duvet on the sofa before turning back to look at Darci. ‘The maître d’ at Garstang’s informed me that you have a fever.’

      ‘Yes,’ Darci confirmed, hoping the warmth she could feel in her cheeks looked convincing.

      Because Luc Gambrelli was a totally disturbing presence in what she had always considered her private sanctum!

      He seemed so big—he was well over six feet to her five feet nine inches—and he made the sitting-room seem somehow smaller, his steel-muscled body totally dominating and exuding a power, a barely restrained strength, that caused a rivulet of apprehension to skitter down the length of Darci’s spine.

      Did he really believe she was ill? Or was his being here some form of retribution on his part for leaving him sitting in the restaurant all that time?

      ‘Have you consulted a doctor?’ he demanded to know.

      ‘I am a doctor,’ Darci informed him, and was rewarded by the raising of dark blond brows as he widened those chocolate-brown eyes.

      She hadn’t expected—not in her wildest dreams!—that Luc would actually turn up at her apartment this way after she had stood him up. If she had, she would have kept the door locked and barricaded herself in her bedroom until he went away again!

      But she had stopped shaking now, and while her heart was still beating far too wildly in her chest, the palpitations had thankfully ceased.

      All she had to do was reassure Luc that her illness wasn’t a hospital case, and then maybe he would leave.

      He had to leave!

      Because just having him here in her apartment was more unsettling, more disturbing, than anything she had ever known in her life. The overhead light was making his hair appear silkily soft in contrast to the harder planes of his aristocratic face. It was enough to overwhelm a woman’s senses—any woman’s senses!—completely.

      In fact, Darci wasn’t sure she didn’t have a fever, after all!

      She was definitely more aware of Luc Gambrelli, more physically aware of him, than she had a right to be…

      ‘And what is your diagnosis?’ Luc persisted, slightly surprised—although why he should be he had no idea—at her choice of profession.

      But,