Powerful Italian, Penniless Housekeeper. India Grey

cocktail and tried not to gag.

      Gently he took the glass from her and put it on the table behind them. ‘You are one of the worst actresses that I’ve come across in a long time.’

      ‘Thanks,’ she mumbled. ‘There goes my promising career as a Hollywood screen goddess.’

      ‘Believe me, it was a compliment.’

      She looked up quickly, wondering if he was teasing her, but his expression was utterly serious. For a moment their eyes locked. The bolt of pure, stinging desire that shot through her took her completely by surprise and she felt the blood surge up to her face.

      ‘So what else is on your list of things to find?’ he asked.

      ‘I don’t know yet.’ She tore her gaze away from his and looked down at the envelope in her hand. ‘It’s all in here. As you get each item you open up the next envelope.’

      ‘How many have you got so far?’

      ‘One.’

      His long, downturned mouth quirked into half a smile, but Sarah noticed that it didn’t chase the shadows from his eyes. ‘The drink was the first?’

      ‘Actually it was the second. But I gave up on the first.’

      ‘Which was?’

      She shook her head, deliberately letting her hair fall over her face. ‘It’s not important.’

      His fingers closed around the envelope in her hand and gently he took it from her. For a second she tried to snatch it back but he was too strong for her and she looked away in embarrassment as he unfolded the paper and read what was written there.

      She looked past him into the blue summer evening. Out on the terrace, Fenella was watching her, and Sarah saw her nudge Angelica and smirk as she nodded in Sarah’s direction.

      ‘Dio mio,’ said the man beside her, his husky Italian voice tinged with distaste. ‘You have to “collect” an eligible bachelor?’

      ‘Yes. Not exactly my forte.’ Angrily Sarah turned away from the curious glances from the terrace and gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘I don’t suppose you’re one, are you?’

      The moment she’d spoken she felt her face freeze with embarrassment as she realised how it had sounded. As if she was desperate. And as if she was coming on to him. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘Let’s just pretend that I never asked that—’

      ‘No,’ he said tersely.

      ‘Please…‘ she ducked her head, staring down at the fashionably worn wooden floorboards ‘…forget it. You don’t have to answer.’

      ‘I just did. The answer’s no. I am neither a bachelor nor remotely eligible,’ he said gravely, reaching out and lifting her chin with his finger, so that she was left with no choice but to look up into his face. His eyes were black and impossible to read. ‘But they don’t know that,’ he murmured as he moved his lips to hers.

      As ideas went, it probably wasn’t his most sensible, Lorenzo thought as he tilted her face up. He saw her dark eyes widen in shock as he brought his mouth down to hers.

      But he was bored. Bored and disillusioned and frustrated, and this was as good a way as any of escaping those feelings for a while. Her lips were as soft and sweet as he’d imagined they would be, and as he kissed her with deliberate gentleness he breathed in the clean, artless smell of soap and washing powder.

      She was shaking. Her body was rigid with tension, her mouth stayed tightly closed beneath his. Anger at the women on the terrace, who had obviously given her a hard time, churned inside him, adding to the sour disappointment of the day. Instinctively he raised one hand to cradle her face while the other slid beneath the warm tumble of her silken hair and cupped the back of her head.

      Patience was one of the things that made him good at his job. The ability to make women relax and release their inhibitions was another. He held her with infinite care, close enough to make her feel cherished, but not so tightly she felt threatened. Gently his fingers caressed the nape of her neck, the secret dip at the base of her skull as his mouth very languidly explored hers.

      Triumph shot through him as a soft moan escaped her and felt the stiffness leave her body. Her plump lips parted, her spine arched towards him and then she was kissing him back, with a tentative passion that was surprisingly exciting.

      Lorenzo found he was smiling. For the first time in days…Dio, months, he was actually smiling, smiling against her mouth at the sheer unexpected sweetness of kissing this woman with the glorious auburn curls and the spectacular breasts and the sad, sad eyes.

      He had come to Oxfordshire on a sort of desperate pilgrimage; a search for places that had long existed in his head thanks to a tattered paperback by a little-known author, picked up by chance years ago. The landscape described so lucidly in Francis Tate’s beautiful, lyrical novel had haunted him for years, and he had come here in the hope that it might rekindle some spark of the creativity that had died alongside the rest of his emotional life. But the reality of the place was disappointing; a far cry from the gentle, rural paradise Tate depicted in The Oak and the Cypress. Lorenzo had discovered a parody of picturepostcard England, bland and soulless.

      This woman was the most real, genuine thing he’d come across since he’d arrived here, and probably long before. Emotions played across her face like shadows on a summer day. She didn’t conceal anything. Couldn’t pretend.

      After Tia’s prolonged, sophisticated deception he found that profoundly attractive.

      And she was actually as sexy as hell. Beneath that self-deprecating insecurity, this girl had depths of heat and passion. He’d kissed her because he felt sorry for her; because she looked sad; because it would cost nothing and mean nothing…

      He hadn’t expected to enjoy it as much as this.

      Lorenzo felt his smile widen as his hands moved down to her curvaceous waist and pulled her against him, desire spiralling down through the pit of his stomach as his fingers met the warm, soft flesh beneath the T-shirt…

      She froze. Her eyes flew open, and then suddenly she was pushing him away; stumbling backwards. Her mouth was reddened and bee-stung from his kiss, and above it her dark eyes welled with hurt as they darted wildly in the direction of the whooping, clapping girls on the terrace before coming back to him.

      For a second she just stared at him, her face stricken, and then she turned and pushed her way through the crush of bodies towards the door.

      It was a joke, of course. That was what hen parties were all about. Jokes. Fun. Flirting. It was just part of all of that.

      Pushing through a gap in the hedge at the back of the car park, Sarah felt the thorns scrape at her bare arms and angrily scrubbed the tears from her face with the back of her hand. Ouch. It hurt. That was why she was crying. Not because she couldn’t take a joke.

      Even one as hurtful and humiliating as being kissed in a pub by a complete stranger who couldn’t even keep a straight face while he was doing it. God, no. She wouldn’t get upset about a silly, harmless thing like that.

      Hell, she thought, striding angrily through the waist-high wheat, she was the woman who only a week ago had done the catering for an engagement party and dropped the cake—complete with lighted sparklers—in front of all the guests and the happy couple. One half of which just happened to have been her lover of seven years and the father of her child. Embarrassment and abject shame were old friends of hers. The small matter of being set up to provide hilarious entertainment for her sister’s hen party was nothing to Sarah Halliday: the original poster child for humiliation.

      The sun was low, dipping down to the horizon, dazzling her through her tears and turning the field into a shimmering sea of gold. Sarah swiped furiously at the wheat in her path, giving vent to the fury and resentment that buzzed through veins that a few moments ago had been thrumming with desire.

      That was the