Her Passionate Italian: The Passion Bargain / A Sicilian Husband / The Italian's Marriage Bargain. Carol Marinelli

laughter for me, signor? Do you think I want to be standing here listening to you play stupid word-games just for the fun of it?’

      He went to answer but wasn’t given the chance to. ‘I am not the one at fault for whatever Angelo did to your stepsister,’ she told him in trembling self-defence. ‘As far as I knew they’d finished their relationship when Nicola returned to her studies in Paris!’ she cried. ‘I do not steal other women’s men from them. And I will not take the blame because your stepsister was hurt! If you want your revenge look to Angelo—and show a little class by moving away from that door so that I can leave!’

      Well, well, Carlo thought curiously, narrowing his eyes on her stiff if trembling stance, and had to acknowledge that his tables had just been turned. It came as a surprise because he hadn’t thought she had it in her to take him on with quite so much ego-shredding venom.

      Show a little class, he repeated musingly to himself, and almost smiled at the hit that cutting remark had landed on his pride.

      ‘And here I was, waiting for you to apologise to me for daring to believe the word of some vamped-up little tramp in really deep trouble, who thought she would stick a few knives in by telling you that I was capable of using you for the purposes of revenge!’

      His voice had risen in anger; now she was staring at him through huge shocked eyes. ‘I…’ she began.

      ‘From there I thought we would continue where we left off in the courtyard,’ he continued ruthlessly without letting her speak. ‘With some really deep, passionate sex—preferably in my very big, comfortable bed, where we would work to help clear away your quite understandable blues.’

      Her chin shot up at the very deliberate way he had just casually dismissed the devastation she had to be suffering.

      ‘After the sex we could then discuss Nicola and how the whole Carlucci clan is in your debt for luring Batiste into believing that the Gianni fortune would be more accessible than hers would be.’

      At last she was beginning to realise that this conversation had another edge to it. He could see a slow dawning colouring her eyes.

      ‘However,’ he went on, ‘if you prefer to leave then by all means do so.’ He even straightened from the door to give her safe passage. ‘There is a phone in the hall and a pad lying next to it with the number of a very good taxi service. If I were you I would get the driver to recommend a hotel for the night and avoid going back to your apart-ment—just in case you walk in on your best friend and your ex-fiancé indulging their lusts on the sitting-room carpet.’

      Having watched her blanch at his final cut-throat comment, he strode across the room, arrogantly assured that he had recovered his ego—at the expense of hers.

      Did that knowledge sit well on him? No, it didn’t, he admitted with a grimace. But one of them had to climb off their high horse and, since he had no intention of doing it, it had to be Francesca.

      He was a full-blooded Carlucci after all. She was only half a Gianni.

      And anyway, he was still angry despite his smooth, careless speech. There were a million things he could have been doing out there if he hadn’t been devoting his full and undivided attention to Francesca Bernard and her Cinderella plight!

      Cinderella, he scathed as he approached the antique French armoire almost dominating one wall. Well, if that made him her Prince Charming then he wasn’t doing a very good job of it, he conceded as he glared at the armoire his stepmother had brought with her from Paris when she married his father.

      As he opened the doors he smelled the age of the solid old wood. Inside had been converted into a comprehensive drinks cabinet, which had always seemed a desecration to him but—he offered another grimace. Nanette had been proud of it and in the end that was all that mattered. This single piece of furniture had been her one and only heirloom and she’d loved to see it sitting here in this great house that groaned beneath centuries of Carlucci statements to wealth and good taste. What else she brought into this house had always been far more valuable.

      It was called love and happiness. And for those gifts alone the armoire would remain exactly where it stood for as long as he held power of decision over the house.

      Reaching for the bottle of cognac and a deep-bowled glass, he was aware that Francesca still hadn’t made that move towards the door. Placing the bowl of the glass in his palm to warm it while he uncapped the bottle of cognac, he dared a sideways glance at her.

      She looked like a pale and bewildered ghost, he observed. Her eyes were too wide and rimmed by the stinging threat of tears that placed a fine quiver on her mouth. She was trying to control it, trying her best to maintain some pride and dignity. But she wasn’t standing where he was standing and seeing what he was seeing. She looked vulnerable, exhausted, so damn shattered he was amazed she was still in one piece.

      Her skin looked so strained it was waxen. And her hair was trying its best to escape again, the beaded comb barely clinging to the twisted silken knot.

      But not for long, he promised himself as he turned away again. He was going to help the hair out in a minute. He was going to remove the silly comb and let the whole tawny mass tumble free. And he was going to heat that waxen flesh until it melted. He was going to remove that silly denim jacket then that silly dress with its romantic layers of chiffon that did nothing for her and yelled ‘bought to please Angelo Batiste!’.

      Anger growled like a snarling dog inside him; his lips bit together to stop the sound from coming out.

      He was going to strip her down to her wonderful skin and bin the whole bloody outfit. Then he was going to begin the task of rebuilding her from the inside out. He was going to turn her into what he perceived she would be if she hadn’t had her self-confidence beaten to a pulp by inadequate selfish swines like Bruno Gianni and Batiste.

      But for now he was going to have to continue to play it tough here, because she also looked like a trapped bird trying to sum up the courage to make a bolt for escape. If she did then he was going to have to stop her—and cornered, trapped birds had a nasty habit of flying at your face.

      He poured a generous splash of cognac into the glass then swirled it around while deftly recapping the bottle with his free hand. By the time he turned back to her he was relieved to find that she’d moved at last and was no longer staring vacantly into space but was looking up at the gilt-framed portrait hanging above the huge stone fireplace, in which his father stood with his arms linked around the slender frame of the beautiful dark-haired Nanette. Nanette was looking up, his father was gazing down, and only a blind idiot would miss the wealth of love and affection that poured from every brushstroke.

      ‘You look like him,’ she said.

      ‘Mm,’ he acknowledged with a small wry smile. ‘Nanette Mauraux was my father’s second wife,’ he explained as he walked towards her. ‘My mother died when I was—quite young.’

      He offered her the glass. Francesca shook her head, her attention still fixed on the portrait. ‘That could be Nicola standing with him,’ she said.

      ‘Does Nanette look so young?’ Turning to view the portrait for himself, ‘Yes, she does,’ he answered his own question. ‘My father managed to shock all of Rome when he went to Paris on a business trip and came back with a child bride clinging to his arm…’

      He took a sip of the brandy, remembering. Then offered a soft laugh. ‘He was fifty-four and she was twenty-three. Nicola was a tiny replica of her mama and I was a brooding, dark, resentful youth of nineteen who was appalled to be presented with a stepmother I would probably have made a play for if I’d met her first.’

      ‘Did you?’ she looked at him. ‘Make a play for her, I mean.’

      It took him a few seconds to understand why she dared think such a thing of him. Then, ‘Ah,’ he smiled. ‘I forgot—I have no scruples.’

      It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it the moment the comment left his sardonic mouth. She stared at him for a