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

Why hadn’t he told her that he was stuck in Milan because he’d overslept and annoyed an important business client? Did he think that confessing he’d messed up would lose him his hero status with her?

      A smile touched her mouth, amusement softening the frown from her face. He ought to know that nothing could do that. He was and always would be the wildly handsome superhero to her.

      They arrived at their destination, driving between a colonnade of tall cypress trees towards the stunning white and gold frontage of Villa Batiste. It wasn’t a big house by Castelli Romani standards but, standing as it did on its own raised plateau, neither the house nor its amazing gardens skimped on a single detail when it came to Renaissance extravagance.

      As they climbed out of the car at the bottom of wide white marbled steps, Francesca could almost feel the Batistes filling with pride of ownership and wondered wryly—not for the first time—how that pride really dealt with Angelo wanting to marry a little nobody like her. He would inherit all of this one day, which would make her its chatelaine and her children its future heirs.

      The house was already under the occupation of an army of professional caterers. A quick cup of coffee after their journey was all they had time for before they were busily helping out. Mr Batiste went off to check his wine cellar. Mrs Batiste made for the kitchen. Francesca became a willing dogsbody, helping out wherever she could. By two o’clock there was nothing more for her to do that she could see. Angelo was still stuck in Milan and his parents were resting before the next wave of activity began.

      On a sudden impulse, she decided to write a note to her great-uncle then go and deliver it. You never know, she told herself as she set off, she might just catch him at a weak moment.

      Her walk took her along narrow, winding country lanes with blossom trees shedding petals on the ground and the golden sunlight dappling through their gently waving branches. It was a beautiful place and she took her time, taking in the hills and the rolling wine-growing countryside that gave such a classic postcard image of Italy.

      Half an hour later and she was standing by a pair of rustic old gates, gazing on a house and a garden that would make Angelo’s mother shudder in dismay. There was nothing formal or neat about her great-uncle’s garden, she mused with a smile. The whole thing seemed to merge in a rambling mix of untended creepers with the old palazzo struggling to hang on to some pride as its ochre-painted face peeled and its roof sagged.

      She lingered for a few minutes, just looking at it all like a child forbidden to enter. She didn’t think of opening the gate and stepping inside. She never intruded past this point when she came here because she knew it was only right that she respect her uncle’s wishes. After a little while she heaved out a sigh then took her sealed note out of her jacket pocket and fed it into the rusted metal letter slot set into one of the stone pillars that supported the gates. As she listened to it drop she had the sorry image of the note landing on top of all the others she’d posted and a sad little smile touched the corners of her mouth as she turned slowly away.

      Head down, shoulders hunched inside her fitted little denim jacket that matched the jeans she was wearing, she was about to begin the walk back to Villa Batiste when a flash of bright red caught her eye. Her chin came up then all movement was stalled on a stifled gasp of surprise and undisguised dismay when she saw an all too familiar red sports car parked up on the other side of the lane with its driver leaning casually against shiny red bodywork.

      Oh, no, not him, was her first gut response as they stared at each other across the few metres of tarmac.

      He was dressed in dark blue denims and cloud-blue cashmere that skimmed his tapered body like a second skin. The way he had arms folded across his chest ruched up the lip of the long-sleeved, round-necked sweater, exposing the bronze button that held his jeans in place and almost—almost—offered her a glimpse of the lean flesh beneath.

      On a sharp flick of shock as to where her thoughts were taking her she dragged her eyes upwards to look at his face. He was smiling—or allowing his attractive mouth to adopt a sardonic lift. His chin was slightly lowered, his eyelashes glossing those chiselled bones in his cheeks. And he was checking her out in much the same way that she was guilty of checking him out, viewing the length of her legs encased in faded denim, then the fitted denim jacket and finally her face.

      ’Ciao,’ he greeted softly—intimately—causing her next response to him, which was a shower of prickly resentment that raced across her skin.

      ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, not even trying to sound polite.

      ‘We do seem to meet in the oddest of places,’ he mused drily. ‘Do you think, cara,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘that we might be the victims of fate?’

      CHAPTER THREE

      FATE, Francesca repeated to herself. She knew about the power of fate. Fate was what Angelo maintained had brought them together. She refused to accept that this… force she was being hit with here had any familiarity with Angelo’s fate.

      It was then that she remembered tonight’s party and that this man had been invited. She’d even written the invitation herself. Carlo Carlucci and Guest, she’d scribed in Italian.

      Which brought up another thought that sent her eyes slewing sideways to glance inside the open-top car expecting to see some raving dark beauty sitting in the passenger seat. To think of Carlo Carlucci without his usual female appendage was impossible, so she was puzzled to discover the seat was empty.

      When she looked back at him he’d lifted those lashes higher and was watching her. ‘I do travel light on occasion,’ he said lazily, reading her like a gauche open book.

      ‘Does the fact that you’re here and not in Milan mean that you’ve tired of making Angelo’s life a misery and let him come back too?’ she threw back.

      He smiled at this attempt on her part at acid sarcasm but his reply when it came was deadly serious. ‘Angelo deserved everything he got from me, Francesca, and don’t let him tell you otherwise.’

      ‘I suppose you’ve never overslept and missed a meeting.’

      ‘Not even after a heavy night with a beautiful woman in my bed,’ he replied. ‘Although…’ his eyes moved over her ‘… I can appreciate that the cause in this case was worth the consequences…’

      He was inferring that she was what had caused Angelo to oversleep that morning, Francesca realised, and opened her mouth to deny the charge only to close it again when she realised that Angelo must have used her as his excuse for missing his flight. A frown creased her brow and she lowered her eyes to the ground while she tried to decide how she felt about that. She didn’t think she liked it. It smacked too hard at the male ego conjuring up a night of erotic sex with his lover as a way of getting himself out of an awkward situation. Her mind even threw up a picture of Angelo standing in some faceless office in Milan, casually boasting to this man of all men about something that should remain private to themselves—if it had happened at all, which it hadn’t.

      ‘I’ve got to go.’ She spun away, not wanting to continue this line of discussion. Not wanting to be here at all. She was cross now with Angelo—cross with Carlo Carlucci for placing a cloud across her golden image of the man she loved.

      There was a hiss of impatience, a scraping of shoe leather on the road surface. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said, and began striding towards her across the lane.

      Her shoulders tensed, her clenched hands jerking out of her pockets as those now familiar prickles began really asserting themselves the closer he came. A hand curved around her arm, long fingers gently crushing sun-warmed denim against the skin beneath that began to burn like a flame. She jumped in response to it, her breathing snagged. He turned her to face him and she found herself fascinated by the discovery that her eyes came level with his smooth brown throat.

      ‘I embarrassed you. I apologise,’ he murmured huskily, and she watched his throat muscles move with the words. ‘It was unforgivably crass and insensitive of me to say what I just said.’

      Yes,