Claimed by the Italian

That assessment planted firmly in her mind, she told herself that she had to remember that Life Begins would benefit immensely from his funding. Her great-aunt would sleep easier, and she, when this was over, would work hard and try to forget the part she had played in the charity’s salvation.

As for the next two weeks—well, she would get through it as best she could. And maybe, if she presented herself as the sort of woman Signora Venini wouldn’t welcome into her family, the poor thing wouldn’t be at all upset when her hateful son told her the engagement was off! She’d be mightily relieved!

She could pretend to be a complete bitch—cold, hard, only showing any animation when asking how much Paolo was worth—or she could be a complete boor—talking with her mouth full, shrieking with raucous laughter at nothing in particular, scratching herself and burping. Deciding which gave her a heady feeling of control, of paying him back for forcing her to do this.

She must have been grinning at the possible scenarios, because he gave her a sharp look that wiped the smile from her face as he said, ‘We’re here,’ and swung the powerful car between two immense security gates that swung open at his approach.

The wide, curving drive was bordered by tall cypresses which banded the fine-gravelled surface with deep shadows, and Lily’s amusing mental pictures vanished, leaving her feeling deeply apprehensive. This was serious, and she knew that there was no way she could attempt to act the part of this intimidating man’s fiancée and change her character at the same time!

Her heart taking residence in her shoes, she watched as the immense white-stuccoed villa came into view. Large windows glittered in the afternoon sun, and giant stone urns filled with colourful flowers flanked the shallow flight of steps that led up to the main door.

One cue, the door opened, and a slim, white-jacketed servant hurried towards the car as it slid to a halt. Exiting, Paolo spoke in his own language. The only words Lily could pick out were references to his mother, as she sat in her seat like an overlooked package.

The imposing villa was completely intimidating. A palace fit only for the rarefied and screamingly wealthy. How could she, an ordinary, dirt-poor charity worker, hope to even pretend to fit in? For the millionth time she wished she’d never agreed to this. Just gritted her teeth and struggled on as best she could.

When Paolo strode round to her side of the car, opened the door and extended his hand to help her out, all she wanted to do was screw herself down in her seat and refuse to budge.

His manufactured tender smile tightened. He must have seen the mutiny on her face, Lily recognised, and she released a pent-up breath, reluctantly accepting his assistance. After all, she had made a bargain with this devil in heartthrob’s clothing, and she didn’t go back on her word, so annoying him would get her nowhere.

‘Mario will take your luggage up to your room.’ His arm was around her small waist. ‘I suggest you freshen up while I greet my mother. And try to remember that we’re supposed to be head over heels in love with each other.’

A statement guaranteed to make her stomach turn over and set her knees trembling.

His strong arm around her was the only thing keeping her upright, Lily realised as he steered her towards the imposing entrance. Her legs had gone completely tottery, and a million butterflies were having a ball in her tummy. She could only manage a wavery smile as he introduced her to a smiling middle-aged lady.

‘Agata is my housekeeper. She has excellent English. Apply to her for anything you need for your comfort.’ His smile broadened, the arm around her waist drawing her closer. Lily shuddered in reaction. ‘She will show you to your room, cara. I will come for you in a short while.’

He was really getting into character, Lily grumbled to herself as she followed Agata’s broad back up the wide sweeping staircase—even dredging up an endearment for the benefit of his housekeeper. Deception must come easily to him. In the play-acting stakes she would come a very poor second!

As the ornate staircase branched in two directions they veered left, and on the first landing Agata flung open the first door they came to. ‘Your room, signorina. You like?’

How could she confess that the vast, opulent room intimidated her when those kindly dark eyes were smiling into her own?

‘It’s beautiful, Agata, thank you.’

Her luggage already stood at the foot of the enormous canopied bed. Spirited up by means of some discreet servants’ staircase, she guessed, and could only widen her eyes in wonderment when the housekeeper stated comfortably, ‘The English tea will be brought to you immediately. Donatella will unpack for you, and if there’s anything else you require then you must please ring for me.’ She left before Lily could gather her wits together to protest that she didn’t want to be any trouble.

So this was how the other half lived, she thought uneasily as she edged gingerly over the thick-piled cream-coloured carpet towards the row of tall windows—louvred and ornately draped—that marched along the length of one ivory-coloured wall. Surrounded by luxury, good taste and the trappings of vast wealth, with servants to cater to one’s every whim and no need to lift a finger.

The panoramic view over manicured gardens to the rolling Tuscan countryside was truly magnificent, and she was lost in admiration when a pretty Italian girl bearing a tea tray entered after a deferential knock.

‘Signorina …’ The girl placed the tray on a low table beside a silk-upholstered armchair, her brown eyes curious as they swept Lily’s diminutive figure—no doubt checking out her probable future mistress, Lily realised, feeling decidedly queasy.

‘Thank you,’ she said, although tea was the last thing she wanted. Her stomach would reject anything she tried to put into it. But she sank obediently into the chair and poured the tea, her hand shaking. Someone had gone to the trouble to make it, and this poor girl had struggled up all those stairs with it, so she had to make an effort.

Nevertheless, the sight of the maid opening her suitcases was enough to get Lily to her feet again, protesting, ‘Look—there’s no need, really. I can do that myself. It’s no trouble.’

But the maid obviously had no English. She just looked up anxiously, and Lily felt foolish and about two inches tall. The young Italian girl would take unpacking for guests as completely normal—part of what she was hired to do. Having a crazy foreigner gabbling at her in a language she didn’t understand would make her feel as if she were doing something wrong. Lily was going to have to remember that she’d entered a world that was totally different from her own.

‘Sorry.’ Her face pink with embarrassment, Lily backed away limply. Desperate to escape without daubing more egg on her face, she headed for a door she’d noticed set between the vast wardrobe and an antique dressing table.

Confronted by an elegantly proportioned bathroom, complete with a huge marble bath, a shower unit, and enough fluffy towels to serve a rugby team, she kicked off her shoes, deciding that the shower would make the perfect hiding place. Just until she had got her head around the uncomfortable feeling that she was way out of her depth.

Carefully placing the unwanted and over-large engagement ring on the marble top of the vanity unit, she stripped off and scurried into the shower. She stayed there, pounded by hot water, wondering how long it would take Donatella to finish unpacking and remove herself, leaving her with the solitude she would need to get herself into the right frame of mind for the dreaded first meeting with the poor woman she was about to so cruelly dupe. She wondered nervously how she would cope when Paolo played his role, as promised, and treated her as if she were the love of his life. Go to pieces, probably! She’d never deceived anyone, and didn’t know how she was going to do it.

‘Porca miseria! No one takes a shower for an hour! Do you intend to boil yourself?’

Mortification followed shock as Lily peered through the steam at one clearly aggravated Italian male. His sharp suit jacket was soaked, where he’d flung open the glass door and reached in to cut off the flow of water, and his sharp tongue was in evidence as he ordered, ‘Get dressed! My mother is anxious to greet you.’ He reached for a huge towel and thrust it at her, faint colour flaring over his high cheekbones, his mouth clamped tight over his teeth.

Grabbing at the towel, Lily was suddenly and horribly aware of her nakedness, of the way his brilliant golden eyes had swept her from top to toe and then blanked. Wrapping herself up like a parcel, she watched him shed his wet jacket and walk away, collecting the ring from the vanity on his way back into the bedroom, stepping over her discarded clothing.

Overheated from the prolonged onslaught of hot water and deep embarrassment, Lily plucked up another towel and began to rub her hair dry. In her shock at his abrupt and totally unexpected arrival she’d just stood there, naked as the day she was born, like a transfixed rabbit. Did he think she’d been flaunting herself? Her skin crawled with utter humiliation.

No wonder he’d looked so blank! His preference lay with tall, leggy blondes with all the social graces. He wouldn’t want the complication of the bog-standard hired help apparently coming on to him! In his mother’s company he would expect her to act like a besotted bride-to-be, but in private he had no interest in her as a woman.

Her face flamed anew when she heard his incisive, ‘Wear this. And make it snappy.’

Emerging from the folds of the towel, Lily saw him place a pale amethyst shift dress on the chair that stood just inside the door before he walked back out again. Lacy briefs and matching bra, too—part of the supply that had been bought for her back in London, so that she would look the part he had assigned her: high-maintenance bride-to-be, exactly what his parent would expect to see.

Her tummy squirming, she dressed in the garments he had taken it upon himself to select. Feeling the soft silky fabric of the exquisitely crafted dress touch her skin like a lover’s caress made her shudder.

Everything was so wrong. She didn’t feel like herself at all. These clothes weren’t her. In fact, the amount that had been spent on her clothing for a mere fortnight would have kept a family of four for a year, she realised, appalled. Such a waste!’

Her mouth set in mutiny, she stalked into the bedroom, where he was waiting in unconcealed impatience, and announced, ‘In future I choose what I wear. You might have paid for the stuff—and paid me to lie for you—but you don’t own me!’

He shot her a look of exasperation. He was landed with an aggravating, argumentative pest with a body to set male pulses racing. Clueless, too. Left to her own devices she would smother those delectable curves in ugly swamping garments. She should be grateful at being given the sort of beautiful clothes that did credit to her hitherto hidden loveliness, not come at him shouting the odds.

At the memory of her earlier nakedness—which he had done his level best to blank—he felt unwanted heat crawl over his skin, and his voice was a rough undertone as he commanded, ‘Come here.’

He swept a silver-backed hairbrush from the dressing table, and as she stubbornly refused to budge he strode over to her and began to stroke the tangles out of her still damp hair, the lean fingers of one hand firmly beneath her chin to stop her wriggling away.

‘In future you may choose what to wear.’ Her jawbone was so tenderly delicate, her skin so soft beneath the pads of his fingers, her hair like caramel silk. ‘Today I hurried you—’ He broke off, aware that he was doing something totally unprecedented, trying to placate an argumentative employee. Oddly, his voice was emerging like soft velvet. Clearing his throat roughly, he continued, ‘My mother is so anxious to meet her future daughter-in-law. I can’t bear to keep her waiting. I know how long women take to dress and fuss over their appearance.’

At the ‘future daughter-in-law’ falsehood Lily snapped out of the dizzy, intoxicating trance she’d fallen into the moment he’d touched her, stroked the brush through her hair, his magnificent body so close to hers. Stepping away from him, and drawing herself up to her full insignificant height, horrified by her weakness where he was concerned she reminded him, ‘I am nothing like your usual vanity-obsessed lady-friends! So don’t treat me as if I am!’

‘Stop arguing.’ Curbing impatience, Paolo slipped the fabulous ring back on her finger. There was a feisty glitter in those big grey eyes. Present her to his parent while she was in this mood and the whole thing would be over before it began. Trust him to pick a woman who couldn’t hide her feelings!

He needed a purring kitten, not a spitting cat. There was only one thing to do. His hands going to her slim shoulders, he bent his dark head and kissed her.

CHAPTER FIVE

AS HIS beautiful mouth took hers Lily was utterly swamped by the shattering emotion which crashed through her with the force of a hurricane. She had never experienced anything remotely like this before. It blew her mind.

Totally incapable of rational thought, she felt instinct take over, and her lips parted to give him better access to the sweetness within. Her entire body was shuddering helplessly as his arms slid from her shoulders to her tiny waist to hold her more closely, to meld her to his lean, powerful length.

She had been kissed before, but never like this—like fire and honey, every cell in her body singing in uncontrolled response as his tongue slid deeper in sensual exploration. Her mindless caressing fingers revelled in the feel of taut muscles beneath the fine fabric of his shirt, and her hands suddenly gripped his wide shoulders in wild reaction as she felt his hot, hard arousal against the quivering softness of her tummy.

Reduced to an unthinking mass of sensation, she raised her hips to press against him, moving with instinct-driven feverish urgency. She heard him groan as a long shudder raced through him, and when his hands slid down to her buttocks, pressing her even closer, the blood in her veins ignited and fierce desire pulsed insistently through her trembling body.

Lily hadn’t known that such sensations could exist. Intoxicated, she slid her hands around his magnificent torso, fingers fumbling at the buttons of his shirt because she couldn’t get close enough to him. He felt the same. She knew he did. Because his hands were moving restively over her silk-clad body with hungry heat, and then they were sliding the hem of her dress up around her thighs, and the part of her mind that was still amazingly capable of halfway rational thought registered that he was consumed by the same high-voltage passion that was thrumming through every cell of her body. And it was glorious!

Until with a driven groan Paolo lifted his head and held her away from him.

Struggling to retrieve her breath, shocked into immobility, Lily was held by the unfathomable depths of those shimmering golden eyes, partly screened by thickly dark lashes. She could drown in those eyes, she thought shakily, dazed, her tingling, sensitised body still in recovery from the emotional onslaught of his raw passion.

‘We should go,’ Paolo reminded her in a low, thickened murmur. His hand, not quite steady, reached out for hers, his eyes drawn to her enticing, incredibly responsive body, to her gleaming eyes and flushed cheeks.

He wasn’t at all sure what had happened. He felt heat crawl over his skin and his driven admission, ‘That was amazing,’ pole-axed him—because he hadn’t consciously meant to confide that opinion. He didn’t know where it had come from. It had simply happened—as if they shared a bond, a passion that went soul-deep.

He pulled in a deep, ragged breath. Before this moment his comments had never, ever been unguarded, and he had always mildly despised those who spoke without thinking through the consequences of what they said.

Fortunately he had the belated good sense to put the shutters up and not voice his further opinion that if his frail parent hadn’t been eagerly waiting for them their kiss would have ended up far, far differently. On that bed. And that would have been a disaster. He lived by his own set of rules, and one of them stated that female employees, no matter how attractive, were off-limits.

As it was, though, he had achieved his initial objective, he tried to console himself. Lily Frome looked the image of the blushing bride-to-be. Soft and pink, about to melt into his arms at the first opportunity. But that didn’t give him the satisfaction he had thought it would, he recognised uneasily.

Thankfully, the walk down to the small salon on the ground floor gave him time to get his libido back under strict control. What had happened, he rationalised, had been due to base lust. He hadn’t been with a woman for a long while, and seeing Lily Frome in all her delicate, promising nakedness had acted on his male libido like a flame on petrol.

Given the circumstances, his initial decision to kiss her, nothing more, had been logical—a means to an end. The outcome, the loss of control on his part—and on hers?—was regrettable. But entirely normal given his months of celibacy.

Thankfully his voice emerged sounding reassuringly normal, too, as he paused before an ornately carved fruitwood door and advised, ‘Just be yourself and you will delight her.’

Lily at last came down to earth with a bump, her befuddled mind clearing at the speed of light. Was he being sarcastic? Of course he was—what else? ‘Being herself’ meant being a dead ordinary, nose-to-the-grind-stone, unsophisticated simple girl. In short, the type of woman he wouldn’t give a second glance. He knew that.

And yet … Memories of that kiss slammed back to scorch her brain. Vividly recalling the greedy way she’d responded, she blushed furiously and knew she was about to sink into a morass of super-heated suffocating shame.

But it hadn’t been all one-way traffic, she told herself defensively.

He had kissed her as if he’d meant it. Passionately. She’d had little or no time for boyfriends in her busy life, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew when a man was aroused. And he had been. So that had to mean he had wanted more than kisses.

Heat engulfed her entire body and her breathing shortened. She was horribly aware that he was now looking at her with shimmering, assessing eyes, and she hunched her shoulders, hoping the cringing posture would disguise the shameful way her breasts were peaking and tingling beneath the silk.

‘Hold your head up,’ he uttered scathingly, irked by the way she was looking—like a woman about to face a firing squad rather than the glowing bride-to-be of a few minutes earlier. Then, remembering he had to tread softly around her, he advised more gently, ‘No one’s going to eat you, cara! Leave most of the talking to me. And remember I’ll be right beside you—holding your hand!’

That was meant to reassure her? Hollowly, Lily decided it didn’t. Being around him always made her uneasy. Vulnerable. Far too aware of his dynamic sexual appeal. And now, after what had happened, she was fearfully aware of how easily he could cut through her flimsy resistance. Panic skittered through each and every nerve-ending.

She wasn’t simple-minded. She knew he didn’t even like her. She irritated him. Normally he wouldn’t dream of coming on to her; she would be beneath his lofty notice. But, walking in on her nakedness, he had decided, Hey, she’d been bought and paid for, so why not enjoy the action for a couple of weeks? The trouble was, what had happened back in her room told her that she would probably do nothing to discourage him. She shuddered helplessly, hating what she’d discovered about herself.

Opening the door, Paolo dropped her hand and slid his arm around her waist, drawing her with him over the threshold into an elegant room, with white walls, white drapes, cream upholstery and crystal bowls of scented hothouse flowers on every available surface.

Seeing the frail white-haired lady seated at a circular table in the deep window embrasure, Lily felt her heart twist in her breast. She dragged in a deep breath and wished she could disappear in a puff of smoke. The situation was growing more scary with every moment that passed, and she felt truly dreadful over the part she was expected to play.

The radiance of Signora Venini’s welcoming smile made her feel even worse, but as if he sensed it Paolo gave her waist a reassuring squeeze and strode forward, bent to give his parent a gentle hug and drop a kiss on the fragile skin of her pale cheek. ‘Mamma, I’m so sorry you’ve been kept waiting. My fault entirely. When I’m with Lily I forget how time flies.’

He had dropped the more formal ‘Madre’, and Lily could scarcely believe the change in him. His voice so tender, his smile so gentle, his respect very obvious. Nothing like the man she had come to know: austerely impatient, critical, and often cold—a man who bowed to no one.

He obviously adored his mother and cared deeply for her. Against all her principles Lily could reluctantly understand where he was coming from. And sympathise. Or almost.

She still didn’t think lying was right, but Paolo truly believed it best to pretend that his future with the woman of his choice was settled, in order to put his fragile mother’s mind at ease.

Her heart was pattering against her ribs as the elderly lady extended a slim white hand. Her smile was warm but her voice was feeble as she said, ‘Lily—how lovely to meet you at last. Come, sit with me. Paolo has told me so much about you.’

Paolo smiled his encouragement but Lily could see the strain behind it, and, despite her distaste for deceiving the fragile woman, it gave her the necessary impetus to move forward, sit on one of the vacant chairs around the table, smile and lie her socks off. ‘And I’m happy to meet you, too,’ she greeted her, because Paolo, now stationed directly behind her, his hands on her shoulders, was clearly desperately anxious for his surviving parent, and up close Lily could see why.

Signora Venini looked as if the slightest breeze would disintegrate her frail body. More than the recent scar that ran beneath the line of her snowy white hair—that would heal and eventually disappear—it was the lines of utter weariness, of sadness, etched on her once beautiful features that told a story of a woman who had been tired of living for a long while.

Lily’s tender heart felt wrung out as she unconsciously covered the opulent family betrothal ring with the fingers of her other hand and blurted sincerely, the words tumbling out, ‘You’ve been through a major operation, signora. You need plenty of rest, peace and quiet—not visitors!’ And, despite the warning tightening of Paolo’s fingers on her shoulders, she ploughed on, verbalising as much of the truth as she dared because she needed to be out of here. Needed to put as much distance between her and the man she now knew could make her act like a sex-starved trollop as soon as possible.

‘I told Paolo that under the circumstances I didn’t think the timing of this visit was at all sensible. It could easily have waited until you were feeling stronger.’ She managed a smile which she hoped would come over as conspiratorial. ‘But you will know how stubborn Paolo can be! Even so, I think it would be best if I left tomorrow, or the day after at the latest, and didn’t intrude further on your recuperation period.’

Lily smiled softly, willing the older woman to agree, but her slim hopes were crushed when she got a decidedly firm, ‘Nonsense! Getting to know my son’s future wife will be the best tonic I could possibly have! The one bright spot in a year that has been so awful!’

Amazingly, the older woman’s tawny eyes sparked now with lively determination. ‘And for us to get to know each other time is needed, si? In fact I expect my son to persuade you to stay with us for much longer than the mere two weeks he promised me—we have a wedding to arrange!’