And that, he thought grimly, was the biggest lie of all.
* * *
Sunlight slanting through the shutters cast stripes across the bedspread. Arianna opened her eyes and looked around the unfamiliar room, and her memory slowly returned. She was at Santino’s villa in Sicily and this was his sister’s bedroom. He had told her that Casa Uliveto had been his childhood home and his father had kept the house when the family had moved to England. Santino had explained that Gina lived in New York and was not planning to visit in the next few months.
She sat up cautiously. Her head still felt delicate after the migraine attack that had started on the boat that had brought her and Santino to Sicily. The strong painkillers she’d taken had knocked her out and she remembered little of the journey. She vaguely recalled that Santino had carried her off the boat and across a beach to some steps that led up to the house. But she had been half-asleep and hadn’t taken much notice of her surroundings, although she had been aware of his strong arms around her as he’d carried her, and the steady thud of his heart beneath her ear when she’d rested her head on his chest.
He had brought her to the bedroom, and she’d been sufficiently awake to take off her dress before she’d climbed into bed and immediately fallen back to sleep. She squinted at her watch and was shocked to find that it was nearly eleven a.m. No wonder her stomach felt hollow. Her feet met the cool floor tiles when she slid out of bed. The room’s décor of whitewashed walls, dark wood furniture and soft blue bedding was simple but pretty, and the muted colour scheme was repeated in the en suite bathroom.
Arianna caught sight of herself in the mirror above the sink and grimaced to see her tangled hair and smudges of mascara on her cheeks. She never went to bed without first removing her make-up and using a variety of expensive potions on her skin. But the only items she’d brought with her in her little gold evening bag were a toothbrush, a mini perfume spritzer and a lip gloss. She didn’t even have any shoes, she thought, remembering her beautiful designer sandals that she’d left behind on the beach in Amalfi.
It felt strangely liberating to have no possessions. At Lyle House and at Villa Cadenza her wardrobes were bursting with clothes, many of which she’d never worn. Shopping had filled the empty hours of every day, but the truth was that all the clothes, shoes and luxury toiletries that she’d paid for with a swipe of her credit card hadn’t eased the emptiness inside her.
A shudder ran through her when she thought of the two men who had approached her on the beach after she’d run out of the nightclub. It had been a frightening experience but she’d assumed that the men were drunk and hadn’t meant any real harm. Learning that they belonged to a mafia gang and had intended to kidnap her made the incident much more terrifying. If Santino had not found her in time, she could have been kidnapped and her life would have been in danger. The recent news story about a well-known footballer’s wife, who had been snatched and then murdered by her kidnappers after her husband had involved the police, was a grim reminder that the mafia was utterly ruthless.
Her shoulder was stinging, and when she looked in the mirror she saw a jagged red weal on her skin. She remembered that the man who’d grabbed hold of her had been wearing a ring and she’d felt it cut into her. Nausea swept through her. She felt dirty and tainted, and with another shudder she hurried into the shower and scrubbed every inch of her body with a bar of lemon-scented soap.
Santino had told her that his sister kept a few items of clothes at the house and wouldn’t mind if Arianna borrowed them. It was that or wear her ball gown, she acknowledged as she put on a pair of bleached denim shorts and a sleeveless cinnamon-coloured top made of a silky material that clung rather too lovingly to her breasts. It was lucky that she and Gina Vasari were the same dress size, she thought.
A pair of leather flip-flops that she found in the wardrobe fitted her. The lack of a hairdryer or straighteners meant that her hair dried naturally into loose curls. Studying her reflection in the mirror, she felt oddly vulnerable with her face bare of make-up. She felt naked without her favourite scarlet lipstick, and annoyingly she found herself wondering what Santino would think of her now that she looked ordinary instead of glamorous.
Arianna’s heart skipped a beat when she went downstairs and found him in the kitchen. Like her, he was wearing denim shorts, and his black T-shirt was moulded to his impressive six-pack. She had followed the smell of bacon frying and her stomach growled as she watched him load two plates with bacon, eggs and mushrooms.
He gave her a searing look as she hovered uncertainly in the doorway. ‘The only thing I liked when I moved to Devon as a teenager was an English cooked breakfast,’ he told her as he pushed a plate across the table towards her. ‘Help yourself to coffee.’
‘I’m starving,’ she confessed, pulling out a chair.
‘Me too,’ he drawled. The blatant suggestion in his voice brought her skin out in goose bumps, and the gleam in his eyes made her blush as he raked his gaze over her and she felt her nipples tighten. She hadn’t worn a bra beneath her ball gown yesterday evening, and there hadn’t been one among Gina’s clothes for her to borrow. The silky material of the shirt brushing against her bare breasts with their taut, sensitive peaks felt deliciously sensual and made her intensely aware of her femininity.
Santino took his place opposite her at the table and picked up his knife and fork, but his eyes did not leave her face. ‘You look very lovely this morning, Arianna,’ he said gruffly.
Was he joking? Self-consciously she ran her fingers through her riot of curls. ‘I’m not wearing make-up.’
‘You don’t need it. Your skin is beautiful.’ He broke off abruptly and she had the impression that he was annoyed with himself. Flustered and agonisingly aware of him, she dropped her gaze from his harshly handsome face and tried to concentrate on eating her breakfast.
‘This is good,’ she murmured after a couple of mouthfuls of crisp bacon. Where did you learn to cook?’
‘The army taught me to be self-sufficient, but I’m not an expert chef by any stretch of imagination. My sister is a much better cook than me.’
She speared a mushroom. ‘Why did you leave the army?’
‘I’d served in the Parachute Regiment for ten years, including three tours of duty in Afghanistan, and I felt it was time to do something different.’ He picked up his cup and took a gulp of coffee. ‘A good friend of mine had been badly injured and Mac was invalided out of the army at the same time as I left. We decided to go into business together.’
‘Doing what?’ she asked curiously.
‘My father had opened a delicatessen in Devon, specialising in selling olive oil that comes from the olive groves here at Casa Uliveto. Dad took little interest in the shop or anything else after my mother died. It was close to bankruptcy when I took it over but I managed to turn the business around. Mac and I ran it together until he left to pursue other interests.’
Arianna found it hard to picture Santino running a shop. It seemed rather ordinary for such an extraordinary man. ‘I know from my father that you were in the SAS,’ she murmured.
He shrugged, and she sensed he was reluctant to talk about his time in the special forces but she couldn’t stem her curiosity. Her eyes were drawn to the tattoo of a snarling tiger on his arm. ‘Does your tattoo have special significance?’
He nodded. ‘I took part in a special mission in Helmand, codenamed Tiger. Those of us who survived had the tattoo done in honour of the men who lost their lives or suffered life-changing injuries.’ His voice was flat and devoid of emotion but Arianna noticed a nerve jump in his cheek.
‘The scar on your back.’ she murmured. ‘Did you receive it in Afghanistan?’ She had been shocked when she’d seen the jagged scar that ran from his shoulder blade up to his neck and disappeared beneath his hairline.
Santino had stiffened when she’d mentioned his scar, and she thought he wasn�
��t going to answer, but then he said, ‘My patrol was ambushed by sniper fire,’ he said at last in a taut voice. ‘I was hit. It was bad luck that the bullet struck me at a point where I wasn’t protected by my body vest. I would certainly have died if Mac hadn’t dragged me out of the line of fire. But the area was strewn with landmines and one step in the wrong place could be fatal. In Mac’s case, both his legs were blown off when an explosive device detonated.’
‘It must have been terrible.’ Arianna did not know what to say that wouldn’t sound inane.
‘Helmand was hell,’ Santino told her savagely. ‘You can have no idea of the guilt I feel knowing that my best friend can never walk again.’
Startled by the rawness in his voice, she murmured, ‘You can’t blame yourself. It was Mac’s decision to go to your aid.’
His jaw clenched and Arianna sensed that he controlled his emotions with an iron will. ‘Of course I blame myself,’ he told her grimly. ‘Mac didn’t even know that I was alive when he ran across to me. If he had left me where I’d fallen he wouldn’t be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.’
Impulsively, Arianna reached across the table and covered Santino’s hand with her own. Her eyes softened with compassion. ‘What would you have done if the roles had been reversed? I don’t believe that you would have left your friend to die.’
He frowned. ‘Of course not.’
‘If you had lost your limbs while saving Mac’s life, would you blame him for your injuries?’
‘No, I would be glad that he was alive.’ He exhaled heavily. ‘I see where you are going with this.’ He moved suddenly and caught her fingers in his. ‘I had not expected such insight from someone who spends her life shopping and socialising.’ He looked down at her small hand in his much larger one and rubbed his thumb over the pulse that was beating frantically in her wrist. ‘I am intrigued to know, who is the real Arianna Fitzgerald?’
‘Just because I go to a lot of parties doesn’t mean that I can’t feel sympathy.’ Desperate to hide the hurt she felt at his comment, Arianna said flippantly, ‘Perhaps if the tabloids knew there was another side to me they would label me “the tart with a heart of gold”.’
She snatched her hand out of his and continued to eat her breakfast, but her appetite had faded. Santino refilled both their coffee cups and leaned back in his chair, studying her intently, as if he was trying to fathom her out.
‘Why was a Devon shopkeeper trying to infiltrate a gang of drug smugglers in Italy?’ Arianna asked him. Something about his story did not add up.
He laughed. ‘As a matter of fact I sold the delicatessen business a while ago. Prior to that Mac had left the business to set up a private investigation agency. He’s fifteen years older than me, and before joining the army he had been in the police force.’ Santino’s expression turned serious. ‘Mac’s younger sister died suspiciously and Mac was convinced that Laura’s drug-dealer boyfriend was involved in her death. He discovered that the guy had links to the mafia in southern Italy and he asked me to infiltrate the gang with the aim of breaking up their drug-smuggling operation.’
‘Wasn’t that an incredibly dangerous thing to do? If your cover had been blown the gang might have killed you.’
He shrugged. ‘There was an element of risk. But Mac was devastated by his sister’s death, and I owed him. When I learned that the gang intended to kidnap a wealthy English heiress, your safety took precedence over Mac’s desire for revenge on his sister’s killers. But if the Italian police are successful in arresting the gang members there will hopefully be justice for Laura.’
Arianna swirled the coffee grounds around in the bottom of her cup while she mulled over everything he had told her. From the sound of it Santino’s only intention had been—and still was—to protect her from the mafia gang who wanted to kidnap her. He hadn’t been trying to control her behaviour and keep her out of the media spotlight as she had accused him of doing. Her problem was that she believed every man was a control freak like her father, she thought ruefully.
Santino was brave and honourable. He had risked his life to help his friend Mac, and he had been there to protect her every time she had needed him. It made her stroppy attitude towards him when they had been in Positano seem even more childish.
At least now the subterfuge was over. She couldn’t even blame him for withholding the truth about the kidnap threat when he had been given misleading information from her father that she had supposedly taken a drug overdose. The weeks she had spent in hospital with pneumonia had been a horrible, frightening time and the fact that Randolph hadn’t contacted her at all had forced her to accept that he would never be interested in her.
She looked over at Santino and her breath caught in her throat when his gaze trapped hers. He was impossibly handsome and his chiselled features—those slashing cheekbones and square jaw—were cruelly beautiful. The only slight softening was his sensual mouth, tilted upwards at one corner in a wry smile that made her wish he would walk around the table, pull her into his arms and kiss her with all the heat and hunger she could see in his glittering green eyes.
He had said he was intrigued to know who she really was. And here at his house in Sicily, away from her old crowd and the photographer’s lenses, she did not have to pretend any more. Maybe she could prove to him that she was not the party princess and darling of the tabloids. What if she told him that she didn’t want to be that person any more, and that actually she had never been the wild child with a scandalous reputation? Would he even care? And why did his approval matter so much to her?
The answer caused her heart to give a jolt. She was falling in love with Santino. She had known the moment she had met him that he could be dangerous to her peace of mind and she’d sensed that he had the power to hurt her. But he also made her feel more alive than she had ever felt, and that feeling was as dangerously addictive as she suspected the enigmatic man who had stolen her heart could be.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘I NOTICED SOME art folders in my bedroom,’ Arianna said, pulling herself together and replacing her coffee cup on the saucer. ‘Do they belong to your sister?’
Santino nodded. ‘Gina took a combined art and business degree before she moved to America to become a fashion buyer.’
She felt envious of Santino’s sister. She wished she had studied art, but at eighteen she’d lacked the confidence to apply to universities after her governess had told her that she did not have the commitment to work for a degree. Typically, she had decided to fulfil Miss Melton’s low opinion of her and had spent the next six years partying in those playgrounds of the super-rich—Monaco, St Bart’s, Verbier and Aspen.
Her lack of business qualifications was something else she needed to consider before she launched her own fashion label, Arianna acknowledged. She had never had to live within a budget before but she would need to make big financial decisions. A familiar sense of worthlessness descended over her. Setting up her own company seemed daunting and maybe she would fail. But isn’t failure better than never trying? whispered a stubborn voice inside her. It was the conclusion she had come to a year ago when she had been in hospital fighting for her life. She had been given a second chance and was determined to make her life worthwhile.
‘There’s an empty sketchpad with your sister’s art portfolio. Would it be okay if I used it?’ She kept her voice casual. ‘I might do a bit of drawing to pass the time.’
‘I don’t suppose Gina would mind if you use some of her old art stuff. But don’t think that you can swan around while you are staying here,’ Santino told her bluntly. ‘Unlike the luxurious way of life you are used to, I don’t employ an army of staff to cater to your whims, and I’m not going to run around after you. I’ll expect you to pull your weight. I don’t suppose you’ve spent a lot of time in a kitchen or learned how to cook, but you can wash the dishes. No, there’s isn’t a dishwasher,’ he said drily
when she glanced around the room. ‘Welcome to the real world, cara.’
‘I’m not completely useless,’ she snapped, stung by his mocking tone. She certainly wasn’t going to admit to him that she had never washed the dishes in her life. When she ate alone in the vast dining room at Lyle House, the butler whisked the plates away immediately after she had finished eating.
Santino seemed to have used every pan in the kitchen, no doubt on purpose, she thought darkly as she filled the sink with hot water and started on the mountain of washing up he had created. But after she’d washed the copper pans and dried them with a tea towel until they gleamed, before she hung them on hooks above the stove, she realised that she was enjoying pottering about. There was a sense of achievement in turning the disorder back into a clean and tidy kitchen. It gave her confidence that she would manage just fine when she moved into her own home in London, probably a rented flat, as she wouldn’t be able to afford to buy somewhere while she was trying to establish her business.
Through the window she saw Santino chopping the wood that was used to fuel the kitchen stove. He had stripped off his T-shirt and his broad shoulders glistened with sweat. Arianna felt a melting sensation low in her belly, an ache that throbbed insistently as she imagined him holding her against his muscular body, touching her, kissing her...
She blushed furiously when he glanced towards the window and caught her watching him. But she didn’t look away and neither did he. The unguarded expression in his eyes made the ache inside her pulse harder, hotter. Even when they were not in the same room sexual tension simmered between them and she had no idea how they were going to live together, possibly for weeks, without that tension exploding into raw passion.
She released her breath on a shaky sigh when Santino finally resumed chopping logs. She could stand there all day watching his rippling muscles beneath the sheen of his olive-gold skin but it seemed wiser to keep out of his way—although not because she was afraid of him. He had proved that he was committed to protecting her. It was her reaction to his smouldering sensuality that scared her.
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