Ultimate Temptation (Harlequin Presents)

by Sara Craven

  She pushed an errant lock of hair back from her forehead as she considered the situation. It was faintly possible that the keys, thrown carelessly, might have skidded all the way across the top and fallen into the gap between the dressing table and the wall.

  She tried to ease out the heavy piece of furniture so that she could look behind it, but it defied her efforts. Panting, Lucy dropped to her knees, awkwardly craning her neck as she tried to peer underneath it instead.

  From the doorway behind her, a familiar vioce drawled, ‘Checking for dust, mia bella? What a paragon you are.’

  Lucy jumped violently, and straightened, muffling a shriek as she banged her unwary head on a drawer’s protruding handle.

  Oh, God, she thought sickly. Why on earth hadn’t she heard him returning? She could only be thankful that he hadn’t actually caught her going through the rest of his things.

  She said between gritted teeth, resisting the urge to rub the aching spot on her head, ‘That’s the third time you’ve scared me out of my wits.’

  ‘It’s the third time I’ve found you in my room,’ Giulio Falcone retorted silkily. ‘I shall begin to think, Lucia, that you can’t keep away.’

  Lucy got to her feet, glaring at him. ‘Then you’d be wrong,’ she said crisply. A glance at her bare left wrist gave her inspiration. ‘Actually, I was looking for my watch. I thought perhaps I’d left it in here.’

  ‘I regret, no.’ He came further into the room. Pale grey trousers hugged his lean hips and accentuated the length of his legs, and his coral polo shirt had been left unbuttoned at the neck. Lucy, assimilating all this, was aware of a slight flurry in her breathing.

  He looked her over unsmilingly. He said. ‘You were wearing your watch last night, I think.’

  ‘Oh, was I?’ She gave a little shrug. ‘I couldn’t be sure.’

  His scrutiny of her intensified. He said, ‘Did you hurt yourself just now?’

  ‘Not at all,’ she said stoutly. It was a lie. In fact, she felt as if she was going to have a lump like the dome of St. Paul’s. She produced a feeble imitation of a bright smile. ‘Well—I’ll go and continue to search elsewhere.’

  She had to pass him to reach the door. His hand closed round her arm, halting her effortlessly.

  He said quietly, ‘I did not intend to startle you, and for that I apologise. Among other things, I went to the vineyard to ask Franco’s wife, Teresa, to cook for us on a temporary basis.’ He paused, then added with a faint smile, ‘I thought I would be back before you awoke.’

  Lucy lifted her chin. She said coolly, ‘I’m sorry to have put you to so much trouble, signore. It won’t happen again. If you’d care to specify a time for my duties to begin, I’ll make sure I’m awake and available in future.’

  The smile deepened. ‘Why the outrage? I am not the first man to see you in bed, after all.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ she said stonily. ‘I happen to value my privacy.’

  He shrugged. ‘Then I must respect it.’ The amber eyes met hers in unnerving confrontation. ‘I promise, columbina, never to enter your bedroom again—without an invitation. Is that the assurance you want?’

  Lucy forced herself to look away to the open door. ‘It will do, I suppose.’ She glanced down at his detaining hand. ‘Now, may I go, please?’

  ‘On the other hand,’ he went on softly, ‘you have my full permission to enter my bedroom whenever you wish, and stay—just as long as you desire.’

  He strolled over to the dressing table. ‘I hope you find your watch,’ he added casually. ‘It’s so annoying to search and search, to no avail.’

  Numbly, Lucy watched him produce first his own car keys then those of the Fiat from his trouser pocket. Slanting a smile at her, he tossed both bunches into the air and caught them, before dropping them unhurriedly into the top drawer. He was watching her stunned reaction, she realised, in the mirror.

  He said mockingly, ‘Before you continue your hunt, may I suggest an ice pack for the bump on your head, Lucia?’ He paused. ‘Who knows? It may also have a cooling effect on your temper.’

  And his laughter followed her, even through the door she slammed behind her and down the long passage to the fragile security of her room.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE room was already like an oven, and there was nowhere to sit but on the bed, which did nothing to improve Lucy’s mood.

  Giulio Falcone was a snake, she raged inwardly. A devious, conniving bastard, who’d outthought and out-manoeuvred her all along the line. In fact he’d made a total fool of her, and she hated him.

  Which, admittedly, was a far safer attitude than her previous naive response to his attraction. Hard work alone wasn’t a sufficient defence against the smile that curled the comers of his mouth, or the amber fire that glowed in those extraordinary eyes. She’d found that out to her cost last night.

  No, she thought, she needed hate as an extra—maybe even a final line of defence, until some day, somehow, she could teach him a lesson he would never forget.

  She emptied her bag onto the bed and went through its contents slowly and methodically, calculating how much she had in lira, how much in travellers’ cheques. Her driving licence was in her wallet. Maybe she could—just—afford to hire a car to take her to the airport. But where could she stay if no flight was immediately available? And how long could she manage?

  The questions seemed to chase each other in her brain. What a fool she’d been not to bring her credit card, she thought ruefully, yet at the time it had seemed a sensible move, a disincentive to over-spending, particularly since she was contemplating a change of flat when she returned home.

  She looked through the other pockets in the wallet, just in case she’d slipped the card in after all in a moment of aberration, but all she found were receipts, a library ticket and, tucked away and forgotten in an inside pocket, a photograph of Philip.

  She took it out and looked at it. A month ago, it would have destroyed her. Now she sat and studied it almost objectively. It was one she’d taken on the flotilla holiday, the first day she’d felt well enough to venture up on deck. Philip, of course, was already bronzed, his blond hair bleached by the sun, totally accepted as one of the gang. He was leaning against the rail, smiling for the camera, his blue eyes crinkling in the way she’d always loved. But he was looking past her, not at her, focused on a different horizon. She could see that now, so clearly.

  I was always swept along behind him, in his wake, she thought. Never at his side, as I should have been. As I wanted to be.

  She took a breath, ripped the photograph cleanly in half, and dropped it into the waste basket.

  The tap on her door brought her defensively to her feet. No need to ask who was there, of course.

  She said stonily, ‘Si?’

  ‘My sister is here, Lucia. Will you come down with me to meet her?’ As she hesitated, he added, ‘However angry you are with me, please remember that the children have been badly frightened, and need you.’

  Fuming, Lucy swept to the door and threw it open. She said icily, ‘That is a shameless piece of manipulation, and you know it.’

  He flung up a hand. ‘Mi dispiace,’ he said, without a trace of penitence. ‘But I have been accused of worse things. Now stop sulking, please, and come downstairs.’

  He turned away, and Lucy took an impassioned step forward, only to bark her shins on her own suitcase, which had apparently deserted its refuge behind the flower trough and was now standing dejectedly outside her door.

  No prizes for guessing how, she thought malevolently, glaring after his retreating figure. She pushed the case into her room and closed the door on it.

  When she got to the stairs, the hall below seemed full of people and noise. There was a uniformed driver stolidly bringing in more luggage than Lucy had ever seen in her life. There was a tall blonde girl, dressed with the kind of careless elegance normally encountered only in the pages of the glossiest magazines, talking very fast and gesturi
ng rapidly. There was a small boy with dark curly hair capering about and shouting, and a slightly older girl in tears.

  She almost cannoned into the Count, who had paused halfway down the stairs and was standing as if he’d been turned to stone, staring across all this chaos to the open doorway. In which, Lucy saw with foreboding, there was yet another newcomer.

  She was a much older woman, matchstick-slender and exquisitely dressed, her silver hair formally and immaculately coiffed. She was looking round her with mingled authority and disdain.

  ‘Claudia,’ Giulio Falcone said softly, and at the sound of his voice a magical silence seemed to fall on the rest of the company. ‘Che sorpresa.’

  The woman in the doorway smiled. ‘My dear Giulio,’ she purred. ‘Naturally I am here for my daughter.’

  Although she spoke in Italian, Lucy had no difficulty making an accurate translation. The contessa, she thought, had a curious voice; it was husky, with a metallic undertone—like honey eaten off a steel spoon.

  The contessa’s eyes, vibrantly dark under heavy lids, looked past him up the stairs to Lucy herself, who had a searing impression of having been tried and found wanting. She said austerely, ‘And who is this girl?’

  Giulio replied in English, his tone cool and deliberately casual, ‘This is Lucy Winters, my dear Claudia, who has agreed to replace Alison, and look after the children and keep house for us, until we can make other arrangements.’

  The arched brows swept up. ‘Dove Maddalena?’

  Giulio shrugged abruptly. ‘There was trouble with Tommaso. She left—rather suddenly.’

  Claudia Falcone made an exasperated sound. ‘Was there no suitable local woman, rather than another English girl?’

  It occurred to Lucy that she made the word inglesa sound like an expression of contempt.

  Giulio shrugged again. ‘Teresa has agreed to come and cook for us,’ he said. ‘But she has her own family to consider. She cannot take on other duties as well.’

  ‘But if she was paid—’ the contessa began, to be interrupted by the younger woman.

  ‘Mamma, of course we want another English girl, so that the children’s lessons won’t be interrupted. We should be grateful to Giulio for the trouble he has taken to find a suitable replacement for our poor Alison.’ She gave Lucy a cordial smile. ‘How do you do, signorina? It is good to meet you. I am Fiammetta Rinaldi.’

  ‘But who is this young woman, and where has she come from?’ the contessa demanded impatiently. ‘What are her credentials? Is she fit for this kind of responsibility?’

  Fiammetta’s tone held a touch of exasperation. ‘Mamma, don’t fuss so much. I am sure Giulio would engage no one whose references were not impeccable.’

  Oh, no? Lucy questioned in silent irony, and found Fiammetta addressing her again.

  ‘This has not been a good way to make your acquaintance, signorina-or may I call you Lucia?—but the past forty-eight hours have been—trying.’ She pulled a faintly comic face.

  She was indeed enchantingly pretty, Lucy acknowledged, with enormous pansy brown eyes and a frankly sexy mouth. Even the strip of sticking plaster on her forehead could not detract from her overall sparkle.

  ‘More than merely trying,’ came the contessa’s voice, with the metallic note even more strongly in evidence. ‘The accident could have been terrible—a tragedy. The life of my only grandson was placed at risk.’

  Lucy saw the older child flinch, her tear-stained face hurt and fleetingly hostile, and in that moment she knew she would never like Claudia Falcone.

  She said politely, ‘Then your granddaughter was not in the car at the time, Contessa Falcone. That was lucky.’

  Her words fell into a suddenly tense silence, broken by the little boy dancing up and down. ‘Emilia was in the car,’ he announced importantly. ‘But she cried. She wasn’t brave like me. And today she was sick.’

  He gave a realistic impression of his sister’s mishap and hooted with laughter. Emilia began to cry again, noisily, and her grandmother turned away, her face frozen with distaste.

  Lucy, biting her tongue with an effort, decided resignedly that it was high time to intervene properly. She walked down the stairs to the Count’s side, and touched his arm.

  She said quietly, ‘Perhaps you’d take the ladies into the salotto, signore, while I see to the children. Emilia at least will need to be washed and changed.’ She looked at Fiammetta. ‘Perhaps you, signora, know which case her clothes are in?’

  Fiammetta gave the mountain of luggage a frankly hunted look. ‘Unfortunately, no.’ She spread her hands apologetically. ‘Alison did the packing, you understand.’

  And someone quite apart from the lovely Fiammetta, Lucy deduced wryly, was going to have to do the unpacking.

  She said steadily, ‘Well, until it’s found, I’ll just have to do the best I can.’ She extended an encouraging hand to Emilia, whose sobs had turned to hiccups. ‘Shall we go and make you more comfortable?’

  The child’s face was sullen and mutinous. ‘No,’ she burst out. ‘I want Alison.’ At Lucy’s approach, she swung towards her grandmother, as if to bury her face in her dress, and the contessa stepped swiftly backwards, her hands moving in a gesture of repugnance and negation.

  Giulio moved into the breach. He said gently, but firmly, ‘Alison is not here, little one, so go with Lucia.’

  ‘I won’t. I won’t.’ Emilia seemed on the verge of hysterics. ‘You can’t make me!’

  ‘You don’t think so?’ He swung the child up into his arms, hugging her, making a game of it, regardless of the condition she was in, then started up the stairs with her, Lucy following.

  To Lucy’s surprise, he carried Emilia straight into his own room, setting the little girl down in the adjoining bathroom, ruffling her hair as he did so. ‘There you are, cara. Everything will be better soon.’

  He looked at Lucy, brows raised. ‘You can manage?’ It was a statement rather than a question, and she nodded.

  ‘Thank you.’ She took a breath. ‘That was—kind of you.’ And totally unexpected, she added silently.

  He shrugged. ‘It had to be done.’

  Lucy began to run the water into the tub. She said with a forced smile, ‘You’ll probably need to change as well.’

  ‘Almost certainly,’ he confirmed laconically. ‘But it doesn’t matter. With children these things happen.’ Casually, he pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it into the adjoining linen basket, before giving Emilia a parting grin.

  ‘Behave for Lucia, little one,’ he commanded softly, and walked back into the bedroom, where he paused to select a fresh shirt from the guardaroba.

  Lucy became suddenly, burningly aware that her gaze was following him, avidly drinking in every ripple of muscle beneath the bronzed skin. She smothered a gasp and turned away, concentrating her attention on the temperature of the bath-water, thankful that Giulio Falcone hadn’t noticed.

  Gawping like a sex-starved adolescent! she chastised herself mentally. For God’s sake, pull yourself together, you idiot.

  In spite of her uncle’s admonition, Emilia was not disposed to co-operate. She was not, Lucy thought as she helped her out of her soiled clothing, a particularly prepossessing child, her current problems notwithstanding. She was thin and rather sallow, with a sullen expression and a small, pursed mouth. Unfairly, Marco seemed to have gained the lion’s share in looks and grace, and Lucy suspected the little girl had been made well aware of that.

  She complained that the bath-water was too hot, then too cold, and that the shampoo stung her eyes. She pushed the handspray away while her hair was being rinsed, drenching Lucy to the skin.

  All in all, it was a memorable introduction to her new duties, Lucy decided grimly, struggling to lift Emilia’s deliberately dead weight out of the bath. She wrapped the child in a bath-sheet, gave her hair a brisk towelling, and sat her on the bed, regardless of her protests, while she went to her own room to fetch her hairdryer.

  To her surpr
ise, she found her case standing out in the passage again. More astonishing yet, through the open door she could see a sour-looking elderly woman, dressed in black, hanging other sombre garments in the guardaroba.

  Lucy checked. She said politely, ‘Excuse me, I think there’s been some mistake.’

  She received a look of complete indifference in return.

  She tried again. ‘This is my room.’

  A shrug, and a muttered, ‘Non capisco,’ was the only response.

  ‘Now that I don’t believe,’ Lucy said roundly.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ The contessa’s voice came from behind her, and Lucy swung round with a slight start. Creeping up behind people must be a family trait, she thought tartly.

  She said, ‘I seem to have lost my room.’

  ‘Your room?’ The older woman’s brows lifted. ‘But this room is always occupied by my maid when I am in residence. I need to have her near me.’ Her smile was wintry. ‘I’m sure you understand.’

  ‘Of course,’ Lucy said pleasantly. ‘I’ll move into one of the others.’

  The contessa examined a fingernail with a certain amount of care. She said, ‘Unfortunately, I have guests arriving this afternoon. All the rooms in the villa are needed. But there is the casetta in the grounds which Maddalena used. You will be quite comfortable there.’

  Lucy stared at her. She said evenly, ‘I’m supposed to be here for the children. I assumed. Signora Rinaldi would want me near them.’

  ‘But of course,’ the contessa said smoothly. ‘The children will share the casetta with you. It is an ideal arrangement. My daughter needs a few days’ complete peace and rest to recover from the shock of the accident. Although she is an excellent and most affectionate mother children of this age can be so wearing, don’t you find?’

  ‘Presumably,’ Lucy said, aware that she was trembling with anger, ‘your visitors will cause no disruption at all to the household.’

  The contessa’s brows lifted in hauteur. ‘My niece has been visiting Florence with a friend. Naturally I wish to see her.’ She paused. ‘As a temporary employee, signorina, you could hardly expect to remain under this roof and mix on an equal footing with our guests.’ Her smile was bland. ‘Although, to save our good Teresa inconvenience, you will be permitted, with the children, to join us for meals.’