Mistress to the Mediterranean Male (Mills & Boon By Request)

by Carole Mortimer

  ‘We’ll sit.’

  Typical! Anna fumed. He Who Must Be Obeyed had spoken! Francesco was taking charge, as if they were in his home, not he the uninvited and as far as she was concerned unwanted guest in theirs—as if they were a clutch of dim-witted underlings about to receive a right royal dressing-down.

  It annoyed her to see Dad meekly comply, his head bowed, while Mum dithered, making fluttery noises about the provision of coffee, receiving Francesco’s softly spoken rejection of the offer. The faint smile that failed to reach his eyes hid impatience. He must think they were all pathetic!

  Taking her time about it, Anna stood, swung her chair around to face the table, impeded by her bulk, and eventually sat.

  Across the table her father raised his head just a little. He looked anxious, cowed. Anna couldn’t understand it. He was usually so good with people—cheerful and outgoing even when speaking to his creditors, full of his plans, so ebullient. Even the most hard-nosed amongst them had—probably reluctantly, given his track record—believed the energetic William Maybury would get over what he blithely termed a ‘temporary blip’, and come good.

  So what was it about the Italian that made him look as if he was trying to shrink into himself? It should be the other way around, with Dad showing Francesco Mastroianni the door because he knew how he’d treated his daughter.

  All those months ago she’d found him pottering about in the greenhouse he’d constructed out of old planks and polythene. ‘Dad—while I was on holiday I met this fantastic Italian—Francesco. I’m crazy about him! And it’s unbelievable, but he feels the same way about me! He’s just phoned. He’s in England to see me. He’ll arrive this evening. But, listen—I’m catering for a WI meeting in the village hall, so I shan’t be here. Until I get back make him comfortable, will you? And don’t bore him with all that safari park stuff!’

  She hadn’t been able to hide the fact that she was almost delirious with happiness, that she was fathoms-deep in love for the first time in her life.

  So Dad knew what Francesco done, and yet he couldn’t raise a single objection to being bossed around in his own home—much less stick up for his wronged daughter and show the black-hearted devil the door!

  So it was up to her! Glancing swiftly at the man who had mangled her heart, who was lording it at the head of the table—where else?—she said flatly, ‘Well? If you have something to say, get on with it. Some of us have things to do.’

  He ignored her. Leaning forward, long fingers laced on the table-top, he addressed her parents. Anna Maybury, who had once meant all the world to him, now meant nothing except as the carrier of his child. Her wishes in this matter were unimportant, not to be considered.

  ‘Your daughter is carrying my child. We met when she was staying on Ischia.’ His mobile mouth hardened as his eyes pinned down William’s. ‘As of course you know. My point is that as the mother of my child your daughter is now my responsibility.’

  ‘Now, look here!’ Incensed by that out-dated assumption, the pointed way he was excluding her from the dialogue, Anna tried to cut him down to size, to point out that she was an adult woman and responsible for herself. But she subsided, red-faced, when he turned his attention to her mother, speaking as if her interjection had no more meaning than the irritating buzz of a fly.

  ‘You must agree, Beatrice—I may call you Beatrice?—that it is not wise for a woman in the latter stages of pregnancy to be working hard all hours of the day, rushing around in hot kitchens until late at night?’

  He was turning on that devastating charm now, and her mother was lapping it up, Anna noted sickly. Her eyes bright, her mouth curving with pleasure, no doubt she was enjoying the fact that she now knew the identity of the father of her coming grandchild. ‘Don’t think I haven’t said as much myself, dozens of times!’ the older woman concurred quickly. ‘She works too hard—and it worries me—but she won’t listen. She was always stubborn, even as a baby!’

  Thanks a bunch! Anna ground her teeth. So, OK, Mum had regularly twittered on about the long hours she worked. But, as Anna had pointed out, they needed the money she earned just to survive. No way was she going to repeat that incontrovertible fact and shame her family, highlight their dire poverty, in front of this brute. He was a stranger to financial problems—would have no idea how it felt to have creditors breathing down his neck.

  ‘So, as I am responsible, Anna will stay at my London home until the birth. I shall not be there, except on the odd occasion, but my excellent housekeeper and her husband will look after her every need,’ Francesco stated, with a blithe disregard for any opinion she might have. ‘She will have every possible care, and the rest she needs for the well-being of the child. Arrangements will be made to have her admitted to a private clinic when the time comes. After the birth—’ his eyes swept between her parents ‘—I will organise a meeting between our respective solicitors to set up a trust to provide for the child’s upbringing, schooling and general future welfare.’

  ‘That’s very decent of you, old chap.’

  Her father was finally showing some signs of life! Anna thought furiously. She scrambled to her feet awkwardly, met the brooding, chilling distance of Francesco’s steely eyes and finally got to say her piece.

  ‘Save your breath! I’m going nowhere with you. I don’t want your hand-outs—in fact I never want to see or hear from you again!’ And she swept out with as much dignity as her swollen feet and a huge stomach could contrive.

  She fumed as she hauled herself up the stairs to her room. How dared he come here and lay the law down? Who did he think he was?

  Their brief and to him meaningless holiday fling—which he had already insultingly insinuated the he regretted—had resulted in a new life, but that didn’t mean he had any rights. He had forfeited any rights when he’d dumped her!

  Indignation kept her going until she reached the chilly sanctuary of her bedroom. Her legs feeling like ill-set jelly, she sank down on the bed and wearily reflected on all she had to do this morning.

  Retrieve her van. It would have been accomplished by now if the odious Italian hadn’t put his oar in. Pick up provisions in the village. Pay Nick’s father for the battery. Phone Kitty Bates to clarify the final number of guests expected at her son’s birthday party on Tuesday. Get hold of Cissie and make sure she’d be available to help out. Normally Anna wouldn’t turn a hair at catering a kids’ party solo, but thanks to the traumatic experience of what had happened over the past dozen or so hours every scrap of energy had left her. And even though Cissie boasted that her culinary expertise went no further than putting bread in the toaster, she was a huge help when it came to fetching and carrying.

  Shivering, Anna pulled the quilt over her shoulders and bit back tears of emotional exhaustion. Thinking of Cissie brought back memories she’d tried and mostly succeeded in wiping from her mind. Memories she didn’t want. But …

  CHAPTER FOUR

  PEACE at last! Anna wriggled her hips further into the warm pebbles and stretched out in the sun. Bliss! All she could hear was the hiss and suck of the clear Italian sea against the shore, and the occasional cry of a seabird.

  For the first time since she and Cissie had arrived on Ischia three days ago she felt relaxed and comfortably normal.

  To be perfectly honest the hotel they were staying in intimidated her. Silly of her—but it was horrendously expensive, with every extravagance laid on for its pampered, seriously wealthy guests. Elegance and sybaritic luxury stretched as far as the eye could see—from the choice of four indoor and outdoor pools, to the coffee shops, formal dining areas, bars, designer boutiques, saunas, right down to the complimentary perfumed essences and soaps in the sumptuous bathroom she and Cissie were sharing.

  In her cheap clothes, with her deeply regrettable but entirely understandable air of gobsmacked awe, she stuck out like a sore thumb. She knew she did. It was all right for Cissie, the spoiled and treasured only child of wealthy parents. She dovetailed beautifully wit
h the silk and cashmere set. Cissie, with her sleek, waist-length auburn hair and model figure, her lovely clothes, fitted in. She spoke their language and instinctively knew how to mingle with what the Olds called the jet set. She knew how to have discreet fun on the other side of the tracks!

  Only this morning, while covering her micro-bikini with a colourful sarong, Cissie had said, ‘Lighten up, Anna. Look—there’s no need for you to mope around on your own. I could get Aldo to fix you up, no probs. Just say the word.’

  ‘What word? And who’s Aldo?’ Anna, glancing up from one of the tasteful complimentary glossies, had wanted to know, and had received an eye-rolling response. ‘Aldo—he’s serviced our table every evening—even you must at least have noticed him!’

  A slim Sardinian with coal-black eyes and a dazzling smile. ‘You’re dating him?’ Anna made the connection, green eyes widening as her best friend grinned at her.

  ‘Nothing serious—as if! Just a fling—holiday fun! You should try it. It doesn’t hurt!’ She tossed sunscreen, lipgloss and designer sunglasses into a scarlet cotton beach bag. ‘He said he could get you fixed up. Now, I simply must fly. I’m meeting him in the village square—it’s strictly against the rules for him to socialise with the guests, apparently. Anyway, think about the offer—you could use some fun.’

  ‘No, thanks.’ Anna knew she sounded like a repressive ancient aunt as Cissie left the room, but she wasn’t interested in meaningless flings—sex for the sake of it. It made her shudder just to think of it.

  Call her old-fashioned, but she equated sex with love. And when she fell in love—and one day she hoped to—it would be for keeps.

  Muttering to herself, she got into her plain black one-piece, covered up with a silky shawl Cissie had lent her, and escaped the rarefied atmosphere of the hotel, wishing she had never agreed to come.

  ‘Don’t you dare say no!’ Cissie had ordered. ‘It’s a freebie. My parents booked the package—flights, transfers, a fab hotel for three weeks. Only Ma went and broke her leg, didn’t she? So they can’t go. It’s all paid for, and you haven’t any bookings on the horizon that you’ve told me about, so there’s nothing to stop you coming along and keeping me company—is there?’

  At the time the idea of a free holiday had seemed like a good idea—a chance to escape from what was going on at home. Her dad up to his eyes in debt. Again. There was no more land to sell to keep the creditors at bay. She loved her father to pieces, but wished he was more grounded. His latest ‘sure-fire winner’ of a scheme was to turn the remaining ten acres of long-neglected gardens into a safari park.

  ‘I just need the right backer,’ he’d said when he’d expounded this latest money-spinning plan. ‘Can’t lose!’ When had Anna heard that before? ‘Fantastic opportunity for the right investor. We’ll get hordes of visitors—rake it in!’

  Anna had nightmare visions of mangy old lions eating the giraffes or—heaven forbid—the paying visitors, and tried not to have hysterics.

  Of course it wouldn’t happen. Dad could charm blood out of a stone, but not even an out-and-out idiot would put money into such a ridiculous venture.

  So they would lose Rylands, Mum’s family home, and it would kill her. She had a mental vision of them living in a tiny bungalow, with Dad setting up a chicken farm—or even a pig farm—in a pocket-sized back garden and she shuddered again. Mum would pine for the glory days before she’d married, when her parents had been alive and Rylands had been up there with the very best country houses, complete with indoor and outdoor staff and the comfort of a vast portfolio of stocks and shares. A portfolio Dad had decided to double, but had ended up losing the lot.

  Now the hoped-for escape looked like being an uncomfortable experience. Especially as Cissie would be occupied with having fun with her waiter during his off-duty times, leaving Anna to kick her heels around in a hotel where she felt as out of place as a pork pie on a silver dish of caviar.

  So she wouldn’t stay around—the object of curious stares, the Cinderella in the corner.

  Skirting the centre of the village, she stopped to buy fruit and bottled water, and trudged up a rocky incline, wandering through little terraced orchards of fig and lemon trees. She clambered over a low stone wall to a stretch of herb-strewn grassland, alive with butterflies and bees, passing a tiny, lone stone building with its windows open to catch the air, revelling in the uncomplicated, unglitzy rightness of the scents of earth and sea, the warmth of the sun and the endless silent blue arch of the sky.

  She came to a narrow track that led down to a secluded cove—a rocky, sheltering headland where deep water lapped with Mediterranean indolence and the pebble beach was devoid of glitterati—of anyone at all.

  Perfect.

  She wriggled again, relaxed and comfy, on her bed of sun-warmed rounded pebbles, closing her eyes, letting the sun lap her exposed limbs. She could spend all her days here, no problem—eat her fruit lunch, cool off in the sea, catch up with her reading and then join up with Cissie for the evening meal and be entertained—or not—by accounts of the slim Sardinian’s sexual expertise, while he served them with smiling obsequiousness.

  Drifting between sleep and dreaming, Anna drew her brows together as an alien scraping, rattling noise punctuated by the sound of male voices shattered her solitude. Peering between her tangled lashes she registered the intruders. A shortish, plumpish guy dressed in what were obviously designer casuals stood on the shore, while another dragged a dinghy clear of the water.

  The other man was something else, she noted, her eyes widening. Bronzed, at least six foot, clad only in a pair of beat-up old denim cut-offs, he had the type of body—honed, toned, lithe and yet power-packed—that her only experience of was cinematic.

  Smiling to herself, she closed her eyes again, waiting for them to go some place else. Voices drifted over on the still, sea-scented air. Italian. She couldn’t understand a word of what was being said, of course, but the tone of one of them positively vibrated with authority. The smartly dressed one thanking the boatman for the trip round the bay, or whatever? The other—the dishy boatman?—was definitely more subservient.

  Feet crunched through the pebbles, and curiosity raised her lashes one more time. The smartly dressed one was heading for the zig-zagging path that had brought her down here. Good. The hunk would no doubt be following at a respectful distance.

  Silence again. Lovely!

  Anna closed her eyes against the glare of the sun and relaxed back into blissful solitude—or tried to. But her skin had started to prickle strangely all over, as if she were plugged into the mains. It couldn’t be just the effects of the sun, because there was a weird tingling inside her, too.

  ‘You are on private property.’

  Wired as she was, the grating, slightly accented tones made her yelp with shock, sit up, and make a grab for Cissie’s silk shawl, her picnic in its tatty plastic bag, her old canvas shoes, her book.

  Watching her fumble with the plastic carrier, snatch up the fat paperback and drop it, Francesco regretted the harshness of his tone.

  Regret was a stranger to him. His decisions, actions, his tone of voice, tailored to specific situations, were always perfectly judged.

  But, standing over her while she’d been supposedly unaware of his presence, he’d taken in the voluptuous contours of a body boldly emphasised by the plain black swimwear, the riotous length of silky sugar-blonde hair, the cute face, the sinfully thick and long lashes, dark but tipped with gold, and had felt his mouth curl with cynicism.

  They were everywhere. As he knew from long and tedious experience. They played every trick in the book. They were so predictable. So boring. This particular gold-digger, unable to attract his attention, wangle an introduction, whatever, had decided to drape herself on his private beach. And hope.

  And yet …

  He’d fully expected her to give him the full works. The sultry look, for starters. That was a given. Then raise her arms above her head, move that sensational body
explicitly, lave her lips with the tip of a moist pink tongue and make insincere apologies. Huskily.

  Seen it all. Heard it all. He prepared to spell out his uninterest. Brutally, if necessary.

  And yet she had squawked like a cat with its tail caught in a door. Scrambled for her scattered belongings without grace or dignity. Or pretence at either. And now she was standing, a good head shorter than he was, clutching a bunch of material in front of her. Hiding, not displaying, with a plastic carrier dangling from the hand that wasn’t struggling to arrange the fabric for the best possible concealment.

  Maybe, just maybe, he’d made a mistake. There was a first time for everything.

  Sable brows drew together as she raised her eyes to his. Green and deep enough to drown in. Part-fascinated, and part-ashamed of his cynical assumptions, he watched as hot colour touched her skin in a wave of mortification as she managed chokily, ‘I’m sorry. I had no idea this was private property. I’ll go.’

  Anna had never felt so disorientated in the whole of her life. That harsh voice, the condemnatory words, had exploded onto her consciousness when she had believed herself alone. It had really spooked her. So much so that an automatic reflex action had had her practically leaping to her feet and floundering around for her scattered belongs, adrenaline pumping.

  And now, actually looking at the guy, she felt a slow, hot fizzle start up inside her. Instinctive—because he really was something else. Too much. Too male, too bronzed, too knock-’em-dead-handsome, with that tousled silky black hair, penetrating smoke-grey eyes, aristocratic nose, razor-sharp cheekbones and a mouth so sensual it made her knees go weak and her breath bunch in her throat.

  And as for that physique …

  Anna swallowed thickly and dipped her head, ashamed of the heated colour that was burning her face. She turned to go, stumbled, was stayed by a strong, long-fingered hand on her arm. She trembled with the wicked intensity of the sensations that skittered through her entire body at the sizzling contact