by Sara Wood
‘Hellfire!’ she breathed, her mouth drying with a stupefying fear. It could be that she had no rights at all!
CHAPTER TWO
HALF-SOBBING with panic, Verity flung back her dripping hair out of her eyes and scrambled awkwardly to her feet, praying that this was an impostor. Perhaps someone who’d read the obituaries and thought Linda had been rich. If so, she’d tear strips off him for scaring her witless!
The buzzer made her jump. Hoping to open the gate, she grabbed the remote control that was still dangling from her waist, but it didn’t work.
‘I’m coming!’ she yelled, her nerves perching on a knife edge.
And with her dress clinging to her like a food wrap and badly impeding her movements, she began to stumble towards the formal front garden on legs that didn’t want to take her there.
If this was Vittore, she decided—somehow risen from the dead—then her deeply disturbed nephew must be protected at all costs, father or no father, whatever the law.
She’d run away with Lio, disappear, hide on a remote island, if it meant that his sanity was preserved.
She had a duty to the sad little baby—and was not going to hand him over to a womanising rat who’d callously ignored his son’s existence—and worse.
Her teeth ground together. Vittore’s infidelity had ruined the marriage and caused Linda to end her life. As a result, Lio was now an emotional mess and in no fit state to be whisked away by a strange man to a strange land where they didn’t even speak English!
Rounding the side of the house, she saw him at last. Tall and immaculately dressed, he was striding up and down like a man possessed, his powerful voice ringing out as he demanded imperiously that someone come to open the high-security gate at once!
Vittore removed his finger from the bell, suddenly struck dumb. Coming towards him with the ferocity of a heat-seeking missile, was a tall, voluptuous woman with ink-jet hair tumbling about her head in a riot of glistening, wet curls.
And this stunning beauty was in a furious temper, a strap of her long, white dress slipping off one tanned shoulder, the neckline scooping low to the mounds of gleaming, glorious breasts which were in danger of bouncing free of the flimsy material as she careered at full speed to where he stood in silent amazement.
Awed, he drew in a sharp breath. The dress was dripping wet and draped around her body in crinkling folds so that she looked like a living Grecian goddess. Like a Venus rising from the sea.
Something kicked hard in his loins, startling and shocking him. And for a brief moment his body took control until his brain reminded him of his purpose.
‘Let me in,’ he ordered brusquely, short-cutting polite greetings and stamping his authority on the situation because she evidently intended to yell at him for some mad reason. He’d come for Lio, not an argument. ‘I’m Vittore Mantezzini and I demand entry.’
‘Oh, are you? Show me proof of identity first!’ she demanded, her white teeth looking as if they would savage his flesh to shreds if he stepped out of line.
His mouth tightened at the delay and he frowned, not used to being disobeyed or challenged. Slid a hand into the inside pocket of his cashmere jacket and handed over his ID card without further comment.
Though the angry set of his jaw and the black glitter of his hard, cold eyes would have deterred most people from questioning his word.
Scowling, she peered at the photo, then checked that it looked like him. Since it had cost a great deal of money and the efforts of Milan’s top society photographer, there was, indeed, a flattering likeness.
Shock registered on her face. Then undisguised dismay.
‘You’re dead!’ she protested, searching his narrowed eyes in bewilderment, her soft lips parted in a perfect O.
Touch me, find out how alive I am! he almost said to his own astonishment, but stopped himself in time, a curl of heat lazily nevertheless easing his tense muscles.
It was new, this. To live again, to breathe sweet air, to feel emotion and the lure of an attractive woman…
‘Is that what Linda told you?’ he queried, annoyed at being diverted by a pretty face, even for a second. Pretty? No, beautiful. Unique, he corrected before he could help himself. Amazing what happened, he thought, when joy captured your emotions.
Plainly crestfallen that he wasn’t six feet under, she nodded unhappily. ‘Last summer,’ she replied in a hoarse whisper. To his astonishment, he noticed that her hands were trembling. She swallowed, the slender line of her throat oddly vulnerable as she did so. ‘Linda sent a change of address,’ she continued. ‘That’s when she said you were dead and that she had come back to England with Lio.’
‘Linda was lying,’ he said curtly. ‘I’m very much alive. As you see.’
She stared at him hard, as if reassuring herself that he was, indeed, not a mirage. Beneath her solemn gaze, he drew himself up and stared back. Apparently she detected enough life to convince her because she gave a little shudder, almost a sexual response. Her shoulders fell in disappointment. He wondered why and was about to ask when she spoke again.
‘If I’d known you weren’t dead,’ she mumbled, her voice wobbling in distress, ‘I would have contacted you when… Oh!…’ Her hands flew to cover her mouth in alarm. ‘You know,’ she said, somewhat inaudibly, ‘that Linda herself is—?’
‘Dead. Yes.’ He brushed her apology and her tact aside with an impatient gesture. She looked shocked at his dismissal of his late wife’s death but the past was past, the present full of urgency. ‘I want to see my son. Now,’ he announced irritably.
‘Tough!’
He almost reeled back in shock. Something odd was happening here. ‘What did you say?’ he asked menacingly.
‘It’s impossible!’
With her extraordinary violet eyes flashing in challenge, she flung back her head, releasing a shower of water drops from her dripping hair. Intrigued, he noticed that tiny white flowers had been trapped in the tar-slick curls. Daisies. Very bohemian.
Her hands thumped belligerently down to her hips, drawing his gaze there. Incomparable, he thought with a start, his eyes and brain full of delicious curves. In other circumstances it would have been the body of his dreams. But he had something more important on his mind.
‘Because?’ he growled, eyes glittering with shards of white-hot fury.
She glared, as hostile as if he were the devil incarnate. ‘Because you can’t! Because I’m not going to let you!’
He froze, fearing that she’d say his son had disappeared. Drawing in a steadying breath he jerked out a husky, ‘And why the hell not?’
‘Because he’s asleep!’ she declared, defiant and ready for a pitched battle.
But her words were wonderful. The best news he could have had. Vittore’s eyes closed and his heart lurched wildly, every taut muscle unwinding as if by magic.
Lio was there! Thank you. Thank you, he thought fervently.
For a moment he couldn’t speak for emotion, but he knew he must persuade this ill-tempered vision to open the gate before she turned out to be a figment of his fevered imagination.
‘It doesn’t matter if he’s asleep or awake,’ he said shakily, his heart singing for joy. ‘I just want to see him. He’s my son!’ he cried passionately. ‘You can’t stop me. So open the gate at once!’
The curving red lips were bitten, one then the other, by the small, white teeth. Her face was a picture of misery, her entire body slumping in defeat and she shivered pathetically.
‘No. I’ve got to get dry,’ she mumbled, her eyes tragic. ‘I’m absolutely soaked—’
‘I’d noticed,’ he drawled. He wasn’t blind. His iced-over sexual responses had already made themselves known, much to his surprise. ‘Are you all right?’ he enquired, his innate thoughtfulness temporarily overriding his own agenda. ‘I heard a cry—’
‘That was me. I was startled to hear your name because you were dead. Or so I’d thought. I fell in the pool,’ she explained mournfully. ‘Swimming in
a long dress when you’re exhausted isn’t the easiest activity in the world.’
There was a breathless silence while he followed her rueful glance at the dress, which seemed to have become an intimate part of her body. Every mound looked alluringly attainable.
Overcome, he pushed a hand over his forehead as his head swam with tiredness from travel, from expectation—or were those the stirrings of sexual desire?
Ruthlessly he restored some semblance of control. ‘I’ll take your word for it. I’ve never tried. So it’s my fault you’re wet?’ he queried, sounding more sardonic than he had intended.
She glared, piercing him with her pansy eyes, thick black lashes wet and spangled with tiny drops of water. He couldn’t stop the heat coursing through his veins. Maledizione! He felt shaken by her, as if he’d been hit by a truck. But of course, she was so vibrant, so alive, and his emotions were at fever pitch…
‘It certainly is!’ she retorted sharply. ‘So you’ll have to stay here while I go and change—’
‘Dio! What are you trying to do to me?’ he cried in astonishment. The thought of waiting a second longer had effectively reined in his wayward hormones. ‘This is ridiculous! Let me in now!’ he ordered indignantly.
‘No. You wait!’ she repeated in agitation.
‘The devil I will!’ he raged. ‘Surely you don’t intend to keep me hanging around out here, prowling up and down like a caged tiger, while you—’
‘I have to!’ she cried, clearly agitated. ‘I can’t risk you snatching Lio while I’m changing!’ she flung.
Vittore flinched with horror at such a barbaric idea. ‘Snatch? Why should I snatch what is mine?’ he demanded in outrage.
‘Yours? Oh, help!’ she muttered. ‘Where do I begin? I’m just protecting Lio—’
‘From his own father?’ he asked incredulously.
‘Yes!’ Her hand swept impatiently over her forehead. ‘Look—you must wait. I promise I’ll let you in as soon as I can. I’m a quick dresser. I just can’t risk…’ She fidgeted in agitation, artistic fingers twisting and writhing together. ‘There’s something you have to know—’
‘What? Why?’ he grated in helpless fury. ‘And what right do you have to deny me? Just who the devil are you?’
‘I’m Verity,’ she replied wearily. ‘Verity Fox. I was adopted by the Foxes, like Linda. I’m Lio’s guardian. Stay there. Won’t be a sec.’
With that, she spun around, untwisted her skirts impatiently and gathered them up to reveal long, tanned and bare legs, which suddenly leapt into action and took her around the back of the house again in a flash of shimmering gold and white, all topped off by that night-dark, bobbing hair.
He dragged his mind from this vision, realising he was being left to stew.
‘Come back!’ he shouted angrily. ‘Verity! Come back at once—!’
He was talking to thin air. He felt like bellowing in his frustration. A nanny or au pair would have been easier to deal with than this stunning, feisty woman with a knockout body and a mind of her own!
He pressed a hand to his forehead, feeling as if he’d been standing in the path of a hurricane. He thrummed with life, aroused by Verity’s extraordinary persona, fired too by the tantalising knowledge that his son slept peacefully a hundred metres or so away.
Patience, he told himself, trying to calm his agitated mind. Five minutes, ten, an hour…what did those minutes matter in the long run? Lio was in the house. He’d scoop him up in his arms and never let him go. Soon. Soon.
But logic and sense couldn’t compete with months of deprivation. He wanted his child and had been without him too long.
‘For the love of heaven!’ he groaned contrarily.
How could he wait? How long did it take most women to undress, shower, choose something suitable… Hell. Hours, usually.
Suddenly incapable of remaining still, he began to loose off some of the energy that seemed to be stored in his body by striding up and down. Astonishingly, his mind had leapt away from Lio and had focussed on the woman who’d ignited his consciousness, imagining her in a room upstairs, peeling off that dress…
Per l’amor del cielo! What was he? Some sort of sex maniac that he should be distracted by a fabulous body at a time like this? It was true she was beautiful. Luscious. Perfect skin, incredible eyes, a mouth that had been made for kissing. And she was fiery. Passionate and apparently very caring.
He allowed himself a wry smile. No wonder she’d made such an impression on him! It was because his feelings were all over the place, his needs raw and hungry. He’d be more in control once he’d seen Lio. More tranquil.
‘Avanti!’ He muttered impatiently. Come on!
He had a child to hold and love, bags to pack, a flight to catch. A son to take home.
From the upstairs bedroom, the trembling Verity furtively observed Vittore as he fumed his way up and down beside the burglar-proof railings. Once he stopped and looked up at the spikes at the top and seemed to contemplate climbing over, but he then thought better of it and resumed his furious prowling, for all the world like the caged tiger he’d mentioned.
She gulped, her eyes wide with dismay. Never in the whole of her life had she seen anyone so angry. He simmered like a rumbling volcano about to erupt and devastate the countryside around.
Her heart thudded loudly. Vittore wouldn’t meekly go away when she explained that Lio oughtn’t to leave her. He’d never understand. She knew that he didn’t have an ounce of sensitivity in the whole of his body.
The nausea clawed at her stomach again. It looked horribly likely that she’d lose Lio. This was a situation she hadn’t expected, not in a million years.
She would never have given her heart so completely if she’d thought Vittore might turn up. Wouldn’t have allowed Lio to regard her as the centre of the universe. It would devastate her if Lio left. And how would he ever recover?
‘Oh, God!’ she whispered, appalled by the terrible dilemma.
This was Vittore’s child. But Lio was far too disturbed to be put in his father’s care. Verity held her stomach, willing herself not to be sick. She had to get through this, had to succeed, for Lio’s sake.
Her brain whirled with questions. Linda had lied when she’d said that Vittore was dead. Why? Had she run away? And if so, why? What kind of ogre was Vittore? Or was it his persistent infidelity that had been too painful to bear? Linda had been scathing about his womanising.
Verity took a good, hard look at him. Not that she didn’t know already how sensual he was, the kind of man who’d attract women like flies to his web.
That athletic and muscular body was packed with sexual impulses—which had, she could have sworn, been zapped at her once or twice. She’d certainly found herself reluctantly wilting under the intensity of his hot, sultry eyes. He even moved with a sexy fluidity that had made her knees go weak.
His air of sophisticated, man-of-the-world confidence was very appealing. Vittore’s hair was glossy; smooth and neat, now he’d swept back that poet’s lick back from his forehead. And he probably made good use of those melting chocolate eyes that had expressed several emotions in the short time they’d talked; flashing with tenderness, anger and longing.
She groaned in despair. It seemed that he wanted his child badly. Whether that was just a male need for a son and heir, or for a more profound and worthy reason, she didn’t know.
Linda’s boasts about their lifestyle could have been true. Clearly he was rich and successful, which meant he was used to getting whatever he wanted. She knew he headed the family textile business, with masses of exclusive outlets all over the world. So we’re talking about dynasties, she mused gloomily.
Even if she hadn’t seen the Mantezzini name above adverts for impossibly glamorous and expensive clothes, she could have recognised his wealth in the cut of his quiet, classy, soft-textured suit. It fitted him like a glove and had obviously been hand-made. Shoes, too. Probably the cream shirt and expensive silk tie had been laboured over w
ith loving care as well. Yes, the playboy Italian looked groomed to the last immaculate inch.
Smelling of money. Smelling gorgeous, as a matter of fact, drat him! She scowled. He’d give Lio a fabulous life—far better in material terms than the one she’d envisaged for them. No doubt Lio would take over the business eventually. What a future.
But would her nephew have what truly mattered: total, unconditional love? She went cold, envisaging the kind of loveless existence she’d been subjected to at home. Without her friends at school, she would have been utterly miserable.
And who would offer Lio a mother’s love? Would he find an ever-changing string of women in his father’s bed? And…would he be farmed out to nannies and be visited by his father only at teatime?
Her fists clenched. That wouldn’t be good enough! Bewildered, frightened little Lio needed affection and love like a fish needs water. And he needed Vittore’s rotten kind of fathering like a hole in the head.
But…what was she going to do? Start a siege? And look what a bag of nerves she was! She was trembling all over!
Time she dived into a warm shower. And found the courage to persuade Vittore that he couldn’t take Lio away right now.
She dared not fail. Her stomach lurching uncomfortably, she checked that Lio was all right. Looking down on his sweet face, her heart somersaulted at the thought of the next hour or so which would decide his fate as well as hers. Her finger stroked his fair cheek.
‘Oh, Lio,’ she whispered brokenly. ‘I love you so very much!’
A sob escaped in a wobbly kind of sound through her trembling lips and she hurried to peel off her sopping wet dress. Shakily she stepped into the shower, where tears mingled with the water that poured over her head and where all the daisy petals from that lovely, blissful afternoon were swept away, to sit in a limp and miserable heap blocking the shower drain.
Still only half-dry, her hair wrapped in a virgin white towel, she wriggled into the first pair of briefs that came to hand and yanked what she thought was her cotton turquoise dress from the wardrobe, her fingers shaking so much she could hardly cope with the tiny buttons which ran from neckline to hem.
