Happy Mother's Day!

by Sharon Kendrick

  ‘I didn’t mean to scare you, cara mia.’ He had done a pretty good job of scaring himself.

  She smiled and expelled a shivery little sigh. ‘I’m not scared. I’m …’ Her voice faltered as she gave a shaky laugh and pressed her hand to the one he held against her face.

  He looked at her fingers, small and very pale against his darker skin.

  ‘What are you?’

  ‘All right, I am a little afraid, but not of you,’ she added quickly. ‘I’m scared of the way you make me feel.’ Her eyes fell from his and she looked embarrassed. ‘God, that is such an over-the-top thing to say to a total stranger.’

  ‘We’re not total strangers.’

  Her feathery brows lifted. ‘I don’t even know your surname.’

  ‘It is Romanelli.’ He paused, but there was no flicker of recognition on her face. ‘Francesco Luis Romanelli.’

  ‘Well, Francesco Luis Romanelli, I’m Erin, Erin Foyle. I’ve not the faintest idea what I’m doing here. Why I’m talking to you this way. Why I’m not having hysterics because you’ve just told me we’ve run out of petrol.’ She studied his face as though she expected to find the reason for her aberrant behaviour written there.

  After a moment the furrow in her smooth brow relaxed as an impish smile that deepened the dimple in her left cheek spread across her face.

  Francesco’s hand fell away as she leaned back in the worn leather seat chuckling softly as she drew her knees up to her chin.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘I was thinking about when you walked into the hotel tonight looking like. I thought that waiter, horrid, stuck-up man, was going to have an apoplexy. “We have a strict dress code, sir.”’ She shook her head. ‘Silly man!’

  ‘Looking like what?’ he probed, totally hooked by the smile that tugged at the corners of her wide, sweet lips. He hungrily examined the soft contours of her expressive face, finding it hard to believe that twenty-four hours earlier he had never set eyes on her.

  ‘So modest,’ she mocked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Are you fishing for compliments?’

  He shook his head, only half concentrating on her words as he looked at her mouth.

  ‘You strode in there looking like a dark, enigmatic antihero, who hides his sensitivity under the surly, brooding exterior.’ She laughed at his expression. ‘Of course, I know you don’t have an ounce of sensitivity because you were quite awful to me yesterday.’

  ‘Yet you are here?’

  ‘Well, you did rescue me.’

  ‘From the results of your own stupidity.’

  ‘Yes, you did touch on the subject of my stupidity yesterday and I agree, in retrospect, that exploring alone that far off the beaten track might not have been the best idea I ever had. But I’m glad I did.’

  ‘You are?’ He was amused by her defiance.

  She nodded. ‘If I hadn’t I wouldn’t have met you.’

  ‘Perhaps we were fated to meet?’ He half expected her to laugh at the suggestion, but she didn’t.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘So you came with me tonight out of gratitude?’ ‘No, not gratitude,’ she denied huskily. ‘I did promise you a dinner, though I never actually thought I’d see you again.’ ‘But you wanted to?’

  Her eyes slid from his. ‘I’m here, aren’t I? Are those exactly the same clothes you were wearing yesterday?’

  ‘This shirt is clean.’ Francesco closed his fingers over her hand and brought it up to his lips. ‘And I’ve showered.’

  ‘But you smelt quite incredibly good yesterday, too.’

  ‘Do you always say exactly what you are thinking?’

  She looked startled by the question. After a thoughtful pause she shook her head. ‘No, it’s just with you. That’s really strange, don’t you think?’

  Not nearly so strange, Francesco thought, as a man who could command a private jet simply by picking up a phone pretending to be the owner of a truck that most people would have been embarrassed to be seen in.

  ‘This is probably the most irresponsible thing I’ve done in my life,’ she admitted. ‘I suppose you’ve done a lot of irresponsible things?’

  ‘You sound envious.’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Your friends didn’t look happy when you came with me.’ ‘They weren’t; they think I have lost my mind,’ she admitted frankly. ‘They suspect you prey on silly, impressionable female tourists like me. They think your intentions are dishonourable.’

  ‘Your friends are right—my intentions are entirely dishonourable.’

  She blushed a little, but did not drop her gaze from his. ‘I’m relieved to hear it. They were actually green with jealousy.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he suggested, playing devil’s advocate, ‘they had your best interests at heart. You know, I didn’t intend it to be like this.’ His frustrated scowl encompassed the borrowed beat-up truck.

  ‘I feel quite insulted. I thought running out of petrol was some elaborate plan to seduce me,’ she pouted. Behind the teasing words and smile her eyes still held that dazed, bruised quality.

  ‘I did have a plan to seduce you, but it wasn’t this.’

  ‘Was your plan nice?’

  ‘It depends how you feel about candlelight and silk sheets.’ And a meal served by an internationally renowned chef who had been flown in from Paris for the occasion on his private jet.

  ‘Oh, that was very sweet. Why are you laughing?’

  ‘I’ve never been called sweet before,’ he admitted.

  ‘Well, you are very, in a wolfish sort of way. You know, there is an upside to this situation.’

  ‘There is?’

  ‘I’ve never made love in a car. Actually, I’ve never …’ She stopped and spoiled the bold invitation by giggling nervously as if surprised by her own audacity.

  He caught hold of the small hand and pressed her palm to his lips. The shudder that rippled through her body was visible. He imagined how she would respond to a more intimate touch and realised that he was shaking with anticipation as much as she was.

  ‘This is not a car,’ he said, thinking about how she would taste when he ran his tongue down the valley between her breasts.

  ‘No, there’s much more room. And you shouldn’t be embarrassed,’ she added, her expression growing earnest. ‘I’m not the sort of girl who’s impressed by flashy cars, Francesco, and what would you need with a flashy car? You work with horses and you couldn’t fit a bale of hay or something in the back of a Porsche.’

  ‘How do you know I work with horses?’

  ‘You mean you don’t?’

  It was at that point that Francesco chose to lie, telling himself she’d laugh when he revealed the real truth. And it wasn’t as if it were an outright lie—as often as his hectic schedule would allow he tried to spend time training the horses on his estate, which had been in his family since the thirteenth century. He had come there more frequently of late, feeling the need to escape from conversations that stopped abruptly when he walked into a room.

  ‘Anyway, it’s a well-known fact men who drive those sort of cars have something to compensate for.’

  ‘Is that so?’ he said, thinking of the several gleaming models, including a Porsche, sitting idly in his own garage.

  ‘You don’t think I have anything to compensate for? You wouldn’t prefer me if I had money and could afford to take you to a smart hotel?’

  There was a long silence while she just gazed up at him. ‘I like you just the way you are.’

  Unable to resist any longer, he bent forward, framed her face between his hands and kissed her with the same combustible results!

  ‘Dio mio!’ he groaned, dragging his head away. ‘We’re here for the world to see!’

  Undeterred by the lack of privacy, she continued to press hot, hungry kisses to the damp skin of his throat while her trembling fingers fumbled with the buttons of his shirt.

  ‘We should wait.’

  ‘
Just thinking about you makes me ache deep inside,’ she confided huskily.

  Francesco groaned. ‘Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me?’

  Her breasts strained against the silk of her blouse as she gave a shuddering sigh in response to his throaty confession. ‘Do you know how totally beautiful you are, Francesco?’ She traced a line down his sweat-dampened skin from his throat all the way to the waistband of his trousers. ‘Of course you do, but I’m trying not to think about all the—’

  ‘We are neither of us thinking.’ The effort of will required to remove the small hand that was tugging at the buckle of his belt made him physically shake like someone in the grip of a fever.

  Her searing blue passion-glazed eyes lifted to his face. ‘Did I get it wrong? I thought you said you intended to seduce me.’

  ‘Dio mio … I did … I do … but not here. I wanted it to be special the first time.’

  ‘“The first time …”’ she echoed, laughing.

  Later the laughter had made sense.

  ‘There was a farm a mile or so back. I will walk back and get petrol.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do to make you change your mind?’ she asked, shooting him a provocative look from beneath the sweep of her lashes as she began to unfasten the buttons of her blouse.

  As the heaving upper slopes of her creamy breasts were exposed his control snapped and he pulled her roughly into his arms.

  ‘Thank God!’ she breathed into his mouth as they slid down in the seat.

  She had been so totally uninhibited about expressing her pleasure at his touch that Francesco had not suspected until the actual moment he slid into her body and heard her tiny cry of shock that she had still been a virgin.

  He was both appalled and aroused by the knowledge that he was her first lover.

  ‘Relax, let me make this good for you,’ he begged huskily as she arched beneath him and slid her hands across his bare shoulders, clinging on as though she feared she would fall.

  ‘Oh, my God, you’re just incredible, Francesco!’

  The hoarse cries of astonished pleasure he was hearing in his head mingled with the more high-pitched sounds of laughter that drifted in through the window. Sucking in a deep breath through flared nostrils, Francesco dragged his thoughts kicking and screaming back to the present.

  It took several moments for him to get the hunger that still roared like a furnace in his veins under control.

  He sighed and dragged a hand through his hair. Reaching inside the glove compartment, he pulled out Erin’s letter. He slowly tore it in half, then in half again before throwing it out the open window. The gesture was purely symbolic, but it made him feel better to watch the pieces scatter as a gust of wind caught them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  FORGETTING about the phone call he had intended to answer, Francesco was about to turn the ignition when there was more laughter outside. And mingled with this laughter was a tearful cry that held an unmistakable note of fear.

  Frowning, he turned his head at the same moment one of the youths moved and he saw the girl’s face; underneath the overdone make-up that caked her face she was very young. The terror he saw written clearly in the childish features radically changed the situation. This was not simply high spirits.

  With a sigh he opened the door. The fact was he didn’t need any of this, but Francesco had not been brought up to turn a blind eye and ignore his duty and social responsibility.

  The youths were too busy, and, if the beer cans discarded on the floor were any indicator, too drunk to register his presence until he was right upon them.

  ‘I think the lady would like to leave.’

  As one they swung around to face him, their expressions uniformly smug and belligerent. The one who was obviously the self-appointed leader dug his thumbs into his belt and took a swaggering step towards Francesco who, rather than recoiling in horror as he was meant to, simply looked bored.

  This reaction visibly troubled the glassy-eyed gang leader.

  ‘Who asked you?’

  Francesco smiled. It was a smile that sent a cold shudder down the young boy’s spine.

  ‘Why don’t you boys just run along home, no harm done?’ Francesco suggested pleasantly.

  The youth nearest raised a can to his mouth and drained it before mangling the tin in his hand and flinging it over his shoulder. ‘We’re not running no place, mate!’ he announced loudly. ‘So why don’t you mind your own business?’

  The pathetic bravado was wasted on Francesco, who was fast losing his patience. He lifted one hand, flicked the cuff of his jacket and glanced at the metal-banded watch that glittered against his olive-toned skin. He had places to be and his plan to reach there before lunch was beginning to seem optimistic.

  ‘That is, of course, your choice, but the young lady—’ he nodded towards the scared-looking teenager ‘—would like to go home. Is that not so?’

  The young girl nodded and eagerly ran into the shelter offered by his outstretched arm. ‘You are all right?’ Francesco asked softly.

  The girl who looked up at him as though he was her saviour nodded and wiped the tears from her cheeks, smearing mascara over her face in the process. Looking at her more closely, Francesco realised that beyond the vibrant hair she bore no resemblance whatsoever to his wife.

  For a start the woman he had married would not have cringed in a corner while brainless thugs intimidated her. One corner of his mouth lifted into a wry half-smile as he contemplated her probable actions if she found herself in a similar situation.

  His redhead would have stuck out her chin and ripped her attackers apart with her rapier-sharp tongue. And if that hadn’t been sufficient she would have aimed some kicks at their most vulnerable areas, and most likely landed a few.

  Neither would she have welcomed his well-meant intervention. No, she would have told him in no uncertain terms that she was more than capable of taking care of herself.

  ‘I think it’s time you went home,’ he suggested gently to the girl, who did not resent his interference.

  She did not require a second bidding. Casting him one last look of supreme gratitude, she fled.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Francesco said, turning his body to block the youth who had moved to pursue her.

  ‘But she liked me.’

  Francesco smiled. ‘Did you not know? It is a lady’s privilege to change her mind, and a gentleman always remembers that.’

  Folding his long, lean length into the driver’s seat, Francesco dismissed the incident from his mind almost immediately, or most of it anyway. But the hair kept triggering memories he fought to keep in check for the rest of the journey.

  Valentina tracked her guest down to the small sitting room. The south-facing room was her own favourite in the big rambling house that had become her home when she had left her native Tuscany to marry her English husband five years earlier.

  She glanced at her watch before hitching her infant son a little more securely onto her hip. Her expression was reluctant as she reached for the door handle.

  Half an hour earlier her husband had revealed the details of his master plan. She had seen the flaws immediately.

  ‘What if she doesn’t want to be in the library at eleventhirty?’ she asked. ‘What if Francesco is late? What am I meant to do then?’

  ‘You’ll think of something, and if Francesco says he is going to be here at a certain time he will be.’

  Valentina could not deny his last point. People who meant exactly what they said were rare, but her cousin was one of them.

  ‘You know, Sam, I think you’re enjoying this cloak-anddagger stuff far too much!’

  She, on the other hand, was having serious misgivings. When she expressed her doubts about being part of what amounted to a conspiracy, Sam dismissed her concerns.

  ‘Conspiracy? This isn’t a conspiracy, Val.’

  ‘Well, what would you call it? We invited Erin to a party that doesn’t exist, when we’re actually going
to lock her in a room with her estranged ex!’

  ‘There will be no locking involved. I’ve just made sure that they can have the house to themselves for a few hours.’

  ‘Erin will probably never speak to me again,’ Valentina predicted gloomily.

  ‘We’re just helping two people get back together,’ Sam soothed. ‘Look at it this way—does Erin look happy?’

  ‘Couldn’t he just pick up a telephone like anyone else?’

  ‘Once the lawyers get involved things get complicated.’

  ‘Maybe, but why does he want to see her?’

  ‘Well, obviously he wants to try again. He wants reconciliation. What other reason could there be?’

  Valentina did not even attempt to explain about the complexities of Latin male, macho pride to her English husband. As much as she loved Francesco, she was not blind to his faults; her cousin was capable of being utterly ruthless.

  Of course, it might be as simple as Sam suggested; he might just want to salvage his marriage. The problem was, where Francesco was concerned things were rarely simple!

  ‘Look, I really don’t see what the problem is. Francesco has asked for our help. When did he ever do that?’ ‘Never,’ she admitted.

  Her charismatic cousin was just about the most self-sufficient individual she had ever encountered. He was the type of person that people instinctively turned to in times of crisis. A cloud passed over her face as her thoughts turned to the tragedy that had recently devastated the Romanelli family.

  Rafe, Francesco’s twin brother, had taken his own life.

  She was ashamed to admit, but she had been so caught up in her own grief that she had spared very little thought to how Francesco, who had remained a tower of strength throughout, must be feeling.

  Then on the day of funeral she had walked into a room and found him alone. At the sound of his name Francesco had lifted his head … the bleak despair she had seen in his eyes during that brief unguarded moment would stay with her for ever.

  The family had considered it a good thing when he had thrown himself into his work with even more energy than usual, but she hadn’t been so sure.