by Jill Blake
“Like I said, Izzy. Enjoy yourself, but don’t forget the condoms.”
Chapter 2
Luca glanced surreptitiously at his watch.
“Not a fan of long toasts?” The husky murmur came from the woman seated to his right. Isabelle DiStefano, one of the bridesmaids.
He stifled a smile and whispered back, “Is anyone?”
She shrugged a smooth white shoulder. “The giver of the toast, I imagine.”
This time he did laugh, an explosion of sound that earned him a few dirty looks from nearby guests. He wasn’t sure who the long-winded speaker was—his attention had been focused more on Isabelle than on the introductions at the head table—but he really wished the man would wrap it up already.
Having lectured before both students and colleagues over the years, Luca knew that if you didn’t snag your audience’s attention within the first ten seconds, you might as well pack it in.
Too bad the man droning on and on about the sanctity of love and the sacrament of marriage hadn’t learned that lesson.
Luca shifted in his seat, his thigh brushing up against the silk-clad leg beside him. He felt Isabelle tense, and waited to see what she would do next. Her attentive expression didn’t change, and above the waist she remained perfectly still. But to his delight, he felt the responding pressure of her thigh against his.
They’d been flirting for hours, practically from the moment they’d met earlier that evening. She was an old college friend of the bride’s, from some all-girls school in a posh suburb of Philadelphia. But unlike the bride, who seemed a little intense, Isabelle was all vivacious chatter, sparkling wit, effervescent laughter. Once in a while, he thought he caught the fleeting hint of a shadow cross her face. But then it was gone, a trick of the light, and she was sparkling again, a gamine smile on her lips, a coquettish flutter of red-tipped fingers against his arm.
He’d met plenty of women like her. Maybe not as vibrant as Isabelle. And perhaps lacking her dramatic beauty. He studied her profile again. Black hair with a hint of curl, tamed into an elegant knot at the back of her head, little strands springing free along her temple and down her neck. His fingers itched to release the rest and see just how long it really was. Dark lashes framed startlingly cool gray eyes. Over the course of the evening he’d found his gaze repeatedly returning to her face, as if trying to reconcile the intelligence in those eyes with the redder-than-red lips and hourglass figure poured into a sleeveless burgundy gown.
But take away the physical trappings, and what was left? A woman in the same mold as so many others he’d come across in his years at Princeton. Trophy wives who kept the boutiques of Palmers Square afloat. Ladies who lunched and played tennis, and graced fundraising galas to get their pictures taken. Coeds who trolled the campus simply to get an “MRS” degree. So much privilege and wealth, concentrated in such a small geographic area.
Isabelle exuded that same breezy nonchalance that came from growing up with money. She no doubt took for granted that when she walked down the street, people would scramble out of her way. Not spoiled, necessarily, but certainly sheltered and cossetted, without much care in the world. A party girl, but with class. Exactly the thing he needed right now.
The toasts finally wound down, and the emcee announced it was time to cut the cake.
Isabelle eased her chair back, and he experienced a brief sensation of loss when she moved out of reach. She glanced at him over her shoulder. “You’re not coming?”
He hesitated. “I don’t care much for sweets.”
Her laughter stroked across nerve endings that had already been primed by hours of proximity. “It’s not about the cake, Luca. It’s the ritual. Bride feeds groom, groom feeds bride.”
“Why, when they’re perfectly capable of feeding themselves?”
She shook her head and sighed. “And here I thought Italians were supposed to be romantic.”
He grumbled a bit more, but ultimately allowed her to lead him through the throng toward the platform where the newlyweds were slicing into an elaborate multi-tiered cake.
The bride performed her part with more concentration that Luca thought the task warranted. She handled the knife with careful precision, no wasted movements. Luca tried to recall if he’d ever seen her flustered. Granted, he’d only known her three months, and even that was a superficial acquaintance based entirely on his business association with her new husband. Still, it was enough time to cement his initial impression of calm intelligence. Probably an asset in her career as a psychiatrist, but to his mind, she always seemed a little too serious. He was surprised she’d agreed to move her practice from Philadelphia to a small town in the middle of nowhere, just to be with her husband. In his experience, career-minded women were notoriously driven, selfish, and inflexible. He wondered what incentives Ross had offered to get her to relocate.
As if sensing his thoughts, Jane raised her eyes from the cake to take an unhurried survey of the guests around her. Her gaze slid past him to settle on Isabelle standing by his side, and a small smile cracked her lips. Her entire expression softened, and the transformation was so unexpected that Luca blinked. Okay, he could see now what might have attracted Ross. But then, wasn’t every bride supposed to be beautiful on her wedding day? Even Cristina, faithless, calculating Cristina, had been a beautiful bride. He took a deep breath, pushing away the unpleasant memories.
Jane’s attention shifted to the maid of honor, who had plated the first slice of cake and offered it to the newlyweds, complete with a fork and napkin.
Beside him, Isabelle smothered a giggle.
Luca raised a questioning brow at her. “Che? What’s so funny?”
“Samantha. She’s just so fastidious.”
Clearly, Isabelle regarded her friend’s desire for neatness and order amusing. Luca found himself agreeing.
He’d encountered Samantha a number of times while visiting her husband Alex on business. Usually she only managed a brief appearance before being called away to attend some medical emergency or other. Alex seemed to take his wife’s dedication to career in stride. Though Luca did notice that the last few meetings had taken place in Princeton, at Alex’s request. Meetings that doubled as social engagements, partners included. Perhaps Alex wasn’t as resigned to his wife’s workaholic tendencies as he pretended. He’d confided at some point that the only time he and Samantha were assured of any uninterrupted privacy was when they travelled at least an hour away from Oakridge, because that was the only time she handed off her responsibilities to a covering colleague.
Well, to each his own, Luca thought, with a mental shrug. He’d had his fill of professional women, and after the disastrous way that had turned out, there was no way he’d venture down that road again. No, a career-minded woman was definitely to be avoided at all costs.
But a party-girl—now that he wouldn’t mind pursuing. His gaze slid back to Isabelle. Especially when it came in such an appealing package.
###
“Dance with me, Bella?”
Isabelle blinked at the unfamiliar shortening of her name and glanced at the large masculine hand that was extended, palm up, in her direction. Not the soft lily-white hand she would have expected from a university professor, but a hard, callused hand with the rough skin of a common laborer. She wondered at the incongruity, and then imagined how those hands would feel on her own delicate skin. A tiny shiver raced through her, and she felt a warm melting sensation deep in her belly.
Around them, waiters were whisking away the remains of dessert. Ross and Jane had opened the floor with their first dance as husband and wife, and now other couples were joining in.
She hesitated briefly before placing her hand in Luca’s, allowing him to pull her up. For an instant she wobbled on the unaccustomed four-inch heels, which put her nearly eye-to-eye with him. He steadied her with a hand on her hip. Through the silk of her dress, she could feel the heat of his palm, the strength of his fingers.
From the moment she’d
met him earlier that evening, she’d had the sensation of being slightly off balance. And that was even before her first sip of champagne.
She recalled Sam’s warning a couple days ago. Yes, she could certainly see how Luca might come off as being a player. Not that he’d done anything blatant or off-putting. There was nothing overtly threatening or predatory about him. But she couldn’t help comparing him to the muscle-bound testosterone-pumped males from the strip club. If they were fully-loaded Chevy Silverados, Luca was a sleek Lamborghini: polished, sophisticated, and all the sexier for not flaunting the powerful engine that purred beneath the surface.
There was something about him that she couldn’t put a finger on, something so compelling that she found her eyes drawn to him time and again, to the point where a lesser woman would have been embarrassed. As it was, she simply flashed a smile at him when he caught her looking, and took a deliberate sip of champagne. She couldn’t recall feeling this thirsty in a long, long time.
Objectively, it was hard to say what actually drew her. Sure, he was tall, with dark hair that fell in casual disarray over his temples and broad forehead. And he had chocolate eyes edged with laugh lines that crinkled at the corners when he smiled. She assessed the rest of him: chiseled cheekbones, square jaw, broad shoulders and tapered waist that showed to advantage in a well-cut tuxedo. He looked like the stereotypical Italian male, but without the abrasive machismo that some of her cousins displayed. And when he opened his mouth—Lord have mercy, was there anything sexier than a gorgeous man with an Italian accent?
Unlike Isabelle’s family, who were several generations removed from their Italian roots, it turned out that Luca was the real deal. Born in Salerno, his family still living back in the old country, he’d apparently come to the States as a graduate student and stayed.
“It’s a different world,” he told her, in response to her question about his home town. “Slower pace, none of this rush-rush-rush that you Americans engage in.”
If only he knew. But she was officially on vacation now. She could afford to slow down, at least for the next two weeks. She focused on his last words. “You don’t consider yourself American?”
“I’ve been here twelve years, Bella.” He smiled, and she felt as if the temperature spiked a few degrees. “Enough to—how do you say, test the waters? But Campania, that will always be home.”
She could almost hear Sam’s voice in her head, urging her to beware, not to fall for what sounded like a practiced line in some playboy handbook.
“I thought you were from Salerno.”
“Yes, but I have family up and down the coast, from Salerno up to Napoli. The whole region is called Campania. You’ve never been?”
She shook her head and smiled dreamily, only half listening as he waxed poetic about the Costeria Amalfitana. “It is the most beautiful place on earth, Bella. You drive on the edge of the cliffs, and the Mediterranean spreads out beneath you, brilliant in the sun. Each town along the way is a gem. Ravello, Amalfi, Positano, Sorrento. If you never see anything else in Italy, Bella, you must see this.”
As they circled the dance floor, she breathed in his scent. A mix of spice and sandalwood, clean male, and a hint of musk. She wanted to bury her nose in his collar, burrow beneath the layers of crisp white linen, down to the warmth of bare skin.
His hand shifted to the small of her back, aligning their bodies more closely. As they swayed together, she felt a low thrumming in her belly, the slow buildup of heat. The voices of the other guests faded into the background, along with the clink of china, and the throaty contralto channeling Nina Simone.
Despite the cool September weather, and the faint evening breeze that wafted through the open terrace doors just beyond the dance floor, Isabelle felt beads of sweat gathering along her hairline and sliding between her breasts.
Luca had fallen silent at some point, his breaths deep and even, feathering across her cheek, stirring the small tendrils of hair that had escaped her chignon.
She shivered and made an effort to return to their earlier discussion. Except she couldn’t recall where they’d left off, so rather than floundering about in search of a conversational bridge, she asked the question that was foremost on her mind. “Are you heading back to Princeton tonight?”
His lips lifted and those laugh lines crinkled. “The fall term doesn’t start until next week, Bella. And it’s a long way to travel if I don’t have to be there tomorrow.”
Her pulse kicked up a notch. “Are you staying here, then?”
“Close enough. There’s a little place in Oakridge, the Whitegate Inn. You’ve heard of it?”
“No.”
“I stay there when there is business to discuss.”
She blinked. “You plan to discuss business after the wedding?”
He laughed. “Your Jane would object to that, I take it?”
“I would think so.” She leaned back to get a better look at his face. “Oh. Of course, you’re joking. I knew that.”
Luca twirled her back toward their table. It was empty, save for the groomsman whom she’d abandoned earlier in the evening. He looked a bit ragged around the edges, and soon excused himself to find a restroom.
“I have a room upstairs,” she blurted.
Luca’s smile faded. His hand, faintly tanned against the pristine white tablecloth, stilled in the process of lifting a water glass. Whether it was the champagne, or the dim light, or the fact that she was so out of practice with this whole flirting thing, she found it hard to read his expression. Was that shock she detected in his eyes, or answering lust?
“Sorry,” she said, licking her suddenly dry lips. How many times had she imagined playing the carefree tourist, the fun-loving single American girl open to a holiday fling if the chance presented itself? And here it was, even before she reached Italy, the opportunity she’d fantasized about. The quintessential Italian male, gorgeous and unattached, right in front of her. Staring at her as if she’d offered to strip down and blow him in public. “I didn’t mean…”
Except that she did, and he seemed to know that. His hand covered hers before she could move away. “We are done here, yes?”
The bride and groom were still making their rounds, the bouquet toss wasn’t due to happen for another hour, and it was probably bad form for the bridesmaid to disappear before the bride. But Jane would understand.
Isabelle nodded.
Luca stood up, and for the second time that evening, offered her his hand.
Briefly, she questioned her own sanity. Propositioning a man she’d just met? This wasn’t even a first date, technically. She’d never done anything like this before. Ever.
“Bella?”
She took a deep breath and placed her hand in his.
Chapter 3
Her room was one of nine bedrooms that the manor offered its overnight guests. Earlier that afternoon, while dressing for the wedding, Isabelle had admired the Victorian décor: the high ceilings and crown molding, the delicate floral wallpaper and heavy velvet curtains, the mahogany furniture and massive sleigh bed.
This time, she hardly noticed the amenities as she and Luca stumbled through the door, lips locked, barely pausing for breath as the automatic lock snicked closed behind them. She briefly considered turning on a light, but couldn’t remember where the switch was, and then the thought faded as Luca’s lips nipped along her jaw and his teeth grazed her earlobe.
In the absence of light, her other senses took over.
Each sound became amplified. The harsh rasp of his breath. The ping of hairpins scattering on the floor as he freed her hair from its restraints. The faint strains of music filtering up from the reception below.
Each brush of skin against skin felt magnified. The tug of his fingers in her hair, exposing her neck to his lips. The scrape of his stubble along the delicate column of her throat. The flick of his tongue against the racing pulse just above her collarbone.
Her hands searched blindly for something solid to hang
onto, tracing the muscles of his arms and shoulders through multiple layers of fabric.
“Bella.” His voice whispered across the tops of her breasts, transforming her name into something exotic, an endearment, an entreaty.
His fingers found the hidden zipper on the side of her gown and tugged.
“Wait,” she murmured.
Cool air brushed exposed skin as the gown fell away, leaving her in a strapless red push-up bra and matching silk thong.
“Luca.” She slid a hand between them and pushed against his chest, flustered by how quickly he’d gotten her nearly naked while he was still fully dressed.
He paused, fingers resting lightly on her back, just below the bra. “Si, cara?”
She tried to ignore the feathery stroke of his thumbs along her ribs. With every upward sweep, he edged closer and closer to her breasts before retreating. Her nipples tightened in anticipation, the material of her bra almost abrasive against the delicate peaks. “I need…”
“Si.” He flicked a thumb over one lace-edged cup. “I know.”
She moaned, clutching the lapels of his jacket. “No, Luca.”
The muscles beneath her fists tensed. “No?”
“I need to get something.” She tried to step back, only to find her way blocked by the solid wood door behind her.
“Whatever it is can wait,” he said, capturing her mouth in a slow, thorough kiss that sent sparks of heat straight to her groin.
Vaguely, she became aware of his hands moving again, reaching behind her to unhook the bra. He cupped her freed breasts, massaging and exploring their fullness, circling the puckered nipples, alternately rolling and pinching the tips until she tore her mouth away, panting. “Condom.”
His fingers stilled. The ticking of an old ormolu clock filled the silence. She nearly tugged him back, thinking, to hell with it, when his grip loosened and he stepped away. “I’ll wait.”
She scurried toward the bathroom, nearly tripping over the gown that had pooled on the floor at her feet. Behind her, she could hear him moving around.
