Carol Marinelli – Her Passionate Italian: The Passion Bargain / A Sicilian Husband / The Italian's Marriage Bargain (страница 9)

How did I miss all of this before? she asked herself. But she knew how. She had spent the last two weeks so engrossed in her love for Angelo that she hadn’t been able to see anything beyond it.

But there was worse to come as yet another thought hit. ‘He’s going to be here tonight, isn’t he?’ she challenged. ‘He’ll be coming here with his wife and you’re going to think you can sneak off with him somewhere for a little while!’

‘That’s so much rubbish,’ Sonya denied.

No, it wasn’t. ‘I know you, Sonya,’ she said. ‘I know how common sense shoots right out of the window when a new man comes into your life.’

‘You sound like my mother again.’

She did, Francesca acknowledged and this time didn’t care. ‘Angelo is worried that you’re both going to risk causing a scene tonight. I bet he even asked you both not to come.’

‘You’re so way off the mark, it’s sad to listen to you.’ Sonya bent to collect her bag.

‘Then why is Angelo mad at you?’ she demanded outright.

Sonya didn’t answer but just walked across the room and threw open the first door that she came to. The fact that it happened to be the bathroom was due to luck more than anything, but as she went to slam the door shut so she didn’t have to have this discussion, Francesca got in one final plea.

‘Promise me you won’t do anything stupid tonight, cara,’ she begged anxiously. ‘I need your assurance—please.’

For a moment she thought Sonya was going to go on protesting her innocence, then it was as if all the fight just trickled out of her and she released a heavy sigh. ‘So long as you promise to keep Angelo away from me,’ she bartered. ‘And don’t try to get out of me who the man is!’

The bathroom door swung shut. Francesca winced as she turned back to the main door. She was just stepping out onto the landing when she heard the sound of raised voices echoing in the hall below. She paused, her heart beginning to beat faster when she recognised Angelo’s angry tones.

‘Do you think I am a fool? Of course I am not going to risk everything now! Your business is safe, Papa, take my word for it,’ he said bitterly. ‘And don’t forget which of us is paying the price for it!’

Angelo’s father spoke then but she couldn’t hear what he was saying because he wasn’t as angry as his son. Then a door closed and she could hear nothing else, but she was left wondering if the Batiste business was in trouble.

Had Carlo Carlucci lived up to Alessandro Batiste’s worst fears and threatened to remove his business and take it elsewhere?

The wretched man was beginning to cast a very long shadow over almost everything that was important in her life, she mused grimly as she stepped into her own room next to Sonya’s and closed the door. If he was a married man she would have to start wondering if he was Sonya’s new lover! Sonya’s reed-slender beauty being most definitely his type!

And on that truly caustic note she took herself off to the bathroom to indulge in a long, hot, tension-relieving soak before she had to present herself downstairs to help welcome the other guests that Angelo’s parents had invited to stay overnight at the villa.

‘I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this.’ She frowned at the mirror.

‘Do what?’ Sonya was standing behind her, busily fixing a beaded comb into the twisted knot she’d fashioned with Francesca’s hair that now felt as if it had left her creamy shoulders and neck vulnerably exposed.

‘Buy something that moulded.’

She was no raving beauty and had never pretended otherwise to herself. She might be tall and slender with passably attractive legs, but she possessed curves—oldfashioned curves like a waist and hips and full, firm breasts that sort of pouted whatever she wore. They were doing it now, pushing up above the straight edge of the bodice as if they were trying to escape.

‘Oh, dear,’ she sighed, and with a shimmy and a tug tried to pull the bodice up a bit.

‘You’re too critical of yourself,’ Sonya mumbled from behind her. ‘Have you any idea how many women shell out thousands to get C cups like yours?

‘They can have mine for free,’ Francesca muttered.

She’d gone shopping for classic black sophistication that would put her on a par with her super-elegant guests tonight and come back with this sultry dark red creation that was supposed to skim not cling to all those places she did not want to accentuate. The silk organza skirt was its saving grace with its ankle-length handkerchief edge. It was singularly the most expensive item of clothing she had ever bought, and, ‘I look like a lush.’

‘Idiot,’ Sonya chided. ‘You look like the lovely belle at your own ball, which is how it should be.’ She finished securing the hair comb then stepped back to study the overall look. ‘Gosh, that colour suits you.’

‘It reminded me of the ruby setting in my ring,’ she explained, which was why she’d bought it instead of nice, safe black. ‘Do you think Angelo will like it?’

‘I think Angelo will adore it,’ Sonya replied without a single hint of her usual caustic spoiling her tone. Then she turned away to pick up the fine chiffon scarf that came with the dress. ‘Here, let’s drape this around your shoulders just so and—presto, we have a princess.’

‘We have an overdressed Barbie doll.’

‘No.’ Sonya appeared beside her in the mirror wearing a short skimpy blue satin slip dress that matched the colour of her eyes. ‘I’m the Barbie doll around here, cara,’ she pronounced. ‘Complete with twenty-four-inch spiked shoes.’

They both fell into a fit of the giggles, which was nice because they hadn’t done much laughing recently—not since Sonya and Angelo fell out. ‘I’m going to miss having you around when I’m married,’ Francesca confided softly once they’d both calmed down again.

There was a silence—a stillness, both short, both tight. Then Sonya uttered a different kind of laugh. ‘You must be joking. You’ll be too busy doing something else to miss me.’

She was talking about making love but the moment that Francesca tried to visualise that Rubicon moment all she saw was a deeply sardonic dark, handsome face. It shook her so badly that she actually gasped.

‘What?’ Sonya demanded sharply, staring at her suddenly whitened face.

‘Nothing,’ she dismissed because how could she confess to Sonya what she had just seen? She would laugh—and why not? To her it would be one in the eye to her favourite enemy, Angelo, to learn that another man could arouse hot visions of lust inside his sex-shy fiancée.

She frowned again. It was beginning to worry her that she could feel like this about another man when she was about to commit herself to Angelo.

There was a knock at the door then. Sonya went to answer it. It was Angelo, come to escort Francesca downstairs. With a stiff smile and a mumbled, ‘See you down there,’ Sonya left them alone, pulling the door shut behind her as Francesca was turning from the mirror.

The moment she looked at him all her worries faded. He was wearing a formal black dinner suit and bow-tie and he looked so handsome that she felt herself melting inside. He was smiling at her, he was warm, he was all sunlight not mocking darkness. I’m just suffering from pre-betrothal nerves, she told herself and found her own smile when he sighed and said, ‘Ah, bella—bella, mi amore. You take my breath away.’

And that was all that she wanted, she told herself as she moved towards him. She wanted to take Angelo’s breath away. She wanted to bask in the warmth of his love.

Which was exactly what she did for the next few hours, as the villa slowly filled with people and Angelo rarely left her side. The official announcement of their engagement was to take place at midnight and until then everyone was encouraged to sample the banquet buffet laid out in one of the grand salons or dance to the music provided by a group of live musicians in another grand salon. By ten the villa was throbbing with music and laughter and the more elegant hum of conversation.

She noted Carlo Carlucci’s arrival at around ten o’clock. Who didn’t note it? she thought sourly as she watched surreptitiously the way he drew people to him without him having to do more than stand by the main salon doors. He’d arrived without the usual beauty hanging on his arm, which surprised her. And he also made no effort to come anywhere near her, which was also a surprise since it wasn’t very polite of him to keep his distance.

But it was an even bigger relief. She didn’t want him using one of his mocking smiles on her, or worse—letting it drop that they’d met by accident a couple of times and exposing the fact that she hadn’t mentioned those meetings to Angelo.

She would do, she promised herself. Tomorrow maybe when this was all over. But for now she was happy—happy—happy again and wanted to keep it that way.

Sonya, she saw, was behaving herself and sticking close to their own friends and work colleagues. If her new lover was here tonight—and Francesca was certain that he was here somewhere—she couldn’t tell from Sonya’s manner who the man was.

And foolishly she relaxed enough to drop her watchful guard on her friend. She was too busy being passed from one partner to another to be whirled beneath glittering crystal chandeliers. She was showered with beautiful compliments and teased and flirted with as only the Italians could do with such stylish panache. It was such a novelty to be the centre of everyone’s attention like this that she began to feel intoxicated by it—or was it the champagne?