Ellie Darkins – Holiday With The Mystery Italian (страница 1)
Winning the ultimate prize...
Since the accident that paralyzed him, Italian tycoon Mauro Evans vowed to embrace life. So when he stars in a dating show for charity, picking prickly journalist Amber Harris as the winner to take on holiday is a challenge he can’t resist!
In Amber’s experience, relationships equal pain, so she’s determined to ignore her attraction to charismatic Mauro. But his bravery and strength threaten to tear down her defenses, giving her a new Christmas dream—ringing in the New Year with wedding bells!
“Why are you angry that I paid you a compliment?”
Amber sighed, shaking her head. “I’m not angry that you complimented me, Mauro. I’m angry that you lied to me.”
“When?” Taken aback, she stopped for a moment. “When did I lie?” he asked again.
“You called me beautiful. And I know that that’s not me. So don’t do it. Please.”
“I’m sorry,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders as he leaned back against the side of the pool. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“And that’s the point, isn’t it? It could have been anyone. I bet you’ve used that line a dozen times before, haven’t you?”
“Amber, I think you’re being—”
“I’m sorry, Mauro, I need to get showered.” She boosted out of the pool and walked away.
By the time Mauro came into the house from the pool, she was showered, caffeinated and had regained some of her composure.
“I’m sorry,” she said as he wheeled into the living space where she was sitting with an espresso and the English papers.
He shrugged. “No need to apologize. But, you know, I’ve given it some thought,” he said. “And I honestly think you’re a very beautiful woman.”
“Well, okay,” Amber said with a small smile. “As long as you’ve thought about it.”
When my husband whisked me away to Sicily on our honeymoon, I knew that it would be the perfect place to set a story. The beaches are beautiful, the mountains dramatic and the local cuisine mouthwatering. It was a real treat to revisit my photos and memories to bring Mauro and Amber’s story to life.
Special thanks go to my sister Rosie, not only for recommending the honeymoon destination in the first place, but for answering endless questions and providing Italian translations ever since—grazie mille!
I hope you enjoy visiting Sicily with Mauro and Amber as much as I did! If you’re interested in seeing more of photos and inspiration, you can check out my Pinterest board at Pinterest.com/elliedarkins.
Lots of love,
Ellie Darkins
Holiday with the Mystery Italian
Ellie Darkins
ELLIE DARKINS spent her formative years devouring romance novels, and after completing her English degree, she decided to make a living from her love of books. As a writer and editor, her work now entails dreaming up romantic proposals, hot dates with alpha males and trips to the past with dashing heroes. When she’s not working, she can usually be found running around after her toddler, volunteering at her local library or escaping all the above with a good book and a vanilla latte.
For Matilda
Contents
‘LAST BUT NOT LEAST, contestant number three, here’s your question: As a gold-medal-winning ParaGames swimmer...’ he paused for whoops from the enthusiastic audience ‘...I obviously spend a lot of time in the water. If you were a sea creature, what would you be and why?’
Amber suppressed an eye-roll. Seriously, this show couldn’t be any cheesier if it tried. She had thought when she’d arrived that the flashing lights and tinsel-bedecked set were tacky enough, but this guy’s titillating questions were taking the cringe factor to a new level. She just had to play along, she reminded herself, and get this over with. A charity gig was a charity gig, and when you worked in the media, even as a lowly newspaper columnist, you sometimes found yourself doing something completely embarrassing in aid of a kids’ charity. Like appearing on a celebrity version of the country’s best-loved dating show.
Luckily, with the answers she’d prepared, there was no way that this ‘eligible bachelor’ was going to pick her, even if the whole thing hadn’t been scripted by the producers, so it was just a case of answering this last question, posing for a quick photo, and getting back to her laptop and her deadline. She still hadn’t finished her latest column. Well, she hadn’t actually started it yet—she had a mailbox full of ‘Dear Amber’ letters, and still had to choose the most interesting to feature on the magazine’s website.
She took a deep breath and tried to remember the answer to the bachelor’s final question that she’d written and memorised when she’d been emailed in advance.
‘A killer whale,’ she said, sotto voce. No doubt the man on the other side of the screen, not to mention the producers, had been hoping for something a little sexier. Something about mermaids and their shells and their penchant for handsome princes, or firefly jellyfishes lighting up the ocean. She’d considered several contenders for her answer, each designed to ensure that she would be the last contestant that this eligible bachelor would be interested in. ParaGames swimmer. That definitely rang a bell—Mauro someone. Welsh surname. She spent an hour every morning in her local pool, and had watched hours of footage of the international sports and para championships held in London a few summers ago. He’d won a clutch of medals, featured in a fly-on-the-wall documentary about his training regime and then been the face of various food and sportswear brands in the years since.
The voice too—she definitely remembered that: an unusual combination of Welsh and Italian accents that was unmistakable. Her brain flashed a pair of built arms, wide shoulders with droplets of water catching the light from a hundred flashbulbs.
She realised that the studio had fallen into silence around them, waiting for her explanation for her decidedly unromantic response. ‘A killer whale,’ she repeated, ‘because they’re intelligent, the women stick together and they can be ruthless predators when it’s called for.’
For half a moment the silence in the studio stuck, but readers of her column knew what to expect from her. She called the shots as she saw them, and more often than not she saw the whole ‘romance’ scene as one big game that was rigged against fifty per cent of the players.
A deep, rich laugh from the other side of the screen stopped her train of thought, and she practically felt the noise flow through her, smooth and dark as the chocolate she kept permanently stocked in her kitchen. And in her desk. And in her bedside drawer just in case. Another flash of something from her memory. Hair slicked back and wet, a charming smile turned on a flustered television presenter. A shiver ran through her spine as she remembered the charm and the charisma that had exuded from this man, even down the camera from an echoing swimming venue. Good job she had sabotaged herself in this game. She had more than a sneaking suspicion that this man was going to be trouble for whichever unfortunate contestant got picked. She was best off out of it.
She sat cooking under the heat of the studio lights and looked longingly at the heaps of snow dotted around the studio. Sweat threatened to prickle at her brow and break through the industrial strength anti-shine powder she’d been caked with. Not that the polystyrene decorations would have helped much—but then there wasn’t a lot of genuine snow around in September.
Due to ‘scheduling reasons’, they were filming this Christmas special in the autumn, and she had to admit that the fake festivities were messing with her mind. Christmas carol fatigue was an annual complaint, but she’d never suffered from it this early before.
Whichever contestant was ‘picked’ to go on this date would be summoned back in December for the live programme, when the footage they were shooting now, and the highlights of the date, would be shown.
As she waited for Julia to announce which ‘lucky lady’ had been chosen, she tried to think of the advice she’d given the woman in her last Dear Amber article, but the crash of the audience breaking into applause intruded into her thoughts.
The presenter announced, with a shake to her voice, ‘And so it seems that our lucky contestant is Amber, a journalist from London!’
Amber wobbled on her stool as her jaw fell open. Oh, please, no. How could he have picked her? She’d said ‘ruthless predator’! She’d not made a single sexual innuendo, no matter how leading his questions, not even the one about which swimming stroke was her favourite—it had taken her an age to think of a response that didn’t conjure images of breasts, butterfly kisses or caresses of a strong, muscled back. She knew for a fact that the producers had told him to choose one of the other women. Had he never seen this show before? He should be picking the person with the biggest hair—the one that the producers had pushed towards the most suggestive answers. She’d batted away their attempts to give her a makeover. She knew what she was working with, and a fake tan and big hair weren’t going to change it. She glanced towards Ayisha, the show’s producer, and from the look on her face it seemed that she was as shocked as Amber. It seemed that Mauro had just gone off-script.