Mistress Material. Sharon Kendrick

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СКАЧАТЬ the pool one morning, a few days after she’d arrived. Men who fancied you didn’t virtually ignore you in a way which she thought bordered on downright rudeness. And they certainly didn’t speak to you in that awful, brusque way he had of addressing her. One day he’d actually had the nerve to tell her to stop hanging her head and to be proud of her height!

      Sometimes, she thought as she ploughed up and down the swimming pool in an effort to get rid of the heat in her veins which just wouldn’t go away—sometimes she thought that Pasquale almost disliked her—his manner towards her was so abrupt.

      And yet at others...

      She shivered. Other times she would turn around to find him watching her. Just watching her with a dark and brooding intensity which frightened the life out of her, yet thrilled her at the same time.

      Just about the only nice thing he’d said to her had been when he’d found her sketching quietly in the garden one day.

      He had stood silently looking over her shoulder for at least a minute, and had given a little nod as he’d watched her long fingers cleverly recreating the glass summer house, which was overhung with vines.

      ‘That’s good,’ he observed. ‘Good enough to make it your career, I think.’ And Suzanna had blushed furiously at the unexpected praise.

      She turned on her back and lazily kicked her legs around in the cool water. It was indeed a strange household she was staying with, she reflected. Francesca seemed to spend her whole time concocting schemes to get to one of the discotheques in the city, but so far she hadn’t succeeded, since Pasquale vehemently blocked every suggestion. ‘You’re far too young,’ he’d told her emphatically, and then his eyes had narrowed and he had given Suzanna one of his rare looks. ‘Do you girls go to many discos?’ he’d queried, his dark eyes suspicious.

      ‘Never!’ Suzanna and Francesca had replied in unison, but Suzanna hadn’t been able to stop herself from blushing at Francesca’s easy lie, and she was certain that Pasquale’s sharp eyes had noticed, for he’d frowned severely.

      Francesca and Pasquale’s father she hardly saw at all. A still handsome man of sixty, with streaks of silver in his dark hair, he seemed to spend most of the time working—as Francesca had prophesied—making it home only in time for the evening meal. Usually at dinner it was just the three of them, as Pasquale always seemed to be out on a date with one of the many glamorous-sounding women who telephoned him, and their stepmother was still in Paris.

      But today Suzanna was alone in the house. Pasquale was working and Signor Caliandro had flown to Naples for the day. Francesca had gone to visit her godmother on the other side of the city. She’d invited Suzanna to go along, but Suzanna knew that the elderly lady spoke little English and had decided that it would be fairer to let Francesca go alone. Besides, she rather liked having this luxurious house to herself.

      The swimming pool was vast and deliciously cool and Suzanna dived to the depths of the turquoise water and swam around. She’d almost used up all her air, when the devastatingly sharp pain of cramp stabbed ruthlessly at her calf.

      Perhaps if she’d had a lungful of air and hadn’t been near the bottom of the pool she wouldn’t have panicked, but panic she did, doing the worst thing she could possibly have done—she gulped water down, her arms and legs flailing wildly in all directions.

      Her head and chest felt as though they might actually burst, but suddenly she felt a pair of hands tightly grasping her waist. She tried instinctively to wriggle free, but whoever was holding her had an indomitable strength and would not let her go.

      She found herself being propelled to the surface, where her mouth broke open and greedily sucked in air, and she fell back against the chest of her rescuer, a solid, hard wall of muscle, but she knew without turning to look at him that it was Pasquale.

      His arms were still around her waist, and his head dropped briefly to rest on hers.

      ‘Dio!’ he exclaimed savagely, and kicked off and swam towards the pool steps. He climbed out first, then picked her up easily and carried her to lay her down on the soft, sun-warmed grass.

      She realised that he had dived in fully dressed—that he had not even bothered to kick off his beautiful, soft, handmade shoes, which were now sodden. His silk shirt clung to him like a second skin and his sopping trousers now etched every hard sinew of the strong shafts of his powerful thighs.

      His eyes were blazing. ‘You fool! You crazy little idiot!’ he cried out, and he ran his hands thoroughly but dispassionately over her body, like a doctor examining for broken bones.

      ‘I—I’m sorry.’ She trembled as her body felt his warm, sure touch.

      ‘And so you should be!’ he told her furiously. ‘Don’t you realise that you could have drowned?’ His eyes narrowed as he took in her white, frightened face. ‘Do you hurt anywhere?’ he demanded.

      Humiliatingly, her teeth stared to chatter so that she couldn’t speak.

      ‘Do you?’ he demanded again, still in that same grim tone. ‘Hurt anywhere? Tell me!’

      She couldn’t cope with his harshness, not when she was feeling so vulnerable, and she did what she hadn’t done since her father had died the previous year—she burst into tears.

      Instantly, his attitude altered. He looked appalled with himself as he gathered her into his arms and laid his strong hand protectively against the back of her head.

      ‘Don’t cry, bella mia,’ he whispered. ‘There is no need for tears. You are safe now.’

      But the shock of realising what might have happened if he had not been there made her sob all the harder, and he made a little sound, a small, rough assertion beneath his breath, as he picked her up and carried her towards the house. She was too weak to do anything other than rest her head against his chest, and gradually the sobs receded. It was just like visiting heaven, being in his arms like this, she realised, her body all wet and clingy and close. She could have stayed like that all day.

      ‘Wh-where are you taking me?’ she wondered aloud as he mounted the stairs.

      ‘To get you dry,’ he answered. His gentleness had vanished, and he spoke again in that grim, terse tone which left her wondering why he still seemed so angry with her.

      He carried her to her own room and set her down on the thick carpet, glancing quickly around, his eyes narrowing as they alighted on a tiny pair of knickers which were lying in an open drawer, together with a matching bra.

      Suzanna blushed.

      ‘Do you have a towelling robe?’ he asked.

      She shook her head. A towelling robe wasn’t the kind of thing you brought to Italy in the middle of summer. She only had a silk wrap.

      ‘You’d better wait here!’ he told her, and left the bedroom.

      He returned minutes later with what was obviously his own robe—a luxurious, almost velvety towelling garment in a deep, midnight-blue colour—and threw it down on the bed. ‘Now strip off,’ he told her. ‘Completely. Put the robe on and I will run you a bath.’

      If any other man had issued such a curt and intimate order, Suzanna would have screamed for the police, but because it was Pasquale she simply nodded obediently. He set off for the en suite without a backward СКАЧАТЬ