One Night in... Milan: The Italian's Future Bride / The Italian's Chosen Wife / The Italian's Captive Virgin. Кейт Хьюит

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СКАЧАТЬ he sent the car shooting out into the main stream of traffic. Several car horns blared in protest at his pushy arrogance. He ignored those too.

      ‘Look, I know you’re angry,’ she allowed shakily. ‘And I know that you have every right to be, but—’

       ‘Grazie.’

      ‘This is kidnap!’

      ‘So sue me,’ he gritted. ‘That could be fun.’

      Fun—? Rachel trembled and shivered as she sat tensely beside him. None of this had been fun from the moment she’d allowed Elise and Mark to talk her into it. One minute she’d been perfectly content, hiding away in Devon nursing her broken heart, the next minute she’d found herself staying up here in London with her half-sister and being embroiled in her complicated love-life!

      ‘It w-wasn’t what you think—’

      ‘You don’t know what I’m thinking.’

      ‘I am not being paid to—’

      ‘Hit on me?’ he offered when those very same words dried in her throat. ‘It is a relief to know I still have some natural pulling power then.’

      He had loads of natural pulling power. That was his problem.

      ‘Are you always this obnoxious when you’ve been caught off your guard?’ she flared up on the back of pure agitation. ‘So I hit on you—what’s new there to a man like you? From what I hear, half the women in Europe have done it at some point in your blessed life—and not all of them because of your sex appeal!’

      He sent her a glinting look. ‘Did I hear a hint of scorn in your tone then?’

      ‘Yes!’ she flicked out. ‘Men like you stroll through life as if you own it. You do what you want when you want to do it. You pick your women on looks alone and don’t give a care whether they have feelings you could actually wound!’

      Something sharp hit his voice. ‘I wounded—you?’

      ‘You mean you don’t know?’ The sarcasm was out before she could stop it.

      They’d stopped at a set of traffic lights and he turned in his seat. Instantly the sheer size and power of the man flooded over Rachel like a simmering hot shower. She could feel his eyes skimming her face and her body as he checked her out while flipping through his huge data bank of women, trying to pinpoint who she was. Any second now and he was going to make a connection he could have made hours ago if he’d been more observant.

      Rachel felt the stinging temptation to lie, if only to really confuse him, but—‘No,’ she said finally.

      Someone just like you did that to me, she added inside her head. Then she flicked him a hard resentful glance, heaved in a breath and saved him the bother of further taxing his no doubt phenomenal brain power.

      ‘Elise Castle,’ she breathed out.

      CHAPTER TWO

      THE name had its desired effect, Rachel noticed bitterly, as a long thick silence stretched between them and he didn’t say or do a single thing.

      She held her breath again while she waited for him to recover and begin spitting out a barrage of angry questions—but still nothing came.

      In the end she took the initiative and broke the silence. ‘The name means nothing to you?’ she gibed.

      Other vehicle headlights swished past the car windows, lighting their faces momentarily. Illuminated, she saw only the cold steel of his eyes as they fixed hers like lashing daggers and he kept his silence. In the darkness her gaze dropped for some reason to the single line straightness of his mouth.

      A mouth that already felt disconcertingly familiar. She could still taste it. Her tongue even made a passing swipe at her lips in response to the thought.

      Headlights lit up the car’s interior again, dragging her attention back to his eyes. They’d narrowed and were watching her like a hawk waiting to pin its next victim. Rachel’s breathing fell into small jerky fits. Her heart was pounding. He was frighteningly exciting to look at, all well cared for male with just the right balance between sensational good looks and raw masculinity.

      Her mouth had to part to aid her quick breathing. He dropped his gaze and the result was a tingling quiver across her lips that sent the tip of her tongue nervously chasing it. Sexual awareness was suddenly alive and cluttering the atmosphere. Rachel felt her breasts grow heavy, their tips pushing out with a terrible knowing sting. He flicked those eyes back to hers again and he knew—he knew!

      Then the traffic lights decided to change, demanding that he set them moving. She watched as if mesmerised as his dark head shifted back into profile, watched his long-fingered hands as he flipped the car into a slick right turn. More seconds ticked by and her chest felt as if it was burning beneath the pressure she was placing on it by barely breathing at all now.

      ‘The name means plenty to me,’ he finally answered. ‘And you are not Elise.’

      No, Rachel knew she wasn’t Elise. She was her younger, less pretty, more sensible half-sister.

      More sensible—when? She then scoffed at that. Sensible women did not get themselves into situations like this. Sensible women steered clear of the complicated love lives of others—and especially of frighteningly sexy men like him!

      Sensible women did not fall in love with handsome Italians with a rich repertoire of words of love and a killer seduction technique—yet she had done it.

      She had to close her eyes as an image of Alonso suddenly appeared in front of her. Tall, dark, beautiful Alonso, who had been so warm and attentive and flatteringly possessive when they had been out together, and so excitingly intense and passionate when naked with her in bed. They’d spent six glorious weeks living together in his apartment overlooking Naples. He’d vowed he loved her. ‘I love you—ti’amo mia bella cara …’ he’d murmured to her in his rich, dark, accented voice and she’d known without a doubt that she loved him.

      Rachel shivered.

      It was only when the time had come for her to return to England and he’d said, ‘We had a wonderful time, hmm, amore? It is a shame it now has to end,’ that she’d understood what a stupid, gullible, naïve fool she had been.

      ‘I said you are not Elise,’ this other Italian with the rich, dark accent prompted.

      Rachel opened her eyes and let the real world back in. ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘But very few people will be able to tell that from behind …’

      A bell of understanding suddenly clanged loud in Raffaelle’s head. Next to come was an action replay of the way this woman had thrown herself on him, followed by several camera flashes. Like a wild beast sniffing danger in the atmosphere, he picked up the scent of a deliberately constructed scandal involving him and the very married Elise.

      But it was a scandal he believed he had already diverted. As far as he was aware, the lovely Elise had seen the error of her ways after his last spiked conversation with her on the telephone before he’d broken all contact with her and made his quick exit from London back to Milan. The grapevine, via Daniella, said СКАЧАТЬ