The Italian's Baby Bargain: The Italian's Wedding Ultimatum / The Italian's Forced Bride / The Mancini Marriage Bargain. Kate Walker

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СКАЧАТЬ older woman lifted her brows and laughed before turning to Sam. ‘He had to sink a small fortune into it just to stop it from falling down,’ she confided, slanting him a challenging look that dared him to contradict her. ‘On present performance it will be another ten years before our hard-headed business tycoon even breaks even. Sound investment! Huh!’ She snorted.

      ‘I’m in for the long haul,’ Alessandro said, looking as close to uncomfortable as Sam had ever seen him.

      ‘Of course you are, dear,’ the older woman agreed. ‘Now, introductions over. What you need is a hot bath and a brandy, Sam,’ Dorothy announced briskly. ‘No, Alessandro,’ she said, accompanying her sharp words with a dismissive wave of her hand as he began to follow them, ‘we don’t need you.’

      Now, that was something he couldn’t hear very often, thought Sam, torn between outright shock and amusement as she turned her head to see how he was taking the rejection.

      Alessandro inclined his dark head, accepting the prohibition with an uncharacteristic meekness that made Sam’s jaw drop. He intercepted her astonished stare and an ironic glitter entered his eyes.

      ‘Come along, Sam…’

      It amused Sam that the older woman’s words were an order, thinly disguised as a request.

      ‘I will see you later,’ Alessandro said as she approached the broad sweep of the stairs.

      ‘Now, there’s something to look forward to.’

      Her muttered response drew a quizzical look from the older woman, but she made no comment beyond recommending Sam to watch her step. Deciding to take this ambiguous comment literally, Sam lowered her eyes and clasped the curved banister.

      She was eaten up with curiosity as to how this most unlikely of partnerships had come into being, but couldn’t work out a way of asking without coming across as nosy. ‘Are you very busy at the moment?’ she asked, as a couple emerged from a room along the hallway.

      Her hostess gave a nod, before asking Sam. ‘Have you known Alessandro long?’

      Obviously the other woman did not share her concern about appearing nosy. ‘Not really. Actually, I don’t really know him at all. I’ve been aware of him, of course…’ She stopped, a dark blush spreading over her fair skin. ‘Not aware in that way—just…’ Lowering her eyes from the other woman’s amused, knowing glance, she bit her lip. ‘My car broke down—hence the drowned rat look.’ She laughed. ‘And he picked me up.’ That, she decided, could have been phrased better.

      ‘Oh, yes—he would,’ the other woman said immediately. ‘Alessandro is very chivalrous.’

      Are we talking about the same man? Sam wondered, responding to this affectionate confidence with a non-committal grunt.

      ‘I have known him since he was a child. I was his nanny.’

      ‘Oh, that explains it!’ Sam exclaimed without thinking.

      ‘His mother was still travelling a lot with her work then…’ The sharp little blackcurrant eyes scanned Sam’s face. ‘You did know that she was an opera singer…?’

      Sam shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t know that.’ It occurred to her that she didn’t know much at all about Alessandro. But then, she asked herself, why should I? Bottom line was, he was the next best thing to a total stranger.

      ‘Oh, yes, she had a very successful career. But after little Katerina was born she decided to become a full-time mother, and I was not needed.’

      ‘That must have been hard for you.’ Sam, who imagined that a nanny would become very attached to her charges, sympathised.

      ‘Yes,’ admitted Dorothy Smith. ‘It was.’

      ‘And for the child too…?’

      The observation brought a flicker of approval to the older woman’s eyes. ‘It was,’ she admitted. ‘But he always kept in touch. Alessandro was always a punctiliously polite boy, and he wrote me delightful letters. I have kept them all. One day,’ she promised, sending Sam a warm glance, ‘I will let you read them.’

      Embarrassed that the other woman persisted in misinterpreting her relationship with Alessandro, Sam bit her lip. Before she had a chance to set matters straight once and for all, the other woman continued.

      ‘When the accident happened I had retired.’ She shook her head, her expression sombre as she thought about those dark days. ‘Of course I came back to help—though the first task was convincing Alessandro he needed help.’ She stopped outside a door and smiled warmly at Sam. ‘But I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that.’

      Sam just smiled. She suspected anything she said was not going to alter the other woman’s determination to see a relationship where there was none. Hopefully, Alessandro would put her right. What was she thinking? Of course he’d put her right. It would do his reputation no good at all for people to think he was sleeping with a ginger-headed frump who wore beige.

      ‘Alessandro usually uses that one, but the bedrooms are identical and of course they are adjoining,’ Dorothy was saying when Sam tuned back into the conversation.

       ‘Bedrooms…?’

      ‘Yes, they’re adjoining—see,’ she said, pushing open a door. She saw Sam’s expression and frowned. ‘You could have a room of your own, of course, but with the Food Festival and the fishing tournament falling in the same week this year we’re totally full.’

      ‘Goodness, no—I just meant to say, I’m not staying. I’m going back to London tonight.’

      ‘Really?’ Her barely discernible brows rose. ‘I must have misunderstood. I thought Alessandro said he was staying over.’

      ‘Maybe he is—he’s a free agent—but I’m not…Staying, that is—not not a free agent. Which I am—’ She broke off, lifted a hand to her head and sighed.

      The other woman observed her pale, drawn face and looked remorseful. ‘Look at me, chattering on when what you need is some peace and quiet. I’ll send you up some brandy. Now, off you go and get out of those wet things. The bathrooms here are really marvelous—when I think what the plumbing was like when I was a girl…’ Shaking her head she lifted a hand in farewell and left Sam alone…finally.

      Lying in the deep bath, her senses soothed by the decadent oils she had added to the water, Sam’s thoughts turned to the day’s extraordinary events. Her mind, pleasantly blurry from the shot of brandy she ought to have refused—though it would have taken a very strong person to say no to the redoubtable Dorothy—kept returning again and again to that bone-melting kiss.

      She had not known that kisses like that one existed! Let alone realised what she had been missing!

      Now she knew, and it had been Alessandro who had been the catalyst—the man who had been in the right place at the right time and pressed all the right buttons.

      ‘It could have been anyone.’ The room was empty, so the only voice of dissent to this defiant statement was in her own head. Are you sure about that…?

      She СКАЧАТЬ