Christina Hollis - Claimed by the Italian

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DIANA HAMILTONis a true romantic, and fell in love with her husband at first sight. They still live in the fairytale Tudor house where they raised their three children. Now the idyll is shared with eight rescued cats and a puppy. But, despite an often chaotic lifestyle, ever since she learned to read and write Diana has had her nose in a book—either reading or writing one—and plans to go on doing just that for a very long time to come.

WITH a convulsive shiver Lily Frome wriggled her skinny frame deeper into the swamping fabric of her old dufflecoat. Saturday morning the High Street of the tiny market town was usually thronged with shoppers, but today the bitter late March wind and icy flurries of rain had kept all but the most hardy at home.

Even those who had gritted their teeth and popped to the shops for essentials scurried past her, heads downbent, studiously ignoring the bright yellow collecting tin adorned with the ‘Life Begins’ smiley face logo. Usually as generous as they could afford to be, because the small local charity was well known and approved of, today the good citizens of Market Hallow obviously weren’t turned on by the idea of stopping for a chat or fumbling in purses for the odd twenty pence piece—at least not in this inclement weather.

Ramming her woolly hat lower on her head, her generous mouth downturned, Lily was about to give up and head home to the cottage she shared with Great-Aunt Edith and report failure when the sight of a tall man emerging from the narrow doorway that led up a flight of twisty stairs to the local solicitor’s office above the chemist’s. He was about to head in the opposite direction, turning up the collar of his expensive-looking dark grey overcoat as he began to stride away.

She’d never seen him before, and Lily knew pretty much everyone in the area, but he looked well heeled—at least from what she could see of his impressive back view he did. Her wide, optimistic smile forming naturally, she sprinted after him, ready to spell out the charity’s aims and efforts, and neatly inserted herself in front of him, avoiding an undignified head-on collision by the skin of her teeth, waving the collecting tin and leaving the explanations until she’d got her breath back.

But, staring up at six feet plus of devastating masculine beauty, she felt that by some freak of nature her lungs and breath would for evermore be strangers. He was the most fantastically handsome man she had ever seen or was ever likely to. Slightly wind-rumpled and rain-spangled dark-as-midnight hair above a pair of penetrating golden eyes had what she could only describe as a totally mesmeric effect.

It was so strange to find herself completely tongue-tied. It had never happened before. Great-Aunt Edith always said she would be able to talk her way out of a prison cell, should she ever be so unfortunate as to find herself locked up in one.

Her smile wobbled and faded. Transfixed, she could only stare, her water-clear grey eyes sliding to his wide, sensual mouth as he spoke. His voice was very slightly accented, making her skin prickle and shivers take up what felt like permanent residence in her spine.

‘You appear to be young and relatively fit,’ he opined flatly. ‘I suggest you try working for a living.’

Sidestepping her after that quelling put-down, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, he walked away. Behind her, Lily heard someone say, ‘I heard that! Want me to go and give him a slapping?’

‘Meg!’ The spell broken, her wits returning, Lily swung round to face her old schoolfriend. At almost six foot—towering a good ten inches above Lily’s slight frame—Meg was a big girl in all directions. No one messed with her—especially when she was wearing an expression that promised retribution!

Her cheeks dimpling, Lily giggled. ‘Forget it. He obviously thought I was a beggar.’ A rueful glance at her worn old dufflecoat, shabby cord trousers and unlovely trainers confirmed that totally understandable conjecture. ‘All I lack is a cardboard box and a dog on a piece of string!’

‘All you lack,’ Meg asserted witheringly, ‘is some sense! Twenty-three years old, bright as a button, and still working for next to nothing!’

For nothing, these days, Lily silently corrected her friend’s assessment of her financial situation. ‘It’s worth it,’ she stated without hesitation. She might not have the most glamorous or financially rewarding job in the world, but it made up for that in spades in the satisfaction stakes.

‘Oh, yeah?’ Unconvinced, Meg took her arm in a grip only an all-in wrestler could hope to escape from. ‘Come on. Coffee. My treat.’

Five minutes later Lily had put the bad-tempered stranger and the weird effect he’d had on her out of her mind. She soaked in the welcome warmth of Ye Olde Copper Kettle at one of its tiny tables, cluttered with doilies, a menu penned in glorious copperplate, and a vase of unconvincing artificial tulips. She placed the collecting tin with its smiley face on the edge of the table and removed her sodden woolly hat, revealing flattened, dead straight caramel-coloured hair. Her triangular face lit up as the stout elderly waitress advanced with a burdened tray, and she sprang to her feet to help unload cups, sugar bowl, coffee pot and cream jug, asking, ‘How’s your grandson?’

‘On the mend, thanks. Out of hospital. His dad said that if he so much as looks at another motorbike he’ll skin him alive!’

‘Teach him to treat country lanes like a racetrack,’ Meg put in dourly, earning a sniff from the waitress, who otherwise ignored her, smiling at Lily, nudging the collecting tin a fraction away from the edge of the table.

‘Not good collecting weather! This place has been like a morgue all morning. But I’ll be at your jumble sale next week if I can get time off.’

Lily’s piquant face fell as she watched the older woman depart. The twice-yearly jumble sale, held to raise funds for Life Begins, looked like being a washout. She voiced her concern to Meg. ‘This is a small town, and there’s only so often you can recycle unwanted clothes, books and knick-knacks. So far donations have been poor—mostly stuff that everyone’s seen and left behind before.’

‘I might be able to help you there.’ Meg poured coffee into the dainty china cups. ‘You know Felton Hall’s just been sold?’

‘So?’ Lily took a sip of the excellent coffee. The Hall, situated a couple of miles further on from her great-aunt’s cottage, had been on the market since old Colonel Masters had died, six months earlier. It was the first she’d heard of the sale, but Meg ought to know, working as she did for a branch of a nationwide estate agents based in the nearest large town. ‘How does that help me?’