Kathryn Ross - Claimed by the Italian - Virgin - Wedded at the Italian's Convenience / Count Giovanni's Virgin / The Italian's Unwilling Wife

But the maid obviously had no English. She just looked up anxiously, and Lily felt foolish and about two inches tall. The young Italian girl would take unpacking for guests as completely normal—part of what she was hired to do. Having a crazy foreigner gabbling at her in a language she didn’t understand would make her feel as if she were doing something wrong. Lily was going to have to remember that she’d entered a world that was totally different from her own.

‘Sorry.’ Her face pink with embarrassment, Lily backed away limply. Desperate to escape without daubing more egg on her face, she headed for a door she’d noticed set between the vast wardrobe and an antique dressing table.

Confronted by an elegantly proportioned bathroom, complete with a huge marble bath, a shower unit, and enough fluffy towels to serve a rugby team, she kicked off her shoes, deciding that the shower would make the perfect hiding place. Just until she had got her head around the uncomfortable feeling that she was way out of her depth.

Carefully placing the unwanted and over-large engagement ring on the marble top of the vanity unit, she stripped off and scurried into the shower. She stayed there, pounded by hot water, wondering how long it would take Donatella to finish unpacking and remove herself, leaving her with the solitude she would need to get herself into the right frame of mind for the dreaded first meeting with the poor woman she was about to so cruelly dupe. She wondered nervously how she would cope when Paolo played his role, as promised, and treated her as if she were the love of his life. Go to pieces, probably! She’d never deceived anyone, and didn’t know how she was going to do it.

‘ Porca miseria! No one takes a shower for an hour! Do you intend to boil yourself?’

Mortification followed shock as Lily peered through the steam at one clearly aggravated Italian male. His sharp suit jacket was soaked, where he’d flung open the glass door and reached in to cut off the flow of water, and his sharp tongue was in evidence as he ordered, ‘Get dressed! My mother is anxious to greet you.’ He reached for a huge towel and thrust it at her, faint colour flaring over his high cheekbones, his mouth clamped tight over his teeth.

Grabbing at the towel, Lily was suddenly and horribly aware of her nakedness, of the way his brilliant golden eyes had swept her from top to toe and then blanked. Wrapping herself up like a parcel, she watched him shed his wet jacket and walk away, collecting the ring from the vanity on his way back into the bedroom, stepping over her discarded clothing.

Overheated from the prolonged onslaught of hot water and deep embarrassment, Lily plucked up another towel and began to rub her hair dry. In her shock at his abrupt and totally unexpected arrival she’d just stood there, naked as the day she was born, like a transfixed rabbit. Did he think she’d been flaunting herself? Her skin crawled with utter humiliation.

No wonder he’d looked so blank! His preference lay with tall, leggy blondes with all the social graces. He wouldn’t want the complication of the bog-standard hired help apparently coming on to him! In his mother’s company he would expect her to act like a besotted bride-to-be, but in private he had no interest in her as a woman.

Her face flamed anew when she heard his incisive, ‘Wear this. And make it snappy.’

Emerging from the folds of the towel, Lily saw him place a pale amethyst shift dress on the chair that stood just inside the door before he walked back out again. Lacy briefs and matching bra, too—part of the supply that had been bought for her back in London, so that she would look the part he had assigned her: high-maintenance bride-to-be, exactly what his parent would expect to see.

Her tummy squirming, she dressed in the garments he had taken it upon himself to select. Feeling the soft silky fabric of the exquisitely crafted dress touch her skin like a lover’s caress made her shudder.

Everything was so wrong. She didn’t feel like herself at all. These clothes weren’t her . In fact, the amount that had been spent on her clothing for a mere fortnight would have kept a family of four for a year, she realised, appalled. Such a waste!’

Her mouth set in mutiny, she stalked into the bedroom, where he was waiting in unconcealed impatience, and announced, ‘In future I choose what I wear. You might have paid for the stuff—and paid me to lie for you—but you don’t own me!’

He shot her a look of exasperation. He was landed with an aggravating, argumentative pest with a body to set male pulses racing. Clueless, too. Left to her own devices she would smother those delectable curves in ugly swamping garments. She should be grateful at being given the sort of beautiful clothes that did credit to her hitherto hidden loveliness, not come at him shouting the odds.

At the memory of her earlier nakedness—which he had done his level best to blank—he felt unwanted heat crawl over his skin, and his voice was a rough undertone as he commanded, ‘Come here.’

He swept a silver-backed hairbrush from the dressing table, and as she stubbornly refused to budge he strode over to her and began to stroke the tangles out of her still damp hair, the lean fingers of one hand firmly beneath her chin to stop her wriggling away.

‘In future you may choose what to wear.’ Her jawbone was so tenderly delicate, her skin so soft beneath the pads of his fingers, her hair like caramel silk. ‘Today I hurried you—’ He broke off, aware that he was doing something totally unprecedented, trying to placate an argumentative employee. Oddly, his voice was emerging like soft velvet. Clearing his throat roughly, he continued, ‘My mother is so anxious to meet her future daughter-in-law. I can’t bear to keep her waiting. I know how long women take to dress and fuss over their appearance.’

At the ‘future daughter-in-law’ falsehood Lily snapped out of the dizzy, intoxicating trance she’d fallen into the moment he’d touched her, stroked the brush through her hair, his magnificent body so close to hers. Stepping away from him, and drawing herself up to her full insignificant height, horrified by her weakness where he was concerned she reminded him, ‘I am nothing like your usual vanity-obsessed lady-friends! So don’t treat me as if I am!’

‘Stop arguing.’ Curbing impatience, Paolo slipped the fabulous ring back on her finger. There was a feisty glitter in those big grey eyes. Present her to his parent while she was in this mood and the whole thing would be over before it began. Trust him to pick a woman who couldn’t hide her feelings!

He needed a purring kitten, not a spitting cat. There was only one thing to do. His hands going to her slim shoulders, he bent his dark head and kissed her.

AS HIS beautiful mouth took hers Lily was utterly swamped by the shattering emotion which crashed through her with the force of a hurricane. She had never experienced anything remotely like this before. It blew her mind.

Totally incapable of rational thought, she felt instinct take over, and her lips parted to give him better access to the sweetness within. Her entire body was shuddering helplessly as his arms slid from her shoulders to her tiny waist to hold her more closely, to meld her to his lean, powerful length.

She had been kissed before, but never like this—like fire and honey, every cell in her body singing in uncontrolled response as his tongue slid deeper in sensual exploration. Her mindless caressing fingers revelled in the feel of taut muscles beneath the fine fabric of his shirt, and her hands suddenly gripped his wide shoulders in wild reaction as she felt his hot, hard arousal against the quivering softness of her tummy.