Kate Walker - A Sicilian Husband

‘Thank you,’ she said again, amazed that this time her voice sounded stronger when inside her stomach the nerves were twisting themselves into tight, painful knots, squeezing harder and harder with each breath she took.

‘Di niente. No problem.’

His hand touched hers again, pressing it softly against his cheek. Then his fingers closed around hers, lifting them, turning them so that he was looking straight down on to the delicate tips, the oval-shaped, shell-pink painted nails.

‘No problem,’ he murmured again, but with a very different intonation this time. One that Terrie struggled to interpret.

But, even as she was reaching mentally for the indecipherable note in his voice, he moved again, and this time he blew her thought process right out of focus. He lifted the hand he held; lowered his head towards it. And when his mouth and her fingers met he pressed a long, lingering kiss first on their tips and then, slowly and sensually, all the way to the back of her hand.

‘Gio…’

His name was just a sigh from her lips, faint as a breath, and she was stunned and bewildered to find that sudden tears stung her eyes. Tears of confusion and delight. Of almost fearful sensitivity to each and every movement that this man made.

Did he know what he was doing to her? Did he realise that, when she was used to the fumbling, clumsy, grabbing advances of men closer to her own twenty-four years, his gentleness, his gallantry—his courtship—were infinitely more seductive than any more passionate approach?

A moment before, she had longed for his kiss. The image of him taking her mouth in passion had flared in her mind like the blaze of lightning. But he had kissed her hand, and the delicacy of the gesture, the gentleness of his touch, had had so much more power over her feelings than any more overt approach.

‘I’d love to have dinner with you,’ she managed, needing to say something to show him a touch of what she was feeling, and yet afraid to let him in fully. To reveal just how deeply he had affected her.

His smile was swift, flashing on and off with the speed of a neon sign.

‘I thought we’d already agreed on that.’

This was going exactly the way he wanted it, Gio reflected as he took her arm to lead her out of the bar and towards the ornate glass doors into the restaurant. At least now Terrie—Terrie! What sort of a name was that for a woman? Now that Terrie had stopped pretending that she needed to be persuaded to spend time with him, they both understood what the evening was all about.

She had wanted him to kiss her a moment ago. It had shown in her face. But a kiss was not what he had in mind. At least not a kiss on the mouth. The only woman he had kissed on the lips since Lucia had been Megan. Gio let a brief, fleeting smile cross his lips at the thought of his new and hugely pregnant sister-in-law. She had brought some much-needed warmth into his half-brother’s life and, he admitted, into his own. Megan he would kiss and hug willingly. And his mother. No one else.

And certainly not this woman. Not some passing stranger he had picked up in a bar purely at the prompting of his most basic masculine urgings. A one-night stand was all it was. All it could ever be. And Teresa understood that. For a moment there he had had his doubts, but the way she had accepted his invitation to dinner, the carefully staged stumble so that he would be forced to take her in his arms, had reassured him of the facts. She knew exactly what was going on; how to play this game.

It should be plain sailing from now on. A meal. Some social chat. A touch of flattery, some light flirtation across a candlelit table. A shared bottle of wine—a nightcap…

And they would share that nightcap in her room. Her room, not his. Taking her to his room implied more than he meant her to take away from this encounter. And, after the nightcap, they would share a bed.

For tonight. And for tonight only.

And tomorrow he would go on his way—alone.

‘SO WHAT are you doing in England? You don’t look like a tourist and you said you’d planned on meeting someone from work. A business meeting?’

Gio nodded slowly, dark eyes shadowed in the candlelight.

‘I’m a lawyer—and we were to discuss how the case went in court today. A post-mortem if you like.’

‘And how did the case go?’

‘We won.’ It was said with total calm; no hint of any false modesty.

Of course he’d won. Gio didn’t look as if he had ever known failure or defeat in his life.

A faint touch of wary apprehension slid coldly down her spine just at the thought. She wouldn’t like to come up against Giovanni Cardella in court. He would have to be counsel for the prosecution, and she just knew that his approach would be deadly, his questions swift and lethal as a cobra’s strike. In fact she wouldn’t want to come up against Gio in any situation. He would be a formidable opponent, whatever the circumstances.

‘Was it an—an important case?’

She stumbled over the question because her treacherous mind chose just that moment to throw at her the image of another, totally different way she could possibly be against Gio. For a few, feverish seconds, her imagination ran riot at the thought of how it might feel to be held close to that lean, hard body, crushed against the wall of his chest in the grip of those powerful arms that the sleek tailoring of his jacket did nothing to disguise.

‘Important enough. International fraud—a man who’s been making millions… What are you smiling at?’

‘Nothing—I mean—I didn’t know I was…’

The pictures her wayward thoughts had been conjuring up of the way the devastating man opposite her might look with the sophisticated elegance of the jacket and shirt stripped away vanished in a second as the bubble of her fantasy was popped by his probing question. For a moment her hands wavered uncertainly in front of her face while she struggled with the temptation to cover her burning cheeks and hide behind them, away from his searching gaze. But then she forced them down again, reaching instead for her wine glass and taking a much-needed restorative sip.

‘If you must know I was feeling like Cinderella at the ball. I mean—all this…’

The hand that held her glass waved rather wildly as she used it to indicate her luxurious surroundings, the heavy linen tablecloths, the silverware and crystal glasses, the immaculately uniformed waiters, their footsteps hushed on the thick, rich pile of the red and gold carpet.

‘It’s hardly how I was expecting to spend my evening.’

A sudden memory slid into her mind. The image of Claire and Anna, just emerging from the doors of the conference room, their mouths agape and a look of total consternation and disbelief on their faces as they had seen her crossing the foyer with Gio at her side. By rights she should be with them now, sharing the cold buffet, thinking about packing, about leaving tomorrow morning.

She could only pray that Gio hadn’t seen them too. That he hadn’t caught the way they’d stopped dead, giggled, nudged each other, and then, most embarrassingly of all, given her a blatant ‘thumbs up’ sign of approval.

‘I was thinking that if I pinched myself I might suddenly wake up and find it was all a dream.’

‘And that I had turned into a pumpkin, hmm? Isn’t that how the story goes?’

‘Oh, no. Not at all! Prince Charming wasn’t transformed into anything. He stayed a prince all the way through.’

‘And is that how you see me?’ His tone was casual enough but there was an unexpected light in his eyes, one that made every tiny hair on the back of her neck suddenly lift in nervous apprehension. ‘Am I truly Prince Charming?’