Mary Lyons - The Italian Seduction

In fact, it was the way he was trying to have his cake—and eat it too—which finally tipped her over the edge.

As the bell rang, signalling that the performance was about to start, and the crowd began moving out of the bar towards the auditorium, she adroitly moved up behind Lorenzo’s tall figure, before casually slipping her arm through his.

‘Sweetie! You weren’t thinking of leaving me behind, were you?’ she exclaimed with a light ripple of laughter, before raising her head to give him a wide, beaming smile.

Rewarded by the sudden tensing of his tall body, and the brief look of horror flickering over his handsome, tanned face, Antonia turned to smile at the Hardings and their guests.

‘I’m so pleased that darling Lorenzo brought me here tonight. I’ve been longing to see this opera for ages. Such a treat!’ she told them, with another warm, happy smile, maintaining a firm grip on his arm as they entered the box.

Swiftly glancing around the red plush interior, which hadn’t changed since the days of Queen Victoria, Antonia quickly identified the perfect position for her client. Letting go of Lorenzo’s arm, she casually edged a nearby chair into a position which would shield him from any possible assassin in the audience—while still allowing him a good sight of the large stage below.

‘Why don’t you sit here, darling?’ she murmured with a soft, winsome smile.

‘No, thank you,’ he retorted through gritted teeth, clearly furious at having to maintain a fixed, pleasant expression on his face, solely for the benefit of his hosts and their guests. ‘I’m sure one of the other ladies would prefer to…’

‘Don’t be silly, darling—I insist that you sit there,’ she told him firmly, accompanying her words with another simpering, entirely false smile. A smile which had those present gazing indulgently at what they, quite mistakenly, assumed to be a loving couple.

As Lorenzo stood glaring down at her, his body taut and rigid with anger at finding himself totally outmanoeuvred, she thought for one, wild moment that he might throw caution to the winds and indulge in a spectacular loss of temper. However, after what appeared to be a massive inner struggle, he finally managed to bring himself under control.

‘Why don’t you go to hell!’ he ground out savagely under his breath as, very reluctantly, he lowered himself into the chair.

‘Only if you lead the way, sweetie!’ she retorted with a grin, before seating herself just behind his tall figure.

As the house lights dimmed and the orchestra began playing the overture, Lorenzo leaned back in his comfortable red plush seat, a bland expression on his face—and murder in his heart!

He’d never, in the whole of his life, been tempted to even think of using violence of any kind against a woman. Which made it all the more shocking to now find himself actively contemplating—with considerable pleasure!—the untimely demise of Miss Antonia Simpson.

Right from the moment that bossy, thoroughly irritating young woman had marched so confidently into his hotel suite, earlier this evening, he’d suspected that she was likely to be up to no good. And how right he’d been. Because the brazen hussy had turned out to be nothing but trouble, with a capital T!

What had he ever done to deserve such a fate? Lorenzo asked himself grimly as, on the stage below the box, the chorus and orchestra wound themselves up for the grand entrance of Otello—returning home to Venice in triumph, after soundly beating the Turkish Navy.

Living most of the year in Milan, he’d regularly visited La Scala—in his opinion, the greatest opera house in the world. And he had, of course, seen many productions of Verdi’s tragic opera, based on the play Othello, by William Shakespeare.

But only now did it occur to him that the story of a man driven out of his mind by external forces and culminating in his murder of his wife, Desdemona, seemed strangely appropriate to his own current predicament.

Don’t be ridiculous! It’s time you got a grip on the situation! Lorenzo lectured himself sternly.

The fact that Antonia Simpson had managed to have everything her own way, so far, was no reason to allow her to push him around for the foreseeable future. Which meant that the sooner he got his act together the better.

Oh, yes! It was about time he taught that domineering, high-handed, so-called ‘bodyguard’ of his a lesson which she wouldn’t forget in a hurry.

For her part, and greatly to her surprise, Antonia found herself enjoying the opera. In fact, she would have found it totally absorbing if she hadn’t been required to be fully alert on behalf of Lorenzo Foscari.

This was definitely the last job she’d ever take on for that ratfink James Riley. Goodness knows, she’d looked after some tiresome people in the past. But this oh, so macho Italian—who clearly should have been strangled at birth—just about took the biscuit!

All the same, maybe it hadn’t been too clever of her to try and score a few points off the swine just now, she told herself. Recalling her impression, earlier in the evening, that he was as tricky and unpredictable as dynamite, she realised it might possibly have been a mistake to have momentarily lost her own temper—simply because she’d considered him guilty of bad manners.

Because, however tempting it might have been to cut the man down to size, it definitely wasn’t the response expected from an experienced and highly capable bodyguard.

She was a professional, Antonia reminded herself firmly. Which was why, despite all provocation, she must strive to maintain an air of cool, calm efficiency and detachment remaining totally aloof and objective at all times. It also meant, she told herself grimly, that she was going to have to find some way of coping with this extraordinarily difficult man.

Unfortunately, it was becoming clear that Lorenzo Foscari wasn’t just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill client.

He was, of course, extremely arrogant and overbearing. Not to mention his quite extraordinary, old-fashioned, chauvinistic attitude to women. The way he’d gone completely ballistic, at the appointment of a female bodyguard was totally ridiculous in this day and age.

On the other hand…well…there was no denying the fact that he did possess a disturbing aura of rampant sex appeal. And, when he wasn’t busy losing his temper, he appeared to have been born with an equally large quota of overwhelming, almost mesmerising charm. Charm which he was quite prepared to use as a weapon, she reminded herself sharply, recalling his unscrupulous attempts to undermine her contract with his insurance company.

So, the fact that the man was a high-octane, lethal mixture of barely leashed force and aggression, coupled with an almost irresistible warmth and attraction, meant that he wasn’t just a difficult man, but also a highly complex one. There was no doubt that she was going to have to keep her wits about her, at all times, Antonia told herself with a heavy sigh. There was no way she’d be able to relax her guard on this job! A conclusion that was reinforced as she turned to view the man sitting on her left, just slightly in front of her own chair.

Despite the dim light within the box, and with only his sharply etched profile in view, one didn’t need a very high IQ to read Lorenzo Foscari’s body language. And the message it conveyed was not a happy one.

The muscle beating furiously in his tightly clenched jaw, and the rigidly tense, broad shoulders beneath his expensive black dinner jacket provided plenty of evidence that the guy was still very angry. Maybe the wonderful music would help him to calm down?

Rarely attending concerts in the Albert Hall, Antonia had forgotten that the larger boxes surrounding the auditorium also contained a small, individual area at the back—designed for the service of food and drink during the interval.