Authors: Sara Craven
smooth line of her shoulder before continuing downwards to
discover and explore softer curves. He frowned a little as his fingers
encountered the barrier of denim, and Juliet gave a little choking cry
as yet another button gave way under his seeking hands.
'No!' She snatched at the gaping edges of the waistcoat and held
them across her breasts protestingly.
'Why not?' he demanded softly. 'I may not be about to offer you
marriage like my ill-advised young brother, but you will not find me
ungenerous, I promise you. Why defer something that we both
know is inevitable?'
Juliet shook her head violently. She lifted her chin and stared at
him, her eyes blazing with defiance.
'I don't doubt you have it all worked out,
signore,'
she said with
only the faintest tremor in her voice to suggest she was not in
complete control of the situation and her own emotions. 'But one
thing you seem to have left out of your calculations is the fact that I
find both you and your insulting advances totally abhorrent!'
The silence that followed her reckless words was electrifying. In
spite of her bravado, Juliet felt a
frisson
of nervousness run the
length of her body as she met his glance. There was anger there, but
she had been expecting that— anger and something else that she
could not immediately analyse.
'So you find me abhorrent, do you,
cara?'
he said at last, each slow
word dropping like a stone into the tension between them. 'That's a
lie, and you know it as well as I do, and if it weren't for the fact that
Annunziata will be serving our lunch at any moment, I would prove
that it was a lie here and now—to the ultimate satisfaction of us
both,' he added, his insolent appraisal raking her from head to foot.
He rose and before she could guess his. intention, leaned down,
jerking her to her feet beside him. Then, while she was still off
balance, his other arm went round her, pulling her against the
warmth of his body, making her totally aware of his vibrant
masculinity.
For one long earth-shaking moment he held her, letting her
recognise the potency of his strength against her weakness. Then
his hand went up to tangle in her hair while his mouth descended
slowly and inexorably on hers.
Juliet couldn't breathe, she couldn't think, although at one point she
thought she heard herself give a slight whimper. But if Santino
heard it, he was plainly unmoved by it. His grip didn't slacken, nor
did his relentless onslaught on her mouth. It was only the sheerest
effort of will that kept her arms at her sides, when every instinct,
every throbbing nerve ending in her body was shrieking at her to
slide her hands up around his neck, to draw him closer still if that
was possible—to tacitly acknowledge that he had the surrender he
was seeking.
When at last he let her go, she could taste blood, and her hand came
up almost of its own volition to cover her swollen mouth. Santino
looked down at her and his eyes glowed oddly—like those of a
mountain lion who has sighted his prey, she thought
half-hysterically, and found herself praying that he would not touch
her again.
As if in answer to her prayer, he stepped away to a low table near
one of the window embrasures where bottles and glasses stood on a
tray. He lifted one of the bottles and uncorked it, turning to where
Juliet stood as if she had been turned to stone, his dark face cool
and mocking.
'An
aperitivo
, cara,' he said, the faint amusement underlying his
voice stressing the ambiguity of his words. 'To give us an appetite
for the delicious meal to come.'
For a moment Juliet stared at him as he stood there, parodying the
courteous host, then a long, slow shudder went through her and she
turned away, forcing her unsteady legs to take her across the room
to the stairs, and the fragile sanctuary of the room above. And as
her hand fastened almost convulsively on the great iron latch of the
door, she heard, as if in a dream, the echo of his laughter drift after
her.
Juliet sat disconsolately on the edge of the bed, staring down at the
floor. Beside her were the remains of the lunch which Annunziata
had brought her, somewhat reproachfully, on a tray. She herself had
felt rather guilty at causing extra work, but it was either that or go
hungry for there was no way in which she could have faced Santino
Vallone across that shining table after what had passed between
them.
No one in her life before had ever held her with such insolent
intimacy or kissed her with such savage passion, she told herself
shamedly, and it was not the slightest consolation to know that all
that passion and brutality were not in fact intended for her, but for
her sister.
She might be pretending to be Jan, but her response to Santino's
dark attraction from the very beginning had been all her own, and
she had been a fool not to realise that a man of his experience with
women would not have registered it, and reacted accordingly.
The last thing he would have expected was for her own reaction to
have been that of a frightened virgin, she thought, the trace of an
unwilling smile lifting the corner of her still-bruised mouth. And yet
that was exactly what she was, and something she would never be
able to disguise or pretend about.
She put up a hand and lifted the weight of her hair off the nape of
her neck with a little sigh. This pitiful little charade of hers was
running out of time fast, and she had little option, she felt, but to
confess her real identity to Santino. It was not a confrontation she
could look forward to with any sort of pleasurable anticipation. She
now knew how he could be when he was angry, and it was not a
state of mind she was anxious to provoke in him again.
In fact, she didn't really want to provoke him in any way at all, and
one of her main priorities must be to get out of this room and into
one of her own—preferably one with a lock on the inside—even if
it was only one night, and she was forced to confess about her
deception on the following day.
She got up and picked up her suitcase with determination. On the
gallery outside, she paused, looking at the closed doors. The room
next to Santino's was an empty bedroom, but she decided to avoid
that particular one as being too close for comfort. Instead she chose
a slightly smaller room on the far side of the bathroom she had used
earlier. It was furnished in the same ruggedly magnificent manner as
the rest of the
castello
, and only the bed needed making up. With
the feeling that she would sleep fully dressed on the bare mattress if
she had to, Juliet hastily staked a claim to her new lodging by
unpacking her case.
Her next action was to make sure that the old-fashioned bolt on the
door really worked. It squeaked protestingly as she pushed at it, but
finally moved grudgingly along, and she had to struggle once again
to unbolt it. When she succeeded and opened the door, she was
slightly disconcerted to find Annunziata on the gallery outside, the
used tray in her hands, and her mouth hanging open in astonishment
at these goings-on by her master's latest guest.
When Juliet indicated that she would like to have the bed made up,
Annunziata's amazement and frank disbelief were almost comical,
and she immediately broke into a flood of speech which Juliet had
no difficulty in interpreting as protests. It was clear Annunziata
considered the occupation of an extra room a waste of time when it
was clear, her rolling eyes and gesticulating hands were saying, that
Juliet would be sharing Santino's bed.
It was perfected obvious, Juliet thought resentfully, that he had not
bothered to give Annunziata any hint of the real state of affairs
between them. If only Annunziata spoke even a few words of
English, or she had Jan's fluency in Italian, she could make the
whole situation clear in moments, she thought unhappily. As it was,
Annunziata clearly believed that some sort of lovers' tiff had taken
place before lunch which would all be happily resolved at bedtime,
and as she went off shaking her head, Juliet, watching her go, had
no great hopes that she would accede to her request and provide
some bedding.
The view from this bedroom was slightly different, she discovered.
She could catch a glimpse of a silver-sanded beach and some boats
drawn up on it. She wondered if the delicious fish she had eaten for
lunch had been caught locally. She decided she would go and
explore later, when she felt less comfortably full of food. She
wandered back to the bed and kicked off her heelless sandals,
stretching herself full length on the mattress. She had closed the
shutters, and the room felt cooler without the full force of the sun
pouring into it. The dim light was comforting too in its way, and
Juliet found her eyelids beginning to sink involuntarily. She pulled
herself together hurriedly. She wasn't going to sleep, just rest a little
in the heat of the day, and presently she would put on one of the
bikinis she had noticed had been included in her luggage and go
down to that beach. In the meantime she would improve the shining
hour by rehearsing some of her lines for the inevitable scene with
Santino when she confessed who she really was.
It would be terrible if she stood in front of him, stammering and
stuttering and totally at a loss. Far better if she had a speech all
prepared, she thought, trying and discarding several promising
opening gambits. Everything she thought of sounded either stilted or
plain ridiculous, and her whirling thoughts had an oddly
uncomfortable way of whisking her into a very different daydream
in which she was telling Santino that she loved him.
'And that really is ridiculous,' she said aloud and very sleepily.
The next time she opened her eyes, it was to find Annunziata
standing over her with an armful of bedding.
'Oh, heavens!' Juliet sat up stretching languorously. She was
amazed to see from her wristwatch that she had slept for nearly two
hours, and guessed she must still be suffering slightly from the
aftermath of the sleeping tablet Santino had given her the previous
night.
She helped. Annunziata make up the big bed and gathered from her
remarks that the older woman was surprised that the
signore
had
given his permission for this to be done. Juliet was a little surprised
herself, although she would not have allowed Annunziata to see
this, and more than a little relieved. Perhaps Santino had decided to
take her at her word, she thought without a great deal of conviction,
as the memory of her unthinking response to that shatteringly
demanding kiss returned to haunt her. It was far more likely, she
told herself uneasily, that he had decided to play some sort of cat
and mouse game of his own with her. All she could hope was that
he would allow this to continue for at least twenty-four hours, by
which time Mario and Jan should be safely married and she could
make her confession. And when that was over, she thought, Santino
would probably never want to speak to her again, let alone make
love to her.
When Annunziata had gone off muttering and shaking her head,
presumably over the vagaries of young Englishwomen, Juliet
changed swiftly into one of the bikinis. Once again, it was far more
revealing than she was used to, consisting of little more than two
semi-circles of jade green cotton held together by strings for the bra
top, and two triangles tied at the side with strings for the bottom
half. Juliet gazed at herself in the full-length wardrobe mirror and
suffered a slight qualm when she saw just how much of herself was
going to be on show to the eyes of the curious, and at the last
minute she pulled on a white cheesecloth tunic with a rounded
neckline and balloon sleeves. Until she discovered how public the
beach was, she told herself defensively, pushing to the back of her
mind the thought that only one pair of masculine eyes was likely to
cause her any concern.
As she reached the ground floor and started towards the great
wooden door which gave access to the outside world, she wondered