The Italian's Future Bride

After that Rachel did not speak another word. They reached the motorway and suddenly the powerful car came into its own, eating up the miles with the luxurious smoothness that promised to cut the journey time by half.

He stopped once at a motorway service station, led her into the café and bought sandwiches and coffee.

‘Eat,’ he instructed, when she stared at the unappetizing-looking sandwich he’d placed in front of her. ‘You look like death and you have eaten nothing since you threw yourself at me last night.’

And I look like death because I hardly had any sleep last night, she threw back at him without saying the words out loud. Because out loud meant opening a Pandora’s box full of what they’d been doing instead of sleeping.

The indifferent-tasting sandwich was washed down by indifferent-tasting coffee. Rachel was surprised he ate his sandwich or drank the coffee. They just didn’t look like the kind of food this man would usually put anywhere near his mouth.

When they hit the road again he wanted to talk. ‘Tell me how your family works,’ he invited.

So she explained how her mother had lost her husband to a long-term illness while the twins had still been very young. ‘A few years later she married my father and then had me.’

‘So what is the age difference between you and the twins?’

‘Six years,’ she replied.

‘And who did the farm originally belong to?’

‘My father. But he—we—never differentiated between Mark and Elise and myself. And it isn’t really a farm,’ she then added because she thought she better had do before they arrived there and he saw it. ‘It’s what we call a smallholding, with three acres of land, a house, a couple of greenhouses and a couple of barns.’

‘Another lie,cara ?’

Rachel shrugged. ‘It’s run like a farm.’

‘And the…neighbour that helps you out when you need it—what does he do?’

‘Jack owns the land adjoining our land—and hisis a farm,’ she stressed. ‘He’s been good to us since our parents died.’

‘Call it as it is,’ Raffaelle said. ‘He has been good toyou .’

Rachel turned to look at him. ‘Why that tone?’ she demanded.

His grimace stopped her from becoming hooked on watching his face. ‘I don’t think I want to elaborate,’ he confessed.

‘Suits me,’ she said and, turning the collar up on her coat, she leant further into the seat and closed her eyes.

His low laugh played along her nerve endings. ‘You are prickly, Carmichael.’

‘And you are loathsome,Signor .’

‘Because I don’t mind saying that I dislike the way your siblings use you?’

‘No. You are loathsome simply because you are.’

‘In bed?’

Rachel didn’t answer.

‘You prefer, perhaps, this Jack in bed as your lover because he is sogood to you.’

He was fishing. Rachel decided to let him. ‘Maybe.’ She smiled.

‘But can he make you fall apart with pleasure there as I can, or does he bring the smell of farmer to your bed, which you must overcome before he can overcome you?’

‘As I said. You’re loathsome.’

‘Si,’ he agreed. ‘However, when I said that I don’t sleep around I meant it, whereas you seemingly did not.’