CHAPTER ONE
KELLY MCKENZIE, skimpily clad in cut-off denim shorts and shirt, lay flat on her back on the lawn that sloped softly to the edge of Lake Garda, and sighed her contentment. It was the end of August; the sun was shining and life was great. Rolling onto her stomach, she looked back at the house, a glorious old stone building set some fifty yards from the water’s edge. A terrace extended across the full width of the house, and at one end a cluster of cypress trees and shrubs cascaded over the stone balustrades. Shrubs that appeared to be moving, although there was not a breath of wind! How odd!
Then she saw him. Her blue eyes narrowed warily. It was the figure of a man half-hidden by the bushes; one hand was on the balustrade and he was leaning over, trying to peer into a window. In his other hand was an iron bar. Kelly’s heart missed a beat. Suspicious didn’t cover it… He looked downright dangerous.
Every muscle of her body filled with tension. She watched as he straightened up, his back to her. Dressed in a white vest and a pair of oil-stained khaki shorts, he looked thoroughly disreputable. He was tall—well over six feet—broad-shouldered with lean hips, and he had long legs that rippled with muscle and sinew as he moved.
A man who was moving furtively towards the steps up to the terrace and the entrance to the rear windows of the house…
Stay cool, girl, she told herself, you can handle this. Three months ago, when she’d bumped into an old school friend, Judy Bertoni, in Bournemouth, and Judy had offered her a job as a nanny to her son with the family in Italy for ten weeks, Kelly had leapt at the chance to spend a summer in the sun, before taking up her post as a research chemist with a government laboratory in Dorset in October.
It had seemed a great idea at the time, but now, faced with what looked like a very sinister intruder, Kelly was not so sure…
She was on her own. The family was in Rome, and Marta the housekeeper had taken the opportunity of her employer’s absence to go and visit friends, after having warned Kelly to lock up carefully as there had been a spate of burglaries in the area.
Kelly fought down the panicked urge to leap up and run and sat silently watching the figure of the man move stealthily to the first step. The tyre iron in his hand said it all. He was obviously intent on breaking in.
Well, there was nothing for it, Kelly told herself: desperate situations required desperate remedies, and she’d been a keen gymnast in her youth and the university Thai kick-boxing champion two years running. While the intruder’s attention was firmly fixed on the windows of the house she psyched herself into fighting mode. Slowly, silently she rose to her feet, adrenaline pumping through her veins.
Then, with a blood-curdling yell, she spun through the air like a whirlwind, and in a few deft kicks the would-be burglar was flat on his back and she had the tyre iron in her hand and her foot on his throat.
Gianfranco Maldini had spun around in surprise at the noise, then he’d had a fleeting image of silver-blonde hair and a very feminine form flying towards him, then all the air had left his lungs.
He could not believe it… A chit of a girl had quite literally dumped him flat on his back. Never in all of his thirty-one years had a woman done that to him. About to move, he glanced up the long shapely length of her and stilled. His testosterone took over from common sense.
Dio, but she was gorgeous. His dark eyes raked over her in a slow, intense scrutiny. From the top of her head, where silver-blonde hair had been scraped back into a pony-tail and tied with a ribbon, lingering on the perfect symmetry of her features, wild eyes, and a sultry mouth that was begging to be kissed, then lower, to where her high firm breasts pushed against the soft cotton shirt she had knotted under the luscious mounds. An expanse of smooth pale flesh revealed her tiny waist and the indentation of her navel, which the ridiculously ragged denim shorts could not hide, nor the long shapely legs.
For the first time in years Gianfranco was struck dumb; he felt himself instantly harden and that had not happened in years either, he thought wryly. But she was stunningly beautiful, vibrant with life, and the image of her flying through the air with such verve and grace was the most spectacular thing he had seen in a long time. What she was doing at Carlo Bertoni’s he had no idea, but it might be a lot of fun to find out. He had not had a holiday in three years and uncomplicated fun had been sadly lacking in his life of late, he suddenly realised. A quick call to his office, and he could free up some time. New York could wait. Yes, he was going to pursue her, he decided with unconscious arrogance.
He could do without her foot on his neck, but he was in no hurry to get up. The view was stunning. She was standing legs apart, one leg bent at the knee to keep her foot on his throat and the other beside his shoulder. Her shorts did not cover all they should and he made the intriguing discovery that she was a natural blonde and he had to smile as he wondered if she knew what she was exposing.
Kelly lifted the tyre iron in her hand, finally getting a good look at the burglar. Thick black hair flopped over his broad forehead in soft curls and perfectly arched black eyebrows framed deep brown heavily lidded eyes. Only a slight crook in what once must have been a straight blade of a nose stopped him from being classically beautiful. But the whole added up to a ruggedly handsome man. A wickedly handsome man, she amended when his lips curved back over brilliant white teeth in a slow, sexy smile.
Kelly almost groaned out loud. Why was it that the most gorgeous male she had seen in her life was a thief? Even at her mercy, he had an aura of supreme male confidence about him that was hard to ignore. But that did not make him any less a burglar, she told herself staunchly. More likely it meant he was highly successful at his chosen occupation.
‘Now, look here, buster, I know you came here to commit a burglary.’
‘What?’ Gianfranco exclaimed. Being caught off-guard and thrown to the ground was humiliating enough, but to be accused of being a thief was a step too far for a man of his pride and arrogance.
In that second he vowed he would make the little madam pay for the insult.
‘Don’t play the innocent with me—it won’t wash,’ Kelly blundered on determinedly. ‘But I am prepared to give you a chance. You didn’t actually get around to stealing anything, so I will let you go, if you promise not to come back.’
The man on the ground shook his head in amazement. If the girl really thought he was a criminal, she was hopelessly naïve believing a genuine thief would just walk away.
‘Was that a no?’ Kelly demanded, seeing him shake his head. ‘Because the alternative is I am going to hit you over the head with this iron bar, and call the police.’
‘No—yes,’ Gianfranco spluttered, his sense of humour totally deserting him as he noticed she was holding the damned tyre iron over her head. She was mad, and he had wasted too long lying on the ground admiring the view.
One minute Kelly was congratulating herself on keeping her head and control of the man and situation, the next, with a speed that defied gravity, their positions were reversed. Her head hit the ground with a thump and for a second she saw stars, and when her vision cleared she was pinned to the ground. Her hands were held above her head in one massive male hand, and a great body was splayed half over her, one long muscular leg flung across her own slender limbs.
‘Get off me! You great brute!’ she yelled, and started to struggle, but to very little effect. He was much bigger and much stronger. He simply tightened his hold on her wrists and with his free hand he caught her chin, holding her head firm as he stared down at her with angry brown eyes.
‘Now, why would I do that?’ Gianfranco asked mockingly. ‘If I am the villain you imagine, do you really think I am going to let you go?’
Kelly wasn’t thinking, she was panicking, the iron bar she’d taken off him had vanished, and his chest felt like iron pressing down on hers. In a last desperate attempt to dislodge him she tried bringing her knee up against his thigh, and opened her mouth to scream.
She almost succeeded, but a hard mouth crashed down on hers and choked off the scream in her throat. It was a kiss of sheer power, forcing her lips back against her teeth until she thought he would draw blood. If he’d wanted to frighten her he had succeeded, she thought numbly.
Then subtly the kiss changed. His mouth gentled on hers, moving over and over against the lush fullness of her lips, and, to her shame, slowly she felt herself succumbing to the intense sensual pleasure his kiss aroused. Involuntarily her lips parted on a soft, needy sigh, and helplessly she accepted the probing invasion of his tongue.
His hand dropped from her chin to curve around the fullness of her breast, and time stopped. Heat flared through every vein in her body. Seduced by the touch of his hand, the heat of his kiss, the musky male scent of him, she melted against him. It had never happened to her before, sexual excitement overwhelming her mind and body.
When he finally broke the kiss and lifted his head she stared up at him in hazy puzzlement, wondering why he had stopped. His hand fell from her breast and he stared down at her with eyes black with anger. She felt the hard proof of his arousal against her belly, and suddenly she came to her senses. What was she inviting by her helpless surrender to his kiss?
Gianfranco, with the part of his brain that still functioned, wondered what the hell he was doing, making love to a crazy English girl on the lawn of his friends’ house in the middle of the day. Even though another much more basic part of him had responded instantly to the feel of her curvaceous body softening against him, it angered him. He was not the sort of man who ever lost control.
‘Please let me go,’ Kelly pleaded. Somehow he had inserted one long leg between her own and the heat and weight of him was no longer exciting but sexually threatening. This was a total stranger and a thief she was dealing with, and maybe worse, judging from the state of his body. ‘Stop now,’ she cried, fighting to stay calm. ‘You know, you could go to prison for years for rape.’
‘Santa Maria.’ Incredulous dark eyes stared down into the beautiful face of the woman beneath him. He had been accused of many things in his time, but a rapist certainly was not one of them. ‘Are you completely mad?’ he rasped scathingly.
‘No.’ The fact that his kiss had knocked her for a loop must have been an apparition, Kelly told herself. She knew what she had to do. He was angry and dangerous, she had to humour him until she got a chance to run.