The Sicilian's Marriage Arrangement

“You have nothing to be guilty over.”

That was easy for him to say. He was just fruit tasting. She’d never done any of this before. “You would say that,” she accused. “You’ve probably seduced enough women to populate a small town.”

His laughter brought her head snapping up as nothing else could have.

She glared at him. “Don’t you laugh at me, Luciano di Valerio.”

He put his hands out in a gesture of surrender. “I am not the rogue you think me and I was not trying to seduce you.”

“Right.” What the heck had he been doing then, practicing his technique?

He brushed her hair behind her ear in a tender gesture that made her treacherous heart melt. “You belong to me as no woman has. Do not regret the passion the good God has given us as a gift.”

He didn’t mean it the way it sounded. He couldn’t. He was implying a special relationship. After New Year’s Eve and how easily he had turned away and stayed away, she could not afford to let herself read too much into his words.

“You have to answer the phone. You mustn’t keep your mother waiting.” Hope wanted time to regroup her defenses.

He looked at her as if contemplating saying something more, but in the end, he said only, “I will be with you as quickly as I can,” before turning to leave.

Hope availed herself of the toiletries in the well-stocked guest bathroom and tried to ignore the fact they had probably been put there for the convenience of his women friends. Like her. How much importance could she put on his avowal she was different? Her supposed difference could stem entirely from the fact that she was a virgin, undoubtedly a rare experience in the life of a male who dated such sophisticated women.

Luciano stopped a few feet from where Hope sat surrounded by the lush greenery and night-blooming flowers in his terrace garden. Strings of small white lights illuminated the dining area giving Hope, with her burnished curls and elfin features, the appearance of a fairy in her element.

Something untamed twisted inside him at the thought she could disappear from his life like the fey wood creature she resembled, leaving nothing behind but his unsatisfied and unabated arousal. If he had been shocked by the deliciousness of her response on New Year’s Eve, he was poleaxed by the living flame he’d held in his arms tonight.

He wanted her.

She wanted him too, but she didn’t trust him.

Anger surfaced to mix with the desire simmering inside him as he considered her reasons for feeling the way she did. She’d been savaged by her grandfather’s guests after Luciano had left the party. His clumsy response to the unexpected carnality of their kiss had been read as a repudiation of her advances, when she had made no advances at all.

How had that blonde thought she would get away with spreading such lies? Had she thought they would never reach his ears, or that he would not care? She would learn to regret the mistaken assumption. Luciano di Valerio did not tolerate being the subject of a tissue of lies. More importantly, Hope was his now and he protected his own.

His hands curled at his sides and atavistic anticipation curled through him at the thought of dealing with the two men who had propositioned her. They would repent treating an innocent, shy creature with such a lack of respect.

There was a certain amount of gratification in knowing that the marriage would redress the wrong he had done her. His pride still balked at submitting to her grandfather’s blackmail, but Luciano could not deny he owed Hope for the humiliation she had suffered at his unwitting hands. Their marriage would even the scales, a very important issue for this Sicilian man.

Si, and there was again no denying that their marriage bed would be a satisfying one. Even now, he wanted to go over there and lift her from the chair, carry her to his bed and finish what they had begun earlier.

Hope felt a prickling sensation on the back of her neck and turned in her chair. Luciano stood a few feet away, a look in his eyes that made the fine hairs on her body stand up. In an instant of primal awareness she could not anticipate or block, all the composure and self-control she had managed to gather around herself in his absence dissipated with the ease of water on an Arizona highway.

“I am sorry to have left you so long.” He came toward her, the muscles in his thighs flexing under the perfectly tailored Italian suit he was wearing.

Did the guy ever wear jeans? Probably not and most likely her heart couldn’t stand the sight of him in the tight-fitting denim anyway.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve been enjoying the view. It’s incredible up here.”

Luciano’s terrace covered the entire portion of the top story of the Valerio building not occupied by his or the company apartments. Someone had turned it into a garden, giving the impression of being in an enchanted bower high above the streets of Athens. The view over the wall was spectacular. The moment she’d seen it she’d been glad she came with Luciano, if only for the opportunity to spend her final evening in Greece in such magical surroundings.