‘Luciano telephoned me last week,’ Hunt O’Brien whispered to his granddaughter in a careful aside. ‘He’s desperate to find someone to look after the old place—’
‘We shall have to instruct the housekeeper to air all the beds.’ Viola smiled at that prospect before giving Kerry an anxious look. ‘You did say that we would have a housekeeper, didn’t you?’
Thinking of Misty’s claim of how very, very rich all her sisters were, Kerry nodded. She was surprised that Luciano had already told her grandfather that he and his wife could go home to Ballybawn and very pleased that he had made that soothing promise in advance of her own trip to London. Her grandmother mentioned that she was looking forward to attending the Leopardstown races the following week and her grandfather confirmed that they would be ready to come home only after the National Book Fair had taken place in early July.
‘I’m…I’m going to Italy with Luciano for a few weeks,’ Kerry admitted tautly then.
‘Now I understand why Florrie has been crying so much in recent years,’ her grandmother pronounced with satisfaction. ‘Our granddaughters were getting married and we didn’t know it. I think an Italian honeymoon trip
is a charming idea, darling.’
Kerry tensed and flushed brick-red. While she endeavoured to come up with the words that would disabuse the older woman of the belief that she and Luciano were in the midst of planning a wedding, her grandfather began to describe his own boyhood trip to Rome. His host took up the topic of foreign travel with enthusiasm. Recognising how clumsy any bald announcement of continuing singledom would be at that point, particularly with her grandfather’s cousin present, Kerry fell silent in mortified discomfiture.
Luciano phoned her when she was travelling back to the airport. ‘My jet awaits you on the tarmac, cara,’ he quipped. ‘Check out the sleeping compartment during the flight. There’s a surprise for you.’
Flying out to Tuscany in style and treated like royalty by the cabin staff, Kerry discovered that the compartment was piled high with designer garments in her size. She opened boxes, unzipped garment bags, came upon a whole embarrassing collection of whisper-thin lingerie. Biting her lip, she held up a white stretchy shirt-dress against her slim body and stared in the mirror. She had only packed an overnight bag for her visit to London yet it had not even occurred to her to wonder what she would wear in Italy. She was alarmed by her own uncharacteristic lack of practical forethought.
Yet Luciano had given no promises in terms of timing or exclusivity. He had made no commitment to her either. His gift of expensive clothes, however, truly shook her. A rich male bought fancy togs for his mistress, didn’t he? Did he rush out and spend a small fortune on an entire wardrobe for his latest girlfriend? No, he did not, she answered for herself. A new lover might be offended or even seriously embarrassed by such generosity. But a mistress, or a woman whom Luciano was determined to treat as his mistress, just had to accept what might be considered payment for her sexual services.
On that cheering thought, Kerry skimmed off her unexciting navy trousers and jacket and used the compact shower adjoining the cabin to freshen up. The lacy lingerie felt wicked against her naked skin. The white shirt-dress clung as close to her slender curves as a caress and she knew just how much he would appreciate that effect.
Was Luciano worth more to her than the sisters whom she would never get to know while he was around? Her guilty eyes shadowed with regret. But choice had been torn from her the same moment that she accepted that she still loved him and indeed loved him a great deal more than she had five years earlier. She had had to lose him to appreciate him. She had had to live five years without him to realise just how boring, lonely and empty life could be.
She had not required Ione to tell her that Luciano was a very clever and dangerous male. She had always known that. He was absolutely ruthless and he had worked very hard at trying to conceal that trait from her, only he had never succeeded. The dark, stormy, shadowy side of his hot-blooded nature had always secretly excited her, for he was so very different from her. Nor had Ione needed to warn Kerry that Luciano was already hurting her family by coming between her and her newfound sisters. The way her siblings felt about Luciano, that separation had been inevitable. After all, no woman painfully conscious that she had once had insufficient faith in the guy she loved would hesitate to range herself squarely by his side when she got a second chance.
And it was a second chance, Kerry reminded herself. She did not require bribery, persuasion or payment in any shape or form to share Luciano’s bed. The very idea was laughable when in spite of her every attempt to convince herself otherwise, she still burned to lie under and over him again and behave like a shameless hussy. In fact being a mistress promised to be a lot of fun. If anything, she would be taking advantage of him…endless, wonderful, enjoyable advantage…and she could hardly wait.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AS THE limousine climbed the steep road Luciano never once removed his steady gaze from the Villa Contarini, which dominated the lush valley.
The magnificent seventeenth-century palazzo built by the first Roberto Tessari sat high on a hillside thick with oak woods and clumps of black cypress. It was not a building that proffered a warm welcome, it was a living stone monument to Tessari power and money. At the foot of the long, sweeping driveway, Luciano told his chauffeur to stop. Just beyond the walls he had scaled as a boy he alighted from his limousine, determined to savour his right to walk up through the superb gardens which had been his father’s pride and joy. In the drowsing heat of early evening, the aroma of the flowering oleanders lay heavy on the still air.
Impatient to find Kerry, he crossed the immaculate marble terrace that bounded the imposing front entrance. He felt good. Everything had fallen smoothly into place, everything was just as he wanted it to be, for he had never pictured being at the villa without Kerry. He snapped off a single white rose that had been allowed to curl round a pillar carrying the weathered bust of some mythical sea creature and went inside. The interior was silent, for he had given the staff the evening off. The arrival of Luciano da Valenza, the bastard son of Stephanella, in the grand villa of his titled forebears was a special occasion to which he wanted no witnesses. His steps echoed round the big porch.
In the vast hall that stretched before him, huge portraits hung in serried ranks on the walls. Although he had never set foot in the Villa Contarini before, he could name virtually every face depicted on those canvases. As a teenager, he had devoured all the books that documented the history of the Tessari family and depicted their treasure house of a home. In one portrait he now recognised the lineaments of his own hard bone structure reflected in the stern visage of his paternal grandfather. But the resemblance meant nothing to him, for it was many years since he had experienced a need to belong to any family tree and he averted his attention with cool disdain from the painting of his own father.
Yet the claustrophobic silence still began to make him feel oddly uncomfortable. His own reflection in a giant mirror startled him and he frowned. In rebellion, he jerked loose his tie, cast it on a marble side-table and unbuttoned his shirt collar. This was now his home: he should make himself at home. But it did not feel like home. But then for longer than he cared to recall nowhere had ever felt like home to him. When he had left the Contarini estate as a child he had never again allowed himself to become attached to a place.
A slight sound alerted him to the awareness that he was no longer alone and he swung round, light as a dancer on his feet for all his commanding height and powerful build. Kerry was poised at the foot of the imposing staircase, an uncertain smile wavering on her soft mouth. Her sweet familiarity twisted something inside him. The dying brilliance of the sunlight cascaded down through the tall landing window above and turned her hair to a fiery, curly halo and illuminated her skin to a pale gold that glowed against the perfect white of her dress. His hunger to possess her again was immediate, ferocious, primal…
In the suffocating silence Kerry stared back at Luciano, her heart going bang-bang-bang, her mouth running dry as a bone. His charcoal-grey pinstripe suit was conventional in colour but the sharp cut was all Italian designer style and gave him the suave, sardonic aspect of a sexy gangster. He had strolled down the hall with a lithe grace of movement that would have made a lion on the prowl look clumsy. She had watched him peel off his tie and throw it aside, luxuriant black hair gleaming as a slice of light fell on his bold, bronzed profile. Simultaneously, her bones had turned to water. He just took her breath away.
The stunning golden eyes Luciano levelled on her released a flock of butterflies inside her tense tummy. Her legs were so rigid that her knees began to wobble. He had an effect on her very similar to a chain reaction, she acknowledged in dismay. Embarrassment claimed her when she registered that her nipples had tightened into stiff little points pushing forward within her bra and possibly even visible to him through the fine, clinging material of her dress.
His brilliant gaze arrowed over her, lingered around chest level, his dense black lashes lowering and then skimming up with all male enjoyment to watch the wave of slow, hot colour climb her face.
With a fl
ourish, he presented her with the rose. ‘Did the staff look after you?’
The petals felt like soft, smooth silk beneath her appreciative fingers. ‘Yes…I was shown to my room—’
‘My room too,’ he slotted in lazily.
At that reminder, Kerry ran even more out of breath. Some timbre in that throaty drawl of his teased at her spinal cord like a honeyed caress. ‘Then I was served with afternoon tea in a very opulent drawing room. It’s a very large building and rather intimidating…’
‘Do you realise that you’re whispering? We’re alone here. Feel free to shout…even scream,’ Luciano suggested huskily while he settled his hands to her slim hips and lifted her up onto the second last step of the stairs. ‘Don’t let the Villa Contarini inhibit your natural instincts—’