It had a pulse.
The door to the library on the ground floor was slightly ajar, and from inside she could hear the rustling of papers and the sound of a frustrated male sigh. For a moment, she thought she must have dreamed her father’s death and funeral and the debt debacle. A short blissful tide of relief rushed through her, but then she heard footsteps crossing the floor. Strong, purposeful footsteps. She would have recognised that stride even if she were blindfolded. Possibly even if she was deaf.
Gabriel Salvetti opened the library door wide and looked down at her from his superior height advantage. Why hadn’t she put on a pair of heels? Ballet flats didn’t quite cut it when she was in the company of the suave and sophisticated Gabriel Salvetti. Not that she ever sought his company—she actively avoided it if she could. Six foot four to her four foot six, he made her feel like My Little Pony facing off a thoroughbred stallion.
His were-they-black-or-were-they-brown? eyes met hers. ‘Francesca.’ He inclined his head in a brief nod that was somehow both polite and patronising at the same time.
‘What are you doing here?’ Frankie couldn’t read his expression. She’d always thought he’d make a good spy or undercover agent. Not that his criminal father, brothers and cousins would appreciate that. Gabriel was known as the white sheep in the super-wealthy Salvetti family. The only good apple in a rotten orchard. An orchard so big with deep roots and long limbs and twisted and craggy branches reaching into places no decent person would ever want to go.
But why was he in her house? He hadn’t even come to her father’s funeral, even though he had done business with him in the past and her father had considered him a friend.
But then she noticed the sheaf of papers in Gabriel’s hand and her gut clenched and her heart slipped from its moorings. No. No. No. The words were hammer blows in her head. Surely, he wasn’t the new owner? How could she bear it? To have the man whose advances she’d spurned four years ago take up residence in her family’s home?
Gabriel held the library door open. ‘Come in. We need to talk.’
Frankie raised her chin and stood her ground, her mind whirling with what he might want to talk about. ‘We do not need to talk. But you need to leave.’ Her arm shot out to point to the front door. ‘Now.’
‘I’m not leaving until we talk. It’s in your interests to hear me out.’ His expression was enviably calm. As calm as his adult-talking-to-a-wilful-child tone. As calm as the silver-surfaced Lake Como outside. Some men took control of a situation by force but not Gabriel Salvetti. He used words economically and curtly. He used stillness and silence as a weapon. He carried with him an aura of command he wore like a second skin.
But the less she thought about his skin the better. She had seen a little too much of it recently. Particularly, a press photo of him at South American beach resort with his latest lover—a blonde model type, whose slim body had made Frankie throb with jealousy. Frankie had inherited her English aristocrat mother’s curvy figure and her Italian father’s uncontrollable dark brown hair. It wasn’t exactly what she’d call winning the genetic lottery.
Gabriel, on the other hand, might not have inherited his family’s penchant for criminal activity but he had inherited every one of the Salvetti traffic-stopping good looks. His jet-black hair, chocolate brown eyes, sculpted nose and mouth and tanned and toned athletic build left him with no shortage of female adoration, and consequently, the arrogance to think no woman could resist him.
Which was why Frankie had made such a point of rejecting his offer of a dinner date the night of her twenty-first birthday party. To prove she was immune to him. If not to prove it to him, then to prove it to herself. He’d assumed she would say yes, so she’d said an emphatic don’t-ask-me-again no, even though a part of her wondered if she had been wise to try and score points with such a worldly man.
And the odd time she had run into him since, she had given him the cold shoulder and hot tongue routine, because, he of all people, was the one person she did not trust herself around. He stirred in her feelings she didn’t want to feel. Physical feelings. Feelings and desires and impulses that burned and scorched her inside and out.
Gabriel crossed the foyer to where she was standing and Frankie forced herself to hold his penetrating gaze. Could he see how threatened she was by his presence? His potent, far too attractive presence? So much for her immunity. Her body was reacting to his closeness like an ice sculpture in front of a blowtorch. Her skin tightened, tingled, tensed as if anticipating his touch. Even her breasts, hidden behind the layers of her clothes, prickled and shifted in the lace cage of her bra like something too long restrained.
‘I can think of nothing you could say that would be of the remotest interest to me.’ She injected her tone with a generous dose of scorn. Eat your heart out, Miss Elizabeth Bennet. No one but no one could do a cold put-down better than Frankie. She wasn’t called an ice princess for nothing.
A half-smile lifted one edge of his mouth, making something in her stomach flip and flop and flap like a torn sail in a stiff breeze. He tapped the paperwork he was holding against his other hand. ‘I have a solution to your current dilemma.’
‘A...solution?’ Frankie affected a laugh. ‘I can’t imagine how any solution you’ve come up with would be in any way agreeable to me.’
He shrugged one broad shoulder, his spy face back in place. ‘It’s an offer. Take it or leave it.’
Frankie could see why he was lethally successful at brokering high-stakes property deals. No wonder he had become one of the wealthiest businessmen in Italy. Even wealthier than his own family, which was saying something. They weren’t called the silver-tailed Salvettis for nothing.
She licked her suddenly paper-dry lips. ‘Are you offering to...to lend me money?’
‘Not lend. Give.’
His eyes held hers in a lock that pulsed with something she didn’t want to name. Stubbornly refused to name or acknowledge. But she felt it all the same. Her body betraying her with a slow-moving heat spreading like warm treacle to all her secret places. His deep mellifluous voice with its rich Italian accent always did that to her—made her aware of every inch of her skin, aware of its traitorous desire to get closer to him, even though her rational brain told her, Danger. Keep away.
‘Give?’ Frankie raised her eyebrows. ‘Free? No strings?’
The half-smile was back and was even more devastating to her resolve to resist him. She couldn’t stop thinking about his mouth and how it would feel to have it pressed to hers. They had not touched each other than a handshake on their first introduction when she was seventeen and a handful of times since, most notably the night of her twenty-first birthday. But it hadn’t stopped her wondering what his touch would be like on other parts of her body. Polite nods and handshakes. That’s all he had done and yet her body had reacted, still reacted as if he had some strange sensual power over her.
‘There are always strings, cara mio. Always.’ His dark-as-night gaze drifted to her mouth as if he too was having the same wicked thoughts. She took a moment to study him. He was clean shaven but there was enough dark stubble on his jaw to suggest there was nothing wrong with the supply of his virile male hormones. His eyes were fringed with thick lashes and his prominent eyebrows could switch from intimidating interrogation to intelligent interest in less than a heartbeat.
Speaking of heartbeats... Frankie’s was currently giving a very good impression of having some sort of medical event. Strings? What strings? What did he mean? And dared she ask him?
He was standing within touching distance. If she so much as reached out a hand she could touch that broad, muscle-packed chest. She could trace the contours of his mouth, trace the slightly Roman nose, trace the slash of a jagged white scar above his left cheekbone. He was dressed casually: dark blue jeans, a white T-shirt with a grey cashmere sweater over the top to counter the chill of late autumn. She could smell
the light lemon and lime notes of his aftershave—they swirled around her nostrils like a stupefying drug.
Frankie brought her gaze back to his and stepped back, her hands curled into fists in case she was tempted to touch him. Tempted to tell him she didn’t care what strings he had in mind, she just wanted to be rescued from the shame of her father’s crippling debts. But of course, her pride would never allow her to do something like that. She flashed him an icy glare. ‘I suppose you’ve come here to tell me you’re the new owner.’
‘I’ve bought the villa, yes. But I plan to give it to you.’
The words couldn’t have been more shocking. Or pleasing. And it was this ambiguity of her feelings that was even more worrying. ‘What do you mean?’ Frankie was surprised her voice came out at all as her throat was so tight with a combination of hope and dread. Hope that she would be able to keep her home and dread that there would be a price to pay that had nothing to do with money.
He tapped the paperwork against the back of his other hand again. ‘My lawyer has drawn up a contract. But I’m not going to discuss this out here in the foyer.’ He nodded towards the library door. ‘I think it’s best if you’re seated for this.’
Frankie widened her eyes but then quickly averted her gaze and stalked ahead of him to the library. No way was she going to let him see how much he unsettled her. She had spent years keeping men with nefarious motives at bay. Men who saw her, because of her social standing and her family wealth, as a trophy worth collecting. Even some of her girlfriends had only been friends with her because of her aristocratic background. It had made her distrustful of just about everyone but what choice did she have? She had been stung too many times in the past.
She was conscious of Gabriel following her, wondering if his satirical dark gaze was on the curves of her bottom. Was he comparing her to Miss Beach Baby?
Frankie turned around to face him once they were both inside the study. She folded her arms and planted her feet, giving him her best make-me-sit-down-at-your-peril glare. ‘Tell me what’s going on.’
His gaze flicked to the chair next to her. ‘Sit.’
She straightened her shoulders like she was channelling a deportment guru. ‘No, I will not sit. I’m a woman, not a dog.’
His gaze skated over her figure, leaving a trail of fiery heat in its wake. His eyes came back to hers and her heart went into arrhythmia again. The steely glint of determination in his eyes warned her she was seriously outmatched. ‘I’m trying to help you, Francesca. It would be wise not to bite the hand that currently holds the deeds to your ancestral home.’