As, too, must he. That, also, was essential...
CHAPTER THREE
CARLA STARED AT her screen. She still had six hu
ndred more words to write for her article, and she was making heavy weather of it. She knew exactly why.
Cesare di Mondave.
He was in her headspace—had been totally dominating it, consuming every last morsel of it, since she’d made it into her apartment the night before, senses firing, aflame.
All through her sleepless night she’d replayed every moment of the evening over and over again—right up to that final devastating moment.
Cesare kissing her...
No! She must not let herself remember it again! Must not replay it sensuously, seductively, in her head. Must instead force herself to finish her article, send it into the impatiently waiting sub-editor at her office.
But even when she had she was unbearably restless, her heart beating agitatedly.
Will he phone me? Ask me out again? Or—a little chill went through her—has he decided he does not want me after all?
Face set, she made herself some coffee. She should not be like this—waiting for a man to phone her! She should be above such vulnerability. She was a strong-minded, independent woman of twenty-seven, with a good career, as many dates as she cared to go on should she want to, and there was no reason—no good reason!—for her to be straining to hear the phone ring. To hear the dark, aristocratic tones of Cesare di Mondave’s deep voice.
And yet that was just what she was doing.
The expression in her eyes changed. As she sipped her coffee, leaning moodily against the marble work surface in her immaculate kitchen, more thoughts entered her head. If last night’s dinner with Cesare was all there was to be between them she should be relieved. A man like that—so overwhelming to her senses—it was not wise to become involved with. She’d known that from the moment he’d first spoken to her, declared his interest.
But where was wisdom, caution, when she needed them? She felt her pulse quicken again as the memory of that kiss replayed itself yet again.
With a groan, she pulled her memory away. She shouldn’t be waiting for Cesare di Mondave to phone her! Not just because she should never be waiting around for a man to phone her! But because she should, she knew, phone her mother—reply to her latest complaint about her sister-in-law’s disapproving attitude towards her.
She gave a sigh. Her mother—never popular with Guido’s younger brother Enrico and his wife, Lucia—had become markedly less popular after her husband’s death, when it had become known that the childless Guido, rather than leaving his half of the Viscari Hotels Group shares to his nephew, Vito, had instead left them to his widow, Marlene. They had been outraged by the decision, and when Enrico had suddenly died, barely a year later, his premature death had been blamed on the stress of worrying about Marlene’s ownership of the shares. Since then, Vito had sought repeatedly to buy them from Marlene, but Carla’s mother had continually refused to sell.
To Carla, it was straightforward. Her mother should sell her shareholding to Vito—after all, it was Vito who was the true heir to the Viscari dynasty, and he should control the inheritance completely. But Carla knew why her mother was refusing to do so—her ownership of those critical shares gave her mother status and influence within the Viscari family, resented though it was by her sister-in-law.
Carla’s mouth tightened in familiar annoyance. It also continued to feed her mother’s other obsession. One that she had voiced when Carla was a teenager and had repeated intermittently ever since—despite Carla’s strong objection. An objection she still gave—would always give.
‘Mum—forget it! Just stop going on about it! It’s never going to happen! I get on well enough with Vito, but please, please, just accept there is absolutely no way whatsoever that I would ever want to do what you keep on about!’
No way whatsoever that she would ever consider marrying her step-cousin...
Vito Viscari—incredibly handsome with his Latin film star looks—might well be one of Rome’s most eligible bachelors, but to Carla he was simply her step-cousin, and of no romantic interest to her in the slightest. Nor was she to him. Vito was well known for liking leggy blondes—he ran a string of them, and always had one in tow, it seemed to her—and he was welcome to them. He held no appeal for her at all.
A shiver went through her. She remembered the man who did...who’d made every cell in her body searingly aware of her physicality. Who’d cast his eye upon her and then scooped her up into his sleek, powerful car effortlessly.
She felt the heat flush in her body, her pulse quicken. Heard her phone ring on her desk.
She dived on it, breathless. ‘Pronto?’
It was Cesare.
* * *
‘But this is charming! Absolutely lovely!’
Carla’s gaze took in the small but beautifully proportioned miniature Palladian-style villa, sheltered by poplars and slender cypresses, in front of which Cesare was now drawing up. It was set in its own grounds in the lush countryside of Lazio, less than an hour’s drive beyond Rome, and its formal eighteenth-century gardens ideally suited the house.
She looked around her in delight as she stepped gracefully out of the low-slung car, conscious of the quietness all around her, the birdsong, the mild warmth of the late-afternoon sun slanting across the gardens—and conscious, above all, of the man coming to stand beside her.