The Sicilian's Marriage Arrangement

Masculine rage radiated from Luciano in palpable waves that burned against her back. “Yet, you think you might, given the opportunity?”

She moved a red five onto a black six. “He touched me. You don’t. Maybe.” Liar. She wanted only Luciano.

“He touched you?” The deadly softness of his voice warned her that she had phrased that very badly.

She spun in her chair to face him and regretted the action at once. First and foremost because it made her dizzy, but secondly because his expression was frightening. He looked like he wanted to kill someone and she thought that person might be Giuseppe. She didn’t want to cause any problems between the two men, especially when the younger one had been so nice to her.

She glared at Luciano. “Not like that. I’m not like your other girlfriend, Zia. I don’t go kissing men in public places.”

Luciano ignored the reference to Zia. “How did he touch you, tesoro? Tell me.” His voice was deadly soft.

“He kissed my hand and he called me beautiful. If you want the truth, it made me feel nice.” A lot nicer than having Luciano dump the suntan lotion in his sister’s lap and leave with the speed of an Olympic athlete when Marco signaled for him. “Now go back to your Playboy Bunny and let me finish my game of solitaire in peace.”

Had she really said that? She sounded like a truculent child, or a jealous woman. Which she was, she admitted.

“I have no interest in other women and I do not wish to leave you alone.”

She rolled her eyes. Right. “Why not?” He had a very strange way of showing his supposed singular interest in her. “You left me alone by the pool.”

“I left you with my sister.” He sounded and looked driven. “Marco wanted to discuss something with me.”

“So, go back and talk some more business with him. I don’t care.” She should be used to it by now. She’d been ignored for her grandfather’s business interests all her life, but if Luciano thought she was going to marry a man who did the same thing to her, then he was a fool.

But it isn’t his business interests that have you so on edge, her inner voice reminded her.

“Clearly you do care.” He had that superior-male-dealing-with-a-recalcitrant-female expression on his face. “You are upset.”

So, he’d noticed.

“Am I?” She turned back to the cards and saw where she could uncover an ace. She did it. She was even better at solitaire than gin rummy. She’d played a lot of it growing up.

Gentle fingers played softly over the bare skin of her shoulders. “What is it, tesoro mio? Are you upset by Zia’s kiss? It was nothing, I assure you. All is over between us. She was joking with me.”

He sounded so sincere and Hope had this really craven desire to lean back into his touch. “That’s not the way it looked to me.”

“So, this is about Zia’s forwardness?” The masculine complacency in his voice grated on Hope’s nerves. He liked the idea of her being jealous, the fiend.

“This is about nothing. I felt like coming inside. End of story.” Was prevarication becoming a habit?

“And playing a game of cards with an inveterate rake?” The complacency was gone.

“Giuseppe is very nice.”

“Si. He kissed your hand and told you that you are beautiful.” The fingers on her shoulders were tense now, but they weren’t hurting her. “You liked this.”

If he had sounded angry, she might have remained defiant, but he didn’t. He sounded confused and disappointed. In her.

“I’d rather you did it,” she admitted. Darn that champagne anyway. The next thing she knew she would be telling him she loved him.

He pulled her up from the chair and around to face her. She kept her eyes focused on the hair-covered bronzed skin of his chest rather than looking up. It was damaging to her breathing pattern, but better for her pride. She didn’t want to see his smug reaction to her admission.

He took her smaller hand in his large, dark one. Lifting it toward him and bending at the same time, he touched his lips to the back of her knuckles. “You are very beautiful.”

Then he said it in Italian. He also told her she was sweet, the woman he wanted to marry and that her skin tasted like honey.

She was entranced by the litany of praise.

But he did not stop with words. He kissed each of her fingertips with tiny biting kisses, repeating the word bellisima after each kiss. Her eyes slid shut as sensation washed over her and then he pulled her into his body, saying something else in Italian. It sounded like, “I knew this would happen,” but that made no sense.

She stopped trying to figure it out when he tilted her head up and covered her mouth with his.