LITMIR.BIZ

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roof benign and tranquil. Balconies, bright with trailing bougainvillaea, surveyed the olive groves with sleepy ambience, and several large pine trees stood as sentinels either side of the sprawling building.

      ‘Casa Carella,’ Vittorio drawled lazily, noticing her rapt gaze. ‘One of my ancestors built the main house in the seventeenth century and subsequent Carellas have added to it.’

      ‘It’s beautiful,’ she breathed softly. As they came closer she could see just how beautiful. And how large and imposing.

      Vittorio brought the Ferrari to a stop and smiled as he turned to face her. She wondered if he knew how that smile affected the opposite sex and then decided that of course he did.

      ‘Grazie.’ His eyes moved from her face to the languid villa. ‘I, too, think my home is beautiful and have never wished to live anywhere else.’

      ‘Do you still farm the olives?’ she asked weakly, reeling from the way his smile had softened the handsome but somewhat stern features.

      ‘But of course. The production of olive oil is one of the oldest industries in Puglia, and the Carella estate is second to none. Because of the methods required to harvest and produce the oil it is impossible to turn the industry into a high-tech affair, however. Modern machinery may be used, but the industry here is still by and large a private one, with the families of farmers tending to their own trees and producing their own oil as opposed to giant conglomerates. I like this.’

      He turned to look at her again. ‘My great-grandfather was first and foremost a businessman, though, and invested much of the Carella wealth here and there, making sure we were not solely dependent on the olive trees. He was—how you say?—an entrepreneur. Is that correct?’

      Cherry nodded. So he was one of the filthy rich.

      ‘He was, I understand, a formidable man, but his ruthlessness guaranteed a privileged lifestyle for future generations.’

      She stared into the dark face. He sounded as though he approved of his great-grandfather’s hardness. ‘You think ruthlessness is a good thing?’ she murmured.

      Slate-grey eyes met her blue ones. ‘On occasion, si.’ He opened his door before she could comment, walking round the low bonnet and helping her out of the car.

      Cherry found she didn’t want him to touch her. It evoked something of a chain reaction which had her nerve-endings quivering. Not that he prolonged the contact. Once she was standing on the pebbled forecourt which led to wide circular steps fronting the house he stepped back a pace.

      ‘I am sure you would like to refresh yourself,’ he said formally, reminding her how bedraggled she must appear to him. ‘One of the maids will show you to a guest room and I will have coffee and cake waiting when you are ready.’

      The door to the villa had opened as he’d spoken, and a neat little uniformed maid was standing in the aperture.

      ‘Ah, Rosa.’ He gestured for Cherry to precede him up the stone steps and she found she’d forgotten how to walk. ‘Would you take the signorina upstairs to one of the guest rooms and make sure she has everything she needs? And perhaps you would like me to try the hire company for you?’ he added to a bemused Cherry, who was trying not to gape at the palatial interior.

      The light, cool hall, with a marble floor and white walls hung with exquisitely framed paintings, was huge, its air scented with bowls of fresh flowers and several chairs and tables dotted about the vast expanse. And the staircase stretching in front of them was a thing of beauty in itself, made of the same pale green marble as the floor and curving upwards to two levels, giving the impression that the hall itself was an inner courtyard.

      Speechless, she followed the maid up the stairs and halfway along a landing, whereupon the young girl opened a door, allowing Cherry to precede her into a vast bedroom. ‘Please to call if you need anything, signorina,’ the maid said in broken English as she walked across and opened the door to an en-suite bathroom. She waved at open basketwork shelves holding neatly folded fluffy towels and toiletries and then left the room, shutting the door quietly behind her.

      ‘Wow!’ Cherry breathed out softly as she stood surveying her surroundings. The cream, stone and taupe colour palette of the room was offset by the blaze of colour coming from the open full-length windows leading on to a balcony thick with purple, red and white bougainvillaea and holding a small table and two chairs. It was obviously a guest bedroom—there were no personal belongings of any kind when she furtively opened one or two of the doors of the wall-to-wall wardrobes and drawers. Imagine what the rest of the house must be like, Cherry thought weakly. She’d been right. He must be absolutely loaded.

      She padded across to the balcony. It overlooked an enormous garden stretching away from the back of the villa for what seemed like miles to her stunned gaze. It was bursting with tropical trees and shrubs and manicured flowerbeds, and the ancient walls which enclosed the garden from the olive groves were brilliant in places with cascade upon cascade of more bougainvillaea. An Olympic-size swimming pool glittered blue under the clear cerulean Italian sky, and orange, apricot, almond and fig trees lived in harmony in a small orchard at the very rear of the grounds. She had never seen anything like it.

      Double wow! She breathed out slowly. Triple. What an oasis. How the other half lived!

      As she continued to gaze out she noticed what must be Vittorio Carella’s gardener, tending a flowerbed next to a lush flower-covered bower, but otherwise the sun-soaked grounds were still, slumbering in the heat of the afternoon.

      One thing was for sure, Cherry thought with wry humour as she stepped back into the bedroom. Vittorio Carella was no ordinary olive farmer. And she supposed if she had to be stranded anywhere for a few hours she could have picked somewhere a darn sight worse than Casa Carella.

      Becoming aware she had been lost in contemplation when she should have been freshening up, Cherry hastily walked into the gorgeous en-suite bathroom of cream marble. The mirror which took up all of one wall showed her just how grubby and bedraggled she looked. She groaned softly. No wonder he’d thought she was a young kid playing at being grown-up. Urgent repair work was needed.

      The bathroom held everything from hairbrushes and cosmetics—still in their wrapping—to male and female perfume and other such niceties. Clearly the guests of Vittorio Carella had their every need met. But she wasn’t a guest. Not in the traditional sense anyway.

      Cherry stood in front of the mirror, decorum warring with vanity. Vanity won. After washing her face, and brushing her hair until it shone like silk with one of the brushes she’d unwrapped, she opened a tube of mascara and a pot of eyeshadow. Not for the first time she blessed the fact she was a female and had make-up at her disposal. She might have entered the house as a little lost waif and stray. She certainly didn’t intend to leave as anything less than a full-grown woman!

      CHAPTER TWO

      WHEN she opened the door of the bedroom to go downstairs the little maid was hovering at the end of the landing, fiddling with the huge bowl of sweet-smelling roses on a small table under the magnificent arched window which flooded the space with light. Cherry smiled at her.

      ‘Ah, signorina. If you will come this way? The signore, he is waiting,’ the young girl said politely.

      Cherry nodded and followed the immaculately dressed maid as she led the way down the stairs and across the hall. After knocking on a door the girl opened it and then stood aside for Cherry to enter. The drawing room was even more beautiful than she’d prepared herself for: the ceiling high, the light wood floor scattered with thick rugs, the gracious furniture and drapes clearly wildly expensive and the white walls covered with exquisite paintings. The huge French windows were open to the scents of the garden beyond, and on the patio immediately beyond the windows a fountain tinkled in the afternoon heat.

      But all this was on the perimeter of her consciousness. Her senses were caught up with the man who had risen from an armchair at her entrance and was now saying, ‘Come and sit down and take some refreshment. Would you prefer

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