LITMIR.BIZ

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big girl.’ His eyes slid down and lingered on her breasts, which annoyingly responded to this devastating no-touching slide of seduction. ‘But only, I assure you, in all the most enticing places.’

      ‘Don’t!’ Cat’s command came out on a tortured whisper. When he turned on the sex, flooded his voice with it, she went to pieces.

      He was lethal!

      ‘Why not? It’s a bonus.’ Another movement, a step closer.

      His black eyes looked drugged as he lifted them slowly from her shamelessly peaking breasts and fastened them on her softly trembling mouth as she muttered defensively, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

      ‘Yes, you do.’

      The tension was making her shake, making the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention. The sheer sexual power of the man overwhelmed her. She wanted to fight it but didn’t know how.

      ‘A wife who would excite me in bed would be a bonus. Yes?’ The soft huskiness of his voice was an unbearable intimacy; it made the blood pound in her ears and her whole body burn. He was much too close. She stared at him wildly. She had to put more space between them. At any moment she could find herself grabbing him, pulling his head down to discover if the promise of that so sensual mouth was capable of delivery.

      Cat tried to move but her legs were so weak she could only sway. Aldo’s hand slid to her shoulder to steady her and an electric storm fizzled through every cell in her body and her eyelids closed helplessly as his knowing fingers stroked the heated skin of her naked shoulder before it brushed with wicked intimacy over the tingling peaks of her aching breasts.

      ‘And you would be excited, too. We would be dynamite together. I feel it and so do you. Yes?’ His hands curved over her hips as he gently tugged the span of her against the hardness of him and the shattering excitement that flooded her produced a ragged sound, halfway between a gasp and a moan. As he lowered his sleek dark head to stifle the sound at source, her arms snaked around his neck, and her last coherent, triumphant thought as he plundered her avidly responsive mouth was a repetition of what she’d said to him earlier—I bet you a dime to a king’s ransom the right woman could teach you differently!

      The sounds of a muted commotion in the courtyard far below brought Cat out of her thoughts of the past. Blinking the film of moisture from her eyes, she peered down. At the sight of Aldo’s silver Ferrari her heart leapt and twisted like a landed fish then dropped with heavy lifelessness to the soles of her bare feet as he exited, and walked round to the passenger side to hand out his mistress.

      Three members of staff were milling around in excited welcome at their beloved master’s unexpected arrival. Cat willed him to look up to where she was standing, to appear remotely interested in her whereabouts. But he didn’t glance towards the villa. His attention was all for Iolanda Cardinale, who was clinging to his arm, her sleek, elegantly clothed body leaning possessively into his, her ripe lips parted with sultry promise.

      Fighting nausea, Cat forced herself to creep down the spiral staircase to her suite of rooms. She was going to have to act her socks off if she was going to be able to pretend she could accept the situation.

      Pride wouldn’t allow her to let either of them see how desperate she was. Love and sexual fidelity hadn’t been part of the bargain on his part, had it?

      As her English grandmother would have said, ‘You’ve made your bed, girl. Now you must lie on it.’

      CHAPTER TWO

      REACHING her rooms and closing the bedroom door behind her, Cat leaned back weakly against the carved wood. She was going to have to face him. Them.

      Why had he chosen to arrive unannounced? Why had he brought Iolanda Cardinale with him?

      Because he was cruel.

      Or simply because this sort of thing went on in the elevated circles in which he moved and he didn’t consider it to be even slightly unusual?

      And how long were they staying? Overnight? Would he share this room with her?

      Grimly, she thought not. He hadn’t bothered to visit during her exile and he hadn’t so much as touched her since she’d told him—dewy-eyed and stupid with love for him—of the confirmation of her pregnancy.

      Besides, he wouldn’t even think about sharing her bed when he had his mistress draped all over him!

      On that draining thought she levered herself tiredly away from the door and walked further into the lovely room. Apart from the gilded four-poster bed the furnishings and decorations were a dreamy medley of white and creams, gauzy drapes fluttering at the tall windows that looked out over the sun-drenched landscape, over the silver olive groves and purple hills.

      She would have to prepare herself, put on the camouflage of warpaint and chic designer armour, and as if on cue Rosa came bouncing in after a decidedly hysterical rap on the door.

      ‘Il padrone has arrived! So unexpected—everyone’s running round in circles! Did you know? Why didn’t you tell us to make ready? Come, I will help you dress, make yourself beautiful for him!’

      Cat forced a thin smile. Rosa, assigned as her personal maid on her arrival here two months ago, had become her dresser, her nanny, her arbiter of correct behaviour and her friend. Unlike the other members of staff Rosa wasn’t painfully deferential and she didn’t whisper behind her hands when she thought she was out of earshot. And no, Aldo hadn’t said anything about finally deigning to visit her the last time he’d phoned her.

      ‘You have already bathed?’ Rosa didn’t wait for an answer, bustling towards the huge hanging cupboard that almost filled one wall, tutting disapprovingly as her eyes fell on the untouched breakfast tray. ‘You must eat, signora. You lose too much weight already.’ She pulled out one of the fitted drawers and handed Cat her selection of underwear, filmy, lacy pale cream briefs and bra, her kind eyes softening. ‘I understand how you feel about losing your baby; it was a terrible thing to happen, but an accident of nature and nothing to blame yourself for. There will be other babies for you.’

      Nothing to blame herself for? She knew differently. Removing her wrap and dressing in the understated chic of the smoky-grey sleeveless shirt-shift Rosa had put out for her, Cat shivered as the cool silk whispered against her body. She’d been assured at the private clinic where she’d been taken on that dreadful night that the early miscarriage had been nature’s way of coping when everything was not as it should be.

      She had said nothing to oppose the well-meaning platitudes but she’d known that if she hadn’t been so tense and anxious she wouldn’t have lost her baby.

      Aldo had politely and coolly distanced himself from her when he’d heard of the coming baby. Overjoyed at the news of her pregnancy, of course, and very solicitous.

      Too solicitous, she’d felt smothered. Her eager explorations of the beautiful old city with her husband as her attentive guide had been firmly vetoed and he’d given orders to his staff at their Florence home that she was to rest, take a little gentle exercise in the cool of the day with Beppe, an ancient retainer who could walk no faster than a snail, as her companion.

      And Aldo himself had been away more often than he’d been at home, catching up on the business responsibilities he’d neglected since their marriage, or so he’d said, and worst of all moving out to another bedroom.

      ‘You are carrying my child,’ he told her gently when she’d protested. ‘If I share your bed I will make love to you; I will not be able to help myself. And our loving is fierce, truly passionate. Yes? I will do nothing to harm you or the tiny life you carry.’

      In view of the way he’d ordered everyone to treat her as if she were made from the finest of brittle spun glass, she might have believed him. She might have lovingly teased him about being over-protective if Iolanda Cardinale hadn’t dripped all that poison into her ears.

      She’d refused to believe a word of what the hateful woman had said but the change in Aldo’s

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