AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Having finally fallen asleep around seven the next morning, she was still in bed when the doorbell went at ten. She assumed that it was the postman and, knowing that he would not wait long, rose in haste, pulling on her cotton wrap and racing downstairs to answer the door.
As her stunned gaze took in the very tall black-haired male outside on the street, she was gripped by total disbelief and pinned to the spot in complete stillness. Cristiano Andreotti.
Even though she thought he could only be a figment of her imagination, the compelling effect of his exotic dark charisma and hard-edged masculinity still knocked her for six. Her heart started pounding and her soft pink mouth opened on a soundless ooh!.
His magnificent bone structure was accentuated by the smooth olive planes of his high cheekbones. Although he shaved twice daily, faint blue-black shading still emphasised his strong jaw and beautifully modelled mouth.
But her mind refused to move on from recognition to acceptance. Because Cristiano Andreotti did not belong on the doorstep of a terraced house in the back street of a nondescript Welsh market town. His natural milieu was much more exclusive, and always redolent of the privilege of the very rich.
Cristiano studied her with unflinching intensity. He had never seen her without make-up before. He saw the changes in her, picked up on every flaw with the eagerness of a man who had dimly expected and possibly even hoped to be disappointed in her. She had lost weight. She was pale, and her tiredness was patent. Her mane of fair hair fell in a tangle round her slight shoulders, no longer glossy and styled into smooth layers of silk by a professional hand. In the midst of cataloguing those differences with the precision of a male to whom no detail was too small, he met eyes as blue as sapphires. Just as suddenly he realized that she was, if anything, more breathtakingly beautiful than ever.
Only this time around she was as nature had made her, with glorious eyes, skin like clotted cream and full, pouting mouth. Desire ripped through his big powerful flume with the dangerous force of a storm tide.
‘ May l come in’?’ he enquired lazily, his rich, resonant drawl wrapping round her rigid spinal cord like a silk caress. The habit of command and high expectation was so engrained in every syllable that it did not even occur to her to deny him.
CHAPTER TWO
ONLY when Cristiano broke the pounding silence could Lydia credit the reality of his appearance. Snatching in a startled breath, she blinked, her long brown lashes fluttering as she struggled to get a hold on the bone-deep shock gripping her. Even in that very first moment she knew that the flame of her hatred for him burned as bright as ever. Perspiration beaded her short upper lip and her legs felt wobbly. She stared fixedly at him, controlled by a heady mixture of fear and fascination, curiosity and loathing.
Predictably, Cristiano took advantage of her astonishment to move forward, and she automatically retreated.
Although she was five foot eleven in her bare feet, he still towered over her by a comfortable six inches. A snaking little frisson of awareness curled somewhere low in her belly, and she went rigid at the novelty of that almost forgotten sensation. All senses on hyper-alert, she could feel the tender tips of her breasts tingle and pinch.
Hot colour flared through her pallor as shame and confusion filled her, and suddenly she found her voice. ‘What do you want’?’
He was feeling his power and enjoying it.
‘Don’t you know’?’ Painfully embarrassed by the way her treacherous body had reacted to him, Lydia tilted her chin in a defiant manner that would have surprised any one of her relatives.
She felt trapped and angry and raw. Deep down inside her lurked the wounding recollection of just how much she had once cared for Cristiano Andreotti and how savagely he had hurt her. It didn’t show on the surface, but he had changed her and not for the better. “ could l know why you’re here’?’ ‘l thought some sixth sense survival instinct might kick in…’ Cristiano surveyed her with liquid dark eyes full of mockery. ‘Might spell out a simple message.’
‘Obviously not.’ She folded her arms in a defensive gesture and tried to still the trembling aftershock that was threatening to take her over.
‘l’ m here because l want to see you. ‘may I come in?’
Cristiano traded, his sexy accent wrapping round the syllables in the most extraordinarily melodic way.
Without having realized what she was doing, Lydia found she was staring up at him, at those brilliant, beautiful dark eyes that had haunted her dreams.
Eyes that betrayed only the most superficial emotion and her own reflection. He gave nothing away. He was famous for his detachment that veered on indifference, even icy coldness. She had felt ten feet tall when she’d made him laugh or smile.
Fighting that tide of memory, she shook her head as though to clear it. She strove feverishly to blank him out, remembering fearfully how it had been for her for a crazy couple of months when he had been all she could think about, when his mere presence had been enough to ensure that she was blind to everybody and everything but him.
‘ l don’t want you here…’ Even as she spoke, she knew that the remedy of asking him to leave was in her hands, but that for reasons she was afraid to examine she coulld not yet bring herself to actually tell him to go.
Cristiano angled his sleek dark head to one side and studied her with maddening cool. ‘Don’t you’?’ Her tummy seemed to somersault, as if he had punched a panic button. For a crazy moment she worried that he knew her better than she knew herself, and she rushed to fill the silence. ‘How did you find me’?’ ‘l obtained some privileged information…’
She turned pale as milk. So he knew about the missing money. an inner voice censured.
She wanted to cringe, and pronounced reluctance to look him in the face afflicted her.
Cristiano Andreotti took advantage of that moment of weakness and stepped past her. He knew her fortunes had been in a steady decline since their first meeting, but it was only now when he saw the shabby, sparsely furnished sitting room, that he appreciated how steep that descent had been. Nothing could more adequately illustrate the vast gulf between their lives, and the reality that she had only ever been one visitor in his world.
‘What happened to the window’?’ ‘It got broken,’ she mumbled.
‘Have you called the glazier’?’
‘ Not yet. It only happened late last night.’
His incisive gaze alighted on the crudely lettered and crumpled note on the mantelpiece and he reached for it.
The stone was sitting on the hearth, and he guessed what had happened. A frown drew his sleek dark brows together for a split second. ‘You’ve been threatened’? Have you reported this’?’
‘ In an abrupt movement she snatched the abusive note from his shapely brown fingers. ‘Why don’t you mind your own business’?’ she gasped, more mortified than ever.
‘The police should be told. The brute mentality behind that sort of intimidation is liable to get more physical. You cannot stay here alone ‘
‘And where do you suggest l move to’?’ she broke in tautly, deeper anxiety assailing her for if anything the incident last night had made her even more reluctant to take advantage of her cousin’s offer of shelter. Gwenna, and her father and brother, lived in an isolated farmhouse, and she would not risk bringing trouble to their door.
‘l may be able to provide a solution,’ Cristiano murmured without the slightest change in his level of intonation.
Lydia realized that she was trembling. Looking away from him, she struggled for mastery over conflicting promptings of fear, bewilderment and discomfiture. In doing so, she registered for the first time since his arrival that she was standing in front of him wearing an old dressing gown and with messy hair. She almost died of chagrin.
‘Look, l need to get dressed…l’m not going to hang around arguing with you.’ What solutions ? she wanted to ask, but she wouldn’t let herself. She hadn’t even told him to get out. Didn’t she have any pride’? How much lower co
uld she sink’? Watching her climb the stairs, Cristiano caught a trash of the pale, slender silk-smooth thigh, and an instant shaft of heat travelled to his groin.
He ground his even white teeth together. The sexual buzz in the atmosphere was sending his male hormones on a primal rampage. That ferocious attraction had been there from the first time he saw her.
But he was convinced that once he slept with her, he would no longer want her. She was scared. If he offered her the money without further ado she would probably let him have her here and now. So what if it was sleazy? So what if he had never paid for the privilege of bedding a woman before?
‘Dio mio, she wanted him too. Her eyes and her edginess around him were unmistakably revealing to a male of his experience. Yet she still seemed to be in denial of that truth always backing off, primly avoiding visual contact. A guy with some class would wait and prolong the finale, he told himself grimly.
A gardening book lay open on the small dining table and he studied it with a questioning frown.
Restive as a hungry panther on the prowl, he paced. It was a challenge, for the room was tiny, the hall non-existent and the kitchen not much larger. There, however, he came to a sudden halt, a black brow rising in astonishment. In defiance of the grim urban outlook, the small back yard had been transformed into a glorious green patio jungle of containerised flowers and foliage.
Employing his mobile phone, he told one of his staff to organist a glazier to replace the broken window. He said the job had to be done immediately.
