of her, the island unfolded before her eyes with the aid of the electronic equipment she now took for granted, and she printed out all the information available on the harsh beauty of a land which was known as ‘Persephone’s Island’. And then, with an odd thundering in her heart, and a prickling sense of expectation, she settled down and began to read.
Soon she was lost in tales of a bloody past, discovering the complex and stormy history of the sensual European island which lay so close to North Africa. Sicilians were the heirs of the ancient Greeks, Carthaginians, Arabs and Normans, she read. No wonder that Giovanni looked more spectacularly different from any other man she had ever met.
She was only disturbed by the insistent ringing of the doorbell and she blinked, and put the sheets of paper down.
Lucy, probably. She wasn’t expecting anyone else—and in London no one ever seemed to call on anyone else unexpectedly. In fact, she had planned a quiet night as she always did at the end of a job. The celebration of its successful completion would come at the weekend, when they could lie in until late the next morning. They would go to their local bistro and eat chicken and drink a carafe of French country wine.
The doorbell rang again.
OK, she thought, I’m on my way! And if she hadn’t been sure it was her sister she might have felt mildly irritated as she unplugged the Internet connection, but left the picture of Sicily still on the screen.
The ear-splitting sound had just invaded her ears for the third time, and her frown changed to one of worry. What was all the urgency?
With a wrench she pulled the door open, and her heart very nearly stopped.
It was him. Giovanni Calverri.
There.
On her doorstep, with the blue blaze from his eyes nearly blinding her. Briefly she wondered whether those unbelievable, unusual eyes were a throwback to when the island had been invaded by the Greeks, centuries ago, but she had no time to wonder more, merely note the look of derision which was hardening the luscious mouth.
‘Y-you,’ she breathed in a stunned kind of disbelief.
‘But of course it is,’ he concurred sardonically. ‘Weren’t you waiting for me?’
‘Waiting for you?’ She prayed for logic and some kind of strength to seep into her addled brain, but all she could think about was his beauty. A hard, cold kind of beauty unlike anything she had ever seen in her life. ‘Why should I be waiting for you?’
So she wanted to play games.
And, suddenly, so did he, damn her!
‘Didn’t you forget something?’ he purred.
Right at that moment, she would be hard-pressed to remember her name. She felt a shivering awareness of him as she shook her head distractedly. The lemony, musky scent of him had invaded her nostrils like some kind of raw pheromone and she could sense the warm, male heat radiating off him.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She frowned.
Part of him wanted to ram the accusation home. To tell her that he had no need of women who lacked such subtlety. Predatory women with hungry green eyes. But that part of him seemed to be fast on the wane and some alien emotion was in the ascendancy.
Until he reminded himself that emotion had no place in what was happening between them. He didn’t know her. Or particularly like her. Certainly didn’t respect her. He just wanted her, it was as simple and as complicated as that.
His lips parted to say with soft venom, Oh, yes, you do, but some interloper had stolen the words from his mouth. He raised his dark eyebrows questioningly and the hand which had been partially concealed by the hard shaft of his thigh suddenly withdrew and he held out the overstuffed black leather diary towards her. ‘This is yours, I believe?’
‘My Filofax!’ Kate stared at it in astonishment. Why, she depended on it as she would her lifeblood—and she had been in such a state that she hadn’t even noticed it missing! ‘I didn’t even realise I’d left it behind!’
She was a good actress, he would say that for her! For a moment her surprise looked almost genuine. But her reaction to him told him the true story. Should he taunt her with it? Let her know that he could see through her schoolgirl games? ‘You mean you hadn’t missed it?’ he mocked.
Kate stiffened, and indignation took the place of surprise. ‘You think I left it behind on purpose?’ she asked, her voice rising with incredulity.
He shrugged, and the blue eyes glittered a challenge at her. ‘Didn’t you?’
She raised her eyebrows, scarcely believing what she was hearing. ‘Presumably just so that you would return it, I suppose?’
‘If that was your intention.’ He gave a coolly beautiful smile. ‘Then you have succeeded, mmm, cara?’
She almost laughed aloud at his arrogance. ‘Maybe such a scenario happens to you all the time Mr Calverri—’
‘Giovanni,’ he corrected softly, unable to stop himself even though the distant clamour of his conscience told him not to enter into this delicious game of flirtation.
‘Maybe women do throw themselves at you—’
‘They do,’ he agreed gravely, and was rewarded with a renewed look of outrage, though was unprepared for the stealthy acceleration of his pulse as her sinful lips pursed themselves together.
‘Well, for your information—’ she drew a deep breath, slightly aware of behaving a little hypocritically since she had been sitting here obsessing about him, hadn’t she? ‘—if I was that interested in a man I wouldn’t resort to such transparent tactics, I would… would…’
Dark brows were raised in query as her words tailed off. ‘You would…?’
Well, why not tell him the truth? ‘I would have asked you out,’ she said in a matter-of-fact voice.
Giovanni knew a moment of intrigue. Women had asked him out before, particularly English and American women, and he had always felt a sizzling disdain for such forward behaviour. Though a modern man in terms of accomplishments, he remained a staunch traditionalist at heart. The island of his birth defined the roles of the sexes far less markedly than in centuries past. But at its root still lay a machismo society where the man pursued the woman, and not the other way round.
And yet he found himself wondering if the unquestionably strong desire she had aroused in him might have enticed him enough to accept.
‘But you didn’t,’ he stated softly.
Her eyes met his fearlessly. ‘No, I didn’t.’
But she had thought about it, he realised with a start. Mulled over the possibility and decided against it. He felt his interest flicker again, for wasn’t that a kind of rejection?
His eyes narrowed. It was an entirely new sensation for him. No woman had ever rejected him, in any way, shape or form, and Giovanni felt the renewed leap to his senses as the first dull flush of the inevitable made him shrug in wry recognition.
‘I will try not to be too offended at such a blow to my ego,’ he murmured.
‘Oh, thank heavens for that!’ came her sardonic retort. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to sleep nights if you had!’
He almost smiled, acknowledging that something unknown and forbidden and dangerous was pulsing in the air around them. And that, instead of getting out of here as quickly as possible, he lanced through her emerald gaze with a cool look of challenge. ‘So, aren’t you going to ask me inside, cara?’
And then realised just how shockingly and beautifully potent that question sounded.
‘Inside?’ she repeated slowly, and her mind started to play outrageous tricks on her as she imagined the reality of that simple, one-word request which suddenly sounded