‘I’ve never been to this area before. My parents don’t do rural holidays.’ Her sultry mouth quirked at the mere idea of her decorative mother in a countryside setting. ‘I did ask my aunt once if she would like to come back and see the garden and she said no, that gardens change with the passage of time and that she preferred to remember it as it was when it was new.’
‘If I can arrange it before you leave I will take you to the Palazzo Barigo for a tour,’ Vitale drawled softly, lifting the bottle to top up her wine glass.
‘No more for me, thanks,’ Zara told him hurriedly. ‘I get giggly too easily, so I never drink much.’
Vitale was sardonically amused by that little speech. She was putting up barriers as prickly as cactus leaves and visibly on her guard. But he was too experienced not to have noticed her lingering appraisals and he was convinced that she wanted him even though she was trying to hide the fact. Erotic promise thrummed through his body, setting up a level of anticipation beyond anything he had ever experienced.
Vitale was as well travelled as Zara and they shared amusing anecdotes about trips abroad, discovering that their sense of humour was amazingly similar. He moved his hands expressively while he talked and slowly but surely she found herself watching him like a hawk. When all of a sudden she collided with his scorching golden eyes, she couldn’t even manage to swallow. The truth that she couldn’t stifle her physical response to him alarmed her. She was not in full control of her response to Vitale Roccanti and disturbingly that took her back to her ordeal with Julian. She breathed in slow and deep and steady, mentally fighting to step back from her reactions. Vitale was gorgeous but not for her. She didn’t want to dip a toe in the water, she didn’t want to get her fingers burnt either. Even if it killed her she was determined to retain her self-respect.
‘I hope you won’t think I’m being rude but I’ve had a lot of late nights this week and I would like to turn in now so that I can make an early start in the morning,’ Zara proffered with a bright smile of apology.
Vitale accepted her decision with good grace, rising immediately to his feet. Her cheeks warmed at the sudden suspicion that he might only have been entertaining her out of courtesy. Not every guy wanted to jump her bones, she reminded herself irritably.
At the foot of the stairs, she hovered, disconcertingly reluctant to leave him even though she had carefully engineered her own exit. ‘Will I see you in the morning?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘I doubt it. I’ll be leaving soon after six,’ Vitale imparted, watching her slim figure shift restively. His level of awareness was at such a pitch it was not only his muscles that ached.
Still unable to tear herself away, Zara looked up at him, focusing on the irresistible dark glitter of his stunning eyes and his perfect lips. He was downright drenched in sex appeal and she wanted to touch him so badly her fingertips tingled. The hunger he was suddenly making no attempt to hide made her feel all hot and shivery deep down inside.
‘But before we part, cara mia …’ Vitale purred, purebred predator on the hunt as he closed long, deft fingers round her arm to ease her closer.
He took Zara by surprise and she froze in dismay, nostrils flaring on the scent of his cologne. ‘No,’ she said abruptly, planting both her palms firmly to his broad chest to literally push him back from her. ‘I don’t know what you think I’m doing here but I’m certainly not here for this.’
Ditching the smile ready to play about his beautifully sculpted mouth, Vitale lifted a sardonic brow. ‘No?’
‘You have a hell of an opinion of yourself, don’t you?’ The tart rejoinder just leapt off Zara’s tongue, fierce annoyance rattling through her at his arrogant attitude. Evidently he had expected her to succumb rather than shoot him down and the knowledge infuriated her, for she had met too many men who expected her to be a pushover.
His dark, heavily lashed eyes flashed with anger and then screened. ‘Perhaps I misread the situation—’
‘Yes, you definitely did,’ Zara retorted defensively. ‘I’m grateful for your hospitality and I’ve enjoyed your company but that’s as far as it goes! Goodnight, Vitale.’
But as she hastened up the stairs and hurriedly shut her bedroom door she felt like a total fraud. Exit shocked virginal heroine stage left, she mocked inwardly, her face burning. He had not misread the situation as much as she would have liked to believe. She did find him incredibly attractive and clearly he had recognised the fact and tried to act on it. She was not the undersexed woman she had come to believe she was. But what a time to make such a discovery about herself! Why now? Why now when she was committed to marrying another man? Even though her bridegroom had no desire to share a bed with her, her susceptibility to Vitale Roccanti’s lethal dark charisma made her feel guilty and disloyal.
She lay in bed studying the crescent of the moon gleaming through the curtains. Vitale was simply a temptation she had to withstand and maybe it was good that she should be reminded now that being a married woman would demand circumspection from her. In the future she would be more on her guard. But she could not forget that even in a temper she had still not told him that she was getting married that summer.
AT WAR with herself, Zara tossed and turned for a good part of the night, wakening to a warm room bathed in the bright light filtering through the thin curtains. Seating her on the terrace, Giuseppina brought her a breakfast of fresh peaches, milky coffee and bread still warm from the oven served with honey. Birds were singing in the trees, bees buzzing and golden sunshine drenched the country valley below the house. It was a morning to be glad to be alive, not to brood on what could not be helped. So, a handsome Italian had made a mild pass at her, why was she agonising over the fact? The attraction had been mutual? So, she was human, fallible.
Giuseppina brought her keys to the car and the villa and Zara left the house to climb into the sturdy pickup truck parked outside. In the early morning quiet the garden of the villa was a wonderful haven of peace. Grateful that it was still relatively cool, Zara took measurements and sat down on a wrought iron chair in the shade of the house to do some preliminary sketches. She chose the most suitable site for the pool first and, that achieved, her ideas were free to flow thick and fast. For the front of the house she wanted a much more simple and soft approach than the current formal geometry of the box-edged beds. So engrossed was she that she didn’t hear the car pulling up at the front and she glanced up in surprise when she heard a door slam inside the house.
Vitale strolled outside, a vision of sleek dark masculinity sheathed in summer casuals, a sweater knotted round his shoulders with unmistakeable Italian style. She scrambled up, her heart going bang-bang-bang inside her chest and her mouth dry as a bone.
‘Time for lunch,’ he told her lazily.
Zara glanced at her watch for the first time since she had arrived and was startled to find that the afternoon was already well advanced. It had taken his reminder for her to notice that her tummy was hollow with hunger. ‘I lost track of time …’
Vitale moved closer to glance curiously at the sheaf of sketches she was gathering up. ‘Anything for me to see yet?’
‘I prefer to submit a design only when I’m finished,’ she told him evenly, accustomed to dealing with impatient clients. ‘I’ve been working on some options for the hard landscaping first.’
He studied her from beneath the dark lush screen of his lashes. Even without a speck of make-up and clad in sexless shorts and a loose shirt, she was a true beauty. Tendrils of wavy silvery hair had worked loose from the clasp she wore to cluster round her damp temples and fall against her cheekbones. Her lavender eyes were wide above heat-flushed cheeks, her temptress mouth lush and natural pink. The tightening heaviness at his groin made his teeth clench. She looked very young, very fresh and impossibly sexy. He remembered the rumour that Monty Blake had paid a fortune to suppress pornographic pictures taken by some boyfriend of hers when she