Exotic Affairs(131)

‘I’ve just seen Felipe and my aunt leaving,’ he told her levelly.

Caroline nodded. ‘She told me they would leave tonight.’

‘I didn’t want them to do that.’ He sighed. ‘I never meant to actually throw them out of here. Family is family…’

‘Warts and all?’ She nodded, ‘I know,’ she said referring to her own feckless father. Picking up one of his hands, she began kissing his fingers. ‘Did you read the diaries?’ she asked.

‘Mmm.’ His other hand slid up her slippery flesh until it found and closed around one of her breasts. ‘I knew some of it,’ he confessed. ‘First from my mother and then from my father, when we did eventually attempt to communicate.’

‘Seven years ago,’ Catherine sighed out bleakly, thinking of all those years they’d lost.

‘Seven years ago,’ he agreed. ‘When I made the trip to Spain to arrogantly lay claim to my roots and met the woman who claimed me instead.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, thinking about how ruthlessly her father had used one of them against the other.

‘I told your father that I was in love with you and wanted to marry you,’ he informed her heavily. ‘He politely informed me where I could go. I wasn’t good enough for his daughter, he said. At the time I agreed with him.’ He grimaced. ‘Still do, actually.’

‘But you’ll have me anyway,’ Caroline added smilingly. ‘There really isn’t much to pick between you, my father and poor Felipe,’ she said. ‘You’re all too self-motivated to be true.’

‘Felipe was right when he compared my father’s life with the life of the ancestor who built this castle,’ Luiz remarked gruffly. ‘It was history repeating itself.’

Twisting in the water until she was facing him, Caroline murmured softly, ‘Not this time, though. This time the Conde got his woman. That makes for a happy ending.’

Eyes like dark chasms filled with satisfaction. ‘A very happy ending,’ Luiz agreed huskily, and began to kiss her…





The Bellini Bride



Michelle Reid





CHAPTER ONE


THE BED was a sea of rumpled white linen. Tangled amongst it Marco Bellini could see a long golden leg bent at the knee and the smooth silken-curve of a hip and thigh. The rest was covered by fine white sheeting but for a slender arm and the rippling swathe of strawberry-blonde hair flowing away from the kind of profile that would have launched ships in times gone by.

Only her name was not Helen, it was Antonia, and, although her beauty might have launched many metaphorical ships in her time, there was no disputing to whom she now belonged.

Leaning back against the balcony rail, Marco allowed himself a smile as he brought his coffee cup to his lips. It was still very early, but the sun was already hot against his naked back. He had come out onto the terrace directly from his shower, and the white towel draped low around his narrow hips was his only concession to modesty, here, in his summer villa perched high on the hill above Portofino, where the only eyes to see him belonged to the seagulls soaring on the early morning currents of air.

And Antonia, of course, if she bothered to wake up. But, unlike him, she didn’t have to be back in Milan by nine o’clock, so she had no reason to rise this early. Although… he then added ruefully to that, if she did happen to awaken now, it would be the simplest thing in the world for him to linger long enough to drop the towel and join her back in the bed.

But not yet, Marco told himself as he took another sip from his cup. The coffee was hot, black and strong and was just another pleasure he enjoyed lingering over while he leant here watching his woman sleep.

In the year they had been together he had never seen Antonia look anything but beautiful. Dressed to slay or stripped bare to the exquisite skin nature had given her, she exuded a beauty that by far outclassed any other woman he had known. He was proud to be her lover, proud that only he held the right to place a possessive hand upon any part of her anatomy. Proud that she only had eyes for him.

But did he love her? he asked himself.

No, he admitted heavily. He didn’t love her. He loved how she looked, and how she always made him feel. And he would willingly have laid down his own life if it meant him saving hers. But true love had to go deeper than that. He had to love what she was, and he didn’t.

A sigh caught in the depth of his chest. A cloud blotted out the sun. A seagull shrieked in protest. The coffee suddenly tasted bitter. Putting the cup aside he turned to stare at the misted-blue waters of the Mediterranean shimmering in the distance—and wished to hell he knew what he was going to do about her.