Moth to the Flame (13 page)

smooth line of her shoulder before continuing downwards to

discover and explore softer curves. He frowned a little as his fingers

encountered the barrier of denim, and Juliet gave a little choking cry

as yet another button gave way under his seeking hands.

'No!' She snatched at the gaping edges of the waistcoat and held

them across her breasts protestingly.

'Why not?' he demanded softly. 'I may not be about to offer you

marriage like my ill-advised young brother, but you will not find me

ungenerous, I promise you. Why defer something that we both

know is inevitable?'

Juliet shook her head violently. She lifted her chin and stared at

him, her eyes blazing with defiance.

'I don't doubt you have it all worked out,
signore,'
she said with

only the faintest tremor in her voice to suggest she was not in

complete control of the situation and her own emotions. 'But one

thing you seem to have left out of your calculations is the fact that I

find both you and your insulting advances totally abhorrent!'

The silence that followed her reckless words was electrifying. In

spite of her bravado, Juliet felt a
frisson
of nervousness run the

length of her body as she met his glance. There was anger there, but

she had been expecting that— anger and something else that she

could not immediately analyse.

'So you find me abhorrent, do you,
cara?'
he said at last, each slow

word dropping like a stone into the tension between them. 'That's a

lie, and you know it as well as I do, and if it weren't for the fact that

Annunziata will be serving our lunch at any moment, I would prove

that it was a lie here and now—to the ultimate satisfaction of us

both,' he added, his insolent appraisal raking her from head to foot.

He rose and before she could guess his. intention, leaned down,

jerking her to her feet beside him. Then, while she was still off

balance, his other arm went round her, pulling her against the

warmth of his body, making her totally aware of his vibrant

masculinity.

For one long earth-shaking moment he held her, letting her

recognise the potency of his strength against her weakness. Then

his hand went up to tangle in her hair while his mouth descended

slowly and inexorably on hers.

Juliet couldn't breathe, she couldn't think, although at one point she

thought she heard herself give a slight whimper. But if Santino

heard it, he was plainly unmoved by it. His grip didn't slacken, nor

did his relentless onslaught on her mouth. It was only the sheerest

effort of will that kept her arms at her sides, when every instinct,

every throbbing nerve ending in her body was shrieking at her to

slide her hands up around his neck, to draw him closer still if that

was possible—to tacitly acknowledge that he had the surrender he

was seeking.

When at last he let her go, she could taste blood, and her hand came

up almost of its own volition to cover her swollen mouth. Santino

looked down at her and his eyes glowed oddly—like those of a

mountain lion who has sighted his prey, she thought

half-hysterically, and found herself praying that he would not touch

her again.

As if in answer to her prayer, he stepped away to a low table near

one of the window embrasures where bottles and glasses stood on a

tray. He lifted one of the bottles and uncorked it, turning to where

Juliet stood as if she had been turned to stone, his dark face cool

and mocking.

'An
aperitivo
, cara,' he said, the faint amusement underlying his

voice stressing the ambiguity of his words. 'To give us an appetite

for the delicious meal to come.'

For a moment Juliet stared at him as he stood there, parodying the

courteous host, then a long, slow shudder went through her and she

turned away, forcing her unsteady legs to take her across the room

to the stairs, and the fragile sanctuary of the room above. And as

her hand fastened almost convulsively on the great iron latch of the

door, she heard, as if in a dream, the echo of his laughter drift after

her.

Juliet sat disconsolately on the edge of the bed, staring down at the

floor. Beside her were the remains of the lunch which Annunziata

had brought her, somewhat reproachfully, on a tray. She herself had

felt rather guilty at causing extra work, but it was either that or go

hungry for there was no way in which she could have faced Santino

Vallone across that shining table after what had passed between

them.

No one in her life before had ever held her with such insolent

intimacy or kissed her with such savage passion, she told herself

shamedly, and it was not the slightest consolation to know that all

that passion and brutality were not in fact intended for her, but for

her sister.

She might be pretending to be Jan, but her response to Santino's

dark attraction from the very beginning had been all her own, and

she had been a fool not to realise that a man of his experience with

women would not have registered it, and reacted accordingly.

The last thing he would have expected was for her own reaction to

have been that of a frightened virgin, she thought, the trace of an

unwilling smile lifting the corner of her still-bruised mouth. And yet

that was exactly what she was, and something she would never be

able to disguise or pretend about.

She put up a hand and lifted the weight of her hair off the nape of

her neck with a little sigh. This pitiful little charade of hers was

running out of time fast, and she had little option, she felt, but to

confess her real identity to Santino. It was not a confrontation she

could look forward to with any sort of pleasurable anticipation. She

now knew how he could be when he was angry, and it was not a

state of mind she was anxious to provoke in him again.

In fact, she didn't really want to provoke him in any way at all, and

one of her main priorities must be to get out of this room and into

one of her own—preferably one with a lock on the inside—even if

it was only one night, and she was forced to confess about her

deception on the following day.

She got up and picked up her suitcase with determination. On the

gallery outside, she paused, looking at the closed doors. The room

next to Santino's was an empty bedroom, but she decided to avoid

that particular one as being too close for comfort. Instead she chose

a slightly smaller room on the far side of the bathroom she had used

earlier. It was furnished in the same ruggedly magnificent manner as

the rest of the
castello
, and only the bed needed making up. With

the feeling that she would sleep fully dressed on the bare mattress if

she had to, Juliet hastily staked a claim to her new lodging by

unpacking her case.

Her next action was to make sure that the old-fashioned bolt on the

door really worked. It squeaked protestingly as she pushed at it, but

finally moved grudgingly along, and she had to struggle once again

to unbolt it. When she succeeded and opened the door, she was

slightly disconcerted to find Annunziata on the gallery outside, the

used tray in her hands, and her mouth hanging open in astonishment

at these goings-on by her master's latest guest.

When Juliet indicated that she would like to have the bed made up,

Annunziata's amazement and frank disbelief were almost comical,

and she immediately broke into a flood of speech which Juliet had

no difficulty in interpreting as protests. It was clear Annunziata

considered the occupation of an extra room a waste of time when it

was clear, her rolling eyes and gesticulating hands were saying, that

Juliet would be sharing Santino's bed.

It was perfected obvious, Juliet thought resentfully, that he had not

bothered to give Annunziata any hint of the real state of affairs

between them. If only Annunziata spoke even a few words of

English, or she had Jan's fluency in Italian, she could make the

whole situation clear in moments, she thought unhappily. As it was,

Annunziata clearly believed that some sort of lovers' tiff had taken

place before lunch which would all be happily resolved at bedtime,

and as she went off shaking her head, Juliet, watching her go, had

no great hopes that she would accede to her request and provide

some bedding.

The view from this bedroom was slightly different, she discovered.

She could catch a glimpse of a silver-sanded beach and some boats

drawn up on it. She wondered if the delicious fish she had eaten for

lunch had been caught locally. She decided she would go and

explore later, when she felt less comfortably full of food. She

wandered back to the bed and kicked off her heelless sandals,

stretching herself full length on the mattress. She had closed the

shutters, and the room felt cooler without the full force of the sun

pouring into it. The dim light was comforting too in its way, and

Juliet found her eyelids beginning to sink involuntarily. She pulled

herself together hurriedly. She wasn't going to sleep, just rest a little

in the heat of the day, and presently she would put on one of the

bikinis she had noticed had been included in her luggage and go

down to that beach. In the meantime she would improve the shining

hour by rehearsing some of her lines for the inevitable scene with

Santino when she confessed who she really was.

It would be terrible if she stood in front of him, stammering and

stuttering and totally at a loss. Far better if she had a speech all

prepared, she thought, trying and discarding several promising

opening gambits. Everything she thought of sounded either stilted or

plain ridiculous, and her whirling thoughts had an oddly

uncomfortable way of whisking her into a very different daydream

in which she was telling Santino that she loved him.

'And that really is ridiculous,' she said aloud and very sleepily.

The next time she opened her eyes, it was to find Annunziata

standing over her with an armful of bedding.

'Oh, heavens!' Juliet sat up stretching languorously. She was

amazed to see from her wristwatch that she had slept for nearly two

hours, and guessed she must still be suffering slightly from the

aftermath of the sleeping tablet Santino had given her the previous

night.

She helped. Annunziata make up the big bed and gathered from her

remarks that the older woman was surprised that the
signore
had

given his permission for this to be done. Juliet was a little surprised

herself, although she would not have allowed Annunziata to see

this, and more than a little relieved. Perhaps Santino had decided to

take her at her word, she thought without a great deal of conviction,

as the memory of her unthinking response to that shatteringly

demanding kiss returned to haunt her. It was far more likely, she

told herself uneasily, that he had decided to play some sort of cat

and mouse game of his own with her. All she could hope was that

he would allow this to continue for at least twenty-four hours, by

which time Mario and Jan should be safely married and she could

make her confession. And when that was over, she thought, Santino

would probably never want to speak to her again, let alone make

love to her.

When Annunziata had gone off muttering and shaking her head,

presumably over the vagaries of young Englishwomen, Juliet

changed swiftly into one of the bikinis. Once again, it was far more

revealing than she was used to, consisting of little more than two

semi-circles of jade green cotton held together by strings for the bra

top, and two triangles tied at the side with strings for the bottom

half. Juliet gazed at herself in the full-length wardrobe mirror and

suffered a slight qualm when she saw just how much of herself was

going to be on show to the eyes of the curious, and at the last

minute she pulled on a white cheesecloth tunic with a rounded

neckline and balloon sleeves. Until she discovered how public the

beach was, she told herself defensively, pushing to the back of her

mind the thought that only one pair of masculine eyes was likely to

cause her any concern.

As she reached the ground floor and started towards the great

wooden door which gave access to the outside world, she wondered