Kitabı oku: «Beauty and the Reclusive Prince / Executive: Expecting Tiny Twins», sayfa 5

He nodded. “Exactly. These things are always…accidents.” He should just hang up and he knew it. He tried. But somehow, it just seemed too cruel.

“Why?” Her voice sharpened, as though she’d suddenly found the hint of a chink in his argument. “Why are you so sure I’ll get hurt? Has anyone actually been hurt in that river?”

His throat choked shut for a moment. This was something he couldn’t talk about. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath to steady his resolve. The consequences were too risky to gamble with.

There was a part of him, in a deep, secret place, that halfway believed there was an evil force lurking by the river, waiting to trap another woman—especially one that he had some affection for—and pull her under the water as well. There was another, more rational part of him that contended the evil force was his own sense of guilt. Which side was right? It wasn’t worth putting it to the test.

“Isabella, I forbid you to go anywhere near that hillside. And the river. Stay away.”

“But—”

“Promise me.” His voice was harsh and stern. He had to make sure she didn’t feel she could come on her own.

She swallowed hard. He could hear the effort she was making but that didn’t matter. He steeled himself. It had to be done.

“All right,” she said at last in a very small voice. “I’ll stay away. At least I’ll stay away until I can find a way to convince you—”

“You’re not going to convince me. I’m changing this number, remember?”

“But, Max…”

He winced. Hearing his name in her voice sent a quiver through him, a sense of something edgy that he didn’t like at all. Given a little time, it would chip away at his resolve, bit by bit.

“Goodbye, Isabella,” he said firmly.

She sighed. “Goodbye.”

Her voice had a plaintive quaver that touched his heart, but he hung up anyway. He had to. Another moment or two and he’d have been giving in to her, and that was something that couldn’t happen.

This entire connection had to end. He couldn’t afford the time and emotional effort involved in maintaining a relationship, even on the phone. He had work to do.

But returning to his research was hopeless at this point. Instead, he rose, grabbed his towel and headed for the fully equipped gym he’d had built into half of the whole ground level of the building. It was obvious he was going to have to fight harder to push Isabella Casali out of his system.

CHAPTER FIVE

ISABELLA fought back tears of frustration as she clicked off her phone connection to the palazzo.

“There go any hopes of a career in negotiations,” she muttered to herself. “Turns out I’m not any better at that than I am at breaking and entering.”

Hardly a surprise, but disappointing anyway. What now? Giving up wasn’t an option. One look at her half-empty restaurant told her that. She was going to have to find another way. But how? She’d promised him she wouldn’t go near the hillside or the river and she was going to keep that promise, much as it hurt.

But there had to be a way to breach those high walls in a more effective manner. Someone in the village had to have dealings with the palazzo. It didn’t make sense that they would import everything from Rome. Slowly, carefully, she began to ask around. At first all she got were blank stares.

And then, finally, she hit pay dirt of a sort. Much to her surprise, the man who delivered seafood to her restaurant every morning also made a stop at the Rossi palazzo once or twice a week.

“Only on Tuesdays and Fridays,” he told her chattily, wiping his hands on his big white apron. “Wednesdays are out. It seems to be the day off for the staff, such as it is.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes. I made the mistake of showing up on a Wednesday once. I couldn’t even get in the gate. I had two pounds of Chilean sea bass go bad over that little error.”

“Do you ever see the prince?” she asked quickly, afraid he might escape before she got all she needed to know from him.

“The prince?” He shrugged. “I don’t think so. I usually deal with an old fellow who tries to get something for nothing every time.” He chuckled. “The place is like a mausoleum. You’d think it was full of old dead ancestors, but somebody seems to have an appetite for salmon and scallops.”

And so, a plan was born.

The gap in the stone wall that surrounded the Rossi estate was still there. No one had filled it in—and that was lucky. Without this little piece of access, her plan would never have worked at all.

And so the following Wednesday, Isabella squeezed through and then stood very still in the warm noon sun, listening as hard as she could. The wind was quiet. The water was a distant babbling. And once the pounding of her heart quieted down, she could tell—the guard dogs didn’t seem to be loose. There wasn’t a sign of them.

She bit her lip, tempted to race up the hill and gather basil as fast as she could, then race back again. But she knew that was no solution. And such an action certainly held no honor. Much as the prince scared her, she had to confront him about this and do things openly and honestly.

He’d told her not to come here. She had to change his mind—not steal from him. Taking a deep breath, she started up the hill toward the castle.

It was a long climb and she was carrying a heavy backpack with supplies—her special sauce pan, her favorite olive oil, the tomatoes that would form her base—and a small container of all that was left of the basil supply for her restaurant. She was going to go for broke and cook for the prince. It was pretty much the last idea she had left.

All the way, she kept expecting to hear someone shouting for her to go back. That didn’t happen and she found some shade once she’d reached the top of the hill. There were no cars in sight, and not a sign of life anywhere. The castle looked just as old and moldy, but a lot less intimidating in the sunlight.

A few minutes of rest and she began to work up the nerve to go on with her plan. She knew where the cook’s entrance was. She would use that first, hoping to find things unlocked. Once she was inside, she knew exactly what to do next.

She scanned the windows as high as she could look. There was no telling where his rooms were, no way to know where he hung out during the day.

Her fingers trembled a bit as she reached for the latch on the kitchen door, and she paused for a moment. Closing her eyes, she muttered a quick plea. This had to work. He had to understand. He was a prince, but he was also a man and she was counting on that basic humanity to come through for her in the end.

And whatever chance there was, she had to take it. She had no choice.

Max stood with his eyes closed and savored being bombarded by water. He’d just had a grueling workout in his gym and the water pouring over his naked body was creating a special kind of ecstasy. Every aching muscle sang with relief. Every body part relaxed with delight. Every nerve, every fiber, came together in rapt happiness.

He would have to pay for this someday. Maybe at the gates of heaven. This was pure self-indulgence and he was probably wasting water to boot, but he let it go on and on, gushing through his thick hair, making small silver rivers over his tanned shoulders and through the dark thatch on his chest. It felt so damn good. He was pure appetite today, appetite for pleasure.

And what the hell? It was his birthday.

It was his birthday and no one had remembered.

That was okay. In fact, it was exactly as he wanted it to be. He hated people making a fuss. What was a birthday, anyway? Just a day. Nothing special. All the celebrating was just a pretence that something had actually happened, something had actually changed, a milestone had been set down. And actually, it was all much ado about nothing.

A memory floated into his mind, how his birthday had been when Laura was still with him. She’d slipped out of bed early in the morning and taken little gifts and hidden them all over the castle. It had taken him the entire day to find them all. How she’d laughed when he’d looked in all the wrong places. He could almost hear her musical voice now.

But he shook it away. Thinking of Laura was still too painful. Would there ever come a time when he could remember her without that dull, hopeless, agonizing pain of guilt in his gut?

Finally he was ready to put a stop to this and get on with his day. He turned off the water and stood there for a moment, feeling the mist around him turn into clear air, the warmth turn into refreshing coolness, the moisture evaporate on his skin. For some reason his senses seemed especially acute today. He was feeling things he never noticed, hearing birds outside, feeling a breeze, enjoying the rays of the sun that came in through the open window. As usual, he avoided looking in the mirror while he dried himself with a huge fluffy towel, glancing out the window at the beautiful day instead.

“There’s no place like Italy,” he murmured to himself. “And in Italy, there’s no place like Monta Correnti.”

He stretched in the warm sunlight, smelling the clean scent of his soap. And…something else.

He stopped, frowning, and sniffed the air again. There was something else in the wind—or, more likely, wafting up from the kitchen. Someone was cooking. How could someone be cooking? There was no one here. Even Renzo was gone, making his weekly trip to see his daughter an hour’s drive away.

Was it his imagination?

No, it got stronger. Garlic, tomatoes, olive oil, and something else.

It was a wonderful smell. A slow smile began to transform his face. It seemed someone had remembered his birthday after all and had come back to surprise him. It had to be Renzo.

Much as the old sourpuss tended to be a dour figure, he had his moments. Max pulled on a pair of jeans, suddenly in a hurry to find out what was going on. He turned to the stairway, bounding down, barefooted and shirtless, feeling happier than he’d felt in a long time. Funny how the fact that someone had remembered his birthday after all seemed to buoy him. He was smiling as he pushed in through the swinging doors to the kitchen.

“So you did remember my birthday after all,” he said, and then he stopped dead, shocked to the core. It wasn’t Renzo who turned to greet him.

“You!” He stared at her. “How did you get in here?”

Isabella was opening her mouth, and as she did so she thought she had words to say. But somehow they never made it out past her lips. For the moment, she couldn’t speak.

It was all too much. She was startled by the way he’d come barging into the room, but, more than that, she was stunned at the beauty of the man she saw before her. His bare chest, his strong shoulders and muscular arms, the way his worn jeans rode low on his hips, revealing a tanned stomach that was smooth and tight as a trampoline canvas, all combined to present a picture of raw, candid masculinity that took her breath away.

“Oh! I…I…”

His jaw was hard as stone and his eyes blazed. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Uh…” She gestured toward the stove. “Cooking?”

His head went back. That part was obvious. He was tensed, every muscle hardening, as though ready to pick her up physically and throw her out onto the front walkway.

“That’s not what I mean,” he said through teeth that were close to clenched.

“I know. I know.”

She shook her head, trying to clear it. She’d never responded to a man like this before. She was swooning like a young girl in the sixties at a Beatles concert. She had to get a grip.

But something about him had hit her hard, right in the emotions. He had come barging into the kitchen and as she’d turned to greet him she’d seen this beautifully sculptured image of a man, backlit by the golden light coming in from the high windows. Michelangelo’s creation in the flesh. She had that feeling she sometimes got when her favorite tenor reached an impossibly high note and held it forever. She even had tears stinging in her eyes—he was just so beautiful.

She turned from him and leaned against the counter, her hand over her mouth. Staring into the red sauce bubbling on the stove, she fought for stability. What was she going to do? She couldn’t seem to stay sane around this man.

And she had to. This was not what she’d come for. She didn’t want to be mesmerized by his male appeal. She had a case to make and she had to stay on her toes to make it. But somehow sanity and the prince didn’t seem to go together well.

Too bad, she told herself sternly. You’ve got to do this right.

Taking a deep breath, she turned back to face him. Resolutely, she lifted her gaze and stared at him hard.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” she said, and somehow she managed to sound strong. “You are denying me access to something I need in order to survive. Something my family traditionally has had access to. We have to find a way to compromise on this.”

He stared back at her. She was looking up at him, her eyes very wide, and he realized he hadn’t even thought to shield his face from her gaze. Here he was in broad daylight with none of the protective shadows of the other night. And there she was, staring straight at him. And yet, once again he felt no overwhelming need to turn away as he felt so often with others. Her gaze was open and natural. She might be scared of something about him, but it wasn’t his face.

But it was her face that drew his attention. He took a step closer and reached out to take her chin in his hand and tilt her head so that he could examine her. And then he swore softly.

“Isabella, you still have a bad bruise,” he said, a touch of outrage in his voice as he studied her black eye.

“Oh,” she said, blinking rapidly. “Yes, I’ve been told it will take a while to fade.”

He swore softly, shaking his head, then pulled away from her and looked at the items she’d spread out all over the kitchen.

“You’re going to have to pack all this up and get out of here,” he said tersely.

She took a step back away from him. She knew he was angry at finding her here. What confused her a bit, though, was why her black eye seemed to make him even angrier. As though it were her fault or something!

“Why?”

He looked back at her. “Because, once again, you’re trespassing. You’re going to have to go.”

She shook her head. She wasn’t going to be bowled over so easily. She lifted her chin. “Not until you try the sauce.”

A look of surprise flashed in his dark eyes. He turned to glance at the brew simmering in the pot. “Is this your special sauce?”

“Yes.”

He turned back and met her defiant eyes.

“I don’t want to try your sauce, Isabella. I’m sure it’s a fine sauce. But, no matter how good it is, it won’t change anything. The special quality of your sauce is not at issue here. It’s the access to the hillside, and I can’t allow you to go there.”

He was like a stone wall. Her hope began to flag.

“Max, please.” She winced and drew back a bit. “Don’t you understand?” she said, trying hard to be calm and reasonable. “I have to go there.”

He shrugged as though he just didn’t care. “I’m going to go and finish dressing,” he said dryly. “I expect you to have cleared out by the time I get back.”

He began to turn away.

Isabella cried out. “No!”

He hesitated and looked back, and in that same moment a furious Isabella, all tossed hair and flashing eyes, got between him and the doorway before he realized what was happening.

“You listen to me,” she demanded, jabbing a finger against his naked chest. “It wasn’t easy doing this. It wasn’t easy coming all this way and climbing the hill with all these supplies, or finding the right time to come here when I would be able to get in, and preparing myself and putting together a proper case to make to convince you. You can at least pay me the respect of hearing me out.”

He grabbed her hand to stop the jabbing and ended up holding onto it. “Why should I hear you out? Your problems have nothing to do with me.”

“Yes, they do,” she insisted, trying to free her hand from his grip. “You own the hillside where the basil grows. That herb is the linchpin of my family’s existence. Without it, our restaurant is over and my father’s lifework is in ruins.”

She finally yanked her hand away and jabbed him again. “You will listen,” she demanded, her eyes fierce.

Max hadn’t been around many people for a good long time, but he’d always had a knack for understanding a lot about human psychology. One thing he knew was that, faced with someone who was almost overwrought with passionate intensity, the worst thing you could do was to laugh. It drove the person crazy and it made you look like a jerk. He knew it was all wrong. Not to mention, if your goal was to calm the person down, it just plain didn’t work very well.

But he couldn’t help it. She looked so cute. Her curly hair was flopping down over her huge eyes and her cheeks were bright red and her lips looked lusciously swollen. And she was so earnest.

He started to try to answer her, but the words didn’t come out right. What did come out was a choking laugh, and once it got started he had a hard time getting it stopped again.

Laughing. It was something he never did. As he tried to analyze it later, he decided it was a release of sorts. He’d spent so long being so tense, so filled with anguished guilt, and Isabella had reached into his life and pulled aside the curtain, letting in a ray of sunshine that helped open the floodgates to emotions he had kept bottled up for too long. But once those gates had opened, it was hard getting them closed again.

She stood back, stunned, her blue eyes bewildered. Next she was going to look hurt and he knew it. He didn’t want her to be hurt. He had to stop that. He had to tell her, had to explain…

But he was laughing and, for the moment, all he could do was reach for her and fold her into his arms.

“How dare you?” she cried, struggling against him.

“Hush, hush,” he was saying, stroking her hair and leaning down into the crook of her neck to drop a kiss on her tender skin, his lips lingering a moment or two too long. His whole purpose was to calm her down, of course, and to reassure her that he wasn’t laughing at her. Not really. But her neck was so inviting and her skin tasted so sweet and he found himself dropping more kisses than he’d ever meant to, dropping them lightly at first, then with more and more intensity, letting his tongue flicker on her skin.

“I’m sorry, Isabella,” he murmured against her warmth, still racked with humor. “I don’t mean to laugh. It’s not that I’m laughing at you. Honestly, I’m really not…”

“I hate you!” she cried, still trying to break free. “You’re mean and arrogant and—”

“No,” he said, finally getting control of the laughter and pulling up to look at her. “No, listen…”

She shook her head and her hair flew around her face. There were tears in her eyes. His heart melted at the sight.

“Oh, Isabella,” he said gruffly, full of regret. “No, I didn’t mean to laugh.”

Her lower lip was trembling. He cupped her face in his hands. She was beautiful and he moved purely by instinct. She had a spirit that had to be soothed, a mouth that had to be kissed. There was no stopping it. Nature had taken over.

CHAPTER SIX

UNPLANNED passion like this was taboo, unacceptable—and, once ignited, completely irresistible. Max’s lips touched Isabella’s once, twice, and then again, as though he’d suddenly developed a raving hunger for the taste of her, and then the moist warmth of her mouth was there, open and inviting and his kiss grew in sweet, silky intensity. And he was lost in the moment.

It was hard to know how long the kiss lasted. When he finally revived, feeling like a swimmer coming up for air, she was trying to push him away and murmuring, “No, no. I didn’t come here for this.”

He pulled his face back, but his fingers were still tangled in her hair. He looked down at her and shook his head almost sadly.

“Neither did I,” he told her, his gaze ranging over her pretty face. It took all his strength to keep from kissing her again. “But I won’t say I’m sorry it happened,” he added, his voice husky with the lingering sense of how tempting she was.

Their eyes met. He saw wonder there, and questions. She was a woman who deserved more than he was allowing her. He groaned, then shrugged in bittersweet surrender.

“All right, Isabella. I’m ready to sample your sauce and hear your entire presentation.”

Suddenly her face was shining. “That’s all I ask,” she said, blooming like a flower that had just found the sun. “Just give me half an hour.”

He nodded, reluctantly smiling at the picture she made. “You’ve got it. Hit me with your best shot.” He gave her a warning look. “And then I will tell you ‘no’ and send you home again.”

She nodded happily. “I’ll convince you. You just wait.”

He released her slowly, wishing he could pull her back into his arms and hold her again. Somehow he doubted her cooking was going to captivate him more strongly than her kisses had.

He went back to his room to put on a shirt and she got busy cooking the pasta. She’d actually talked him into hearing her out. She could hardly believe it.

The fact that he’d kissed her didn’t mean a thing, she told herself. It had thrilled her and she was still tingling. Her heart was racing, skittering around like a happy bird in her chest. But she knew she shouldn’t have let it happen and now she had to get over it. She had work to do.

But she also knew that she would be remembering how her cheek had felt against his naked chest for the rest of her life. The smoothness of his skin, the strength of his arms, the sound of his heartbeat, had sent her into a tailspin. She had to push those thoughts away, save them for later, or she wouldn’t be able to do what she’d set out to.

He was more beautiful, more manly, more exciting than any man she’d ever known, but, still, she hadn’t let it completely drag her under, and she was proud of that. She’d been the one to pull away. And she had definitely not come here scheming to use any feminine wiles or anything of the sort. The kiss hadn’t been planned by either of them and it didn’t count.

At least, she hoped it didn’t. Because she wasn’t going to let it happen again. She couldn’t.

Taking a deep breath, she nodded. Never again. That was the route to ruin and she was too smart to go that way. She had something to accomplish here, and she got down to it.

Max sat at the head of the long mahogany table that had been in his family for over two hundred years. Before him lay a mat of ivory lace that was set with heavy sterling silver flatware in an exceptionally beautiful baroque pattern. Two crystal goblets of wine had been added, one reflecting a golden hue, the other taking in sunlight and translating it into a deep, rich, royal red. There was a silver fingerbowl as well, deeply engraved with a bucolic scene, and a fine, creamy-white, linen napkin.

He surveyed it all and shook his head, wondering how she’d found everything so quickly. It had been almost thirty years since he’d seen these pieces laid out this way—when his mother was alive.

It came to him that he ought to do this more often. Just seeing these things here, touching them, brought up feelings of attachment, memories of ancestors, connections to his family and his past that he didn’t think about often enough. It all touched a chord deep inside him, a link to eternity.

He swallowed his smile quickly as Isabella entered the room. Sunlight slanted in from the tall windows that lined the space, setting her dark hair aflame with golden highlights. Her cheeks were red from time over a hot stove and she was carrying a steaming pot with hot pads protecting her hands. As she approached, the scent of something extraordinary filled the room.

He shook his head. As he watched her a sense of her beauty overwhelmed him, despite her bruised eye, and he felt an intense need to hold her again that filled him with an aching regret.

How had he gotten here? It was insane. Over the last few years, he’d lived his whole life to keep people away. Isabella had somehow crept right through his barriers and found the center of his being in ways no one else had done. He wasn’t really sure how she’d accomplished that, but he knew she had. And he knew he had to resist it.

She turned an impish smile his way as she placed the pot onto the trivet in the middle of the table.

“There you are,” she told him, ladling the sublime sauce out into a porcelain bowl, which she’d already filled with freshly made pasta. “I hope you’ll deem this fit for a king,” she said with another grin. “Or, at any rate, a prince.”

He looked down into the bowl. The sauce was the color of a late summer sunset and swimming with beautiful vegetables he couldn’t name. “It smells wonderful.”

She nodded and didn’t waste time on false modesty. “It tastes wonderful, too.”

He managed to maintain a skeptical look, just for dignity’s sake. “We’ll see.” And he began to eat.

She was right. The sauce filled his mouth with a feeling like ecstasy. He’d never had anything quite like it. Amazing how one little herb could make such a difference.

“Well?” she asked, watching him like a hawk.

He looked at her. He could hardly keep his eyes off her. She was so alive, so vibrant, so expressive. There was something real about her, something basic and decent and appealing in a new way. He felt a pull toward her, a definite attraction, something he couldn’t deny.

But how could that be? She was so different from the wife he had loved so much. The woman he still missed so much.

Laura had been blonde, ethereal, slender and light as a bird. She had looked very much in life like the angel she had surely become since. But this woman was very different—full and round and earthy. And, to his eternal regret, he ached for her right now as he’d seldom ached for a woman before.

He looked back down at the bowl, avoiding her bright gaze. It was insane to let her stay. He had to get her out of here before he lost control and did something crazy.

The worst of it was, it was quite evident that she had not come here to seduce him at all. She was dressed modestly in a simple peasant blouse and full skirt. There was no cleavage showing, no revealing exposure of skin. She was honest and straightforward and she wasn’t playing games. He liked her for that. It showed a certain respect for him and for the dilemma between them. The fact that he could detect the beauty of her body beneath all the swishing fabric was beside the point. She wasn’t using it as a trump card—even though she probably sensed it wouldn’t be hard to do.

Resolutely he lifted his gaze and met hers.

“Magnifico, Isabella,” he told her. “This is spectacular. I can fully understand why your cuisine is famous and people come from miles around to enjoy it.”

She brightened with happiness at his words. “You’ve heard of it, then?”

“Oh, yes,” he admitted.

She radiated joy. “I knew once you tried it—”

“And I understand how important it is to you,” he interrupted before she could have a chance to make assumptions his admission didn’t quite warrant. “But that doesn’t change the danger that you would face every time you went across that divide above the river.” His hand swept out in a royal gesture. “If I had a house full of servants, I could have one of them go and harvest the weed for you. But at present, Renzo and I live here alone. There is no one to help out.”

Isabella bit down hard on her lower lip, keeping herself under tight control. His constant emphasis on the danger of going near the river was clearly overstated and there had to be a reason for it. She was pretty sure it had something to do with the death of his wife. What had happened that had made him so sure the place wasn’t safe for her? She wanted to know, but she didn’t want to push him. A horrible vision of tractors mowing down the hillside if he got annoyed enough did the trick.

Back to the plan.

“We can talk about that later,” she said quickly. “Right now I just want you to enjoy this.”

He gave her a faint, reluctant smile, his eyes glowing. “I do, Isabella. More than you know.”

She flushed. It was odd to watch how he still tended to turn his face away from her, as though trying to keep her from seeing the scars. No matter what he did, he looked gorgeous to her. How could it be otherwise when he was blessed with those huge, emotional dark eyes and that wide, sensual mouth?

He looked like a poet, she decided. A poet with a tender, sensitive soul purposefully disguised by his muscular form and his harsh, cynical manner, all protected by a wall of ice to keep the world at bay. She knew about his physical scars. What had hurt him so deeply that he couldn’t be free? That was the mystery he carried with him.

“Tell me about this place,” she said, leaning forward on her elbows as she watched him eat. “Did you grow up here?”

“Pretty much.” He took another bite, savored it, and sighed with pleasure, then went on. “My father tended to drag us all over the continent, staying at one property after another. He was quite a gambler, you see, and he was always looking for another game. But when I was young we spent a lot of time here. I would ride my pony all over these grounds.”

“Mmm. And you didn’t fall into the river?”

His face darkened. “That is not a matter to joke about,” he said curtly. “Our river is a dangerous place. We didn’t realize how dangerous at the time.” He looked at her face and winced. “I should have caught you before you hit the rocks.”

She marveled at him. He seemed to think it was his job to save the world—or at least all females that came within his purview. That was too big a role to take on for any man. She wished she knew how to tell him so. Instead, she shrugged.