A Forbidden Seduction. SARA WOOD
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knew, somewhere in the back of her mind, that it was nothing to do with a mere sexual vacuum that had existed within her for longer than she could remember. This was something different. Something so threatening to her vaguely ordered life and her respect for herself that she must escape.
And yet ... there was the mystery of the photograph. Torn between flight and curiosity, she looked up at him helplessly, her enormous, soft eyes unknowingly begging him for help. And seeing his tense stillness, his potent and sinister stare, she grasped frantically for the banal.
‘Any chance of some tea?’ she asked tentatively.
A short laugh exploded from his lips as if that was the last thing he’d expected her to say. ‘Tea!’ The cynical mouth curled into something resembling a wry smile. ‘Of course. I should have remembered the English pick-me-up, the solution to all of life’s dramas,’ he said a little scathingly, as if, she thought wryly, she should be knocking back double whiskies like any self-respecting Sicilian.
When he went to the desk and ordered tea over the intercom, she allowed her gaze to focus on the photograph again. Still there. Still Gio. Someone else’s suit-madly elegant and expensive and so designer-labelled it would have been out of their realm—but she recognised the shirt...
She jumped. Colleoni had come up behind her so quietly that she hadn’t noticed, and put a hand on her shoulder. Which she flinched from and which he drew away. But not before his wretched energy field had made her stomach contract in alarm.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, coming around the chair and speaking with a huskiness that rolled through her in waves. Either she’d imagined it or be had caressed her neck with his maddeningly arousing fingers. Something had caused her skin to tingle.
Too many things were happening to her. She needed to deal with one at a time. With a shaking finger, she pointed to the photograph. ‘That’s...that’s my husband,’ she croaked.
Surprise wiped away all the sensuality, all the ruthlessness of his expression and he was briefly just plain handsome. Seeing that she was serious, he followed her pointing finger and then looked back at her in astonishment.
‘Impossible!’ he said emphatically. ‘That’s my brother—my elder brother.’
‘Gio,’ she persisted shakily, levering herself cautiously to her feet.
There was a pause. ‘Really?’
For a moment she thought Luciano had tensed but when she studied him carefully she saw that he was quite composed. She checked the photo again. It was Gio. Her legs wobbled and she caught hold of the arm of the chair as a million doubts began to wash through her mind.
‘He is my husband.’ Her bewildered eyes met his. ‘He’s called Gio Colleoni,’ she cried in agitation. ‘I’m Debbie Colleoni.’
And although he hadn’t moved she knew that Luciano had killed his sexual response to her stone-dead and replaced it with a wall of ice. ‘You’ve linked our names and jumped to a few conclusions. That can’t be your husband. I think you’re mistaken,’ he said coldly.
She wasn’t. Her heart was pumping hard. What did Gio get up to when he was away? Were her secret fears right—that Gio’s stories about his travels didn’t ring true, that his refusal to give her a contact number at work was highly suspicious?
‘Oh, God,’ she groaned softly, closing her eyes. ‘Please let there be a good reason for this.’
“There is.’ Luciano Colleoni stood between her and her view of the photograph. ‘You’ re mistaken. He must be... similar to your husband. The photo’s blurred and there’s a similarity in some faces that—’
‘No. That’s him,’ she whispered, opening her eyes again and staring blindly at the view. She didn’t need to look at the photo again; the image had been burned into her brain. ‘That’s the way he tilts his head.’ She looked up at Luciano helplessly, willing him to solve the mystery. ‘That’s the expensive watch he won in a rams.’
‘A raffle? No. My brother bought that in Venezia—Venice,’ said Luciano curtly.
‘I bought him that shirt!’ she cried, failing to keep her voice calm.
‘There must be a million like it,’ dismissed Luciano with a shrug.
‘That is my husband,’ she persisted in a wobbly voice. ‘Heavens, we have the same surname! There aren’t coincidences like that; you must be some relative!’
‘The name is common among my countrymen. If you were called Smith, would you claim kinship with any Smith who resembled your husband?’
‘If there was a photograph of them both together, yes!’ she declared hotly.
Colleoni strode over to his desk, studied the photograph and appeared to come to a decision. He picked it up and brought it over to her. ‘Do you recognise his wedding-ring?’ he asked abruptly.
She held the frame with trembling hands. It was evidently an expensive ring, a thick gold band with stones set in it. Not the cheap one she’d saved up for and which she’d exchanged with the thin band of gold he’d given her on their wedding-day.
Muddled, she looked up, her expression lost and forlorn. ‘No,’ she admitted.
‘As I said,’ murmured Luciano soothingly, taking the photograph back and dropping it rather casualty on the bubble-wrap, as if it had no sentimental value to him, ‘he can’t be your husband. It’s out of the question.’
‘But... it’s so like him. I thought...’
‘Ah, tea,’ he said, sounding relieved, as if he couldn’t wait to get rid of the paranoid female making outlandish claims in his office. ‘Bring it here, Annie,’ he instructed coolly. ‘Milk?’ Debbie nodded glumly as he went through the ritual. ‘Sugar?’
‘Two.’
‘I’ll make that three.’ He hesitated and then said in stilted tones, ‘It must have been a shock to think that you might be related to me.’
‘Yes,’ she muttered, wondering if she was going crazy. But she couldn’t see the photo any more. Perhaps it had been her imagination. She could be wrong.
He handed her the thin porcelain cup edged in gold and watched while she stirred and sipped, his arms folded across his brawny chest.
When she put the cup down and lifted unhappy eyes to him again, his mouth compressed as if he was stifling a wince. ‘You do see that you’re mistaken, don’t you?’ he said gruffly. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but I do know my brother. I know what he would have spent on that suit, for instance, and...’
She dashed the tears from her eyes. Either he believed what he was saying and she’d mistaken the identity of the man in the photograph, or he was hiding the truth. She needed to be sure.
‘It’s expensive,’ she said shortly. ‘I take your point.’
‘You’re not offended?’
Luciano proffered a royal blue silk handkerchief. She gave a good blow, hoping it would wake up a few brain cells. And then she screwed the silk into a small ball in her clenched fist, her lower lip trembling with uncertainty. Maybe Gio had kept the existence of his family from her because he was ashamed of her.
Debbie swallowed the hard, choking lump in her throat, her eyes filling again. He’d made his opinions clear quite soon after their wedding-day, when he’d discovered the easy, ordinary way they lived. Gio was too smooth, too classy, his manners too impeccable for him to be comfortable in their cramped flat. Sauce bottles on the table, butter from the packet, no napkins—napkins!—which he’d been horrified to hear her mother calling serviettes!
And now she might be facing his brother—the elegant, autocratic Luciano, who seemed equally determined to keep her at arm’s length.
‘I like honest people,’ she said pointedly. ‘I call a