The Italian's Baby Bargain: The Italian's Wedding Ultimatum / The Italian's Forced Bride / The Mancini Marriage Bargain. Kate Walker
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arched a brow and looked her up and down. ‘You were expecting someone else?’
Failing miserably to adopt the desired attitude of defiance to mask her real feelings, Sam mutely shook her head. Hands clenched into tight balls, she didn’t even notice the pain as her nails dug into the flesh of her palms. This, she decided, was the substance of nightmares. Thinking of nightmares turned her thoughts to the frequent occasions when he had featured in her more torrid nocturnal dreams. A rush of shamed heat slammed through her body.
‘You’re here…’
‘We have covered that,’ he said, making no attempt to conceal his growing impatience.
‘Well, why…?’
‘Yes, I am here…for an hour I have been here.’ His narrow-eyed, disapproving glance roamed hungrily over her slender body. His manner was terse and impatient as he looked down his patrician nose and demanded, ‘Where the hell have you been?’
The flight back from New York had begun productively enough. He had been working his way through the pile of paperwork he had brought with him with his usual methodical speed. Then, somewhere mid-Atlantic, he had allowed the infuriating redhead to creep insidiously into his head. She was on another continent, she was a distraction—yet his body had responded to the imaginary scent of her warm body in his nostrils.
Suddenly not being the one to make the first move had seemed less a matter of principle and more an action of wilful stupidity. What was he trying to prove anyway? It wasn’t as if he had any illusions about the nature of his true feelings. The realisation hadn’t been a bolt from the blue, but gradually it had crept up on him—he didn’t want a casual relationship!
He didn’t want some secret little affair.
He wanted Samantha. And he wanted the world, and especially anyone called Jonny Trelevan, to know that she was his.
Putting aside the papers, he’d pulled out the small box secreted in his inside pocket. His expression distant and unfocused, he’d been staring at the square-cut emerald when a passing flight attendant, who had been about to ask him if he required anything, had released a soft, awed cry.
Alessandro had lifted his head.
The girl had flushed a little and given an apologetic shrug. ‘Sorry—it’s just beautiful. The colour is so intense,’ she’d observed, her envious glance drifting to the ring lying on its ruched bed of velvet. Unable to hide her curiosity, she’d added. ‘She must be someone very special…?’
Alessandro, his eyes trained on the ring, had nodded. ‘She is. But she is also as stubborn as hell. But you know something…? I wouldn’t have her any other way.’
The reflective smile that had curved his sensual lips upwards had dimmed as he became aware of the attendant’s amazed stare. Shoving the box back into his pocket, he’d announced that he did not require anything.
And why wouldn’t she stare…? he’d mused as she left—no doubt to spread the story. A man famed for his ability to cut dead anyone unwise enough to delve into his personal life had gushed on like something straight out of a women’s magazine.
He had played out various versions of this scene, where she’d open the door and find him standing there, during the remainder of the journey—while the paperwork had lain untouched. She would, of course, regret her previous unreasonable behaviour, and he in his turn would magnanimously forgive her before he proposed.
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