Pride And The Italian's Proposal (Mills & Boon Modern) Read online

  Restless and edgy, she paced the study, glancing at the leather-bound books lining the walls—all very distinguished tomes—and then at the chessboard set in front of the fire, clearly an unfinished game, with black at a distinct advantage.

  She was still studying the board when Fausto returned with a bundle of clothes under his arm.

  ‘Do you play?’ he asked, sounding so sceptical that some sudden contrary instinct made Liza widen her eyes innocently.

  ‘Sometimes. Do you?’

  He gave a terse nod, and that impish instinct inside her gave voice once more. ‘Perhaps you would give me a game?’

  Fausto looked startled, and then he thrust the clothes at her. ‘Perhaps you should get dressed first.’

  ‘Very well.’ Of course he wasn’t going to play a game of chess with her. She’d only asked to tease him, which had been stupid of her. Fausto Danti did not seem like a teasing sort of person. Flushing from the humiliating ridiculousness of it all, Liza turned away.

  Everything about this situation was so very odd, she reflected rather grimly as she took the clothes and Fausto gave her directions to a powder room down the hall. It didn’t seem to be much of a house party since the house, enormous as it was, appeared empty.

  She found the powder room, which was as big as her flat’s living room, without trouble and groaned at the sight of her reflection in the gilt-edged mirror—hair in a frizzy mess, cheeks and nose reddened with cold and the jumper and jeans which had been perfectly respectable when she’d put them on this morning now clinging to her like a second skin. No wonder Fausto Danti had been looking at her so disdainfully.

  With a dispirited sigh Liza peeled off the wet clothes and hung them on the towel rail to dry. Dubiously she inspected the outfit she’d been given—a modest yet clinging dress in cranberry-coloured cashmere.

  It slid over her chilled skin as soft as a whisper, making her wonder whose it was. She scrunched her hair and blotted her face, knowing there was little else she could do to repair the damage wrought by the rain. She still looked very much like a drowned rat, if a little less so than before. She supposed it didn’t really matter. She could hardly hope to impress him, and she certainly wasn’t going to humiliate herself by trying. She knew how that would go.

  As Liza headed back to the study, she wondered yet again where everyone was. She felt like Goldilocks stumbling upon a castle rather than a cottage, and instead of three bears there was merely one incredibly intimidating—and attractive—man.

  Having no idea what to expect of this encounter, Liza pushed open the door of the study and peeked in. To her surprise, Fausto was sitting at the chessboard in front of the blazing fire. He’d set the board up for a new game, and he gestured to it as she entered the room.

  ‘Well?’ His heavy-lidded gaze swept over her figure, clad in the clinging red dress, her feet bare, but he made no further remark. Liza pushed her damp hair away from her face.

  ‘You want to play?’ she asked incredulously.

  ‘I believe you asked for a game.’

  ‘So I did.’ Her stomach fizzed with sudden expectation and excitement. She hadn’t thought Fausto would humour her in such a way, and she had no idea why he was, but as she took her seat across from him she realised in a scorching instant why she’d come all the way to Netherhall in the pouring rain. It hadn’t been to rescue her sister, as much as she loved her. It had been to see him—the incredibly attractive, arrogant, frustrating and fascinating Fausto Danti.

  Fausto studied his opponent from under his lashes as she considered the board. They’d played the first moves in silence, and he’d noted her predictable use of the Spanish Opening, attacking his knight on the third move. Basic but acceptable, and about what he’d expect from someone who played chess but was still a beginner. At least she didn’t call the knight a horse.

  He was reflecting on whether to put her out of her misery right away or prolong the game simply for the pleasure of seeing her sitting across from him—the dress he’d taken from Chaz’s sister’s wardrobe fitted her just as he’d hoped it would, skimming her slender curves with an enticing delicacy, making her look warm and so very touchable.

  Her legs were bare, slim and golden, one foot tucked up under her, her hair, as it dried from the warmth of the fire, curling up into provocative ringlets about her heart-shaped face. Everything about her was utterly delectable.

  Fausto didn’t wish to consider what contrary impulse had led him to agree to her suggestion of a match, but he suspected it was a rather base one. The sight of the firelight glinting on her still-damp curls, the pretty flush on her face as well as the gentle rise and fall of her breasts...it was all a distraction he did not need, and yet even so he found he was enjoying it immensely and he could not be sorry.

  ‘I’ve never been to a house party,’ Liza remarked as she unexpectedly—and, Fausto thought, amateurishly—moved her bishop, ‘but I always assumed there would be guests involved.’ She looked up at him with laughing eyes. ‘Where is everybody?’

  ‘They’ve all gone to Guildford,’ he replied as he moved his knight. ‘Since they were so bored here, with the rain.’

  ‘Except for Jenna and Chaz?’

  ‘Jenna stayed because of her purported cold, and Chaz stayed because of Jenna.’ Fausto spoke tonelessly, refusing to let his own suspicions colour his words, but Liza frowned anyway, her eyes crinkling up as she cocked her head.

  ‘Purported?’ she repeated a bit sharply.

  ‘I have not seen her, so I cannot judge for myself.’

  ‘And yet you judge no matter what,’ she returned tartly as she flicked her hair over her shoulders and moved her queen. ‘Regardless of the situation.’

  ‘I judge on what I see,’ Fausto allowed as he captured her queen easily. She looked unfazed by the move, as if she’d expected it, although to Fausto’s eye it had seemed a most inexpert choice. ‘Doesn’t everyone do the same?’

  ‘Some people are more accepting than others.’

  ‘Is that a criticism?’

  ‘You seem cynical,’ Liza allowed. ‘Of Jenna in particular.’

  ‘I consider myself a realist,’ Fausto returned, and she laughed, a crystal-clear sound that seemed to reverberate through him like the ringing of a bell.

  ‘Isn’t that what every cynic says?’

  ‘And what are you? An optimist?’ He imbued the word with the necessary scepticism.

  ‘No, that’s Jenna. I’m the realist. I’ve learned to be.’ For a second she looked bleak, and Fausto realised he was curious.

  ‘And where did you learn that lesson?’

  She gave him a pert look, although he still saw a shadow of that unsettling bleakness in her eyes. ‘From people such as yourself.’ She moved her knight—really, what was she thinking there? ‘Your move.’

  Fausto’s gaze quickly swept the board and he moved a pawn. ‘I don’t think you know me well enough to have learned such a lesson,’ he remarked.

  ‘I’ve learned it before, and in any case I’m a quick study.’ She looked up at him with glinting eyes, a coy smile flirting about her mouth. A mouth Fausto had a sudden, serious urge to kiss. The notion took him so forcefully and unexpectedly that he leaned forward a little over the game, and Liza’s eyes widened in response, her breath hitching audibly as surprise flashed across her features.

  For a second, no more, the very air between them felt tautened, vibrating with sexual tension and expectation. It would be so very easy to close the space between their mouths. So very easy to taste her sweetness, drink deep from that lovely, luscious well.

  Of course he was going to do no such thing. He could never consider a serious relationship with Liza Benton; she was not at all the sort of person he was expected to marry and, in any case, he’d been burned once before, when he’d been led by something so consuming and changeable as desire.

&nb
sp; As for a cheap affair...the idea had its tempting merits, but he knew he had neither the time nor inclination to act on it. An affair would be complicated and distracting, a reminder he needed far too much in this moment.

  Fausto leaned back, thankfully breaking the tension, and Liza’s smile turned cat-like, surprising him. She looked so knowing, as if she’d been party to every thought in his head, which thankfully she hadn’t been, and was smugly informing him of that fact.

  ‘Checkmate,’ she said softly and, jolted, Fausto stared at her blankly before glancing down at the board.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ he declared as his gaze moved over the pieces and, with another jolt, he realised it wasn’t. She’d put him in checkmate and he hadn’t even realised his king had been under threat. He’d indifferently moved a pawn while she’d neatly spun her web. Disbelief warred with a scorching shame as well as a reluctant admiration. All the while he’d assumed she’d been playing an amateurish, inexperienced game, she’d been neatly and slyly laying a trap.

  ‘You snookered me.’

  Her eyes widened with laughing innocence. ‘I did no such thing. You just assumed I wasn’t a worthy opponent.’ She cocked her head, her gaze turning flirtatious—unless he was imagining that? Feeling it? ‘But, of course, you judge on what you see.’

  The tension twanged back again, even more electric than before. Slowly, deliberately, Fausto knocked over his king to declare his defeat. The sound of the marble clattering against the board was loud in the stillness of the room, the only other sound their suddenly laboured breathing.

  He had to kiss her. He would. Fausto leaned forward, his gaze turning sleepy and hooded as he fastened it on her lush mouth. Liza’s eyes flared again and she drew an unsteady breath, as loud as a shout in the still, silent room. Then, slowly, deliberately, she leaned forward too, her dress pulling against her body so he could see quite perfectly the outline of her breasts.

  There were only a few scant inches between their mouths, hardly any space at all. Fausto could already imagine the feel of her lips against his, the honeyed slide of them, her sweet, breathy surrender as she gave herself up to their kiss. Her eyes fluttered closed. He leaned forward another inch, and then another. Only centimetres between them now...

  ‘Here you are!’

  The door to the study flung open hard enough to bang against the wall, and Fausto and Liza sprang apart. Chaz gave them a beaming smile, his arm around a rather woebegone-looking Jenna. Fausto forced a courteous smile back, as both disappointment and a very necessary relief coursed through him.

  That had been close. Far, far too close.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  LIZA’S SENSES WERE still swimming as she blinked her sister and Chaz Bingham into focus. Had that really happened? Had Fausto Danti almost kissed her?

  She touched her tongue to her lips, as if she could feel the press of his lips against hers still, even though he hadn’t actually touched her at all.

  She had been able to imagine it so thoroughly, even as she recognised she could not truly envision it at all. In her twenty-three years, Liza had had a handful of casual dates, and one total disaster. None of it had, thankfully, gone too far, although she was still reeling from the emotional fallout of her almost-fling with Andrew Felton, even if she pretended otherwise.

  Still, none of her experience, those few kisses, had been as memorable, as mind-blowing, as she was sure Fausto Danti’s would be. As even the possibility of his had been.

  But he hadn’t kissed her and, looking at him now standing in front of the fire, his expression as austere as ever, she thought he never would.

  She had a sudden, awful certainty that she’d imagined the whole thing; it had been a fabrication of her fevered mind, of the utterly inconvenient longing she’d felt for this man since she’d first stepped into Netherhall. Even now she felt overwhelmed by the height and breadth and power of him, the sight and sound, even the smell of him, a sharp, woodsy aftershave that made her senses tingle, along with everything else.

  But of course he wasn’t interested in her. He couldn’t be. Realisation scorched through her. He must have been teasing her, toying with her, and she’d fallen for it completely.

  ‘Liza!’ Jenna exclaimed, and started towards her.

  Feeling clumsy and stiff, Liza hugged her sister. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

  Next to her, Fausto drawled, ‘It was just a cold, wasn’t it?’

  Liza threw him a glare that was meant to be mocking. Jenna let out a wobbly laugh.

  ‘I think I’ve made a fuss over nothing. Chaz gave me some paracetamol and a cup of tea and I feel so much better.’

  Jenna smiled adoringly at Chaz, who puffed his chest out as if he’d scaled Mount Everest rather than doled out a couple of tablets. Liza could not keep from glancing again at Fausto, whose inscrutable expression still managed to relay his arrogant assurance that he had been entirely correct about the nature of Jenna’s purported cold, and she fumed inwardly. How could she dislike a man and yet want him to kiss her so much? So much she’d imagined the chemistry that she’d felt pulsing between them?

  ‘I’m sorry I made you come all this way,’ Jenna said with a guiltily apologetic look for Liza. ‘I was just feeling so low.’

  ‘I’m sure you were,’ Liza murmured. She could not deny the awkwardness she felt now at having gate-crashed, and she felt it most from Fausto, even though he didn’t say a word. When she dared look at him again he looked so severe and unimpressed that she felt quite overwhelmingly that she could not continue to stay there. She would not fulfil Fausto Danti’s obviously low expectations of her and her family; she would not let him tease her for another instant with his mocking looks and his almost-kisses.

  ‘Then it looks like I don’t need to be here at all,’ she said in a voice of patently false brightness. ‘I’ll call a cab to take me to Guildford—the trains will still be running from there.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Chaz exclaimed, just as she’d feared he would. ‘We can’t send you away now. Stay the weekend, along with Jenna. I’m sure we could all use the company.’

  ‘I can’t...’ Liza began. She knew insisting on leaving now would be rude, but she was frustratingly, furiously aware of Fausto’s fulminating silence, and she wondered if he thought she and Jenna had orchestrated the whole thing, for some nefarious, mercenary purpose, no doubt. Gold-diggers, the pair of them. How she disliked the man, even if she still wished he’d kissed her.

  ‘You can certainly stay,’ Chaz insisted, and then, to Liza’s humiliation, he turned to Fausto. ‘Can’t she, Danti?’

  ‘Liza must do as she pleases,’ Fausto replied with a shrug. Inwardly, everything in Liza writhed with humiliation at his dismissive tone.

  ‘Then it’s settled. You’ll stay.’

  ‘I don’t have any clothes or toiletries,’ Liza protested, determined to make one last attempt at departure.

  ‘That’s no trouble.’ Chaz airily waved away her concern. ‘We’ve got loads of extra shampoos and things like that, and you look about the same size as my sister Kerry. In fact, I think she has a dress just like that one.’ He smiled easily, as carefree as a little boy, while Liza flushed. So that was where Fausto had found the dress.

  ‘Thank you, this is really kind of you,’ she said dutifully, because she knew she could give no other response.

  ‘I’ll show you to our room,’ Jenna suggested, and Chaz nodded.

  ‘Yes, we’re eating at eight—not too long now. I’ll see you then?’ He smiled hopefully at them both, and Liza nodded.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said again, and she turned away, making sure not to catch Fausto Danti’s eye.

  As soon as they were upstairs, Jenna launched into a glowing description of all Chaz had done for her. ‘He’s so nice, Liza, I mean really nice. You don’t often meet people who are good all the way through.’

 
‘You are,’ Liza said with a smile. Her sister was so big-hearted, so generous with her time and talents, that Liza felt small for ever having resented her for a millisecond. Andrew Felton was not Jenna’s fault.

  Jenna had ushered her into a room that was twice as big as their flat, with huge windows overlooking a terraced garden, the kind you’d normally have to pay to look at.

  ‘I mean it, though,’ Jenna insisted, as if Liza had contradicted her. ‘He really is a good person.’

  ‘I believe you.’ Liza reached for her sister’s toiletries bag and started to tend to her frizzing hair. ‘That being the case, though,’ she asked mildly, ‘why did you send me that text?’

  Jenna had the grace to grimace guiltily. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t think I should have, really. It’s just I was feeling so low. My head was aching and everyone besides Chaz seems so...well, I don’t like to criticise, but they’re...’

  ‘Snobs?’ Liza filled in succinctly and Jenna shrugged.

  ‘I suppose, although they’re all very nice on the surface, Chaz’s sister Kerry in particular. She was cosying up to me right from the beginning, acting so sweet, but I had the feeling she’d talk behind my back the second I was out of the room.’

  ‘She probably would,’ Liza agreed.

  ‘You’ve never even met her,’ Jenna couldn’t help but protest, and Liza sighed.

  ‘I don’t need to, but you’re right, I should reserve judgement until I do.’ Not that Fausto Danti ever did. Checkmating him had been one of the greatest pleasures of her life, although in truth she would rather he’d kissed her.

  The thought appalled Liza as soon as it had formed in her head. No, of course she wouldn’t have wanted that. She couldn’t. She actually loathed the man, even if she was helplessly attracted to him.