PROLOGUE
‘BUONASERA!’
He was beside her in a couple of long strides. All towering height and dark, sexy masculinity, he was wearing expensively cut suit trousers and a white shirt tugged open at the throat. His black leather shoes were already sprinkled with a coating of dry Sicilian dust. Immediately his hands went to cup her face and he lowered his head to capture her mouth with a kiss full of possession and promise.
Leah leant in to him, her eyelids closing as she breathed in his familiar cologne mingled with his heat and scent after several hours’ travelling. She had been longing for this moment for weeks. But now...
‘Mmm, that’s better.’ Pulling away, Jaco let his arms drop and, finding her hands by her sides, linked his fingers through hers. ‘You look...bellissima.’ His intensely dark brown eyes raked hungrily over her body.
‘Thank you.’
‘I’ve missed you.’
‘I’ve missed you too.’ Leah focussed on keeping her voice steady. ‘It’s been a long time, Jaco.’
‘Yes, too long.’ Running his hands over her cheeks, he kissed her softly on the lips again. ‘But now I am here I intend to make it up to you.’
He pulled her closer to him, the evidence of how he intended to do that already making itself felt.
Leah gently pushed him away. ‘So how long are you here for?’ She tilted her head to meet his.
‘I should be able to manage a couple of days.’ Jaco held her gaze, stroking a seductive finger along her jawline as if reacquainting himself with her face.
‘Two days?’ Leah rearranged her features to hide her disappointment.
‘Sí.’ He smiled at her—the sort of smile that could break a thousand hearts the world over. ‘So we’ll have to make the most of the time while we have it.’
‘Yes.’ She bit down on her lip. ‘I suppose we will.’
‘Right, I’m going to grab a shower, and maybe something quick to eat, and then I am very much hoping we can pick up where we left off.’ The wicked gleam in his eyes left no room for doubt as to where that would be.
Where they’d left off. Leah’s stomach swooped at the memory of the last night they had spent together. The wonderful intimacy they had shared before Jaco had disappeared from her life yet again.
Jaco Valentino: tall, dark, ridiculously handsome, flirty, funny and sexy...knee-shakingly sexy... He was impossible to ignore or resist. Introduced to her by her twin sister, Harper, at Harper’s wedding to Vieri, it had been lust at first sight for Leah. A sledgehammer kind of attraction—the sort you never really recovered from.
So when Jaco had invited her to visit his vineyard the next day she had accepted right away, any ideas about being more cautious, more circumspect, somehow blown to the wind. He had described the Capezzana estate as his ‘Sicilian roots’, and his obvious pride in the place had made her fall in love with it before she had even seen it. She’d known she might fall for its owner too, if she wasn’t very careful.
And Capezzana had proved to be every bit as enchanting as Jaco had said. With its rows upon rows of neat vines against a stunning backdrop of dark mountains, not to mention an imposing eighteenth-century palazzo, it was picture-perfect. The few days they had stayed there had been wonderful—special—as they had begun to get to know one another, sharing stories, chatting, laughing, sampling the delicious Capezzana wine—probably too much of it in Leah’s case.
Although her light-headedness had been more likely down to the company than the alcohol. Jaco Valentino was like no man she had ever met before. Somehow he made her feel as if the ground beneath her feet was no longer quite solid, as if the sky was more intensely blue, the air suddenly in short supply. It was a dangerously exhilarating feeling, but Leah had sternly told herself to stamp it down, not to let herself get carried away.
Because Leah had learnt never to trust a man. Starting with her father, who had turned to drink when she’d needed him most, it seemed to Leah that the opposite sex had done nothing but let her down her whole life.
Okay, maybe she was partly to blame. She was impulsive by nature, and a series of bad judgements had landed her in trouble more times than she cared to remember. Act first and think later. The phrase might have been invented for her. And it seemed there were plenty of men only too happy to take advantage of that.
From the job interview in Morocco, when she had ended up slapping the guy’s sleazy face after she’d found out what was really involved, to stupidly losing all her money to a gambling addict in Atlantic City, she had managed to mess up all over the world.
But only once had she lost her heart, and that had been in her home town of Glenruie, in the wilds of Scotland. At the age of eighteen, finally fit and healthy after the years of kidney problems that had plagued her young life, she had fallen head over heels for a handsome young redhead called Sam, the son of the local Laird. The same Laird who owned the Craigmore estate, which employed her entire family. Leah and Harper had both worked at the lodge, and their father, Angus, was the head gamekeeper.
The whole thing had ended in misery. Several months into their relationship Leah had discovered that Sam was engaged to someone else—a titled lady, no less. And not only that, as employees at the lodge Leah and Harper had had to wait on the happy couple at their wedding.
When a bowl of cock-a-leekie soup had mysteriously ended up in the groom’s lap, Leah had been hauled before the Laird and told in no uncertain terms that if she and her sister wanted to keep their jobs—and more importantly if they wanted their father to keep his, a job he was only hanging on to by a thread anyway, because of his drinking—Leah had better change her ways.
And so she had. Simmering with the injustice of it all, while trying to hide her poor broken heart, she had vowed she was never going to be stupid enough to fall in love again.
Which was why, even though the sexual chemistry between her and Jaco had been off the scale from the start, she had done her very best to keep herself grounded, not to give in to her feelings. Concentrating instead on trying to work out exactly who this darkly handsome stranger was. To figure him out rather than let the explosion of desire knock her off her feet.
And it had seemed that Jaco felt the same way. Flirtatious and tactile from the start, he had never tried to hide his attraction to her, but at the same time he had tantalisingly held back from attempting to take it any further. Treating their relationship like an unexploded bomb, he had handled it so carefully that Leah hadn’t known whether to swoon or scream.
So when the time had come for them to leave—Jaco to fly back to New York, and Leah reluctantly to return to her family home—she had told herself that that was that. With no mention of their meeting up again, she had swallowed her disappointment and pasted on a brilliant smile, only letting it slip very slightly when Jaco had enfolded her in his strong, warm embrace to give her a tight hug.
Lord, he’d felt so good. Pulling back, he had looked into her eyes for a long, mesmerising moment, before turning to stride away, taking a regretful little piece of Leah’s heart with him.
However, twelve months later they had met again. On discovering they
