Raul had moved back to the window and was staring at the rain, which was now lashing the glass. ‘Of course you’ll come. You’re not going to turn down the opportunity to live a life of luxury,’ he drawled confidently. He glanced back at Libby and tried to ignore the burning ache in his groin. Clearly he’d been too long without a lover if he could be attracted to his father’s tart, he derided himself. It was a situation he would remedy once he returned home. He could take his pick from numerous beautiful, sophisticated women who understood that all he wanted was a casual sexual relationship with no strings attached.
But first it was imperative that he persuaded Elizabeth Maynard to return to Italy with him immediately. Much as he resented the fact, she controlled fifty percent of Carducci Cosmetics, and he could not run the company without her. ‘Once we are in Italy I will arrange for the baby to see a private specialist,’ he assured her. ‘Gino is a Carducci, and I know his father would have wanted him to have the best of everything.’
The best of everything—the words echoed in Libby’s head. Wasn’t that what her mother would have wanted for Gino, too? She stared around the flat, at the threadbare carpet and the patches of damp on the walls, and bit her lip, conscious that Raul was watching her.
‘How can you deny Gino his birthright?’ he demanded. ‘Already the spring sunshine in Lazio is warming the lake beside the Villa Giulietta, and the warm climate will be good for him. As he grows older he will have the run of the house and grounds. He can play in the orange groves and learn to sail on the lake.’ He would teach his father’s son, just as Pietro had taught him to sail when he had been a boy, Raul vowed silently.
A thought suddenly struck him that might mean an annoying delay to his plans to take his father’s son to Italy as soon as possible. ‘I don’t suppose Gino has a passport?’
‘Actually, he does,’ Libby replied slowly. Her mother had applied for one soon after Gino had been born. It had been most unlike Liz to be so organised, but Libby guessed that her mum had hoped Pietro would send for her and his baby son. Liz would have wanted Gino to live in Italy, in a grand house rather than this flat, she knew.
To her surprise Raul did not sound as though he resented his baby half-brother, as she had first feared, and actually seemed to want Gino to live at the Carducci villa.
She thought of the bank’s refusal to increase her overdraft, and the worry that had kept her awake for the past few nights of how she was going to pay the next month’s rent on the shop and flat. The truth was that she was at rock-bottom, and there was a very real danger that she and Gino would be homeless. Pietro Cardicci’s will was nothing short of a miracle which assured Gino’s financial security for life. As Raul had pointed out, she did not have the right to deny Gino his birthright. And Raul had promised he would arrange for Gino to see a private specialist about his dreadful cough…
‘All right,’ she said abruptly, her heart thumping. She felt as though she was about to jump over the edge of a precipice into the unknown, but Gino had been offered the chance of a better life than the one she could give him in Pennmar, and for his sake she had to take it. ‘We’ll come with you today.’
‘Good.’ Satisfaction laced Raul’s voice. He had never doubted that the lure of the Carducci fortune would persuade Libby to move to Italy. He strolled across the room and lifted Gino out of her arms. ‘I’ll hold him while you pack. My private jet is on stand-by at Newquay airport. I’ll tell the pilot to be ready to take off two hours from now.’
Chapter Three
‘WE SHOULD arrive at the Villa Giulietta in a few minutes,’ Raul announced abruptly.
Libby had been staring out of the car window, watching the Italian countryside flash past, but at the sound of his rich-as-clotted-cream voice she turned her head and felt a peculiar tightening sensation in the pit of her stomach when she glanced at his handsome face. He possessed a simmering sexual magnetism that fascinated her, and she could not prevent herself from staring at his mouth, imagining the feel of it on hers. Raul’s kiss would be no gentle seduction. The thought slid into her head, and she was shocked to feel a hot, melting sensation between her legs.
Her face burned with embarrassment and she prayed he could not read her mind. How could she feel such a fierce attraction to a man she disliked intensely? But it was no good reminding herself that Raul was the most arrogant man she had ever met. Her body seemed to have a mind of its own, and his closeness, the subtle tang of his cologne, made each of her nerve-endings thrum with urgent life.
Her reaction was probably caused by shock that he had finally deigned to speak to her after he had ignored her throughout the flight to Italy, she decided irritably. Back in her flat in Pennmar she had hastily packed Gino’s clothes and her own few belongings. When she had walked back into the living room Raul had compressed his lips at the sight of her bright orange coat, and his disdainful comment, ‘You seem to be wearing just about every colour of the rainbow,’ had made her wish that she owned elegant, sophisticated clothes rather than oddments she’d picked up from charity shops.
He was so stuffy, she thought rebelliously. He couldn’t be more than in his mid-thirties, but he had a way of looking down his nose at her, just as Mr Mills—the headmaster of the secondary school she had attended intermittently—had done when he had told her that she would never amount to much.
Maybe all upper-class men acted like stuffed shirts? Miles certainly had, she brooded, recalling her brief relationship with Miles Sefton, which had come to an abrupt end when she had overheard him assuring his father, Earl Sefton, that of course his relationship with a waitress from the golf club wasn’t serious; she was just a bit of totty.
The memory of that humiliating episode made Libby squirm. Why on earth had she agreed to come to Italy with Raul? she wondered, casting a furtive glance at his chiselled features. He made Earl Sefton seem like Father Christmas. Tears stung her eyes as she remembered how Miles’s father had stated that she was little Miss Nobody from Nowhere. Now Miss Nobody was going to live in a grand villa with a man who despised her, and, although she would rather die than show it, she was scared stiff at the prospect.
Lost in her thoughts, Libby had not noticed that the car had slowed, but now it turned and purred up a sweeping driveway lined with tall cypress trees. Through the dark green foliage she glimpsed tantalising flashes of pink and cream stone, while in the distance she caught the sparkle of sunshine on blue water. She remembered Raul had said the villa was near a lake, and suddenly the line of trees stopped, the driveway opened out onto a wide courtyard—and her jaw dropped in astonishment as she stared at the most beautiful house she had ever seen.
‘Wow…’ she said faintly. The Villa Giulietta looked like a fairytale castle, with its four rounded turrets and myriad arched windows glinting gold in the evening sunlight. The pink and cream striped brickwork reminded Libby of a candy-stick, while the ornate stonework at the top of the turrets was exquisitely detailed.
The courtyard ran round to the front of the house, which overlooked an enormous sapphire-blue lake. A series of stone steps led up to the front door, and cream and pink roses grew in profusion over the elegant stone pillars of the porch.
‘It’s…incredible,’ she murmured, utterly overwhelmed by the house’s splendour.
‘I agree.’ For a moment Raul forgot the anger and frustration that had simmered inside him since he had read Pietro’s will, forgot that the woman at his side had been his father’s mistress who now had the right to live at the villa. This was his home and he loved it.
His ex-wife had accused
