Catherine Spencer - Sicilian Millionaire, Bought Bride

“You’re doing all the giving,” she whispered. “I want to give a little, too.”

“How? Like this?” He dipped his head and once again touched his mouth to hers. “Or had you something more intimate in mind…like this?” He slid his finger in a straight, sure line past the pearls at her throat and, cupping a brazen palm over her breast, teased her nipple with his thumb.

A sharp, sweet arrow of sensation speared the length of her and found its target between her legs, leaving her embarrassingly damp. Aghast, she stammered, “Only if it’s what you want.”

He put her from him as if he suddenly found her repugnant. “Sorry, Corinne, that’s not a good enough reason. The day—or night—has yet to come that I take a woman to my bed because she feels she owes me her body.”

Catherine Spencer, once an English teacher, fell into writing through eavesdropping on a conversation about romances. Within two months she’d changed careers, and sold her first book to Mills & Boon in 1984. She moved to Canada from England thirty years ago, and lives in Vancouver. She is married to a Canadian and has four grown children—two daughters and two sons (and now eight grandchildren)—plus three dogs. In her spare time she plays the piano, collects antiques, and grows tropical shrubs.

You can visit Catherine Spencer’s website at www.catherinespencer.com

Recent titles by the same author:

THE GIANNAKIS BRIDE

THE ITALIAN BILLIONAIRE’S CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

THE GREEK MILLIONAIRE’S MISTRESS

THE FRENCH COUNT’S PREGNANT BRIDE

BERTOLUZZI’S HEIRESS BRIDE

THE ITALIAN’S CONVENIENT WIFE

BY

CATHERINE SPENCER

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

TERSE AND ENIGMATIC, the letter sat on Corinne Mallory’s dressing table, held in place by a can of hair spray. Hardly a fitting resting place, she supposed, for correspondence written on vellum embossed with an ornate gold family crest. On the other hand, considering her initial response had been to decline its autocratic summons, it was a miracle that she hadn’t tossed the whole works in the garbage.

But the name at the end of the typed missive, signed in bold, impatient script, had given her pause. Raffaello Orsini had been married to her dearest friend, and Lindsay had been crazy about him, right up to the day she died. That alone had made Corinne swallow her pride and accede to his wishes. Whatever the reason for his sudden visit to Canada, loyalty to Lindsay’s memory demanded Corinne not refuse him.

Now that she was just two short hours away from meeting the man face-to-face for the first time, however, she wasn’t so sure she’d made the right decision. What did one wear to an invitation that smacked more of a command performance than a request?

Eyeing the limited contents of her closet, she decided basic black was probably the most appropriate choice. With pearls. Dinner at the Pan Pacific, Vancouver’s most prestigious hotel, called for a touch of elegance, even if the pearls in question weren’t the real thing, and the black dress made of faux silk.

At least her black pumps came with a designer emblem on the instep, a reminder of the time when she’d been able to afford a few luxuries.

A reminder, too, of Lindsay, a tiny woman full of big dreams, who hadn’t believed in the word “can’t.”

We’ll buy some run-down, flea-bitten old place in the right part of town, and turn it into a boutique hotel, Corinne. I’ll take care of housekeeping and decor, and you’ll be in charge of the kitchen.

We’ll need a fairy godmother to accomplish that.

Not us! We can do anything we set our minds to. Nothing’s going to derail us.

What if we fall in love and get married?

It’ll have to be to men who share our vision . She’d flashed her dimpled smile. And it’d help if they were also very, very rich!

And if they’re not?

It won’t matter, because we’ll make our own luck. We can do this, Corinne. I know we can. We’ll call it The Bowman-Raines Hotel, and have a great big old BR emblazoned over the front entrance. By the time we’re thirty, we’ll be famous for our hospitality and our dining room. People will kill to stay with us….

But all that was before Lindsay went to Sicily on holiday, and fell in love with Raffaello Orsini who was indeed very, very rich, but who had no interest whatsoever in sharing her dreams. Instead he’d converted her to his. Forgetting all about creating the most acclaimed hotel in the Pacific northwest, she’d moved halfway around the world to be his wife and start a family.

And the luck she’d believed in so fiercely? It had turned on her, striking her down at twenty-four with leukemia, and leaving her three-year-old daughter motherless.

Swamped in memories, Corinne blinked back the incipient tears, leaned closer to the mirror to sweep a mascara wand over her lashes and tried to remember the last time she’d worn eye makeup. Far too long ago, judging by the finished effect, but it would have to do, and really, what did it matter? Whatever the reason for his sudden visit, Raffaello Orsini certainly hadn’t been inspired by a burning desire to evaluate her artistry with cosmetics.

Downstairs, she heard Mrs. Lehman, her next-door neighbor and baby-sitter, rattling dishes as she served Matthew his supper.

Matthew hadn’t been happy that his mother was going out. “I hate it when you go to work,” he’d announced, his lower lip trembling ominously.

With good reason, Corinne had to admit. She frequently missed tucking her son into bed, because her work too often involved late nights and time during his school holidays. It was the nature of the beast and much though she’d have preferred it otherwise, there wasn’t much she could do about it, not if she wanted to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

“I won’t be late, and I’ll make blueberry pancakes for breakfast,” she promised. “Be a good boy for Mrs. Lehman, and don’t give her a hard time about going to bed, okay?”

“I might,” he warned balefully. Although only four, he’d recently developed an alarming talent for blackmail. He was becoming, in fact, quite a handful. But Corinne hoped tonight wouldn’t be one of those nights when she arrived home to find Mrs. Lehman exhausted from fighting to get him to bed, and Matthew still racing up and down the stairs every fifteen minutes and generally raising mayhem.

I should be staying home , Corinne thought, the familiar guilt sweeping over her as smoothly as the black dress slid past her hips. But the letter pulled at her, and even though she could have recited it word for word from memory, she picked it up and scoured it yet again, as if the writer’s reason for sending it might be hidden between the lines.

Villa di Cascata

Sicily

January 6, 2008

Signora Mallory:

I shall be in Vancouver later this month on a matter of some urgency recently brought to my attention and which I wish to discuss with you in confidence.

I have reservations at the Pan Pacific Hotel and would appreciate your joining me there for dinner on Friday, January 28, a date I trust you find convenient. Unless I hear otherwise, I shall send a car for you at seven-thirty.

Kindest regards,

Raffaello Orsini

But just as with the first reading, there was nothing. No hint of what she might expect. And if the racket taking place in the kitchen was anything to go by, Matthew was gearing up to give poor Mrs. Lehman another night of grief.

“This had better be good, Mr. Orsini,” Corinne muttered, tossing the letter aside, and taking a last glance in the mirror before going downstairs to appease a little boy who had no memory of his father, and whose mother seemed to be making a lousy job of doing double duty as a parent.

The view, Raffaello decided, was impressive. To the north, snowcapped mountains glimmered in carved splendor against the clear night sky. The lights of a bridge spanning the entrance to the harbor looped like so many diamonds above the Narrows. And closer at hand, almost directly below his suite, a yacht some twenty-five meters long or more rocked gently at its moorage.

Not Sicily, by any stretch of the imagination, but arresting nonetheless, as much because it had been Lindsay’s home, a setting both wild and sophisticated, beautiful and intriguing, just like her.

Two years ago, one year even, and he could not have come here. The pain had been too raw, his grief too filled with anger. But time had a way of healing even the most savage wounds; of gilding the memories that were his wife’s legacy, and turning them into a source of comfort. “I do this for you, amore mio, ” he murmured, raising his eyes to the heavens.

Somewhere in the city below, a church bell rang out, eight solemn chimes. The woman, Corinne Mallory, was late. Impatient to get down to the business of the evening and be done with it, he paced to the telephone and buzzed the front desk to remind whoever was in charge that she should be directed to his suite when— if —she showed up. What he had to propose was not something to be aired in public.

Another ten minutes dragged past before she arrived, her knock so sudden and peremptory that his hackles rose. Curbing his irritation, he shot his cuffs and tugged his lapels into place.

Remember she was Lindsay’s best friend. That does not mean she has to be yours, but it will be better for everyone if you can at least establish a sympathetic cordiality , he cautioned himself, striding to the door.

He had seen photographs, of course, and thought he knew what to expect of the woman waiting on the other side. But she was more delicate than he’d anticipated. Like fine lace that had been handled too carelessly, so that her skin was almost transparent and stretched too tightly over her fine bones, leaving her face much too small for her very blue eyes.

Standing back, he waved her across the threshold. “Signora Mallory, thank you for agreeing to see me. Please come in.”

She hesitated a moment before complying. “I’m not aware you gave me much choice, Mr. Orsini,” she said, her accent so vivid a reminder of Lindsay’s that he was momentarily disconcerted. “Nor did I expect our meeting would take place in your room, and I can’t say I’m particularly comfortable with that.”

What did she think? That he’d traveled halfway around the world to seduce her? “My intentions are entirely honorable,” he replied, tempted to tell her that if a romp in bed was all he wanted, he could have found it much closer to home.

She let him take her coat and shrugged, an elegantly dismissive little gesture that made the pearls nested at her throat slither gently against her skin. “They’d better be,” she said.

Suppressing a smile, he motioned to the array of bottles set out on the bar. “Will you join me in a drink before dinner?”

Again, she paused before inclining her head in assent. “A very weak wine spritzer, please.”

“So,” he said, adding a generous dollop of San Pellegrino to an inch of Pinot Grigio, and pouring a shot of whiskey for himself, “tell me about yourself, signora . I know only that you and my late wife were great friends, and that you are widowed, with a young son.”