Secrets of a Powerful Man, page 8
‘You look lovely,’ Darcey assured her truthfully.
‘Thank you.’ Kristen gave her a friendly smile. ‘I know it will be worth it in the end. Sergio is so excited about the baby, and it will be nice for Nico.’ She sighed. ‘It’s a shame that Salvatore hasn’t met anyone else. I think Rosa would love to have a mother, and perhaps a little brother or sister. But since Adriana’s death Salvatore shuts himself away in his castle. He rarely leaves the estate, and all he focuses on is the vineyards and making wine. He has gone to the village chapel today to arrange the funeral of the head vintner. It’s such a tragedy that Pietro died while he was attempting to save some of the wine. The old man was a good friend of Salvatore’s.’
‘I knew that some of the workers were injured in the fire, but I didn’t realise someone had actually died.’ Darcey felt guilty as she recalled how she had accused Salvatore of putting work before Rosa. How terrible that he had lost a friend in the fire.
‘Salvatore is coming now.’ Kristen shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand as she looked across the fields at a horse and rider galloping towards them. She sighed. ‘I bet his leg will be painful after he’s been riding. I’m a physiotherapist,’ she explained. ‘I’ve advised Salvatore that horse-riding overstretches the damaged muscles in his thigh, but he doesn’t care. He’s determined not to allow his injury to change the way he lives his life.’ She gave Darcey a rueful smile. ‘Be warned: the Castellano men can be very stubborn.’
Darcey watched the horse and rider thundering across the field towards them. The horse’s powerful flanks glistened with sweat and its mahogany-coloured mane streamed behind like a flag. The rider was no less impressive. Dressed entirely in black, with a bandana tied around his head to keep back the dark hair that fell around his shoulders, Salvatore looked like a pirate—ruthless, dangerous, and so devastatingly sexy that Darcey’s heart thudded.
He dismounted and walked through the gate to the pool area, moving with an innate grace despite the stiffness in his right leg. Darcey felt herself blush and was aware that Kristen was looking curiously at her. Terrified that she might betray the effect Salvatore had on her, she jumped up and mumbled, ‘I’ll go and help Sergio with the children.’
As she walked down the steps into the pool her eyes were drawn to Salvatore, who greeted his sister-in-law with one of his rare smiles. Fortunately the water cooled Darcey’s heated skin, and she concentrated on playing with Rosa and Nico, but she was conscious of Salvatore’s penetrating gaze every time she darted him a glance.
Eventually Sergio called a halt to the swimming session and he and Kristen shepherded the children into the changing cubicles. Realising that she would have to wait for a cubicle, Darcey had no choice but to walk back to the sun lounger where she had left her towel—which happened to be where Salvatore had sat down.
‘Rosa looked as though she was having fun.’
His gravelly voice did strange things to Darcey’s insides. She blushed as she remembered in vivid detail the passion that had flared between them, and against her will her eyes were drawn to him. He looked incredibly sexy, with his swarthy complexion and a day’s growth of dark stubble shading his jaw. His shirt was half-open, and the sight of his bare bronzed chest covered with wiry black hair evoked a flood of warmth between her thighs. She felt acutely self-conscious in her bikini, especially when she felt her nipples harden in response to Salvatore’s devastating virility.
‘I hope you don’t mind that I brought Rosa swimming. I guessed you would be busy today.’ She recalled Kristen saying that one of the winery workers had died in the fire. ‘I’m sorry that your head vintner lost his life.’
‘The funeral will take place tomorrow.’ Salvatore’s jaw clenched.
Darcey’s gentle sympathy undermined his iron control over his emotions and he felt an inexplicable need to hold her in his arms and allow her sweet nature to ease his pain.
‘Pietro was an excellent vintner who taught me everything I know about winemaking, and he was an even better friend,’ he said gruffly. ‘Thank you for looking after Rosa. I watched you playing with her in the pool and she clearly enjoys being with you.’
Darcey bit her lip. ‘I realise that she could grow attached to me, and I to her. I have been thinking that I should go home and you should appoint another speech therapist.’
His dark brows lowered. ‘Why do you want to leave?’
She flushed. ‘Well, in light of what happened last night...I’m afraid it will be awkward for me to stay.’
Her wariness was understandable after his behaviour last night, Salvatore thought grimly. He should not have come on to her the way he had. But the passion that had exploded between them had been mutual, he reminded himself. Darcey had wanted him as much as he had wanted her. It was imperative for Rosa’s sake that he persuaded Darcey to remain at the castle, but his daughter’s need for speech therapy was not the only reason he hoped she would stay, he acknowledged.
‘I do not see why it should be awkward. You are here in your professional capacity. The fact that there’s a spark between us is immaterial. It happens between men and women all the time. I am sure we are both mature enough to be able to ignore an inconvenient attraction.’ His eyes narrowed on her face. ‘But perhaps there is another reason why you want to leave. Since your divorce there must have been other men in your life. Is there a lover back in England whom you are missing?’
‘No,’ Darcey said fiercely. ‘I wouldn’t have kissed you if I had a...a boyfriend.’ She coloured hotly, thinking how naive she must sound. But she believed strongly in fidelity. It was a pity that Marcus had not shared her values, she thought wryly.
She dropped her gaze from Salvatore. The air around the pool was hot and still, broken only by the song of the cicadas in the bougainvillaea bushes.
‘Why did your marriage end?’ he asked abruptly.
She shrugged. ‘We discovered that we weren’t compatible. But the nail in the coffin of our relationship was when I discovered Marcus in bed with another woman.’
The moment the words were out Darcey regretted revealing something so personal and still so painful. She was over Marcus, but he had left her with a host of insecurities that Salvatore had opened up when he had rejected her the previous night. She looked away from him, hoping he would drop the conversation.
Salvatore watched Darcey gnaw her bottom lip with her teeth and felt an irrational rush of anger towards Marcus Rivers. From the moment he had introduced Darcey to his daughter he had been impressed by her kindness. Her soft heart did not deserve to be broken.
‘The guy was obviously a jerk,’ he said quietly.
Darcey bent her head so that her hair swung forward to partially hide her face. Her breath hitched in her throat as Salvatore lifted his hand and tucked a few strands behind her ear. His soft voice was unexpected and tugged on emotions she’d thought she had buried.
‘I suppose it wasn’t Marcus’s fault that I’m not...’ She flushed. ‘That I didn’t...excite him.’
‘What do you mean?’
Oh, Lord, why had she started along this route? Darcey sighed. ‘I’m hardly a sex siren. Marcus likes voluptuous women, and I’m not very well endowed in that department—as you no doubt noticed last night.’
For a few seconds Salvatore did not follow her, but as he stared into her eyes and recognised self-doubt, understanding dawned.
‘What I noticed last night, and from the moment I first met you, is that you are very beautiful. How can you not know how lovely you are?’ he asked intently when she looked disbelieving. ‘You have a gorgeous figure.’ An image flashed into his mind of her small, firm breasts with their pink, tightly puckered nipples. ‘I’ve never been so turned on as I was last night,’ he admitted roughly.
Darcey shot him a startled look. ‘Then why did you stop...?’
‘I heard Rosa make a sound, and I was concerned that she might wake up.’
It was the partial truth. Hearing his daughter had released Salvatore from Darcey’s sensual spell and forced him back to cold reality. He was not free to make love to her while his amnesia continued to conceal his past. Dio, it was his fault that Adriana had died and Rosa was growing up without a mother. His guilt was a poison inside him and he did not want to taint Darcey with the blackness in his heart.
His eyes roamed her slender figure in a yellow bikini that was all the more sexy because it wasn’t overtly revealing and desire knotted his stomach. She was so lovely, but she could not be his, and it was only fair that he should put some distance between them.
He stood up and began to walk away from her. ‘We have agreed to ignore the attraction between us, and it will be best for Rosa if we stick to that arrangement,’ he said curtly. ‘I have some work to do in the vineyards and I might not get back to the castle until late. Armond will serve you dinner at eight o’clock.’
CHAPTER SIX
AT FIVE TO EIGHT Darcey walked into the dining room and felt her heart perform a somersault when she saw Salvatore standing by the window, his powerful frame silhouetted against the golden sunset. She had half expected him not to be back for dinner, and the sight of him shook her composure.
The bandana had gone, and he had changed out of jeans and riding boots into tailored black trousers and a collarless white shirt made of such fine silk that she could see the shadow of his dark chest hair through it. She was aware of her body’s instant reaction to him—the way her nipples tingled and sprang to attention—and was thankful that the chiffon shawl which matched her dress hid the evidence of his effect on her.
‘Good evening, Darcey.’ Salvatore’s hard-boned face showed no expression, but his eyes narrowed as he swept his gaze over her, taking in her slender figure in a jade-coloured jersey-silk dress. He wondered why she was hugging her shawl around her like a security blanket. ‘Lydia will be joining us for dinner—but she is usually late,’ he said wryly. ‘Can I get you a drink while we wait?’
Dismissing the temptation to have something strong and alcoholic, hopefully to dull her senses and her fierce awareness of him, Darcey instead asked for fruit juice. She had no option but to walk across the room to him, but when he handed her a glass of pomegranate juice she moved over to the window to watch the dying rays of the sun streak the sky blood-red. Above the castle’s highest tower the dark shadow of an eagle circled. Even from a distance Darcey could see that it was holding something in its hooked beak. Probably a mouse or a rabbit that it had just killed, she thought, and a shiver ran down her spine. There was a ruthless cruelty to the rugged landscape that she sensed suited the mood of the master of Torre d’Aquila.
Salvatore reminded himself that he deserved Darcey’s coolness. But he missed her bright smile. After he had left her by the pool he had visited the mortuary for a final time to pay his respects to Pietro and had felt the unfamiliar sting of tears in his eyes. He had not cried since he was a small boy, when his father had told him his mother had left and would not be coming back.
His headache had begun soon after he had left the mortuary and now throbbed dully behind his temples. His consultant had explained that in some amnesia cases the sufferer’s memory returned suddenly. His startling insight that Adriana had disliked living at the castle had given him hope that the past was about to reveal itself to him. But to his frustration a black curtain still obscured his memory.
His savage mood was not improved by the company of his mother-in-law. Lydia arrived twenty minutes late for dinner and spent the entire meal talking about Adriana.
‘The birth of their child cemented my daughter’s relationship with Salvatore,’ Lydia told Darcey. ‘It was just a pity that Rosa turned out to be flawed.’
Darcey frowned. ‘How do you mean, flawed?’
‘Well, the fact that she’s deaf and dumb.’ Lydia sniffed. ‘Her defective hearing doesn’t come from our side of the family. Adriana had perfect hearing.’
‘Rosa’s deafness has nothing to do with a genetic link.’
Darcey had not taken to Lydia when she had first met her, and now she felt a surge of dislike for the woman. She had hoped that Rosa’s grandmother would support the little girl through speech therapy, but when she had spoken to Lydia before dinner and mentioned that she might like to take part in therapy sessions Lydia had refused, saying that she would be bored.
‘Rosa is a very intelligent child, and I have no doubt that she will learn to speak very quickly,’ she told Lydia firmly. ‘But it is crucial that she has encouragement from her family.’
She looked across the table at Salvatore. ‘I’ve already explained that for speech therapy to be successful it must be continual, and I will incorporate it into Rosa’s daily life. But I think she will benefit from an hour to an hour and a half of intensive therapy every day, which I would like you to attend. Afternoons would be best, and I thought that after the session you could take her swimming. It’s something she loves and will look forward to.’
She held his gaze, challenging him to refuse her request.
‘I realise that you will have to take time away from work, but Rosa needs your support.’
‘And she will have it,’ Salvatore assured her. He had been impressed by Darcey’s fierce defence of Rosa and the way she had put Lydia in her place. ‘Your idea of taking Rosa to the pool afterwards is a good one. I hope you will swim with us? I realise that you should be on your holiday, and I want you to have some relaxation time.’
The chances of her feeling relaxed around Salvatore were zero, Darcey thought wryly. Just the idea of him wearing nothing but a pair of swim shorts made her feel hot and bothered. He had stated that it would be best if they ignored the chemistry they both felt, but his eyes sought hers and she felt as though she was drowning in his liquid dark gaze. Her awareness of her surroundings faded and she was aware only of Salvatore—master of his castle, a sorcerer who had trapped her in his sensual spell.
Shaken by the simmering sexual tension between them, she unconsciously lifted her hand to the pendant around her neck and traced the four-leaf clover, taking comfort from its familiar shape and the reminder of her father who had given it to her. Home and her family seemed a long way away, and she wished fervently that she was in France at the villa at Le Lavandou, where she had spent so many happy family holidays.
‘Oh!’ She stared at the pendant in her hand and realised that the chain had broken.
‘That’s the trouble with cheap jewellery.’ Lydia’s voice broke the silence and released Darcey from Salvatore’s bewitchment. ‘It’s a pretty trinket, I’ll grant you, but peridots aren’t particularly valuable.’
Darcey placed the necklace on the tablecloth. ‘It has sentimental value.’
Lydia shrugged. ‘The engagement ring that Salvatore gave to Adriana is a ten-carat diamond solitaire. After her death I kept it as a memento of my darling.’ She looked at Salvatore. ‘Adriana told me you proposed to her at a five-star hotel in Rome. It must have been so romantic.’
Salvatore’s jaw tightened as he glanced up at the wall, where another photograph of his wife hung at his mother-in-law’s request. No memory came to him of when he had proposed to Adriana. He stared at the picture, willing the curtain blocking his mind to open. How could he not remember the woman who, according to Lydia, he had adored? he wondered grimly. Was his love so fickle that it could so easily be forgotten? Or was he flawed, emotionally deficient and unable to love deeply—or be loved? Frustration surged up inside him and he jerked to his feet, conscious of the surprised looks from Darcey and Lydia.
‘Excuse me,’ he growled.
As he strode out of the dining room it occurred to him that usually when he was in a black mood he would visit Pietro. His old friend had always known how to calm him. But Pietro was dead. He thought briefly of going to see his father. Recently there had been a rapprochement between him and Tito, helped by Sergio who, since his marriage to Kristen, had become closer to their father. But Tito was in poor health and went to bed early. He did not want to disturb his brother. Sergio had enough to worry about with the imminent birth of his second child.
When had he ever needed anyone? Salvatore asked himself mockingly. All his life he had felt alone, and he did not understand why tonight he longed for the company of a girl with green eyes and a sweet smile that made his guts ache.
* * *
Darcey entered her bedroom and closed the door with a sigh of relief. After Salvatore had abruptly walked out of the dining room halfway through dinner his mother-in-law had spent the rest of the evening talking incessantly about her daughter. Adriana had apparently been a paragon of beauty and sophistication.
‘My late husband, Adriana’s father, was an Italian count,’ Lydia had explained. ‘He was much older than me and he died when Adriana was a child. But it is evident in her photographs that she was of noble blood.’
It was little wonder that Salvatore had been so deeply in love with Adriana, Lydia had said. Considering that the castle was filled with photographs of the beautiful brunette, Darcey guessed that Lydia was right and Salvatore was still mourning his wife. She frowned as she recalled that several times during their conversation Lydia had hinted that Salvatore felt guilty about Adriana’s death. But why on earth should he? she wondered. She did not actually know how his wife had died. That was another mystery hidden within the castle’s thick walls.
Someone had turned back the covers on the bed and the crisp white sheets looked inviting. Yawning, Darcey slipped off her shawl, but as she went to take off her necklace she remembered that the chain had broken at dinner and the pendant must still be on the dining table where she had left it.
The stone floors echoed beneath her feet as she hurried back downstairs, but when she walked into the dining room her heart sank as she saw that the table had been cleared. The butler was standing by a cabinet, polishing a silver candleholder. He looked round when he heard Darcey’s footsteps.
