The Italian's Rags to Riches Wife by Julia James

Author:Julia James
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Man-Woman Relationships, Family-Owned Business Enterprises, Illegitimate children, Contemporary, General, Romance, Italians, Fiction, Poor Women, Love Stories
ISBN: 9780373127160
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2006-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

The taxi drew up outside the hotel she’d left only a few hours earlier in a state of happy excitement. Now she was as flat and drained as a burst balloon. Stiffly, she got out of the car and walked inside the lobby. Allesandro was still with her—presumably he would see her dutifully to the reception desk and see she had her key. Then he would go. Escape. Back to his own life.

Was there a woman waiting for him? There was bound to be. Allesandro di Vincenzo could have the pick of any woman who caught his eye.

Like a bolt from the blue, it struck her.

You caught his eye!

The moment burned in her senses. When you were standing there, in the entrance to the bar, he was transfixed by you—and he didn’t know who you were, so it was real—real that you caught his eye—just for being beautiful. Beautiful enough for him to look at…

Almost she stumbled, then recovered herself and kept walking. But in her head was the memory, that extraordinary, unbelievable memory, of watching, all unknowing, Allesandro looking at the woman in the reflection.

Her stomach hollowed. All evening she’d blanked it out, refused to think about it, focussed only and exclusively on what had been happening to her—on the growing, thrilling awareness that men were looking at her, liking what they saw, admiring what they saw.

Wanting what they saw.

Luc Dinardi had been blatant about it. She’d let him be, because it had fascinated her, enthralled her, to see a man as obviously philandering as he was singling her out. Flirting with her. It had been heady—exciting to let him do it.

Safe.

Where that word came from, she didn’t know. But it was there, all the same. That was why she’d ignored Allesandro’s dark and dire warnings about him. Because they’d been pointless. Unnecessary.

‘Your key, signorina.’

The receptionist proffered a key that looked like a credit card. Laura surfaced, and stared at it blankly. She’d never seen a key like that—but then she’d never stayed in a hotel like this before.

‘You swipe it through the lock,’ said Allesandro, taking it from her. ‘I’ll show you.’

He headed at a swift stride towards the lift. Laura followed him. Absently, she wondered if the clothes she had been wearing before she’d been handed over to that spa place had been taken up to her room. She hoped so, or she’d be completely stuck.

She looked after Allesandro. There was tension in his shoulders, and she realised with a start that she still had his evening jacket around her own shoulders. As the lift doors opened she shrugged herself out of it and handed it to him as they stepped inside the lift. He took it, but didn’t put it on, just slung it over his arm. The fingers of one hand drummed on the metalled wall of the lift.

His face was closed. Laura looked at him covertly.

The man who’d given her a coin to throw in the Trevi Fountain, who’d climbed up the Spanish Steps with her, had gone.

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