Page 4 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

‘Okay,’ she said, her gaze reluctantly straying back to his body. She’d never seen him dressed so casually before, in jeans and a black cashmere sweater. Did he realise that the taut denim stretching over his thighs was positively indecent—causing her heart pound in a way which made her feel almost dizzy? Did heenjoymaking women desire him? She cleared her throat, wondering why she had suddenly morphed back into that same star-struck teenager. Focus, she thought. Justfocus. ‘You still haven’t told me where Flo is.’

‘She’s stranded. In France. In the snow. In that godforsaken place they choose to call home. They won’t be here until tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Didn’t she call you to tell you?’

Kelly bit her lip. ‘She might have tried, but there was hardly any signal when I was driving through the mountains and now my phone’s completely dead.’

‘I see.’ There was a pause. ‘Plus your car has “conked out”.’ He surveyed her with a steady look, his dark eyes laced with undeniable mockery. ‘Anyone would think youwantedto get yourself stranded in the middle of nowhere with me, Kelly.’

‘Why? Do women often engineer situations to find themselves alone with you, Romano?’

‘You’d be surprised,’ he drawled.

‘I’d beverysurprised if anyone should actively seek out your company, yes!’

He smiled at this—just a flicker of a smile but powerful enough to break through the outer layer of her bravado, like the warm lick of the sun beginning to dissolve the edges of an ice lolly.

‘Would you really?’ he questioned silkily, and Kelly felt the beginning of a blush begin to heat her skin as she recalled the tarty dress she’d worn to ask him out and the cringe-making way she had fluttered her eyelashes.

‘Anyway, where’s your army of servants?’ she put in quickly, in a not very subtle attempt to change the subject.

‘There are no longer any resident servants and, believe it or not, I do allow them to have time off. This isn’t medieval England. I’m a very considerate employer.’

‘What about your mother—isn’t she here?’

There was a pause. ‘My stepmother, you mean,’ he corrected.

Kelly screwed up her nose. ‘I thought she’d always treated you like a son.’

‘Rosa has never treated me with anything but kindness,’ he agreed, his mouth flattening into a hard and unremitting line. ‘But I am not her son,’ he asserted.

Kelly could hear the frost edging his voice, which made it sound as brittle as ice. Hadn’t his mother died when he was very young? She couldn’t remember. Despite her sunny nature, Flo was always reluctant to dwell on the past.

‘Every time it is ever mentioned, there are always tears. Always some sort of scene, or row. So I block it out,’her schoolfriend had once told her.

‘Rosa will be arriving with Floriana tomorrow,’ he informed her.

‘And what about your brother? Sorry, half-brother,’ corrected Kelly hastily as she remembered Flo’s fierce and dogmatic brother, Riccardo, who had apparently been tamed by his love for the sweet Angie, his former secretary. ‘Is he coming?’

‘No. They’re in New York and Angie is heavily pregnant so they can’t fly,’ he said, his cold gaze sweeping over her, before he gave a heavy sigh of resignation. ‘And in the meantime, it looks as if you’re here to stay.’

‘There’s no need to look so pleased about it.’

‘I’m not going to pretend something I don’t feel, Kelly.’

‘You’d obviously rather I wasn’t here.’

‘Yes, I would. I never wanted you here in the first place.’ He shrugged. ‘I would have been quite happy never to have set eyes on you again. Actually, scrub that. Deliriously happy might be a more accurate description.’

‘Believe me, the feeling is entirely mutual.’

They glared at each other across the fire-splashed entrance hall.

‘But while we could easily spend the rest of the evening trading insults,’ he continued silkily, ‘it might be more sensible if you went upstairs and got changed out of those damp things. I don’t want to have to ring the local doctor and tell him that one of the guests has come down with pneumonia. Apart from anything else, he would hate to be disturbed in the middle of dinner.’

Kelly opened her mouth to respond with something smart but her brain was being scrambled by mixed messages, because Romano Castelliari was suggesting she take her clothes off and her nipples were growing hard beneath her chunky sweater as a result. How crazy was that—that a few careless words could provoke such a reaction? Why was her body betraying her in such a way when she didn’t evenlikehim? Please don’t let him notice, she prayed, crossing her arms tightly across her chest the way she did when she was working on the market stall.

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