Page 6 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

‘You can stay in here,’ he growled abruptly, putting down her suitcase but making no attempt to enter the room, as if the interior was in some way contaminated. ‘You should find everything you need. The bathroom’s just along the corridor.’

‘Oh, dear. No en suite?’ she joked weakly, trying to distract herself from the fact that very nearby was the most enormous bed.

‘It’s a castle, Kelly.’ The granite line of his jaw tightened. ‘Not a hotel.’

No. A hotel would never have employed such a grim-faced guide as him.

‘Come down when you’re ready,’ he continued. ‘And I’ll fix us something to eat.’

And with that, he turned on his heel and was gone and Kelly was left feeling as if somebody had sucked all the oxygen out of the atmosphere. She blinked, wondering if she’d misheard him. Was he actually offering to make her dinner? The rugged car tycoon rolling his sleeves up and cooking? He probably meant pulling the cling film off the top of a ready meal and shoving it into the microwave. She couldn’t imagine that Romano Castelliari had ever had to lift a finger in the kitchen—not with his countless servants and myriad lovers.

Peeling off her damp clothes, she hung them over one of the radiators and sighed. That was one outfit out of action until it was dry enough to wear again. She stared bleakly into her small suitcase. Her cheap airline ticket meant her luggage was weight-restricted with not a lot of wriggle room, but even so… She glanced up at a lavish tapestry hanging on the wall and swallowed. She didn’t really have any clothes which were suitable for a christening in a billionaire’s castle. She used her imagination and what little money she had to make her own clothes, but no way was she going to be able to hold her own among the A-listers, who would doubtless be wearing designer.

She pulled out a dress and studied it—she’d made it herself from a bolt of claret-coloured velvet she’d bought cheap at the market. But a dress meant legs and somehow that made her feel…vulnerable.

No. He makes you feel vulnerable. He only has to look at you and you start to melt.

She found the enormous bathroom—as modern as the castle was old. The water was pleasingly hot and the soap high-end, scented with bergamot and lavender, and for the first time since she’d arrived, she felt vaguely human. Back in her room, she tamed her wayward curls and put on a pair of handmade silver earrings which caught the light as she peered in the mirror, but the eyes which stared back at her were uncertain. He made her feel twisty and strange but she mustn’t let Romano Castellani intimidate her or realise how much she still wanted him. Because all that was history now.

But her fingers wouldn’t stop trembling as she slipped from the bedroom.

CHAPTER TWO

HE SENSED HERbefore he saw her. Before she’d even made a sound, he knew she was there—as if she had activated some sixth sense to alert him to her presence. How the hell did she make that happen? Romano wondered frustratedly. And why her, of all people?

Abruptly, he turned to find Kelly Butler hovering in the doorway of the castle kitchen, looking as if this was the last place she wanted to be. Or as if he was the last person she wanted to be with. Well, that makes two of us,cara, he thought grimly, though the wild thunder of his heart as he shot her a censorious look made a mockery of his sentiments. Her velvet dress clung to her generous curves and the worn fabric seemed curiously appropriate in this ancient setting, as did the richness of its claret hue. He could see the glint of silver at her ears and the swing of her lustrous hair and thought how big her green eyes looked in her heart-shaped face. She looked like a painting come to life and silently, he cursed the rapid trajectory of his thoughts and the corresponding hardening of his groin.

‘Sit over there,’ he said, gesturing towards the table with the abrupt slice of his hand. ‘Dinner won’t be long.’

‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather just walk around for a bit,’ she said, stepping into the warm room and looking around. ‘I’ve been sat in that wretched car for hours.’

‘Suit yourself.’ But Romano’s careless shrug as he met her witchy gaze wasn’t really representative of his feelings because hedidmind. He didn’t want her close enough to be able to detect her body heat, or smell the subtle drift of her perfume. Or to watch her petite form as she moved around the vast castle kitchen, peering this way and that with a guileless curiosity, her thick curls swinging around her shoulders. He wanted her seated at the table, half hidden from view. Because if she continued to walk around the place looking like…

His throat grew dry as he adjusted to this new-look Kelly Butler. Thefemme fataleschoolgirl who had morphed into the wild-looking art student had matured, it seemed. There was no tiny dress barely covering her bottom, her breasts straining against tight satin. Nor those horrible all-black clothes and clumpy boots which had followed—the front of her hair dyed a startling shade of purple and a small silver ring laced through her nose. Every time he’d seen her he had been nothing but critical of her appearance, but on a visceral level he had been unable to deny his attraction towards her. Yet he had always kept her at a chilly distance. He knew that women fell for him—hard—and he never encouraged unrequited love in order to feed his ego. More than anyone else, his half-sister’s wild-child friend had been strictly out of bounds and he had found it curiously easy to transmute his undeniable attraction towards her into disapproval. He found it easier to dislike her than to desire her.

He hadn’t seen her for years until the night before the wedding which had never happened, when she had been properly grown up and the chemistry between them had been almost off the scale. He remembered the way she had looked at him—with hunger and promise glinting from those magnificent emerald eyes. The way her curls had coated the luscious curve of her breasts with fiery corkscrews. And he could recall quite vividly how urgently he had wanted to lick her nipples. If she hadn’t run off with Floriana into the night, who knew what might have happened? Would they have ended up in bed together? He gave a short laugh. Maybe. At the end of the day, he wasn’t made of stone and at least he might have been able to get her out of his system. He’d had a lucky escape, he concluded grimly.

Only right now, it didn’t feel so lucky. If he had bedded her, at least he would be immune to her charms, because once you’d been intimate with a woman, inevitably she began to bore you. He certainly wouldn’t have been left wanting nothing more than to run his fingers through those magnificent curls and kiss the crumpled petals of her lips. Silently, he registered the deep shadows beneath her eyes, as if sleep had been at a premium of late. Was she still a party animal? he wondered acidly. Was that why she was looking so worn out?

‘What do you want to drink?’ he questioned roughly.

‘Just water, please. Don’t look so surprised, Romano. Did you imagine I’d grab the bottle and start drinking it by the neck?’

‘Why not? I imagine that old habits die hard,’ he drawled. ‘Isn’t that what you used to do at your sixth-form parties?’

‘Oh,that,’ she responded airily. ‘It’s so long ago I can hardly remember. And you don’t have to wait on me, you know. If you tell me where the glasses are, I can easily help myself. I’m very self-sufficient and house-trained.’

‘No.’ His voice was terse as he reached into the refrigerator, pulling out a bottle and tipping water into a tumbler and handing it to her. ‘I don’t want you getting in my way.’

‘Of course you don’t,’ she said, sipping at the water and then putting the glass down on the table with a sigh. ‘Flo was right, you are a total control freak.’

‘I don’t deny it.’

‘I should have realised that a man like you would regard that kind of remark as a compliment.’

‘What’s bothering you, Kelly?’ he taunted softly. ‘Do you prefer the kind of man you can just push around? Who obediently does everything you want him to? Ayesman?’

She was chewing on her bottom lip as if his comment had made her feel uncomfortable. Was that because he’d touched a raw nerve and she reallydidlike her men submissive? As their gazes clashed in hostile duel, he tried to quash the first evocative shimmering of sexual fantasy.

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