Penny Jordan - Marco's Convenient Wife (Książę z Florencji - Marco).pdf - Penny Jordan (właśc. Annie Groves) - gingerjb

“In order to protect baby Angelina I need a wife—you have said so yourself. Under the circumstances, who better

to be that wife than you?'

'What?' Alice was gripped by shock. 'No,' she whispered. 'We can't. I can't.'

'Yes, we can. We have to,' Marco insisted fiercely. 'For Angelina's sake.'

Here was a man who was totally dedicated to protecting the child fate had placed in his care, even to the extent of

marrying a woman he did not love in order to do so. She loved Angelina too. Could she do any less?

'So far as you and I are concerned, it will simply be a business arrangement,' he told her calmly.

How could she agree to a business arrangement of a marriage with Marco when she loved and wanted him so

much? Hadn't this afternoon taught her anything at all?

'Yes!' That he was the most wonderful man to be kissed by, she found herself t h i n k i n g recklessly.

PROLOGUE

'G OOD luck with your interview. You're bound to get the job, though—no one could find a better nanny than you, Alice.

Your only fault is that you love children too much!'

As she returned her elder sister's warm hug Alice tried to smile. Even though it was over a month since she had left her

previous job she still missed her two young charges. She did not, however, miss their father, who had made her last few

months in the employ of his wife so uncomfortable, with his sexual come-ons towards her.

Even without his unwanted attentions, Alice knew she would not have accepted his wife's invitation to work for them in

New York, where she had been relocated.

Her former employer was in many ways typical of some career women, who whilst needing to employ a nanny to look

after their children, often resented and even deliberately undermined their nanny's role within the household.

But that was the price one paid for the job she had chosen to do, and now she was about to fly to Florence to be

interviewed for a new post, that of looking after a very young baby—a motherless six-month-old baby.

'And thanks for agreeing to take Louise with you,' her sister, Connie, was saying. 'I know she's going to love Florence,

especially with her artistic talents. Life hasn't been very easy for her lately, so I'm hoping that this trip will help her.'

Privately Alice felt that Louise, her sister's stepdaughter, was determined to express her own misery and insecurity by

making her new stepmother, Connie, and her father feel guilty about their marriage, and that she was determined that

nothing they did was going to please her and that included the gift of a four-day trip to Florence. Alice had agreed to

accompany her by flying out to Italy four days ahead of her interview with the awesomely patrician-sounding Conte di

Vincenti, who had advertised for an Italian-speaking English nanny for 'a six-month-old child'.

It had been that 'a six-month-old child' that had not just caught Alice's eye, but more importantly had tugged at her all too

vulnerable heartstrings. It had sounded so cold and distancing, as though somehow the imperious conte was devoid of

any kind of emotional attachment to the baby, and that had immediately aroused all Alice's considerable protective

instincts.

After children, languages were her second love; she was fluent in not just Italian but French and German as well— a

considerable advantage in a nanny, as her agency had approvingly told her.

The last time she had visited Florence had been when she had been eight and her elder sister fifteen and she had very

happy memories of that trip, so why was she feeling so apprehensive at the thought of going back?

Because she would be accompanying and be responsible for Louise, who was currently manifesting almost all of the

traits of teenagedom that made her parents despair, or because there was something about the very sound of her potential

new employer that sent a cold little trickle of atavistic antipathy down her spine?

Alice didn't know, but what she did know was that over and above her own feelings were the needs of a motherless six-

month-old baby.

CHAPTER ONE

F LORENCE was having a heat wave and the weather was even hotter than Alice had been prepared for. Whilst Louise

slept in her hotel bed, bad-temperedly refusing to join her, Alice had taken advantage of her solitude to explore the early

morning city on her own. Having just seen an elegantly dressed young mother emerging from a shop with her children,

all triumphantly carrying tubs of ice cream, Alice couldn't resist the temptation of indulging in the same treat herself.

After all, according to her guidebook Florence was famous for its ice cream.

Carefully she started to make her way across the busy street, not really paying much attention to the vehicle that was

blocking the road, although she was aware of a bright red and very expensive-looking sports car that was bearing down

on both her and the parked vehicle. Just beyond her, the street ended in a set of lights, and as they were on red she

determinedly chose to ignore the angry blare of the car's horn.

However, she was conscious of its delayed and engine throbbing presence behind her at the traffic lights as she gave and

received her order for a tiramisu ice cream—her favourite Italian sweet. The young male assistant serving her made a

boldly flirtatious comment as he handed her her change—bold enough to make her face flush bright pink, and loud

enough, she realised as she turned away, for the man behind the wheel of the scarlet open-topped mechanical monster

still waiting for both the obstruction to be moved and the lights to change, to have heard.

To have heard and to be thoroughly contemptuous of, she recognised as she saw the way he looked down the length of

his aquiline nose at her, his mouth curling in open disdain.

Totally mortified, Alice could feel her face burning even hotter, her enjoyment of her ice cream completely destroyed by

her recognition of his contempt of her. No doubt he thought she was some silly Northern European tourist looking for a

cheap holiday fling, she fumed as she gave him a look intended to be as corrosive as the one he had just given her.

Unfortunately, though, she had not allowed for the effect of the extremely hot sun on her ice cream and as she turned to

glower at him, in what she had planned to be a rebuffing and ladylike manner, she realised that her ice was dripping onto

her top.

And that of course was the reason why her nipples should suddenly choose that totally inauspicious moment to peak

openly and flauntingly with maddening wilfulness. And all the while she had to stand there waiting to cross the road,

with his gaze pinned with deliberate emphasis and insulting thoroughness on the swell of her breasts.

Horrible, horrid man, she designated him under her breath, but she knew as she did so that he was also just about the

most sensually magnetic and dangerous man she had ever set eyes on.

Just the merest link between her own bemused, shocked eyes and the hooded, mesmeric topaz intensity of his would

have been enough to melt a full glacier, never mind her ice cream, she reflected shakily once he had driven past her.

And that was without him trying. Heaven alone knew what he could do if he really tried to turn a deliberately sensual

look on a woman! Not that she was ever likely to know or want to know. Of course not! No. Never. Definitely not!

And as for that open-topped car—in this heat—well, that was obviously a deliberate pose, meant to underline his macho

masculinity. She despised men like that! Men who needed to reinforce their machismo. Not that he had looked as though

his needed much reinforcing—and no doubt that thick head of dark, dark brown but not quite jet-black hair would ensure

that his scalp would never need protecting from strong sunlight.

'Damn the woman, where is she?' Marco looked irritably at his watch, and then frowned as he studied the empty foyer of

the exclusive and expensive hotel just outside Florence, where he had arranged to meet the Englishwoman he was

supposed to be interviewing. He was stalking imperiously up and down its imposing length with a lean and predatory

male animal stride that caused the female hotel guest crossing the foyer to give a small, unstoppable little hormonal

shiver of appreciation.

Oblivious of his effect on her, Marco continued to frown.

The fact that his interviewee had neither the discipline to be on time for their meeting, nor the good manners to send a

message apologising for her late appearance, was not in his opinion a good advertisement for her professional skills,

despite the fact that she had come so highly recommended by her agency that it had virtually sung a paean of praise in

her favour.

He had not been in the best of moods even before he'd reached the city. His car, the normally totally reliable saloon he

drove, had developed some kind of electrical problem, which meant that it was currently being repaired, leaving him

with no alternative but to drive the ridiculous and, to his mind, totally over the top bright red Ferrari, which had belonged

to his cousin Aldo, but which since Aldo's death had remained at the palazzo.

Unlike his Mercedes, the Ferrari was certainly the kind of car that attracted a good deal of attention—and the wrong kind

of attention in Marco's opinion. His eyes narrowed slightly as he remembered the blonde girl he had noticed when he had

driven into the city earlier in the day on his way to meet a colleague.

Her body had certainly approved of the car, even if her eyes had flashed him a look of murderous, 'don't you dare look at

me like that' rejection, he reflected wryly.

Personally, he would far rather have a woman be attracted to him for himself than his car! Aldo, though, had not shared

his feelings!

Where was this wretched girl?

To be truthful it had irked him a little that she had refused to stay in this hotel as he had wished. Instead she'd insisted on

staying, albeit at her own expense, in a far less convenient, so far as he was concerned, hotel in the centre of Florence

itself. This was apparently because she wished to do some sightseeing and because she had been concerned that the hotel

he had chosen was too far out of the city centre and too quiet. An ominous statement, so far as Marco was concerned! As

a student at university in England, he had witnessed the way in which some English girls chose to demonstrate their

dislike of anything 'too quiet'!

Perhaps it was old-fashioned of him to abhor promiscuity, and to believe that a person—of either sex—should have

enough self-restraint and enough self-pride not to treat sex as an emotionless act of physical gratification on a par with

eating a bar of chocolate, but that was how he felt.

Irritably he shot back the cuff of his immaculately tailored pale grey suit and frowned. Angelina, the baby for whom he

was seeking the services of a nanny, would be awake and wondering where he was. The traumatic loss of her mother had

left the baby clinging to the only other adult who was a constant in her life, and who she seemed to feel safe with, and

that was himself. Marco was not impressed with the standard of care or commitment the girl who'd originally been hired

by Angelina's late mother was currently giving to the baby.

Grimly Marco reminded himself that now Angelina was his child, and that she was totally dependent on him in every

single way. Right now it was Angelina who needed to come first in his thoughts and his actions. That was why he was so

determined not to find merely 'a nanny' for her, but the right nanny, the best nanny—a nanny who would be prepared to

commit herself, her time and to some extent her future to being with Angelina.

And this was where a battle was being fought inside him. His frown changed from that of irritated, almost antagonistic

male, to one of deeply concerned protective paternalism. He felt such a strong sense of family and emotional

responsibility to Angelina, that the only woman he would entrust the baby with had to be someone who could supply her

with the love and security her mother's death had deprived her of, someone warm and loving, reliable and responsible.

And as the baby's mother had been British, he had decided to advertise for an Italian speaking British nanny for

Angelina, so that she would grow up learning both languages.

The girl he had eventually settled on had in many ways almost seemed to be too good to be true, she had been so highly

recommended and praised by her agency. But then of course they would not necessarily be dispassionate about her!

Now it seemed that he had been right to be dubious. Grimly he rechecked his watch. His autocratic features were so

arrogantly and blatantly those of a sensually mature adult Italian male that it was no wonder the pretty girl behind the

reception desk was watching him with awed longing.

He positively exuded power and masculinity, laced with a dangerous hint of potent sexuality. Just as the lean animal

grace of the way he walked failed to cloak that maleness, so too the elegant tailoring failed to cloak the fact that the body

beneath it was all raw magnificence and muscle. He possessed that kind of bred-into-the-bone sensuality that no woman

could fail to recognise and respond to, be it with longing or apprehension. The kind of sensuality that went much, much

deeper than the mere good looks with which nature had so generously endowed him, the kind of sensuality that neither

money nor power nor position could buy!

There was, though, a touch of grim determination about the hard line of his mouth that set him apart from most other

men of his race, a certain cool hauteur and distance that challenged anyone who dared to come too close to him

uninvited.

At thirty-five he had behind him over a decade of heading the vast and complicated tangled network of his extended

family; aunts, uncles, and cousins.

His father and mother had been killed outright when his father's younger brother had crashed the private plane he had

been flying. Marco, or, to give him his correct name, Semperius Marco Francisco Conte di Vincenti, had been twenty-

five at the time, and freshly qualified as an architect, aware of the responsibility of the role that would ultimately be his,

the guardian of his family's history and the guardian too of its future, but relieved to know that that responsibility would

not truly be his for many years to come. And then his father's unexpected death had thrown him head first into

shouldering what had then seemed to be an extraordinarily heavy burden.

But somehow he had carried it—because it had been his duty to do so, and if in doing so he had lost some of the

spontaneity, the love of life and laughter and the ability to live for the moment alone that had so marked out his younger

cousin, Aldo, like him left fatherless by the crash, then those around him had just had to accept that that had been so.

Some of the older members of the family considered that he had allowed Aldo to take advantage of him, he knew. But

like him his cousin had lost his father in the tragedy, and, at only sixteen, it surely must have been a far harder burden for

him to bear than it had been for Marco himself.

Marco's frown deepened as he thought about his younger cousin. He had been totally opposed to Aldo marrying Patti, the

pretty English model. The wedding had taken place within weeks of Aldo meeting her, and it had not surprised him in

the least to learn that they had fallen out of love with one another as quickly as they had fallen into it.

But there was no point in dwelling on that now. Aldo had married Patti, and baby Angelina had been conceived, even if

both her parents had by that time been claiming that their marriage had been a mistake and that they bitterly regretted the

legal commitment they had made to one another.

It had been in his role of head of the family that Marco had felt obliged to invite them both to visit them at his home in

Tuscany, in the hope that he could somehow help them to find a way of making their marriage work. After all, whilst he

might not have approved of it in the first place, they now had a child to consider, and in Marco's eyes the needs of their

child far outweighed the selfish carnal desires of either of her parents.

But, once he had left them to their own devices, an argument had broken out between Aldo and Patti, which had resulted

in Aldo driving Patti away from the villa in a furious temper.

They would probably never know just what had caused the fatal accident, which had claimed their lives and left their

baby an orphan, Marco reflected sombrely, but he knew just how responsible he felt for having been the one to have

brought them both to the palazzo in the first place.

As Aldo's next of kin he had naturally taken on full responsibility for the orphaned baby, and now three months later it

was abundantly obvious that little Angelina had bonded strongly with Marco. Marco's strong paternalistic instincts had

meant that he had decided that it was both his duty and in the baby's own interests for him to make proper arrangements

for her care.

In order to cut down on wasting time unnecessarily on interviews that would not lead anywhere, he had painstakingly

spent far more time than he could currently afford sifting through the applications he had received, to make sure that he

only interviewed the candidate or candidates who met all his strict criteria, and in the end Alice Walsingham had been

the only one to do so; which made it even more infuriating that she had not even taken the trouble to turn up for their

interview. It was eleven o'clock, half an hour past the time of their appointment. His patience finally snapped. That was

it! He had waited long enough. If Miss Walsingham did ever decide to turn up, she was most definitely not the person he

wanted to leave, in sole charge of his precious child. Not even to himself was Marco prepared to admit just how attached

he had become to his cousin's baby, or how paternal he felt towards her.

As he stepped out of the hotel into the bright Florentine sunshine it glinted on the darkness of his thick, well-groomed

hair, highlighting his chiselled, autocratic features, and the lean-muscled strength of his six-foot-two frame.

Automatically he shielded the fierceness of his topaz gaze from the harshness of the sun by putting on dark glasses that

gave him a breath-catching air of predatory power and danger.

An actor studying for a role as a Mafiosi leader would have found him an ideal model. He looked lean, mean and

dangerous. No one would dream of making a man who looked as he did any kind of offer he might be tempted to refuse!

Irritably he returned to where he had left Aldo's Ferrari, which was parked outside the hotel, and he had just climbed into

it and put the keys in the ignition when he suddenly remembered that he had not left any message for his dilatory

interviewee, just in case she should choose to turn up!

Leaving the keys in the ignition, he climbed out of the Ferrari and strode toward the hotel.

'Oh, for God's sake, will you stop nagging me? You aren't my mother, you aren't anything to me. Just because your sister

has managed to trap my father into marriage that doesn't give you the right to tell me what to do.'

As she listened to Louise's deliberately hostile and inflammatory speech Alice mentally counted to ten.

It was now five minutes past eleven, and she was over half an hour late for her interview appointment, but it had been

impossible for her to leave Louise to her own devices after the teenager's totally unacceptable behaviour during their trip.

The previous night, Louise had sneaked out of the hotel without her, returning in the early hours very much the worse for

drink, refusing to tell Alice where she had been or who with. Alice had been beside herself with anxiety.

As luck would have it, Alice had now learned that her sister's stepdaughter had spent the evening with a group of young

American students who were studying in the city, and who it seemed had thankfully kept a watchful eye on her whilst

she had been with them.

However, as one of the students had a little anxiously explained to Alice, Louise had spent a large part of the evening in

conversation with a rather unsavoury character who had attached himself to the group and now it seemed Louise had

made arrangements to meet up with the man.

In order to ensure that she did not do so, Alice had insisted that Louise accompany her to her interview.

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