Modern Romance Collection February 2025, #5-8

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE

T HE STORM ROARED , the rain lashed, and the inky-dark sky seemed to reflect the current state of Romano Castelliari’s mood.

Which was angry, to say the least.

He had just returned from Turin where he had been poised to sign the deal of a lifetime. The purchase of one of Italy’s most iconic car factories to add to his already impressive portfolio had been a long-held dream and for once he had allowed his stony heart to feel a flicker of anticipatory joy. And then, right at the last minute, the elderly owner had pulled out, citing a deep aversion to Romano’s lifestyle as his reason. ‘I want to sell my company to a family man,’ he had rasped. ‘Not an international playboy.’

The old man had been adamant, stubbornly rejecting every inducement Romano had offered, leaving the Italian billionaire—simmering with a quiet rage—to make his way to where his private jet waited. He was still simmering now.

‘Porca miseria!’ he raged, although there was nobody around to hear him. What right did Silvano di Saccucci have to refuse a deal on such flimsy grounds? What right did anyone have to stand in the way of his wishes? Or to judge him like that?

Irritably, he continued to pace the corridors of his Tuscan retreat, glaring as the rain lashed against the windows of the ancient castello , obscuring the mountains in the distance with a heavy grey curtain.

He had never been a man who allowed himself to be governed by the elements and would walk, or ride, or hunt boar in almost any weathers. But this! This never-ending rain was yet one more intolerable fact to add to his growing list of inconveniences and if the coming weekend had not been fixed in stone, he might have taken himself off to somewhere warm, maybe Brazil, to watch one his cars competing in the Premio Mondo.

He scowled. Certain social events were inevitable when you were custodian of a vast Italian estate like this and, since he was rarely here, he always limited them to a few per year. This weekend was the baptism of his little half-sister’s baby. Actually, Floriana was not so little any more, he reminded himself, for she was a wife now and a mother. But he was not looking forward to it, because such occasions always prompted intrusive questions—the most intrusive being the supposedly innocent query about when he intended having children of his own.

Innocent they most certainly were not, though he should have been used to fielding them by now. How many times had lovers looked deep into his eyes, with what he always considered a rather bovine expression? It usually happened after a particularly satisfying bout of sex, when they suspected he might have let his guard down, because they were foolish enough not to realise that he never let his guard down. When would they ever learn? ‘You’d make such a good father, Romano,’ they would coo, as if the idea had only just occurred to them.

This was a lie. He knew his limitations—the very same ones which had made Silvano withdraw his offer at the last minute. He had neither the desire nor the tolerance to settle down, despite the growing pressure to do so with every year which passed. A shudder of distaste whispered its way over his skin. Why create a situation which would inevitably draw his memory back to his own, wretched childhood?

And now he had opened a floodgate to the rogue thoughts which came tumbling in. Because it had been a night like this, hadn’t it?

His body tensed.

The night his mother had taken him away. He remembered rain lashing down on him as he had been carried outside in her arms. The howl of the wind as he had been bundled into the back of a waiting limousine. He recalled the pungent smell of some sickly sweet and cloying smoke and then…nothing—until he had awoken in an unfamiliar house with his mother kissing an unfamiliar man who was not his father.

Romano felt a pulse begin to hammer at his temple. The ordeal had lasted a full three years before he was free again. But you could never really be free of your past, could you? Good or bad, those experiences made you the person you were. Every criticism laid at his door, he could trace back to that interlude. He accepted that it accounted for his lack of feelings. His chosen remoteness from other people. His sense of always being on the outside, looking in. The man who never really fitted in anywhere.

And that was the way he liked it.

Because he didn’t want emotional mess. He had no intention of going through that again. He didn’t want pain, or insecurity. He lived his life in a carefully controlled way and if anybody ever dared challenge him, then he cut them out with a ruthlessness which came as easily as breathing to him.

He threw another log onto the massive fire which burned so brightly in the castle’s entrance hall, splashing the dark panelled walls with red and gold and providing some much-needed warmth, because it had been freezing when he had arrived at the empty castello . At least he had been granted an unexpected day’s grace before everyone else got here. His half-sister and her family, along with his stepmother, had all been delayed, which meant he would be able to spend the rest of the evening alone. He swallowed. Trying very hard not to think about the other guest…

The unwanted one.

The spectre at the feast.

The green-eyed witch with the cascade of copper curls.

The woman who…

Romano caught a glimpse of his glowering features reflected back from one of the antique mirrors and his scowl grew deeper.

Why the hell had his half-sister chosen to bring that infernal woman here, when she knew how much he disliked her? He could feel his muscles bunch, his body becoming iron-hard and tense. Why make someone like Kelly Butler godmother to a Castelliari child when she had always been the most unsuitable of Floriana’s friends? Hadn’t the stubborn redhead already caused enough trouble with her interference? With her stubbornness and her insolence?

And hadn’t that trouble been compounded by the way she had made him feel? By the shameless sexuality she had exuded, which had licked at his body and soul with a taunting heat, made worse by the fact that she had been forbidden to him…

His turbulent thoughts were interrupted by a distant sound. A muffled banging, which was barely audible above the banshee scream of the storm. At first he thought it might be a stray branch, dislodged from a tree, which had hurled itself against the door, and better left until morning to investigate, when the wind suddenly dropped and he heard it again, more clearly this time.

A voice.

His forehead creased.

A woman’s voice.

Turning away from the blaze of the fire, he pulled open the heavy door to the howling gale, unprepared for the vision who stood in front of him. At first he barely recognised her as the light from the castle spilled out onto the courtyard, bathing her in a golden halo. Her hair was plastered to her head and her shoulders were hunched in a useless attempt to resist the onslaught of the driving rain. But then she looked up and said his name—said it in that soft, witchy voice of hers—and he could do nothing about the sudden thickness which gathered in his throat, nor the unwanted stab to his groin. His gaze raked over her with unwilling hunger and he swallowed. He had forgotten how tiny she was.

‘Get inside,’ he bit out.

Obediently she nodded, stumbling over the threshold into the hall. As he shut the door on the forbidding night, he found himself thinking he’d never known her quite so compliant. Or so vulnerable. There was no rebellious challenge on her heart-shaped face tonight. Her rain-streaked cheeks were pinched as she stared up at him, but in the firelight her eyes were as bright as he remembered them. Green eyes, he thought. Green with promise. Even when wet with rain, they were the eyes of a sorceress.

He wanted to ask her why the hell she’d turned up so early but she was shivering so violently that instead he jerked his head in the direction of the fire. ‘Stand over there and take off your damned coat,’ he ordered roughly.

Her teeth were chattering so much that she could barely get the words out, but she tilted her chin to stare at him defiantly and this was more like the Kelly he knew.

‘Y-you haven’t lost any of your bossy instincts, I s-see!’ she declared.

‘Quit the analysis and concentrate on what you’re supposed to be doing—or rather un doing,’ he snapped back. ‘Which are the buttons of your coat.’

But her ungloved and presumably frozen hands seemed incapable of accomplishing even that simple task and Romano gave an impatient click of his tongue as he moved towards her.

‘Shall I?’ he growled.

Her nod was grudging, the recalcitrant set of her lips achingly familiar. ‘If you want.’

If he wanted? Romano gave a short laugh. What he wanted was something quite different.

For her to be as far away from him as possible. Out of sight and out of mind.

Oh, yeah?

Wasn’t the truth something much more fundamental? Something carnal and urgent, which flared up inside him like a sudden fever, despite the pathetic and sodden image she presented? Wouldn’t he have liked her lying beneath him, that soft and petite body opening up to welcome him?

And hadn’t she always had that effect on him?

He remembered the clumsy pass she had made when she was barely eighteen years old. His obvious shock that his sister’s friend could have been so glaringly obvious how much she desired him had fuelled his worst prejudices about women and made him worry about her influence on Floriana. He had rejected her swiftly—some might even have said cruelly—but he’d needed to do that. Because hadn’t he been appalled at just how much he had wanted her, despite her unsuitability and the fact that she had been out of bounds? Because no way would he have contemplated having sex with the eighteen year old best friend of his little sister, no matter how great the temptation.

His breathing shallow, he slid open the buttons of her sodden jacket and slipped it from her shoulders, taking great care to keep all contact with her body to a minimum. But even the featherlight brush of his fingertips against her shoulders felt like wildfire rippling over his skin. ‘Didn’t it occur to you to wear something waterproof and warm?’ he demanded huskily as he hung the dripping garment on a nearby coat-stand. ‘Or did you think the fashion police would be watching your every move?’

‘I wasn’t expecting the weather to be quite so foul, if you must know!’

‘You think the sun always shines in Tuscany, do you, Kelly?’ he questioned sarcastically.

‘Not when you’re around, that’s for sure! It probably wouldn’t dare to show its face. Anyway…’ She glanced around, her hair resembling a rapidly forming halo of fire as the heat began to warm her curls. ‘Where’s Floriana?’

‘Let’s get you dry first, shall we?’ he clipped out impatiently.

‘You’re making me sound like a dog who’s just jumped in a puddle.’

‘A dog would show more gratitude.’

‘Ah. So that’s why you’ve got a face even more like thunder than usual. Aren’t I showing the correct degree of appreciation, Romano? Do you want me to bow and scrape to you and simper my thanks?’

‘I want you to shut up for a while, if such a thing were humanly possible.’

‘I’m surprised you’re talking about being human, when everybody knows you’re the devil incarnate,’ she mumbled.

But Romano’s retort died on his lips, his gaze reluctantly drinking in her appearance despite the fact that she was wearing little he found commendable. Her striped sweater made her look like a cartoon character and her jeans were surprisingly practical and sturdy. And yet… How could she manage to make such a commonplace outfit look sexy ? ‘You’re soaking,’ he observed unevenly.

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Where are the rest of your clothes?’

‘In the car.’

‘I didn’t see a car.’ He frowned. ‘In fact, I didn’t hear a car.’

‘No. It conked out, halfway up the drive.’

‘Conked out?’ Despite his fluency in four languages, the English colloquialism was unfamiliar to him.

‘Broken down. It won’t budge. I ran over something in the road and I think I’ve done something to the wheel.’

‘You think?’

‘Okay, I have!’ she shot back. ‘We don’t all have limos on tap, you know! The satnav stopped working and I got hopelessly lost. Even if the roads weren’t currently looking like rivers—this is a godforsaken place to find.’

‘It’s a castle on top of a hill—how hard can it be?’

‘A few signposts along the way might have been helpful!’

Softly, in Italian, he cursed. ‘Give me the car key and wait here,’ he ground out, grabbing a jacket.

Kelly told herself she was glad to see the back of him as he took the key and slammed the centuries-old door behind him, even though the back of him was almost as tempting as the delicious front of him. The journey here had been an absolute nightmare—like an animated version of the worst kind of fairy tale. Tall, creaking trees. Perilous drops into unseeable forests. A castle she had never liked, which had risen up before her, vast and daunting. And then, waiting inside was the ogre. The beast.

Except that he was neither of those things.

She fanned her face and tried to get her breathing back to normal, but it was a big ask, because how could anyone ever act normally when Romano Castelliari was around? That had always been her problem when he had been in the vicinity. There was something almost dangerous about his beauty which set him apart from other mortals. His muscle-packed frame—all six feet plus of it. His eyes as dark as a starless night. Eyes which seemed capable of looking into your very soul—which was total fantasy on her part, because he’d never looked at her with anything but contempt.

She remembered the first time she’d ever seen him. She’d been peeping from an upstairs window at school when he’d arrived to take his sister out for lunch, in a shiny black car, with a chauffeur at the wheel. Had he known she was watching? Was that why he glanced up, dark eyes narrowed, his black hair ruffled in the light breeze? But that first sight of his face had come as something of a shock, for he had none of his half-sister’s sunny expression. She remembered thinking how cold his features looked. How hard and forbidding. But there was something about the sensual curve of his lips which badly made her want to kiss him. And just like that, she had lost her heart to him even though a man like that was never going to look twice at a schoolgirl, despite the fact that she’d been nearly eighteen and just about to go away to college.

Was that why she had taken to dressing up like an amateur seductress every time she saw him and making out as if she were always on her way to a party, much to his sister’s amusement? Because Flo had known the truth. That Kelly was the person least likely to have a wild social life. Not that Romano had appeared to notice her, no matter what she wore, or how she behaved. Which was why she had mistakenly brought things to a head and asked him if he fancied going to the pub for a drink on the last day of term, wearing a tarty outfit she’d borrowed from one of the other pupils. Hadn’t she deserved the derisive curve of his lips which had followed?

‘Go away, little girl,’ he had drawled contemptuously and she had done just that, hurt and humiliated.

Stop it, she thought distractedly. Just stop it . Romano Castelliari’s gorgeousness had never been in any doubt and she’d left behind her hero worship a long time ago. Good job too, because, judging by his behaviour since she’d arrived at his castle, he was still a judgemental snob and control freak. Nothing has changed, she recognised. He still doesn’t like you. And you don’t like him. End of story.

And hadn’t she got other stuff to think about? Scary, urgent stuff. Like, how was she was going to scramble together enough money to pay her rent now that the restaurant she worked in had finally gone bust? The part-time job didn’t pay much but it just about supplemented her meagre takings from the market stall.

But it was still a constant juggle, keeping all the balls in the air, and now one had come crashing down, she wasn’t sure how she was going to manage in the short term.

In an attempt to distract herself from the teeming of her worried thoughts, Kelly wondered where everyone was. Cocking her head, she listened for sounds of life but she could hear nothing other than the crackle of flames and the howl of the wind. Come to think of it, she hadn’t noticed any other cars when she’d been banging on that ancient door for what had seemed like hours, had she? A flicker of apprehension whispered over her skin at the thought of being alone in this vast castello with the Italian billionaire, but her musings evaporated when Romano reappeared a few minutes later, removing his dripping jacket and depositing her battered suitcase on the flagstoned floor.

‘Did you get manage to get it to start?’ she questioned.

‘No,’ he snapped.

‘But it’s a hire car,’ she wailed, thinking about the damage clause in the contract she’d signed.

‘I’ll make sure it’s moved off the road tonight,’ he said, from between gritted teeth. ‘And get someone to look at it properly in the morning.’

‘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 he enjoy making women desire him? She cleared her throat, wondering why she had suddenly morphed back into that same star-struck teenager. Focus, she thought. Just focus . ‘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 you wanted to 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 be very surprised 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 even like him? 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.

‘I have no idea where Floriana was intending to put you, but there are a number of guest rooms on the second floor available,’ he continued. ‘Any preferences as to which one you’d like?’

Indignation rode to her rescue, dragging her attention away from her aching breasts. ‘How would I know?’ she demanded. ‘Last time I was here I was made to sleep in a local hotel—presumably because I wasn’t considered good enough to stay in your precious castle!’

There was a pause as their gazes clashed. ‘I think we both know I was trying to keep you away from my sister as much as possible.’

‘Even though, as her bridesmaid, I was supposed to be on hand at all times?’

‘I didn’t like your influence over her.’ His black eyes glittered. ‘And it seems my judgement was entirely correct, since you encouraged her to run away the night before her wedding, jilting the man she was supposed to marry and bringing shame and dishonour on the entire Castelliari family.’

‘Surely her happiness was more important than the reputation of the family?’ she protested. ‘And I didn’t influence her at all. The whole thing was her idea.’

‘You could have stopped her,’ he ground out. ‘You could have come to me.’

Kelly stilled. ‘Why would I do that? Not only were you the last person I would ever turn to for advice—she was being offered up like some ancient sacrifice to an older, richer man!’

‘Stop being so melodramatic,’ he snapped. ‘Count Alphonso de Camino would have made an excellent husband. He would have provided for her. Unlike her current one.’

Kelly heard the criticism implicit in his tone. ‘But Floriana is happy with Max,’ she defended.

‘And for how long?’ he retorted. ‘She won’t stay happy unless she has some money.’

‘So give them some!’

‘You think I haven’t tried?’ he demanded. ‘But not only is he poor—he is proud. It is the worst possible combination.’

She stared into his dark and brooding features. ‘Did you really want her to marry a man she didn’t love?’ she whispered.

At this he tensed, his powerful body growing still. ‘Please. Do not speak to me of love ,’ he said, his voice filled with venom. ‘It’s nothing but a lazy word for lust—which screws up people’s lives if they’re stupid enough to believe in it.’

‘And you don’t.’

‘Of course I don’t,’ he answered scornfully.

‘What a cynic you are, Romano,’ she breathed and was about to turn away when his expression stopped her. Startled her. And suddenly she couldn’t tear her gaze away. Because he looked…

Kelly swallowed. Everything about Romano Castelliari seemed like a contradiction in that moment. Like ice and fire. Like need and contempt. His features were stamped with bitterness. Impatience, too—probably because a little nobody like her had the temerity to speak to a powerful billionaire in such a way. But she saw something else as he followed the movement of her hair falling back down to her shoulders, like a man who had just been hypnotised against his will. Something in his eyes, which echoed the molten rush of longing which was gathering low in her belly. Heat began to flood through her pelvis, filling her with unfamiliar hunger and frustration, making her want to grind her hips against his and ask him to…beg him to…

Her throat dried. How was it possible to want someone you hated so much?

To want him to touch you so badly that your life felt as if it would be incomplete if he didn’t?

She knew he still blamed her for her part in what had happened. Floriana’s carefully choreographed wedding to the middle-aged count had never happened—mainly because the bride-to-be had run away in the middle of the night, aided and abetted by Kelly. And Kelly had been at her side when Floriana had married Max, the man she’d loved for so long. Emotions had been understandably raw for a long time afterwards, which probably explained why Floriana and Max’s first baby had been baptised in a low-key family ceremony, to which Kelly had most definitely not been invited.

But that was all in the past. Now they had an adorable baby girl and the couple were determined that Kelly should be Allegra’s godmother. Things had moved on, tempers had cooled and they were all grown-ups, weren’t they?

Surely she could manage to be civil to the brooding billionaire for one short weekend of her life.

But it wasn’t easy when he was looking at her like that. Making her skin feel too tight for her body. Making her want things she had no right to want. Not from him.

She licked her dry lips. ‘Weren’t you about to show me my room?’

Imperiously, he inclined his dark head and somehow the sensual spell he had woven was broken.

‘Come with me.’

She followed him up the sweeping staircase, remembering how unwelcoming she’d always found this huge castle. How she had never really fitted in. Because she was different, she’d always known that. She wasn’t like them. Floriana had money and class and connections going back centuries, while she, Kelly, had nothing.

Trying to keep up with his long-legged stride, they reached the second floor where, at the end of a long corridor adorned with faded silk rugs, he halted in front of a door and pushed it open.

‘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.