Czytaj książkę: «Prince's Virgin In Venice»

CHAPTER TWO

LOST IN VENICE. Panic pumped loud and hard through Rosa Ciavarro’s veins as she squeezed herself out of the flow of costumed crowds pouring over the bridge and found a rare patch of space by the side of the canal, trying to catch her breath and calm her racing heart. But nothing could calm her desperate eyes.

She peered through the lace of her veil, searching for a sign that would tell her where she was, but when she managed to make out the name of the square it meant nothing and offered no clue as to where she was. Scanning the passing crowds for any hint of recognition proved just as useless. It was pointless. Impossible to tell who was who when everyone was in costume.

Meanwhile the crowds continued to surge over the bridge: Harlequins and Columbinas, vampires and zombies. And why not zombies, when in the space of a few minutes her highly anticipated night had teetered over the edge from magical into nightmarish?

Panic settled into glum resignation as she turned her head up to the inky sky swirling with fog and clutched her own arms, sighing out a long breath of frustration that merely added more mist to the swirling fog. It was futile, and it was time she gave up searching and faced the truth.

She’d crossed too many bridges and turned too many corners in a vain attempt to catch up with her friends, and there was no chance they’d ever find each other now.

It was the last night of Carnevale, and the only party she’d been able to afford to go to, and instead she was lost and alone at the base of a fog-bound bridge somewhere in Venice.

Pointless.

Rosa pulled her thin cloak more tightly around her shoulders. Dio, it was cold. She stamped her feet against the stones of the pavement to warm her legs, wishing she’d had the sense to make herself something warmer than this flimsy gown with its bare shoulders and high-low hem. Something that better suited the season. Preferably something worn over thermals and lined with fur.

‘You’ll be dancing all night,’ Chiara had protested when Rosa had suggested she dress for the winter weather. ‘Take it from me, you’ll roast if you wear anything more.’

But Rosa wasn’t roasting now. The damp air wound cold fingers around her ankles and up her shins, seeking and sucking out what body warmth it could find. She was so very cold! And for the first time in too many years to remember she felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes.

She sniffed. She wasn’t the type to cry. She’d grown up with three older brothers who would mercilessly tease her if she did. As a child, she’d stoically endured any number of bumps and scratches, skinned knees and grazed elbows when she’d insisted on accompanying them on their adventures.

She hadn’t cried when her brothers had taught her to ride a bike that was too large for her, letting her go fast on a rocky road until she’d crashed into an ancient fig tree. She hadn’t cried when they’d helped her climb that same tree and then all clambered down and run away, leaving her to pick her own tentative way down. She’d fallen the last few feet to the dusty ground, collecting more scratches and bumps. All wounds she’d endured without a whimper.

But she’d never before been separated from her friends and lost in the labyrinthine calles of Venice on the biggest party night of the year, without her ticket or any way to contact them. Surely even her brothers would understand if she shed a tear or two of frustration now?

Especially if they knew the hideous amount she’d spent on her ticket!

She closed her eyes and pulled her cloak tighter around her, feeling the icy bite of winter working its way into her bones as resignation gave way to remorse. She’d had such high hopes for tonight. A rare night off in the midst of Carnevale. A chance to pretend she wasn’t just another hotel worker, cleaning up after the holidaymakers who poured into the city. A chance to be part of the celebrations instead of merely watching from the sidelines.

But so much money!

Such a waste!

Laughter rang out from the bridge, echoing in the foggy air above the lapping canal—laughter that could well be directed at her. Because there was nobody to blame for being in this predicament but herself.

It had seemed such a good idea when Chiara had offered to carry her phone and her ticket. After all, they were going to the same party. And it had been a good idea—right up until a host of angels sprouting ridiculously fat white wings had surged towards them across a narrow bridge and she’d been separated from her friends and forced backwards. By the time she’d managed to shoulder her way between the feathered wings and get back to the bridge Chiara and her friends had been swallowed up in the fog and the crowds and were nowhere in sight.

She’d raced across the bridge and along the crowded paths as best she could, trying to catch up, colliding with people wearing headdresses constructed from shells, or jester hats strung with bells, or ball gowns nearly the width of the narrow streets. But she was relatively new to Venice, and unsure of the way, and she’d crossed so many bridges—too many—that even if Chiara turned back how would she even know where to find her? She could have taken any number of wrong turns.

Useless.

She might as well go home to the tiny basement apartment she shared with Chiara—wherever that was. Surely even if it took her all night she would stumble across it eventually. With a final sigh, she reefed the mask from her face. She didn’t need a lace veil over her eyes to make her job any more difficult. She didn’t need a mask tonight, period. There would be no party for her tonight.

Her cloak slipped as she pushed her hair back, inadvertently exposing one shoulder to the frigid air. She shivered as she grappled with the slippery cloth and tucked herself back under what flimsy protection it offered against the cold.

She was bracing herself to fight her way back over the bridge and retrace her steps when she saw him. A man standing by the well in the centre of the square. A man in a costume of blue trimmed with gold. A tall man, broad-shouldered, with the bearing of a warrior.

A man who was staring right at her.

Electricity zapped a jagged line down her spine.

No. Not possible. She darted a look over her shoulder—because why should he be looking at her? But there was nothing behind her but the canal and a crumbling wall beyond.

She swallowed as she turned back, raising her eyes just enough to see that he was now walking purposefully towards her, and the crowd was almost scattering around him. Even across the gloom of the lamp-lit square the intent in his eyes sent adrenaline spiking in her blood.

Fight versus flight? There was no question of her response. She knew that whoever he was, and whatever he was thinking, she’d stayed there too long. And he was still moving, long strides bridging the distance between them, and still her feet refused to budge. She was anchored to the spot, when instead she should be pushing bodily into the bottleneck of people at the bridge and letting the crowd swallow her up and carry her away.

Much too soon he was before her, a man mountain of leather tunic and braid and chain, his shoulder-length hair loose around a face that spoke of power. A high brow above a broad nose and a jawline framed with steel and rendered in concrete, all hard lines and planes. And eyes of the most startling blue. Cobalt. No, he was no mere warrior. He must be a warlord. A god. He could be either.

Her mouth went dry as she looked up at him, but maybe that was just the heat that seemed to radiate from his body on this cold, foggy evening.

‘Can I help you?’ he said, in a voice as deep as he was tall.

He spoke in English, although with an accent that suggested he was not. Her heart was hammering in her chest, and her tongue seemed to have lost the ability to form words in any language.

He angled his head, his dark eyes narrowing. ‘Vous-êtes perdu?’ he tried, speaking in French this time.

Her French was patchier than her English, so she didn’t bother trying to respond in either. ‘No parlo Francese,’ she said, sounding breathless even to her own ears—but how could she not sound breathless, standing before a man whose very presence seemed to suck the oxygen out of the misty air?

‘You’re Italian?’ he said, in her own language this time.

‘Si.’ She swallowed, the action kicking up her chin. She tried to pretend it was a show of confidence, just like the challenge she did her best to infuse into her voice. ‘Why were you watching me?’

‘I was curious.’

She swallowed. She’d seen those women standing alone and waiting on the side of the road, and she had one idea why he might be curious about a woman standing by herself in a square.

She looked down at her gown, at the stockinged legs visible beneath the hem of her skirt. She knew she was supposed to look like a courtesan, but... ‘This is a costume. I’m not—you know.’

One side of his mouth lifted—the slightest rearrangement of the hard angles and planes of his face that turned his lips into an almost-smile, a change so dramatic that it took her completely by surprise.

‘This is Carnevale. Nobody is who they seem tonight.’

‘And who are you?’

‘My name is Vittorio. And you are...?’

‘Rosa.’

‘Rosa,’ he said, with the slightest inclination of his head.

It was all she could do not to sway at the way her name sounded in his rich, deep voice. It was the cold, she told herself, the slap of water against the side of the canal and the whisper of the fog against her skin, nothing more.

‘It is a pleasure to meet you.’

He held out one hand and she regarded it warily. It was a big hand, with buckles cuffing sleeves that looked as if they would burst open if he clenched so much as a muscle.

‘I promise it doesn’t bite,’ he said.

She looked up to see that the curve of his lips had moved up a notch and there was a glimmer of warmth in his impossibly blue eyes. And she didn’t mind that he seemed to be laughing at her, because the action had worked some kind of miracle on his face, giving a glimpse of the man beneath the warrior. So he was mortal after all...not some god conjured up by the shifting fog.

Almost reluctantly she put her hand in his, then felt his fingers curl around her hers and heat bloom in her hand. It was a delicious heat that curled seductively into her bloodstream and stirred a response low down in her belly, a feeling so unexpected, so unfamiliar, that it sent alarm bells clanging in her brain.

‘I have to go,’ she said, pulling her hand from his, feeling the loss of his body heat as if it had been suctioned from her flesh.

‘Where do you have to go?’

She looked over her shoulder at the bridge. The crowds were thinning now, most people having arrived at their destinations, and only latecomers were still rushing. If she set off now, at least she’d have a chance of getting herself warm.

‘I’m supposed to be somewhere. A party.’

‘Do you know where this party is?’

‘I’ll find it,’ she said, with a conviction she didn’t feel.

Because she had no idea where she was or where the party was, and because even if she did by some miracle manage to find the party there was the slight matter of an entry ticket no longer in her possession.

‘You haven’t a clue where it is or how to get there.’

She looked back at him, ready to snap a denial, but his eyes had joined with his lips and there was no mistaking that he’d know she was lying.

She pulled her cloak tighter around her and kicked up her chin. ‘What’s it to you?’

‘Nothing. It’s not a crime. Some would say that in Venice getting lost is compulsory.’

She bit her tongue as she shivered under her cloak.

Maybe if you hadn’t dropped more money than you could spare on a ticket, and maybe if you had a phone with working GPS, you wouldn’t mind getting lost in Venice.

‘You’re cold,’ he said, and before she could deny it or protest he had undone the chain at his neck and swung his cloak around her shoulders.

Her first instinct was to protest. New to city life she might be, but in spite of what he’d said she wasn’t naïve enough to believe that this man’s offer of help came without strings. But his cloak was heavy and deliciously warm, the leather supple and infused with a masculine scent. The scent of him. She breathed it in, relishing the blend of leather and man, rich and spiced, and her protest died on her lips. It was so good to feel snug.

‘Grazie,’ she said, warmth enveloping her, spreading to legs that felt as if they’d been chilled for ever. Just for a minute she would take this warmth, use it to defrost her blood and re-energise her deflated body and soul, and then she’d insist she was fine, give his cloak back and try to find her way home.

‘Is there someone you can call?’

‘I don’t have my phone.’ She looked down at the mask in her hands, feeling stupid.

‘Can I call someone for you?’ he asked, pulling a phone from a pouch on his belt.

For a moment Rosa felt a glimmer of hope. But only for a moment. Because Chiara’s phone number was logged in her phone’s memory, but not in her own. She shook her head, the tiny faint hope snuffed out. Her Carnevale was over before it had even begun.

‘I don’t know the number. It’s programmed into my phone, but...’

He dropped the phone back in its pouch. ‘You don’t know where this party is?’

Suddenly she was tired. Worn out by the rollercoaster of emotions, weary of questions that exposed how unprepared and foolish she’d been. This stranger might be trying to help, and he might be right when he assumed she didn’t know where the party was—he was right—but she didn’t need a post-mortem. She just wanted to go back to her apartment and her bed, pull the covers over her head and forget this night had ever happened.

‘Look, thanks for your help. But don’t you have somewhere to be?’

‘I do.’

She cocked an eyebrow at him in challenge. ‘Well, then?’

* * *

A gondola slipped almost silently along the canal behind her. Fog swirled around and between them. The woman must be freezing, the way she was so inadequately dressed. Her arms tightly bunched the paper-thin wrap around her quaking shoulders, but still she wanted to pretend that everything was all right and that she didn’t need help.

‘Come with me,’ he said.

It was impulse that had him uttering the words, but once they were out he realised they made all kinds of sense. She was lost, all alone in Venice, and she was beautiful—even more beautiful than he’d first thought when she’d peeled off her mask. Her brandy-coloured eyes were large and cat-like in her high-cheekboned face, her painted curved lips like an invitation. He remembered the sight of her naked shoulder under the cloak, the cheap satin of the bodice cupping her breast, and a random thought amused him.

Sirena would hate her.

And wasn’t that sufficient reason by itself?

Those cat-like eyes opened wide. ‘Scusa?’

‘Come with me,’ he said again. The seeds of a plan were already germinating—a plan that would benefit them both.

‘You don’t have to say that. You’ve already been too kind.’

‘It’s not about being kind. You would be doing me a favour.’

‘How is that possible? We’d never met until a few moments ago. How can I possibly do you any favour?’

He held out his forearm to her, the leather of his sleeve creaking. ‘Call it serendipity, if you prefer. Because I too have a costume ball to attend and I don’t have a partner for the evening. So if you would do me the honour of accompanying me?’

She laughed a little, then shook her head. ‘I’ve already told you—this is a costume. I wasn’t waiting to be picked up.’

‘I’m not trying to pick you up. I’m asking you to be my guest for the evening. But it is up to you, Rosa. Clearly you planned on going to a party tonight.’

He eased the mask from where she held it between the fingers clutching his cloak over her breasts and turned it slowly in his hands. She had no choice but to let it go. It was either let him take it or let go of the cloak.

‘Why should you miss out on the biggest night of Carnevale,’ he said, watching the way her eyes followed his hands as he thumbed the lace of her veil, ‘just because you became separated from your friends?’

He could tell she was tempted—could all but taste her excitement at being handed a lifeline to an evening she’d all but given up on, even while questions and misgivings swirled in the depths of her eyes.

He smiled. He might have started this evening in a foul mood, and he knew that would have been reflected in his features, but he knew how to smile when it got him something he wanted. Knew how to turn on the charm when the need arose—whether he was involved in negotiations with an antagonistic foreign diplomat or romancing a woman he desired in his bed.

‘Serendipity,’ he repeated. ‘A happy chance—for both of us. And the bonus is you’ll get to wear my cloak a while longer.’

Her eyes lifted to meet his—long-lashed eyes, shy eyes, filled with uncertainty and nerves. Again, he was struck by her air of vulnerability. She was a very different animal from the women he usually met. An image of Sirena floated unbidden into his mind’s eye—self-assured, self-centred Sirena, who wouldn’t look vulnerable if she was alone in six feet of water and staring down a hungry shark. A very different animal indeed.

‘It is very warm,’ she said, ‘thank you.’

‘Is that a yes?’

She took a deep breath, her teeth troubling her bottom lip while a battle went on inside her, then gave a decisive nod, adding her own tentative smile in response. ‘Why not?’

‘Why not indeed?’

He didn’t waste any time ushering her across the bridge and through the twisted calles towards the private entrance of the palazzo gardens, his mood considerably lighter than it had been earlier in the evening.