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romantic.’
    ‘You like that?’
    ‘Who wouldn’t?’
    ‘And yet this morning you told me you preferred the pragmatic approach,’ he mused.
    ‘Did I?’ But this morning seemed a lifetime ago. She kept looking upwards towards the heavens, losing her gaze in itsstar-studded blackness, terrified of what she thought might be about to happen—and yet her heart was beating fast with a mad kind of eagerness because she wanted it to begin. ‘Aisling?’
    His soft voice made her stop looking at the sky and turn her gaze instead to the sculpted shadows of his face. In the dim light she could see the glitter of his eyes and the gleam of his lips.
    Her voice was tremulous. ‘What?’
    ‘Do you know what I would wish for, if I saw a star blazing across the night sky right now?’
    She shook her head, so that the hair moved like a heavy silken curtain. ‘No.’
    His lips curved into a mocking smile. ‘Yes, you do,’ he taunted softly as he pulled her into the shadow of a large tree and into his arms.

CHAPTER THREE
    H IS body was hard, his breath was warm as he pulled her close against him and Aisling could scarcely breathe as every longing she’d ever had about him fused into that single moment. ‘Gianluca!’ she gasped, her voice a mixture of plea and protest.
    ‘Mia
bella!
Kiss me. Just
kiss
me!’
    ‘But this is wrong!’
    ‘Why is it wrong? How
can
it be wrong?’ he demanded.
    She tried to think of a reason but her brain had gone to mush and so had her body. Was it the raw urgency in his voice which made her want to obey him without question, or her own overwhelming hunger which made Aisling stay right where she was? Perhaps it was simply the fleeting feeling that if she didn’t, then she would regret it for the rest of her life. That she would become one of those bitter old women who had rejected a taste of paradise when she’d had it offered to her on a soft, warm night in Umbria.
    ‘You know you want me,’ he asserted harshly.
    ‘Yes,’ she assented breathlessly. And with a little moan, she wrapped her arms around his neck, lifting her mouth to meet his hard, seeking kiss.
    A thousand fireworks exploded in his head as her lips opened beneath his. ‘Aisling,’ he groaned, her name as unfamiliar on his lips as the taste of her, the smell of her, this sheer unexpected reality of having her soft and compliant and oh-so-hungry in his arms. The ice-queen melting! The cool Englishwoman kissing him!
    Aisling swayed as she responded with a fervour which seemed to sap her of strength and reason. His hands were touching her breasts, and—oh, heavens!—she was
letting
them, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Fingertips moving over her body, as if examining her by touch alone. Lingering at the indentation of her waist. Skating over the curve of her hips. Cupping the swell of her buttocks and pulling her into the hard rock of his arousal.
    ‘Oh!’ she gasped.
    ‘You like that?’
    ‘Yes!’
    ‘And that?’
    ‘Oh, yes.’ She breathed.
‘Yes!’
    ‘You want me to keep doing it?’
    ‘Yes!’
    He flicked his tongue over her bone-dry lips. She was like molten lava, bubbling beneath his touch—so responsive, so unbelievably receptive in a way which belied her normal cool image.
    Gianluca thought quickly. If his barn were not filled with villagers and local dignitaries, he would have thought nothing of taking her there, beneath the tree. He could have fought to get her jeans down and thrust deliciously into her. Then they could have gone back to the party afterwards as if nothing had happened.
    He frowned with concentration. If he kissed her thoroughly enough, silenced the sounds of her orgasm, he might yet be able to accomplish it. And yet he was still not certain of her. Some women were needlessly sentimental when they took a new lover—insisting on the formality of a bed rather than a shadowed space in an orchard. Would Aisling be one of them?
    He realised that this was madness—that there