The Count's Prize Read Online Free PDF Page A

OK?’ Dario asked.
    ‘It’s the heat, that’s all,’ she told him abruptly. ‘Sun like this is so rare in England, I’m not used to it.’
    ‘Then take care of yourself.’ Suddenly his voice was unexpectedly firm. ‘Keep to the shade, and always wear a hat. When I see you again, I don’t want it to be as a sunstroke victim in the local casualty unit.’
    Raising one hand in a salute, he rode away. Josie found herself staring after him and had to apologise to Giacomo, the workman. She didn’t need a translation of the workman’s reply. His knowing chuckle was enough to give her a pretty good idea of what he was thinking. Blushing furiously, she made a point of turning backto her study of the ancient stones that were being used to repair the wall rather than watch Dario.
    Work first, play later
, she repeated to herself—but for once her usual mantra didn’t seem quite so comforting.
    Dario couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there was something about Dr Josie Street that unsettled him. He kept thinking about her pale face and tense movements on and off for the rest of the day. She was socially awkward and dressed to disappear into the background rather than make a fashion statement. All the same, he could see why his sister had taken to her—Josie had a charm all of her own. She was delightfully easy to tease, and her innocence was irresistible for someone whose social palate had felt somewhat jaded of late. She had been so animated in her conversation with Giacomo. Dario had seen her gestures from a hundred yards away and automatically assumed she needed a translator. It was only as he rode nearer he saw she was simply engrossed in her subject. He liked that. He hadn’t been nearly so keen on the way she seemed to lose all her self-confidence when she saw him.
    She went out of her way to communicate with Giacomo, but she could barely string two sentences together once I appeared
, he thought.
    For a moment, Dario was reminded of Arietta. He had no idea why, because she had been the complete opposite of Josie—talkative with him, but almost silent in company. Forcibly dismissing the image of his late fiancée, he tried to think of something else. It should have beeneasy enough. After all, he had lived without Arietta for far longer than they had been together.
    But to find her loss could still hurt him acted as a powerful warning.
    Arietta’s memory will
not
be allowed to come back to haunt me again tonight
, Dario thought firmly as he got ready to go out for dinner that evening. As he fastened a pair of solid gold cufflinks into his white dress shirt, he heard the rapid crunch of gravel from outside. Looking out of a window, he saw Josie striding away into the distance, so he strolled out onto his balcony.
    ‘Where are you off to in such a hurry?’ he called down to her. ‘Can I give you a lift?’
    She stopped and turned in a clatter of falling equipment. She was carrying a shuttle tray but it was piled far too high with trowels, brushes and other tools. Now half of them were slithering to the ground.
    ‘Thanks …’ she put a hand across her chest as though trying to hide her practical but dull overalls ‘… but I couldn’t put you to all that trouble …’
    ‘It’s no trouble.’ He swung back into his suite but, by the time he had pulled on his jacket and made his way down to the courtyard, she was gone.
    Dario kept a lookout for Josie as he drove towards the main gates of his estate a little while later. When he spotted her, she was already hard at work beside the old boundary wall. They waved to each other in passing. That was something; but Dario knew she must havevirtually run like a rabbit to have got there so fast. He wondered why. There could be nothing scary about him.
    Little scenes with Josie kept edging their way into his mind all that evening, despite the attentions of several female guests. Unlike Josie, they were all dressed in the finest clothes that Milan, Paris and New