Untouched Until Marriage Read Online Free PDF Page B

Libby. She couldn’t look away from him. It was as though he had cast a spell over her which rooted her to the spot as he strolled nearer, those midnight-dark eyes boring into her as if he were looking into her soul.
    He halted inches from her, and almost as if he could not help himself he reached out and wrapped a silky red curl around his finger. ‘So, you’re not a stripper?’
    â€˜ No!’ Her face felt like a furnace, but she was trapped by his magnetism and seemed incapable of moving away from him.
    His brows rose and he looked down his arrogant nose at her. ‘Pity,’ he murmured. ‘I might have considered paying you for a private performance.’
    â€˜Well, you would have wasted your money,’ Libby snapped, her will-power finally reasserting itself so that she jerked away from him. She lifted Gino out of his highchair and hugged him to her. ‘I don’t think this is going to work. I’m not sure I want to bring Gino to Italy to live at the Carducci villa—certainly not if you’re going to make comments like that. Anyway,’ she added, desperately clutching at reasons why they should not go with Raul, ‘I can’t come with you now. Gino has an appointment with a paediatrician next week because my GP is concerned about his respiratory problems.’
    Raul had moved back to the window and was staring at the rain, which was now lashing the glass. ‘Of course you’ll come. You’re not going to turn down the opportunity to live a life of luxury,’ he drawled confidently. Heglanced back at Libby and tried to ignore the burning ache in his groin. Clearly he’d been too long without a lover if he could be attracted to his father’s tart, he derided himself. It was a situation he would remedy once he returned home. He could take his pick from numerous beautiful, sophisticated women who understood that all he wanted was a casual sexual relationship with no strings attached.
    But first it was imperative that he persuaded Elizabeth Maynard to return to Italy with him immediately. Much as he resented the fact, she controlled fifty percent of Carducci Cosmetics, and he could not run the company without her. ‘Once we are in Italy I will arrange for the baby to see a private specialist,’ he assured her. ‘Gino is a Carducci, and I know his father would have wanted him to have the best of everything.’
    The best of everything —the words echoed in Libby’s head. Wasn’t that what her mother would have wanted for Gino, too? She stared around the flat, at the thread-bare carpet and the patches of damp on the walls, and bit her lip, conscious that Raul was watching her.
    â€˜How can you deny Gino his birthright?’ he demanded. ‘Already the spring sunshine in Lazio is warming the lake beside the Villa Giulietta, and the warm climate will be good for him. As he grows older he will have the run of the house and grounds. He can play in the orange groves and learn to sail on the lake.’ He would teach his father’s son, just as Pietro had taught him to sail when he had been a boy, Raul vowed silently.
    A thought suddenly struck him that might mean an annoying delay to his plans to take his father’s son to Italy as soon as possible. ‘I don’t suppose Gino has a passport?’
    â€˜Actually, he does,’ Libby replied slowly. Her mother had applied for one soon after Gino had been born. It had been most unlike Liz to be so organised, but Libby guessed that her mum had hoped Pietro would send for her and his baby son. Liz would have wanted Gino to live in Italy, in a grand house rather than this flat, she knew.
    To her surprise Raul did not sound as though he resented his baby half-brother, as she had first feared, and actually seemed to want Gino to live at the Carducci villa.
    She thought of the bank’s refusal to increase her overdraft, and the worry that had kept her awake for the