Claimed by the Italian: Virgin: Wedded at the Italian's Convenience / Count Giovanni's Virgin / The Italian's Unwilling Wife

One sable eyebrow rose in amazement that such imperious volume could issue from such a scrawny scrap of a thing. A disarming hint of a smile appeared, and two hands were expressively spread.

‘I don’t have time to go into detail. But last night my mother collapsed. Hospital tests reveal she has a brain tumour. The operation takes place the day after tomorrow. The prognosis isn’t good. In fact, it couldn’t be much worse,’ he announced heavily, the glittering gold of his magnificent eyes now shadowed by thickly fringed black lashes, deep lines scored on either side of his handsome mouth.

Lily got to her feet, instinctively leaning towards him, her voice soft, her huge eyes brimming with sympathy, seeking his. ‘Oh—poor you! You must be so worried! No wonder you’re in such a bad mood,’ she declared forgivingly. ‘But it’s amazing what surgeons can do these days. You mustn’t give up hope! Really you mustn’t!’

‘Spare me the platitudes.’ He shot her a look of brusque impatience. ‘Let’s cut to the chase.’

So he couldn’t take sympathy, Lily decided. That figured. He probably couldn’t give it, either. And that reminded her that she still didn’t have a clue what he’d been on about when he’d offered a donation in return for the use of her name. She flopped down again. Why her name, for pity’s sake?

‘My mother’s dearest wish is to see me married and producing an heir to the family wealth. That I show no signs of doing so is a source of deep distress to her and I regret that,’ he supplied flatly, ‘but for reasons which are none of your business marriage is a state I have no desire to enter. However, to make what might well be her last days happy I intend to tell her I’ve fallen in love and am engaged to a woman I met in England.’

For a long moment Lily couldn’t believe her ears. ‘You’d lie to your own mother! How immoral can you get?’

He shot her a look of withering contempt. ‘It doesn’t please me to do it, but it would please her. That, and only that, is the point.’

Those stunning features were riven with pain, and Lily’s soft heart melted. ‘I suppose I can see why you think a white lie’s forgivable in the circumstances,’ she offered falteringly, not quite sure she totally agreed. But the poor man was hurting. He clearly thought the world of his very ill mother, and the awful news had shaken him. He wasn’t thinking straight, hence his crazy plan.

‘Listen, have you considered the possibility that the operation might well be a success?’ she asked softly, pointing out something she was sure couldn’t have occurred to him. ‘Then you’d have to tell more lies, say you’d broken the engagement. She’d want to know why—and she’d be even more upset.’ She noted the ferocious frown line between his eyes, but continued understandingly, ‘I expect you’re in shock after that news, and that’s stopping you from thinking logically.’

Paolo gritted his strong teeth. She was seriously irritating him. Obviously a creature with the attention span of a gad-fly—veering from bristling moral outrage to saccharine triteness in the flicker of her impressively long eyelashes.

When he put forward a proposition he expected the recipient to sit quietly, hear him out and reach a conclusion based on the facts as offered. Most typically his conclusion.

A slash of colour washed his strong cheekbones as he spelled out through gritted teeth, ‘Without the operation she will die. Fact. With it, the chances of her pulling through are slim. Fact. She is seventy years old and not strong at the best of times,’ he imparted grimly. ‘My mind’s made up. All you have to do is agree to my request.’

‘I’m not comfortable with it,’ Lily confided earnestly. ‘If you really do intend to do this couldn’t you invent a name? Any name?’

Resisting the impulse to pick her up and throw her out, he confessed austerely, ‘I deal in facts and figures, not make-believe. A real woman’s name I would remember. A name I made up might slip my memory in the grip of emotion.’ Not something he was overjoyed to admit to even to himself, let alone this hugely annoying creature. He shot a dark look at his watch and demanded lethally, ‘Well?’

Lily took a deep breath. He was clearly set on going through with it. Nothing she’d said had stood a chance of changing his mind. And it had touched her deeply when he’d made that remark about worrying he’d forget a made-up name if he got emotional. His conversations with his mother prior to her operation would be highly emotional for both of them.

Shrugging her slim shoulders resignedly, she gave in. ‘OK. I agree.’

‘And total secrecy?’

‘Of course.’ How could he ask that? ‘It’s not something I’d remotely want to have known!’

‘And?’ Irritated beyond endurance by her holier-than-thou attitude towards what was, after all, a kindness to a desperately ill woman, he grated. ‘Your name? Lily what?’

‘Oh!’ Her face flamed. He must think she was an idiot! ‘It’s Frome. Lily Frome. Shouldn’t you write that down?’ she suggested, as he just stared at her, making her feel ridiculously squirmy inside.

‘No need. As I told you, I never forget facts. How tall are you?’

‘Why?’

‘Because Madre will ask what you look like,’ he grated through his teeth, as if talking to a child with the IQ of a snail.

‘Five foot one and a half,’ Lily muttered, as he withdrew a chequebook from one of the desk drawers and began to write.

He slid the cheque over the desktop, his eyes lifting as he enumerated, ‘Big grey eyes, small nose …’ he drew the line at voicing that, come to think of it, she had a totally luscious pink mouth. ‘Hair the colour of—caramella.’ He almost smiled before inborn practicality and self-possession kicked in. ‘Arrivederci, Lily Frome.’ He extracted car keys from the pocket of his beautifully tailored suit trousers. ‘I have a flight to catch. Miss Fleming’s somewhere around. She will look after you.’

And he was gone. Leaving Lily staring at his cheque for five thousand pounds and wallowing in the sense of unreality which was swamping her, because the happenings of the last twenty minutes were totally weird.

Two weeks later, at just after ten o’clock, Lily gave her last passenger a cheery ‘Goodnight!’ after seeing her safely inside her home—one of a pair of former labourer’s cottages—and clambered back into the people carrier, expelling a sigh of exhaustion.

It had been a long day, following a long night spent trying to put the accounts in order. She started the engine and set off through the dark lanes for home. The usual sort of day. Organising the two willing volunteers, visiting the housebound, doing chores they couldn’t manage themselves, drinking tea and chatting, driving old Mr Jenkins to his doctor’s appointment.

It was worth it, though. Even if ferrying eleven senior citizens with no transport of their own to the monthly whist drive in Market Hallow’s sports centre and back to their homes again was time consuming, the pleasure the old people got from the outing, from socialising with friends over tea and biscuits, made every minute special. After all, one of the charity’s main aims was to alleviate loneliness and isolation.

And thanks to Paolo Venini’s generous cheque—plus the jumble sale, which had raised a record level of funds—they were managing to carry on. At least the financial crisis was over for the time being. But they would have to advertise for more volunteers in the parish magazine. She and their two part-time volunteers couldn’t do everything.

Shelving that downbeat observation, she wondered how Paolo’s mother was, if the operation had been a success, and immediately conjured up an image of his spectacular, totally unforgettable features. He often occupied her thoughts—which was natural, she excused herself. Without that strange encounter the charity would probably have folded.

And it was not, definitely not because she fancied him, as Penny Fleming had dryly commented when, driven by something more than mere nosiness, Lily had bombarded her with questions about her boss.

‘Females have a habit of going weak at the knees around him,’ Penny had cautioned. ‘But there’s no mileage in it. He’s the take ‘em and leave ‘em type. With one broken engagement behind him he upped and married a French actress, but got rid of her before their first anniversary. I don’t know the ins and outs, but my guess is he was bored. That’s my opinion anyway, because no woman’s lasted more than a few weeks since then. His dumped wife died of an overdose a couple of months later, poor thing. If you fancy him you’re on a hiding to nothing, believe me!’

‘I don’t fancy him!’ Chilled by that last revelation, Lily had protested tartly. ‘In any case, I’ll never set eyes on him again!’

The obvious truth of that state of affairs had left her feeling oddly regretful—a feeling that stubbornly persisted. Which was why when, yawning widely, she finally let herself into the cottage and found Paolo Venini sitting with Great-Aunt Edith in front of the parlour fire, her heart felt as if it was exploding within her under-endowed breast.

‘Miss Frome—’ He rose to his feet, spectacular in a beautifully tailored pale grey suit, crisp white shirt and dark grey tie, the image of the highly successful merchant banker detailed on the internet. Handsome, powerful, charismatic. And heartless?

Her knees weakening shamefully, swamped by the effect he always seemed to have on her, she got out thinly, ‘What are you doing here?’ and received her great-aunt’s curt rebuke.

‘Manners, Lily. Manners! Our benefactor has introduced himself to me and has been waiting for you.’ She heaved her solid tweed and twin-setted bulk out of the armchair. ‘Signor Venini has a proposal which, in my firm opinion, is the generous answer to all Life Begin’s future difficulties. Listen to what he has to say. It will mean changes.’ She smiled at the tall Italian. ‘But then nothing stays the same. Onward and forward—or stagnate!’

On which typical rallying cry the old lady excused herself and retired for the night, leaving Lily wondering what the strictly principled lady would say if she knew exactly why their ‘benefactor’ had made that hefty donation.

And his new proposal—whatever it was—would have heavy strings attached. Strings her upright great-aunt would have no knowledge of! If the hard-nosed banker gave he would undoubtedly want something in return.

‘So?’ Suspicion glinted in her eyes, and her slender frame was rigid—until he smiled. It was like a bolt of lightning, setting up a tidal wave of tingling reaction. His impossible sexiness, sinful sexiness, took her breath away, and made her deeply ashamed of reacting like all those other gullible females Penny had talked about.

‘We shall sit,’ he announced, with infuriatingly cool calm, looking incredibly exotic against the old-fashioned background of the shabby parlour with its Victorian clutter.

Sinking into the armchair her elderly relative had recently vacated—not because he’d told her to but because in his vicinity her legs felt disgracefully wobbly—she found her breath hard to catch, because his sheer presence seemed to suck all the air out of the room. His gaze held her mesmerised as he took the chair on the opposite side of the dying fire, leaning back, elbows on the arms, lean hands steepled in front of his handsome mouth, those golden eyes still smiling with speech-stealing warmth at her.

‘Your great-aunt has quite the reputation,’ he stated. ‘A formidable woman with admirable charitable ethics, yes? Tirelessly working for the benefit of others over the years. She now deserves to rest. Yes, again?’

The softly accented flow of words reached a pause. He was obviously waiting for her response, her full agreement. Lily pressed her lips together. She would be a fool to trust a purring tiger!

Paolo lowered his hands, dropped them loosely between his knees and leaned forward. His slow smile was decidedly dangerous.

Lily’s tension level racked up a few more notches. He didn’t have the look of a recently bereaved loving son. Her suspicions hardened.

‘Nothing to say? As I recall, on our previous encounter you were—to put it politely—remarkably chatty.’

Gabby, he had mentally named her. In less fraught circumstances he might even have found her chatter amusing. But now she was as animated as a stone, her small triangular face pale, dark smudges of fatigue beneath wary grey eyes, her slight body, clad in well-worn denims and a tired-looking fleece, tensely held. Her hair, scraped back in an unflattering ponytail, made her look younger than what he now knew to be her twenty-three years.