At The Sicilian Count's Command

Not that one sleepless night was a problem. No, it was the fact that he found Angelica Harper just as sensually disturbing this morning as he had last night that was the problem.

Because, after witnessing Angelica going to Stephen’s bedroom last night, there was no doubting the intimacy of their relationship!

‘Mmm,’ Angelica murmured appreciatively as she sank beneath the waves of bubbling water, sitting down on one of the underwater tiled benches and resting her head back against the side to look up at the broodingly silent Wolf Gambrelli. ‘You really should go for a swim and then come for a dip in here, Wolf,’ she told him brightly as she luxuriated in the Jacuzzi. ‘It’s absolutely wonderful!’

‘I prefer to watch you,’ he assured her, and again he got down on his haunches to pick up a strand of the long dark hair she had lifted out of the water and draped over the side.

Bringing him close, Angelica noted nervously.

Too dangerously close, she acknowledged, as her breathing suddenly felt constricted, and her gaze was caught and held by the caress of those long fingers on the thick strand of her hair.

‘Do you love him?’

She raised startled eyes to Wolf Gambrelli’s face. The harshness of his tone was matched by the hard glitter in his dark eyes and the tight clenching of his jaw. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she replied uncertainly.

His hand tightened on the thick strand of her hair and he twisted it around his long fingers. Repeatedly. So that Angelica was forced to lift her head, which brought her face so close to his she could now see the flecks of gold amongst the brown in his shrewd eyes.

‘I asked if you love Stephen,’ Wolf Gambrelli repeated. ‘Surely that’s a simple enough question to answer?’ he prompted at her silence. ‘Either a yes or no will do,’ he added, when she still didn’t answer.

Well, no…no, it wouldn’t. Her relationship with Stephen was much more complex than that. They were still getting to know each other. And while she might care for Stephen, she wasn’t sure she understood the life he had led these last thirty years.

Wolf’s jaw clenched as she continued not to reply to his question, his eyes becoming glacial, his hand tightening on the silkiness of her hair. His scrutiny moved down as he caused her throat to arch and her breasts to thrust forward, her hardened nipples clearly outlined against the soft material of the red bikini top.

He knew a sudden hunger to see those breasts bared, to know whether her nipples were a dark, tempting brown or a dusky, inviting pink, to touch and taste them until he heard her throaty groans of pleasure.

‘Count Gambrelli, you’re hurting me!’ Her surprised protest broke into his erotic imaginings.

Wolf frowned darkly as he looked down at her, his frown deepening as he realized he had tightened his hand in her hair and twisted her head back.

He gave a self-disgusted snort as he unravelled that silky tress from his fingers before straightening, thrusting his hands into his trouser pockets as he looked down at her, dark storminess in his eyes now. ‘Stephen is obviously besotted with you—’

‘I don’t believe that is any of your business, Count Gambrelli.’

‘I find it…surprising that a young and beautiful woman like you would give herself to a man for his money,’ he opined.

Angelica stopped rubbing the sore area of her scalp. ‘“Give” myself?’ she repeated slowly.

His mouth twisted derisively. ‘I saw you go to Stephen’s bedroom last night, so I think it is a little late for you to attempt to play the outraged virgin!’

He had seen her?

‘And just how did you see me, Count Gambrelli?’ she demanded, having not seen him in the hallway the previous night. ‘Did you stand in the shadows and spy on us?’ she scoffed, and she surged up on a wave of bubbles in the Jacuzzi, then stood up to wade across and climb out of the tub. She grabbed up her towel to wrap it around herself before turning to face him, her cheeks flushed with anger and her eyes glittering with the same emotion. ‘Well?’ she challenged furiously.

What on earth was he doing? Wolf wondered with inward self disgust.

Had his heated response to this woman’s sensual beauty made him forget all discretion?

‘No, of course I was not spying on you,’ he denied coldly. ‘I decided to go back downstairs for a brandy—’

‘And by pure coincidence it happened to be at the time I went to Stephen’s bedroom?’ she concluded. She gave a disgusted shake of her head. ‘I don’t believe my relationship with Stephen is any of your business, Count Gambrelli.’

‘Stephen is my friend—’

‘I don’t believe friends spy on each other!’ Angelica challenged him again.

‘I have told you I was not spying—’

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said flatly.

Wolf stiffened at this denial, nostrils flaring. ‘Do you really think that I would willingly make myself a witness to Stephen’s infatuation with you?’ he refuted.

The angry flush deepened in her cheeks. ‘Stephen’s feelings for me, and mine for him, are absolutely none of your concern—’

‘Not even if I believe he is making a fool of himself over a woman young enough to be his daughter?’ Wolf came back swiftly.

Angelica became very still, lowering her lashes as a shield to the shock she knew would be in her eyes.

Because, without realising it, Wolf Gambrelli had inadvertently hit on exactly what her relationship was to Stephen. She was his daughter. His illegitimate daughter. Born to Kathleen Singer eight months after her affair with the married Stephen Foxwood had ended.

Angelica had always known that her mother’s husband, Neil Harper, wasn’t her real father—she had been a precocious five years old when Neil and her mother were married. But it had never mattered. Neil had always treated Angelica exactly the same as his own daughters by Kathleen—Saffron and Rosemary.

Although Kathleen had told Angelica the name of her real father when, aged twelve, she had asked about him, Angelica’s curiosity hadn’t been strong enough at the time for her to want to trace him. Especially when, at eighteen and a little more curious, she had discovered that Stephen was still married to Grace.

But a year ago she had seen Grace’s obituary in the newspaper—had learnt that Stephen and Grace’s thirty-year marriage had been childless, which had reawakened Angelica’s own curiosity about the father she had never known.

A curiosity she had discussed with her mother and Neil before she had even attempted to see Stephen Foxwood. As she had known they would be, both Neil and Kathleen had been completely supportive of her decision to at least make contact with her real father and let him know that he did have a child after all—a daughter.

That first meeting between father and daughter had been extremely emotional…

It had been followed by further meetings, and by Angelica agreeing six months later to start occasionally staying with Stephen at weekends, so that they could get to know each other better.

They were still getting to know each other…

And now this man—this Wolf Gambrelli, this arrogant Sicilian count—had come along and passed judgement on a relationship he knew absolutely nothing about!

She and Stephen had agreed from the onset that for the foreseeable future their relationship would remain private between the two of them. A secret that Stephen had obviously kept even from his close friend Wolf Gambrelli. Resulting in this supercilious man making assumptions about their relationship—insulting assumptions.

Angelica didn’t believe for a moment that Wolf Gambrelli’s comments about their assumed relationship were out of concern for Stephen. She had seen the searing way Wolf Gambrelli had watched her every movement last night. And again, this morning, she’d seen the desire in his eyes when he looked at her, and had known that he was pursuing self-interest rather than concern for his friend.

A self-interest that was going nowhere as far as she was concerned. Wolf Gambrelli was just a younger version of Stephen. And while she might forgive Stephen all his past indiscretions—simply because he was her father and she was growing to love him for that alone—she certainly wasn’t stupid enough to become involved with a man who was just as emotionally unreliable!

‘Do you have nothing to say in your defence?’ Wolf Gambrelli broke into the lengthy silence.

Angelica drew in a controlling breath before raising her lids to look at him scornfully. ‘I’m not on trial, Count Gambrelli.’

‘You are playing with the emotions of a man I consider to be a good friend as well as my business partner—’

‘Stephen is a big boy, Count Gambrelli,’ she told him firmly.