The Sicilian Duke's Demand

The first kiss was soft and assessing, as though he were getting the taste of her, smelling her skin, gauging the smoothness of her lips. She had the fleeting thought that expertise like this must have been gleaned at the expense of a hundred women in a hundred taverns along this rocky Sicilian coast.

He smelled warm, masculine, of the sea. His body was all male, living muscles swelling against her slim body as he enfolded her further into his embrace, the second kiss deepening as his lips caressed hers, pressing against her mouth.

In fact…

In fact, she was to recall later, by some weird chemistry of the female mind, it was not until she started to kiss him in return that she also started to struggle.

And that was what she was doing now, kissing him passionately and yet fighting him all the way. Her nails digging into those powerful shoulders, her knees trying to thrust at his groin, even as her mouth opened to his like a flower in the sun, and her eyes closed in ecstasy.

His hard, flat belly pressed to hers, the crisp curls caressing her skin.

Isobel’s heart was pounding wildly, her breath rushing hotly, mingling with his. The inside of her chest felt as though it were filled with some molten metal; her legs were boneless; her mind was whirling with emotions. Fury that he should do this to her. Resentment that her hormones should respond so vehemently to such an indignity. Relief that this brigand had just proved Michael Wilensky wrong. Imperious and sarcastic she might be, but an iceberg who had never responded to a man she was not.

Not any more.

And he kept kissing her, until his erotic mastery was so intense that, although he had not touched her breasts or anywhere else, she felt that swelling, rapturous pressure in her womb that only came when…

She shuddered violently in his arms, her emotions peaking almost unbearably inside her, holding her on a pinnacle of suspense for a long eternity until her body sagged in his arms like a released rag doll.

‘Mmm,’ he purred, releasing her at last, ‘the legend was right.’

In a hot blur, she saw that he was smiling at her, holding out one hand. Her fingers trembled as she took the coin from him. It was warm and heavy. She clutched it weakly.

Did he have any idea what he had just done to her?

Any idea?

‘You—’

She ran out of words after that first pronoun. ‘Sorry I took more than one kiss,’ he said in that husky, accented voice. ‘But it wasn’t breach of contract. There is actually a whole amphora of coins down there.’

‘Amphora…?’ she said weakly.

‘I don’t know what you would call it. Some kind of ancient pot. Full of coins.’ He gave her that dazzling smile. ‘Plenty more where that came from, siren lady.’

‘But—where?’

‘You’ll find them where I left a marker.’ He rose to his feet, a magnificent, bearded creature from some ancient myth, smiling down at her with knowing eyes. The black Neoprene clung to his thighs, revealing the swelling, male muscles of his body. ‘I will see you again.’

‘Oh, no, you won’t,’ she said, dragging her dignity back together again. ‘Unless it’s in a criminal courtroom!’

‘Nobody has committed any crime,’ he said softly. ‘Arrivederci.’

And now she could tell why he was so anxious to leave: the purring of an outboard motor could be heard threading its way between the rocks towards them. It was the others in the dive boat, coming to see why she was taking so long.

‘Don’t come back!’ was her parting shot.

He slipped into the water like a dolphin, leaving her with a final memory of a broad back and tight buttocks. Then he was gone.

Isobel sat clutching her coin, hot and cold flushes chasing one another across her skin as she waited for the other archaeologists to arrive.

The coin told her she was triumphant. So why on earth did she feel as though she had just been conquered?

CHAPTER TWO

FOR her pains, she had to endure a morning of merciless ribbing about her ‘encounter with Poseidon’.

None of the others had actually seen her mystery man, not even Antonio Zaccaria, their Sicilian liaison with the Beni Culturali, who normally saw everything. The boat, piled with diving gear, had rounded the little cape just after her Poseidon had vanished beneath the waves.

By their grins she could tell that they suspected she had had some kind of daydream, inspired by finding the beautiful gold coin—she did not tell them about the kiss—until David Franks and Theo Makarios strapped on scuba gear and went down, and found the floating marker attached to the pot of coins.

They were still talking about it late in the afternoon as they crowded around the workbench that they had set up in the vaults of the Palazzo Mandalà.

‘It’s a fantastic collection!’ Theo exclaimed, bright brown eyes alight with pleasure. He was carefully rinsing the coins with his ‘magic formula’ liquid cleaner. He was the coin expert among them, his lean fingers expertly sorting through the mass of metal discs, many of which had been welded together by corrosion. ‘Mostly bronze, and so corroded by the sea water that it’ll take weeks to separate and identify them. But there’s plenty of silver here, and that’s in wonderful condition. Stuff from Syracuse, a couple of super ones from Agrigentum, things from all over, really. But this gold Poseidon is just magnificent. A real treasure. Can’t believe you rescued it! I wonder how we came to miss this amazing treasure trove?’

‘The storm, yesterday,’ Antonio Zaccaria said. ‘It must have uncovered the pot. That’s how Poseidon found it this morning.’

They looked at each other. A storm had uncovered the wreck in the first place, shifting the sand so that the debris had been spotted by a fisherman, who had reported his find to the Duke of Mandalà, the major landowner on this stretch of the coast—who in turn had reported it to the Berger Foundation. Which was why they were here.

But another storm could just as easily bury the wreck again, perhaps for centuries. Thieves like Poseidon weren’t the only danger to a fragile site like this one.

‘The trouble is,’ Isobel said slowly, putting the thoughts of all of them into words, ‘that it’s not really a wreck at all. We’ve found no traces of the timbers—the boat itself must have rotted away a thousand years ago. All that’s left is the cargo, strewn along the sand, with nothing to protect it.’

Antonio nodded. ‘And the site’s so shallow that rough weather pulls it around, throws the material in different directions, covers it with sand…’

‘We need to work fast,’ Isobel said decisively. As the team leader, it was up to her to take decisions. ‘Between the weather, the tides and visitors like Poseidon, that material may not be down there much longer. We’ll have to work double shifts until we’re sure there’s nothing else left down there.’

The others nodded. Isobel glanced at what they had recovered so far. Not a bad haul for a few days’ work: a row of wine and olive oil amphorae, heavily encrusted with barnacles, but intact and, according to David, the pottery expert, of extremely rare shapes and sizes; the bronze fluke of an anchor and some other bronze fittings, yet to be identified; and now this hoard of coins.

All the finds lay soaking in neutralizing solution in plastic boxes, ranged rather incongruously along the carved marble bench that ran the length of the workroom they had set up. The Palazzo Mandalà was a magnificent, seventeenth-century palace that bore little resemblance to the rough quarters Isobel and the others were more accustomed to working in. Even the laundries and kitchens of the palazzo, which led off the vaults, were echoing marble halls, studded with carved angels and saints—no doubt to edify the souls of generations of skivvies.

The palace was the family home of Ruggiero, Duke of Mandalà, now in his eighty-first year, a noted benefactor of many causes, including the Berger Foundation, which employed Isobel, Theo and David. It was that lucky connection that had secured them the invitation to come and investigate the sunken Greek galley that had turned up practically on the duke’s doorstep, thanks to a Mediterranean storm.

And the old duke had extended his personal hospitality to the archaeologists, so that they were billeted in stunning chambers hung with Tintorettos and Caravaggios, instead of the leaky tents they were more used to.

The workroom, set aside especially for them, was a good place, spacious and secure, with an immense door like the portal of a cathedral, which could be locked with a key that weighed about three pounds.

‘The carabinieri have promised to keep an eye on the site,’ Antonio Zaccaria said as they made their way up the flamboyant marble staircase to the first floor, where they were roomed. ‘And the Coastguard say they’ll send a patrol past there every couple of hours.’

‘Think that’ll help?’ Isobel asked.

Antonio shrugged. ‘This is Sicily,’ he replied.

‘This is Sicily?’ she repeated. Of the three of them who had come from New York, she was the only one who had never been to Sicily before and, good archaeologist as she was, she sometimes felt out of her depth. ‘What does that mean, ‘‘This is Sicily’’? The cops have to keep that jerk away!’

‘I’m sure they will,’ Antonio soothed. ‘You were very brave to confront Poseidon like that, but not very wise. Especially since you say he had a knife. You were lucky he just backed off.’

‘He won’t come back,’ she said confidently. The story she had told the others had been highly edited. If it got out that she had allowed herself to be kissed by the marauder, her reputation as the Ice Princess of Archaeology would melt in a second!